My excuse for not writing, part n

I can't seem to write when I am feeling really bad. The reason I didn't become a published writer is that for most of my adult life, I've been feeling like shit.

(Return of the) Teenagers

There is nothing like having children to really make you experience to the bitter end how little you can do, how you always land up saying/doing what you *knew* you should not, how utterly incapable you are as a human being.

I love my sons (15 and 13) so that it hurts. But that doesn't stop me from having blazing rows about how late 15 can and cannot stay out. And worst of all, losing in the end anyway.

Ah, maybe in ten years time 15 will have grown up and possibly developed a brain. Maybe 15'll read this text then and think, my, maybe it wasn't all that easy for her either.

Night of the Arts

Yesterday saw Helsinki's 18th Night of the Arts. I usually haven't bothered much with it, but this year I checked out a few events in my neighbourhood, kicking off the night round 5 pm by queuing up for some costumes at the Opera flea market. These had been used for Cosi Fan Tutte - we shall use them in the 25th anniversary production of (the one-and-only, the inimitable) Finn-Brit Players, which, incidentally, will be The Winter's Tale.

Events I missed included poetry karaoke, canoe ballet, and a UV-light circus act. I did see various other things though: shamanic drumming, an antiques dealer who made pancakes for free and stripped off for my camera - without being asked to, I hasten to add - and fire-juggling. We closed the night by dancing to the tunes of La Traviata, again at the Opera. A full circle, in other words, of "high", "low", and, um, surprising culture. A good time was had by all. More photos on my photoblog.

Teenagers

Who'd have them?

Smoke and the Northern Lights

Winds turned easterly again yesterday, and Helsinki was suddenly overcome with smoke from the forest fires raging on the Russian side of the border. It has been alleged there's also a rubbish dump, which would include all sorts of nasties, on fire there, too.

My parents, though, the lucky buggers, saw aurora borealis, the Northern Lights, on Saturday night, while at the cottage in the countryside. It is no further north than Helsinki, but I saw nothing - the city lights beat them back. I have seen them twice before: once as a child, on ski holiday in northern Finland, and once here in Helsinki. (As luck would have it, on that night the whole of my end of the city was light-polluted even more than usual, due to the football stadium being lit for a match, so the colours were lost. They must have been really spectacular to be visible through stadium lights...)

Sadly, I only got pictures of the smoke. And not even particularly brilliant ones.

My photoblog

I became obsessed with documenting this art gallery with a difference, and the obsession became my new photoblog. You can check it out at One-a-day Helsinki.

Oh shit

So much for the ceasefire.

What I thought today (amongst other things)

It occurred to me today, for whatever reason, that I have had two wedding rings, one wedding dress, but the bells never rang for me. They forgot.

It might be noted that I am not in the merriest, sprightliest of moods.

Today,

behind me, on the bus, two ten-year-old girls eating sweets, discussing.
- Are you reading something at the moment?
- I am.
- What's it called?
- It's called Wuthering Heights.
- Oh. pause Is it from the library?
- No, it's from my gran's shelf.
Outside, a woman walked past the bus stop, her sandals showing her toe bending peculiarly over her big toe, with every step.

On my way home, I accidentally kicked a wasp buzzing over some muck, but it didn't sting me. On the street, four teenagers, two girls, brunette and blonde, just like my best friend and I a quarter of a century ago, except did we use to have boys? - I expect we did. Don't spit on the street, children.

My aunt's tale

(as told by my mother. I really need to get directly to the source...)

In the summer of 1944, it was clear Finland was losing the war. Karelia, a significant portion of Eastern Finland, equalling approximately 10% of the country's land area, would be lost, again, for good. The people, around 10% of the population, had to be evacuated. The Red Army was very close.

My father was five. My aunt was eleven, twelve. They were sent alone on the refugee trains, while their mother and the eldest brother would walk across the country with the surviving cattle and a few belongings. (I have heard that people had to slaughter most of their livestock - Finland was a self-sufficiency farming nation until after the war. I don't know whether my father's family had to slaughter their animals, or how many cows they had. I really must get to the source - my father has no memories of Karelia.) Their father was fighting in the war.

As the two children arrived, the Elisenvaara station with the evacuee trains had just suffered massive bombardment by the Red Army. They narrowly escaped it, but there were dead and wounded lying everywhere. Many of the wounded were packed into the train the two children boarded. People were shellshocked and frightened.

My aunt and father managed to get a seat on the packed train. The journey took a day or more, with the train stopping for hours, then starting again. My aunt needed to pee, but she didn't dare to go to the toilet, in case her seat would be taken, in case something would happen to the little brother. Eventually she couldn't hold it any longer. She lifted the hem of her skirt and peed, allowing it to seep into the upholstered seat - the humiliation. She couldn't sleep, either, in case something might happen - more bombings, someone stealing their things, something happening to her little brother.

Eventually, little brother woke up, also wanting to pee. My aunt could do nothing about it, she had to get up and take her brother to the toilet. Outside the toilets, a group of Finnish soldiers - omia, "our own" - were standing around smoking. Upon seeing the two children, one of the soldiers said, "Nythän me saadaankin naista!", "Now we can get ourselves a bit of ass!", and pawed my aunt, the child of eleven, twelve, under her wet underpants.

Eventually, the train arrived at Keuruu, in Central Finland. The children were taken to a local school converted into an evacuee centre, along with tens, possibly hundreds of other evacuees. My aunt hadn't slept for two days. She made herself a hiding place in the small triangle behind two adjacent doors and slept for twenty-four hours. When she awoke, a woman gave her a pair of underpants and told her to wash herself, as by now she smelled. She went to the lake, washed and changed. Later, their mother arrived with the older brother. The home built by their father in Karelia would be lost forever, but he returned from the war and the family was eventually rehoused in Central Finland.

I don't often think of myself as one. But I am a refugee's daughter.

More moral dilemmas

Did you people read this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,1844559,00.html

Apparently, the information leading to the foiling of the terrorist attacks on air traffic last week was received through torture.

I don't mean this as a cop-out. I am quite sincere when I say I have no solutions to anything. Anything.

Made in USA?

I saw a picture from bombed Lebanon on the Finnish news yesterday. Atop a building utterly collapsed, someone had planted a banner saying "Made in USA". Today, I read in the paper that Iran has promised an "unlimited budget" to aid the rebuilding of Lebanon. Now, although I don't hold individual Americans personally responsible for what their, um, great leader undertakes in his wisdom, it remains a fact that Israel gets massive military and financial support from the US. So, one can understand the feeling on the groundroots level in Lebanon may well be that the bombings (by the US-funded Israel) are in fact made in USA - and the rebuilding is made in its (current? future?) archenemy, Iran. This is not, I emphasise, to express my personal preference for a fundamentalist Iran (over a near-fundamentalist US?). Neither do I mean to equate the government of any country with its people. However. The people in Lebanon, as elsewhere, put together the pieces of information they receive from their news sources and draw conclusions from their own standpoints. Their conclusions will be biased, for sure. With lives lost, homes bombed to the ground, infrastructure destroyed, whose wouldn't? We in the West receive our news biased by governmental opinion as well. Trouble is, people in the great Western powers are culturally programmed to think the information they receive is impartial, objective, correct, "what actually happens", rather than filtered through the alliances and agendae of their government.

How much money is the US going to give for rebuilding in Lebanon? Does anyone know? Even if one wouldn't piss in the general direction of namby-pamby humanitarian objectives, wouldn't it be politically expedient to be seen to be the good rebuilders, rather than the bad bombers?

Meanwhile, the civilian death toll in Iraq is said to be over 3400, much more than in Lebanon, with no end in sight.

I actually believe most people in the world, given the chance, would prefer just to live their lives, bring up their children, mind their own business, without a driving need to kill each other. Really. And by "given the chance", I mean (amongst other things) the chance to grow up without an atmosphere of vengeance and hatred. Which is seriously lacking in the modern society, worldwide.

Dance with a statue

This living statue guy stepped off his plinth and danced with me, when I'd dropped a coin in his pot. You know me, once an actor, always hungry for attention...

Foxy girls

The fur trade is an aspect of my native country I have great difficulty accepting. These activists do, too, as they are staging a demonstration outside Kiasma, the museum of contemporary arts. The girl on the right is sitting inside a fox cage - I believe they are taking turns in living in it for a week. Members of the public are invited to try out a fox's life, too. I didn't.

Drought

Finland is experiencing the driest summer in a hundred years. A central Helsinki measurement station has apparently measured 3,4 millimetres of rain this July. The corresponding figure for 2004 is 177 millimetres.

Crops are failing, not only those planted by man. Also our usually-abundant forest berries are virtually non-existent this year. Mushrooms, my favourite - don't even mention them, not a sausage. A large number of students and other people from Ukraine are in danger of being stranded here with no money and no way of getting home - they had come to pick forest berries, which usually gives a fine profit. We have pickers from Thailand, too (I am not making this up), but apparently they have come better prepared (i.e. with enough funds to allow them to hire a car) and are managing to find something to pick.

A hundred years ago we would have starved next winter.

There are numerous forest fires raging close to the border, on the Russian side, as well as in Estonia, across the Gulf of Finland. The south-easterly winds this past week have been bringing the smoke all the way to Helsinki, obscuring visibility and causing anxious citizens to call up the emergency services. You can actually smell smoke.

Well, kiddies, I think the climate change is upon us.

Last night was Hiroshima night

so I went to listen to the speeches and to send my floating candle onto Töölönlahti Bay, of the Sculpture Park fame. (Dear reader, this was in Helsinki, not Hilo - I feel a phony writing under the Hawai'ian topic!) My camera ran out of batteries so I have no pictures, but it was beautiful all the same. One of the speakers was Helena Ranta, a doctor of forensic medicine and a lady I enormously admire. She earns her living identifying the victims of genocide in Kosovo and elsewhere. I wish my life was more about righting wrongs than about making a general mess of things.

Not a catastrophe

but an upheaval. We didn't return to Hawai'i. We stayed here in Finland. Because of the kids, or in fact more because of one rather than the other.

So, instead of worrying about

a) how my hopelessly impractical husband will cope not only practically but also emotionally
b) urgently needing employment and housing for myself and two unweildy teenagers

I sit here worrying about which one of my two blog sites should now be my steady site, or do I indeed want to continue writing at all.

Yet another blogger's block, in other words. Fantastic. Meanwhile, perfectly sane people seem to OK acts of violence against civilians.

Maybe I'll give up writing and start knitting Teresa blankets instead.