not finished with you yet

“Every single time my heart beats, and my lungs expand, God is telling me, ‘keep living. I’m not finished with you yet.’”

(consurgo, Tumblr)

lose myself in landscapes

I should get in the car and just drive more often. Turn up the music, stop for coffee at a cute café, explore an old town that I always meant to visit sometime.

I should go back to my old university more often. Visit places where kings ruled and bishops decreed eight hundred years ago, where I had giggly picnics with my friends eighteen years ago, where venerable past and glorious future have always mingled in bubbly hope. Walk the streets where I was once so clueless and worried and excited. Look back with nostalgia and enjoy the confidence I have gained since. Have coffee in ancient, sunlit gardens and wine by the river at twilight.

I should travel by myself more often. Explore endless pathways on foot, linger at the places where my spirit ignites, write in badly lit pubs. Send pictures to friends and caption them "wish you were here", lose myself in landscapes that would seem boring to them. Remember lost friends and be grateful for present ones.

I should ... and I do, sometimes.

silver sequins in a nightless night

Yet another Midsummer was spent in the white kitchen on the Island, celebrating the summer solstice and the season of strawberries, tiny potatoes and the smell of meat sizzling over hot coals.

Friends not seen for a year hugged each other and immediately started sharing: food, ancient memories, roars of laughter, painful tales of death and suffering. This is how friendship always should be. But if I only experience it once a year, under the mild light of the midnight sun, I still count myself lucky.

There was unmerciful teasing about a silver-sequined beanie someone wore with a lacy dress. I choked on my food as someone brought up a story from my indiscriminate youth that involved heated kisses behind a refrigerator. In the middle of the meal, we called the ambulance for a neighbour with a broken leg. The kids, unsupervised, gobbled down corn on the cob and infinite amounts of chocolate while the adults laughed until we cried over stories involving tofu and showers with strangers.

After endless cups of coffee and big bowls of strawberries and icecream, we took a late-night stroll to see the sun glide along the northern horizon. It is easy to be happy in the season of the yötön yö - the nightless night.

passion instead of foolery

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”

(Hermann Hesse)

of cakes and castleyards

I had white chocolate cake the other day, in a castleyard that was silent and hot with sunlight. You could say that I drove four hundred miles just to have cake in this castleyard. I had a sudden craving for something sweet and the Middle Ages.

Turku Castle

Where I am from, there is history too. Things like million-year-old meteor craters and Neanderthal caves - but they look just like enormous fields and any old caves. People lived here a thousand years ago and more, but they left no castles behind, just a few mysterious stone labyrinths and the fields they plowed.

When I went to university in a city far, far away, many years ago, I discovered what it was like to walk down the same cobblestoned streets used by monks seven hundred years ago and explore a castle where a king threw his brother in the dungeons. And staying up late, labouring over my books, seemed easier when I knew students around here had done the same for centuries.

After graduation and some exploration of the world and even more ancient history, I eventually returned to my homeland of silent forests, birdsong and diligently plowed fields. I love the pure air, the flowers, the small boats in the archipelago, the earthiness of the people. But I miss the visible history and the atmosphere it brings. That's why I took the car and drove hundreds of miles to the castleyard.

I ate my cake and breathed deeply, and felt better.

wake up and taste the raspberries

I write about the taste of raspberries, fragrances, the heat of the sun on my skin. The comfort of soft wool and a touch that instantly calms me. And yet I seem to be so disconnected from my body.

Every spring, as the outside temperature rises to a level tolerable to bare skin, I awake as from a frozen sleep. It surprises me every spring. And I never feel as alive as on a hot summer's day, straight after a dip in the sea, when I stand half naked on the porch and brush out my wet hair.

This year, my soul woke up with my body. I finally understood this. That I'm not just my head. That the screaming dissonance in my entire existence is my body trying to make itself heard.

I need to learn how to love this body, feel it, be patient with it. I need to really taste the raspberries, not just write about them.

lighthouse lorry

This week, I have rearranged my furniture and my emotions. I have also seen a lorry full of lighthouses drive past my house.

of threes

Summer heat, milky coffee and a Kate Atkinson novel. I should find more work, wash my windows, get my bike fixed up. But I have a slight headache, deep-rooted sorrow and a wonderful life to live.

doodle and dine

1) Eat better. You have a chalkboard; use it. Make menus. Plan meals.
2) Read at least one chapter of a book for fun each day.
3) Go on a drive once a week. Have no particular destination other than a stop for iced tea. Put on music and see where you end up.
4) Listen to a record straight through without doing anything else. Sometimes music needs your full attention.
5) Doodle. Who cares how shitty of an artist you are? Give it a shot. Create.
6) Go to coffee shops. There’s a million in the city. Get out of the house for a while.
7) Ask a friend to go to dinner. Simply as friends and for no particular reason. Pick up the bill.
8) Allow yourself to fall in love. Let things happen. See where it goes. Take the risk.

(Joshua Angell: "Eight Things to Start Doing")

do not deconstruct

“I will teach my daughter not to wear her skin like a drunken apology. I will tell her ‘make a home out of your body, live in yourself, do not let people turn you into a regret, do not justify yourself. If you are a disaster it is not forever, if you are a disaster you are the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Do not deconstruct from the inside out, you belong here, you belong here, not because you are lovely, but because you are more than that.’”

(Azra T.: "Your hands are threads, your body is a canvas")

climbed the highest mountains

I once heard this song referred to, by its singer, as "a gospel song with a restless spirit".

I'm listening to this song while walking through a world slowly turning into the sheer loveliness of spring. I still don't feel well. My mind is weak and under constant siege by nameless fears. I look at the tiny pills I take every night and wonder how I, the strong one, became dependent on these. These pills, people who reply to my anxious text messages on dark nights, and a woman with kind eyes who listens to my deepest secrets twice a month are the only things standing between me and a falling sky. That, and the Word of God.

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes, I'm still running 

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

darling books: the isolated princess

"They are the Shaman, Medicine Man, or Witch Doctor of the tribe, the Prince or Princess in fairy tales, the True Knight or Defender of the Faith, like Don Quixote of Joan of Arc. Isolated by their seclusiveness and infrequency (around one percent of the general population), their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity."

I'm browsing through one of my favourite books again, one of the few non-fiction ones I own. Never have I seen my own personality (and those of all my friends and acquaintances) described in such unerring detail.

The book is Please Understand Me II - Temperament, Character, Intelligence by David Keirsey, who bases his temperament studies on the Myers-Briggs personality categorization. I turn to this book every now and then to learn more about how I and others function as we do, and why, and to console myself that I am not, in fact, "isolated from the rest of humanity" - I am an INFP, briefly outlined above.

The book describes sixteen different personalities in great detail, including such things as their interests, orientation and self-image, as well as how they function individually and together with others in career choices, mating, parenting and leadership. Fascinating! Variations of the personality test and its interpretations can be found online but this book really seems to contain everything you need to know, ever, about yourself and others.

"[Idealists] forget very easily yesterday's negative, disagreeable events and tend to remember the positive and agreeable - they are always the romantic about both the future and the past, and always the cheerful dreamer in the public presentation of self ..."

Welcome to my world.

cupcakes and unexpected hazards

Combined three of my favourite things today:

1. Coffee and a cupcake
2. with my best friend
3. in the library.

Afterwards I went to the gym to work off some remaining aggression and depression. Witnessed a man doing complicated, rotating movements to exercize his neck muscles while standing on his head, not once but many times. It looked impressive and dangerous. I found that it is really hard to avoid staring when you're expecting someone's neck to break at any moment.

bent and broken

"I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape."

(Charles Dickens: Great Expectations)

butterflies, wolves and a few Neanderthals

I'm not a museum person. But I love losing myself in foreign worlds.

I had the afternoon off so I wandered into the Ostrobothnian Museum, where I haven't been for years. I studied the exhibitions in detail. Before long, I was far, far away in the last ice age, in the world of butterflies and wolves, in a cave with a Neanderthal man.

I have seldom pondered the fact that I live so close to a cave where Neanderthals lived. Or that I take walks on the impressive site of a major meteorite impact, or that my summers are spent in an archipelago that has been deemed a world heritage site because of the bizarre effects of the last ice age.

It is a fascinating thing, learning about history in one's own home town. I stared at black-and-white photographs from the market square and wondered if the man selling produce from his horse-drawn cart might be my great-grandfather. I recognized streets I last saw in my early childhood but sometimes dream about, irrevocably changed now. I even saw familiar faces on the museum dummies because they were made by friend of mine and and modelled on other friends.

I exit a boring old museum and feel as if I've been on holiday.

Europe's night out

Last Saturday night, I was dipping bread into cheese fondue with friends while watching and heavily criticising the European Song Contest.

Everybody loves and hates the ESC but it is a bonding moment between friends and the 200 million people watching the show. It is always so predictable and so surprising, with the daring dresses, the biased voting, the dancing monkeys, the pyrotechnics, the odd mooning, the false notes, the protests and the oddities never seen before.

Oh Europe, you are so very bizarre and so endearing.

two odd moments

Chilly morning air is streaming in through the open balcony door and I'm scrolling through my Facebook feed lazily while a man in work gear is stretched out on my floor, muttering to himself.

I'm sitting in a chair with blood flowing out of my arm into a little bag, while I'm laughing at a girl practicing Swedish phrases: "Jag ska byta din blöja!" ('I am here to change your diaper!')

a mother's day

What my mother talks about when she calls to chat:

* church services
* walking to the shop
* how hard it is to reverse the car out of the garage without denting it
* what is on her latest bank statement
* what she had for lunch
* when I will come to see her
* what is on TV

My therapist says I should tell my mother more about my own life. So I try. I love my mother, but being an adult daughter is so hard. I love my mother, but. I love my mother.

a curse on my kingdom

Today I borrowed a wifi, had an unhealthy lunch, drove in rush hour traffic with broken brake lights, decided to rearrange my bookshelf for no good reason and abandoned the project halfway through because it turned out it was terrible (books by colour? What an insanely insane idea. I'm staying off Pinterest from now on).

I also managed to do some work, wear new ankle boots, have some negative thoughts and comfort myself with the latest novel by Tana French.

By the way, it snowed. In May. Even in Finland, it should never snow in May.

It may turn out that I am the Ice Queen after all and have put a curse on my kingdom.

detailed life plan

Go to live in my favourite city.

Tools:
* Two books - The Message (Eugene H. Peterson) and The Stylist's Guide to NYC (Sibella Court). Maybe I'll bring a pocket version of Kalevala along for boring subway rides
* A humble heart, lots of love and merciful thinking
* A laptop and an observant mind
* A loyal dog
* The complete DVD set of White Collar
* A black coat, a pair of good jeans, glittery sneakers, a pencil skirt, black boots, a Nepalese hoodie, woollen socks knitted by my mother (for cold nights), a few bohemian tops, a good scarf and a hipster beanie
* Hoop earrings, sky blue nail polish, a bulky silver watch and an alluring scent
* Seven hundred songs + the lullaby my mother used to sing
* A return ticket