choose a man

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman." (Anaïs Nin)

And people wonder why I'm single.

a mini-van and someone else's life

Late one night I find myself trying to manouver an unfamiliar mini-van through the city streets after receiving a panicked phone call from a friend going into labour.

Nervous and high on adrenaline, I put all my effort into projecting calm and cheerfulness for the benefit of the three small children staring at me shyly from the back seat. I'm a half-stranger to them and the situation must be even weirder for them, after hearing their mother gasp in pain and their father give me hurried instructions.

As I try to figure out the car and navigate vaguely remembered roads to find their grandparents' house, I feel oddly elated. This is like taking a peek at someone else's life. Like being a mother. Is this something I have missed out on?

It's oddly satisfying, being responsible for three small lives. On the other hand, it's nice to be the one that can be called on to sort out a crisis at a moment's notice.

manual overload

Downloaded a manual for my new phone onto my new phone.

Now I can't find it because I need a manual to tell me where to locate a downloaded manual.

Just another day in the life of a 21st century savage.

a bigger brain moved in

New phone. (Old one broken, beyond repair they say with an infuriating shrug. It was only three years old and well treated.)

The phones of today scare me. I don't have the first idea what mine is doing. It asks me for mysterious downloads and updates and registrations and I feel as if I'm signing away my privacy and safety and soul. It has a bigger brain than I do and is always humming away, doing mysterious stuff in the background.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it starts to share information about me with the entire world. What I do, where I am, what my bank details had for breakfast.

And it conveniently fails to locate my high score on Angry Birds.

why Mondays (or Thursdays) are blue

I think life's secret is to just decide to be alive and present and happy, and I will be.

I also think it's all a fatal mistake I've made, a dreadful self-deceit, and the moment I admit it, everything will crumble around me.

This is like trying to believe in two impossible and mutually exclusive scenarios at one. No wonder Monday mornings are tough.

(Actually, Thursday evenings are worse. But that's just me.)

That was today's Deep Thought. And a reminder why it's detrimental to my health to have too many of these Deep Thoughts. Now, back to being shallow and superficial and watching NCIS: LA.

Mucha and the red toaster

My phone is broken and I feel a bit lost and anxious.

Tried to fix the situation by buying a curtain, a Mucha illustration, a velvety jacket, a tomato-red toaster and icecream. Most of it in a second-hand shop, but still.

for cuddling

"Saturdays are for adventure; Sundays are for cuddling."
(unknown)

Or picnics. Picnics are okay on Sundays, too. I had one today. There was pizza, fizzy cider, wild kids, friends who screamed with laughter, and a little bit of vomit.

art with Nutella

Fallen in love with Pascal Campion. Can't get enough of his art, especially the urban landscapes. Or anything of his, really. Finally someone who knows how to create a masterpiece named "You, Me and Nutella".

garlicky, chocolatey birthday

The rest of my birthday, by the way, consisted of the following:

* watching a train arrive at the station - one of my favourite things
* lunch at an unassuming but oh so peaceful pizza joint, sharing a very garlicky pizza with a friend
* going on a quest for cloves, brown sugar and a lemon
* working
* a deluge of birthday greetings on Facebook, moving me to tears
* and a candle-lit evening of wine, pie, pavlova, chocolate liqueur and three girls laughing until they cried. No-one ever went home. It was perfect.

laughing over blueberry stains

I splatter blueberry juice over half my kitchen, squeeze lemon over my sleeve, leave a carton of salt in the bathroom.

I laugh, free and unconcerned and happy to be alive. Happy that it's my birthday and I've created a beautiful pavlova and strangely combined it with hot whiskeys.

When I feel old, I celebrate the best thing about ageing: the strength, the confidence, the joy in just being who I am.

second home

City libraries in Finland are fantastic.

The one I frequent has enormous selections of books, magazines, audio books, films and music (not to mention sheet music!) in three languages, and smaller ones in a few other languages.

You can rent paintings to hang on your wall. Play the piano with headphones. Read magazines you've never even heard of. Join a book club, attend lectures and get personal tutoring on how to make the most of your iPad. Look at art. Eavesdrop on people in the café. Use a scanner or printer. Borrow music online. Hassle the staff with demands on foreign newspapers they should have in the reading room. Pick up second-hand (non-library) books for free at the book exchange table. Bring your laptop and work or study at one of the desks all day. Go look at the fish tank in the children's section. Borrow an interactive course to learn a foreign language or musical instrument. Watch a thunderstorm through the gigantic windows.

Or, most importantly, crawl up in a comfortable chair in a forgotten nook and lose yourself in a book. This library has nooks. Nooks are important.

the opposite of war

"The opposite of war isn't peace. It's creation."
(Jonathan Larson)

Perhaps this is why there is a war in my soul. What do you do when you can't create?

rest, and all the rest

A day of rest.

I never really know what to make of it. Stay in bed with Pinterest and a book? Watch DVDs? Go fleamarket shopping? Have a lazy lunch at a cute café? Take a long walk? Meet up with a friend? Visit Mom? Clean the house?

Do I want the result to be tired but content, or well-rested but bored?

retrieving a friend

Went to a dog show last Sunday.

I felt 12 years old again. The age when I ran around the neighbourhood with my best friend A., ringing strangers' doorbells to ask if we could walk their dog, knowing every dog breed by heart, making up a bunch of pretend dogs when  the real ones weren't enough.

Then friends took over my attention, and boys, and books, and Jesus, and volleyball. And A. disappeared out of my life, more or less, for decades.

At the dog show, I looked around and saw thousands of dogs and even more humans. I found I could still identify most of the dog breeds. At the retriever ring I stopped, because retrievers used to be our favourites.

Someone said, "Hi!" And there was A. beside me, grinning. It was so unexpected, so predictable, and so right. The tousled little brat was now a bank teller and mother of two, but the grin was the same. We walked around, discussing life and pointing out weird-looking dogs, and everything was the same.

you who have suffered

"You who have suffered - 

find where love hides,

give, share, lose,

lest we die

unbloomed."

(Allen Ginsberg)

rye chips day

Today is: blustery weather, rye chips with Greek yoghurt, and googling French caves for work.

horses and God

Fact: I can happily stand in a cold drizzle for hours if there are pretty horses to look at.

As long as I have a thick parka, a hotdog, a cup of lukewarm coffee and a friend who demands that we discuss God.

So I ended up explaining my views on heaven and hell while stroking the soft muzzle of a beautiful Irish Cob.

happiness, a dog and an inflatable raft

One of the very first  works of fiction  I wrote, at approximately age 12 or 13, was heavily influenced by (not to mention plagiarising) something from The Famous Five. Jo, the gypsy girl, takes her dog and runs away, but not without some careful packing of essentials which she loads onto an inflatable raft.

A raft, because it's handy and can be deflated and easily transported also overland (or so I imagined). The story I wrote never got very far beyond a detailed list of the stuff Jo packed.

What intrigues me about this story now, except how ridiculous it is, is how exactly it mirrors my sentiments today - sentiments that lay buried somewhere inside me for decades, under more generic nesting and gathering and mothering instincts. The urge to purge everything out of my life except the essentials, to travel light and be free of baggage.

And to have a dog. But that's another story.

wish I loved its silly face

"People are so different", a friend sighs on the phone.

I sit on my kitchen stove as I talk to her, absently staring out the window. I really need to do the dishes. I have spent the day working and obsessing over the bedspread I want to buy and can't find. Later today, I will interpret a church meeting into a foreign language but I'm not worried. I will also play a volleyball match, but am not worried about that either. I will show up and do these things and not think twice about it.

But I worry and think more than twice about how to deal with my friends. With people in general. Sometimes I find myself wishing to be left alone. Not a healthy thought. But I could do without most of the human race - or so I tend to think, with annoyance.

And then, sometimes, I am hit with such a soul-crushing pity and love for people that my knees almost literally buckle beneath me. It's too much, I can't handle it. I turn away.


“I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I thought; “WHAT JOLLY FUN!””

(Sir Walter Raleigh 1861-1922)

chat to change a nation

I feel a need to  chat to strangers.

I'm not actually the type of person who chats to strangers, rather the opposite.

But somebody has to do it. Nobody in Finland does (except my Dad, but he's dead). And that is just wrong.