spontaneous studies in theology

Social workers, teachers, pastors and me - subtitler and queen of denim - gather twice a month this winter/spring to discuss a book. 

We meet in a drafty church attic and keep safety distances. Most of us didn't know each other before and have never seen each other without a face mask.

In the book, a Swedish theologian analyzes how shopping, cults, nationalism and the new technologies (among other things) try to fill the void that appeared when we abolished God and everything supernatural. When we demystified the world and lost the magic. Because human beings long for something beyond a mechanical, dull universe.

I haven't discussed anything like this since my university days. The group was spontaneously formed and I joined by mistake. But my favourite topic for study is cultural movements, the paradigms that form our society, the major developmental arcs throughout history and especially now. 

We discuss why ultranationalism attracts people, how Google's algorithms affect our minds, the religious fanatics that messed up our youth. Someone cried already in our first meeting, someone else shared a very painful story during the second.

I feel my understanding and knowledge expanding. I discover new aspects of myself, such as the fact that I sometimes feel embarrassed by my own opinions and threatened by criticism of the environment I grew up in, even when I freely criticize it myself.

There is so much to learn.

this Disney winter

I should stop complaining about the Finnish winters. Because this one has been picture-perfect, ridiculous in its idyllic gorgeousness, breathtakingly beautiful, as if Disney had come here and sprinkled magic snowdust all over a fairytale movie set. Weather-wise, at least.

It's all glittering ice crystals dancing in the sun, rosy-cheeked children playing in powdery snow, hot coffee in thermos flasks, iceskating and snowball throwing and snow-fort building, ski tracks through silent fir forests, blinding sun over ice. Even wolves - real, wild ones, scaring dog-walkers and early morning joggers in quiet suburbs. I fantasize about hearing them howl at night while I make tiny snowmen on my balcony.

It's a bit too cold, perhaps, at times. My car coughed a little in minus 20 degrees Celsius today, and I'm fighting an almost chronic case of frostbite in my fingers. But it's better than suffering the grey sleet or rain of warmer winters.

I'm not a very outdoorsy type but I can't resist the siren call of all this beauty. I dress in three layers, including ridiculous woollen hats, boots with metal studs in the sole, and a coat that looks like its last owner was a mammoth. Then I walk in the wide-open landscape of a frozen sea or along winding paths in snowy woods. Listening to the silence and breathing the scentless, crystal air of deep winter. Only in a very cold and dark country can the return of the sun make you want to cry from relief and melt into its comforting embrace.

A friend took me on a walk in a forest unknown to me. The snow glittered and sparkled, the sun was low in the sky but almost warming, caressing us with friendly rays through the frozen pine trees. We climbed a look-out tower and gazed at endless forests, distant seas, cold horizons. At a picnic spot, we grilled stick bread over open fire and warmed cold fingers on coffee mugs. 

It was seven degrees below freezing but we didn't feel it. We sat in the middle of a snowy forest for over an hour, talking about the adventures from our youth, feasting on hot, garlicky bread.

Picture-perfect winter.

a companion through the ages

My friend and I sat in a fast food joint in a bland, suburbian mall, discussing physical therapy and inheritance tax with the dissonance of muzak and screaming kids around us.

In our youth, she and I used to sit in medieval cafés in inspiring university towns, discussing dreams and the world as candles flickered quietly under ancient vaults.

But our friendship ripens and sweetens deliciously as time goes by.

blinis and grief

Winter sun, winter gin. Long walks in snowy woods. A brightening at the horizon. A blini evening with people I love and a dog that tried to pull a sock off me. A repetitive strain injury from too much space opera.

And the strange grief that occasionally strikes me, with full force, over a life not meant for me.

blessed, found, loved

Today's best colours: A cloud of powdery white snow, a green DKNY bottle, a rose-golden sun. 

I doubted and feared and despaired a lot today. Then I remember that I'm one of the blessed, one of the found, one of the loved.

the office puppy

My boss in the garment industry understands the importance of good employee care, it must be said. Amenities in the office have escalated from a fruit bowl to a Nespresso machine and now to a PUPPY. 

Here with mirror image for your doubled viewing pleasure.

Perceived results in employee efficiency: Employees eagerly arrive at work, and then don't get much work done.

days of sparkle and cold

It's January. Enough said.  

Midwinter is terror and magic. Snow, achingly cold and beautiful. Outer space and its mysteries, almost close enough to touch. Days of icy, grey rain so desperate that no human should have to endure them. Days of sparkle and cold that freezes your breath and kills in minutes. Midwinter is immediate danger and exotic adventure. Cars skidding off the road, dogs playing in the snow, sleds and skates and skis.

In midwinter, there is death and despair. In January 2021, so many people are balancing on the edge.

But I pray and hope and learn to live.

excerpt from a space opera

   A faint whooshing sound, barely audible, caught Dak’s attention. It was a very familiar sound and it did something strange to his heart.

  Neither of them had said anything for hours - Xandor wasn’t much for small talk with a slave and spent a lot of time half-asleep anyway - but Dak’s loneliness suddenly reached new heights. 

  He said quietly, 'They’re powering up the engines.'

  Xandor didn’t react at first and Dak wondered if he was asleep again. Then he replied, just as softly, 'Yes. We’re leaving for Earth One. Royard will be doing a night shift in the pilot’s seat.'

  Dak had somehow managed to forget that. His world had strangely shrunk to only include the most immediate, concrete facts and fears of his existence. The world outside these bulkheads was receding into a dream.

  The whoosh was accompanied by a distant clang and other vague noises. He recognised them all - this was the airlock being secured, that was the mooring being disengaged. He closed his eyes and imagined himself in the pilot’s chair. It was suddenly so real that he expected to feel the smooth shape of the helm control in his right hand and hear the scratchy voice from the station traffic control operator in his ears. 

  The engine noise rose to a smooth buzz. The ship vibrated softly in response. He would now be saying his goodbyes to the operator and shifting the helm control ever so slowly to set the Sky Vixen in motion. 

  His right hand twitched. There was no helm control under it. 

  Dak pressed his sleeve against his face to stop the tears. 

  Xandor’s voice was so gentle that he nearly didn’t hear it. 'It will be alright, boy. Go to sleep now.'

2020: the year I stayed home and wrote space opera

Twenty twenty, the twenty-year anniversary of my graduation and my new life. Oh yes, and a pandemic that stopped life in the whole world.

* New Year out on the town with a clergyman, blueberry bubbly and old movies.

* New Year's resolution: to feel loved and alive and creative and see a bit more of the world (haha!).

* Helsinki trip: vintage shopping, the science museum, the most wonderful library in the world, battling crowds at the Lux festival of fiery art.

* Exiled from my home due to renovations - spent a lot of time working in cafés, libraries and my mother's sofa. Learned that I really, really need peace and quiet.

* Community theatre play - Two for One, funny - and tea with the Ski Club in my childhood hoods.

* Twenty-twenty party with a reenactment of The Divine Comedy in an old church - inferno with moral tales and a cembalo (a diabolical instrument in my opinion) in the eerie basement vaults, purgatory where I got to play the enormous church organ, paradise in the attic where we climbed the roof beams and studied the ancient clock mechanism and several hundred year old graffiti.

* Extended my laptop collection to 5 pcs.

* Asbestos in my house, and a cold colour in my hair after a lifetime of warmth.

* A winter of no winter, then a spring with a lot of winter (snow and a thunderstorm with snow). 

* Badminton with the boys. I played worse and worse.

* Volleyball tournament with the funniest, if not the best, team. I was attacked by a genuine pitbull and played against a sumo wrestler with a fashion sense.

* Learned how to put a cast on a leg.

* The pandemic arrived, my trip to Italy was cancelled, Finland was put into a state of emergency and lockdown. My work continued at a little more distance than usual. Two and a half months of emergency consisted for me mostly of Star Trek and personal protection equipment.

* Volunteered in food distribution to the needy. It involved frozen princess cake, rotten bananas, canned snails and some really cool people.

* Studied personal protection equipment and became qualified in advising firefighters on which breathing apparatus they should choose.

* Birthday: a hike with friends and slightly outdated banana cake, reading in the sun, pizza and action movie with a man.

* Alternative Italy trip in the neighbourhood: a creek was Venice, a crooked fir tree was the leaning tower, a deserted camp site was Florence. Picnic in chilly sunshine with raspberry pastries and Nordic mead and a view over water and birds.

* Found out that I work for the kind of boss who gets sued for slander and is found guilty and gets his hunting rifles impounded by the police (all due to local politics and the feuding it begets. Stay out of politics).

* Funeral for  my uncle in pandemic times: outdoor service in cold spring sunshine. Then highland beef stew with lots of laughs on a farm owned by family for generations. Then a picnic at the summer house, with cake, football and sunbathing in our funeral finest. My uncle would have approved.

* Scary crisis when one of my nearest and dearest had a stroke. He survived and recovered.

* Foot spa get-together with friends, online. Wine and the scent of peppermint.

* Celebrated the start of summer and (temporary) end of pandemic restrictions with a friend and a bottle of wine by the sea. We talked until the sun shone from a northern angle in among the dandelions.

* Planted lilacs and daisies. 

* Moved furniture here and there over all the town, all summer.

* Beachvolley weekend with hot weather, modern cathedrals, corona concerns and brunch arguments.

* Drove a boat in scary conditions despite my general sea-unworthiness. Found a paradisical, hidden beach with dark coffee and a mystery.

* Night of the Arts, corona edition: explored the visual arts of friends and enemies, chamber music and hip hop dance. And big band jazz from my balcony, against my will.

* Road trips out of my comfort zone (scared of my car breaking down but being courageous about it). Saw ancient churches, great beaches, waffles and cupcakes, a lot of forest.

* Witnessed a house lifting operation.

* Picnics and barbecues.

* My first ever team-building day at work. A hike and fake champagne, a luxury lunch, checking out the competition.

* An August with many wilderness nights alone in the forest, with candles, Netflix, books, pizza and the most perfect peace. And melancholia.

* The year of meetings. Staff  meetings just because, church team-leader meetings, virtual Friday night "meetings" with friends over wine.

* Realised that my mother has the beginning of dementia and a tendency to fall over.

* Got acquainted with Pilates balls, a really strange method of exercising.

* Visited an artists' collective.

* A rare night out on the town with a new friend, deep talk, music and dancing - on a night when the virus tore through our town (making it one of the worst places in Europe for a while) and forced it to close down. At least I got my dancing done before that happened.

* Course in altered book art journalling, loved it and scorned at the same time. I'm a conflicted artist.

* Dreamed a lot and wrote a lot.

* Had a man fall deeply in love with me. Turned him down.

* An October of living in the midst of the pandemic.

* Wolves nearly at my office door.

* Virtual reality games - it turned out I'm a natural-born talent at swinging light sabres.

* Road trip to the depressing neighbour city for a spot of shopping and new perspectives (travelling goals had to be adjusted this year).

* Bought an expensive bottle of gin. I don't even like gin.

* Fabulous work Christmas party with luxury food on a snowy Tuesday afternoon.

* Art experiments involving matchboxes and glitter.

* Christmas with family and strangers, a snarling dog and photos from the 50s.

Work-related issues: the mysterious life of eels, subtitling (for the deaf) a crash course in death metal growling, fabrics, Kalevala in beautiful Swedish, how elks sound when they are in heat (again, subtitling it for the deaf), doing a search on the zulu version of Wikipedia, sleeping bags for pro footballers, how to certify kneepads.

The year in general: Exploding head syndrome and forest walks, rediscovering childhood fairytales and favourite novels, scifi from my teens, lots of chocolate cake to celebrate that we're still alive, writing space opera.

First time events: frying asparagus, paddling a kayak, making banana pancakes, playing virtual reality games.

Quote of the year: "No-one has greater love than he who smears sauerkraut juice on his friends' cars."

the dinosaur is coming

We welcomed the year of hope, 2021, in a dark, snowy garden. I twirled my long skirt, waved sparklers and shouted, caught in that electric elation of watching fireworks explode and a new year being born. 

The fireworks and the party were tiny, as befits a pandemic year. We spent hours playing a card game called Virus, trying to infect each other's vital organs. One of the kids screamed at me, "WE ALL HATE YOU" and I still didn't win. We amused ourselves with drinking strawberry wine, made in a local old wizard's subterranean vaults (all of us survived), and with the Finnish tradition of telling our fortunes by melting toxic tin and then trying to interpret its solidified shapes.

According to the tin, my destiny this year is to meet a tall, dark dinosaur. After a year like 2020, who is even surprised?

christmas with no line breaks

My white witch coat. Snow falling on Christmas Eve after a charcoal winter. Trying to avoid spreading a pandemic by going to only one Christmas dinner. Salmon, lamb, rosolli, herring, meatballs and about sixteen different kinds of sweets. People who are always there for Christmas, some that are not, some that are in quarantine. Finland-Swedes, a Swede turned Finn, a Kurd, an Afghan, someone of Thai origin. A Christmas tree, rhyming and laughter and a wonderful, wonderful feeling. Youngsters who watch people eating on YouTube and show me that I really can't pretend I'm up to date with what youngsters like these days. A night and a day spent with an old lady. Delight and irritation. Chocolates, a ton thereof. A scent of wild mint and hyacinth. A burst of experimental creativity involving glitter, water colours, matchboxes, toothpicks and golden ribbons - and that familiar feeling of this is kinda fun but what's the point really? Walks in snowy woods and festive neighbourhoods in dubious grey daylight. Fiction writing. Faraway laughter in the night. A little doubt and fear as darkness plays its tricks. A glittering bottle I have not dared to open yet. A friend bringing spicy glögg. Time to read fantasy and theology.

what a winter night holds

A winter night is full of candle-light, hot peppermint tea, words on a page, spicy smells, dreams, weariness and fear.

on writing, disgust and crawling through the world

I'm reading about writing. It's pissing me off. Everybody says: Just sit down and write.

I should have known this already but I'm not like others, not in my passion for writing either. It's when I sit down and write that I can't write. I have to sneak up on my writing, pounce on it unexpectedly when I pretend to just walk by all uninterested. 

And I feel a deep disgust for myself if I detect any desire to be published (a blog doesn't count, nobody reads those anyway). The world is full of words being screamed, of attention being craved. I don't want to be a part of that.

And despite my idealistic longing to do something good, I'm too broken and alone to do more than occasionally smile at someone as I crawl through this world on my way to the next.

a sleeping spell all over the country

December is cold steel and wet grey wool and a sleeping spell all over the country except nobody is allowed to actually sleep. 

It's dragging yourself out of bed after a restless night, daylight lamps hurting your eyes or Christmas lights reminding you that you won't get through the day without hearing "Last Christmas" at least once. A constant fog even when there is no fog. 

It's clementines and scented candles and the mirage of a holiday and a little hope and buying a really expensive bottle because it glitters and reminds you of happiness and spices. 

It's being awake for lunch hour and going back into hibernation afterwards. Forgetting what being warm feels like, what summer smells like. Stiff muscles and fear of demons. Vitamin D and melatonin. Restless words pouring out, quieter thoughts too tired to surface. The beauty of grey fog.

It's face masks, uncertainty and no concerts this year, and maybe a little more rest.

December is also thai food with friends, volleyball with friends, Zoom meetings with friends, really weird phone calls with friends, a reminder that you can't make it without friends.

gravel, sun and a red skirt

I don't remember how it actually happened. The tall, lanky man was sitting on a chair outside an Irish cottage, on a sunny summer's day. I think he pulled me down to sit on his lap, or maybe it was my idea. We probably kissed. In any case, the chair tipped over and we both fell on the gravel, which hurt him more than me because I mostly landed on him.

I remember I was wearing my blood red wrap skirt, because in that moment it opened and showed more than was completely decent. He teased me about my "wardrobe malfunction". I laughed wildly, still lying in his arms, on the gravel under a warm summer sun.

Later, he texted me: "I  have a bruise on my arm where a girl fell on me. Not that she was heavy, mind."

I remember the day I met this man - I was in high heels and walked with him into a kitchen. I turned around and smiled at him and knew that I liked him.

I also remember the last time I saw him. It was just a glimpse of his anguished face because he refused to look at me. I turned my own face away because I knew I had destroyed him.

But that day with the gravel, the sun and the red skirt is my strongest - and fondest - memory of a man I once loved.

sing, all ye blissful ones of heav'n above

Cold sea, frost-bitten old grass, bare tree branches, clouds, jackdaws, frozen mud on a forgotten path. Lonely boats on still grey water, people with dogs. This path along the sea is all I need today.

I think of the dream I had last night, of living on the beach and really living. I think of that night I spent dancing before all the dance floors closed down. I think of beauty, dogs, friends with different perspectives.

I come home and play my Christmas playlist for the first time this year. Songs from long-gone childhood records, Bach and Tchaikovsky, beautiful new songs, hymns, fairytales of New York, choral works in Latin that still resound in my memories from university town cathedrals, homesick Canadian-Irish songs that somehow ended up in my Christmas canon, that annoying Mariah Carey that I can't bear to delete.

I need to clean my house. I'm cynical and weary. But even I can see the candle of hope flickering in a window far away. Light and life to all He brings, ris'n with healing in His wings.

Peace, the First Sunday of Advent, God waiting behind the corner. O sing, all ye blissful ones of heav'n above.

i hate cooking

Cold and tired and wishing someone would cook for me. That's the essence of November.

I hate cooking. I proclaim it to the world. And ready-made food always has added sugar or is too expensive. How old do you have to be to get that meals-on-wheels deal senior citizens do? When will someone invent that cheap pill that you can take instead of food?

Today this seems to me a major problem. Must be a November thing.

sabres, wolves and licking

Dancing with light sabres in virtual reality, walking near wolves at a seven-hundred-year old seat of power, sun and ice, licking someone's hair.

It was that kind of weekend.

stars around my neck

I wear stars around my neck, and a vanilla leather trenchcoat that stiffens my spine. I wonder why modern novels are so thick and why I carry home more from the library than I actually read. I roll around on pilates balls.

I'm supposed to be looking for divine love and seeing the world, but both are impossible so I write a space opera instead.

stiff-necked and fictional

A bottle of wine red as blood, a cold sea outside, pages of fiction pouring out of me. 

Bucketloads of clementines and one tea calendar. A stiff neck and no energy for adventures, just a stroll in the wilderness of strange suburbs.

Almond butter, avocado butter and other strange news, a world that has shrunk to a few streets, The Crown and Friends on Netflix, economics as comics.