the revenge of the hotel receptionist

Someone did upset me. As I still do the odd shift at Heartburn Hotel, I had the bad luck of running into one of the truly despicable people that disgrace this world.

Arrogance, is it not the worst feature in a human being, be it conscious or subconscious? This particular man made ridiculous claims regarding the price of his room (yes, money is almost always the root of evil). We might have been able to reach a compromise were it not for the fact that he clearly thought I was so far beneath him that he could not react in any other way to my suggestions than laugh condescendingly. Good for him we were speaking on the phone; had he been standing before me, he would have had to try that laugh through my surprisingly strong hands squeezing the nasty chuckle out of his throat.

After years in the hotel business, I have noted that hotel guests in general are pleasant enough people. Better hotels tend to attract more unpleasant customers, for some reason. So I assumed I was more or less safe from these, working at Heartburn Hotel. But there is always the exception to the rule. This particular customer did not even have the excuse of being rich and snobbish... not that that is much of an excuse.

Customers everywhere have the right to complain, of course. But a complaint should, first of all, not be taken out of the air on some poorly founded reason. Secondly, there is a nice way and a nasty way of complaining. The nice way usually accomplishes more.

Here's advice to all arrogant hotel guests trying to get freebies by making ridiculous complaints: the hotel might bend to your will, in accordance with the principles of good customer relations. But hotel staff will not always, in spite of our smiles, take it lying down. The next time you avail yourself of our services, you might find that you have been placed on the black list. Or that, for some reason, only the smallest, darkest room is available, or that something in your food tastes funny, or that through an unfortunate accident, no laundry service is available just when you need it.

Because the Universe gets mad when you laugh at lowly receptionists.

upset me, somebody

I dreamt of playing a wooden trumpet that kept falling apart and laughing so hard that all my sorrow dissolved.

I turned around in my bed and dreamt of my stalker. I woke up furious.

I have powerful emotions in my dreams. I have violent eruptions of feelings in my imagination even when I am awake, making up heated arguments and upsetting events. In my real life, there is also emotion. But few ever get to witness it.

People just don't upset me like they should.

belles lettres

We read to know we are not alone. Sometimes I write to know I am not alone.

While the darkness falls like velvet outside, I light a candle for lonely writers everywhere.

on stolen socks and snowbows

A puppy stole my sock today and my sister gave me a shirt and I walked through my playground and childhood dream. I don't know any of the neighbours anymore but their cats and dogs come out to say hello.

The sun is very low in the sky, and brighter than in summer. First snowfall was yesterday but the sun shone then as well and a rainbow (snowbow?) rooted itself in the prison yard not far from my window. I couldn't get in to look for treasure.

My stomach hurts and I see the world through a massive fatigue. Nevertheless, I long for a friend and a glass of wine. I also want to mean something.

stay in the cold world

A friend tells me - with an indulgent grin - that I am considered a Nerd because I have actually read something by the new Nobel Prize winner in literature.

I stick my nose up in the air, proudly. Then so be it, I am a Nerd. I analysed a short story by Doris Lessing for a literature class at university years ago. (For truth to be told, the choice of author was not mine... and I did not particularly like the story.) I can hardly remember the story now and have to look it up on the Internet. It is called "To Room Nineteen" and tells about a woman who realises life did not turn out the way it was supposed to do, and now she feels stuck in a role that is not her genuine self. She secretly withdraws to a room in a little hotel - the only place nobody can find or disturb her, the only place she can be herself - only for a few hours at a time, and becomes increasingly addicted to these moments of solitude.

I seem to remember it was not a particularly pleasant story, witnessing the woman withdrawing gradually from reality until the only option is suicide. At the time, hungry for life, I shrugged it off. But now, years later, I suddenly understand how she felt.

The pleasure of escaping from the too harsh reality into a place of quiet solitude where nobody can make any demands on you. Necessary at times, but if you make this place your home you are in danger. Instead of gaining strength from it to go back out there, you stay back in a dreamy state and gradually lose interest in everything the outside world has to offer. And gradually, the anguish creeps up on you. When it becomes too heavy to bear, you have already cut too many ties to the real world to be able to make your way back, or even ask for help.

So I will force myself to go back out there. I will call a friend even when I am tired. I will say yes when someone challenges me. I will put down my book and attend volleyball training even when I have to walk through a snow storm to get there. I will keep drinking my coffee on the balcony, shivering in the cold but with the sun on my face.

coffee break therapy

Today I will not write about God although as the Good Book (almost) says, the keyboard speaks what the heart is full of.

I am in a new-old state of semi-unemployment as my season in Heartburn Hotel is over. But I am slowly learning to live one day at a time. How difficult it is! How afraid of boredom I am! What is so scary about silence and doing nothing at all, letting my own thoughts and state of mind creep up on me?

Pouring my second cup of coffee, I force myself not to take it back with me to the computer but instead venture out on the balcony. In the October chill, I shiver with my cup under a blanket and stare out towards the bay and the fantastic colours surrounding it. If I concentrate, I can hear the birds.

Surprisingly, what comes out of my subconsciousness is not the usual vague anguish but hope, some contentment, even a faint shiver of... joy.

holiday beneath a McDonald's sign

Autumn at 63 degrees north with explosive colours, bleak sunshine, fog, a cold that surprisingly bites your fingers.

I have searched the entire Internet for a trip southwards. Something simple. A flight out of our local airport, a hotel someone else has chosen, a destination not too far away, with a little sun and interesting things to see. But above all, not too many tourists. And therein lies the difficulty. Why can nobody on the entire Internet understand that I do not want to spend my hard-earned holiday surrounded by drunk tourists from my own country, loud music and McDonald's signs?

I go bleary-eyed looking for a holiday and my neck muscles are stiff. I need... a holiday.

there is comfort in the world

New sense of freedom and the sun shining on glittering sea when I woke. The daylight seemed a bit gentler than usual, with a hope for the future or was it perhaps the mercies of the past, like the voice of a lover whispering in my ear. I dug out an old skirt from the closet to wear with suede boots. Beauty makes the world beautiful and sometimes it's an act of will.

Sometimes I am too weak to be an adult. I want someone to take care of me, do the difficult things. Never seem to find the balance between making my own life and allowing God to lead me in ways of adventure I could never have found on my own. But then, that's life. The search, the struggle, the confusion and the comfort of not being alone with it all. And the sudden joys that shouldn't be there, logically.

I read stories on the Internet while drinking bitter coffee, I dream of a library full of books with more stories and I want to walk through the city and look at people in admiration or maybe buy something that makes me look different. Maybe I lack a purpose but if I bury myself in the details I don't have to look at the bigger picture and feel the anguish.

The hotel calls. On my first day of freedom, they want me back to do the bad shift. To hell with the money that will pay my bills this winter. I say, deliberately, no. Freedom is to be treasured, not thrown away.

The world is screaming "you are ugly, disgusting, worthless" and keeps whipping me with its impossible demands. Or is it inside me? Sometimes those gentler voices reach me and I drop out of the rat race, sobbing, and are laid to rest on a bed of clouds - where I could spend much more of my time if I only learned to listen to the right voices.

When we know so much better, why do we keep believing the lies? I can't answer that but I will think of it today as I wander through the city in my suede boots and remind myself that everyone is worth loving and that there is a good book in the library and a friend waiting for my company tonight.

last days of key management

The autumn sun shining brilliantly and I can't decide whether I'm tired or impatient to start the day.

Only a few more days at Heartburn Hotel and I might be missing it later but not now. I seem to spend all my workdays cleaning the kitchen and I'm sick of the smell of disinfectant and the rumble of the dishwasher. The hotel magic is evaporating.

I'm sure I will miss some of the people. The ex-football star and our philosophical discussions on the meaning of suffering. The blind Jehovah's Witness who seemed to be lost, too far from home. The mystery man wandering around in the middle of the night. Santa Claus silently staring into the fireplace. The international backpackers with their aroma of adventure, who make me want to pack my toothbrush, passport and diary and head south, east or west.

This summer may have been tough, tiresome and sometimes depressing, but I learnt. And I saw. I got to handle keys again.

resolve under a full moon

Full moon and I didn't sleep very well and wake up sneezing. Not the best of days.

I have decided to stop longing for someone to give me directions in life. I'm wise and mature enough to draw my own conclusions from what I have learned and seen with my own eyes. After a year or more of being too weary to try, I'm getting ready to stand up and take control again.

Maybe.

So I take time to think. I call my friends again. I kick my childish desire for attention in the face. I speak with my own voice. I snarl, threateningly: "Accept me, or else...."

eleven little things to come

I just want laughter, candles, unconditional love, chocolate, adventure, strong arms and a strong heart, whirlwind, a dog, wine, everyone I love, and the ability to experience all of this with fascinated wonder and maybe, sometimes, a little loss of control. That's not too much to ask, is it?

two family affairs

Sunday lunch with my first family who had to chase me through town because I was angry and upset without even realising it. Once seated at the table and dealing with potatoes and ham with Thai sauce, a great Calm descended on my tortured soul. Family hugs, puppy love bites and a stroll in the woods probably helped.

Then get-together with that other family, the church. How ironic, I though bitterly at first, the Lonely of Lonelies. What am I trying to pretend, surrounded by strangers? I could have cried - actually, I think I did.

But my ancient angel hurried up to me afterwards and hugged me while she told me the latest adventures of her bold cat. I had a laugh with the pastor and he offered me help. An African student had an invitation for me. And one of the youngsters walked me home.

Even in the midst of misery, may I have love enough for a kind word to someone else.

And after all of this, I'm not sure I'm in misery anymore.

the Swedish edge

I am starting to realise that I was born on the edge of the world. Not in the centre.

Here is a big country (OK, everything is relative) and its people, a fairly homogeneous crowd who look alike and think alike, watch the same TV programmes and like the same mild coffee, get drunk on Saturday nights and doubt themselves, vow to beat the Swedes at ice hockey and speak a quirky, complex Finnish language that nobody else can understand.

On the very edge of this country the Swedish-speakers, as fiercely Finnish as the rest but forever different thanks to their mother tongue, a little more sociable and outgoing, struggling for their identity, always unsure of what the other Finns really think of them, tending to turn inwards and squabble among themselves regarding the best course for ethnic survival.

The majority Finns feel annoyed by their stubborn insistence to press the Swedish language on everybody else who does not want it, but forget about them the rest of the time - or ignore them just to annoy them back. On holiday trips to the coast they feel it is kind of cute, this chatty language which permeates every aspect of local society and which is as ancient as their own but with an international atmosphere. The world seems to be stretching outwards from the Swedish-speakers' seaside towns.

The trainee in the hotel reception is experiencing this for the first time, newly arrived from her inland Finnish city. More language skills are required of her here and more travellers from all over the world smile at her across the counter. There are traditions she has only heard about and she feels as if she is half-way to Sweden. The locals, as Finnish as herself, address her in that weird language which she has struggled to learn in theory for years.

I, her workmate and shift supervisor, speak to her in a broken Finnish, read a local newspaper in Swedish and seem too sure of my place in the world considering the fact that I struggle with the language of my own country.

And I smile way, way too much.

vasa limbo

My emotions are too abundant and colourful to be contained in written words.
My emotions are, on the other hand, petty and insignificant even to myself.
One minute the world is full of meaning and even a grain of dust carries a story.
The next minute, the world is full of dust and nothing else.

To stop, and stand still, to find out who I am.
Or to go out and make my life?

not in motion

The door opens.
The edges meet.
Step through and you find yourself lost.
Stay where you are and you go nowhere.

Wayfinder Hasturi
a.k.a. The Mad Perseid
AFC 217


I'm going nowhere but I don't see any doors.

midnight in the house of good and evil

I won't deny that I am anxious, doing the night shift all alone in the hotel. The constant noise from the TV, the music channel, my only and not very comforting company - rappers exhorting half-naked girls to shake their booty somehow don't seem to understand my loneliness and weariness.

It's not so much that I'm nervous of the dangers of the night or scared of the darkness. OK, maybe a little, but I push that fear aside while walking the endless corridors and venturing into the dark corners when necessary. Even the overgrown jungle that goes by the name of "garden" doesn't get my pulse racing much. The drunken men staggering in after a pub crawl don't worry me either, although I make silent wishes that they won't linger in the hotel bar for a beer but crawl straight to their room and into bed.

Perhaps it's only my weariness, that ancient instinct of seeking the refuge of home when darkness falls. Or the loneliness. Or the heartbreaking fact that I can't seem to make myself love this job either, as I can't love any job no matter how much I try - and the consequence, the depressing realisation that life may always consist of a vague dread of daily life. Or nightly life.

not much of anything

The storm came too soon, before I had time to lay down in the grass. Not even a pretty storm. Just rain, rain, rain. So I sulk indoors.

Even my computer is betraying me. He turns himself off when he feels I've had enough of surfing or DVD-watching.

A man I don't even like much has decided he and I were meant to be together forever. So I keep switching my phone off to avoid calls. While I'm pining for someone I can't have.

Still, the rain has to stop sometime. There is a cup of comfort coffee waiting for me somewhere. And the library is full of books yet to be read.

july is defined by this dream

I want to lie down in sweet-smelling grass and look at the sky above me and not move an inch until the autumn storms sweep in. Then I will roll myself into a blanket and fall asleep in peace.

nerves in an empty city

A lone tourist wanders the streets. All the inhabitants have fled the city. Finns have a strange urge to live close to grass, wind, sun and even rain during the short but intense summer of the North, and so they pack the car full of spouses, kids, dogs, barbecue meat and beer as soon as they can get out of work on Friday afternoon and head out to a humble cottage somewhere along the coast or at a lakeside. Finns have also seen to it that they have the world's longest vacations, so nobody seems to be doing any work from mid-June to the beginning of August.

Except for me of course. Somebody has to be hospitable to the tourists. But I hear that call of the wild too. Today I was restless, sad, anguished even, for no obvious reason. I tried all remedies known to woman: food, chocolate, coffee, shopping, chatting, more coffee. But the only thing that finally helped was the park. Sitting down for fifteen minutes surrounded by grass, trees and sun and all my nerves took a holiday.

pieces of eight or nine

I have been tagged by Prince Kazarelth to list eight things about myself, but found it impossible. So here are nine...

* I have a juvenile mind. Long after my teenage years, like a teenage girl I look for affirmation from someone I admire at a distance - "my whole existence turning around a word, a smile, a touch". I may never grow up.

* I am addicted to chewing gum and get severe withdrawal symptoms.

* I gravitate between a somewhat failed academic career and a much more fun, but doomed non-career in the hotel world. Nobody understands why, or what I really want, least of all myself.

* I am the Ice Queen in a crowd, cheerful among friends and extremely moody in my own company.

* I have received serious death threats.

* I talk to God.

* I once found heaven on earth and then had to leave in order to preserve my sanity.

* In my music library, I mix dance with church hymns but especially love songs that celebrate life and strength of will.

* I cannot live in ugly places.