time for a Danish or something

Greyness that looks soft but is cold like frozen iron to the touch. And exhaustion.

Those are the characteristics of this time of the year, when you don't know if you dare hope for spring yet. The end of winter, but what an interminable end.

That's when you should go to a Thai restaurant. With soft lamps in all the windows, a smell of hot spices, colours that are a bit too garish and a Buddha staring at you. A refreshingly un-Finnish welcome.

In fact, I welcome anything  un-Finnish  this time of the year. Thai restaurants. Irish pubs. Portuguese wine. Kenyan coffee. Israeli oranges. Swedish music. American movies. Polish door-to-door vendors. Nigerian scam letters. Dutch courage. Spanish lullabies. French kisses.

(I draw the line at Brazilian waxes.)

driving me sane

Driving at night. Alone. Electronic music with a steady beat and a melody that twists, turns, explores ever-changing landscapes.

It slows down the endless spinning of my brain, cools the fever, creates a calm focus on what is right before me: the road, the night, the solitude. And sometimes, God speaks.

evolution's proudest moment

The "Please prove you're not a robot" feature in my blog's comment field has amused me before (I mocked it here).

Nowadays you no longer have to enter numbers and stuff to do this. To my absolute delight, you are now only required to tick a box next to the statement "I'm not a robot."

Apparently, the ultimate proof of genuine human nature is a mouse click. How our species has evolved!

put down your gun

"I seemed to hear God saying, 'Put down your gun and we’ll talk'."

(C.S. Lewis)

herbal tea and a kite

My eyes ache from staring at a screen and my herbal tea collection is growing - vanilla chai, chamomile and spiced apple, mango and strawberry, peppermint and nettles, chocolate.

I lift my eyes and they land on a bright blue kite against a grey sky.

I look at it for a long time. I dream about being a läppärikulkuri and of reading Kalevala. I think I should get that suspension thingy fixed in my car so I can drive without limits. I want to be brave.

become invisible

"I’m an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It’s an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner."

(Christine Feehan)

heading upstream with Herodotus

"... they all say that the earth is divided into three parts, Europe, Asia, and Libya, whereas they ought to add a fourth part, the Delta of Egypt..."

The library of religious and cultural history. Deserted, dusty and quiet. Sometimes there is a librarian there who gives me a discreet nod. Sometimes the only living soul is a dachshund, walking around with claws clicking against the floor.

I come here because it is the only department of the university library that has a copy of The Histories by Herodotus. And you are not allowed to take it out, so I sit in the quiet and read it for a few hours at a time, taking notes and listening to the clicking of claws. Knowing that just outside the dusty windows, the slow river is flowing by and that I could be sitting on the river bank in the sun.


"With regard to the sources of the Nile, I have found no one among all those with whom I have conversed, whether Egyptians, Libyans, or Greeks, who professed to have any knowledge, except a single person. He was the scribe who kept the register of the sacred treasures of Minerva in the city of Sais..."

What about the sources of the Aura, peacefully flowing past the window? One day I'm going to pack my bag, leave the libraries and go explore.

away

A nice, smiling girl in a shop made me cry today. She was nothing but nice, I just didn't like what she said about redeeming a voucher.

So I walked home in tears, and okay, I was probably hormonal or something but it happens too often nowadays. Having spent time around people I don't know, even if I don't interact with them at all, I come home exhausted and disillusioned with the entire human race, vowing to never again get within fifty feet of a person I don't know and like.

Away, away, I need to get away.

forget stardust - you are iron

"Forget stardust—you are iron. Your blood is nothing but ferrous liquid. When you bleed, you reek of rust. It is iron that fills your heart and sits in your veins. And what is iron, really, unless it’s forged?

You are iron.

And you are strong."

(n.t., Tumblr)

whole and laughing

A gang of handsome men burst into laughter when I spectacularly dropped the ball during a volleyball game today.

I grinned and took a bow. Then I did a little dance that was at once self-mocking and genuinely joyful.

This is a miracle.

Some years ago, I was a shattered soul who cowered whenever people laughed around me, convinced I was once again the butt of their jokes. I usually was. For many of my early teenage years, verbal and psychological abuse was thrown at me every day in school. I learned the hard way to never trust anyone's smile and to assume the worst at the sound of laughter.

Can you go on to live a trusting, loving life as an adult after that?

I don't know how, but I know I am. In all the years after that, my life has been crowded with women who entrust me with their darkest secrets and men who love me deeply and aren't afraid to say so. I don't really know where they came from so I have to say they were sent by heaven.

When guys I barely know start laughing in the volleyball court, I don't get that horrible, terrifying coldness inside. I laugh with them, somehow incongruously (and probably somewhat mistakenly) assuming they all adore me - and even if they don't, that nothing they do or say can really hurt me.

During those awful, lonely years I prayed many times for God to save me. He didn't exactly smite my oppressors. At the time, anyway. And I was never much of a fighter myself.

But not so many years later, this soul of mine that I thought was destroyed has a diamond core. It is whole and safe and feeling loved.

It shouldn't be possible. I think God gave me a miracle.


No power of hell, no scheme of man 
can ever pluck me from His hand
Till He returns or calls me home, 
here in the power of Christ I stand

(excerpt from song "In Christ Alone" by Getty/Townend)

first duty of the novelist

"The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone."

(Donna Tartt)

this business business is so complicated

I am the born employee - fiercely loyal, eager to please, dutiful to a fault. Smart and multi-tasking like a demon. So why do I sit through a day of lectures on how to start your own company? In embroidered white clothes and angelic hair, no less.

Maybe it was to meet men. If you want smart, strong men of various ages gathered in a room, go to a lecture on entrepreneurship. (There were many women there, too. My people are a people of entrepreneurs.) Fascinating, how many ages, professions and dreams were having coffee together.

So I sat there, absorbing information on how to set up and run your own company. "Motivation is vital," the lecturer said.

I thought to myself, "I have everything it takes. Except motivation."

Admittedly, I also lack even the most basic understanding of bookkeeping. Even if you hire someone to do it for you, you should probably at least be able to understand concepts like turnover and cash flow. Maybe if I work really hard I can squeeze these things into my mathematically challenged brain.

But motivation is more complicated than bookkeeping. The only motivating factor I can think of is the mental image of myself doing a job that I love, sitting at a café table in a foreign city. Not sure that will get me through the process of creating a successful business.

The fact is staring me in the face, however: I may have to choose between unemployment and starting up my own business.

 But I made friends. Not with any of the gorgeous, single men. With a middle-aged woman and a very young, very gay man.

a fish in the wind

"This is a home of tiny details - unexpected ones, you have to look closely."

Said a friend about my flat. She is not really a friend anymore, after she took off with the man I liked. But she was right.

I am not a fan of knick-knacks and I actively pursue a minimalist style. But I seem to have tiny boho-style angels, stars, beads and candleholders glittering here and there. Even the occasional  fishy windchime.

I really feel that no home is complete without at least one proper stained-glass window. Alas, I'm not there yet.

white dwarf

The sun returned today. Not the watered-down version we have glimpsed occasionally this winter, if we were lucky, but a full-force burning star, blasting us with brilliance and even a bit of warmth even if it was still very far away, low in the sky at noon. It lit up the white desert of the ice-locked, snow-covered sea and made birds sing.

Weak, vulnerable, sad, I sat in the sun. Wrapped in wool, more for comfort than for warmth. Staring at the blinding whiteness through my sun-glasses, gripping my tea mug tightly. Life was over-whelming so I lost myself in a science fiction novel.

Later, I fell asleep on the sofa, exhausted and comforted by the promise of spring.

chocolate vanilla thoughts

While kites are spreading blotches of wild colour across a winter-grey bay, I drink chocolate-vanilla tea, stave off employers and dream  - of cobbled alleys named after ancient astronomers, university libraries, speaking French fluently, love and intelligence.

I pull legwarmers down over freezing feet and wonder what is more poetic, science or poetry itself.

the circumference of love

The word circumference contains the sound of laughter.

I remember standing on a tiny balcony, precariously perched seven stories above a heavily trafficked street. Noise, the smell of fumes. Sunshine, the glorious feeling of being in love. And a tall Englishman, different from all other men I knew, laughing - no, giggling hysterically - at my mispronunciation of the word circumference. I protested, tried to look offended, but love was forcing a broad grin onto my face.

Later - close to dawn, after a night of talking of dreams and drifting around a summer-warm city - I stood on the same balcony and watched him leave on his mountain bike. He turned and waved at me.

boho minimalistic rustic freedom-loving home decor

Essentials:

* A balcony with a view.
* Small reading lamps (preferably adjustable ones), strings of fairy lights, coloured mood lighting. Absolutely no overhead lighting. (I am a creature of the dark.) To save energy, only have one or two lit at the same time. Alter them to create the illusion of change.
* Hardwood or stone floors.
* A laptop.
* A big bed. There is no overwhelming need to make it - a messy bed looks cosy and inviting.
* A good table.
* Windows from which you can see people (who can't see you).
* Comfy chairs and/or sofas with plenty of blankets or throws.
* Candles.
* Somewhere to keep all the books.
* A mug of steaming coffee or a glass of wine on the nearest available surface.
* A small, unobtrusive TV screen.
* A bath tub or tiny sauna.
* A fireplace.
* A back door leading out to a lush garden or enclosed Moroccan courtyard with turquoise mosaics and a private pool.
* If curtains are absolutely necessary, something white and gauzy.
* A dog.


General guidelines:

1. Keep it simple.
2. Don't spend money on anything (this might change if at some point I actually have money).
3. Colour scheme: White with grey, or white with some other rustic pale colour like tan or olive.
4. Exception to the colour scheme: something like the bedroom or reading nook will probably succumb to my guilty love of gypsy colour madness (fiery shades of red, orange, yellow).
5. Keep it tidy and clutterfree, but don't worry too much about the dust bunnies.

looking over your kingdom

"winter looks: wearing a blanket over your shoulders like an aging king and looking over your kingdom with weary malaise"

(princething, Tumblr)

lady gaga, meet bette midler

Would love to arrange my Spotify playlists into tidy, themed collections.

But they are a jumble of rock classics, electronic dance music, indie, lesser-known Broadway musical numbers, cheesy 80s ballads, Christian worship music, even Sunday school songs next to hiphop hits with "explicit" warnings on them. In at least five different languages. Sorted alphabetically to ensure that my listening experience skips freely from one genre to another. In my main list there are over 170 songs at present - everyone a favourite, all with a special meaning to me.

It's not that I couldn't sort them into something neater. It's just that the neatness would bore me. I love the wild mix.

It's for the same reason that my wardrobe, bookcase and Pinterest boards are a jungle. No pretty colour coordination or thematic categories in sight. I may try to keep it tidy but I can't bring myself to categorize.

I need to have it all there, side by side. All the extremes of my weird life in one glorious mess.

critical moments in closed captioning

My job right now:

* I sink into it, and surface every hour with aching back and dizzy eyes.
* It worries me - my laptop might break down right before a deadline, I might have to work through the night.
* I kind of enjoy it.
* It's ever-changing and yet so monotonous - how long can I keep it up?

I guess I also should be asking myself: Will it pay the bills and can I do it at a café table in New York City?