after the quake

Here we are, then. Is this how one is supposed to feel afterwards? After the end of life as we know it, after twelve years of education.


Far too many flowers and presents. A silly hat and ultimately quite painful shoes and the most beautiful dress. And in the evening, dinner with friends over the rooftops of Helsinki, drinks, dancing, wandering about, crashing into bed with the birds singing at sunrise.



free, adjective
1 able to act or or be done as one wishes; not under the control of another
2 (often as complement) not or no longer confined or imprisoned



A confession: I'm scared.

I'm trying to find my footing, trying to find something to do, something to be.


But first, a summer. I'll find myself a ukulele, get back to playing. Take up swimming. Do the things that make me happy and try to figure out what exactly I plan to do with my life now that I'm almost unbearably free.

on graduating

This is my chosen theme tune for my graduation. Hopeful, wistful. Beautiful. 

I graduate tomorrow.


I can't believe how fast those three years passed, and how much I managed to grow in that crackle of time.

So allow me a few moments of nostalgia. 



The past few months have been all worrying over exams and summer jobs and everything that comes after graduation, after our lives are blown apart. After the end of mapped-out, planned-ahead life.

The past few days have been tears and rehearsals and disbelief. Cleaning and cooking and receiving far too many cards and flowers.

But the past few years. Three to be exact. They have smashed me into pieces and helped me build myself up again.

I have become a better writer, I think. A better student, maybe. A better friend, certainly.




These are the things I will miss.

My teachers.
The classrooms and the corridors, the stages and the stairs.
The performances. The endless enthusiasm, the constant outpouring of ideas.
The buzz beneath the mundane, the excitement of being a part of something.

That sense of belonging.
 
The streets of Kallio: the drunks and the hipsters, the cafés and the dodgy bars, the flowers and the vomit stains, the erotica shops and the beautiful library. The trams and the seagulls.

And, finally. My friends.
Because the friends I have found in and around Kallio, the people we've gathered into our mutual orbit, these are the people I don't want to let go of. This is the most difficult, terrifying thing about graduating. This fear of loss.

(But I think my fear is mostly unfounded. A bit premature. We have all summer, after all. These three glorious months.)



Before I start crying: I think these are the years I might miss later on.

When I was little, my mother said about missing things and people: It's how you know you care. It's how you know you had a good time. It's a sign of love.

my bed is an ocean, my sheets are the waves

I'm tired of sleeping in my own bed or maybe I'm just tired of myself. These days it seems I sleep better when squashed between friends on thin mattresses after parties.


I sort of feel like my entire life is stalling, like I'm going nowhere and this will be the end of all things, despite knowing that I'm moving forward faster than I have ever before and that a few months from now my life will be wide open. Quite possibly more open and new and just-begun than it has been since the day I was born. This isn't a new page being turned, this is an entire fresh notebook waiting to happen.


I will sort myself out and this too shall pass, these are the things I tell myself over and over late at night. It's funny, I never thought of myself as a survivor (as in, I never thought I could hold up my chin and keep going) but there are surprises left in me yet. Sometimes I can't quite believe how young I am.

chancing it

Next summer will be the summer after my graduation.

And I have no idea what I will be doing. During the summer or after it. My plans extend to the evening of next Monday, when I complete my exams. 

After that, all bets are off. 

You see, I wasn't accepted to the universities I applied to last autumn. (Admittedly, they were highly prestigious and I always knew a Finnish diploma wouldn't be an easy sell. And my course choice could have been better suited for what I actually want to do. And I could have focused more on my application. And so on and so on. And yet.) 

There have been tears and teeth gritted together too tightly for a whisper to fit in between. 

But I think I'll be fine. I really do. This is the first time I've ever truly fucked something up, the first time I've failed to get what I want. All the schools I've so far wanted to go to, I have. All the exam grades I've so far wanted to achieve, I've achieved. And I'm nineteen. It's about time. 

(The greatest thing I've learnt during the past few weeks is this: I would not choose to live a different life from my own right now. Despite the disappointments and the fear and the shame. I want to survive this, if only to show myself that I can.) 

So, a gap year. 

Maybe I'll stay in Helsinki for a while. Get a place of my own, a toehold on adulthood, with a rent and bills to pay and hopefully a housemate with kind eyes. 

Maybe I'll move to Paris for a year, which is funnily enough what my mother did after she finished school. I never thought I'd follow in her footsteps, but it doesn't sound too shabby. 

Maybe I'll say Fuck It and go backpacking in India. Or on a kibbutz in Israel. Or on any other kind of predictable gap year activity. 

This is the first time I have had the possibility to do with my life whatever I want to. Which is scary and exhilarating and lonely and also insanely hopeful. 

And first there is a summer. I hope to spend some of it working. Maybe travel. Go to some festivals. Love my friends more than I ever can in the winter, because that's what summer makes me do. 

I'll keep my head above the surface, whatever I do. 

confessions

I cover the floor of my room with essays and textbooks and old postcards. I always leave my scissors on the floor and I never step on them, not even when I stumble out of bed at six in the morning in November, with eyes screwed shut and creaks in my bones. (I don't know how this is possible.)

Sometimes I scare myself with my carelessness, carelessness to do with both people and possessions.



I alternate between hating my hips and sneakily loving them. Some nights I stand before the mirror and I look at myself and I think about what Meg wrote, about how my hips will "hoist groceries and children" and in those words and in those moments I am filled with appreciation for my body and everything it can bring.

(This is a recent development, this forgiveness that I seem to have picked up somewhere, at some point. I can forgive myself my hips and I can forgive myself for loving them; how grown up, how necessary.)




For the first time in years, I've spent a solid period of time without fancying anyone and without wanting a relationship. It's been a long enough time to mark this as significant, a good few percents of my life so far. For me, this is an achievement, something I've worked on, something I've given to myself initially as a punishment and then as a gift: here is your life, here is the person that is you, now learn how to be without the chronic hope of an anchor, a mirror, a buffer.

And I think maybe I have, at least a bit.

post-birthday meditations

This is what I looked like yesterday, on the morning of my 19th birthday.

I woke up late to the sunshine and crept through the empty house to make myself a cup of tea and open some presents. My present to myself was a quiet morning, just the radio for company and a bit of bossa nova. I gave my eyes wings with eyeliner and put on my favourite dress, the one I bought in Amsterdam with my own hard-earned money. I still feel like an adult only occasionally, half-heartedly, in brief pockets of time.

Turning nineteen is scary because it's so close to twenty. And twenty sounds like far too much. But I do like this steady flow of time, these anchors that make me stop and go, okay. Nineteen. I've been around the sun nineteen times. That's quite something, isn't it?

19 (a letter to myself a year ago)

A year ago you were in Paris and you were busy turning eighteen, drinking your first legal glasses of Champagne and smoking your first legal cigarettes. There are so many things I could tell you about what will happen in your first year as an adult, but I almost wish I could leave you there, on that street corner with smoke in your lungs.


In the year to come you will cry. A lot. In the good ways and in the bad. You will think you can't go on and then you will roll back your shoulders and know that you can, and will, go on.


You will meet people who will make you feel as insignificant as possible and you will realise that the people who make you feel good are the ones who were closest all along. You will leave some people behind and you will let some new people into your life. They will be almost incandescent in their brilliance. You will recognise them when you meet them.


You will write a lot and worry constantly about not writing enough. (It is enough.) You will make yourself and the people around you proud, and you will also be a disappointment. Forgive yourself your failures.


Know that the summer ahead will be the best summer so far.


There will be bars and late nights. There will be loneliness, but there will also be holding hands and sailing and playing the ukulele and studying. These are the things that matter.


You will break your glasses. You will pass your exams. You will apply to university. You will chase far too many trains, especially in the night, with heavy feet and a light head. You will spend most of your summer in various parks in Helsinki. (It is a good way to spend a summer.) You will call V in the middle of the night. Several times. You will change in ways you could never have imagined, but I like to think you'd be proud of me if you could see me now.


You will learn to understand who are the people who really matter. Talk to them. Tell them. Be grateful every day for having them in your life, because (and I'm paraphrasing Virginia Woolf here) you would become transparent without them.


It will be a good year. I wouldn't change a single minute. Take the chances you feel like taking and know that you will land on your feet, eventually. And even if you don't, there will be people around you willing to help you, if you let them.


So I won't leave you there on that street corner in the 5th arrondissement after all. Chin up, head high, off you go into your future, my past, and know that it will be pretty damn spectacular.

smoke and mirrors, etc.

Yes, I am still alive and kicking but weeks pass by too quickly for me to notice and certainly too fast for words. Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and barely recognise myself, almost like I've forgotten my own features. Or maybe I'm growing up too fast to keep up.

I don't really know what it is I want to say, except maybe this: I feel younger and sillier than before and yet it feels as though there's something emerging in me, breaking to the surface, some half-baked form of a grown-up. And it's everything I never thought it would be.

It's not calm or all-powerful, it's not offering me answers as much as questions and it's certainly not as organised or capable as I'd have hoped. In fact, I feel more like I'm reliving a sort of childhood. The childhood of my adulthood, maybe.

I'm curiouser by the day and feeling things in the deep, rooted way children do, in my belly and my spine. I'm overpowered by chords and words and the everyday, every day. I'm breaking out of my self-imposed limitations. I'm maybe trying to accept my ignorance when it comes to certain things, I'm asking questions, breathing the world in and exhaling it in tiny bits, leaving something always to be dissected within my lungs.

I'm not looking back, this is not the nostalgia of leaving childhood behind. 

This is something to do with looking into my own eyes like into a stranger's.

october

I think I call every season my favourite time of year while living it. (Except for spring, springs are difficult and I have learnt to fear them.) So right now I'm in love with autumn.

The yellow maple leaves like starbursts against the shiny black pavements, red-cheeked apples and approaching Hallowe'en.

(Also, Halloween or Hallowe'en? I was taught the latter spelling and I think I'll stick with it either way. The apostrophe adds a certain flair, does it not?)

In other news, I applied to university today. It all feels very grown up and surreal and I'm only beginning to understand what I've got myself into.

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.


e.e. cummings

the great perhaps

Well.

It's been a while, hasn't it.

School, revision, trying to cram in some sleep - it's all been just a bit too much. Weekends have never been quite as welcome. 

It was sudden, this end of a summer, and also this beginning of an entirely different ending: my final year at school. Soon commence the university applications and other scarily grown-up things, but for now, with the mornings misty and the afternoons still clinging to summer, it's kind of ridiculously easy to be happy.


(And I say this cautiously though it must be said: I think I might actually be doing better than I have done in months and maybe years.

Like I'm finally finding my own feet, finally able to face the future without my knees buckling.

The end is nigh, but in these last months of school I'm going to get to the very marrow of life - before the Great Perhaps that comes after graduation.)

small joys and freckles

An eternity ago in early May, as a consequence of sunny lunch hours spent on the school lawn, I discovered a smattering of freckles high up on my cheekbone, near the thin blue skin beneath my right eye.

It was just a light dusting of them, an area I could cover with a few clustered fingertips. But there they were, improbable and exciting and new.

Blandly blonde, with a complexion the colour of skimmed milk, I have always longed for skin like a star chart. Back in playschool I had a friend with skin as pale as mine, but an explosion of rust-coloured dots scampering around her face. She was spectacular, with her polka dot eyelids and misty hairline, and I was desperate enough to paint clumsy circles onto my cheeks with a brown felt tip.

So there they were, my first true freckles, proudly pointed out to all of my friends. My mother, who nonchalantly sports freckled arms and shoulders every summer, calmly remarked that my pigment must have altered with age.

Freckles suggest days spent in the sun, a certain carefree je ne sais quoi. An entirely different attitude, a better life. Freckled people are infinitely more beautiful than the rest of us, it seems, a group somehow more adept at life.

Or so I thought, naive as I was.

Although my collection of freckles remains small (in addition to cheekbones and nose, a few flocks have settled onto the backs of my hands, my forearms and my knees), I have lost my delusions. There's always a gut-wrenching nostalgic sadness in watching childhood dreams flicker and die, and even more so when they were dreams of eventual happiness.

Because last spring, although sublime in many ways, almost convinced me of freckles being the shadows of tears. And along with the steady accumulation of the little brown dots, although this summer has proven to be better than many of the ones before, has come the realisation that no amount of freckles will result in happiness. (A silly notion of course, but a solid one.)

And still there's the small pang of joy every time I notice them, a fleeting glance into a mirror every morning, a jolt of energy in my veins. Small joys build up to happiness, after all, so maybe the constellations of my skin will eventually show me the way.


Drawing by the always wonderful Daniela Henríquez.

äiti

My mother and I picking rhubarb near our summer cottage circa 1999.

Today is äitienpäivä (Mother's Day) in Finland, so my mother and I digged through some old photos and reminisced. (I cannot believe my parents' hairstyles and clothes. Shoulder pads, really?)

My mother is the singular most important person in my life. She has been my rock throughout my childhood, the most stable and present thing in my life. She raised me as a single parent - there are so many things to be grateful for.

Growing up is difficult and it's such a relief to know my mother will always be there for me. Kiitos, äiti.

My mother and I three and a half weeks after I was born, a lazy morning at our home in Reading.

oh captain, my captain

Casey O'Connell's paintings are beautiful. They make me want to grab a paintbrush and a canvas and get working. 

Today I'm going to vote in the parliamentary elections, which is slightly scary and also very very cool. (Ja muistakaa piru vie äänestää!)

Paintings by Casey O'Connell. From top: How Am I Not Myself?, Intuition and Oh Captain, My Captain.

sunday morning

Last night / this morning was definitely an interesting experience, what with being in an unfamiliar town at a party with mostly unfamiliar people. Strobe lights and sunsets and holding my own quite well, despite my initial case of shaky hands and tattered nerves.

I also managed to get on a wrong bus and find myself in the middle of nowhere. At two in the morning. With only a vague idea of how to find my way back. I then managed to get on the right bus and fall asleep so I almost missed my stop. But here I am, in one piece, tired and uninjured and really quite happy, what with this sun and this wind and my recurring dream of a white Vespa.

How has this weekend been treating you?

(And I think I'm beginning to crack this adulthood thing. I have maybe held this naïve thought of adults never being nervous or getting lost. But what if being a grown-up simply means holding my own despite my nerves, and coping with getting lost at night with a shrug of my shoulders?)

(Also, you should take a look at this post  on Meg's blog. If you're in need of some reassurance. Because I think this might be one of the most helpful, hopeful things I have ever read.)

i used to say i hate surprises

Some of you might remember this annoyingly elusive post from a few weeks back. Well, I finally obtained a few photos so I can tell you all about what happened.

I'd only just returned from Paris and turned eighteen. My friend, whom I shall refer to as V (because I've always wanted to refer to my friends with their initials) had told me she wanted to take me to see some kind of a show or performance on Friday night, and it was to be a Grand Surprise. So I traipsed into town wondering what it could be, like the gullible little girl I am.

V called me and told me she'd got the time wrong - the performance would start an hour later than she'd thought. She told me to come over to S, a mutual friend of ours who lived nearby. Along I went, only to find twenty of my friends singing me Happy Birthday.

And as much as I go on about hating surprises, this is one I can't not love.

My friend J turned eighteen on the same day as me, so we were given a bottle of wine each to kick off the evening. (Incidentally, I think this picture nicely demonstrates the difference between our respective personalities.)

It was a brilliant evening, made of friends and food and drink and music and the irreplaceable feeling of being fully and purely happy. V had not only planned a party, she'd also asked Antti Autio to come and play a gig for us. (He's one of my favourite artists and his live shows are incredible. My friends are still reminiscing how my face looked when Antti walked in.) V also performed one of my favourite songs for me. (Summer in the City by Regina Spektor, in case you're wondering.)

We ended the night by dancing to the Beatles on the kitchen table, and never have I ever felt as cared for.

PS. Guess where I'm posting this from? From the lazy aftermath of a surprise birthday party to my friend K. We really are lucky, aren't we.

18

first

So, a new blog.

I've been running various blogs for about two years, and the one I've stuck with the longest is with my head in the clouds, which will soon be shut down. Then I will commence to build a new blog here, called we're everything brighter than even the sun, which is a quote from a poem by e.e. cummings.

I feel as though I should explain myself. I turn eighteen next week, which apparently makes me young in the eyes of the world. (Also, the fact that I don't feel young is apparently yet another testimony of my youth, which I don't really understand.) So two years is an awfully long time for me.

I have changed a lot in two years, mostly for the better but also, in some ways, for the worse. And I feel like every time I post something on with my head in the clouds, I'm burdened by everything I used to be.

So, maybe this will be a blog about my adulthood, although I doubt I will feel like an adult for a very long time. But I want this blog to be about me, because with my head in the clouds is something I have felt distant from for a very long time. There's a lot I need to think through and a lot I want to share.

Let the blogging begin.

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