how long does limbo last?

Find myself trying to focus on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark while wishing I were somewhere else entirely. Eating chocolates and thinking I shouldn't. Hoping and dreading friends will call.

A walk in the woods might set things into perspective. Even though I sometimes run into strange creatures.

vanity and vexation of spirit

Here is everything I know about my life today:

The milk in my coffee had turned. I have been in pain. I have done useful things that were useful only to me so do they count? I have decided to study French and to tell my friends when I feel bad. I hesitate between stepping out into reality and staying in to watch a DVD. The Jehova's Witnesses came by again and were really young and shy. Books do not tempt me today. I fell asleep to the sound of someone digging up my street. I am not good at this life thing. But I will keep doing it. I believe I will die at age 82 and go to heaven.

the night of two musics

Guided by candlelight I find my seat in a dark concert room and let my ears be caressed by the beautiful fragile voice of a female singer-songwriter. Her vulnerability and pain and careful hope floats in the air above me and if I were to laugh it would break.

Touched, I make my way home afterwards and yet there is a relief in leaving this intimate darkness and breathe the fresh nightly air. I can almost see the pain and hope of humankind. The streets are deserted and quiet but music of another kind reaches me from somewhere far away. It is irresistible...

I follow the sound to the International House. Its large windows are thrown open wide to let in the winter wind and spilling out in return is loud music of an oriental kind (I am guessing Turkish) with its distinctive dance across the half and quarter notes. It is shockingly different from the careful, precise music I have just heard. It is boisterous, jubilant, joyful - blaring into the quiet night with no respect for the House's decorous neighbours, and bouncing back as an echo against the sober Orthodox church building opposite. The House itself is almost shaking from many feet dancing on its wooden floorboards. People are hanging out the windows to catch a breath of fresh air before pressing back into the suffocating heat of the dancing crowd, shrieking with laughter. Children who should have been in bed long ago are playing outside without a care in the world.

I walk past twice - no, three times. Joy is swirling through the night and I am incapable of leaving.

this is not a poem because it doesn't rhyme

The ice is gone,
friends threw me a party,
new books are piling up,
spring is in the air and everywhere else.

I have learned a new way to write (this is not it),
I had a wonderful chèvre salad today,
I am learning the meaning of friendship.

A Czech woman called me on Skype,
my boss gave me time off,
soul is warming up,
dreams are getting intense.

Come here to me, desired and lovely things.

påsk must

Really must start updating this blog, read other blogs, be in and be out there. But first must wake up, stop bleeding, eat vitamins, set up goals, get a grip, drink more water, eat less sweets, do this do that, quit moping, feel loved.

soul and sea

Dreamed that the sea was free and dark and beautiful. Woke up and looked out the window and the sea was still bound in ice.

Not long now, hopefully. The ice is grey and wet and rotten, and melting away slowly. One good storm is all it takes and then I will see the waves roll in.

Then my soul will be free as well. Linked to the sea, I will defeat the ice of winter. There are forces at work that cannot be stopped.

not a good day for love

Day of ex's wedding. Was theoretically invited but knew I wasn't expected to go and didn't want to either. Drifted around in a shopping centre, lonely as a cloud. Ran into a could-have-been ex, shopping happily with his newly-wed wife.

Self-pity? Rage, more like. I'm sick and tired of everyone else's happily efter after. But most of all, I'm sick and tired of losing friends.

ice queen melting

The bay still under a cover of ice and snow, thick enough to ski on, but in my sheltered spot on a balcony I soak up the spring sun. It warms my cheeks for the first time since September. The Ice Queen is melting just a little, just a softening up of the outer shell while the birds are chattering in the bare lime tree. I lean back. Feelings frozen inside me for months overwhelm me.

may the force be with me

When I slam the volleyball down on the opposite side of the net and I really got it right this time and all my energy erupts in that single moment... I can hear a choir of angels sing. Peace and good will and God's favour.

in this very minute

News in the Sami language on TV, incomprehensible. Old pictures in my photo album, including one showing my smiling friend in front of a docked submarine at Pearl Harbor. I can remember the claustrophobic feeling inside it.

Me, the computer and a thick dictionary. A sudden urge to wear bracelets and I find two on my jewellery tree: a half-broken one with olive-green fake pearls and my most precious one in jasper and silver, made by an artist friend.

I live my life in broken moments like this.

what I give up for Lent: worrying

I need to: Learn more English, learn more French, learn more Finnish. Go over my notes from the course in self-defence. Love my friends better. Go see my parents more often. Write the dream. Get a dog. Stop worrying. Be loved. Eat less bread. Tell my neighbour what she needs to hear. Stop looking for attention. Grab attention. Love myself. Stop obsessing about myself. Eat more fruit. Go to the gym. Laugh. Go for longer walks. Be fascinated by the world. Stop to think. Laugh again. Experience the moment. Watch fewer DVDs. Play the piano and sing. Go to bed earlier. Feel less envy. Listen to more music. Dare to face my repressed dreams, if they are still there somewhere. Water the potted plants. Grin.

coffee and toffee and demons

Tired and lonely.

Beautiful winter, pristine snow, an important task that apparently only I could do, a new sofa, a father who cares, film "Australia" and a sudden urge to read The Songlines, friends that don't forget me, a thermos with coffee in the snow, God. Behold things to remember when despair strikes again as it always seems to do as the month of murder approaches.

Tomorrow I will go to the expensive coffee shop and have a large vanilla latte and a piece of toffee cake. Coffee and toffee, invaluable weapons in the battle against demons.

in a van through winter

Steering an impossible huge and heavy van across the plains of Western Finland, I try to shut out the chatter of my travelling companion and dream of Prince Charming.

Icy roads are okay as long as there is snow on the fields and forests to add a shimmer to an otherwise bleak landscape. I keep an eye out for elk and deer and try to decide on a radio station. The van is loaded with books but smells of apples and winter. My fingers are numb with cold and I turn up the heater a notch.

Sleepy villages and towns pass by with their wooden cottages and ugly '60s blocks. An occasional tractor blocks the road. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, people have chosen to live, even here there are schoolyards with laughing children. Imagine.

There will be no sun today either, and darkness is falling as we head home in the late afternoon. I slow down and turn on the full headlights. My shoulders are aching from the driving and from carrying heavy book cases in the cold but I am served coffee out of a thermos and life seems suddenly quite allright. I am driving through winter and I can smell the sleeping fields and the resin of the woods, and oh how beautiful is this country I am in.

darling books: i'm shack-shocked

When God invites you to spend a weekend at a shack where your daughter was violently killed - will you go? I know I would, after reading The Shack (by W.P.Young). If only to ask him to explain himself. And to watch him cook dinner.

This book shockingly turned my thinking upside down. With all the books I read, it doesn't often happen.

to the strangers in the church lobby

Faces that are becoming dear to me, sometimes I hate you. Sometimes you annoy me, frustrate me, look right through me when I need you to see me. Don't walk past me! Don't smile politely. I need you to really look at me, to ask me.

Faces of strangers, you are family. We share so much, let's share more. Let's listen. Let's care. When I am lonely, I will look around and see if you need me to ask. When I dry my tears I will say "are you okay?". When I'm exhausted I will reach out a trembling hand to steady you. In my weakness, I will try.

But I need you. To see me, to speak gently to me, to give me a shoulder to lean against for a minute. To love me when I'm not worth it.

Because I love you too, even when I hate you, my family of strangers.

harmonious day

Ordering in CDs by new, unknown artists and helping them spread their message.
Imagining that a book I sell will change someone's life.
Seeing the joy in an old woman's eyes when I get her a book that she has been looking for and never thought she would find.
Playing a beautiful song on the CD-player and seeing stressed-out customers pause to listen.

There is joy in working in a shop sometimes.

sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimes I just sits

Took a walk by the seafront in the January twilight and counted my blessings. My new golden boots left gold sprinkle in the powdery snow - or so I like to think.

This year has already brought new things. Golden boots. A chocolate tasting party where it took us 2 hours to get through five small pieces of chocolate. A new responsibility. Even a new admirer (though I still wish to be admired by someone else entirely).

And new sports clothes, for that New Year's resolution that I adamantly claim to never have made at all. But here it is: this year, I will be beautiful, rich and happy.

Pause for irony.

OK, OK. Too much, I know. So I will settle for being just beautiful and happy.

2008: the year I became an African

What I Did During the Year 2008: *After the Veuve Clicquot of the New Year celebrations faded out of my system, I had a runny nose and cynical mind. *Borrowed (for a few days) a terrier who hated postmen and barked at ice. *Couldn't hide from the dentist any longer (but 10 years is a personal best!). *Advanced in my digital development. *Had a dream where I found out I'm worth 1300 euro. Everyone was surprised. *Was pictured in the newspaper eating fish soup. *Forced the Little Shop of Harmony into the computer age (with a malfunctioning fax machine as my accomplice). *Worried that my jaw would fall off. It stopped feeling like it would when I stopped worrying. *Had dinner with a Limey. *Tried snowboarding. Only really managed to stay upright while clinging desperately to the gorgeous snowboard instructor. *Danced until midnight at an African wedding and then walked for miles through a wintry night in my party clothes to have a man teach me to play the mandolin. *Tried public speaking in a foreign language in front of hundreds of people. Almost died. Then felt like I'd gone to heaven. *Got my first parking ticket. *Spent a weekend getting foot massage, compliments and Russian poetry. *Limped around the island of Crete and discovered that what I love most of all is limping around foreign islands and really having the time to look. *Baked a cake. *Had the best possible Midsummer, laughing and dozing among friends and not having a care in the world except which man to choose as the most handsome. *Studied macho men at a metalsmithing fair, met real-life villagers at a local craft fair and genuine urbanites at an inter-city beachvolley tournament. *Ended a close friendship, restarted another. *Took on the responsibility of bringing Swedish literature to the Finnish people... at least some of it, to some of them. *Tried to teach a refugee girl not to dye her dog's fur yellow. *Decided to be happy. *Was denied membership in a church and felt more at home than ever. *Was totally culture-shocked, not to say culture-bowled-over at yet another noisy, chaotic African wedding. *Drove a van through the Land of Cool, Sweden, and tried to look cool. *Learned about mussels, black pasta, the EMO look, the life of rich EU brats, modern art that actually managed to move me, Flemish pubs, and how much I love my sister, during an intense Halloween in the capital of Europe. *Suffered defeat, over and over again, with the volleyball team. *Dreaded family Christmas turned out to be surprisingly OK, perhaps due to the presence of seven (7) dogs. *During the last evening of the year, was awarded the title of honorary African. By a non-African. *Made a fool of myself and it didn't matter one bit. And now, over to the next year... Wishing all of my blogging friends all the joy in the world for 2009!

excerpt from my diary

"What I like about weddings is that nobody is in a hurry; you eat & laugh & applaud each other & sometimes ignore the program in order to chat to someone & eat some more & send an sms to somebody you wish were there & take pictures of people & sit all by yourself and ponder life for a while & drink some coffee & all of a sudden 8 hours have passed... and then it's time to dance!"

Said by someone who doesn't hate weddings as much as she claims to.

in need of tuning

dissonance screeches through my life as notes of evil
I shake my head to clear it
but have to keep playing, keep playing
to reach that endnote of beauty

forgive me, I'm off key again