silk shirt, December mood

Weary eyes, a desk lamp, a warm pool of light over scribbled notes and rebellious laptops. 

A niche in a rock face overlooking the icy sea, battered by winds, rain or snow. Dark outside when I get up to work, dark again before I've finished. 

Black jeans, silk shirt, December mood.

the house of the thirteen clocks

The apartment building is surrounded by other identical apartment buildings, fairly new and proper. The area is quietly pleasant and has absolutely nothing interesting to look at. It was built for people to grow old in, snug and warm and alone in front of the telly. 

My mother's flat is nice, clean, with a wide collection of pretty trinkets. My father liked clocks. During his time there were 26 of them in the flat, 13 of which were ticking ones. 

I lived there for a while, years ago, unemployed, unhappy, falling to pieces. I also stayed there during that awful week after my father died. I greeted a steady stream of visitors bringing my mother flowers, lay sleepless at night, listened to the ticking of those thirteen clocks. 

But I also spent many cosy Christmas nights in the flat, with books, chocolates and that old Christmas record I always wanted to play, warmed by candles and a mother's love. 

Still, I never left the flat without taking a deep breath of relief. Not because I wanted to leave my mother. I just wanted to escape the atmosphere of boredom and decay in that building.

The ticking of those thirteen clocks has nearly stopped. My mother will soon leave the building, to move into a home for the elderly. I cannot yet deal with my feelings about her aging and the prospect of sorting through all her belongings, which go back generations. 

Instead, I write about the relief of never having to go near that apartment building again.

the ice cannot fix this

I went down to the bay, with its ice like a mirror all the way to the horizon, and sat on a sun-warmed rock. The ice was singing.

It has not been a good winter. It has not been a winter at all, in some respects. Just a dark wetness, bringing dark thoughts.

It went well for a while. I savoured each month carefully, deliberately. The swirling grey mists of November, the spicy candles of December. Then came the discordant threats of January, the midwinter demons that play tricks on body and mind. I have been so busy fighting them that I hardly even noticed this bland February.

The last two months, and probably for a few more to come, I wake early in the mornings to the sound of drilling in the walls around me. Instead of working from home, I'm forced to take my laptop to noisy cafés, chilly libraries and my mother's quiet flat. It has its charms - sipping smoothies or my mother's strong coffee while I work - but hunching on uncomfortable chairs over a small laptop twists my body into seizures and aches.

I didn't sign up for any evening classes or courses last autumn, as I usually do. I was tired and needed my evenings for myself. I couldn't even find any fun dance classes at the gym, only boring workouts alone.

I may be more rested now. Or more stressed out, from the drilling. My mind wanders only around the same, small circles - my flat, the grey streets where nothing ever happens. My creativity has dried up. Love is still not a reality. Only my friends and family keep me afloat on this dull ocean.

I used to be the traveller, the explorer, the curious one. How did I become this dazed and lonely shadow?

The ice sang its song to me today, with cracks and soft hoots.

new worlds in the oldest city

I go to Finland's oldest city and sleep in a monastery.

I wander slowly through the cathedral that ranks among my favourite buildings in all the world, savour the silence beneath its lofty vaults, light a candle, study the ancient tombs for the hundredth time and never want to leave.

I seek shelter from a snowfall and huddle over coffee in a hot and crowded café on the university campus - a comforting place where I used to hide from the challenges of English linguistics and French literature.

I abandon outdoor exploring when the snowfall turns into freezing rain and instead study 700 year old ruins in detail at the archaeological museum and write over a glass of wine in the museum café.

I stroll along the river in cold morning light and get soaked because I cannot get enough of its beauty. I dry out over a pot of coffee and reindeer pie in a hidden pearl of a café.

I deal with the business part of my trip by getting together with other freelancing translators, laugh with strangers over mulled wine and discover yet another strange new world.

I take the train home, as I did a thousand times before.

me and another language and a mock-orange

I sit on a bench in the park and smell the sweet mock-orange and practice phrases like parce qu'elle est jeune nous pouvons la comprendre and think that it doesn't matter so much that I sit here alone.

monthly report by the queen of denim

The month of May ...

There were weeks in the city: Hammering out thousands of subtitle two-liners, walking barefoot to the kitchen to make bitter coffee. I pulled down the blinds,visualized blindness and was blinded by a hot sun. In the office, I ruled the world of denim and wool - reconciling Swedish fashion dreams with Turkish deadline facts and putting a tea stain on a merino sweater. I got myself nerdy-cool glasses.

There was too much work. But there were also walks on the seaside path in hot weather, icecream with my icecream friend. There were parties on a balcony overlooking the bay, fueled by strawberry cider or pinot gris. I would have liked to drink wine and discuss God, world literature and the mysteries of science. Instead, we drank wine and discussed sex. Some of us sang along to the music - When you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong ... and sweet like a chic-a-cherry cola. That was OK too, because we laughed a lot and I declared myself as being "made of cobweb and birdsong". Other visitors gave me mango sweets in exchange for suspicious pills, or promised me boat trips.

There were weekends by the seaside: sun and sweet air, a hundred swans. An old lady who had to be watched over and occasionally fought with. A laptop full of jobs. Peace in my leaning ivory tower.

the buzzing at week's end

Saturday, the day of possibilities. Of sleeping late, of setting out on adventures, of partying in glitzy clothes and smoky eyes.

I used to love Saturdays as a child. I got up early in the morning to watch a long and boring Swedish talk show (it was before the time of children's morning TV) just to see a Tom and Jerry cartoon that appeared somewhere midway through. I didn't even like Tom and Jerry - too violent! - but it was my own Saturday morning ritual. I sat quietly, played with my toys and listened to the boring drone of the talk show, peaceful and happy. The house was quiet. A long day of freedom lay before me.

During my years in the hotel business I fell out of love with Saturday. It was a busy, long day of work and sometimes parties that were just a little too wild. During my time as a shop assistant, Saturday turned out to be a short and sweet workday, full of interesting people and with freedom dawning when I locked the door mid-afternoon.

Now I spend my Saturdays working hard at my laptop at home, looking forward to free days ahead. Watching people through the window, often still in my pyjamas. Taking a walk in the early evening on streets still quiet but brewing excitement for the party night to come. Returning home for a movie night with friends or in blissful solitude. If it's the latter, I still feel the Saturday night fever in the air - faraway friends suddenly message me and distant laughter is heard.

chemicals, violence and a governor

A day spent trawling through the legislation of Finland for no good reason. Everything from corporate law to the latest additions to the forbidden chemicals list, the construction of air-raid shelters and what happens to your maternity benefit if you die.

Now, after subtitling a TV interview on domestic violence, I'm going to visit the governor's residence.

This is not exactly how I imagined life as a translator but I'm not complaining.

with that terrifying sound, an insight

So, this week I have been subtitling a movie from the 1940s, taught myself to knit, finished a project I began twenty years ago (cross-stitching; I'm so not going there again!) and learned something new about myself.

Not a bad week.

A physical therapist told me that he was going to "crack" my back. I was familiar with the concept, in theory, and it sounded scary. Despite my apprehension I leaned into his strong arms, took a breath and relaxed completely.

It surprised me, all of it. The terrifying sound my back made, the fact that it didn't hurt, and the fact that I leaned back to let him do it to me again. Most of all, the feeling of putting myself willingly into the hands of a stranger who could hurt me badly. (He didn't). I suddenly realised that, despite my cynicism, I have a natural capacity for putting trust in people. I never do it blindly - after assessing the risks, I quickly make the decision and act on it with very little hesitation.

It felt like a strength, a courage that I never realised I had. In a life of much weakness and fear, it felt like being handed a gift.

working with lava and beautiful corpses

Work topics in the linguistic business:


* cardigans with sleeves of different length
* spherical lava
* macros and how to record them
* Lemminkäinen's temple
* Chinese snake liquor
* Putin and a penis sheath
* a movie-making prince of Jerusalem
* speech karaoke
* atonal symphonies and how to subtitle them for the deaf
* virtual reality pornography
* Finnish swear words and their translation
* high-visibility vests
* Haheoikanalonakeikimaikaponokakainolanai and her sister Pualani
* how to be a beautiful corpse
* oyster opening
* gourmet cooking in a coffee maker
* garment care symbols
* reformed neo-Nazis
* the procreation of woodpeckers
* tomato farmers on epic road trips
* translating Swedish, Finnish, Danish, French, German, Russian and Tamil for TV (even if you don't speak all of these)

As a result, I have a very interesting search history on Google.

ugh and ow for Christmas

Christmastime means that life is different for a while.

I get a break from my usual work and instead spend my days subtitling TV programs of a different kind.

Children's programs, which means typing words like 'splat!' and 'ugh!' and 'ow!', sometimes in a foreign language.

Music programs, with hauntingly beautiful and desperately depressing songs.

Films about tomato farmers that go on epic road trips.

Nature documentaries, with birdsong filling my room.

It also means waking up to grey darkness and taking my evening walk in the middle of the afternoon while there is still daylight. Weariness, coloured lights and mood swings.

the way I run my business

I have been an entrepreneur for half a year.

During this time, which foolishly started with four weeks of holiday, I have walked around in turquoise sweatpants, worried about how I will die, kept up a never-ending Messenger chat with nasty friends, lived on fruit and bread and wine, witnessed a rainy summer and a sunny autumn, repeated German phrases out loud, tried to fend off customers, felt anxious and weary, played volleyball, bought and sold old clothes, eaten kale, watched TV, felt superiour for no apparent reason, felt lonely, worked hard, worn a Nepalese hoodie.

Not necessarily in that order.

enter the businesswoman

The last year or more I've been ...

worrying, procrastinating, making feasibility plans, making appointments I didn't want to keep, talking about things I didn't understand, filling out forms, waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, trying to forget about everything, being pushed forward by sheer despair, reading boring material, trying to remember figures, wondering why nobody can help me, forcing myself onward ...

while trying to remember that this is what forging my freedom looks like.

survival spiced with cinnamon

Gone are the days of hanging out in second-hand shops or watching tv all day on the weekend - my weekend, which takes place on other days than normal people's.

Nowadays, I do the extra jobs that I haven't had time for, clean out my closets - which gives me peace of mind when I don't have much - and plan. It's not ambitious or successful, merely a not-so-healthy survival technique in a stressful life.

I long to get back to my lazy days. Especially when I realise I have just poured cinnamon all over my lunch.

stories of my life

I began to study English as my third language - but it is now my second - as an eleven-year-old.

I was born a story-writer and had not learned many words of this exciting new language before I tried to put them into sentences and sometimes include them in my cartoons. Here is some of my early work:

 A nine-word story with a sense of doom:
"I will never see you again."
"Why me?"
"Because."

"Look at this star, Mummy!" Pissed-off-looking star sitting on a hill.

And my favourite, very philosophical one: "I am not at all of course BAD."

the refugees made me do it

Fell in love today.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than this?

It says "Finland" in Arabic. A forest underneath a starry sky, yes? Or a city skyline, if you prefer.

I had promised myself, after forages into six foreign languages, that I wouldn't try to learn any more new ones (simply out of the fear that my brain will explode). But to everyone's bewilderment, a lot of Arabic is suddenly heard even in the icy streets of this backward Northern European town. I don't really know how to deal with this influx of strangers. Learning a few linguistic basics suddenly seems like a survival strategy.

So, headfirst into madness it is. A nine-hour intensive crash course into a language that wouldn't really be that difficult if not for a rule-loving teacher who refused to let us learn any useful phrases until we mastered the written letters (surely conceived in the brain of a lunatic).

I gave up after one hour or so and let the teacher fill the blackbord with pretty script. I would love to learn it but I had no time or brain capacity at the moment. I tuned back in when we finally got to the useful stuff, like saying hello and asking for food. At that point, the only real challenge was a few sounds that weren't made to be produced by stiff Finnish vocal cords. At the end of the course, a young refugee was assigned to endure my attempts at speaking a few phrases. As if he hadn't suffered enough by almost drowning on his desperate journey to Europe. He patiently listened, corrected and encouraged.

I went home elated. Tomorrow, 99 % of my newly acquired skills will be forgotten. But I have now in my possession the key to not just another language but an entire culture. I have opened a door, and through it I glimpse a marvellous world of Sufis, blue mosaic, dangerous men and hot desert winds.

the language of Europe

"The language of Europe is translation."

(Umberto Eco)

pixie dust aftermath

Finland in November: ugliness of post-apocalyptic proportions. Add snow and a little sun: fairytale land of divine beauty.

And near-suicidal Finns are suddenly smiling again.

Took my laptop and walked through this fairytale to the library - stopping for a latte on the way. Work doesn't really feel like work when you are surrounded by books. I translated someone's account of a trip to the frontier in east Ukraine while students whispered secrets around me.

a rock star and cardigan afternoon

Alone in the office, not-even-daylight outside.

Friday afternoon, not expecting to be able to go home at a decent time. Translating the hideous slang of a rock star and waiting for urgent updates on the production status for a cardigan. Coffee stains on my white blouse and I walk with a limp.

But kind of peaceful. That's the kind of Friday afternoon I'm having.

on pet placement

There is to be a final inspection of all the flats in my building after the plumbing renovation is finished. A notice on the door informs us that the inspectors will enter the flat even if nobody's home. It adds, "Any pets in the flat should be placed so as not to interfere with the inspection".

I would love to place my pets, if I had any, in appropriate locations. But do the inspectors know how hard it is to make sure that pets remain where they are placed?