Random

A week of unquenchable exhaustion, and avid sleep ; of wonderful new music streaming steadily from all sides - oh how could I forgot my dedicated love for German language, sung stiff but fiercely carnal ; and music to the winter frozen sky, music for dreams and spells, in a way I'd never heard before. A week of unexperienced feelings, those to see people ready to leave as leaves from autumn trees, and those of certitudes shattered to the point of leaving me wordless, facing unknown and wild realms not used to be invented by words - and, related to the last mentioned, this overwhelming and truly frightful sense of helplessness to write anything worthwhile.

In such times of unrest and transition, I tend incidentally to turn towards dreams - something I realize, strangely enough, only right now - even visibly meaningless. Last night has been a case in point. I was leading a group of students, assumedly those from the summer course, in spite of the presence of one of my close French friends, through a rainy and crepuscular Tampere, certainly to some party somewhere. We were walking all the way from the university to the other side of the train station, trying to find out which way was precisely the shortest to get there, something I felt highly concerned by. This aim led us to a strange concrete stairway - strange for it looked like some tunnel taken out of the ground and for no apparent reason set on the outside. Climbing down was pretty hard, in the dark and dripping water, forcing through some railing. Somehow, whereas the stairs were leading to the open street, the sole idea of a tramway lasts in my memory - and we ended up in the underground.

The sensation in here haunted me for a fair part of the day. There was something mild in there. I have no idea of the path we followed, but we were then, all buoyant and partying, in some underground changing room, with very dirty and feeble lights. Another gap in my memory, and we remained only three or four in the room. Suddenly, one of my friends made me aware of people coming... Trying to hide silently in that room, I succeeded after three vain attempts to shut off the music system - it was uncongruously enough playing some dark ambient stuff, who knows how. Out of the room, in some rock cave, another friend showed me, on the tip of a transparent plastic glove, that the all-wood table had been recently covered with blood... And the regulars were coming. We dashed off the cave, with bare feet for my part - I left my shoes in the changing room.

The escape came out on a large bridge - a real bridge over trees and river, in a bright blue night, as evidently in the underground as the stair tunnel was on the open air. The mildness of the air, of this luminous deep blue sky made it feel like a magical summer night. But we did not walk further yet ; something was happening on this bridge. On both sides were standing people at regular intervals, wearing tick plastic outfits up to the neck, and some white arcs of energy rapidly appeared as canalised in the middle of the road, concentrating more and more inside an invisible channel, bright to pain. The experiment ceased and we were reproached to stand here without protection, what would cause us some health harm, a weakness we already could feel inside us. It is worth mentioning that Marie Curie recurred in my thoughts these last few days, for an unknown reason. I understood immediately that this experiment was the successful proof for a new way to accumulate energy, what I hold for years to be the only way into entering a true economic innovative cycle, in Kondratieff's or Schumpeter's terms. My enthusiasm of realizing this discovery's consequence obviously did not echo back among my few friends ; as we were at last hastily passing the bridge, I caught a glimpse of a bearded scientist on the other side of the road, his importance emphasized by the reverence of his assistants, but had to refrene my compulsion to bring him my admirative compliments.

The further we headed into the magical underground land, the sweeter was the atmosphere, slightly feverous and eerie. Our walk, assumedly through a forest path, brought us upon a funfair field, what I guess to be the goal of the initial trip. We slided on the canvas of a huge tent, down to the field. I was the last and lost track of the others. Another gigantic tent was open in front of me. A circus, but a circus with no ring, only audience from the far up back plunged in the dark to my feet... Some people of the former group were waving to me from the other side of the bench... No more precise image after that. I think it ended, I might have been superficially woken up. I drowned then again delightfully in sleep, and was dreaming that words were now flowing easily, that I could write again... Texts were prepared in my head, they got structure and sense, they were matching my thoughts, so far from what I've been hardly able to produce lately...

The terrible cramps in my legs woke me up completely, as almost every morning, excepted that this precise morning the ache crept acutely through the abdomen to the stomach. The affection expands, I thought. The sun was barely rising, but the batteries of my camera were too low to catch the colors of the dawn. Strange dream, mixing trivial habits, nonsense symbolism and extravagant accounts - the view of the circus field with its firefly lights had been significantly shifted since I found it some resemblance with Moominvalley... Now that I write this down, yes, meanings emerge, in the self-significant and constructive way I strongly believe in. Sickness, admiration, sublimated faith... There is although nothing comforting in the manner issues seem to be smoothed over in dreamlands, what primarily proves the existence of those latent issues in material life. I might be much more concerned that it seems, even to myself...

Times of unrest and transition... Maybe here is the point. Among all the acquaintances I have here - that on all levels appear more as friends as most of the people I know in a country I feel increasingly far from - raises the awareness that things will be soon over. Asia will leave Finland earlier than planned, and to her own surprise already madly regrets it. Anne escapes the safety of this place for wild Siberia. Katerina leaves. Michael departs soon, as Daniela does - Daniela with whom we had such nice discussions, after everybody got to another party, drinking Martini till the middle of the night. Diego, Caleb that I got to know, it seems to me, so late - and our afternoons spent in the Linna building talking passionately about politics, Europe, regionalisation. My dance partner, even. Who remains ? Ben and some others living their own life in their far autonomous suburbs, and school comrades of my nationality. Will they all get back to their previous life as if nothing had really happened ? Stop travelling ? How could it be ?

I often distrust my own judgement on these subjects, especially on their importance ; however this mass leave did not worry me as apparently as financial trouble and, above all, concerns about the crucial choices I have now the possibility to make could do. I definitely don't mind being alone. The week before, quite hectic in such a different way from these very last days, pushed me pretty soon off my limits of tolerating promiscuity - well, if it hadn't been made clear enough before, I needed a bit of solitude. What I got in full measure then. The short absence of Asia and Michael, in Virrat for a few days, gave me a foretaste of how times could feel after : more austere, but not necessarily in a negative way. Plain times - to work, think and learn, maybe to get illumination in a much more straight manner. Here maybe begins the real thing.

Coming home by bus a few days ago, thinking about how people could perceive me, I had a sort of vision, as symbolic illustration of a feeling. A little room, minuscule room, and the one able to break the seal would discover a bright white bedroom with a stupid princess bed, all white, pink and blue, and bizarre concretions mixing dusty feathers and sharp metal pikes - some kind of completely useless item one wonders for ages about the purpose, without being able to throw it away. Worthlessness. That is not me, not as I chose. I exactly don't want this to be me. I sense there that I touch the deep and underlying issue...