exhausted and spider-bitten

Summer is for intense living.

There has already been wine on picnic blankets, seagull chick rescue operations, thunderstorms, flower picking, reading six year old magazines, heatwaves, tantrums, crossword puzzles over bad coffee, lilac planting, blisters and spider bites, mojitos, primitive living, expensive chocolate cakes, lawn-mowing in way-too-hot weather.

I'm exhausted, is it autumn soon?

church bells, star-flowers, history

The forest is warm and pine-scented - welcoming me with birdsong, winding paths and summer adventures.

Happy and alone, I pick lilies-of-the-valley in the emerald light of sun-soaked birch leaves. The bells of a church at the edge of the forest are ringing, a strange and beautiful melody that echoes through the trees as I wander further and further away.

I find a cave, canals with silent water, remains of ancient stonewalls and a mysterious hole in the ground. My additional findings include a site where people lost their lives for my freedom, a pet cemetery and a secret garden, luxuriously overgrown with apple blossom and lilacs.

A hill nearby was the centre of the world for many people, many centuries ago. History sings in my blood as I pick the star-flowers I remember from my childhood.

I have to come back. This forest contains almost everything that I love: summer, exploration, history, nostalgia, dreams.

planting lilacs

Digging soil and planting lilacs, hot sun, salt water, a spider bite, barefoot in a hammock, feeling at home.

a country opening around me tonight

From a weekend in the wilderness, I will return to a reopened country on Monday morning.

I have managed ten weeks in a closed country quite well. My work life wasn't much affected. I did a course in personal protective equipment. I got a little lazier and fatter, did a little charity work, read old books, watched Netflix, cycled and walked, drank wine with my friends.

I lost a trip to Italy, missed the library but rediscovered my own bookshelf of old favourites, did some writing, almost lost someone dear to me, was stiff-necked just like the folks in the Old Testament, enjoyed Star Trek and Kalevala.

I have really missed café windows, thrift shops, dinners in candle-lit bistros and freedom.

But there is rest in staying still, when everybody else is staying still too. And new ideas are coming.

around the Högfors stove

We sat around the Högfors stove, you and I, the ancient iron radiating heat into a chilly May evening. The evening sky still bright outside the old cottage, dust in the air around us.

Death had passed by me, the world felt fragile but I had hope and faith.

"I haven't bought any new clothes since this whole thing started," I said and picked at a loose thread in my old sweater. "It's time for some brand new thrift shop bargains!"

"I might apply for a new job," you said and put more firewood into the stove.

"The fairy tales we read as kids were really scary," one of us said. "And yet they never bothered us! Nobody would let their kids hear them today."

"Money is not everything," I admonished. "I'm not talking money, I'm talking time," you protested.

"You have your own piece of road," I said. "You could establish a road toll."

"I put out the nets, with my nephews," you said, "and we got eighteen perch and ten pike. Even the pike are quite tasty, smoked."

"Should we swap houses?" you said. "If you put a sea over there," I said and pointed out the window.

"We're already swapping stories about our aches and pains," we wailed. "In a few years, it will be all about bowel movements."

I left with three smoked perch and sang an old gospel song loudly on my way home.

the importance of rocks

I like rocks. The large, mossy kind you find scattered all over Finland, granite or gneiss ones. I love walking with bare feet on course, sunwarmed rock or boulders covered in cool, velvety moss with tiny flowers in it. I love smooth, wave-kissed rocks sloping down to the sea.

Rocks were my passion as a kid. The kind of rocks you could climb on and crawl under, and create little nests between. I created of them entire fantasy worlds where I lived in a wilderness with wild animals and fairytale people all around, a bit like my hero Robin Hood. My mother had large flower beds in our garden and forbade me to walk in them, but there were smaller rocks scattered there so I jumped from rock to rock in exhilaration.

As a moody teenager, I walked into the woods on summer nights and climbed up on the largest boulder I could find, then sat there for ages brooding about my teenage troubles and dreams.


As an adult I often take a pretty pebble home with me from the beaches of the world, my one and only souvenir.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that my name means 'rock'.

"When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I" (Psalm 61).

a pandemic at my heels

Empty streets, cold wind, sunlight. I walk past closed cafés and struggling shops. A pandemic at my heels. The air smells of dust clouds and hand sanitizer but swans are shouting the arrival of spring.

After sunset, a single candle. Stars wander past my nest as I isolate myself with a glowing screen and foreign languages.

The world is closed.

darling books: the 'revenge' of the Galilean

  'You say he seemed out of his head?' said Demetrius, anxiously.
  'Yes - dazed - as if something had hit him. And out there in that archway, he had a sort of empty look in his face. Maybe he didn't even know where he was.'
  Demetrius' steps slowed to a stop.
  'Melas,' he said, hoarsely. 'I'm sorry - but I've got to go back to him.'
  'Why - you -' The Thracian was at a loss for a strong enough epithet. 'I always thought you were soft! Afraid to run away from a fellow who strikes you in the face before a crowd of officers; just to show them how brave he is! Very well! You go back to him and be his slave forever! It will be tough! He has lost his mind!'
  Demetrius had turned and was walking away.
  'Good luck to you, Melas,' he called, soberly.
  'Better get rid of that Robe!' shouted Melas, his voice shrill with anger. 'That's what drove your smart young Marcellus out of his mind! He began to go crazy the minute he put it on! Let him be. He is accursed! The Galilean has had his revenge!'
  Demetrius stumbled on through the darkness, Melas' raging imprecations following him as far as the old gate.
  'Accursed!' he yelled. 'Accursed!'

This favourite book of mine (The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas) I found in a forgotten library in a musty Swedish attic. Later I bought my own copy on an island in the Pacific. It is a story of the Roman officer who crucified Jesus and won his robe in a dice game, and of the slave who tries to make sense of all this.

I don't think I've ever gotten so caught up in a book written in the 40s before. And it happens every time I go back to it. The writing is too good to ever feel musty and it puts a surprising spin on the familiar Bible stories without changing them.

Although it does have a lot of commas and exclamation marks. I guess they liked them, back in 1942!

oxygen deficiency and very long words

What I'm studying in pandemic times: 

EU certificates of conformity, risk assessment, how to choose your personal protective gear, noise exposure levels, liquified gas, why bactericides are not enough and how oxygen deficiency usually kills two people at the same occasion. 

All this in my third language. In which the first term bears the lovely name EU-vaatimustenmukaisuusvakuutus.

should have been in Florence

April is the cruelest month and my favourite - heat and ice, birdsong and wildness.

On the eve of my birthday I lounge in sunlight, with tea-green lamb's wool around me and coffee porter before me. I watch the boats on the bay and wonder if peace and strength are possible without love.

I should have been in Florence today, dizzy with wonder.

Whimsical clothing and the most boring textbook of all - today's odd combination. Life stands so still that I'm surprised the sun still wanders.

the unprecedentedness is unprecedented

For such an exciting time, with a pandemic locking down the entire world, bodies piling up and economies crashing left and right, life is really quite boring.

Thank God for that.

I work, eat, sleep, take walks or bike rides while socially distancing myself, watch Netflix. I read in the news that the use of the word 'unprecedented' in news reports is in itself unprecedented, and find it mildly funny.

I like: dozing on the couch and not feeling like a failure for it, reading more, taking slow walks with my mother, never knowing what's going to happen, seeing people help each other, connecting more deeply than before, learning new things, planning picnics.

I dream of: hugging my mother, sitting idle in a café, travelling to Venice, feeling less lonely, mocking life with friends over Mexican food and wine, dancing with other people than myself, browsing second-hand shops, playing volleyball, GETTING OUT OF HERE, renewing my life completely, kissing someone.

still lost in the Delta Quadrant

The pandemic drove me to go on a retro-trip on Netflix. I binge-watch Star Trek: Voyager, the series I loved madly twenty years ago.

I've had no interest in the show since then, but I've fallen right back in now and can't stop. What a dream it would have been twenty years ago, to have access to a series streamed on demand, or even DVD boxes! Back then I was limited to one episode a week, broadcasted on TV (and if my VHS recorder or TV malfunctioned I only got to see it once or missed it completely), a few pages of fanfiction on the brand new Internet, and a couple of paperback fandom novels I found in a sci-fi bookstore on a dodgy backstreet.

(But if Netflix had existed, I would never have got a stitch of work done, or managed to find my way out into the world.)

Filming and acting were different in the 90s. Now the acting looks clumsy, the dialogues sound clichéd. But were they clichéd back then or do they seem so now because I recognise every line, from that show or any of a thousand others I've watched since?

Oh the nostalgia! Twenty years ago I was graduating and gearing up to go see the world for real. April then was like April now, minus pandemics and lockdowns: the golden light returning, seagulls, wild spring in the air, exuberance, promises of happiness. I threw open my windows to dark, crisp evenings and watched Voyager's crazy adventures while I secretly, desperately wished for adventures of my own.

And yes, I got them. I got on a plane, almost on a whim, and ended up in a mad place where I sometimes thought of myself as part of a starship crew in a universe of impossible adventures. Because it was actually a bit like that. I ran around putting out fires, fighting monsters (sometimes almost literally) and kissing aliens (really literally). I wore a uniform, screamed for backup in threatening situations, tried to communicate with hostile entities and ate things I probably shouldn't in the mess hall. I couldn't have found more drama and weirdness if I had gone looking for it in outer space.

Still, did Star Trek: Voyager set me up for disappointment? I mean, what normal life could continue to provide such a maelstrom of mad happenings and tightly-knit teams of friends? Yet somehow I think I expected it to.

I watch episode after episode and find myself back in that stormy spring world of the year 2000. It was a magic idea, such unlimited freedom, to end up 70 000 lightyears from Earth like the starship did - but the other day I saw a picture on the news of a black hole 5.5 billion lightyears from here and that adjusted my perspective a little.

But I still wonder why my life has so few space/time rifts, hull breaches, aliens wielding flashy weapons and chatty Talaxians cooking leola-root soup.

wind and green marzipan

The world is wild. The wind is wild.

I couldn't sleep last night and now I stand in a school kitchen, cutting thousands of slices of princess cake. Strangers around me sort boxes of free food for the needy and chatter easily in two languages. We couldn't sleep last night because we worried about ourselves. This morning we decided to worry about the even more helpless. We came together to sort lettuce from bread and cut princess cake.

Outside, the wild wind throws up dust devils to prove how scary the world is. But people still want to help people and my kitchen world is a calmness of green marzipan.

words to bring home

I will change your name
You shall no longer be called
Wounded, Outcast,
Lonely or Afraid
I will change your name
Your new name shall be
Confidence, Joyfulness, Overcoming One,
Faithfulness, Friend of God,
One Who Seeks My Face

(D.J. Butler: "I Will Change Your Name")

I found these words on the other side of the world in 1996 and took them home with me. They are still pinned up on the inside of a kitchen cupboard door.

They are still a summary of pretty much everything I aspire to.

no way to Venice

I binge-watched Marco Polo, the TV series, on Netflix recently and dreamed myself away to the steppes of Central Asia.

The Marco Polo of this series often looks up at the starry skies. His father, who cruelly left him alone at the mercy of Kublai Khan, told him that the stars of Orion's Belt will lead him back home to Venice.

A month or so ago, I bought a ticket to Venice for a long-planned exploration trip of Italy with friends. Well, that trip has now been cruelly cancelled as all of Europe locks itself away for a while.

Now I look to Orion for guidance. It is no easier for me than for poor Marco to find a way to Venice.

viral days

These are viral days and I'm stocking up on books, vitamins, potatoes, Netflix, tofu and apples. The only thing I'm afraid of is tension neck and lack of love.

When will I learn to breathe right, live right? A quarantine could not make me feel more stuck than I am already.

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.

travel report

I went to Helsinki.

I saw fire and some impressive art, studied science and rats for a day at the Heureka Museum and heard the blackbird sing in the middle of winter, in the middle of the city. I found English books and a lovely quilt. I walked too much and had a comfort pizza.

Now I feel socially acceptable again. I have been to the big city. I have actually seen other people.

tofu and tension

This is a winter of huddling beneath a Helsinki quilt. Watching Netflix and the rain that should have been snow. Frying tofu and rolling wraps. Fleeing my noisy apartment building to work in cafés and libraries. Being so tense it hurts, jumping at loud noises.

A winter of spinning my 80's globe - it has countries like Zaïre, Czechoslovakia and the USSR - and calling my mother because I miss her even though I saw her yesterday.

dust and a smell of copper

The sun is so far away, there is dust and a smell of copper, builders are ringing my doorbell at 7 AM, my brain zaps me at night, I still haven't found true love, every little thing scares me, and I sit alone in my house on a Saturday night.

But God will command his angels regarding me, I will not fear the terror of night nor the plague that destroys at midday, and I will dwell in the shelter of the Most High.