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")