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.

carry on

Spring creeps in so slowly and I still haven't learnt to cope with this waiting. The sun at a low angle, the slanting shadows, the streets covered in dry rubble, the billowing dust, the tough piles of dirty snow in the shade.


Springs have traditionally not been my forte, and so the brighter the days and the muddier the grass, the harder it is for me to sleep and to smile.


I'm feeling a bit adrift right now, with my exams over and nothing to do but apply for summer jobs and think about the future. I'm waiting for May, for that almost-summer phase of spring, and listening to this in the mornings.

(Also, thank you for your comments on my last post. It really does mean a lot to be offered these words 

of encouragement and trust.)

sporadic and ambiguous thoughts

I've begun so many posts lately, it seems that's all I do these days. Begin and let go, give up and give in.

The libraries of Helsinki are packed these days, full of students and anxiety and the soft thrum of hopelessness. We'll brave this, I like to think. But I do worry, rather too much.

I listen to Bright Eyes and the Cure and to old old songs by Regina Spektor. These are things I listened to when I was fifteen or maybe sixteen and I don't know what that says about me. Maybe I'm regressing. I'm also rereading all the Murakami I first delved into at the age of fourteen. And I also find it a bit disconcerting how I can only talk about the songs I listen to and the books I read, not much about anything that's actually happening.

There's the constant undertone of I Should Be Studying and it's just terrifying. Only a bit over a week to go and I can hardly believe it.

I had a high fever a few days back. I haven't had a proper fever since the age of ten. I had completely forgotten how it feels.

Also, some of my friends are on the verge of being terrifyingly happy and some are trying to fight through things and some are still waiting for everything. And I'm thinking every day about how I will finish school and leave. Where I'll go to, I don't know, but I know I'll miss them more than I can even imagine right now. Sometimes I get these surprising attacks of nighttime fondness, when I think of how much I'd like to fix everything in their lives that is broken.

Mostly I try to focus on my breathing. And sometimes I feel light, despite the way the snow is too bright on sunny mornings. Conor Oberst and Regina will tide me through this.

cures for things

Recently I've been writing. A lot. And I don't know why, maybe as a cure for loneliness, although I've figured out years ago that the best cure for loneliness is the Cure. (Mainly because the Cure is the best possible cure for almost everything.)

And I don't know where this loneliness stems from, or why it causes a chronic build-up of words in the joints of my fingers, ready to pour out as soon as I set a pen to paper.

I'll breathe through this, I know I will. This faint phase of melodrama and cliches will slide on by, I will find myself listening to bands that are not quite as New Wave and 80's as my current chosen cure. In the meanwhile I consider it completely acceptable to dance around my room to Just Like Heaven at night when I can't sleep.

tuesday morning

So I'm done with school. Almost. Not quite. But we're definitely past the beginning of the end. (I don't know quite how to feel.)

Lately I've been doing voluntary work in the presidential elections. I've been queuing for concert tickets at arse o'clock in the morning. I've been spending quality time in the library. All in the midst of enormous piles of snow and harsh winter sunlight.

(And yesterday I got to see Ultra Bra live, as a result of all that queuing et al. And it was. Just. You know? Pretty much the best thing ever.)

monday links (feminism, mainstream-ism, obama, presidential elections, etc.)

Carole Brémaud's paintings are my new favourite thing. 

Oh goodness am I caught up in these presidential elections. (The Finnish ones, not the farce that is the Republican election in the US.) I'm going to blatantly push an agenda here and tell you to have some of this.

My links this week are a bit of an odd bunch. In my defense, I've been dancing around since last night because of all this elections excitement.

Speaking of which, oh Obama. You make me happy when skies are grey. 

And on to an excellent blog post on how to reply to anti-feminist comments.

A brief history of sexual liberty. (Did you know the first so-called sexual revolution took place in the 18th century? Because I sure didn't.) 

Also, I adore Adele. A simply ridiculous amount. I don't care how mainstream that takes me. I'll go wherever she leads me. All my victory dances since yesterday have been backed by this. (Although, this article about the New Boring, also known as the Beige Age, does have a point.)


(My apologies for such an odd concoction of links. Politics do odd things to your higher brain functions.)

silly things

This feeling dropped into me like a stone while I was wading knee-deep in snow, 

this longing for warmth and summer. 

(Also: oh my goodness Ben Howard.) 

monday links (gingers, languages, new york, new york)

It's been a while since I last managed to shuffle together a deck of links. But here we are, with some truly spectacular essays and a bit of Carey Mulligan thrown in for good measure. Enjoy.

First and foremost, my great love, the ever charming online quarterly The Junket, has a new issue out. So far I've fallen arse over tea kettle for The Red Headed League by Ed Wethered 

(a somewhat tragicomic account of living with red hair) 

and On Not Being Jewish by the brilliant Thomas Marks 

(I suggest going through his back catalogue if you haven't already done so). 

The history of English in ten minutes. (Oh yes. I adore this with ridiculous zeal.)



Speaking in Tongues by Zadie Smith explores the significance of how we speak. (Spectacular. Honestly.)

The multitalented and consistently amazing Carey Mulligan singing New York, New York in the new film Shame. (Heartbreaking and haunting and so beautiful.)  

(Also, I've managed to lose the source of the photo. If anyone knows who took it, I beg you to tell me.) 

2011: a musical retrospective

Adele: 21

Alex Turner: Submarine EP

Arctic Monkeys: Suck It and See 

Bon Iver: Bon Iver 

The Decemberists: The King Is Dead

James Blake: James Blake

Noah and the Whale: Last Night on Earth

Regina: Soita mulle

Scandinavian Music Group: Manner

St. Vincent: Strange Mercy

tUnE-yArDs:  w h o k i l l

Veronica Maggio: Satan i gatan 




(Honorary mentions: 
Asa Masa, King Krule, Azealia Banks, 
The Antlers, Beyoncé and Eleanor Friedberger)

a very merry

I'm non-religious to my bones, but there's something about this hymn (especially when it's sung by the glorious Sufjan Stevens and accompanied by a banjo) that makes me weak in the knees and strong in the heart.

May you all have the very best of Christmases.

the eve of the eve

I thought these pictures from Ezra Jack Keats's children's book (published in 1962) might bring holiday cheer to one and all.

The snow here melted as swiftly as it snowed down. But I've been making mince pies and playing Christmas songs, and I've hung my stocking already, and nothing will discourage me now.

I'm on holiday and there's finally no shortage of time. There are hours for sleep and for reading and cooking and simply being. I've banished all thoughts of revision and work out of my head, for just a while.

Today's Christmas song is called Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance! and it is beautiful. Because what's Christmas without Sufjan Stevens?

monday links (unspoken truths, last christmas, naming novels)

Only a few days to go till Christmas. Today I traipsed down to a Christmas market to get some aniseed and finger all the handmade decorations. It was crowded but calm and cheerful and oh goodness I love this time of year, despite the dark and the wet and the still-no-snow.

On with the links, not all of which are Christmas-y, I swear.

The late, great Christopher Hitchens on illness and voice. 

For those of you who need a pick-me-up for the final days of hurry and worry, and really don't feel like listening to Christmas songs anymore, something entirely different. For those of you who adore slightly corny Christmas songs, here's Florence Welch singing Last Christmas.

Why Finnish is cooler than English. Why, thank you. 

Olivia Cole on Frank O'Hara's glorious love poem To the Harbormaster. And writer Shalom Auslander on naming novels.

tomorrow i'll be stronger

Oh really. No matter how many hours I sleep, how many times I roll back my shoulders and crack my spine, I can feel the tiredness and everything it entails pooling in my palms. 

(But I refuse to let my hands fall. There are things you can only hang on to with palms facing the sky.) 

I suppose this is one of those darker times but I'd so like it not to be. I want nothing more than to pull myself together. Instead I spend my days willing away schoolwork and thinking 

about the skeletons and lungs inside us all.

And listening to this song by Alex Turner, whom I've loved since the very first Arctic Monkeys album. 

Turns out, I adore him even more on his own. 

Tomorrow I'll be stronger, running colourful, no longer just in black and white.

i could see for miles miles miles

A tired Friday tinged with relief. Only another week to go till the holidays, until Christmas and sleep and books and friends and family. 

I've been studying history enough to have it bleed into my dreams. I dream of time travel and the impossible weight of a war and wake up with a beating heart, infinitely glad the sound of bombs is only in my head. 

(I won't write about how there's still no snow in Helsinki and only a week till Christmas. 

Except there's this pull in my chest, in my rib cage, a desperate longing for the crackling crumpling 

sound of footsteps in frost. Stars reflecting on a smooth surface of snow. 

I'm also listening to Bon Iver more than ever. 

This song and video suits this final melancholy wait before Christmas perfectly.) 

(Also,  Sandra Dieckmann's illustrations are pure magic.) 

star star

(There's a storm raging outside but I'll be having friends over and I'm listening to this.)

winter winter winter

Dear December,

Please bring us the same kind of snow we've had in Helsinki for the past two winters. I won't mind you making my trains late or sneaking into my boots or clouding my glasses. Just bring us a cold white wet blanket and those red cheeks.

Please help me find my calm this Christmas. I swear I'll try my very best to do my Christmas shopping and fretting in time. I'll open my ears and my eyes for everything you want to show me, snowflakes and Christmas lights and delightful jazzy Christmas songs.

Speaking of which. There's this one Christmas song that always always makes me cry a bit. Because it promises things like next year all our troubles will be out of sight and faithful friends who are dear to us will be near to us once more. So, yeah. That. 

Thanks ever so. And I'll see you tomorrow. With all my advent calendars on the ready and my corny Christmas playlists on standby. 

Yours daily and nightly and ever so rightly (for the next thirty-one days at least), 

me

monday links (manifestos, lullabies, strangers, paris)

Another Monday, another set of things that make my pulse speed up.

Roberto Farruggio takes the most beautiful photos. 

Nude in Your Hot Tub, Facing the Abyss (A Literary Manifesto After the End of Literature and Manifestos) by Lars Iyer is something everyone inclined to write should take the time to read. ("To say that literature is dead is both empirically false and intuitively true," he writes, and opens your eyes.)

A truly incredible song for any dreary morning.

Is 2011 a year that will change the world?


"Grab hold of the nearest stranger. Don't take the stranger's hand, God knows where that's been, but grasp their arm, firmly. Don't let go until I tell you to." Miranda July on strangers.

sundays

(Reading Brideshead Revisited and Lolita and listening to this.)

monday links (shakespeare, skeletons, nostalgia)

I'm feeling a bit blue and waiting desperately for snow this week. Thank goodness for all the glorious distractions, such as friends, tea and Jane Austen. And short films, essays, jazz. Here's for a week better than the one gone by.

Mourir auprès de toi is a beautiful animated short film by Spike Jonze, featuring a lovesick skeleton, a brave young lady and a certain bookshop in Paris. 

Recently I've been reading a lot of the Paris Review. Two of my favourite things this week: O. and I, a study in adulation, jealousy and growing up, and Francesca Mari on homesickness.

In case you're already in the mood for Christmas, there's this. 

How well do you know your friends?

And finally: the new film Anonymous explores the theory of Shakespeare not being the true author of his works. If you, like me, burst a vein every time somebody brings up these far-fetched and frankly quite boring theories,  here's an excellent article to fatten up your arguments: Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare? by Stephen Marche.

snowflakes and spectres

I'm head over heels with Becca Stadtlander's illustrations. And desperately waiting for the first flakes of snow.


Things that make me happy today include peppermint tea, meeting an old friend, brightly lit windows by dusk, a quick wander-about in a bookstore and the wave of relief that hit me this morning like a freight train. I'm already sleeping better and feeling like a human being again.


Happy Hallowe'en everyone!