add up to something

"What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade" by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

beaming peace like the North Star

I Confess
by
Alison Luterman

I stalked her
in the grocery store: her crown
of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
watching
the way she placed yogurt and avocados in her 
basket,
beaming peace like the North Star.
I wanted to ask, "What aisle did you find
your serenity in, do you know
how to be married for fifty years or how to live 
alone,
excuse me for interrupting, but you seem to 
possess
some knowledge that makes the earth turn and 
burn on its axis—"
But we don’t request such things from strangers
nowadays. So I said, "I love your hair."

helsinki magic

Vague sounds of traffic, far-away sirens, voices. Lights from the street projected on the ceiling of a city flat at night. I'm trying to sleep on a makeshift bed, on crisp sheets smelling sweetly of detergent. Listening to the sounds but not disturbed by them. Unfamiliar sounds, a large city living and breathing around this young country girl. Unfamiliar smells of old stone and concrete, fumes, gas stoves, other people's cooking.

Whenever I visit my sister in the big city, my days are spent exploring. Being treated to delicious desserts and cinema evenings. Learning how to travel on the metro, navigate the city, savour ethnic food and appreciate art. Laughing at the sarcastic, hilarious jokes of my sister and her friends in candle-lit cafés at night. Seeing strange things and strange people.

I'm shy, wide-eyed, hopeful that life will always be adventurous like this.

The world is much louder than I knew, I think as the nightly sounds of the city rock me to sleep.

going home, when you live in Finland

Going home, when you live in Finland, often means driving long distances through dark forests.

I used to lie in the backseat of my father's car, a long long time ago, and look at the winter night sky through the window. Treetops flickered past at its edges, yellowish street lights when we passed through a village. The stars stayed still, far above in the inky sky. The air smelled sweetly of wood smoke from cottages we passed. The road was icy and my father drove slowly, looking out for elks. My mother talked in a low voice, the dog slept on the floor. Hot air blasted from the vents but the chill crept in and I pulled my coat tightly around me. 

I thought about my grandmother, who we had just been to see, and aunts and cousins I had met at her house. Their lives and that place in the countryside seemed so far away. The quiet farmhouse that smelled of old wood, the wide and open fields around it, the ticking of an ancient clock, the memories of relatives long dead, the peaceful and very alive presence of nature. Almost like a fairytale. 

Sometimes I felt I had been abducted from that life that I'd never known, plucked from the embrace of doting aunts and lively cousins, forced into a suburban life among cold strangers and harsh demands.

Now I gladly leave the urban lights of the large cities in the south to travel home, along a winding road through the darkest and wildest of forests. Towards the north of the North. The road narrows with the hours that pass, signs with strange names flash by. 

The stars appear, the wood smoke, the old cottages. The sight of empty fields against a backdrop of spruces that always quiets my heart. Wilderness stretching from here to the Arctic Ocean. I'm going home.

the ancient road to Samarkand

I spin my old 80's globe gently, brushing the dust off the USSR and inspecting the crack that has appeared just off the International Date Line.

I got the globe as a Christmas present as a kid. Probably after nagging my parents about it for quite a while. I love maps. Nowadays I can explore Google Earth with a passion but I still find it fascinating to read the mystical names in tiny italics on my globe: Kufra Oasis, Sea of Okhotsk, Society Islands ...

I used to love travelling. I logged quite a few countries during my intense twenties. Now I dread bumpy flights and the exhaustion of arriving at midnight in foreign cities. I still travel, but not without suffering many sleepless nights about it. I force myself to go - because I have to. I have to explore.

I explore mysterious forest paths and strange neighbourhoods locally. But I daydream about sailing among the Society Islands. In my nightly dreams I follow the ancient road to Samarkand.

2022: the year of French castles and a knife in the stomach

2022 was a year of exploring paths, listening to 57 different genres of music and reading 115 books. 

In the beginning of the year, I couldn't play volleyball, go to church or have dinner in a restaurant because of the pandemic. At the end of the year, the pandemic was more or less forgotten and people worried instead about war and NATO, high prices, energy crises and iodine tablets.

I worked remotely and in the office, went to the gym, walked in the woods, gave up volleyball (again), looked after my mother, had Lucifer evenings with my world-weary friend.

 

Highlights:

* New Year in suspected covid isolation and a holiday alone in Narnia.

* Graffiti and rebel art exhibition in a spooky, abandoned, Arctic fun fair.

* Kicksleds and flashlights with sister on a dark night.

* Winter party in a snowy, dark forest - lanterns, carrot cake, spicy coffee.

* Art exhibition with French masters, pastry as a reward.

* Participating in a demonstration, shouting "Slava Ukraini!"

* St. Patrick's Day celebration - watching live stream of Dublin parade during a boring day at the office.

* New sofa with sheepskin throws and a sea view and many a cozy evening. 

* Turku, my favourite city, just before Easter: snow and sun, Dumbledore's secrets in the cinema, secondhand stores, emotional Sunday service in the cathedral, Bach's St Matthew Passion with spiritual insights.

* Birthday in isolation with flu, pizza and blackcurrant beer, slow walk at a safe distance from a friend, cookies in the spring sun.

* Studying innovative textiles: nettle, banana, coffee fibre, self-regenerating octopus genes ...

* Theatre with friends: Botnia Paradise, met the stars of the show (KAJ).

* Walpurgis Night celebration: listening to spring songs in the park, party with donuts and Popeda music.

* Street market in my old neighbourhood: Sunday school memories and strangers.

* Trip to Stockholm: two archipelagoes seen from the deck of an enormous ferry, churches and cafés in the old town with a friend, water buses and the charming Söder, window shopping and weird cinema in Mall of Scandinavia, luxurious hotel night with velvet and royal portraits, old friends and a sermon in Arabic at a church service, munching churros with sister and niece, an afternoon alone at a historical Stortorget café and in a wonderful scifi bookshop, a night show with cocktails on the ferry home to make the most of life while others slept.

* Military exercise that I walked straight into on my quiet forest walk - had to ask heavily armed soldiers for permission to pass through.

* Celebration of summer: two-minute boat trip and an outdoor lunch so windy that my friend had to hold down the wine glasses while I cut the pizza.

* Studying French until I dreamed in French and heard birds converse in French.

* Rickshaw ride with excited old lady.

* Midsummer with the usual crowd and a boat trip under the midnight sun.

* Fleeing a heatwave to a house with a hidden garden - read C.S. Lewis, walked a poodle and watered tomato plants.

* Hen night with Slovakian liqueur, chocolate quiz and book bingo.

* A wedding that was all my fault, in a leaning church. Reunion with old friends, the charming of new ones.

* Summer with boat trips and library trips, golf played with tennis balls and steel pipes, butterfly safari and finding fallen stars.

* Epic road trip through France.

* Two Tampere weekends: summer with beachvolley, autumn with exploring, wine and Mortal Engines.

* Dark september evenings in the wilderness cottage - a fire, wine and books.

* My first trade fair, with colleagues, free sweets and strange innovations like exoskeletons and neurological beds.

* Dancing salsa with beautiful people, trying not to crush their toes.

* Power cocktails and fire extinguishers - just another day in the garment industry.

* Crane-watching in a meteorite crater.

* An eventful week in a suburbian house - dealing with bleeding poodles, ambulances, cranky heating systems, videocalls in the dark, ghosts in the garage.

* MRI, laparoscopy, post-op pains - all resulting in a whole month of rest, then physical uproar and trouble finding medicines.

* Christmas season concerts: 90s gospel and traditional chorals.

* Luxury Christmas lunch, crises and passive aggression as an end to the work year.

* Christmas week: five parties, work, plus a New Year's Eve on the Island. Still finding the time to stuff my face with chocolate.

Domestic road trips of the year: Lapua and Kauhava for vintage shopping and too much snow, Jakobstad for books, Isokyrö for the following of a river towards a yellow cupcake.

explore, pray, read

I'm the eternal explorer. Of forest paths, medieval castles, secret doors to new worlds, old-fashioned Swedish words, libraries, languages, cities, local history, bird sounds, personalities and motives, my own past and present.

I also pray, read, write, and try on clothes.

starting at the end of the world

New Year celebration with candles, friends, a French look, discussions on the war and the latest Jewish Messiah, bubbles, a strong wind and bad roads - on the Island at the end of the world.

I try

Some days I try to write and I scare myself into silence.

mornings without a clock

Mornings without a clock, hours over cooling coffee, remembering strange dreams of hunger. 

Drowsy happiness with books, frustration and worry over persistent pain. Battling ache and age. Watching the sky, lighting candles. Blankets and a flickering laptop on the couch. Autumn turns into winter, the cold creeps in, evenings are dark and last longer than the days.

Staggering around doing small chores, venturing a few steps down the icy street, sometimes driving a cold car to the shop or to see people. Mostly half regretting it afterwards.

I'm no use to anyone and I'm learning that it's OK. My life is as slow as November.

surviving a knife on Halloween

November began in the hospital, a major surgery I wasn't at all sure I'd survive. They said it was routine but I wasn't convinced anyone could cut open my stomach without killing me. And it was Halloween after all, when the veil between living and dead is said to be at its thinnest ...

Surprised, I woke up. My body in chaos, missing a piece. Completely dependent on strangers for my continued survival. It was strange and not typical, the deep trust I felt. 

Pain, sometimes unbearable, came and went. I got used to that little hospital room, impersonal and comforting at the same time. Cared for, and alone, at the same time. I liked the metal rails of the hospital bed, so strong and good to hold on to for support, so cool a relief in pain. I listened to the loud beeping that rang through the ward whenever someone pressed a call button. I felt horribly wounded, and safe. Love poured in through my phone.

I was in the maternity ward, not having a baby but having my womb removed. At the other end of the corridor, tiny babies cried. At my end, an old woman cried.

I had an odd insight - I may have been born in this very same building, on an April evening long ago. My mother happy after a miscarriage the previous year, my father receiving a mischievous wink from me the first time he held me.

This time, grey daylight descended quickly into dark November evenings, like a blanket when you're desperate for sleep. 

At the end of nearly a week, I was discharged and expected to be independent again. My exhausted soul was still dependent. Still aching for the fierce, protective love of a father.

summer, only a very old one

In a suburban house, October is grey like the suburban dystopias I've read about in novels (usually psychological thrillers). Wind and rain shake yellow leaves, the neighbours have dogs and prams and curious gazes. An atmosphere of quiet bleakness and tedious lives. My vanilla-coloured vintage leather coat feels out of place among Gore-Tex and softshell jackets.

But there are also flowers surprising me in the garden, half-frozen and withering. Blackbirds, magpies, woodpeckers and pheasants among the smaller birds outside the kitchen window. Over-ripe plums dripping juice from a windblown tree. A roaring fire to ward off the chill in a house with empty rooms. Silence that feels like kindness.

A feeling - both sad and comforting - that I don't belong here.

In the rain, I carry an old dog down the steps and then walk slowly, slowly, as he limps after me to sniff along the side of the street. I don't care if my mohair sweater acquires mud and the smell of wet dog.

I go to the fitness center in a grey, square building, as ugly as the grey streets around it. A hopeless greyness that induces weariness. Grey rooms, quiet and mostly empty. A vague smell of sweat and industrial cleaner. Working out on the crosstrainer still feels good, after I plug music into my ears and open my phone screen to a weird Kindle novel.

I walk for miles in the neighbourhood. There are large woods to get lost in. New streets where young families are moving into modern houses. Old streets where old memories dance around me like ghosts from the Seventies and Eighties.

The weather clears up, the sky rises high and blue and icy. The sun is low but warm and tricks me that this is summer, only a very old one.

a French town of all times

It's so typical of France - a town that no tourist has ever heard of, full of impressive ruins from Roman times. A huge triumphal arch, a well-preserved large amphitheater ... I gasp with delight. I love Roman ruins.

We happen to stop for the night just as the town is hosting a large festival that no tourist has ever heard of either. Outside a church, bathed in golden sunlight on a warm July evening, we drink the local beer and listen to people chatting around us. Loudspeakers in the tree branches above us play classical music. The bartender is beautiful, too beautiful for a small French town.

Onward we drift, to another sidewalk café where we feast on galettes as darkness falls. Are we the only foreigners in town?

We decide to go to a concert at 10 pm, much too late for a weary traveller. The 12th century abbey is mostly dark. Only the middle part is lit. A few dozen people sit in a semi-circle around a small stage where musicians play 17th century music on viola da gamba instruments - music that only serious lovers of classical music have ever heard before, I suspect. I'm not one of them. I've never even heard of viola da gamba instruments before.

A mezzo-soprano's soft voice sends German words drifting upwards to the vaults. The shadows around us flicker, smelling of stone and history. I almost doze off, lose myself in time. Am I in an obscure Roman town, in a medieval abbey with Benedictine nuns, in 17th century Königsberg with exiled musicians, on a French road trip in the scorching summer of 2022?

We walk back to the hotel at midnight, through empty alleys lit by weak streetlights. Too high on the experience to feel fear. Footsteps echo between stone walls, a cat jumps out of our way, plane trees rustle in the wind.

in the Savoie, at last

Many, many years ago, when I was young and travelling but not always free to travel exactly where and when I wanted, I spent a few summer weeks working in Switzerland. 

I partly enjoyed it, partly felt insecure and stuck in a boring job. I dreamed of running away. Getting on a train, taking off for the mountains I saw from my window. I longed to explore, to go and see what's behind that mountain ridge, to wander in complete freedom to the ends of the earth.

The mountains I saw from my window were the Alps of Savoie, white and wild and mysterious, a wilderness in the heart of Europe. During thunderstorms you could hear them boom, like the galaxy's largest drum being struck. It reverbated in me.

Now I'm in Savoie at last. Not quite in the wilderness of those highest summits. But close enough. There are immense mountains and clear, blue lakes and a chill in the evening air.

We shiver with cold as we get out of the car. After two weeks in summer-hot France, it's a delicious feeling. The car engine ticks in exhaustion after a long trek on steep roads with hairpin turns. The cheap hotel, clearly meant for skiers, is quiet in off-season and smells of pine wood and adventures. As we splash happily in the outdoor pool, there is a sound of sonorous bells. A herd of cows is returning home from their grazing in mountain meadows. 

Wrapped in scarves we spend a long, happy evening in the restaurant around the blue flame of a fondue pot, sharing Savoyard wine and giggles. The food is hot and heavy, the comfort food of a chilly mountain night.

bad night, big city

When we arrive in one of France's largest cities, we get stuck in a loop - in heavy traffic - as the navigator stubbornly insists on a route that is temporarily closed. Night is falling over hot, narrow streets in a seemingly endless city filled with cars and exhaust fumes.

Irritated, exhausted and uncomfortable, the way only an introvert gets when she needs a private space to withdraw to, I arrive at our destination. A tiny flat with no air-condition and windows that can't be kept open because robbers would climb in straight from the street and kill us in our sleep. Somebody, who knew very well how unbearably hot this flat is, decided that I would spend the night here. During France's hottest summer.

First, I need to make awkward conversation with the half-strangers we will share the flat with. I'm hungry, but too warm and exhausted to find food. Getting into bed I have the feeling of my body dissolving into liquid, into salt water and blood leaking away to leave me a dry, dead husk. The night is the hottest I've ever experienced, unmatched even in tropical countries. It nearly brings me to tears of desperation. I'm trapped and dissolving in Lyon. 

Outside are the sounds of a large city - cars speed by, people shout. As my breathing and heart-rate slow down, my body temperature goes down a little too. Drinking water helps. So I sleep, exhausted.

The next day, we taste coussins of Lyon and explore pretty streets and awesome cathedrals and exciting Roman ruins. Lyon has two rivers and the biggest city square I've ever seen. Under the right circumstances, it could probably be a nice place to live. But I'm happy to leave.

ascending into the hall of the mountain princes

We're in the south of France, following our loosely planned travel route from Pau towards Carcassonne. The heat is shimmering over withering sunflowers and vinyards. The mountains of the Pyrenees follow us like hunking, hazy clouds on the horizon to our right. 

An idea is forming in my mind.

"I know the plan is to explore France. But ... how about a little detour to Andorra?"

It takes a few seconds for K to understand what I mean. Andorra, the independent and mysterious little principality hidden in the mountains between France and Spain, where nobody we know has ever been? In those few seconds, she already warms to the idea.

I'm a little doubtful myself. I'm nervous about driving in mountains and this is more than a little detour. Heights of 2000 meters, an unknown country. Still, it can be done in a day. And it's something very different - we have to google even the basic facts about Andorra. The microstate was founded by Charlemagne, officially became a democracy as late as 1993 and is ruled by two co-princes: a Spanish bishop and the President of France.

So the next day we set off. It's our first sunless day in France. Clouds hang low and grey as we follow the winding road towards the border, the only real road from France to Andorra. Higher and higher we go, past vast caves we wish we had time to stop and see. Hairpin turn after hairpin turn after hairpin turn. There is some traffic - the French and the Spanish apparently like to go shopping in Andorra because the prices on things like fuel and alcohol is lower.

Suddenly we're above the clouds. Around us lie a sunlit vista of treeless mountains. France is behind us, beneath a lid of clouds. We pass a border station without stopping.

The first thing greeting us is a shopping centre. A shopping village really, and ski resort, formed out of modern, colourful building blocks and followed by a long line of petrol stations. The uneven French road is suddenly a smooth, tidy highway. It continues higher, through a mountain pass. We pass a herd of freely grazing cows with cowbells on, then a herd of horses with similiar bells strung around their necks. We marvel at the tenacity of many cyclists doing high-altitude training on the steep road.

There are villages but they are nothing like the villages of France, where even the newer houses look old and cute. These are ski resorts with blocky chalets lined up on the slopes. Nothing looks old here, except the mountains surrounding us.

Andorra la Vella, the highest capital in Europe, hunkers down in a valley and the summer heat is oppressive. Most of the town seems to consist of one long shopping street filled with the most popular clothes stores. The language is Catalan but most of the people are French and Spanish visitors. Slightly dazed from the exciting journey and not a little jubilant, we find a table outside a restaurant, sit down and order goat's cheese salad and white wine. 

"We made it! We're in Andorra, of all the weird places on earth!" 

For me, the most poignant contrast is that I'm sitting in front of a shop selling expensive Karl Lagerfeld clothes. I'm wearing an old, faded t-shirt that I usually only wear at my cottage in the Finnish forests, the other end of the world (because it's too worn-out to be used in public). I packed it for the trip only in desperation because I simply did not have enough clothes suitable for the hottest summer in a century. I'm not ashamed to be seen wearing it here, though. It's a symbol - I came from the remote wilderness of the North all the way to the Principality of Andorra.

After lunch, we look around (not a lot to see except shops unless you count the beautiful mountains around us) and buy a lot of small items in different shops, paying cash in the hopes of receiving two-euro coins as change. Andorra is not a member of the EU but still issues its own euro coins, which are pretty rare. I finally find one of them among the French and German euro coins littering my purse. The only thing left to do is to enjoy an icecream, fill up our car with cheap fuel and go back to France - and we find a toll tunnel that makes the return trip surprisingly quick and easy.

I descend from the mountains back into beautiful France with some unnecessary items: a cheap linen top, a fridge magnet, a stick of lime-flavoured lip balm and, weirdly, a hash brownie.

the Atlantic and a new song

You may not think you'll miss the sea when you have fascinating mountains, historical river valleys, fields full of sunflowers and old castles to look at all day long.

But if you're born and raised by the seaside, reaching the coast feels like coming home. The light, the salty breeze, the seagulls, the smell of seaweed. It's easy to breathe. Your eyes find the blue horizon, your skin suddenly longs to be immersed in salt water.

You just have to find a beach, no matter how rocky. Walk barefoot into the outgoing tide. Breathe in the eternity of the open ocean. Look for the most beautiful smooth pebble. 

If it's La Rochelle, you also have to order mussles with white wine on the pier, browse creative shops and randomly walk into a church where an organist plays a song you've never heard before and instantly love.

da Vinci, Joan of Arc and the wonderful K

The Loire valley. Too many castles and palaces to count. A royal air. The murky, slow and sensous Loire river. A muggy heat that peaks at 43 degrees Celsius.

I have found the perfect travel partner in K. Like me, she enters a place of ancient history, sighs with happiness and settles down to read the basic information provided. She then takes all the time she needs to explore every nook and cranny, study the facts in the brochure or "histopad", admire the furniture and the views from the windows, plod up and down steep stairs to towers and dungeons. We have all the time in the world. We are equally awed by standing at Leonardo da Vinci's grave and being in the room where Joan of Arc met the future king of France.

K also understands the importance of putting on mascara in the mornings, in order to be ready to conquer the world, and the pleasure in ordering a glass of wine or a Ricard with the chèvre salad for lunch. 

And she drives the car.

My role in our holiday is to speak French and translate menus, look for cute bed & breakfasts and drink Côtes du Rhône out of the three-liter box hidden somewhere in the car. And admire the views, guess the song playing on the car radio and dream up wonderful places to visit.

The highlight of our days by the Loire: not the royal ramparts of Blois or Amboise, or the free rosé provided by one charming bed & breakfast hostess, or the views from Château de Chinon - but the coolness of the murky waters of the  mysterious Loire on one golden evening when we take off our sandals and wade in the shallows.

the Jura surprise

Sometime last winter, I was browsing through Google maps and happened upon the Jura Mountains, for no obvious reason except that I love mountains and Central Europe. I dove into Street View and followed a few mountain roads, sighing in pandemic isolation over views I would probably never see in real life.

This summer, I found myself in the passenger seat of a car at the foot of these mountains, near the French/Swiss border. The driver programmed the navigator with our destination - the Loire Valley in the middle of France. I peered at the suggested route, winding back and forth across the navigator screen. "Looks like it's taking us across the mountains." I'm a little nervous about driving in mountains. I  don't have much experience - Finland is pretty flat.

So we drove across the Juras. It was beautiful - steep, wooded slopes, valleys with cute villages. Good roads. A very surprising hilltop fortification (Forte l'Écluse) looming over the road. As surprising as my dream coming true - diving into a map and surfacing in France.

dragons and kings and dormant volcanoes

Three thousand three hundred kilometers, seven castles, four mountain ranges, three countries, two freedom-loving ladies, one car.

Happiness is getting into a car and driving through France (and small bits of Switzerland and Andorra) without any goal, just to see where you end up. 

We ended up in a heatwave, in the murky waters of the Loire, in the airy throne rooms of ancient kings, in the vicinity of dormant volcanoes, in a wild garden party with magnum bottles of wine, above the clouds on hairpin roads, in a concert with instruments we'd never heard of, in a cave with a chained dragon, under Roman triumphal arches, in medieval villages with loud cicadas and silent bats, in a hot city flat with no air-conditioning, at tables with strange and wonderful dishes, in the middle of our wildest dreams of freedom.