I posted this on a train. Isn't that cool?

Days like today I swear I can almost see the Helsinki-dwellers who have already gone. I don’t only mean the ones who have died – although obviously, I mean them, too; I also mean us who are still here, but the way we were before, in our past, the past that is as gone as – theirs.

February is particularly good for this, for it needs to be so the snow is wee needles in the wind, and daylight is needed, too. Somehow, the effect is never the same in the dark hours, but by February, the days have suddenly returned, and I can see them – almost see them, their shapes forming in the spaces between the needles of snow the wind is full of.

I can feel them too, of course, which is probably why I can almost see them. I see those of long ago, long skirts or dresses, heavy overcoats, scarves and shawls, dark bundled figures. I see myself, at twelve or so, my existential awakening of a kind coinciding and somehow becoming forever connected with the snow piling up everywhere – on the branches of our city trees, making drifts along the streets, creating sculptures of lampposts, walls, window ledges, adding their bit to statues. I see myself a few years later, at fifteen, yes fifteen, life and the future rushing at me, my future, the future, The Future, as if a miracle, the world, The World, all the excitement of realising there is a life larger than oneself and a world to be discovered and -. Found? Owned? Belonged in?

I want to wave to myself, I want to say, be brave, be brave, be braver. Don’t lose yourself in the business of life.

It’s so strange that I am there too, with the old Helsinki folks, the by-gonners, the bundled-up ghosts. Is anyone else there?