In my local off-licence I found a Riesling with the same name as the first friend I ever had.
The name is rather odd, for a boy and for a wine.
I'm drinking it with morbid curiosity and find myself missing him. I think I was seven years old the last time I spoke to him. I attended his funeral about ten years ago.
If I Had Three Lives
After “Melbourne” by the Whitlams
by Sarah Russell
If I had three lives, I’d marry you in two.
The other? Perhaps that life over there
at Starbucks, sitting alone, writing — a memoir,
maybe a novel or this poem. No kids, probably,
a small apartment with a view of the river,
and books — lots of books, and time to read.
Friends to laugh with, and a man sometimes,
for a weekend, to remember what skin feels like
when it’s alive. I’d be thinner in that life, vegan,
practice yoga. I’d go to art films, farmers markets,
drink martinis in swingy skirts and big jewelry.
I’d vacation on the Maine coast and wear a flannel shirt
weekend guy left behind, loving the smell of sweat
and aftershave more than I did him. I’d walk the beach
at sunrise, find perfect shell spirals and study pockmarks
water makes in sand. And I’d wonder sometimes
if I’d ever find you.
_____
Note from me: Love this poem because I'm kind of living this third life.
Living in a community, with idealists. It was autumn in Sweden.
I was nineteen and on the way to discovering what was perhaps my life calling - comforting, encouraging, praying - and at the same time feeling vulnerable and naive like a child. I discovered playfulness, unexpected physical strength, the importance of letting myself get close to others - physically, mentally, spiritually. I cried like I'd never cried before and realised how little I knew myself.
I had just left my childhood home, thinking I was independent and grown-up. But I was a bambi-eyed, scrawny teenager, weak and unaware of how much others protected me, even as I gradually learned how to look after myself. Perhaps it's the same for everyone at that age.
I grew like a flower during that chilly autumn, safe among people who loved genuinely and warmly. It was an environment I craved - and crave still, perhaps. Later I would realise how isolation and too much indepence always make me sink into apathy and despair.
It was a community of Christian missionaries, and some of the things we talked about seem odd now - not dangerously so, just odd. Like the sinfulness of pride, confessing sins to each other, dealing with the devil, prophesying. But I learned to be open and loving, accept differences, overcome brokenness, speak English, and let myself be loved by others when I least expect it.
Even with the cynicism that has come with the years, I can't seem to lose my faith in God, genuine love, hope.
It's a city of olives and oranges, of a thousand swifts darting around in the sky. The Arabic coffee is soot black and spicy, the sangría joyfully juicy. The April sun is delightful, the wine comes with tapas of tabbouleh or Manchego cheese or, obviously, olives.
We explore an immense cathedral, the burial chapel of monarchs, the heavenly gardens of the long-vanished Moors. We rest among roses, light-headed from their scent and the whispers of marble and fountains.
Feeling a little faint, I stand in front of the sarcophagi of legendary Isabella and Ferdinand. I shudder with fear and excitement when we get lost among the poorly lit alleys of the Sacromonte after dark, long after the tourists have left for the flamenco shows and the restaurants. Shadows are dark, dogs are barking in the distance, footsteps echo in the deserted, winding streets. Danger and the ghosts of gypsies stir the cooling air.
The red castle on the hill and the snow-covered Sierra Nevada summits float over us like a fata morgana. Seven hours is spent exploring the castle - we are, by now, seasoned castle explorers who won't leave any dungeon or turret unseen.
Europe has too many works of art and my head will soon explode. Andalusia is a cauldron of emotions, bullfights and scorching heat. And chilled, white almond soup in the shade is a wonder as great as the Alhambra itself.
No matter how wondrous the place I visit, I very rarely return. How could I, when there are so many wondrous places still unexplored? The sadness of leaving a place like Granada, a fairytale of spices and stories hidden in the mountains, knowing I'll never return .... adds to the magic.
I bury myself in Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra for days afterwards, refusing to let go.
Dust, doctors, death.
Stress, songs, shivers.
Cauliflower, consideration, cocktails.
Birds, boredom, books.
Worry, whiteness, wars.
History, halloumi, hope.
Misty grey fields and forests. Icy winds with snow crumbs swirling around. Deer grazing in open fields, looking for sustenance under half-melted, re-frozen snowdrifts.
It's March but spring feels very far away and in the backseat of the car, I shiver in my puffer jacket and wriggle my freezing toes. I have dressed for a choir concert, not for a long, poorly heated car drive.
Then, incongruously, there is an icecream truck. It's sitting there at a rest stop, open for business. Icecream trucks are a thing of the summer.
We screech to a stop and four adults tumble out of the car to buy huge icecream cones. The wind coming across the fields swirls more snow around us, to prove that it's still winter.
We laugh at it, shiver, and stuff ourselves with summer hope.
It's been a long, long day
Are we in heaven, heaven, heaven?
I want a playlist with only songs that mention heaven. Because my body hurts and my mind fears and hope is scarce ... but heaven is heavy with grace.
Every day I know that this might hurt but I don't care
This is heaven, yeah
The apartment building is surrounded by other identical apartment buildings, fairly new and proper. The area is quietly pleasant and has absolutely nothing interesting to look at. It was built for people to grow old in, snug and warm and alone in front of the telly.
My mother's flat is nice, clean, with a wide collection of pretty trinkets. My father liked clocks. During his time there were 26 of them in the flat, 13 of which were ticking ones.
I lived there for a while, years ago, unemployed, unhappy, falling to pieces. I also stayed there during that awful week after my father died. I greeted a steady stream of visitors bringing my mother flowers, lay sleepless at night, listened to the ticking of those thirteen clocks.
But I also spent many cosy Christmas nights in the flat, with books, chocolates and that old Christmas record I always wanted to play, warmed by candles and a mother's love.
Still, I never left the flat without taking a deep breath of relief. Not because I wanted to leave my mother. I just wanted to escape the atmosphere of boredom and decay in that building.
The ticking of those thirteen clocks has nearly stopped. My mother will soon leave the building, to move into a home for the elderly. I cannot yet deal with my feelings about her aging and the prospect of sorting through all her belongings, which go back generations.
Instead, I write about the relief of never having to go near that apartment building again.
Arctic winter, so cold that cars and buses stop running even in hardy Finland.
An old lady is sent home from hospital and I try to arrange for diapers, grab handles, nursing homes and everybody's peace of mind.
I have a week off from work but not much rest. Except some precious, quiet mornings on the couch with a brilliant, icy sun, the Farseer trilogy and the last remnants of Christmas magic.
I join a new choir and practise the alto parts.
I feel I have done much of this before, but decades ago.
2023 was the year when I abandoned contact lenses, bleeding, zumba, ignorance of current events.
It was a year of special significance. A year when a fantasy novel (one I didn't even enjoy much) taught me that life is what it is, so ditch the shame and resentment and go do what you were created to do. Ditch the self-pity too and go help the people you can.
People around me suffered this year, so I worried, prayed, spent much of the summer alone. A poodle died, an old lady was hospitalized, the autumn was exhausting. But it was also a jubilee year, with a strong new focus and a tender heart.
Highlights:
* New Year with spumante in an island cottage kitchen and debates regarding divinely installed outdoor toilets and the evilness of Putin.
* April picnic with thick snow, warm sun, sausages grilled over a hot fire.
* First draft of my space opera (poor fiction written for my own enjoyment), finished after about three years.
* Celebration month and crafting my own philosophy while walking dusty streets and drinking wine by the sea.
* Helsinki weekend with my sister: the House of Nobility, the theatre, deep talk in vintage bar Kappeli surrounded by the Helsinki nightlife, an art museum, spring flowers and singing blackbirds, silk shirts, café visits just like in the 90s.
* Birthday alone in Helsinki: exploring the Fortress of Finland and reshaping my world on an almost-deserted island, warmed by the infinite horizon, a bleak sun, wine and history.
* A big surprise birthday party, two planned parties, and one balcony party to finish off the cakes.
* A chartreuse-coloured new car.
* Cruising in a convertible, playing "Cha Cha Cha" loudly, with my middle-aged friends, to the ridicule of the neighbourhood teenagers.
* Field trip to a sheep farm to pet the lambs, and to an old mansion to look at half-burned attic rooms and luxury spa areas.
* Meteorite explosion that shook me to the bones, late one night.
* Memorable chat with an AI about explicit phrases, historical novels and Slovenian caves.
* Last(?) zumba class ever, last(?) time bringing my old mother to the cottage by the sea.
* New air-conditioning, new fridge, new stove in my 60s flat.
* The cute town of Kristinestad, explored on a hot day with a funny friend. The cute town of Jakobstad, where further exploration was abandoned when we found the cutest café ever.
* Nightwish's last concert which I eavesdropped on, sitting on a rock in the woods on a warm summer night.
* Midsummer with old and new and marvellous Midsummer People, in the forest by a sea of reeds, with a barbecue and strangely-named cats.
* Volunteer assignment as interpreter at a church conference, where I battled social phobia and other demons and decided I might as well become a full-time warrior while I'm at it.
* Exploration of various forests, marshes and villages, sometimes in sandals and silk shirts where hiking boots and safari gear would have been more appropriate.
* Road trips with an old lady: the pavillion where Jean Sibelius got engaged in secret, an ancient meteorite crater, dark lakes with silky water, bohemian farmhouse cafés, faraway villages where we might have lived our lives had fate not intervened.
* Summer almost alone by the sea, with repetitive strain injury,
occasional visits by the motorcycle club and excavators and swimming elks,
and putting out the bonfire after everyone else had gone home and left
me.
* Music of the exquisite kind - in a church fragrant with incense on a hot, thunderous summer evening, in another church as the autumn darkness crept in and coloured lights twinkled in the churchyard.
* Night of the Arts, when I skipped the arts and holed up in crowded café to plan an Italian journey with my friend.
* Singing in a choir after 25 years of silence. First song: "The Sound of Silence".
* Italy, hot and lovely. Venice - falling into a fairytale and fantasy novel. Florence - crowds and art exhaustion. Cinque Terre - riviera life with beaches and fresa coladas. Pisa - an unexpectedly emotional evening.
* An autumn wedding where I arrived in summery silk, looked after an old lady, talked at length with a father figure from my youth.
* New book club with a minister and a pathologist, Of Mice and Men, Piranesi, and The Call of Cthulhu.
* A week and a weekend with the 16-year-old poodle, nearly blind and deaf and lame. Dark, early mornings dealing with his health issues, knowing it was time to say goodbye.
* Wintry November with snow, theatre, dancing at midnight, fancy restaurants, pub evenings, book club (another kind of pub evening), exhaustion from too much caretaking.
* Mysterious black hole appearing in my car.
* December with concerts, nostalgia and literally sickening amounts of chocolate.
* Warm and fragrant Christmas, plus complicated arrangement to fetch old lady with broken hip from hospital. Chocolates and Love Actually with the best people afterwards. Unexpected bliss.
* New Year's Eve with two people who had never met. And pizza with dark gin. And sadly noting that the days of magnificent fireworks are over. And still hopeful, a little.
Sleepy homesickness, slow moves in messy hair and woollen socks. The office on those silent last days of the year when Christmas is still in the air. Almost alone.
Fir trees in snow outside the window, shifting from dark to golden pink, to greyish white, to dusky blue, to dark again. Christmas lights, leftover chocolates. End-of-year statistics, last-minute shipments. Lonely colleagues between empty desks at the other end of the office. Lazy chats over mugs of coffee.
I'm reluctant to let go of glittering lights in dark snow, cinnamon scent, angelic voices, traditions of centuries, magic of millennia, Christmas in the North.
Things I brought to the recycling centre, probably causing speculation among the staff regarding my life choices:
1 rusty car exhaust pipe
10 injection needles (most of them used)
2 tiny capsules of butane gas
1 packet of painkillers
miscellaneous small electronic gadgets
I had just been clearing out some old junk at home. But while driving to the centre, I visualised a scenario where the ancient gas capsules exploded, turning the injection needles into deadly shrapnel aimed with precision by the rusty pipe at unsuspecting victims, and wondered if anyone would believe that I hadn't actually intended to build a bomb.
While others struggle with this winter darkness, I melt into it, gratefully. Books, sleep, heated blankets.
“You mustn’t live so lightly,
spin your stories, tell your tales.
Let them dance across the oceans
and set the wind upon your sails.
For every truth found on your travels
and in the pits of your despair,
is a shout into forever
of ‘I existed, and I cared!'”
-e.h
A hot autumn week in Italy. Train rides where I wrote in my old-fashioned journal, stared out the window at fields and hills, and sometimes got into heated debates with my companion.
The food was wonderful, the coffee even better and the gelato to die for. The heat was no joke and the amount of tourists in some places was unbelievable.
Venice, Florence, and then on to Cinque Terre - village-hopping by train with lots of tourists, but more space to breathe than in crowded Florence. We walked around picturesque villages on this rocky coast, cooled off in the sea. Sun, sand and salt water eased our weary souls and aggravated the blisters from walking over 20 000 steps per day. A fresa colada on a hilltop overlooking the sunset over the Mediterranean was a dreamscape. From the train we glimpsed the white marble mountains of Carrara.
Pisa was squeezed in on our last night. The aim was too see the damn tower and then crash into a hotel bed. But we world-weary travellers were taken by the strangeness and awe surrounding that leaning tower and the basilica. The smooth marble and the green lawns were cool and peaceful late in the evening. We lingered - deep in thought, weariness and a little melancholia. We laughed at tourists taking mandatory pictures of themselves in funny poses with the tower. Then we laughed and took those same pictures of ourselves.
There is an odd comfort and warmth in sharing the same ridiculous joke with strangers from all corners of the earth.
A leisurely meal at an outdoor restaurant as the warm darkness fell and the lit facade of the tower leaned towards us. We shared spritzes and the best moments of our journey before walking back slowly and discovering that Pisa is an unexpectedly charming city.
As if Italy wasn't enough, the plane that took us towards our home in the North flew over all the tallest Alps - mountain lakes, rivers, summit snow glittering in the sun - and continued over Prague and the meandering coastlines of the Baltic Sea. I got my money's worth from this European trip.
After Venice and love at first sight, Florence gave me an overwhelmed feeling - too hot, too many people, too noisy traffic, the Duomo too immense, the Uffizi Galleries too vast with too much to see, too much walking.
And yet - who wouldn't want to be overwhelmed?
We had a too-strong drink under the watchful eye of Michelangelo's David, at the site of the Bonfire of the Vanities. Gaped at the thousands of people queuing for hours under a lethal sun to enter the Duomo. Did a few Italian lessons on Duolingo over iced cappuccino on the Uffizi café terrace. Realised, after 3.5 hours of walking through the Uffizi, that we missed the Botticelli room and had to backtrack to the beginning. Stood before the graves of Galilei, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. Found the shirt of Saint Francis of Assisi. Had a pain in the neck after gazing in wonder at too many painted ceilings. Had knees that literally buckled from too much walking. Kept walking anyway, driven by hunger for more wonders, to the Ponte Vecchio, Porta Romana, Palazzo Pitti. Admired a street performer singing "La donna è mobile". Almost got run over by a police car pushing recklessly through a crowd. Almost got run over by one or several horse-drawn carriages. Ate cannoli.
And finally, had a glass of wine in a deserted B&B while watching the comings and goings in a back street, discussing how the world overwhelms you - with its wondrous art and its infinite masses of people.
The cynic in me saw damp and mold, rotting buildings and dirty canals, millions of tourists, gondoliers with fake smiles, plastic trinkets sold in old squares.
The rest of me ignored the cynic and fell in love with this fairytale maze of alleys, canals, bridges, history. Venice, the city that looks more or less like it did in the 16th century. The strange city with no traffic except boats: boat taxis, gondolas, transport barges, ambulance boats, police boats, luxury yachts and immense cruise liners further out, and people's everyday boats everywhere. The city where darkness pools black in back alleys and smaller canals, just outside the colourful lights of cafés and bistros - so dark that the stars can be seen in the middle of the city.
The crowds of people and pigeons, both of which got too close for comfort sometimes, in the vast Piazza San Marco. The expensive old cafés around the open place, a classic orchestra playing newer tunes, thousands of tourists taking selfies. The impressive campanile that crashed down to earth once, the intricate decorations on the ducal palace, the odd cupolas of the basilica and its Byzantine wonders out of my reach.
The stretch of designer shops from the waterfront along winding streets up to the expensive hotel terrace where we dropped of fatigue, drank Aperol spritz in the shade and watched gondolas, some with men singing dramatic songs in them.
The narrow alleys leading from a tower on Piazza San Marco, past a cannoli shop we couldn't resist, past old-fashioned payphones, to a square where tourists milled around and blue lights from spinning toys glittered in the air, on to the Rialto Bridge with its densely packed tourist crowds, shops, entertainers and glimpses of the Grand Canal.
The quieter square where we had gelato among pensioners reading the paper in the shade of old trees and a small boy gave us sweets. The heat of the midday sun and the cooler shadows in cobblestone lanes.
The deserted back alleys where we got lost in the dark, a little scared, until the staircase of Contarini del Bovolo suddenly rose before us, shining like hidden treasure.
The corner of yet another unknown square where we sank down in a corner to drink water and eat over-sweet cannoli - lost again and with the maps app out of sync. Darkness was falling but friendly cafés shone bright and children played around us, there were voices and the tinkle of glasses.
The quiet San Zaccaria where a priest said Sunday mass under Bellini's altarpiece. The Orthodox church where three ladies sang a hymn. The wild peals of church bells echoing between stone walls and bridges, loud and unapologetic.
The quirky bookshop Acqua Alta, hidden somewhere in the maze, with its gondola filled with books and steps made of books leading up to a viewpoint over the canal - and the narrow aisles so packed with tourists you couldn't breathe.
The morning we got up before dawn and watched the stars shine over the promenade by the lagoon, its choppy turquoise waters now dark. Sitting on the deck of a vaporetto in a cool breeze as the morning light crept in, travelling slowly up the Grand Canal. Past palaces, some beautifully restored, some worn down by centuries of neglect and mold. Intricate windows, little jetties, dark canals leading into the maze of alleys behind. Crystal chandeliers glittering under vaulted ceilings in some of them, rotting shutters hiding others. A man watching the sunrise from a top balcony of his palazzo. The boats everywhere - water taxis pushing past at high speed, tiny private boats with outboard motors, small barges carrying wine cases, vegetables, building supplies, garbage. Gondolas tied up waiting for the tourists to wake up. The white Rialto Bridge almost deserted at this hour.
Before I boarded the train to continue exploring the rest of the world, I ate my breakfast sitting outside the station, watching the boats on the canal and thinking I never wanted to leave at all. How many mysteries and old stories did I leave behind?
Go to Italy, buy a fridge magnet, read Of Mice and Men, sing in a choir, make myself strong, pray, live now.
(Victoria Erickson)
I can walk alone through dark woods.
I don't kill spiders if I can avoid it.
I can do hard and holy things even if it breaks me.
My heart is growing softer, bleeding too easily, and I don't know how to survive it.