Eat your heart out, Inuit*

Last year I wrote a couple of jokey little entries on the oddities of my native tongue. It's time for another.

Snow is lumi. I, a latter-day city-dweller, can only really name two distinct types of snow - nuoska, the snow of lesser minus degrees (not räntä, sleet), the snow which squeaks under your feet, the snow you can make snowballs out of, and viti, the powdery snow of colder weathers (which won't work as snowball snow). Once on the ground, the lumi forms a hanki, in which you can discern individual drifts (or piles formed otherwise, e.g. by shovelling the snow with a kola). These are known as kinos. In the trees, particularly the fir trees, in certain conditions the snow sticks onto the branches and onto itself, creating huge billowy formations - tykky. Tykky can pile up so much the weight of it bends the tree into a bow or an arch, and sometimes snaps the trunk altogether. Snow can fall in various ways - pyry implies a thick snowfall, possibly in short bursts, during which the flakes can be bigger and can billow in the air, every which way; tuisku a thick snowfall, possibly of long durations, of smaller flakes, maybe with a wind driving them in a particular direction. Both words are used as first names - Pyry for a boy, Tuisku for a girl.

There are many more snow words. These are the ones I can remember at the moment.

I am going to see a butoh show tonight.

*and I only meant the language. The author of this blog wishes to thank Anne Kleemola for her lovely tykky photo. She has some other totally gorgeous shots on her Flickr account, mostly from Lapland, and one, as a surprise bonus, from Scotland. Go Anne.

I need to cleanse my mind and soul now

And what better to do it with than art (or love, I suppose)? So here's a love poem by the recently-deceased Jarkko Laine. I thought it was lovely:

SUUTELEN UIMARANNALLA HIEKKAA JOSSA ISTUIT, PIENI MARSILAISENI
Noël Coward laulaa We Were Young

Olen hulluna sinuun, oma pieni marsilaiseni.
Suutelen uimarannalla hiekkaa jossa istuit.
Jokaisen hiekanjyvän joka ihosi tunsi, minä talletan kieleni alle.
Tämä kivi tässä - sulana vieläkin, keskikesän lumikide,
merestä palavana noussut, Airiston kuukivi.
Jos ilmaa voisi koota syliinsä,
viesin kotiin jokaisen kuution jossa sinä viivyit.
Rantakadun asfaltista lohkon irti jalkojesi jäljet.

Sinä sanot että rakastan sinua liikaa.
Miten se olisi mahdollista?
Mikä mies minä sinulle jos en ylitse sinun miehesi?

Oletko koskaan nähnyt kissan pääkalloa?
Niin hauras on minun maailmani. Runoutta kyllä, siroutta,
mutta hetkessä mureniksi murskattavaa.

Miten osaisin sen sanoa:
unikuvien laatijalle vain väärentämätön kylliksi.
Utumies kaipaa käsin kosketeltavia asioita.

Älä väisty pois, jää auringon eteen. Sinä olet valoni.


AT THE BEACH, I KISS THE SAND WHERE YOU SAT, MY LITTLE MARTIAN
Noël Coward sings We Were Young

I am mad about you, my own little Martian.
On the beach, I kiss the sand where you sat.
Every grain of sand which felt your skin I will store beneath my tongue.
This stone here - still molten, a midsummer snow crystal,
risen, burning, from the sea, a moonstone of Airisto.
If you could gather air into your arms,
I would take home every cubic metre where you stayed.
From the tarmac of the seaside street I chisel off the marks of your feet.

You say I love you too much.
How could that be possible?
What man would I be for you, if not more than your man?

Have you ever seen the skull of a cat?
So fragile is my world. Poetry, yes, gracefulness,
but crushable to crumbs within a moment.

How could I say it:
for the maker of dream images, only what is genuine will do.
The man of mist misses tangible things.

Do not move away, stay in front of the sun. You are my light.

- Jarkko Laine -

The translation being mine, and a quick one at that - some words are not right, but what do you know. And, sorry - but I couldn't find We Were Young to link to...

If I keep on doing this, sooner or later someone will sue me for copyright infringement, or alternatively, offer me work as a translator. Place your bets, please.

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.

By the end of this post, you will owe me an Easter egg

It is Palm Sunday. (It is also April Fool's Day, but you only have seven minutes to fool me - it has to be done before midday, you know.)

An old tradition from Eastern Finland, revived in recent years, has children dressing up as Easter witches, ringing doorbells (I am badly prepared so shall have to hide if someone rings mine) or going to their relatives, and, bearing a decorated willow branch which the victim is lightly smacked with, chanting the following:

Virvon varvon
tuoreeks terveeks
tulevaks vuodeks
vitsa sulle
palkka mulle.

The decorated willow branch is then given to the victim, who gives the child an Easter egg. (Traditionally, the wee virpoja would have to wait for it and come back on Easter Sunday to claim his reward, but our era is not very big on pleasure delaying.)

So you see, dear reader, I have tricked you. I am big on keeping traditions intact, and ok with pleasure delaying. Therefore, I shall not expect my Easter egg from you until next Sunday.

It came to me in a dream

I woke up this morning with a phrase on the brain: valtameriä kuolleille tilaajille, which roughly translates as "oceans for dead subscribers", although the Finnish original is smoother. I sort of like it - can't remember what it referred to (or indeed if it did, as dreams are not necessarily that logical, my dreams anyway) but my still-sleepy mind felt it was in relation to my writing. I write oceans for dead subscribers.

(Incidentally, I have now received my official translator's certificate, so whenever you need stuff translating from Finnish to English, don't hesitate to be in touch.)

It's all my fault -

I did say the season had turned without knocking on wood. See these two pictures?
This one from last night


this one from this morning


both from my balcony.

Yeees. Those odd little balls are snow. Spring has gone and fucked off, or painunut v*t*uun, as we say around here (although, in our defence, possibly not usually in this context). At least it's silenced the bloody birds (well not really even that, there was at least one die-hard shouting ti-tyy with all his might when I walked to the shops).

I haven't posted this thing just to bemoan the return, with vengeance, of the cold white stuff. No. I am humbly requesting you all take a look at my sadly-neglected, oft-ignored photoblog, because if you don't, nobody will, and think how sad it's feeling, stuck there in the ether of the world wide web, all on its lonesome.

Just for the record - you can always blame his highness the Political Umpire for reminding me about my photoblog. I would, naturally, never stoop so low as to gratuitously advertise my own crap site, would I?

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.

Tongue Twisters, Translated

The water-demon hissed in an elevator. (Vesihiisi sihisi hississä.)
The black cat's fat cheeks. (Mustan kissan paksut posket.)
The bean-pot of the assistant chaplain of Appila's chaplaincy boils and foams on the hob. (Appilan pappilan apupapin papupata pankoolla kiehuu ja kuohuu.)
I'll wind the R around the pole, S I'll put in my pocket. (Ärrän kierrän ympäri orren, ässän pistän taskuun.)
Don't torment the poor corncrake! - But I am not tormenting [it]! (Älä rääkkää rääkkä raukkaa! - En mä rääkkääkkään!)
Gather up the whole bonfire! - The whole bonfire? - The whole bonfire. (Kokoo kokoon koko kokko! - Koko kokkoko? - Koko kokko.)

(The Finnish-language originals in brackets. I am aware of some flaws in the translations - orsi is not really a pole, pankoo not really a hob. But some things have no translation, and sometimes the words are lost in time and the translator's poor mind.)

Ok, so god knows what makes me want to post such stuff.

Glum-and-gloom moon

There is nothing quite as grey as Helsinki in October. Unless it is Helsinki in November, although November does tend to go more towards the brown scale, which is possibly even more miserable. I used to like to play the Tom Waits song "November" (badly, I am afraid) on the piano this time of the year, but now all my music is in Hawai'i.

Months are called moons in Finnish, kuu. October is lokakuu, loka being the brown, muddy water you would find in, say, a deep ditch in October, after weeks of rain. Ditchwater moon is a very apt name. November is marraskuu, marras being archaic Finnish for death. Death moon is even apter.

There are some nice "moons", too: January is tammikuu, oak moon. My favouritely-named (if that is a word) is February: helmikuu, pearl moon. But right now, we are in puddle-water moon, and it is bringing out the melancholic introvert in me.

Not necrophiliac

Yesterday, I mentioned I had dreamt of dead people. The correct form would of course have been "about". Sloppy of me. Sloppy. Not necrophiliac.

Trousers and pants

I bought a pair of trousers the other day from H&M. Joy! They came all the way up my waist, past my bellybutton. Imagine my delight. I can't remember the last time I managed to find a pair like that. (Fact: I am no longer of an age where my bare belly would be something anyone would like to see.) Maybe they're coming back into fashion - hurrah!

In Hawai'i, my friends would hold both hands over their mouths to suppress delighted giggles every time I said the word "trousers". I believe to them it sounded about as old-fangled as, say, talking about wearing pantaloons (and with a straight face, too). I practised saying "pants" instead, but of course to me, it felt like I was discussing my underwear with all and sundry.

This was a silly post. But it is my blog.

I nearly killed myself today chopping up an onion

It's true. The knife slipped, skipped, hopped, and slid across the chopping board, and went to embed itself in my belly, round about where my appendix is, business end first. It was all over in a splitsecond. I couldn't have done that if I'd tried.

I have always had a morbid overwhelming fear of having sharp knives in the house. Now I know why; so that I wouldn't stab myself to death today, while chopping an onion. As it is, my knives are all ridiculously blunt, and when I recovered from the shock of my own kitchen implements attacking me viciously and unprovokedly, and checked myself, there wasn't even a scratch.

However. Bad news. Owner of our house has decided to sell it. Bugger. Bugger. Bugger. We shall probably have to find somewhere else, unless the buyer is just making an investment rather than wanting to move in him/herself. (Bugger.) I *so* could have done without this weighing on my mind when I am supposed to be going nutty with my travel nerves instead. This is what the black cat and hen brought me, I'm sure.

And I have been working so hard in my garden, and the rockery of the rats...!

To cheer myself up I went to the Hilo Hep Cat hop, at Kope Kope cafe. It did cheer me up. Dancing is good, although I am quite, quite hopeless half the time. (Incidentally, kope is coffee in Hawai'ian.)

© 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