the turning

My coworker asks me the question, first thing in the morning. Later in the day, I hear it again - from a stranger that I happen to walk past on my way to lunch. And from my elderly neighbour, dressed in fur. The question is on everybody's lips.

"Got your winter tyres on yet?"

It's time for the biannual, mandatory tyre swap. In Finland, you must have one set of car tyres for summer, another for winter. Most like to leave the autumn swap until the last minute, i.e. just before the weather turns icy or the snow arrives to stay. People study weather forecasts and ponder the risks of driving in snow with summer tyres.

In the evening, the first snow arrives, as predicted by every forecast. I still haven't changed my tyres. I watch the swirling snow and think of the winter ahead - always so long and cold and fraught with danger. The first snow is still magical.

I fall asleep in the eerily yellowish light of street lights reflected in so much white. The next morning, the world is changed.

I drive to work, extremely slowly.

soup and melatonin

On an October day of the genuine kind, I do the following:

* take the winter coat into use and enjoy being warm again
* wander into town for a bowl of hot soup with rustic bread
* buy melatonin supplement and desperately try to get as much daylight as possible
* walk in the park and listen to the soft whisper of yellow leaves falling like snowflakes
* speculate, with everyone I meet, on the possibility of the first snow and when it's time to put winter tyres on the car
* light candles and worry a little bit about the winter ahead
* go out on the balcony before bed, to look for the aurora borealis

celebrate yourself

“When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.”

(Joel Osteen)

bare, probe, live

Asleep, I dream of sailing on moon-lit seas and exploring unknown landscapes.

Awake, I pray for meaning, adventure and unexpected meetings with beautiful strangers. I learn piano chords and foreign words and come up with strange ideas, like long Sunday morning walks. I take time to stand and stare. I bare my soul to others. I probe the souls of others. I long. I live. I suck the marrow out of life.

the Cigar Room that never existed

It feels odd to talk about sailing on a dark evening in October when all around us in the marina, yachts and smaller boats are being hoisted out of the water for winter storage.

But the president of the yacht club is an enthusiastic man who enthralls us landlubbers with tales from the club's history. And he gives us coffee and biscuits.

Our motley crew of listeners didn't expect the coffee, much less the history lesson. We came because the adult education centre arranges a course on "the secret rooms of the city" and takes us on guided tours in beautiful, historic buildings not normally open to the public. The point of visiting the yacht club is apparently the mysterious Cigar Room in the ancient club house.

"I have no idea where this room is, or used to be," our guide admits from the outset. In fact, nobody in the club (or among us course participants) has even heard of it - apart from someone in the adult education centre who asked our guide to arrange this lecture and tour. That someone doesn't work at the centre anymore and can't be reached.

Things get increasingly odd when we realize that we have come to visit a secret room that is so secret that nobody has ever heard of its existence.

Still, we finish the tour in a small, cold room with large windows overlooking the marina. It's not hard to imagine sailors of old sitting here, smoking cigars and talking of distant horizons. The room smells of old wood and the sea, and is dimly lit by two boat lanterns - one red, one green. The lights around the bay twinkle poetically.

The group around me experiences a bizarre moment of companionship, joined by our interest in this secret Cigar Room that is probably a figment of someone's imagination. I shiver with joy.

darling books: wonderful troublesome Moomin life

"I'm longing to get away from this stony country. Even a poet can have enough sometimes."

Some children's books are not children's books at all but wonderful and beautiful when you've grown up. The Moomin Books (by Tove Jansson) are like that. They scared me when I was little. Now they give me poetry and life. They make me want to wander for hundreds of miles through the silent forests of my homeland and arrive in a valley where a steaming cup of coffee is waiting in a warm kitchen.

"That's where we're going to live and lead a wonderful life, full of troubles ...."

(quotes from T. Jansson's Comet in Moominland and Moominpappa at Sea)

unconditional and complete

“I demand unconditional love and complete freedom. That is why I am terrible.”

Tomaz Salamun

ode to October

October is that first lash of cold rain. Your car buried under red and yellow maple leaves. Evenings so dark you can't see where you're going. Social events, evening classes, taking on extra jobs. Apples and all your friends making warm apple pies. Heaters not working properly. Sweaters and candles and movie nights. Waiting for the first snow.

road trips in Finland when you're young

You travel in the wilderness of Lapland, along the marvellous sand ridge of Punkaharju and to the mighty rapids of Imatra when you are so young that the memories only consist of hazy, dreamlike images and smells - reindeer crossing the road, the pine smell of a wooden cottage where you stayed the night, the oddly unknown mummy of Keminmaa. Your dad takes pictures of you in front of carved troll statues and your grandmother climbs mountains wearing long skirts and wellies.

You travel along small roads through hills, villages and lots of forest, enchanted by summer. You swim in a few of the country's 187,888 lakes. You cook spaghetti lunches in pure lake water on a camping stove. In the evening, you drink red wine before squeezing into a small tent with best friends and strangers.

You pack an old van full of friends and skiing equipment and drive north on wintry roads. You spend an unplanned day in a non-descript town halfway when the van breaks down. You finally reach your destination late at night and discover that Lapland is a magical realm of snowy forests, starry skies and the breathtaking silence of an icy wilderness. You ski on the mountains all day and stop only to grill sausages over open fire and pass a thermos of hot coffee around in the middle of the forest. You spend evenings in a cottage playing board games in front of the fire with people you will never see again but will remember for the rest of your life.

You stay at an Orthodox monastery and watch the monks make berry wine. You explore the medieval castles of Olavinlinna and Suomenlinna. You island-hop in the charming Åland archipelago and try seaweed delicacies. You laugh until it hurts and you tire yourself out driving endless distances through empty forests.

You return home to the open prairies near the west coast, with the vast sky and the glittering sea saying welcome.

Nietzsche on reality

"No artist tolerates reality."

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

the clearest way into the universe

The forest is a part of my soul. I have grown up with it like a silence inside me that calms anxiety. The silence of it in autumn, with only the whispering of a wind setting heavy spruce branches in motion, the lonely call of a bird. The vibrant energy of it in spring and summer, with a thousand birds singing and everything exploding into joyous life.

The fragrance of it. Rich earth and moss, spicy scents of spruce needles, a honey note of flowers.

I played in the forest as a kid and walked in it with my father, in wellies and with bucket in hand, to pick blueberries and lingonberries. I wandered in it as a lonely teenager with a trusty dog as my companion. The moss was soft under my feet, the quiet of the wilderness was soothing. I discovered strange things and wondered, with a shiver of fear, if a bulky shadow was going to turn out to be an elk or bear.

At times, the mere idea of the forest can intimidate me. It is too vast, too strange, too dark in every sense of the word.

The forest is a place of thoughts. Of dreams. I'm in a world bursting with life that humans know nothing about. I can walk for hours and not reach the end of it and never be within a mile of a human being. I can get hopelessly lost. It is a place where everything is born, lives and dies without anyone noticing or remembering. This is the landscape of my forefathers. They walked among ancient trees and dreamed, and now they are gone.

The solitude, the purity and the feeling of infinity. If you want to feel safe, go and lean against an old tree that goes nowhere for a hundred years but slowly and steadily reaches for the stars. Press your face against the sweet-smelling bark. Experience creation.

downhill swing café

In a dream last  night I started a blog and called it Downhill Swing Café.

The blog spoke about real life, not airbrushed or edited. It comforted those who thought they were the only failures and losers around. It was a virtual café with the wonderful, spicy aroma of dark roast coffee and sweet vanilla lattes. It played old jazz, the kind that anchors you and takes you flying at the same time.

The blog was an instant success.

carry me on the waves to the lands I've never seen

Sometimes, very seldom, this happens: Someone puts me in a speedboat, hands me a can of cider and off we go. With speed, loud music and people I barely know.

My people, the Ostrobothnians, are a boat people. To me, the archipelago is largely an unknown world, even though I can see it from my window every morning.

And such a lovely world it is, vast and intimidating and beautiful. The endless vista of open water, the strange marine birds and the seals, the millions of uninhabited islets with rocky beaches or smooth cliffs. The fresh, salty air. The feeling of being helpless in a world not made for humans.

The silence, when you disembark on an island, as if you were a hundred miles from civilisation. The strange and beautiful labyrinths laid out with stones on many of the outer islands, ancient and mysterious. The stories of shipwrecks, the centuries of perilous fishing and of setting off towards unknown shores in search of something, the tragedies.

On the island of our destination, the autumn colours are vivid, the air smells of paradise and the woods are filled to bursting with mushrooms and dark red lingonberries. The sun is warm but a light mist is swirling eerily among the ancient graves of the shipwrecked. We feast on grilled meat, hot potato wedges and black coffee in one of the old fishing huts and try our luck navigating one of the old labyrinths that could be up to a thousand years old.

Someone should put me in a boat more often.