20 juillet 2008
Sleep is a facultative facility these days. Feels like should I will to remain awake I would, all sleep being part of a scheme whose nature is not essential by any means. All the compulsory difficulties I have to face are wearing me down though - in this divine mechanism of propulsion a grain of sand in the right gear can bring anything to a standstill, if not an unsolvable deadlock.
Been sending wishes to the Moon -- from the above sky to the earth below, hoping it'll help bringing pieces to one. Coming up for forgivenness and reconciliation.
18 juillet 2008
Friday, July 18, 01:02
All hail to the Moon Goddess!
16 juillet 2008
Days in, days off
Very sexy, very sexy, okay, okay
There are days like that, filled with the joy of a concealed promise, the heart on the verge of the lips and happy news blooming and forthwith forgotten, only leaving behind them a trail of light-heartedness... This unearthly strength and sizzling energy, the satisfaction to see efforts pay off, feeling somehow blessed by unpredictable windfalls and a plenty of smalls chunks of happiness... sowing smiles and cheering up, lifting up hopes and holding them high, at one's arms' strength; so many things going on, new people, exciting perspectives to finally look forward to; cooking divinely and singing aloud, spending hours on the phone; smiling to the clown jokes of immensely loving and caring people, people dead and buried for years.
There has been days down and drown in absence, maybe too much of an indulging pain, pushing so little too far and withdrawing back again and much further. Still I'm observing with a vague curiosity and some detachment how it will feel, still, just like a cat and its dying prey, wondering for the sake of revenge alone if I may not care just like the others don't.
Fall in light, fall in light fall in light,
grow in light
take his offer, you're done for, done for, oh
Oh I'm such a child sometimes!
06 juillet 2008
The cotton bud paradigm
When one goes as a student or intern in a foreign country such as Finland, there's one thing never to care about, to buy or to expect missing when the small amount of the travel stock is out. Something that, of course, one only learns living through it, something which can seem futile, but not in the way the evidence grows on: Cotton buds. One explanation would be a wrong estimation of how often one cleans one's ears, or a relative inappropriate packaging size, another one would have something to do with the accumulation effect in question here. Without shedding light on its starting point.
There were two full boxes and a half of those among the dozen of crammed bags I found myself with, amazed and helpless, a few days ago. Aida had been calling me late in the evening as agreed to hand them to me. She was a sauna-mate of mine in this now half-empty and drifting ship of Junailijankuja 5, where we used, she and I and a couple of others, to hang out on the last floor's terrace - more than a better-than-nothing here, the cheap luxury of the best we could ever get. Aida had been open and talkative the first time we met, she was halfway through her stay and I was in the early days of my life in Helsinki, and I talked about how it was, here, in Tampere, how strong my desire for other horizons was, nearly desperate in its abnegation and radical readiness, in a luminous way tinted with melancholy as it seems everything gets tinted with in this country. She seemed somehow relieved. "It is good to meet someone so optimistic." It had to, I thought staring somewhere beyond the concrete buildings surrounding our perched stronghold.
Aida proposed to give me the food and some stuff she did not wanted to throw away when leaving. She brought me one full bag already two weeks before returning home, after a funny episode when she took by accident my own shoes to her place. I was expecting the same amount, or possibly a bit more, as I went down to her flat to pick up the rest, on the evening before her flight back home. And I was given a whole life instead.
We hardly fitted ourselves in the lift and carried the dozen of bags up to my place. My flatmates glared to the unloading in the freshly cleaned kitchen with a visible hint of concern. Aida dashed off to finish packing and I followed her till the threshold of my flat, puzzled by her generosity and weighed down with a gratefulness I did not really know what to do with. She told she was so excited to come back home, and that it had been good but that it was now time to go. I stared at her waiting for the lift, in the corridor soon to be renovated, like all walls and floors, another layer of painting of a different colour, white-blue, white-green, yellow, through all years and through all which would have been lived there, all the arrivals and departures, all the hearts broken and all the instants of eternity. She smiled, still handy and her hair perfectly dressed, that girl with Croatian roots and living in Austria, her story I did not know more than that, and she rushed into the cabin and disappeared forever. The instant I stared at her in the corridor would stay forever, very precise and alive, in my memory, I knew it then and forever and knew also I would stare at this mental image again, after the last traces of my own stay would have been erased - when images would be the only remains of my life here, instants fixed and still for ever, and whose faint echoes of joy and nostalgia would yet resound from afar.
I closed the door and walked slowly to the kitchen. I began to unload the bags, a task which would take me hours; there was much more than one, or two, or three need to live for four months in a foreign country; tons of paprika, herbs and spices of all sorts, so much that our already cluttered shelf threatened not to take them all; flour and baking powder, white, brown, vanilla sugar in grains and cubes, everything needed to bake anything sweet and indulging, even two colours of sugar icing to write names on birthday's cakes; enough tea bags for a siege and a half; pasta, rice, instant soups, lasagne sheets and weird things I did not even have any idea what they were used for. She handed me a basket of bottles of cosmetics along with neat towels, one hundred of postal envelopes and a Finnish dice game; among this bunch of things, three boxes of cotton buds.
I had to throw away the one in which water from a bottle had been dripping in. On the shelf, in my room, were already two other boxes. The first I had bought back in Tampere, sometime in the autumn, when everything was still different, and imprecise, although there was things I already felt back then - but there were the late dawns in the colour-fired sky, and an all-instant amazement, and not too much of a close look on the future, and still so much more time to run. The second one I had been given by my first Polish flatmate and friend as she left, in a basket full of bottles of cosmetics and other stuff, in early December. I thought by then I should have waited instead of buying a new box. Boxes are passed from someone to the next, handed through our lives, piling and piling as people leave and leave behind a window of their lives, their hearts broken and moments of eternity. I shall hand the boxes to someone else, some new girl, fresh and amazed, to whom everything would look new, before time hollows out its mark on her. She might not read out from my eyes. She is very likely to have bought a box of cotton buds in the first days of her stay, another one to join the pile of boxes just opened and abandoned.
Anne was also leaving from our flat, on the same day as Aida, and she packed and cleaned until late in the night. As I was sorting Aida's stuff, she came to me with a small fat plant in pot and asked if I wanted it, as it needed only a little water and not to much care. As Asia was leaving from Tampere, she also gave me her plant, just about to bloom. I did not have the time to take a picture of the flower before it withered, so busy I was, and regretfully, as I promised myself to do it for Asia who was back then undergoing a heavy medical treatment. Cycles and repetitions. We joked and said the plant would still be there in five years, in a vague future in which we would visit the place again, and find it on some windowsill, older and maybe dried up, but still there. Anne's plant was taken to one of the open rooms before I made space for it on my desk, but it does so little matter now.
I gave up in the middle of the night, moved the unsorted rest to my room. The whole flat felt like departures and endings, the night was sultry and I was feverous. Fever made things looking strange and different, impressive and leaving their imprint on my hazy mind. I unloaded the last bags, those containing the papers and non-comestible items. In a notebook, some writings and scratches in German, very neat and organized. Aida was much to be admired, I thought rummaging through the cosmetics basket, hairspray and nail polish. She seemed to have an outstanding will. She was cooking like a chief as one could tell, always well-groomed, doing twenty things at a time, while I am struggling to complete anything within the weak and inconstant deadlines I even gave up trying to set me. "It is good to meet someone so optimistic." Strange. Surrounded by all those things which belonged to someone else, I felt for an instant looking from the standpoint of this stranger's life. The night still sultry had turned cloudy and black, and the fever sweating. I closed the door of my room on Anne, still packing, and drowned into anguished dreams, wrapped up in someone else's carefully ironed towels.
02 juillet 2008
Seen on the wire II
"Spiritual" effects of mushrooms last a year: study
(Note the quotation marks...)
01 juillet 2008
Rest, not remain
I still like to be the one turning off lights and closing doors, watching over reality and things to keep them from going wild. To keep them together while you are not there. All is very quiet at work. Most are off, and there's only that binational guy - international and a bit rootless, just as most are here - with me in the late afternoon. He asked me a few questions when he arrived, I briefly answered. Now I just drop the last stories in the basket and say "The outlook's in TASTE." "See you tomorrow."
All silent. I don't play music much. A week to rest, not even, to recover merely what has been lost in the last weeks; turning everything off at ten and forcing me to sleep. Eating homemade food, an attempt for less, to feel lighter, drinking tea. Hardly time to read short stories more than once in a while. I feel already better. Words sharp and quiet.
I have to make up my mind for the flight back and I'm every time pushing off the decision until another day. As expected, prices are rising and I pretty much count on them to choose instead of me. It will be 7th, 8th, 14th or 15th. Most likely 8th - I don't dare asking to stay longer. We'll see tomorrow if I'll have to.
We'll see most likely every next day until I have to.
There are some doors I desperately don't want to shut on me.
29 juin 2008
Polka dot
Strawberries cherries and an angel's kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
I looked with child's eyes at my friends singing, so full of admiration and unconditional love for them both, the two dearest to my heart - certainly no one but me would understand that moment viewed from the crossroads of France and Finland, the profound amusement of the situation and even deeper love I feel for them. Intense nostalgia of past bliss veils that song now and forever, always dedicated to karaoke nights, taxi rides in the luminous dusk and laughters.
Weekdays before had been harsh and drown in frenzy, and I'm at a loss of words to characterize the dimension of exhaustion which affects me. Keeping things done and kept awake all in a stimulants-induced torpor, but under the fever a lack of sleep as never experienced before, dashing into all edges and walls, pushed to tight management of sleep time slots and caffeine absorption. And yet, and very heartwarmingly, everything, events and relations, had settled and got an exquisite taste of normality and concreteness, beyond their surreal array. Heading in a taxi toward a karaoke bar, picked up in the heart of a night looking like a sluggish sunset, would have been at first sight surreal enough without the enlivened discussion between two Finns wearing shades about the features and qualities of this and that karaoke place. Only fun instead of that. Not even sure they noticed I laughed. This finally wouldn't have been a night for singing, clubs and bars were crowded and not very cheerful - but for that light-hearted moment in Fairy Land, nearly as brilliant as another song and a tango, in another basement, in another land.
I trembled upon seeing you leaving, surprised in the early morning, and silently wished you'd stay. You did and sun had never been that bright. Are words said then to be kept for the record? I'd love they would. Don't lose heart, I whispered to myself, draw on your innermost resources of trust against the bleak perspectives threatening to bring you down. Dispel this cloud of irritating flies of fear and doubt buzzing around you. The complexity of the situation exposed in full light, along with the most delicious moments; past, my past, echoed through the former. In the latter we'd draw our strength, in the sunny indulging tramway ride, in the so funny expeditions in bookstores but not for books; and then we joined in a walk which was merely surreal for we were in it.
Funny how much it was a Pride Parade in the Finnish way, much quieter than French ones, much less extravagant people, much more in a margin closer to normality and social acceptance. Mostly girls, very strongly present. We stood looking at the walk passing by, trying to find our friends in. I suspected the Estonian Kaisa from my Finnish course, which feels now like remote past, to be somewhere around; as we entered the march joining the boys, she walked as a coincidence in the very next row. We hugged, talked a bit, she was tremendously joyous, joked with the boys in broken Finnish, and we chased balloons. Once in a while the procession stopped, and a loud cheer ran from its head to its end. Someone was asked to give me a balloon, and I ended up with ten all entangled. At times I was stopped by people wanting also one, the rest of the time holding them high and walking in the sun. It was a very gay atmosphere, in all meanings but mostly in joy. And in the sweet treeshades were even sweeter divinely drunken moments.
You took the sun away with you, gradually vanishing in the sky's dampness; exhaustion creeping back in spite of the boys' high spirits and indecent behaviour in public places. I left off, a bit out, barely able to walk between the tram and my place, where I immediately passed out for a long drift in the realm of sleep.
I need so much to rest. Unpleasant perspectives, whose time is counted down very symbolically these very days, drain me even more, along with the bite of absence and missing. But very latest events feed more thinking that sorrow - another note on mirrors, and a dramatic evidence that complying with everyone's feelings happens to be the best way to hurt some. So deeply relevant and placed precisely on my way, as if, to me at least, the idea was not already so very obvious.
Strangely I spent these last days burning myself, cigarette, ignited thread of balloons, hot water and stoves, not to mention how dangerously candles have been burning in my room all through our sleep. I still burst into laughter alone out in the street thinking back to some instants of the weekend - especially the Small Sausage Song - and the man-at-work signpost in the sandbox, and the ride on someone's back through the Alley - much to the disapproval of people around.
21 juin 2008
Juhannus
A time for realizations. A time for openness and clarity. For more direct, heartfelt ways. It wouldn't have been going as the legend - no fire then, none on the lakesides and riverbanks drown in dampness; nor on the innermost shores, but - Light instead. More of a threshold than an apex, blooming inner peace, and deep clarity. The one clarity ripping through the veils of dispensable suffering and complication, deceptively believed to be the essence of things. It is realizing, in a heart-warming surprise, how one's own words believed as hardly useful do actually work. It is touching and being touched, opening oneself to being touched. It is realizing aiming one's feelings for someone at this someone, whatever the conviction they will reach le coeur de la cible or scatter in the infinite void, is as easy as turning them against oneself in an unnecessary spiral of self-affliction.
In the heart of the night, clouds broke and revealed a patch of the clear sky one wouln't have imagined existing above the grey-black layer. Beyond the absence and missing is magical empathy, is a mutual realm of understanding and support. The only difference now being it truly lies at an arm's length. And, on top of it all, a flowing source of profound and ever-renewed Love.
Toward the Sun ~ Io Pan!
20 juin 2008
A slight taste of divine justice
After the cashier sent me back home without the small can of beer I absolutely needed for cooking, in the recipe, for I forgot to take any ID (do I fucking look like a teenager? Ah, cheerleader smile, eh?); after I ran back there three fucking minutes before it closes for the whole weekend, I grabbed another can and headed to the same cash desk.
I was preparing in the queue my most disdainful and loathsome look to send to the blonde checkout operator.
As her arm made a brusque move to type a code on the right box, while she was checking for the person just before me, it sent to the edge of the desk a can left there for someone else forgot his or her ID. The can half-exploded. The blonde girl was substantially doused with sweet apple cider.
I was pretty confused, slightly sorry and felt even more slightly, somehow, guilty. She could not even make a pause so many people there still were. I did my best to shamefully repress the well-settled scathing look on my face, showed my ID, paid and ran away.
I sorrow for you
What a bleak light for the brightest day... and it seems every peak of awareness merely uncovers weaknesses and failures (or fêlures, clefts, its French homophone). Most likely pushing one into the same downward loops of despair ever and ever again. If sorrow is finally worth something, is so much sorrow worth a smile? A very real seriousness which at its most extreme point turns into furious black humour, so absurd it is. Possibly for the best, and not downgrading one's grief. Finally... I sorrow for you has already been another you in the past, even then a process doubtfully worth its implication and investment, maybe vain, maybe worth, even a mere smile.
I engaged in indulgence to distract myself and drown my inquietude. Namely sales and milkshake - a gorgeous Marimekko-designed dress, ultrafancy undergarment, shoes. The so indulging feeling to spend money I don't have - seconds of fear to see my card refused every time. Spiritual reflections about design and marketing failures and shopping strategies. There are peaks of cynicism considering how these processes so clearly go, but work, anyway.
And today I'll cook. Keeping busy. I tend to cook a lot when I am worried, to the example of Picouly's mother in Le Champ de Personne, baking piles and piles of cake while waiting for news from its sons on the Algerian front. Very funnily, I realized thinking back to the book the cake she bakes is a war clafouti, "Sans œuf, sans lait, sans beurre, sans cerises, tout plat, brûlé. Avec une flopée de noyaux."
Very funnily I suddenly switched this morning my cooking plan from apple clafouti to cherry clafouti. Only afterwards I remembered (consciously) the anecdote...
Even though it might drain me more than I deserve, it is good I walk so much. It works things out. Through some circuitous logic I surprised myself thinking that after all, we might be only childs obdurated by experiences. The childs we once were. I might be the same person as I probably have been in immemorial times, though I don't have any memory of it. This totally opposes how I've always and strongly been feeling so far; hence the (good) surprise.
Life and sorrow are definitely things to be taken more lightly. In a certain way, the certain way.
Now, cooking.
