helsinki magic

Vague sounds of traffic, far-away sirens, voices. Lights from the street projected on the ceiling of a city flat at night. I'm trying to sleep on a makeshift bed, on crisp sheets smelling sweetly of detergent. Listening to the sounds but not disturbed by them. Unfamiliar sounds, a large city living and breathing around this young country girl. Unfamiliar smells of old stone and concrete, fumes, gas stoves, other people's cooking.

Whenever I visit my sister in the big city, my days are spent exploring. Being treated to delicious desserts and cinema evenings. Learning how to travel on the metro, navigate the city, savour ethnic food and appreciate art. Laughing at the sarcastic, hilarious jokes of my sister and her friends in candle-lit cafés at night. Seeing strange things and strange people.

I'm shy, wide-eyed, hopeful that life will always be adventurous like this.

The world is much louder than I knew, I think as the nightly sounds of the city rock me to sleep.

going home, when you live in Finland

Going home, when you live in Finland, often means driving long distances through dark forests.

I used to lie in the backseat of my father's car, a long long time ago, and look at the winter night sky through the window. Treetops flickered past at its edges, yellowish street lights when we passed through a village. The stars stayed still, far above in the inky sky. The air smelled sweetly of wood smoke from cottages we passed. The road was icy and my father drove slowly, looking out for elks. My mother talked in a low voice, the dog slept on the floor. Hot air blasted from the vents but the chill crept in and I pulled my coat tightly around me. 

I thought about my grandmother, who we had just been to see, and aunts and cousins I had met at her house. Their lives and that place in the countryside seemed so far away. The quiet farmhouse that smelled of old wood, the wide and open fields around it, the ticking of an ancient clock, the memories of relatives long dead, the peaceful and very alive presence of nature. Almost like a fairytale. 

Sometimes I felt I had been abducted from that life that I'd never known, plucked from the embrace of doting aunts and lively cousins, forced into a suburban life among cold strangers and harsh demands.

Now I gladly leave the urban lights of the large cities in the south to travel home, along a winding road through the darkest and wildest of forests. Towards the north of the North. The road narrows with the hours that pass, signs with strange names flash by. 

The stars appear, the wood smoke, the old cottages. The sight of empty fields against a backdrop of spruces that always quiets my heart. Wilderness stretching from here to the Arctic Ocean. I'm going home.

the ancient road to Samarkand

I spin my old 80's globe gently, brushing the dust off the USSR and inspecting the crack that has appeared just off the International Date Line.

I got the globe as a Christmas present as a kid. Probably after nagging my parents about it for quite a while. I love maps. Nowadays I can explore Google Earth with a passion but I still find it fascinating to read the mystical names in tiny italics on my globe: Kufra Oasis, Sea of Okhotsk, Society Islands ...

I used to love travelling. I logged quite a few countries during my intense twenties. Now I dread bumpy flights and the exhaustion of arriving at midnight in foreign cities. I still travel, but not without suffering many sleepless nights about it. I force myself to go - because I have to. I have to explore.

I explore mysterious forest paths and strange neighbourhoods locally. But I daydream about sailing among the Society Islands. In my nightly dreams I follow the ancient road to Samarkand.

2022: the year of French castles and a knife in the stomach

2022 was a year of exploring paths, listening to 57 different genres of music and reading 115 books. 

In the beginning of the year, I couldn't play volleyball, go to church or have dinner in a restaurant because of the pandemic. At the end of the year, the pandemic was more or less forgotten and people worried instead about war and NATO, high prices, energy crises and iodine tablets.

I worked remotely and in the office, went to the gym, walked in the woods, gave up volleyball (again), looked after my mother, had Lucifer evenings with my world-weary friend.

 

Highlights:

* New Year in suspected covid isolation and a holiday alone in Narnia.

* Graffiti and rebel art exhibition in a spooky, abandoned, Arctic fun fair.

* Kicksleds and flashlights with sister on a dark night.

* Winter party in a snowy, dark forest - lanterns, carrot cake, spicy coffee.

* Art exhibition with French masters, pastry as a reward.

* Participating in a demonstration, shouting "Slava Ukraini!"

* St. Patrick's Day celebration - watching live stream of Dublin parade during a boring day at the office.

* New sofa with sheepskin throws and a sea view and many a cozy evening. 

* Turku, my favourite city, just before Easter: snow and sun, Dumbledore's secrets in the cinema, secondhand stores, emotional Sunday service in the cathedral, Bach's St Matthew Passion with spiritual insights.

* Birthday in isolation with flu, pizza and blackcurrant beer, slow walk at a safe distance from a friend, cookies in the spring sun.

* Studying innovative textiles: nettle, banana, coffee fibre, self-regenerating octopus genes ...

* Theatre with friends: Botnia Paradise, met the stars of the show (KAJ).

* Walpurgis Night celebration: listening to spring songs in the park, party with donuts and Popeda music.

* Street market in my old neighbourhood: Sunday school memories and strangers.

* Trip to Stockholm: two archipelagoes seen from the deck of an enormous ferry, churches and cafés in the old town with a friend, water buses and the charming Söder, window shopping and weird cinema in Mall of Scandinavia, luxurious hotel night with velvet and royal portraits, old friends and a sermon in Arabic at a church service, munching churros with sister and niece, an afternoon alone at a historical Stortorget café and in a wonderful scifi bookshop, a night show with cocktails on the ferry home to make the most of life while others slept.

* Military exercise that I walked straight into on my quiet forest walk - had to ask heavily armed soldiers for permission to pass through.

* Celebration of summer: two-minute boat trip and an outdoor lunch so windy that my friend had to hold down the wine glasses while I cut the pizza.

* Studying French until I dreamed in French and heard birds converse in French.

* Rickshaw ride with excited old lady.

* Midsummer with the usual crowd and a boat trip under the midnight sun.

* Fleeing a heatwave to a house with a hidden garden - read C.S. Lewis, walked a poodle and watered tomato plants.

* Hen night with Slovakian liqueur, chocolate quiz and book bingo.

* A wedding that was all my fault, in a leaning church. Reunion with old friends, the charming of new ones.

* Summer with boat trips and library trips, golf played with tennis balls and steel pipes, butterfly safari and finding fallen stars.

* Epic road trip through France.

* Two Tampere weekends: summer with beachvolley, autumn with exploring, wine and Mortal Engines.

* Dark september evenings in the wilderness cottage - a fire, wine and books.

* My first trade fair, with colleagues, free sweets and strange innovations like exoskeletons and neurological beds.

* Dancing salsa with beautiful people, trying not to crush their toes.

* Power cocktails and fire extinguishers - just another day in the garment industry.

* Crane-watching in a meteorite crater.

* An eventful week in a suburbian house - dealing with bleeding poodles, ambulances, cranky heating systems, videocalls in the dark, ghosts in the garage.

* MRI, laparoscopy, post-op pains - all resulting in a whole month of rest, then physical uproar and trouble finding medicines.

* Christmas season concerts: 90s gospel and traditional chorals.

* Luxury Christmas lunch, crises and passive aggression as an end to the work year.

* Christmas week: five parties, work, plus a New Year's Eve on the Island. Still finding the time to stuff my face with chocolate.

Domestic road trips of the year: Lapua and Kauhava for vintage shopping and too much snow, Jakobstad for books, Isokyrö for the following of a river towards a yellow cupcake.

explore, pray, read

I'm the eternal explorer. Of forest paths, medieval castles, secret doors to new worlds, old-fashioned Swedish words, libraries, languages, cities, local history, bird sounds, personalities and motives, my own past and present.

I also pray, read, write, and try on clothes.

starting at the end of the world

New Year celebration with candles, friends, a French look, discussions on the war and the latest Jewish Messiah, bubbles, a strong wind and bad roads - on the Island at the end of the world.