they always appear on Monday mornings

Some people are idiots. Idiots! How lucky I am to get one of them as my first Monday morning interaction. A student emails me her 50-page-thesis and asks me to language-check it for tomorrow. Tomorrow. As if my desktop wasn't already full of stuff that is due tomorrow. She mentions in passing that she tried to email it to me weeks ago but I might not have received it as her email program has been acting up. No, really? And she didn't think to check with me?

I take a sinful pleasure in telling her "no way". Not even this week unless I happen to take mercy on her. And I don't feel particularly merciful on a Monday morning.

At least there is lunch with my sister to look forward to.

soaking in beauty

Dazzling glorious morning with sunshine on snow.

Only a Sunday can be this beautiful. Sleep, a lazy look through the paper, cook breakfast, watch people in the harbour taking their boats up for the winter. The beauty of the outside world reflecting in my inner peace.

I never again in my life want to see anything ugly.

the danger of cinnamon buns

My mum and dad always welcome me when I arrive. Their flat is always tidy and cosy. There are always church newsletters on the coffee table and the radio is tuned in on the local, Swedish-speaking station. There is always coffee and a fridge full of food that I (almost shamelessly) take advantage of when I've exceeded my budget. Today, I ate two homemade cinnamon buns and enjoyed the safe feeling of home.

It wasn't always like this. Last year, I lived in that same flat with my parents for months. Sometimes I'm surprised my sanity is still intact. It almost destroyed me. Family can rip you to pieces in its genuine and flawed love.

But time heals, and I'm slowly nearing the point where I can again enjoy the warmth of returning home every now and then and find shelter. I can somehow deal with that love.

But love is like that storm I lived through last night. If you get carried away by it, you can end up in a place you never dreamed of, which makes it all worth while. But it can never be completely controlled.

I will forever be in danger.

even snow can roar

As the storm, a genuine blizzard, finally arrived last night, I curled up on my sofa with a good book and some cheese and wine (to compensate after a tough volleball training session) and lit a candle to increase the coziness factor.

At some point, however, I couldn't resist venturing out on the balcony. It's a glazed balcony but a couple of the glass panes I've never managed to shut properly so wet snow was whirling in and the rest of the panes were rattling in the wind rather threateningly. Freezing cold. Yet, the sight of the snow masses drifting past against the background of the dark sky had me spellbound for a long time. The snowflakes, though wet and heavy, were not falling, they were being carried horisontally by the wind. Meaning there will be snow on the ground tomorrow but not too much. Wonder how many miles inland those snow flakes finally end up?

During the night, in my uneasy sleep, I could feel the building trembling around me.

In the morning, all was quiet and peaceful. A grey light over a landscape covered in white, and a bird singing. We survived and we are calm and humble.

stormgazer

I'm waiting for a storm. They say it's on the way this evening, approaching from the west, the first proper storm of the autumn. Since my flat overlooks the west sea I'm expecting the gale to hurl itself against my balcony windows very soon. I will see it coming.

If only that were the case with all the storms of life.

walk through space, time stands still

I drag myself out for a walk. Past the red-brick prison walls, past the small-boat harbour, on along the seafront. The trees are a silent explosion in yellow and red next to the grey velvet of the water. I hear silly lyrical phrases float up inside my head and try to ignore them.

The sandy beach next to the great hospital complex is empty. I doubt that the nudists still occupy the bath house next to it - they are hardy ladies who have probably just moved on to the private sauna of the ice bathing club at the other main beach, where they fry themselves in the sauna before going for a dip in the sea - the colder, the better. At least they wear their swim suits during the winter. Many of my friends also display a manic love of this extreme behaviour. Now, with the winter approaching fast, the sea will soon freeze and the excited souls will cut up a hole in the ice. In fact, almost half of the country seems to have picked up this strange habit during the years that I was in exile. What happened during that time? Was Finland exposed to radiation from a Russian nuclear disaster or was everybody abducted and replaced by aliens?

I walk back home through a part of the city, past the indoor swimming pool and the Greek-Orthodox church, while I plan my simple dinner - cucumber and ready-made pizza. Maybe accompanied by a glass of rosé. I pass ugly 1960s apartment buildings and 19th century former factory buildings, now transformed into enchanting apartments. The traffic is heavy, at least as heavy as it ever gets in this tiny city. The old wooden barracks of what used to be an army base are being done up as well, to equally lovely residences. Top-notch apartments in hundred-year-old buildings are the big thing here.

People are hurrying home from work or university classes, hurrying to the gym or the community college, walking their dogs.

Sometimes I feel at home with this. Sometimes it's all alien.

chat and silence

Finnish women tend to chatter. Not incessantly, like some other nationalities. But chatter nevertheless.

Finnish men are typically men of few words. Nothing unnecessary should be uttered if it can be avoided.

Some people claim men and women are very similar, mentally and socially speaking. Not in Finland. This is my latest observation.

I take courses at the local community college, not having much else to do. Languages, computer skills and such. The latest is a course in volunteer friend activity run by the Red Cross and the participants are, predictably, all female. Most of them have no problem with voicing their opinions in class in front of strangers. I have attended other courses where the majority is male, and these classes tend to be very quiet apart from the lecturer who desperately tries to start up discussions. The women, if in minority, seem to wait for the men to speak (this is interesting, in one of the world's most gender-equal nations). They may be waiting forever.

Me? I'm a female, but the shy type. I usually prefer to listen to others talk and squirm in embarrassing silences. The problem with chatty, all-female classes though is that it's often just that - chat. Not much of all the useful knowledge and skills I'm there to learn seem to get through.

Maybe my thirst for knowledge and cost-effectiveness is male?

what to talk about in October

Subjects discussed with a close friend over a drink:

* Thoughts and feelings of a person buried alive beneath a collapsed skyscraper
* Tobacco-smelling hair
* Drunk brothers
* Life ruled by fear
* Wineglass sizes and alcohol measures
* Madness
* The influence of Mum
* Newly-divorced men and their traumas
* City singles
* The rise and fall of civilisation as we know it
* To care or not to care
* Personality types
* God and mind control
* Fuel miracles

And the wine was good too.

merrily, merrily

Some days I head out to town and then just forget what day it is and what I'm supposed to do. I hang around the library reading or sit in a café wondering about all the people around me. I'm either going prematurely senile or just being distracted by life.

I see it as a good sign. Being able to drift like that means I'm not too hopelessly anchored to time and space and expectations.

First day of winter. Snow on the ground and the air is bright and chilly. I had my breakfast on the balcony, wrapped in blankets and reading Harry Potter.

my ancient Sunday angel

I know an angel. She looks old, really old actually, probably has been around for a few tough millennia. Or maybe it's just her disguise. She lives by herself in an old fisherman's house on the Island, with a little mischievous cat for company, and can be seen slowly limping across the yard on weary old legs to dig up potatoes out of the little garden plot. She has a car which she drives around to visit her friends and to go to church in town every Sunday. The only time she actually misses church is when her cat has run away, because then she is too worried to leave the Island.

Whenever I come to church, she beams her smile at me and scurries over to say hello, leaving the elderly ladies behind. She asks me how I'm doing and holds my hand or strokes my arm affectionately while we chat. No words of deep wisdom are exchanged, just the usual "how are you?" and then I get to hear what her cat has been up to lately. But such a warm, comforting feeling it brings me.

I wonder why she was sent to earth. Maybe it was only for this.

damsel in technological distress

Technology is neither good nor bad, but our thinking makes it so. To paraphrase Shakespeare. Despite being a characteristic female I am able to operate a microwave oven and a car. I can even reboot a computer. Still, the sight of any unfamiliar gadget with more than two buttons makes me shudder.

But this fact has sometimes unpredictable benefits for my social life. Today, I was faced with one of these unfamiliar gadgets with about thirty buttons and fifteen cables plugged into it, and felt myself starting to hyperventilate.

Thirty seconds later, I had not one but two gorgeous-looking men rushing to my assistance. I gave them both my most dazzling smile. One of them found the on/off button and the gadget problem was solved. But at least I got their attention.

whirlwind has got me

I have never been inside a whirlwind but I know what it's like.

It must be like this, the way my emotions are being tossed around. After a long while, exhaustion wins out and my mood is taking a steep dive that knows no bottom.

Three steps to break the fall: 1) eat, 2) eat chocolate, 3) drink - coffee, or if all else fails, wine.

Hate to admit that last bit because it sounds so alcoholic and I really wouldn't recommend it to anybody else but myself. But it's a fact. A glass of white breaks the back of that obsession with being in control and the panic in realising that I'm not.

I just need a break from myself. I would like to leave the world for a while and then come back and start over.

an idealist speaks her mind

According to a certain book on the four personality types I'm an Idealist. Another book I'm reading says relationships are the only thing in life that really matters.

Today the sun is shining but I feel like drinking wine. Alone.

being hunted through dreamland

I have a recurring dream in which I'm in a car (my dad's), trying to manouver it out of a crowded parking lot or the like, trying not to hit any of the cars around it or trying to avoid rolling into a ditch. For some reason, the brakes are always in a terrible condition (strange, since my dad is very caring of his car) and that recurring moment in my dream is the panic I feel when I desperately try to brake and it's not working.

Definitely to be interpreted as my fear of not being in control and of people realising that I'm not in control.

The last time I had that dream, I suddenly had enough of trying to brake and violently stepped on the accelerator instead, and the car bounded right into the ditch and up on the other side. I woke up feeling better about myself.

My other recurring dream is the one where I'm being chased. I keep running, knowing that it is futile, and sooner or later I always fall, or stumble on the edge of a precipice. The strange thing is, the hunter at my heels always catches me just as I'm falling and thereby saves my life. The weird feeling of being caught and being safe, simultaneously.

I always wake up from this dream longing to be loved, stubbornly and unconditionally, by someone who knows even my weaknesses.

evening delights

A teenager is wandering around in the House of Seven Widows. He rang on my door and asked me if I avail myself of cleaning service. I thought he was going to advertise his own services but his next question was whether I suffer from asthma. Turned out he was selling air humidifiers.

The widow next door closed the door in his face before he even made it to the asthma question with her. I wonder how many of the other widows he will survive. They don't take kindly to door-to-door vendors. He's the first I've seen who's even made it to the fourth floor of the building. Must have been his teenage charm.

The weather is rainy and cold, as usual, and I wrap myself in an old sweater. I keep my laptop on my lap because its ineffective fan makes it a nice little heater. I sleep more than I should when the weather is like this. Today I had to get up early for a job interview and was reminded of the scary, unpleasant coldness of the early hour when normal people have to get up. Don't think I miss those times when I had to be up by six to cycle through a deserted city to get to work.

I'm an evening person. The twilight time, the blue hour, when people are taking their early evening strolls, the smell of dinner cooking is wafting through windows and lamps are lit, when dogs are barking and children are out playing, that's my favourite time. I love to watch the sky darken and listen to the sounds of human beings returning home.

writings of a morose, stiff and generally doomed poet

Just read two novels (by Finnish authors, nobody else would think to write about us) which both described the Finnish people as morose, stiff and grudging of others.

Yes, we are. But not all the time, and probably not more so than other people. We have love, joy and fun here in Finland too. The problem is, we tell ourselves over and over that we are morose, stiff and grudging. And we believe it.

I would like some positive thinking, please! And positive writing by Finnish authors. I'm sick of being told I'm morose. Come to think of it, I'm sick of this "realistic" writing style that everybody thinks is the only credible writing out there. It's definitely not realistic, it's pessimistic. If you dare to write that you have hope for the human race, you are sneered at for being naïve. If you dare to include any flight of fancy in your writing, you get stuck in the children's lit or fantasy category.

Conclusion: we must be morose and stiff and generally doomed after all.

undesirable freedom

Strolling aimlessly around the city, envying people the purpose in their stride. I do what I want, but I don't want it anymore. When I sit down to relax I wish to do it because I deserve a rest. Not because there is nothing else to do. Coffee doesn't taste as good when you haven't had to long for it during hours of work. The city and the world is on the move towards the future but I have no part in it.

I merely observe. Maybe some day this will be useful.