This post is about everything. And love.

I started this blog about two years ago. Happy Birthday, blog girl. It is quite safe to say a fair amount has happened in these two years - when I started blogging, I was married in the tropics, now I am divorcing in the Arctic (okay, near enough, and it sounds good).

Now before y'all hasten to lace your congratulations with commiserations I will categorically state that this is not a miserable state of affairs, at all. Being a divorcee in the Arctic clearly suits me, is much more right for me than the other option, because I am if not happy (for what, pray, is happiness, and do people seriously expect to achieve it as a permanent state of affairs?) at the very least the shape of my life is a shape that fits, if you see what I mean.

(I am here reminded of several lines from some Finnish poets - names forgotten, sorry. One says something to the effect of "Life is given to you so you can decide what position you'd like to be dead in", another "Life is made that way so you wouldn't long to come back too quickly", and a third states that "Just as the visitor starts to feel at ease, it is time to leave." The last is a bit startling, because I am rather feeling at ease in my life - even with the pain. The pain, in fact, is okay, has been okay for quite some time, it's the sticky immobility horror that is still bad to cope with. Time to shut up in these brackets.)

So yes. My life is a shape that fits, and it's surprising to me, really, how difficult it's been getting here - although to be fair there have been times before now when my life has fitted me okay and I've given it up, either through choice or necessity. I have clutched various instructions and users' manuals on life in my time - and I'd bet I'm not the only one. They tend to state very standard guidelines, though - if you're from a cold country with miserable weather, fantasise about warmer climes, please, if you're single, hope for a relationship. And so on.

I don't mean to sound miserable or embittered here. For I'm not, gentle Reader, most emphatically. Spring has returned, bringing with it birdsong (the other night when I was on my way to the sauna, the blackbird gave me a single and piercingly lovely wolf-whistle. I interpreted that as A Very Good Sign (hello, sis). Put a spring in my step, I can tell you that for free), things that grow, and light - all good things I appreciate greatly (nothing wrong with seasonal change, though, and autumn and death-moon and all that are fine too when their time comes). But there is a certain unnameable something, a wistfulness that the return of spring stirs up in me. Particularly, I suppose, the light, that unreal light of Northern summers which seems to glow from the inside, more and more the later it gets. The further into spring and summer we get, the lighter the light becomes, in both meanings of the word, a weightless other-worldly light which makes you feel like something will come, some redemption, darkness and death are no more, Heaven will surely come unto the earth, and the feeling builds up and builds up with the light, and I can't help myself, can't help my body and soul responding to it and believing the feeling, even though this is my forty-first spring (although only my thirty-first of these my native white springs of such painful beauty. As it is, existence owes me ten more springs, wouldn't you agree? And so, once I'm dead, I will come back for ten more springs. Yes). But alas, maybe it is my age, maybe it is my nature, but while I allow myself, once more, to believe it, can't help but believe it, once again, one more time, I also know it's not going to happen, it will build up and build up and never peak, for just as you think it will, it turns and though it is still lovely it is already descending. I tried to explain this the other night to someone who, miraculously, seemed to get me despite the garblational pig's ear I made of it.

So yes. This blog is two years old, and - probably rather by coincidence than by planning - it has had a fine birthday present from the one-and-only Montag (whom, incidentally, I urge you all to visit. He cares about stuff, and is poignant, funny, angry, amongst other things, sometimes alternately, sometimes concurrently, so there's something for everyone over at his house). Although he is stupefyingly prolific on his "main" site, Montag also has another site where he posts a poem a week, because he fasts and writes poems weekly, for peace. And the present for my blog girl, gentle Reader, was a poem, dedicated to yours truly and my sisters. This is a special and fine thing and one I cannot hope to match, so I'll just say thank you again, Montag, and here - have some trees. I believe you have a liking for them.




(So, if you got this far, gentle Reader, thank you for bearing with me. To all those who have gone on at me about putting up a new post, you've only yourselves to blame (love you really). I feel it may well be I'm pretty much written out for a good long while to come. But another anniversary is also approaching, so I may have to return before too long for a few words on the Second Coming.)

I will have a December post if it kills me

Some while back, I noted I had written no posts at all in December, last year. In fact, I was, at the time, having a blogging crisis (I am fond of the artistic licence to exaggerate) during which I came very, very close to giving it up altogether. Oh, thank God I didn't, because it would have been unthinkable...but I note I have not exactly been particularly wordy recently either. This is, of course, to do with the climate and the weather and the darkness - location, location, location, in other words, dear Reader. Living a stone's throw from the North Pole has its lighter and its darker sides, and currently, we are going through the latter. It has a strange, flattening effect on one's writing (at least this is as convenient an excuse as any I'm likely to come up with before December's done again, and I still don't have a December post to my name). Weirdly enough, the darkness does lend itself to some lovely photography (excuse me while I blow my own trumpet).
These pictures, dear Reader, are from my balcony, and depict not the constellations above me (a chance to see them would be a fine thing in current prevailing weather conditions) but a very wet type of sleet falling.
I am so fond of these photos (I took a couple a few weeks or so ago, when we first had a light dusting of sleet) that I have already got several up on my flickr site, and I'm too embarrassed to flood more and more of the same thing there (don't ask me why - it is as much my site as this one, so I should be allowed to do whatever dorky thing I like there. Mostly, I do, too, but for some reason, these (oh God) artsier efforts make me feel shy). Which is why I am treating you, dear Reader, to them, here on my bloggy. Here, have another one (sorry, but I do like them an awful lot).

And because I do like you, too, an awful lot, although I've been neglecting to say much, here's one more showing my downwards view as well as the galaxies of snow. I think it has a distinct stage-lit feeling to it. The blogger enters, upstage left...she is going home.

How to tell the season has turned

There's no doubt about it - the stars have come back. The white nights are over.

This is for you, dammit

I don't know. There I was, committing an act of great altruism and love, and what do I get in return? Petty quibbling on whether the Republic of Ireland can actually be considered a part of The British Isles or not.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not some uneducated twirp who thinks England is the name of all the countries thataway, forrin geerrl as I may be. I am speaking purely geographically - not geopolitically - when I claim that The British Isles is the name of that island group. To me, this smacks of the reluctance of the Canadians to be known as North Americans - which is, of course, abject nonsense, because they just are, ok?

Anyhow. Just in case this matter needs any clarification, I sent my beautiful, 22-hours-a-day Finnish sun over to comfort a weather-violated friend in the Republic of Ireland. You had better be nicer about it after this clarification, as I am wondering whether such a magnanimous act was altogether wise - it has gone down to + 16 here and it is absolutely pissing down (my summer holiday starts in two days).

For good measure, I'll send another sun. The first one can be for the weather-beaten friend who is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, not only in The British Isles, but also in Great Britain. So there.

This is for you

One or two of my dear people have been suffering terribly from the recent weather conditions to mistreat the British Isles. In an attempt to offer them some comfort, I am now sending them the Finnish sun, with an added feature of the auringonsilta, the sun's bridge - that's what we call the reflection of the sun on the water.

There you go. Hope it helps.

Some things stay with us for no reason

One of the defining features of the Finnish landscape are the rocky outcrops, way too big to be called "rocks" - the word gives an impression of something about the right size to sit upon, perhaps. Stones that size are called kivi. I am referring to the part of our landscape where the bone structure of the land shows through, rocks the size of (bigger or smaller) hills. These are called kallio. I have failed to find translations that would really include a clearly defined difference in size. The kallio here is right behind the Steiner school I attended for a year when I was four, a place of which I have many memories. For some reason, the complicated structure of roots (belonging to a pine tree, to the left) captured my four-year-old's mind to the extent that they still seem to hold some inner meaning to me, the way they simultaneously flow down the rockface like slow water, and grip the stone with their wooden fingers. Not much has happened to them in the last thirty-five years. I tried to shoot them from a four-year-old's eye level. What do they mean?

I have a real love for the sea, and my own sea is the (piddling) Gulf of Finland, a nook of the Baltic Sea. Much could be said about the horrendous things that have been done to the Baltic Sea within my lifetime - extensive areas of the seabed are actually completely without life, they are dead - but these are the sort of things that upset me deeply, and I can do without upsetting myself any more right now. Therefore, I want to just point out the glitteringness (which is now a word) of the sea, my sea. I swear it glimmers and shines and reflects in a way other seas don't. I used to miss it so when I was away. Why? What is it saying?

Not good

Election day came and went. Results are not good, to put it very mildly. To put it less mildly, it was an effing dreadful election - only something like 67% of the electorate actually cast a vote, something that just doesn't cease to piss me off (I mean, people have given their lives for the right to vote, goddamit). The other thing is, of those who did bother to drag their asses to the polling stations, a surprising majority voted straight out of their asses.

Ok, let's immediately take a firm step backwards from what I've just said. Because this is not how democracy works - it's not democracy that everybody thinks like I do and votes like I do. In a democracy, people decide who they wish to vote for - startlingly, even if it really disagrees with *my* sensibilities - and the people who receive the majority vote have power for the next parliamentary period. But still, oh god of all agnostics. The vote swung to the right an *incredible* amount. I worry about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, about the basic welfare state services, which I believe to be the foundation of any modern-day civilised nation, being eaten away. My native land, good night.

Today's mantra: ti-tyy, ti-tyy, ti-tyy

Om om om

Spring.

Spring spring spring spring spring spring spring.

Spring. Spring. Spring.

Spring.

Om om om

The incredible fact is the season's turned, and lucky I, on the tenth floor, I don't just have a view. I have a soundscape, too: the birds have started their spring-time spouse-finding. The talitiainen (literally, lard tit, but better known in the English-speaking world as a great tit) is our first harbinger of spring. His much-quoted love call used to be ti-ti-tyy, but particularly in urban areas, this is nowadays trunkated into ti-tyy. Like human babies, baby lard tits learn their vocabulary from their parents, and during my lifetime the wall of sound from traffic has grown to such a magnitude the baby talitiainen can't hear the first "ti". I was shocked to find the English think he says "teacher, teacher". No, no, no. Ti-tyy, ti-tyy is what we now hear.

I have also heard a peipponen, the fellow elsewhere known as a chaffinch (he says tiritiriteijaa, this proven by a popular old children's song). This is headline news, since, as everyone knows

Kuu kiurusta kesään
puoli kuuta peipposesta
västäräkistä vähäsen
pääskysestä ei päivääkään.

(NB I don't make this stuff up, this is an ancient Finnish rhyme which utilises the arrival of certain migratory birds to predict the beginning of summer:

A month till summer from the song thrush,
half a month from a chaffinch,
a little bit from a wagtail (sorry folks, you'll have to make do with the Finnish Wikipedia here as the English version illustrates the wrong subspecies altogether),
not a day from the swallow.)

I heard Mr. Peipponen last Sunday and nearly fell off the balcony. Half a month, and we're only in mid-March now! (Incidentally, hope you all bewore the Ides of March yesterday, was meaning to post an online warning, but the day ended before I got round to it.)

I also managed to catch Mr. Country Bumpkin Great Tit saying not only ti-ti-tyy but also adding the odd extra -tyy, for good measure, as it were, just to prove he could. I was so happy, he sounded like my childhood spring. Mr Tit, I said to myself, a lovely spring to you too, and best of luck with the lady lard tits.

Beware, I'm going theatrical again

We started rehearsing our spring production yesterday, Jean Genet's Maids (I am Solange). The play is based on a true story - two pious little maids went berserk in France in the 1930s, and got rid of their employers in a fairly graphic manner. Given my habit of in-character face-pulling actions when reading/going over my lines in public, I hate to think what this'll make me look like. Glad I won't have to sit next to me on the bus this Spring. (If you do follow that link, be warned, it's really rather harrowing.)

Afterwards saw Ville Valo in the pub. I nearly asked him for his autograph (for my son, I hasten to add - I know about his handshake, remember!) but then bottled out. An endearing side to Finland is how our big celebs and politicians actually drink & shop with us plebs. Of the four presidents we've had in my lifetime (one was in forever, hence so few) I have seen three amongst his/her subjects, pretty much casually minding their own business. I once saw the current pres Halonen shopping at my local grocery shop, with one female minder only. Apparently Halonen also goes to the same belly-dance lessons as my friend Arabella.

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.

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.

Getting ready

Today's tasks included taking my dancing shoes to my husband's office, so that they wouldn't go moldy in my absence (we don't have air conditioning in the house, the office is "climate-controlled").

Yesterday, we went to Richardson's, a local black sand beach. There are rocky outcrops there too, and coral reefs, which ensures plenty of sea life, so it was snorkelling rather than boarding (the sea was "flat" anyway). My pal Jenna, my younger son, and I investigated around all the tide pools, too. We found two types of starfish, one with "brittle arms", two kinds of sea urchins, one with "pencil arms", sea cucumbers (I was brave and stroked one, it felt leathery. I wasn't brave enough to hold it in my hands, though Jenna and my son did. Apparently, they grip onto your hand with the little suckers they have on their underside), hermit crabs, a scorpion-like water-dwelling critter whose name I have forgotten, and froglike fish I am sure are descended directly from those that first made the big move onto land.

The sea fish are so beautiful, just like a in marine aquarium but huge by comparison, some parrotfish are the size of a hefty salmon. Somehow the size of them makes it hilarious, at least initially when you're getting used to the wildlife. The fish have fantastic Hawai'ian names: kihikihi, or the state fish, my favourite, humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Yes, I did not make that up. Roughly translated, it means "stitched together from patches, with a pig's snout". It is a good description. Also many Hawai'ian (people's) names are very descriptive or mean something: Kekoa (the brave one), Pualani (heavenly flower). Pretty good Hawai'ian sealife images can be found here and here.

I will be home in Finland in a matter of days. It's great, but I fear I will be homesick for Hawai'i while I'm there.

© 2006 Anna MR

Who says miracles don't happen?

Not only did Finland win the Eurovision song contest (and I admit I didn't think I'd ever live to see the day), but also my orchids came into bloom!

Hell just might freeze over, today

Alright. Being Finnish, I will have to do it – there'll have to be a comment on the phenomenon known as Lordi, the "horror metal band" the Finns elected to represent the country at the Eurovision song contest this year.

Those of us who either are European or have lived there, cannot be unaware of the Eurovision song contest and all the kitsch and gigglable horror it encompasses. If you've watched it more than once, you'll also be very familiar with the phrase "Finlande, nil point". My native land has never had any great success with the competition. I think we may hold the dubious record of receiving no points whatsoever in more competitions than anyone else. To the point that there are online jokes about global warming and climate changes, which have as their punchline something like "-340 Kelvin, all cell-based life dies, hell freezes over, Finland wins the Eurovision song contest". And Lordi is not only silly in its own right with the masks and costumes (although perhaps the boys can play?), it is also hilariously against the grain of the contest.

Ha. You unbelievers. According to the BBC news website, we are now hot-tipped bookie favourites at 7/1. Get your jumpers out. And please note my best pal in Finland, Bruce, appears in the Lordi movie "The Kin", as the head evil guy! You can imdb this if you don't believe me.

I wish I could be in a Finnish pub, I just know people are pissing themselves laughing tonight, which of course is more or less now, given the time differences. *She has a wistful moment*

© 2006 Anna MR

The Middle-Aged Woman and the Sea

When people give directions in Hawai'i, they often say something is either mauka (towards the mountain) or maka'i (towards the sea).

The sea I grew up with is a mere puddle compared to the Pacific. Most seas are, but the Baltic is particularly tiny: too shallow to have tides, with a salt content so low we get fish the Brits consider fresh-water species. Even so, I'm sure you can smell the briny sea any time you go to the market in downtown Helsinki. In the months when the sea isn't frozen over, anyway. I would have expected there to be a strong, noticable, continuous sea-smell off the Pacific, but for some reason, the smell isn't there, not all the time anyway. I went for a walk downtown Hilo yesterday, and I did smell the sea. It is my favourite smell.

Different seas sound different. I can't remember what the Irish Channel around Wales says, but the Mediterranean waves break to the rhythm of Greek music. Waves in the Gulf of Finland make a small, friendly sound, like this: lip-lap, lip-lap. That is also the Finnish word for what the waves say: liplattaa. The Pacific waves make a massive, slow sound, like one huge, mysterious word, an om. And the sand is black.

© 2006 Anna MR