July

Tonight the fireflies
light their brief
candles
in all the trees

of summer—
color of moonflakes,
color of fluorescent
lace

where the ocean drags
its torn hem
over the dark
sand. 

Linda Pastan

Summer — summer — summer! 
The soundless footsteps on the grass! 






John Galsworthy: Indian Summer of a Forsyte 

don't ask me why, i'll tell you no lies

Yes, I know. Months of near-silence and no explanations.



There are no proper explanations, I guess. But then what is there? Unfinished posts festering in my drafts. Lots of late nights working. (I have a summer job at a cinema.) Lots of nights spent watching films in the comforting darkness. (Summer job at a cinema, bring it.) Friends and music festivals and all that.

Getting into university. (I'll be studying English at the University of Helsinki come autumn. Not my original plan, but I'll take what I can get. I'm actually very very pleased, and relieved.)



The truth is, I've been feeling blue for quite a while now. Like I've misplaced my happiness and peace of mind and can't for the life of me remember where I put them. Like I set them down for a moment and turned my back and suddenly they were gone, and I keep telling myself to look where I last saw them but they simply aren't there.

In part I think it's anxiety over my future, but mostly I think it has to do with this being the first summer in four years that I don't get to go sailing. It's painful, almost. A cut in my finger, constantly there, constantly aching. And I can't help but poke at it.



I'll be okay. I know I will. Things pile up and suddenly you look around and realise you're not where you thought you'd be. But it turns out to be okay, I think? Tonight I went to see Le Skylab, the new Julie Delpy film, and leaving the cinema in the evening sunlight with my shoes untied felt like a rebirth. Or maybe not a rebirth, a re-reckoning.

night's dream

Traditionally, on Midsummer night, you should gather seven flowers and place them under your pillow for the night, so that you could see your future spouse in your dreams. But I think I'll rather go dancing.


I feel like I've finally caught up with summer. This morning I woke up early and walked the almost-empty streets of Helsinki. Summer mornings are what I love most about Helsinki. The sea, the breeze.

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. 

we sing to bless the morning

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.) 

seasides

Because that's where I'd rather be now, somewhere far away and summery and revision-free.

(Although last night was nice, taking the ferry to Suomenlinna, ogling tall ships on the way, and ending up at a folk gig at Korjaamo. Nights are still so warm sometimes, warm enough for t-shirts and running.)


I've lost the source of the first photo. If you know, please tell me!

ends and beginnings

So summer finally comes to a close, sudden and clean like a paper cut. But I refuse to wax nostalgic, because today's Flow Festival was spectacular, a perfect ending for this summer. My feet ache from all the dancing and I'm exhausted and at a loss for words and just too darn happy to do any kind of thinking right now.




So here, watch some James Blake. This song is sublime, ethereal, the music of the stars. Even more so when heard live, mere metres from the stage, with the bass kicking its way through my ribcage right into my heart, throat and lungs. I could have listened to him for this entire infinite night.



(And oh, this summer has been glorious. Despite everything.)


(Also: I promise to type out a proper post at some point. At a less ungodly hour.)

day by day (old joy comes back to me)

So here we are, well into August, and the familiar melancholy-tinged end-of-summer nostalgia is hitting me like a freight train.

Endless rain and nights too cold for bare feet, a prep course in Swedish for my final exams, the approaching start of my final year in school - it's all slightly too much. (And I do know the days still swelter with heat and there are warm days to come, but nonetheless there's no escaping the blues.)

For the past few weeks I've been intensely unhappy and disconcerted, in the familiar shaky-hands way. Unable to sleep, listless and vague. Clinging to the idea of summer having flown by without much of an impact. (Forgive me my maudlin tendences, this'll get brighter I swear.)

And then last night, at the seaside with music and friends and a sunset, I got to thinking about everything I've done during the past two months, how undeniably and inexplicably happy I have been.

And so maybe there's nothing to be sad about. Maybe what I need right now is a good cry and a shoulder to lean on, and then I can face this mystifying concept of autumn with a heart less faint. I aim to be prepared, this time around. With wellies and jumpers and fingerless gloves. I'm already waiting for the cooler days in September, the darkening night and coloured leaves.

And in the meanwhile, I have ten more days of (almost) absolute freedom, to be spent with friends in that glorious sunshine.

road trips and midnight escapes

A sublime weekend, driving up with friends to a red house by a lake.

Blasting our music with the windows down, pitching our tents on the perfect lawn, laughing too hard to breathe, going for a swim first thing in the morning, finding a ukulele and adopting it for the night, going to the sauna around three in the morning, falling asleep with the sun rising, brewing tea over a blue flame, singing until our voices grew hoarse.

How lucky I am to be able to surround myself with the people I love, the people who make me feel safe.

(Maybe this is one of those times I'll remember for years and years to come. Maybe this is what it really is to be young and to be happy, unguarded moments like the one below, captured on our journey back home.)

Soffulle kiitos kuvasta!

notes from an island

So there was the sea and the smooth cliffs pouring into it.

There were sunsets to warm the bone to its marrow. (Sunsets I mostly spent on the phone, because sometimes you need more than beautiful views, you need tangibility.)

There were small cold waves to dive into and lots of books to read. (I mostly read Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's been years since I've last read it cover to cover and it's very different from what I remembered. And I might have outgrown Fitzgerald, oddly enough. He's too melancholy for my state of mind.)

There was a lot of thinking and even more writing. Pages upon pages. Most of it utter nonsense but sometimes there's no need to judge. Not right now.

There was a huge bed to lie back on and listen to my breathing during the nights when sleep didn't come. A small lamp to light up the walls made of wood and outside the steady sighs of the sea.

expect the unexpected

(Incidentally:

There are some essential things I am learning to do this summer.

Like collapsing into the arms of friends as a way of saying hello, letting myself be folded into familiarity. Trusting the people I love to support me.

I am learning to speak of the future without trepidation. It seems to be the thing we mostly do these days, outline plans for when we graduate, for when we send ourselves into the world with just our wits and hearts, open wide. Over and over, universities and gap years and beyond, into marriage and children and everything that comes along with adulthood.

I am trying desperately to learn to trust. I am fighting the urge to distance myself from the people I love. Because sometimes fear is insignificant when compared to what could be without it.)

a love letter of sorts

To my city.

Because stepping off that train and breathing in your sun-tinted air, lying down on the freshly cut lawns of all your parks, bringing my tired feet to rest in the folds of your sea,

it's home.

More at home than I've ever felt.


I have broken my heart in your arms, I have cried too many tears of frustration, and yet you are the skin memory of my youth. There are few streets not blotted with moments gone, few tram routes that don't have me glancing up from my book to smile at a certain corner, a certain window, a certain someone.

And however far I end up going, I promise to come back. Every now and then. When you are at your best, during these summer months made of sunsets and cobblestones warm beneath bare feet. When one can stumble upon a young man playing a grand piano in the middle of Senat's Square, when the sunlight hits the golden domes of Uspenski just so.

july so far

A weekend at Ruisrock festival: wading knee-deep into the sea while listening to Finnish reggae, singing along to Scandinavian Music Group and pounding the dusty ground with my feet, carrying around a massive slice of watermelon and eating it during the worst heat, biking home at 2 am in that incredible warmth.

And before Ruisrock, an impromptu sleepover and brunch the morning after. A reunion. Some gossip (the nice kind) at night in a park, kisses planted onto foreheads and stolen conversations at sunset.

And now there's my first quiet evening in weeks. The house is silent and I am spent and exhausted and happy.


Kiitos Karkki kuvasta!

arriving

I'm home, finally. (Yes, finally. I was supposed to be gone for ten days but it became almost two weeks. These things happen on tall ships: they needed crew and I needed to keep on sailing.)

And now I'm sat in this empty house, tired and a bit sad and ultimately thankful to have experienced all this. Life throws us in such strange directions and sometimes following the wind is the only thing to do.

The places I've been and the things I've done during the past two weeks seem oddly detached from the rest of my life. And that is exactly what I love about sailing, this chance to leave everything regular behind. I live and breathe the ship and sea. I get to forget myself, completely and without a doubt. Sailing tall ships is one of the most beautiful things in my life and I need it desperately. It is an act of forgetting.

(Also: countless bruises, new scars, wonky tanlines on my forearms from all those rolled-up sleeves, tar and sweat and mud on every piece of clothing. Chipped nails and callused palms and I love it all.)

windy days

 

"Now is the season to know that everything you do is sacred."

Hafiz

Photos by the talented Ezgi Polat.

small cities

Yesterday was parks and a sunset by the sea. We sat on a pier, dipping our mojitos into the spring-cold sea to cool them. (Are you sensing a drink trend for this summer? Because I know I am.) 

We ate insane amounts of ice cream, joined a group of music students who cruelly hijacked our ukuleles, set off to find a bar but couldn't find anything to fit a student budget. So we sat at a tram stop watching the last trams of the night rush by on their way to bed, empty of passengers, lights turned off.

Then walked all the way from Kallio to the railway station, which admittedly is not much of a distance, except when you're tired and hungry and the city is almost asleep. Helsinki is so blissfully small sometimes, when there are distances to be covered by foot and familiar streets to get lost in.

I arrived home at sunrise, the lilacs next to our gate have never been quite as beautiful. A good night, one of the best in a very long time. I can't begin to understand this warmth, bare legs all through the night, donning a light cardigan sometime around two in the morning.

(Can you imagine how hot my room gets, with our black tiled roof and sunlight pouring in all day, every day? I sleep with my windows open and sometimes I wake up in between dreams to listen to the birds and trains.)

the first days

 Pictures from a few weeks back. (Those are post-operation prescription meds I'm showing off, don't worry. And oh goodness I look ridiculous.)

So yesterday was graduates and flowers and friends (the kind who make it easier to breathe, just by existing), hugs and tears, cigarettes and mojitos (yes, mojitos; I regret nothing), train rides at night and sitting on a rooftop.

I am now officially on summer holiday and I don't know quite what to do with myself, with this hoarse voice and these aching legs (blame it on the dancing). In two hours I will board a train that will whisk me out of town. Finally I get to read the books I want to read and sleep as much as I want to and work on my summer project, the acquisition of more freckles. Really, I am quite happy.

this is a post in which i list things to do next summer

My summer holiday begins tomorrow. And it's taken me completely by surprise. (Too many things to do, a suitcase to pack for when I go to my Dad's for the first week of summer, a skirt to sew for the Saturday graduation celebrations, a brain to wrap around this forgotten concept of freedom.)

So it's high time for a list of things to do next summer. (I plan on making myself a survival kit for summer, containing the essentials for nights out / days at the beach / whatever summer shenanigans I get up to. Always on the ready.)

(Oh, and I think I forgot a few: send as many postcards as possible, throw a garden party, drink Tequila, maybe fall for someone [but not too hard], dance whenever there's a chance for it and spend as much time near the sea as possible.)