the language of Europe

"The language of Europe is translation."

(Umberto Eco)

radiantly attractive

"Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you’re delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody - and that’s what’s made them radiantly attractive."

(Mignon McLaughlin, The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook)

cooling techniques

I reluctantly opened my door, feverish on a winter's night.

In came steaming, spicy Chinese food, white wine and someone intense who studied my every move and teasingly touched me without permission.

When he left, my skin was cool to the touch.

cup of kindness

I like my coffee in ...

* the café at the Cloister Hill open-air museum in Turku, Finland: When I was tired of the hustle and bustle of the city, the impossible demands of the university, even my life-loving friends, I cycled up the hill to the museum with its ancient cottages. The café had several small rooms with antique furniture and was always quiet in off-season. I drank my coffee out of a thin porcelain cup, ate a nice old-fashioned cinnamon bun or a pastry in an empty room and listened to the soft murmur of old ladies chatting in the next room or a clock ticking somewhere. There was a smell of coffee and ancient history. There was a deeply soothing silence, so far from the real world.

* the village pub near the Magic Valley, Ireland: On my day off I walked the forest path to the village. After a ritual consisting of breathing the soft air beneath ancient oaks along the path, saying hello to the horses in a nearby field, checking my email at the so-called IT Centre and stocking up on chocolate and yogurt in the village shop, I parked myself in the pub for the afternoon. Ordered the garlic mushrooms, with a Bailey's Coffee for dessert. Read the newspaper in detail. Idly watched whatever was on the TV in the corner - usually The Weakest Link with the matchless Anne Robinson (I had never seen such cold rudeness in my life). I loved the days when the air outside was soft and wintry and filled with the smell of turf smoke, when there was a fire roaring in the fireplace near me. I thought about the strange people I met every day, what to do about the boy I loved, the feeling of being exactly where I wanted to be in life.

* the Starbucks in an English city, inside a gigantic book store: I ordered a vanilla latte and perhaps some cake and sat there for hours. Read the Times or borrowed books, wrote my journal, studied people, talked to a friend.

Having coffee is more than just having coffee. In my current home town, there are plenty of cafés and pubs. But none that really welcomes and shelters my soul. So my coffee, be it of the strong Finnish kind, with Bailey's or with vanilla and milk, is currently homeless.

drop them when they bore you

"There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you."

(Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook)

river summer and rosebud winter

What I did in Cambridge, England:

Lounged on the lovely green banks of the river Cam with picnic food, a coffee frappuccino and occasionally a friend. Long, sunny afternoons doing nothing much except reading a book and watching people having fun in the river punts. Composed ironic poems in honour of the puntsman I had a crush on.

Worked in a fancy hotel, confused over how well it was run and how psychotic the boss was. In fairness, I had at least one psychotic episode there myself. Hotels can do that to you.

Spent a cold evening in a garden shed with half the world. All of us drunk, stoned or Australian, i.e., a typical hotel staff party.

Moved in with a complete stranger: a lawyer with an extra room and a view of an apple tree.

Took my friends to a tiny corner pub I had discovered, for a live jazz evening. Was rewarded with a kiss from a gorgeous Frenchman.

Strolled and biked along the river, through Stourbridge Common where Isaac Newton once bought books and prisms and where cows and horses now graze. Met one particularly memorable pony that took a bite out of my arm when he couldn't get a bite out of my sandwich.

Sat down to read a novel in a beautiful cemetery and was questioned on the meaning of life by a stranger.

Fell in love with the city itself. Winding streets that changed names at random and always got me lost (and I never get lost), beautiful colleges that were worlds unto themselves, wide parks with strange names (Christ's Pieces, hello?), suburbs that weren't suburbs but rather quaint villages with leafy paths and a lush, summery feeling.

Took private chess lessons from a Czech woman (gives a whole new meaning to the expression "check mate") in pubs with names like The Slug and Lettuce and Fort St. George in England.

Whiled away an autumn afternoon in the enchanting orchard of Grantchester.

Spent hours at Starbucks, in dark pubs, by the river, in the computer room of the city library.

Cycled through suburbs and greens, on dark evenings to my self-defence class and on chilly Sunday mornings to church.

Joined a real volleyball club with a real coach, and was escorted home by a liver transplant surgeon.

Frequented the police station to look for my stolen Peugeot (bicycle).

Felt lonely, pressured to breaking point at work, exhausted from years among an endless stream of strangers. Felt excited, joyful, in love with the strangeness of the world.

Was serenaded on the street by four unknown young men in formal wear, some of them on bended knee.

Did a holiday in Cornwall, a few weird weekends in weird cities, and whirlwind day trips to the marvellous city of London. (And the train back to Cambridge from King's Cross station leaves from platform 9, next to that of the Hogwarts Express. So it doesn't really matter if you get on the wrong train. I did that once but only ended up in Ely.)

Flirted underneath the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night and was sent a dozen roses to my workplace by a guy in a mohawk.

Checked too many celebrities into the hotel and soon hated their arrogant, whingy guts.

Curled up in a corner of the dark Eagle pub with the ghosts of Watson and Crick while a rare blizzard howled outside, then danced in the snow with my Czech mate.

Experienced the birdsong-and-rosebud winter of England's sunniest corner, as well as the strangest Christmas Day ever in a completely shut-down London. Christmas dinner under the blueish strip lights of a Libanese falafel joint, squeezed in at a plastic table between a fat Russian and a chatty French family and smiling joyfully at my best friend.

Went back to Finland, via New York and a hidden Irish valley (a.k.a. the long way), after an eventful year.

we took the name from a Swedish king

Vaasa/Vasa, my little city. The place to come to if you want to:

* cross over by ferry to Sweden, 80 kilometers away
* specialize in energy solutions
* meet lorries transporting 50 meter long wind turbine blades
* be international
* hear Finnish and Swedish in a carefree mix (almost everyone speaks English, too)
* study for free
* enjoy the sea and the sun (in moderation; this is not the Mediterranean, after all)
* feel safe
* watch a quality game of icehockey, soccer or even American football
* get drunk
* see a UNESCO world heritage archipelago where the rocks line up in neat ridges
* experience glorious, warm summer days with pure air and water, or dark, life-threatening winter nights straight out of a Scandinavian film noir masterpiece
* meet honest and friendly people
* meet quiet and reserved people
* (if you approach from the right direction) see a city that looks like a string of jewels on a bed of velvet
* hang around students
* feel the wind
* see the mad ice-fishing gang walk on ice that is melting away beneath them
* see the mad ice-bathing gang take a dip in the sea in temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius

behind barred doors in Le Havre

I'm sure Le Havre is a very nice city.

It's by the sea in Normandy, France. It has a nice strand promenade. That's about all I saw of it. My friend and I arrived late one July evening in our rented car. Looking for a place to stay, we found a cheap hotel in a back alley. The hotel "lobby" - more like a cramped corridor with peeling wallpaper - should have scared us off but we were desperate for a place to stay the night and bravely approached the receptionist, an aging rock chick. She gave us a room but made it clear that the breakfast should be avoided at all cost.

We barred the door to our worn-down room with some spare furniture before daring to go to sleep - that was the vibe we got from our surroundings. And we were relieved to find our car not stolen or destroyed in the morning. We left Le Havre very quickly, and without breakfast.

The rest of France is very nice.

what february is

February is long, dark evenings with blankets, candles and dreams.

Fingers going numb while scraping ice off the car and moods swinging with the temperature - sullen frustration with wet slush, crystal joy with ice cold sunshine.

The silence of snow. The silence of a society between party seasons, working hard, staying indoors and trying to survive. The comfort in hearing the unmusical chirp or squawk of one single magpie or sparrow. Longing for the cold of January or the warmth of March.

Body lotion, remote controls, woollen socks, sneezing. Pale skin, vitamin D supplements, bottles of wine, heavy boots. Gym bags and irregular sleep. Dragging oneself out of bed in the morning and seeing the southern sky a little brighter than the morning before. Trying to locate lip balm or a lost glove or one's will to live or just one more piece of chocolate.

a Cornish holiday of missing

September, but Cornwall is hot and sunny like summer ...

I arrive shaken up by the novel I read on the long, long train ride from London.

I scratch my name absently on a pebble on the beach and wonder who will find it and ask themselves who I am.

I walk, when the tide is out, to St. Michael's Mount, which is like a smaller déjà-vu of Mont Saint-Michel in France. Wrap my head in a bright orange scarf and miss my friends.

I buy fresh seafood from a fast-food stall and watch people remove a dead seal from the beach.

I have coffee and walnut cake in one of the romantic "tea rooms" that abound in English towns and talk to my parents on the phone. Miss them.

I note that I love to wander aimlessly in foreign landscapes, for hours on end, but when the sun sets I'm struck by an anxious longing for safety and home.

I take a day trip to the amazing little town of St. Ives. Buy a flattering skirt and write my journal on a sunny rooftop terrace overlooking the bay.

I marvel at the tides, endlessly fascinating for someone who's grown up by a smaller sea unaffected by the moon.

I wander around Penzance for days and have an ongoing text conversation with a friend who, like me, is having a lonely holiday but somewhere far away. We tell each other we're strong and independent, and feel better.

I want to go into a church but don't dare. Instead end up in a club across the street, drinking wine and listening to good music. Talking to God and texting another friend who makes me laugh across a distance of two thousand miles.

I sleep in a B&B with flowery wallpaper and have breakfast made by a motherly old lady. Read a novel that makes me miss God.

I take the train home while thinking how strange it is to leave a place like Penzance and know that you will probably never see it again. Miss it already.

not the same as never leaving

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

(Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky)

instructions for a snowy afternoon

Walk in fresh snow and biting wind. Look for poetic windows. Call your mother while you walk, holding the phone with a thick mitten. Barely avoid getting run over by a manic snow-plough. Dream a little. Smile at dogs. Use the boot scraper when you come home.

top 5 today

Desserts with whipped cream
Jackdaws
Courier guys when you're bored in the office
Accidental meetings with a sister
Wikipedia

a fairytale with coffee-flavoured cotton

"For once, this place actually looks as if we're in the clothing business," said my boss and took a picture of me surrounded by cotton cardigans with defects (one of these defects was categorised on my list as "too many fairies").

I hung a tape measure around my neck for practical reasons - tape measures always end up on the floor otherwise - and pretended I was a real seamstress, instead of just an office assistant measuring cardigans sewn in some Turkish factory.

I found tiny particles of cotton fibre swimming in my coffee cup. I drank my coffee anyway. It wasn't polyester, after all.

dry müsli and the order of the phoenix

During my year in England, I spent a considerable amount of time discovering Cornish castles, driving down country lanes and walking on rainy, endless beaches, mending a crushed spirit on the streets of London, and sneaking into every hidden courtyard in Cambridge. Not to mention loving life on the banks of an idyllic river on many a lazy summer afternoon.

But I particularly remember one week when I did none of these things. I spent it reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in my unmade bed, in a tiny room in a sleepy suburb. Didn't go out, only occasionally and reluctantly rolled out of bed to go work an evening shift in the hotel.  Didn't tidy up my room, do my laundry or even go grocery shopping - only ate dry müsli straight out of the box and, in the evenings, drank cheap white wine out of an unwashed mug.

I finally finished the book, got out of bed, cleaned up myself and my room and bought some milk to go with the müsli. Got on with my life. Looking back, however, it was a strangely poetic week.

dizzily on ice

In the coldest days of January, before the miserable wetness of global warming hit us again, there was a skating track prepared on the ice on the bay.

I dug out my skates (bought for me by my father in my sixteenth year), laced them up and dizzily headed out on the track. I veered crazily from side to side, gritted my teeth against the pain in my ankles (not used to this) and listened to the silence of the frozen sea.

the comfort of jackdaws

The wind is cold and the night is dark, but on my wrist are bangles so pretty (I know because the metal chills my skin) and a clattering of jackdaws is circling the black sky above.

I need everything pretty with colours, stained glass and glittering metal in the dark greyness of winter.

I need birds and their chattering and twittering in the cold silence of winter.

sober slams the door

There is an anxious knot deep inside me that hasn't been untied for months, or years.

Something tightly wound that aches to be unwound.

Sometimes, when I'm a little tipsy, or maybe a little bit more than that, I feel God's love swirl around me and a sweet relief settle inside. But why that love is unreachable in a sober state is beyond me. One would think God prefers sober.

Perhaps in the sober state, my mind is slamming the door in love's face. Thus far, but no further.

in bed with Bukowski

"I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take."

(Charles Bukowski)

bikers and a mother's love

Awakening to the sound of raindrops,
a mild wind after weeks of ice cold winter,
and I feel like crying a little (winter rain is the worst rain).

But I won't.
I go the the market hall,
borrow the newspaper from a couple of aging bikers
who nod politely at me.
Eat hot salmon on brown bread, and drink comforting dark coffee.
Walk through the city looking at people
and wonder, as usual, what their lives are like.

Feel odd, as usual. Not of this world.

A couple of hours with my mother,
welcoming and warm and hard to relate to.
(Well, mothers and daughters, they say. You do your best.)

I go home and wonder,
since there is love all around me,
how come I don't feel it?

even our prison is pretty

Prison walls look pretty in snowy weather.

not up for this game

A man (trying to flirt) sends me a text message with only the heart symbol.

Me: Is that an ace of spades?
Sarcastic reply: Queen of hearts!
Me: Quit playing poker.

while collecting empty wine glasses

Candles burned down,
soft buzz in your blood stream,
"it really doesn't matter if we never sleep",

The time of night when every song has a soul,
"some die young, but you'd better hold on",
a friend's gentle words warm inside,

Hope seems infinite,
"screaming out for love",
tomorrow will be cruelly bleak but tonight is clear,


It's going to be okay,
Someone's watching over you,
"speaking through the silence",

Be still and know that I am here
Be still and know I am

do this today

Learn to play the piano,
go out and find love,
ask yourself what is the darkness in you.
And above all, stay and watch the rising moon.

tortilla dinners in the Arctic

I mention winter a lot, in the winter. My least favourite season.

But a season that fascinates me, at least when we have the proper freeze-to-death-or-be-killed-by-falling-icicles kind, not the too-mild, drown-in-grey-slush-or-expire-from-the-sheer-ugliness-of-it kind. It is so exotic, in my slightly foreign eyes. The thick snow, the stabbing cold, the everlasting darkness. The danger, in this otherwise safe and quiet country.

And the unbelieveable beauty of ice crystals and forests buried in snow. 

And the way life still moves on when arctic conditions hit hard - how people dig their cars out of immense snow drifts and drive to work, negotiating lethally icy roads with a shrug, how children go skating in minus twenty degrees Celsius. How we shut out the cold, have parties and Friday night tortilla dinners and post pictures on Facebook and argue about politics, and think nothing of the fact that if we go outside without proper gear we might die within a few minutes.

I'm reading a beautiful thriller, Rosamund Lupton's The Quality of Silence. An English mother and her deaf little daughter somehow end up in northern Alaska, driving a truck on ice roads on a desperate mission. It's so far-fetched that I'm enthralled. And parts of it are familiar in my exotic homeland. Driving in complete darkness, without even the hope of a dawn, stopping to scrape ice off your vehicle in the murderous cold. The immense loneliness of it - knowing that if something happens, you're completely on your own.

I put the book down at last, with a relieved sigh. Darkness and cold may be surrounding me too, but I also have a warm bed, hot peppermint tea and an ongoing Messenger chat with friends.

drawing the same heart

We sit in a parked car, I and the friend who knew me best in the thousand-year-old city where we chased life all over town. She is breastfeeding her baby while a blizzard is piling snow over the car on a dark winter night.

She absent-mindedly draws a heart in the condensation on the window, the same kind of heart that I do when I doodle even though I don't really believe in love much. The temperature outside is minus twelve degrees Celsius, and despite thick wool coats and thermal mittens we feel the cold assaulting us when the car's heater is no longer blasting hot air. I watch the whirling snow outside while we talk about a man we knew who froze to death recently, not far from his house.  This winter could kill us.  But I can see my house from here, and windows are lit up in warm welcome. The baby, wrapped in a fleece, is making contented noises.

Many years ago, in that ancient city, my friend and I were guests at a wedding and knew every nuance of each other's faces. Now, my friend's face is almost strange to me as we talk about the painful divorce of that wedding couple. Her arms are used to the weight of a baby. My legs are used to running in high heels to silence fire alarms.

Today, we have screamed with laughter about a golden skirt and discovered that we share a recurring and very, very odd dream that we don't like to talk about. Our friendship is no longer what it used to be. It is now warming hearts in a blizzard, exploring newer cities, reuniting women that have carried babies and run in high heels a thousand miles apart.

a bottle back and forth

"Sometimes, you just want to hand a bottle back and forth with someone, with the lights low, feet brushing against each other, as you sit on the floor. You want to read paragraphs aloud from philosophy books, and smile. You want to kiss their neck, just behind their ear. Their cheek just southwest of their eye. You want to whisper french terms of endearment. You want to tell them about the last time you cut yourself, or accidentally looked down to find blood from a scratch on your knuckle.

You want to play the music a little too loud. You want to whisper the lyrics. You want to lose sleep. You want to cry a bit, from laughing so hard. You want to not touch at all except for fingertips. You want to dance, throwing your arms around, your hair a mess. Collapse with joy etched on your face.

You want to lift the bottle up to your mouth and notice them watching your lips. You want them to want. You want to want. You want to mourn the 30 degree drop in temperature, and the week ahead. You want to tell them what you fear the most.
But most of all, you want to get drunk off the taste of them. Lips on lips. Drunk off the night, and the whiskey. The secrets, the laughter. Drunk off the idea that you didn’t have to be anything other than yourself."

(thatkindofwoman, Tumblr)

the games that play us

* Volleyball. Forever and ever the love of my life. Started in fifth or sixth grade thanks to a wise teacher called Runar, in a small and dark gym. Throughout the rest of my school years volleyball was my only extra-curricular activity - when I could be bothered to go. We had two coaches: one who put us through murderous hours of practising technique, one who didn't know much technique but let us play around and have fun. Not until one of my last school years did we actually get to play against any other teams. With the exception of my Irish years, I've played since then. Always just for fun.

* The main sports of PE classes: ice skating and skiing in winter, pesäpallo (Finnish version of baseball) in spring and autumn. The ice skating was sometimes combined with playing bandy, which was fun. The skiing was the cross-country kind where we were basically let loose on the skiing tracks in nearby forests without supervision. This always turned into a competition and I always finished among the last, so no good memories there (having to lug the heavy skiing equipment to and from school didn't help). I wasn't very good at pesäpallo either and was always one of the last to be picked for a team, but it was kind of fun.

* Badminton, during one or two quiet winters in the Irish mountains. My childhood game turned out to be a good way to kill time and get to know the Irish.

* Dance, during a few years at university, and zumba, which I bravely threw myself into much later (when it became a thing).

* Swimming: exercise on hot summer days.

* Running, cycling and weight-lifting: necessary evils that I avoid until I can't.

* Horse riding and tap dancing: hobbies I wish I had. One is too expensive, the other nobody seems to be doing anymore. Why?

if, full of care

This whirlpool of information and stimuli everywhere!

My mind is becoming scattered. My attention is fluttering in a hundred different directions. I can't even write a short blog entry on a single subject - even if I manage to stay on the web page long enough without moving on to a dozen others.

I can no longer sink into a good novel for hours as before. I find it difficult to sit through an entire two-hour film. I feel immediately anxious if I have nothing to do. And yet, I am mentally exhausted and don't want to go out or see anyone apart from my laptop in the evenings.

More and more often, I have to force myself to fix my eyes on a still object and breathe evenly for a while, just to relax my over-stimulated mind.

This cannot be healthy. I'm afraid that with a few more years of this, I will no longer be capable of thinking with concentration on a single subject.

While writing this blog entry, apart from moving over to other websites every now and then, I actually started two other blog entries on other topics.



WHAT is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

( W.H.Davies: "Leisure" )

my most incomprehensible blog entries: a compilation

"My busy work day was paused..."
"Ten years and a thousand entries. I'm not sure how to celebrate."
"The dark but colourful décor, the sangria."
"Accidentally set fire to my hair (three times)."

"I'm faced with an infinity of strange streets or unknown doors that offer adventures beyond my wildest dreams."
"... a woman with wild, brown hair, with storms and bitterness beneath her outward calm."
"Sweet, homemade mead with tippa-leipä, traditional fare on May Day and the day before, Walpurgis night and the mad spring party."

"I minored in history, back at university. Probably because of the house."
" ...stared across the bay at a fairytale castle, dreamed of coffee shops with wooden tables, walked on quiet back streets, made..."
"I felt the deep helplessness of the spoiled urbanite as I was trying to feel my way up four flights of stairs with only the feeble light from my phone to guide me to the right door."

"Vaasa may not be the prettiest of little cities but when you approach it from the harbour it shows off an enchanting skyline."
"Something's awake."
"In a town of cotton-snow I spent a few hours in a favourite place."
"Wonder if I will ever look back on this time with nostalgia. Ah, that winter with those Thursday nights..."

"Why is it that grown-up women like me still tend to get stuck on what our mothers say?"
"The place to come to if you want to meet lorries transporting 50 meter long wind turbine blades."
"My own retirement age is hopefully still decades away but it's never too early to start with these things, right?"
"I parked myself in the pub for the afternoon. Ordered the garlic mushrooms, with a Bailey's Coffee for dessert."
"I'm sure Le Havre is a very nice city."

"Some days begin with me waking up in pure, yellow silk."
"I sing while I walk."
"My eyes hurt, my food cravings won't go away and nothing works."
"Tied a bow into the beard of one of the men. Said, "You know, when Tolkien was writing The Lord of the Rings..." and watched the eyes light up on four of them. Took a picture of one in a little green hat."

things to do in Ostrobothnia when you're dead serious

These are some of my activities:


* Sit down too much, burning my retinas staring at a screen.
* Excitedly buy shoes online and send them back when they arrive.
* Fret over the broadband upgrade I was talked into getting and didn't really want.
* Buy strawberry cider and impatiently wait for warmer weather when I can get gloriously tipsy on balconies and in beer gardens with my cider man.
* Worry, for no apparent reason, that my laptop will break down.
* Wonder what I'm supposed to do with my life.
* Get desperately unhappy and relentlessly happy.
* Light candles, no matter if it's midnight sun season or no daylight at all season.
* Sulk over my ugly sofa.
* Have entirely too many "girls' night in" Saturdays, with entirely too many girls sleeping over in my tiny flat, and enjoy it entirely too much.
* Go running, very reluctantly.
* Suffer from tendinitis in every shoulder I own.
* Use the fact that it gets dark at 4 pm in the winter as an excuse for seven-hour-long TV marathons.

a midwinter night's dream

Snow is falling, the last of this Christmas's traditional glögg-drink is simmering on the stove and I'm planning to go out and buy the thickest candle I can find.

One night just before Christmas, I had to venture out in the dark streets in the middle of the night because of a borrowed poodle with a tummy ache. While the poodle was chewing on frosty grass, as dogs with tummy aches do, I shivered, yawned and studied the apartment buildings of the neighbourhood. Most windows were dark, a few were lit by Christmas decorations that had been left on overnight. Electric candelabras, stars and strings of light.

Outside of one dark window hung a simple wooden lantern with the only non-electric light I could see, a thick candle flickering in the wind. The next days I looked for it every time I walked past and it was still lit, day and night. The window belonged to a small flat in the most run-down building around, probably inhabited by a student. I imagined a young woman living alone but not lonely, romantic, full of dreams for the future. Planning a life in beautiful places far from this cold, dark back street in the North. Making the most of her life here, decorating her home with this romantic, thick candle left to burn day and night over Christmas to symbolize the poetry of life.

After a while, I realised that my sleep-addled brain was confusing her with me. And that the student in the flat probably was a loser, judging by the constant blueish flicker of a TV or computer game in his/her window that I saw at more humane times of the day. (Which could, on the other hand, also be confused with me - I watch quite a lot of TV in the winter.) I am not so young, fast approaching the midpoint of life, but I live alone and plan and prepare for a wonderful future in places far from this dark street. Meanwhile, I light candles and make the most of life here.

When the time for Christmas lights is over but darkness still lingers here in the Nordic winter, I will hang a lantern on my balcony with a thick candle left to burn day and night, flickering in the wind. To symbolize the poetry of life and light my way.

2015: the year of greyness, white paint and one red motorcycle

* Began the year with that rare feeling of true happiness. Fireworks in the sky above me, exciting new friends around me (new as in made that evening), sparklers in one hand, champagne in the other, no need to worry about a thing.
* New Year's Day, and already my car had to be towed to the repair shop.
* Saw my armpit on an ultrasound.
* Published prison fire pictures and subtitled the President's speech.
* Founded a sports club that can make balls stick to a ceiling.
* Enterprising thoughts all year.
* Debut as a TV translator. Also added Danish and Tamil to my list of work languages.
* Ice-skating in my summer paradise.
* Discussed God among beautiful Irish Cobs while getting drenched in winter rain.
* Birthday party with pavlova and hot whiskey.
* Nightly road trip with someone else's three sleepy toddlers.
* Straight perm of afro hair, which involved me, my sister, latex gloves and an instagramming teenager.

* Professional photo shoot (as model) and world championship volleyball game (as enthusiastic supporter) on the same day.
* Cold and quiet summer and two months of holiday with white paint and strawberry liqueur. Painted everything white.
* Midsummer with the Midsummer People and more kids than I knew existed.
* Walked through mud to study 75 000 ultra-conservative Christians. I was the only one wearing ear-rings.
* Gave my Mum a haircut while inebriated.
* Weirdest date ever planned by me: a visit to a cat shelter, followed by an afternoon at an American football game. Hot sun and cold Pepsi.
* Encounter of the third kind with a mouse and a weasel early one morning.
* Drove a Porsche wild with a scandalous man.
* Weekend in the forgotten city of Jyväskylä with friends, sun and beachvolley.
* Metal detector search for wedding bands and my uncle's pacemaker.
* Returned to the clothing industry and spent three days a week between a butcher's block and a Buddha of baby hippo size.

* Loveliest day of the year started with sibling breakfast and culminated in sunny hours on a deserted island.
* Too much TV.
* Internal conflict between my shoulders and knees.
* Joined the third book club of my life.
* Trip on a red Ducati to have pastry with a priest.
* Looked for an exorcist and had pizza with a suicidal wife-beater.
* Theatre with a doctor and a curious incident of a dog.
* Tried one of those cars that parallel park themselves.
* November picnic with mother's peach pie.
* Escorted a heavy Turkish lorry and led it astray.
* Girls' weekend on the sinful streets (and canals) of Amsterdam. Sex, drugs and wild parrots, all viewed from a safe distance.
* Turned down a job I dreamed about two years ago, in favour of freedom.
* New Year's Eve with good friends, whom I then dumped to go and drink beer and watch fireworks with a man.

* What paid my bills all year: subtitling a talkshow, the President's speech and obscure 80's song lyrics. Monday became the new Saturday.
* Wine evenings with the nastiest girls in town, falling asleep to each other's snores.
* The year of refugees everywhere and a feeling of insecurity.
* New phone, new laptop, new TV service - too little time to think.
* A life made up of a billion small tasks.

going Dutch

The streets of Amsterdam are packed with tourists despite the persistent rain. I pull my hood up and wonder if my white coat glows in the December darkness, just like the scant underwear of the lady of the night in the window next to me. I'm almost pressed up against her window, illuminated by a soft red light, by a rowdy stag party making flirty gestures at her but I seem to be invisible. The Red Light District, with its faint scent of weed in the air, has a strange effect on everyone.

We take one of the last canal boat tours of the evening and the cheerful guide is clearly longing to go home. I sit with my friends in the back of the boat, watching thousands of illuminated townhouse windows - without curtains, a Dutch thing - reflected in the black canal water. We laugh at a heron staring at us from his perch, make jokes with an Australian tourist and dream of the strawberry mojitos we are going to have when we step off the boat.

In the morning, we dawdle in the hotel courtyard, marvelling at the wild parrots shrieking at us from the trees. We also take our time in the breakfast room, stuffing ourselves with dark bread, yogurt, and croissants with Nutella underneath a large reproduction of Rembrandt's The Night Watch.

And we walk, walk and walk. Along pretty canals, in mild greyness, through crowded afternoon markets. Almost get run over by bicycles, many times. We attend a church service, talk to a cat and giggle with a wine shop owner who wants us to take him home.

Watching a gay couple try out leather harnesses in one of the sex shops or choosing among cannabis icecream cones doesn't even seem weird anymore after a day in Amsterdam.

dealing with it

On New Year's Eve, I offered my cannabis sweets from Amsterdam to the chairman of the national anti-cannabis network. He declined, politely. I suppose I could get arrested for this.

controlled loneliness

"I enjoy controlled loneliness. I like wandering around the city alone. I’m not afraid of coming back to an empty flat and lying down in an empty bed. I’m afraid of having no one to miss, of having no one to love."
 
(Kuba Wojewodzki)

at tension

I seek attention through the way I look, not through what I say and write. Which is very strange, considering my contempt for today's fixation with looks, my love of writing and my faith in the power of words.

But I don't seek a lot of attention. Sometimes I wish I was invisible.

airplane passing

"I heard an airplane passing overhead. I wished I was on it."

(Charles Bukowski)

wander off the edge

"She always had that about her,
that look of otherness,
of eyes that see things much too far,
and of thoughts that wander
off the edge of the world."

(Joanne Harris)

make room, pretty

Dark-eyed men are drifting around in the city centre mall these days, playing with their phones and greeting each other in Arabic.

My Finland is changing. Now there are men here who make eye contact, who say "hello, pretty", who make me smile and feel vaguely afraid at the same time. Not afraid of them. Of all the sudden changes in this world. Of losing my trust and my welcoming smile.

I'm thinking of how much I have to lose, when I really want to be the one who keeps giving.

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.

the Sunday soothing

The voice of a true friend in the morning, the cold white world of a blizzard.

The walk I took with freezing fingers, the joyful noise from the sledding hill.

The softness of a blanket, the comfort of cold pizza.

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.

a mist for falling asleep in

November picnic at the summer cottage.

A fire roaring in the fireplace, freezing fingers gripping a steaming coffee mug, the sweet taste of my mother's homemade peach pie. I can see my breath.

In the garden, everything is damp and grey under a layer of mist. The sea is the colour of steel and a gang of swans near the shore are filling their bellies before the long flight south. It's almost cold enough for snow.

The silence is almost absolute but peaceful, not oppressive. I feel my eyelids growing heavy. Time for sleep, the deep sleep of winter.

late so soon

"How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?"

(Dr. Seuss)

things to do for fun around here

Getting lost in the small, dreary Finnish city of Seinäjoki. Diving into its vast flea markets. Driving home under a darkening grey sky across the prairie.

you could

you could go the distance
you could run the mile

you could walk straight through hell with a smile

(unknown)

a shove-you-down and push-you-'round town

An evening walk in October yields some pretty sunlight,

some inviting windows,

 footprints in the sand (like in that poem, was Jesus here?)

and the realisation that some of the good townsfolk are very, very serious about dog poo located too close to their roses. "Owner of this dog, please call this number."

I also saw a great crowd of jackdaws wheeling around in the darkening sky, fishermen, a very suspicious meeting in a hair salon, yellow leaves. And around the seaside restaurant, there was an enticing smell of steak. I wanted nothing more than someone to take me out for dinner right then.

blue memories start calling

The October storms have arrived, and the very great darkness.

Time for some outrageously blue fairy lights in the window where they scream out their blueness all the way to Sweden. They are actually too blue, if such a thing is possible, and my neighbours hate me.

intelligent women

"Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women."

(Leo Tolstoy)

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?

the q words

English is not an easy language, even for a talented academic from Belarus. He is trying to explain to me why things are tense between two of our coworkers:

"Arthur and Teresa had a squirrel."
"A squirrel?"
"Yes, a squirrel ... eh, quarrel."

run with the wild horses

Unexpected encounters with horses:

I'm sunning myself by a quiet brook in the mountains. Four gigantic horses, of the draught horse kind, trot into view. Not another human being in sight. The horses wander down to the brook to drink and splash. I stare. A few minutes later, their owner and his friend show up, panting: "We've been chasing them for hours!"

The man who drives tourists in his horse-drawn carriage hands me the gelding's reins: "Could you look after him for me while I run inside for a minute?" The horse is rather old and lethargic and I expect no problems. Until another carriage passes by and the gelding is suddenly gripped with an urge to follow the herd. We spend a tense few minutes playing tug-of-war until the man comes back.

I stroll around one of the "commons", public green areas in the city of Cambridge. It is a pleasant place on the banks of the river Cam. Lots of people out for a stroll or bike trip, and on the river, every kind of boat. There are also horses and cows mingling calmly with the people since this common is part of their pasture. When I sit down on a bench to eat a sandwich, a horse approaches and makes it clear that he fancies a snack too. When I refuse him a bite of my sandwich, he takes a bite out of my arm instead. For days afterwards, people stare at the impressive mark on my arm and worriedly ask if my boyfriend is abusing me.

my knight errant

Alan of the blue eyes has me mesmerized.

It's the first time we meet and he is asking me out on a date. I hear myself say yes.

The first date, he stands me up. I shrug and have a drink with my friends instead, laughing at the predictability of men.

A few days later, he comes back grovelling and asks for a second chance. I roll my eyes and accept.

The second date, he stands me up. I have already made this a joke among my friends, who are taking bets on whether he will actually show up or not. He doesn't and I call him. He apologizes profusely and begs for a third chance.

The third date, he shows up, to the surprise of me and all my friends. He takes me to a hamburger place somewhere in Tallaght, a dreary Dublin suburb. Afterwards, we go to visit a stable full of thoroughbred racehorses somewhere in the hills, so he can show me where he works - he's a steeplechase jockey apparently, as well as a rally driver. He likes fast horses and fast cars and drives like a mad knight with a death wish on the narrow Irish roads. I'm thrilled by the beautiful horses I've seen and don't mind too much (feeling that if I'm killed, I die happy).

We go back to the hotel where I work to continue our date in the bar there. Before we go in, he pulls me behind the car and kisses me. He's a very good kisser and his eyes still mesmerize me. But in the bar, I drift toward my friends and he towards his own.

A while later, he's gone. I never see him again. I don't really mind.


"All I wanted was a white knight
with a good heart, soft touch, fast horse..."
(Faith Hill: "This Kiss")

a Thai hand

My Thai nephew is in his early teens - a gorgeous, black-haired boy with an inherent fashion sense and a shy, irresistible charm. His most treasured possessions are his guitar, his subwoofer, his mountain bike and his friends - not necessarily in that order.

His eyes eyes shine at me across the table in one of the Thai restaurants in our town. Unusually, I'm having lunch with only him and his mother, the rest of the family occupied elsewhere. As we leave the restaurant, his mother and I grab one each of his hands and walk like that for a while, just to tease him. The teenager scoffs but indulges us with an eye-roll.

In fact, I can only recall one other time that just the three of us had lunch in town together. It must be close to ten years ago. He was tiny then, just arrived from his country of birth and shoved into a cold Finnish winter. I remember him charming shop assistants and just about everyone we met. And I remember him walking hand in hand with me just like this. His tiny hand in a thick winter glove. It's a ten-year-old déjà-vu.

thunder and a baby

Poetic memory:

Sitting curled up in an attic window, watching a thunderstorm rage over Irish mountains. The only other person in the quiet room was a six-week-old baby sleeping peacefully. I sat there for three hours.

helps me breathe

"I crave space. It charges my batteries. It helps me breathe. Being around people can be so exhausting, because most of them love to take and barely know how to give. Except for a rare few."

(Katie Kacvinsky, First Comes Love)

once, I hugged the world

Weird memory:

Wearing a swimsuit and hugging a world globe while being photographed by a Belarussian artist named Natasha.

She was going to use the pictures to do a painting but was later distracted by money problems and a dramatic breakup with a French boyfriend who had bad teeth. But I think I'm entitled to say that I have worked as a swimsuit model.

OK, unpaid. But still.

skull drill

On a sunny October afternoon I sit on my white sofa, calculating the costs of starting a business, while someone is drilling an everlasting hole in the neighbour's wall. They could be drilling into my skull. It must feel the same.

the dragon woke me again

From ghoulies and ghosties,
and long-leggedy beasties,
and things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
(traditional Scottish poem)

No ghosts have bothered me yet. Long-leggedy beasties are admittedly scary but most of them can be thwarted with a good mosquito net or by making your home in a modern apartment building. But things that go bump in the night are tough to deal with.

Thanks to a plumbing renovation project in my building, there is a hellish contraption somewhere that at irregular intervals lets out a very ghoulish roar. Trust me, it's not something you want to wake up to in the middle of the night.

For years, any unexpected noise in the night would wake me immediately and set my heart racing. It was the result of scary things having startled me awake too many times. The sudden rattle of a door handle when drunk men tried to get into my room, cars crashing spectacularly right outside my window, thunderbolts, people screaming in pure rage, and that industrial-size fire alarm that once went off right next to my head on my most hungover morning ever. Sleeping, or suddenly and confusingly awake, I feel so vulnerable.

Nowadays I lead a quieter life and sleep quite peacefully. I don't go into full fight-or-flight mode when that beastly roar makes the building vibrate at 3 am. "Maybe there's a dragon in the dungeon," I think before rolling over and going back to sleep.

miles to go before I sleep

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(Robert Frost)

Robert Frost knew the magic of night-time wanderings, apparently. Knew the peace of the woods. Knew the joy of keeping a promise. And the weariness when you just have to push on, regardless.

a decade of coffee, Finland and men

Ten years of blogging today! A decade since I bought my first laptop and started worrying that it would break down.

Wordle has found the words I used the most, that first year on this blog. Back in the day, PianoPoet had eyes for new men, took a beautiful look at the universe and felt that life was time-like. Or like a lifetime. Maybe.

I'm frustrated by the lack of creativity and originality (in my blog and in every other piece of writing in the entire history of the written language) and would like to find a whole new way of writing. Dramatic, funny, profound. Having failed, I sulk and play with Wordle.

go help your brothers

Once, on a flight, I ended up sitting next to a guy I knew but hadn't spoken to after he hit his girlfriend and I let her stay at my place and harboured very murderous thoughts towards him. Seeing as I next to never harbour murderous thoughts at all, this was significant. We spent the time on the flight talking about the incident and when we landed I had not forgiven him but had to admit to myself that people make mistakes and should at least be given a chance to redeem themselves.

A few years later, I heard that my best friend in school (whom I later got out of touch with) had gone through a very dramatic break-up with her husband. Rumour had it the police had to rescue her from him, a rather reliable source later told me a court had found the husband guilty of prolonged physical and mental abuse. Again, murderous thoughts. I contacted my former best friend to show my support, we exchanged a few private messages and what she told me seemed to confirm most of the rumours.

Around the same time, the husband started to hang out with some other friends of mine and I ran into him now and then. I'm not the confrontational type. Actually, I'm rather the people-pleasing, compulsively smiling type. The fact that I was chilly toward him and avoided his company spoke volumes about how much I hated his guts.

The problem was, as he was hanging out with my friends, I couldn't completely avoid him. The other problem was that, a few months after his divorce, he seemed to be working through his issues and becoming a very harmonious, stable, likeable person. He started going out with one of my friends. When my father suddenly died, the two of them showed me unwavering support and sympathy, and even though I never sought it from them specifically - I actually tried to avoid them both - it came to mean a lot.

In short, after a year or so, it had become impossible not to like the man even though I resisted valiantly. He was kind, compassionate, humble, supportive. One of the few who saw how lonely I was and tried to help me through it. I still didn't understand why he had apparently abused his first wife, and how he could live with it. I probably never will. For a while, I worried that his new girlfriend might be in danger but now I'm convinced she never will be. When his suspended prison sentence officially ended, I celebrated it together with him and a group of friends. Now, a few years later, this man is settled and happy, as far as I can tell, and has helped other men who are going through life crises of various kinds.

The other day, another friend of mine called me in deep, heartfelt despair. He had been arrested, thrown in jail, then transferred to a psychiatric hospital after literally beating his head bloody against the walls of his cell. The reason? He had been in a violent, physical fight with his girlfriend. This time, I held back my murderous thoughts and went to visit him in the hospital. I might put him in touch with my other, former wife-beating friend. He is now in the perfect position to help someone else and I know he is willing.

I still reserve the right to harbour murderous thoughts on this issue. But I know now that there is nobody who can't be redeemed. And once you are redeemed, go help your brothers.

getting ready to exist

"I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist."

(Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet)

passionate, weird

"I just want to have a completely adventurous, passionate, weird life."

(Jeff Buckley, on moving to New York)

I have a long way to go still. But this week I saw a silver fox on a leash, asked around for a man who could deal with demons, and loaded a wheelbarrow full of hay before putting a live poodle on top. Sometimes my life qualifies for the "weird" category. 

it takes more than bread

"It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth."

I think of this as I make myself another sandwich. It's been too long since I listened to the voice of God.


(Quote from The Message Bible, Matt. 4:4)

scent here to remind you

Carried a potted plant home in the dark but warm September night. The scent of its flowers seemed incongruent with autumn.

I thought: Summer is over but life is not.

you will never solve the Irish

"Your reason for being in Ireland?" The inspector licked his pencil and indelibled his pad.
"Reason has nothing to do with it," I blurted.
His pencil stayed, while his gaze lifted.
"That's a grand start, but what does it mean?"
"Madness."
He leaned forward, pleased, as if a riot had surfed at his feet.
"What kind would that be?" he asked politely.
"Two kinds. Literary and psychological. I am here to flense and render down the White Whale."
"Flense." He scribbled. "Render down. White Whale. That would be Moby Dick, then?"

Some time after I came back to my home country after four years in the enchanted land called the Emerald Isle, I picked up a little book by Ray Bradbury (famous of course for, among others, Fahrenheit 451). It wasn't a novel, strictly speaking, more of a memoir of a certain time in the writer's life, but the magic in it made it seem like part fiction, part dream.

It was called Green Shadows, White Whale and described Bradbury's adventures in Ireland in the Fifties when he was there to write a screenplay. Bradbury discovered the same thing about the country as I did: there is magic in it, obvious even to a person who doesn't believe in that sort of thing. Ireland in the Fifties was very different than the Ireland I knew but my heart jumped in joyful recognition.

Books about another era than my own usually fail to engage me - I can't seem to relate to anything outside my own time - but this strange little book is still one of my favourites. 

"...you will never probe, find, discover or in any way solve the Irish. We are not so much a race as a weather. X-ray us, yank our skeletons out by the roots, and by morn we've regrown the lot. You're right, with all you've said!"
"Am I?" I said, astonished.
The inspector drew up his own list behind his eyelids:
"Coffee? We do not roast the bean - we set fire to it! Economics? Music? They go together here. For there are beggars playing unstrung banjos on O'Connell Bridge; beggars trudging Pianolas about St. Stephen's Green, sounding like cement mixers full of razor blades. Irish women? All three feet high, with runty legs and pig noses. Lean on them, sure, use them for cover against the rain, but you wouldn't seriously chase them through the bog. And Ireland itself? Is the largest open-air penal colony in history ... a great racetrack where the priests lay odds, take bets, and pay off on Doomsday. Go home, lad. You'll dislike the lot of us!"

thx 4

Sleep, morning contemplation on the balcony with bare feet and sleepy eyes, work that finally seems to be taking off.

My new laptop that mostly works, my old laptop that always works, discount coupons to the lunch café with the lovely, lovely sallad buffet.

A new novel by Tana French, a few hours spent working under the watchful eye of Abraham Lincoln, a latte in the sun because summer is not quite over yet.

Business plans, the fact that I don't hate the gym anymore, all the friends that stay in touch.

Strength of body, integrity of mind, love of God.

pale stars rising

"Understand, I’ll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I’ll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows, with only this one dream: You come too."

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

book clubs of my life

The university one:
The Fairytale Club. Adult women studying ethnology, theology, languages and political science, among other things, gathered to read classic children's stories out loud and knit. (I refused to knit.) It was The Wind in the Willows, the wonderful Moomin books and other educational ones.

The Irish one:
The "Book" Club (sarcasm audible in the name). Each member wandered down to the pub to have a quiet drink while reading their book in peaceful solitude. Inevitably, we ran into each other and discussed the state of the world while spilling drinks on our unopened books.

The yet-to-be-defined one:
The Book Opinionateds (strange ungrammatical name intentional and supposedly witty). A bunch of elderly ladies, a few young women with a Master's in literature, and two men - of which one is a Mexican bohemian. I joined the club today and was thrown into the middle of a heated debate about an Icelandic novel I hadn't read (and by the sound of it, wouldn't want to read). A horse-breeding lady claimed that the characters strongly reminded her of her Icelandic ponies. My music teacher in primary school (now retired) loved the book (I remember her having a strange taste in music, too). One of the literature grads was opinionated indeed and kept throwing in references to literary theory to remind us amateurs of her expertise. (Next time I'll show her she's not the only Finn who can quote Paradise Lost.) (I might have to brush up on some quotes first, though.) The non-Mexican, non-bohemian man wanted us to read poetry later in the autumn, and my inward groan was almost audible.

I loved it. Whyever did I allow years to go by without the pleasure of a real book club? Afterwards, I laid in a straight course for the library.

top 5 today

Mexican restaurants
Book clubs
Scented candles
Laptops
Friends who come bearing wine bottles

sometimes I'm terrified

"Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts."

(Edgar Allan Poe)

bicycles and the human race

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

(H.G. Wells)

Every time I see a flat tire on my bicycle, I despair.
(me)

what september is

September is twilight on a balcony overlooking the bay, a warming drink and sweater, and a laptop on my lap.

It is the joy of Indian summer days and the fear of a long winter ahead. It is melancholy and eagerness.

It is people.

It is small lights in darkness.

It is a chill creeping up, and leg warmers.

on a slow boat to paradise

After a cold summer, this was my reward:

Smooth, sun-heated stone, the peaceful silence of nature void of humans, a sea like glass. An archipelago where few humans ever set foot (the benefits of living in a sparsely populated country). We came, we swam, we swooned with happiness.

Maybe the best part was that my sister and I recognized the place from another family boat trip in the early 80s, when we were very young. It was paradise, and it was still untouched. We had a history there, so it felt like ours.

thank the wagtail

If you sit for a while in a place where there is wind in the trees, and birds and butterflies around, you can hear and breathe life.

I think I had forgotten it for a while, that the planet itself is alive. Too much winter, too much city. I really need to feel this life that is not human. It comforts me when I'm sick of people.

This summer, I was reminded of this again. Thank you wagtails, inchworms, squirrels and a thousand others I could mention.

mocking the mock-ups

I looked through the new IKEA catalog. It took me about three hours, for the same reason I enjoy walking through their showrooms.

Not that I'm in love with their stuff. It's just a source of never-ending fascination to me, to see rooms that are designed and arranged for photo shoots. To think that every single item has been placed in that exact position to mimic reality and make people covet that room.

Like that throw "carelessly" abandoned on the bed, the books chosen for their cover, the mandatory plant included to add a splash of green. The bedlamps asymmetrically arranged to prove that this is a place where real people live (they have just stepped out for a moment).

And the kitchens - endless amusement in the way the too-few utensils are arranged on the shelves. Always a couple of plates and mugs, rarely matching but chosen to offset one another beautifully. Some odd item as well, such as an ancient key hanging on a hook. Colourful fruit.

I snort in mocking delight, but deep down inside, I do want to live in these rooms. The minimalist in me envies the person who can get by with so little stuff (and apparently afford a cleaner too).

concrete plans

In a bizarre twist in my bizarrely twisted career, I'm back in the clothing business. Well, half of me is. The other half is still in the subtitling business. Am I the first person in the history of the world to combine these two?

The boss who fired me a couple of years ago is my boss again, the job is more or less the same (but I have very effectively managed to forget how to do it), most of my former coworkers are gone, the office is new. I mean, brand new in a brand new building with brand new furniture by an up-and-coming Danish designer. My desk is made of smooth concrete. I love it. Will be good to bang my head against in despair later.

sand love

There is nothing better you can do on a hot summer's day than watch the beachvolley championships.

Except maybe play beachvolley.

Especially when you have friends with you who like strawberry drinks as much as you do.

being of a sound mind

Sounds on a summer night when you look out on the world and drink something green:

* laughter
* outboard motors
* male shouts
* high heels
* the pop of hot metal window sills cooling
* thump of a baseline
* dogs barking
* people going places
* seagulls
* hum of streetlights starting up

And I think I can hear the earth turning, too.

cut from marble, smoother than a storm

The sea was as still as a mirror, the sunlight golden and tender on the skin. The peace of the open horizon was disturbed only by the birds flittering around me as if I wasn't even there, in their paradise. It was perfect. Perfect beauty, perfect summer.

And I had only a few precious hours to experience all this before summer was over and I had to return to the city to face another long winter. I couldn't stand the pain of knowing this. It broke my heart. So I packed my bags, gave up those few hours and left paradise early.

I have so much here in the city, I know. The sun is still tender on my skin, I can see the sea from here and it is still like a mirror. There is a warm salt lamp illuminating my safe harbour as the sky slowly darkens. I can hear the pulse of the city and the response inside me, my blood heating up for new adventures. I'm strong and free, I have a life to make the most of.

But the memory of paradise is still aching inside me.

"...so I just try to keep up with the red, orange, yellow flicker beat sparking up my heart..."
 

(quote from "Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde)

colour-coded day

Walked through a carrot-coloured part of the city.

Later, I painted a table white and the sun made everything white hot.

The indigo of a night walk with the moon was my favourite.

houses on the go

Traffic was unusually slow the other day. That's what happens when four houses apparently have decided to go for a little road trip.

Eventually, all four of them and their escort cars squeezed into a tiny lay-by to let a queue of impatient drivers pass (or for other reasons - one of the drivers was apparently desperate for a pee, judging by what I glimpsed as I drove past). Just another day on highway 8.

shadows and pink grapefruit

I sit in the shadows, as I so often do in the evenings. A flickering candle, the glow of a laptop, the soft velvet light of twilight sky and sea outside.

What else I do nowadays: paint my furniture white, smell of pink grapefruit, take all my boring greying plates and mugs to the charity shop and return with odd pieces of crockery in blood red, buttercup yellow and petrol blue, bemoan the lack of creativity everywhere (including my own life), put in my mouth anything that has the word "strawberry" in the description.

stirs up

"Coffee brings warmth and comfort to my life. Part ritual, part relationship, part hope, having a cup in my hand feels as natural as holding a pencil. It stirs up memories and gratitude inside me."

(Nicole Johnson) 

end-of-summer habits

As summer draws to a close, I instinctively hoard candles and scented tealights. I think a lot about clothes, like cool scarves and heavy boots - because I seem to be able to handle all the challenges of autumn and returning to work if I just feel good about what I'm wearing.

I get excited about courses I could take and gyms I could join, then get depressed about how overbooked my free time will be, then get excited again.

I alternate between desperately squeezing all I can out of the last summer days and longing to get back to TV and the internet.

This afternoon, I dawdled around in the summer heat in bare legs and silver sandals. This evening, I'm pulling a blanket over me while listening to the chilly rain. I'm in between.

a dancer from the past

You know the kind of friend you have at uni, the one who was secretly in love with you back then (or at least you told yourself he might be), brought you icecream, told you stories that made your jaw drop, danced with you, kissed you as part of a fairytale, broke your laptop, went off to run a motorcycle club in Jerusalem.

I just reunited with that friend. His life is quite different now. He has kids, a Porsche and a terrible story. My jaw dropped again.

I won't kiss him again, but I do love him. (Not just because he let me testdrive the Porsche.)

I wrote this (can't think why)

From the cutting room floor of my blog, here are a few weird sentences that thankfully never made it to publishing (until now, when I'm desperate enough to post just about anything):

"Trendy toy she absolutely insisted on having: Monchichi."

"... a dismal autumn day, from the perspective of a shop entrance ..."

"How to tie somebody up so they can't get on their feet."

"There are lots of little flies, big mosquitoes and even the occasional hairy spider."

"A chameleon has a tough life."

"Having my home invaded feels like being violated in the worst way."

"New York is a symphony. A galaxy."

"I glimpse a girl who is so pale-skinned that she might be a ghost."

"... too anxious to please God..."

"Today was downright hypnotic."

"Could it be that I'm at the heart of the world after all."

"Volleyball. Forever and ever the love of my life."

"Je voudrais parler à mon père..."

"His latest toy is a large excavator, in which he happily spends hours digging a ditch."

"Forced myself through French lessons despite feeling useless at it and hating every minute (would I do that now?)"

"... a man of mystery, rarely seen outside the kitchen..."

"Too cold and tired for living."

"Finns moan about the ever-lasting darkness."

"All because I got the sack."

"My friend is explaining how to travel across the frozen sea."

"A dozen selfies from various angles of some airhead with nothing to say..."

"... a few more years of this, I will no longer be capable of thinking with concentration on a single subject..."

"I write about Stinissen and the spell check suggests: stinsen, stinnaste, stinknäsa."

what her heart sounds like

"Call your mother. Tell her you love her. Remember, you’re the only person who knows what her heart sounds like from the inside."

(pobredreamer, Tumblr)

hotstepper and night air

Improvised a halloumi-clove-basil omelet. It tasted like egg.

The rest of the day consisted of a flea market, chartreuse green and boho jewellery,  "Here Comes The Hotstepper," blueberry liqueur and intervening in a fight between a cat and a dog.

Oh yes, and I tried to define the concept of groove. It seemed important. Which led me back to one of my favourite songs, Jamie Woon's "Night Air".


I don't need those car crash colors
I control the skies above us
Close my eyes to make the night fall
Comfort of a world revolving
I can hear the earth in orbit
In the night air

writer's block as a lifestyle

Came across my lifelong dilemma, again.

My old university is now accepting applications to a two-year creative writing program run by two established authors.

Sounds like a DREAM. I immediately visualised inspiring sessions together with a tight-knit group of aspiring writers, passionately discussing literature and boosting each other's writing (preferably over a pint in a cosy pub, kind of like Tolkien and Lewis and that gang). Making lifelong friends and magically turning into a writer. I sat down immediately to write the three-page text sample necessary for the application, free choice of genre.

And realised that I couldn't. I can't write fiction.

It's not that I question my own ability, it's that I find it a complete waste of time. Which is very odd because I love reading fiction, basically read nothing else. But I want what I write to be true, or at least have a message to the reader. I can't seem to find a message. And as to writing the truth - well, the truth doesn't really seem interesting enough. I doubt that a few pages out of my blog will do for the application.

Dilemma: what do you do when you love writing but all you can manage is a blog?

so juicy you can't spill

And I heard the most SCANDALOUS story that will probably ever happen across my boring little life, the kind that would even make the headlines, and I can't tell anyone. Not even my best friend. Sometimes I wonder why I have morals.

urban joy

After a week in the wild, I feel as if I'm doing all the things urban hipsters do (or what I imagine them doing) - I go for  a run and afterwards dress in white and denim and sip something strawberryish in a white city apartment while browsing Pinterest.

Running (usually a painful chore) felt as if my trainers had developed little wings. I returned to my little flat in the sky bursting with strength and freedom.

I love the city, the sound of people's voices screaming and laughing in the distance even when I have shut myself in. I love being online again. But oh, was it ever hard to tear myself away from the stillness of a place where there are only trees and a quiet sea.

turns a meal into a feast

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."
(Melody Beattie) 

I think I need this gratitude, whatever it is.

The world is an impossible place for atheists. To have gratitude, you need someone to be grateful to.

the usual story (never to be written)

A candle, something sweet in a glass, a head full of dreams and absolutely nothing to write about.

white roses are a warning sign

I read blogs to find inspiration. Someone I knew had a beautiful one, like a piece of art in itself. Gorgeous pictures that should hang in an art gallery, poetic writing, creative and tasteful layout.

Then I found that many of that blogger's friends had almost identical blogs. Other pictures of course, and clearly their own writing, but somehow so very alike that they could have been copy-pasted off each other.

Pictures of white roses. Pictures of a few lines of poetry on ancient paper, surrounded by props such as vintage books, a single flower (sometimes dead and dried), white linen, a Diptyque candle. The colour scheme always white with greyish tones, pictures often in black and white and with a shimmering, softening filter. The writing center-aligned with careful line breaks to make prose look like poetry, talking about the beautiful little things in everyday life - the evening light, the warm skin of a loved one, a mug of tea, a sudden realisation that happiness is just a breath away.

I used to find these blogs so beautiful, the pictures as well as the writing. Such a welcome relief after reading all these air-headed, girly blogs with dozens of selfies that show off "today's outfit" from every possible angle. After I found these beautiful ones, I saw the whole world through a golden shimmer for a little while.

Then I discovered that this is a trend, this vintage-artsy-minimalistic-photographer/writer blog. These creative blog writers were suddenly not very creative after all, but interchangeable. It kind of broke my heart a little.

this expression

"You had this expression on your face, like you weren’t quite sure you were supposed to be on Earth."

(Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You)

I feel this expression on my face every now and then. 

an American touch(down)

Summer in a tiny Finnish city: sunshine, ice cream and not a bad game of American football.

Actually, I wouldn't know if it was a bad game or not, since it was the first one I've ever seen. American football is not a big sport in Finland, although our local team happens to be a good one. But there were big guys throwing each other to the ground, talk of yards and quarters (which sounds strange in the mouth of a Finnish commentator, but he was very good at explaining the game to us ignorant Finns), cheerleaders (although very young and rather half-hearted) and some good music on the loudspeakers.

We were baking under the hot sun but the man at my side kept bringing me ice-cold cans of Pepsi from the concession stand. So no cause for complaint at all.

eyes on the horizon

I have spent so many hours of my life just staring at the sea.

What a wonderful life to have.