see God and live

Returned to The Shack, the book about a man who gets to confront God about all the pain he's suffered. I reread it when I'm angry, anxious or just looking for meaning.

The movie is actually very good too.

in Ireland everything takes more than 15 minutes

Addition to the recap of 2018:

Ireland in April: A country looking more worn-down but with the same fabulous seafood and friendliness. I showed my friends my previous life.

Blackbirds in a Dublin park, rain and hot fires, wandering around my Magic Valley forever, watching sheepdogs at work, feeling absurdly happy on a cramped bus on a rainy morning, finding the sun over hot chocolate on a vast beach, having my first reflexology treatment, not finding a pub in Dublin but running straight into a Romanian midnight church celebration, crawling into the 5200-year-old Newgrange tomb, a music session on the happy west coast, the spectacular and strangely unknown Slieve League, terrible back roads where the speed limits are the most optimistic (not to say homicidal) in the world, a joyous Monday night pub crawl in Monaghan.

Quote of the trip: "Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back." (I.e. my rather optimistic estimate of the time a particular walk would take us. My friends never believed me again.)

2018: the year of silver and the Ski Club

* New Year with the Ski Club that never skis.
* A Spanish evening with tapas, wine and wild dancing with hot-blooded people while the weather was being very Finnish outside.
* Sushi-making lessons from a teenager who had just bought a Kevlar vest.
* Election night watch party where we forgot to watch and booked a trip to Ireland instead.
* Ice hike and picnic alone on a deserted island - mushroom pie and coffee.

Ice hike

 * A military parade on a sunny, freezing day and an impressive air show by a fighter jet - exhilarating and my worst nightmare.
* A wild car chase to get free tickets to the theatre - the wonderful musical Billy Elliot in Finnish.
* Blind date with a window blind salesman. It was blindingly obvious that we weren't meant to be.
* Another non-skiing day with the Ski Club: luxury hamburgers with foie gras and dancing to dodgy music.

* Ireland in April: beaches, mountains and narrow Dublin streets, friends in various moods, dreams and Donegal.
* All-night drive to get home after a long journey, which gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "midnight madness".
* Birthday celebration, times two, on my balcony with traditional silver pear cake.
* May Day brunch on raw food with the Ski Club (still not skiing).
* A bucket of chicken shit that I carried into the main hospital to give to a friend.
* Autopsy that I attended in a carefully planned outfit.
* Ear massage (heavenly!).
* Poodle week with strawberries and gorgeous summer mornings.
* Anxiety pills that I gave away to a friend.

Not feeling anxious anymore

* First day of summer vacation: visit to the world's most boring museum.
* Tree-felling weeks with family and poodle.
* Midsummer with the Midsummer People in a cottage deep in a rain-soaked forest.
* Sing-along and beer at the micro-brewery with the Ski Club (need I say it? there was no skiing).
* Picnic in the park with the Ski Club on the hottest day of the year (33.7 degrees Celsius, not enough snow for skiing). A nap afterwards to sober up, on brown grass with a wild hare for company.
* Lots of summer floating on the sea (peaceful) and quality time with mother (not always peaceful). Heat headaches and a desperate search for cold water.
* Weekend in Helsinki with a friend, Bukowski and an electric fan. There was unbelievable heat, a hunt for a golden lion, dead presidents and a party with Hare Krishnas. We fled the city when Trump and Putin arrived.
* Encounter with (what might have been) a monster of the abyss, on a summer morning boat trip.
* Pergola planning for the garden by me and my equally non-planning, non-gardening sister.
* VIP tickets to a festival. Music, great food and wine, and everyone soaked in sweat. "Can you believe how much your employer invested in you?" gasped my plus-one.

* Barefoot pizza party on a tiny balcony during the thunder storm of the century.
* A dead squirrel and traumatized kids, all my fault.
* Guided excursions to a waste treatment plant (with its own Grand Canyon), a theatre, the City Hall, an opera cellar, the dangerous roof of the icehockey arena and the smelly locker room of the Vaasan Sport icehockey team.
* Badminton - my old Irish hobby became my new one this year.
* Two days shopping in the city that tends to give me suicidal thoughts. Not so this time. It gave me good coffee and quality time with friends.
* My first and last cooking class ever.

* Flirting with a vegetable vendor who took my pulse, right before I was given a book about a vegetarian lion - all while undergoing a health examination.
* Lessons in first aid.
* Large party with strangers only - I mingled with boat people and entrepreneurs and loved it.
* Turku visit with nuns, bad weather, happy memories and another party mingling with strangers.
* Christmas celebrations for nine hours straight, with thirteen humans and five dogs.
* New Year's Eve with friends, prayer, wine and fireworks - and the worst storm in recorded history.

Ongoing projects of the year:
* Getting silver hair - loving it.
* Volleyball - playing and watching with friends.
* Church - mostly avoiding it.
* Becoming a morning person and a bus person and a less lazy, unorganized person.
* Doing piano lessons on winter evenings and intense French studies through an app.
* Having party evenings with my nasty friends, other evenings with my good friend watching bizarre reality shows about au pairs.

Text is my thing

Miscellaneous:
* Frequent food: Carelian pasty, croissants, eggs and carrots.
* Freezing winter when wolf packs became the talk of the town, scorching summer when I watered squirrels and constantly stuck my head under the cold-water tap.
* Self-analysis of the year: "I am made of spiderweb and birdsong." And I have a deep anger, am more harmonious when responsible for someone, and need to get in touch with my body.

New experiences: Sing-alongs and autopsies, reflexology and traumatizing smear tests, wild boar steak.

being good on Epiphany

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." (John Steinbeck)

It is Epiphany today. I dreamed I was being good last night. In some ways, I am. Good at some things. Sometimes a good person.

(In my dream I also executed people, but that only shows I'm good at unusual dreams, right?)

bubbly and the sign of the cross

As I waited for year 2019...

I ate, drank, let a little boy play with my hair, received the sign of the cross on my forehead as I prayed, got the mambo and the salsa mixed up but swinged my hips anyway, got the introverts to chat and sing some very weird songs.

Candles flickered on the window sill, a blizzard raged outside, the Backstreet Boys made us dance.

At midnight, we shivered on an icy balcony and sipped something bubbly pink as fireworks rained down stars on our heads.

I dedicated the first few hours of the new year to diving into the deepest secrets of a woman's life.

I may be lonely, it may be the last New Year's Eve on my beloved balcony by the sea - but I have friends and celebrations and life moves forward.

parties, darkness and parties

December was family parties, friends parties, office parties, darkness, too much sugar, badminton, laughing with strangers, three rainy and nostalgic days in the city that educated me, a very social Christmas.

deep thought over garlic

Every time I fry garlic, or take the first sip of coffee, or blow out the candles after a party, I feel a little more loved.

(for god likes girls and tomorrow and the earth) - e.e. cummings

saints and songs and gingerbread

I have watched the Nobel Banquet on TV and found inspiration among princes and sages.

I have loved the darkest time of the year, loved by nobody else, because it is so intense in its darkness. I have walked in rain and snow and eaten too much chocolate and it's not even Christmas yet.

This is December, when memories and a craving for ancient traditions tumble over me. I want to sing of tidings of comfort and joy and wonder as I wander. I want to see a saint with a crown of candles walk into a dark room. I want to hear hymns echo under high vaults and burst into tears. I want the smell of gingerbread and the taste of clementines and the love of people and gods.

I want to sing out loud, courageously as when I was six years old and surprised everyone by singing a solo about lighting a candle in a lonely house. I want to sleep for hours in my mother's house.

coming home, fourteen years later

I'm back in the Magic Valley, fourteen years after it changed my life.

Nobody here looks familiar - all my friends have moved on too. But the valley is as welcoming as ever, soothing my soul with its loveliness and sweet memories.

After a long day out in all this beauty and fresh air, I walk into the hotel bar, nervous. What if I recognise someone but they look straight through me? The thought is unbearable.

That fear is laid to rest when a man looks at me and exclaims: "Come here, stranger!" It's an old friend - the patron saint of magic valleys.

He spends the rest of the evening buying me drinks and talking to me. I stumble back to my hostel a little drunk, completely happy and at home.

daylight lamps, spiced tea

November is monochromatic coldness, too much to do, jackdaws, favourite boots. The dreaded, sunless month of dying, always dark. Sugar cravings, evening classes. Start of the party season with cake and mulled wine. Daylight lamps, spiced tea. A little worry and a great love for life.

November withers down, the essence of life is left. Find this treasure and be happy.

bus stop: Serenity

I have become a person who takes the bus.

The bus is noisy, a bit smelly, the windows are sometimes too dirty to see through and the heater is often on full blast, creating a tropic micro-climate that is not the best when you want to arrive at work cool and unruffled.

Above all, the bus is slow, winding its way through four or five suburbs. It never goes straight down any road if it can find a small side road into which to do a sharp turn, or an dodgy neighbourhood to circle. My fifteen-minute commute becomes at least forty-five minutes long.

Still, I cheerily greet the surly busdriver and find my seat in the back where I endure the jolting and shaking journey, surrounded by students and immigrants. Because the noisy bus is an oasis of calm. A no man's land. Work stress is left behind at the bus stop. I can do nothing about anything, just sit still and think, or not think, and watch people and things I've never seen before. And afterwards get a much-needed walk from the bus stop.

The bus turns my hyperactive brain off for a while.

the numb fingertips of Halloween

It always happens around Halloween, when you're in the middle of your busy, tired autumn and still far away from Christmas.

The first mornings of scraping ice off the car and skidding on frozen puddles. The first lungfuls of air that smells of winter and nothing else whatsoever.

The first sensation of fingertips going numb when you forgot your gloves. The first uncontrollable shivers under a parka not quite thick enough.

The first snow, delightful and shocking with its promise of a new season.
The last week in October - the time when autumn turns from mild to harsh. My fingers are constantly numb with cold but when other Finns moan about the long winter ahead, I only worry about getting the winter tires on my car. Once that is done - always a mad scramble at this time of the year, always a cold, cold task - I settle in to enjoy the challenging, mysterious, exotic, dangerous winter in the North.

the Carrie years, with a happy end

Map of the school where I spent my first teenage years:

It still gives me that haunted feeling. Endless corridors, filled with smirking faces, where I was chased by wild beasts. No place to rest or hide. The nightmarish place where all those corridors converged, a dark place that smelled of burned metal and where a loudspeaker was forever playing Europe.

Carrie, Carrie, things they change my friend ...

Classrooms behind locked doors, dull in appearance and spirit. Prison yards, struggling against graffiti, where my best friends stabbed me in the back. A cafeteria smelling of onions and fear. Nameless horrors everywhere.

Seeing it again makes me jump with joy and walk with a swagger. I survived! I went through hell and grew strong, and I will never, ever, let anyone chase me through a dark corridor again. What is there to fear, after this?

starlings and my lost voice

Starlings in the crabapple trees sing joy into my otherwise quiet world.

I'm looking for my voice. I go walking in woods where I'm sprinkled with gold, every tree a jewel.

The sun is at an angle, always staring me in the face. Storms are pushing wild water up against thresholds. Rustling of leaves, insistent winds. Red sunsets, too early. Crisp dawns with blue skies or dull greyness, later every day.

The cold creeps closer and I'm knitting another scarf. The darkness creeps further into my days and I feast on juicy red apples. I teach myself French, then Russian. I travel by bus and drink wine with my friends. I pray. I dress with care and learn to live my life in months. October smells of wet leaves and pencils.

Almost half a year until spring.

mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam

I dreamed of this back then, when I roamed the world and was feeling weary and homesick:

After a successful day at the office, taking an interesting evening class in the community centre in my hometown, the bright and airy building with the wonderful library and the cosy café in it. Being surrounded by people who speak my language, running into people I haven't seen for decades. Having coffee with a friend I've known forever, in that cosy café. Strolling around the library that was my second home as a kid.

Then going to visit my mother who welcomes me with more coffee and sandwiches, which we share with another random visitor, my nephew. Discussing everyday things (unpaid bills) with my mother and lofty things (macroeconomics) with my clever nephew. Feeling connected to past and future.

It's been a while since my world-roaming days and nowadays my dreams are mostly of new adventures. But today, as this particular dream came true, I was quite content with being right here - at home.

Childhood hoods

the good darkness

Cold rain, red and yellow trees, and people who are afraid of the dark. It is the heart of autumn.

I am not afraid of autumn darkness. There are worse darknesses out there, and so much light to create.

holding a man's aorta

For some reason, I'm standing in an autopsy room.

A man who was alive up until a few days ago, is lying naked on a slab with excrement on his inner thighs and his entire torso cut open. The sight is horrifying and utterly sad.

The only sane way to deal with it is to pretend that he is not real, just a very authentic-looking dummy. So that is what we do. The medical examiner and her assistant dig out the important organs one by one, cut and study them, while doing a running commentary to us two outsiders who have no medical experience whatsoever.

At one point, I get to hold the aorta so I can see for myself how calcified and hard it is. It's absurd. I'm holding a man's aorta in my hands.

It is fascinating. I'm thrilled about the experience. Not to mention relieved to find that I can handle the sights and smells without fainting. What a piece of work is man! What an intricate puzzle of complicated pieces that all function seamlessly together - until they don't. (And even then they can usually be fixed, even heal themselves.)

Even more fascinating is the fact that it is so clear, looking at this poor man, that he himself is long gone. Whatever the soul is, it has left the building.

Afterwards I enjoy the sun on my face. I feel happy to be alive, and away from the smell of decay. And I feel sad. We pretended that the man wasn't real and in a way he wasn't - but he used to be.

buses, biogas and kittens

September is the month when I stare sunset in the face, celebrate chocolate harvest festival and become obsessed with beanies and pulse warmers.

This year, it was also the month when I found a kitten on my balcony, looked into a biogas reactor and started travelling by bus.

not just in a grain of sand

I want to ...

visit Prague, Barcelona and Venice.

have endless cups of tea and then be rocked to sleep on the train from Helsinki to Beijing.

shiver with fear in the heart of Africa on a hot, dark night full of strange sounds, feeling very far from home.

sail up the Amazon river and see crocodiles, monkeys and other unpleasant animals.

drink beer in the colourful cantinas of Mexico and sleep on a Pacific beach.

look for my lost love on the streets of Sydney.

get lost in a maze of neon-lit alleys in any city in East Asia where I don't understand a word of the language.

lazily cruise Polynesia, the Stockholm archipelago and any other friendly archipelago.

explore New York, Oklahoma, the Dakotas and every other part of the U.S. A.

really feel India.

be drunk and in love among the glitter of Hong Kong

travel on a slow, small boat along the rivers and canals of the European continent, listening to chansons, boat horns, crickets and the popping of wine corks, passing underneath low-hanging branches that smell of honeysuckle and roses, close enough to the river banks to wave at playing children and hear the sizzle of meat from summer barbecues.


see every medieval castle and ancient ruin known to man.

I mix melancholia with excitement, bonfires with storms

August was:

Encounters with hedgehogs and eagles, carnival smoothies with a doctor, midnight car crashes far away, sea buckthorn berries, a bonfire in a storm.

Long talks and arbour planning by the sea. Inaction, weariness and a little worry. Crying over a dead squirrel and the discovery that I am very strong, sometimes.

Days alone in the wilderness with chocolate and Once Upon A Time.

As always at the end of summer, melancholia mixed with excited plans.