international love

"Close your eyes and form your lips like this! Well, do you remember now? Were your lips on the same level as his?"

I'm trying to help my sister recall a German summer fling from her teenage years. We're having lunch in a gem of a vegetarian restaurant, and the only thing not to our liking is the coffee made from grain, which tastes like grain. The rest of the food is good enough to make us wonder why we would ever want meat again.

When we've sorted out the summer fling guy, we discuss the guy from Kansas who I used to call So Close And Yet So Far Away, and the guy from Burkina Faso who disappeared so mysteriously. 

The guy at the next table is reading a book called The Art of Mind-Reading.

didn't hear this

My friend A has a way of prefacing a particularly juicy bit of gossip with the warning "you didn't hear this". Which means I'm not allowed to tell anyone.

"I can't remember if I told you this story before, but if I didn't, you didn't hear this," she said today.
"But if you did tell me before?"
"Then you did hear this. Obviously."

And we were falling over with laughter. The world would be a bleak place without her.

freelancer style

An unusually productive workday. A great cup of coffee. A tentative feeling of optimism. A glorious view through my workplace window. A run and a long shower. A movie night with my best friend, garlic rye chips and Coke.

Nothing more is needed today.

on the wrong side of the police tape

Came rushing through a large airport with a friend. Suddenly found ourself surrounded by stressed-looking police who were putting up police tape in a hurry and commanding people to get out of the area immediately.

My first thought was, "Shit. There's a bomb here and I'm probably standing right next to it."

Was quickly shooed out to the other side of the tape. When the area was cleared, the police left it too. One lonely policeman, with no protective equipment, pulled on latex gloves and walked back in, right to a small bag that had been left unattended next to a bench. He opened it carefully and started to go through it.

And there we stood, not more than 20 metres away, staring in morbid fascination. Also felt that we really, really would like to put a bit more distance between us and a bomb, preferrably something like ten miles. But we were at the check-in desks and really needed to check in so as not to miss our flight - and then the way to our gate was of course on the other side, so we had to circle the entire perimeter of the police tape to find it.

It took forever and ever,  walking next to a bomb.

( In the end, there was no bomb. But that feeling. )

everybody walk the dinosaur

Time for a confession - my most shameful habit:

When they play the Macarena in the club, I teach the youngsters the moves.

I'm always surprised that they actually let me back in there the next time I come.

( I'm also surprised that a club still plays the Macarena. Not that I'm complaining. )

today's guest of honour

S, the fair of face.

the H word

Sometimes happiness is just to take a break from work and go for a run ( even though you are not really in shape and don't really enjoy the running much ).
And stop on the way home to go into a shop, rosy-cheeked and with no make-up, to buy cream for your coffee.
When the air is cold and the sun is bright.

agenda for success

* make a plan for my day
* book a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany
* find a way to get along with my mother
* find more interpreters for my church
* drink less coffee
* get out my running shoes
* read the book of Psalms
* go to bed earlier
* live dramatically and beautifully and IN THE PRESENT
* buy a pair of summer shoes
* change the tires on my car 

essence d'Avril

Spring at 63 degrees north, at the sea's edge:

Blinding sun, cold winds, whirling dust, seagulls, joy.

alien and irresistible

Feeling:

Alien, like Peter Pan ( "He had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy from which he must be for ever barred” ), my own worst enemy and desperately in need of grace, old, damaged, meaningless, LOST, like certain passions of the past mean absolutely nothing anymore.

But also:

Stronger, sometimes beautiful, wise, a better person than I would be otherwise, a drifter, a free spirit ( sometimes ), independent and spontaneous, here and now, in rare moments irresistibly lovable.

going underground in Jyväskylä

Reading a Finnish novel. That doesn't happen very often, I tend to gravitate towards British, Irish and American literature.

Shame-facedly I have to admit that I only discovered this Finnish author - Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen - because one of his novels ( The Rabbit Back Literature Society, not a bad one ) had been translated and found its way to the English Books section in my local library. I read that one and then moved on to the one called Harjukaupungin salakäytävät.

The story is set in Jyväskylä, in my opinion a very boring and non-descript Finnish town where I've only passed through once. In this book, I discover that Jyväskylä has not only magical qualities but a network of secret, underground passages.

Makes me want to hop on the next train there and go exploring.

The intriguing theme is cinematic places and cinematic living. One of the principles of this is that if you open your mind to the cinematic, dramatic and beautiful things around you in the very ordinary, everyday world and live accordingly, you will also have a cinematic, dramatic and beautiful existence. My thoughts exactly!

So I will go and do that. But first I have to finish the novel. Apparently it's been printed in two versions with different endings, and you can't know which version you have happened to get.

( Picture from adlibris.com )

a professional x five

Worked from home. What I actually did was to download two kinds of software and then watch instructional videos on YouTube on how to use them.

It took ALL DAY.

I'm getting motion sickness from yet another career change. Within less than ten years, I have gone from the hotel business to the translation business to the book business to the garment production business to the TV subtitling business. My CV looks like the Yellow Pages.

It's mostly not even my fault. The changes have been done out of necessity. But something inside me is a little bit  thrilled  about this.

ordinary, vanilla day

Savouring my first cup of vanilla coffee from my new coffeemaker while seagulls are announcing the spring outside my windows.

I would say I'm having a late start to my working day but it's actually my default setting when I work from home. I pretend it's necessary for the creative process. But now I'm finally settling down to read instructions and download software and learn a new job.

I will work, I will get a little bored, I will get a little excited, and at some point I will have another mug of coffee outside in the sunshine.

apricot cider evening

Still chilly, but the April sun was blasting my windows with a million watts and degrees.

I winced and wanted to draw the curtains. But a friend said, "let's sit on the balcony. I'll bring cider!" So we watched the world and got tipsy on apricot cider and hours passed and the world was wonderful.

the assignments

Today I have ordered a coffeemaker online.

I have also convinced a new employer that I am indeed a very professional and experienced translator while balancing precariously on a plank over a swamp.

report from the vast forests of the North

Walking in a grey forest. Couldn't get anyone to join me ( people actually work on Tuesday afternoons? ) so it was a solitary experience.

It wasn't the prettiest of forests. But it was quiet, not a soul within many miles. I was entertaining myself by trying to figure out how the rescue services would get to me if I fell and broke my neck ( my plan involved helicopters and huskies ). The trail was supposedly four kilometres but it took me 2.5 hours so I suspect foul play was involved in the signposting.

I saw no animals except a few birds. ( One signpost said encouragingly that seeing a bear around here wasn't unheard of. See above under "Foul Play". ) The ants were still hibernating inside giant anthills. I expected an adder or two but it must have been still too cold for them.

There were information boards placed at intervals along the trail, describing plants, wildlife and the odd creatures you might see if you were of the old religion - fairies, water spirits and such. In reality, the spirits were as absent as the bears.

For the most part, my forest experience consisted of pines, spruces, swamps and rocks. There was, however, a tiny cave where I crawled in ( trusting the huskies to find me if I got stuck ) and an open place where rocks had been laid out to form a primitive compass rose - supposedly to ward off bad luck and originating from the 8th century. There were spruces that were said to have lived through the bad years of the late 19th century, as evidenced by weirdly tangled branches. And there was a picnic spot, complete with fireplace, an axe and a saucepan ( a real Finn needs nothing else, right? ).

 

Chocolate was necessary to raise the morale of the troops.

hens on heels

For a successful hen night, take:

* an assortment of girls from Kenya to Kazakhstan and a few countries in between
* a giggly workout session in a sunny dance studio
* Thai take-out
* inexplicably exploding balloons
* chatter in Russian, Swedish and English
* a hard-core cynic
* a wedding dress improvised out of bin liners
* a  crowded dancefloor at midnight

Mix with high heels and a few rolls of toilet paper, and all is well with the world.

better to curse the darkness than to light a candle

A crescent moon.
Was Not Was: "Walk The Dinosaur" 
Dancing on the volleyball court and grinning at all the men.

Avocado and mushroom omelet.
A silver laptop.
A job I feared, which turned into a job I loved.
My favourite bookshop and lists to go through.
Speaking a foreign language fluently.

= things that made me happy today.

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Bonus feature:

My incredulity at looking at a candle in a shop and discovering that it cost 50 euro. FIFTY. EURO. In what world would you pay that for a candle?

It actually made me angry. Not because I couldn't live without the candle. But to think that there may be people who would actually buy it, when approximately 20 000 people around the world died from hunger only today, that kind of scared me. What is wrong with us?

happy in HEL

More marvels found in Helsinki, the capital of Finland:

* a proper mixture of things

* streets paved with real stones, for that authentic European feeling

* trams ( lovely trams! ), and tram tracks to stumble over in high heels

* a Burger King that looks like a church

* the gigantic, enormous, ginormous book store Akateeminen, of which Michael Cunningham ( author of The Hours ) reportedly said it was the best book store he'd seen

* icebreakers looking very pretty in the evening sun

* an interesting fake fauna - the elk is somewhat understandable, this being Finland, but the giraffes on the balcony were entirely unexpected

* the ugliest presidential palace in the world ( OK, only temporarily... undergoing renovation )

* and another tourist, happily singing as she wanders the streets for hours ( that would be me )

there's heaven, and there's Helsinki

Wow, Helsinki! What else can I say?

I must have turned into a proper hillbilly. I tend to turn into a gawking, gasping, awe-struck TOURIST every time I arrive in a big city ( not necessarily even properly big like New York, but biggish like Dublin or Helsinki ).

Helsinki has everything. For example:

* Starbucks
* tourists ( not just me, a whole lot of English and Russian is heard in the streets )
* pretty houses ( all the below are residential / business buildings, no actual castles )

* ugly houses

* snowfalls from sunny skies
* people wearing colourful clothes
* a prison turned into a trendy hotel
* thousands of GORGEOUS little wine bars, pubs and bistros where you could just settle down at one of the rustic, candle-lit, wooden tables and drink beer and feast on delicacies and laugh with friends for the rest of your life
* a smell of roasting coffee beans
* pretty doors

* pretty cathedrals

* golden domes

* and some beautiful views

        *** to be continued ***

cities filled with the foolish

I love weird traditions that make entire continents laugh, or groan, or both. Like the Eurovision Song Contest, or April Fools' Day.

Or ones that don't raise an eyebrow almost anywhere in the world but are in fact utterly ridiculous when you think about it, like Santa Claus.

I mean, April Fools' Day, how bizarre is that? I'm sitting in a hostel in Helsinki with my laptop, chewing on a cereal bar and laughing at a round-up of today's newspaper jokes. The world is making fun of itself, for once. And when I'm done, it seems to me that the world is a better place on the first of April.