the road to the Loire is a difficult one

It's in a luscious garden in France, just as the July heat is cooling into a delicious evening, that I decide that I hate my best friend.

Behind us are days admiring the beautiful, rocky coasts of Normandy and Brittany. We have explored the smaller roads, laughing and snacking on fresh apricots and smelly, wonderful local Camembert. But I'm tiring of the sea. The alluring Loire valley, with its rolling hills, fairytale castles and a thousand years of history, is beckoning me.

My friend wants to stay longer by the sea and then take the motorway straight back to the airport.

This is where we hiss our most heartfelt feelings of disappointment at each other and I run off into the old garden just to get away from her.

Travelling together can do that. Even if you are the best of friends who have travelled together before.

The end of the story: we made up, compromised, travelled through the Loire valley and had a few more wonderous adventures.

to see a world in a cup of espresso

A memory:

The waiter in the little seaside café brings me an espresso because my rusty French doesn't seem up to ordering the café au lait I really wanted.

Sometimes the world decides to show you new perspectives of itself. The espresso, coupled with a tiny piece of dark chocolate, flows into me like smooth, black honey.

Around me are sunwarmed cobblestones, squabbling sparrows and a sweet breeze from the sea. I am free, I have my best friend with me and I am on the beautiful coast of Normandy.

to call myself beloved

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

(Raymond Carver: "Late Fragment")

not brave

I am not brave.

Throw me in the sea and I will panic and drown. Put me in a roller-coaster and I will suffer an immediate heart attack. Force me to endure a flight in heavy turbulence and you will hear me whimper with fear. Whisper the word 'cancer' and I will scream at you to shut up.

But give me honesty and then ask me to take a risk on you. I will calmly assess the situation and then take the jump for you.

road trip with Camembert

For an ideal summer week in France:

* Bring your best friend and rent a car. Try not to faint with fear while driving out of Paris in the mad rush hours.
* Drink real espresso, complemented with a piece of dark chocolate, in a seaside café in Normandy.
* Buy Camembert cheese, newly picked apricots and local cider and throw in a couple of bottles of wine. You will develop a tolerance for the strong smell of mouldy cheese that is fermenting in the hot car.
* Admire the rocky coast of Normandy and Brittany, playground to the likes of Joan of Arc and many a famous painter.
* Sense the shock and grief still lingering over the eerie fields of Omaha Beach.
* Stay at picturesque chambres d'hôte and struggle making conversations with the chatty hosts in forgotten French.
* Fear for your life on the back streets of Le Havre.
* Discover that your friend wants to stay by the seaside but you dream of reliving history in castles and stone age tombs in luscious Anjou.
* Have epic fights with above-mentioned best friend in the idyllic Loire valley and make up in time to have equally epic giggle fits over strange things such as ghost towns and monsters hiding in wheat fields.
* Spend a day of massive thunderstorms in Chartres and its enormous cathedral.
* Come home without your suitcase because the Parisian baggage handlers had an important football game to watch. Allez les bleus!

the day of the Saudi-Arabian camel whip

Penkkarit is being celebrated these days. Final year students of upper secondary schools hail their last day of school by coming to school in fancy dress, arranging all sorts of merriment and parading through town piled onto lorries, shouting and throwing sweets at everyone.

I remember my own penkkarit decades ago, dressed as a stereotypical Native American woman (or as such a one was imagined in Finland in the 90s), with clothing mostly assembled from presents my brother had brought home from Saudi-Arabia. It was so crowded on that lorry that I hardly felt the piercing February coldness. Twelve years of school were over and the future beckoned.

I was rather incongruously carrying a serious camel whip. It impressed everyone.

Harry Potter and the Regressing Adult

It's been a Harry Potter winter for me and my friends, as we dedicated seven dark evenings to rewatching the films over wine and snacks (and once, memorably, cheese fondue). Say what you want about the wizard boy, he makes for great entertainment. On film as well as in the books.

Some deep reflection, too. And emotions (unless that was just the wine). I can't get into the Potter world without feeling the longing for a great cause and the aching need for love.

Now I'm reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for the first time. It's a script for a play and so only gives you the bare dialogue and a few stage directions. And yet, I feel deep emotions welling up in me again. Different ones, this time: the cold loneliness of being different and not understood, the anger and the need to rebel just to be seen for who you are.

I think I'm back to being a teenager.

your very flesh shall be a great poem

“This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, 
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

(Walt Whitman)

winter, electric and crimson

It is a heavy feeling, donning a large, green coat. Walking out in sturdy, insulated boots. Being late as usual because it took so long to find your wool mittens and a chunky knit hat. Feeling icy air bite your throat if you haven't wrapped the scarf tightly enough.

It is a heavy feeling, walking out into a cold, cold winter.

But the snow is enchanting everything, the frost shimmers like silver on tree branches. The assault of the cold makes your blood run faster, dispelling all weariness. The air is electric, the sunset is crimson, faraway lights flicker like stars. The world smells of wood smoke and snow, and that heavy feeling is not heavy anymore.