six months

Six months of complete silence. My apologies for that.

Six months, which were somewhat unintentional and somewhat completely intended.

I don't really know what happened and I don't really know what's happening right now, all I know is that I've missed this, so much, and the words have been bottled up for long enough, building up in the bones of my fingers.

So much has happened, you wouldn't even believe me if I told you. I've moved out into this ridiculously perfect apartment (like something out of an Astrid Lindgren book, something that should not exist so close to the centre of Helsinki, but somehow does, and somehow here I am), and I am living alone, and I'm studying at a university, and it's not what I had planned but it's somehow pretty darn good either way.

(And, I won't say more than this, and I don't want to jinx anything, so touch wood, but there's a possibility of a place beginning with L and ending with an n. And every time I think about it I feel like puking and laughing out loud, simultaneously.)

I don't know if anyone will be reading this, I don't know what I'm going to do about this whole blogging thing, but I needed to say something, so here I am, ending this radio silence. I hope you are all well, and I hope the past six months have treated you with all the kindness you deserve.

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

thoughts on the wind

(I wouldn't mind it right now if someone whisked me off my feet and took me someplace by an ocean.) 

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






John Galsworthy: Indian Summer of a Forsyte 

do not look for me

Maybe one day I'll stop torturing myself with pictures of the sea, but that day is not today. 

(The white curtains in my room look like sails sometimes when they billow in the breeze and
I find myself coiling things like the cord of the hoover just to do something familiar with my hands.)

Those who fear the border
do not know they are walking on the sea. 




Luis Benitez, from The Pearl Fisherman