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.) 

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.)

final days

I graduate on Saturday.


Yes.


I don't think I've ever been freer than this.

I don't think I've ever been more terrified. I am scared shitless.


These past few months have slipped by and suddenly we're on the cusp of summer. The maple outside my window has leaves of rich green. The lilies of the valley hang their white heads at the side of the road.

This spring was slow and grey and I still haven't cast off my winter skin. I'm pale and I haven't yet dipped myself in the achingly cold sea. Have I told you about the sea climbing into the lap of Helsinki?


I surprise myself over and over with this ability to bounce back. I never knew myself to be this defiant, this capable of lifting up my chin as if begging failure to throw another punch. It's fantastic. To be quite frank.




(I promise to tell you about my two days in Auschwitz and Birkenau and my single day in Krakov. I promise to write about my plans for the summer and for my gap year. I promise to write about my feelings regarding my gap year. These are the things I need to write about.)

glass in the park

thoughts on failure

I feel like I'm writing about the same things over and over again. Which is why I haven't posted much lately. But there are heavy thoughts I need to kick around a bit. So bear with me.


This spring I failed to get into university.

Right. I said it.


Obviously I don't know what you think now, but I doubt it's Oh my goodness what a pathetic little girl, probably the most witless of all the witless, why am I even reading this idiot blog, if I saw her I'd point and laugh. (If this is what you're thinking, please do not consider it necessary to inform me.)

But this is very much what I think.


I am bad at failing. For the past month or so I've been holding my breath. Waiting to wake up.
So far I haven't.


I haven't talked about not getting into uni with anyone at all. I didn't want to. Still don't. I just went out and bought the books I need to study for the entry exams of the University of Helsinki. And remade my plans. I've done the mature thing and still I feel more like a child than in ages.


My worst fear all along has been the pity. The pity, the surprise. The disappointment. I have feared the reactions of my friends and family because, and I know exactly how irrational this is, I thought they would no longer love me if I failed. So I've kept it all to myself.

Can I be completely honest with you?
I'm really lost with my life right now.
And it's terrifying.



Also, it's good. In that annoying self-help kind of way, that disgustingly cheesy rebuild-your-life, have-a-gap-year, figure-out-who-you-are-and-what-you-want-to-do way.

I'm not going to lie, not anymore: it's a constant gruelling uphill battle with a voice in the back of my head calling me names. It is no fun.


But it is necessary. It is, on that self-help level, good.

I'm drawing up a map from scratch.
No, not from scratch. From everything I know about myself. I will find my way.



After all, what I needed to hear was that the people who love me still love me.
And guess what?
They do.

(Also, a friend of mine sent me this video, in which the brilliant 

Hank Green answers questions about growing up and adulthood. 

Someone asked, How do you get past your insecurities?

Hank's answer: If you fail, I will like you more. 

Which was exactly what I needed to hear today. )

monday links (virginia woolf, finishing books, dancing ballet, racing bikes)

Picture from the Orient Express by the wonderful Hotze Eisma.

Oh goodness, it's been a while. But here they are, a compilation of my online findings. Enjoy.



A brief, beautiful piece on the room in which Virginia Woolf used to write.

Confessions of a Cycle Messenger by Jon Day. 

(Stunning. If there is one link you should click out of all of these, it's this one.) 

Ballet in slow motion. 

If you, like me, are bad at reading books all the way through, try reading Why Finish Books? by Tim Parks for reassurance. (From now on, I might even be able to admit I quit reading a book three-quarters in.)

Laura Brady on her "not a real job" job.  

Also, the third issue of the online quarterly The Junket (also known as my one true online love) is due to appear any moment. (Yes, I have been refreshing the page for a while now.) Make sure you check it out. 

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.

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.)

we sing to bless the morning

counting down

Five more days.

Five more days of textbooks and dictionaries and timelines and conjugation sheets and cramping hands and aching nerves and knuckles turned silver by the lead of a pencil. Five more days of rubber shavings on exam sheets, five more days of sitting inside while the sun shines and the snow melts. Five more days of reminding myself to breathe while the exam sheets are being handed out. Five more days of telling myself, This is it now. Pen to paper, keep track of the time, these are things you know.

Five, more, days.




(Today, history. I poured a few millennia of knowledge onto paper. The Renaissance, the French Revolution, Finland in WWII, the Industrial Revolution and its effect on women's rights, India's independence, the Holocaust and its continuing effect on world politics, with a special focus in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All in the space of six hours. I cannot remember ever being this worn out, wrung dry.) 

the first days of spring

Days are ever longer. I woke up at six today to go to an exam, and the sun was already rising. I wrote about Narcissus and the necessity of self-love for six hours behind dark red curtains that shut out the sunlight. Emerging from the exam was a rebirth, and outside the wind surrounded me like an embrace.

Two more weeks, and my exams will be over. Two more weeks of bated breath and shaking hands. I think I'll manage. I cross my fingers every now and then, for luck. 

I have reached the point where I translate everything in my head into Spanish. And I seem to find historical facts I could slip into almost any conversation. (I don't, for the sake of my friends.) 

I have found a fragile appreciation for myself. I wrote before about sometimes sneakily loving my hips, and this surprising love is extending to the tired bags beneath my eyes, to the wrinkles of my elbows, to the red indentations left behind by tights and underwear. (I have wanted a tattoo since the age of fifteen or so but I have always been stopped by the fear of committing to this body of mine, accepting that this will be my shell for the rest of my life. I think I may be nearing the time of ink.) 

Bear with me, please. I'll write something sensible after a few weeks, I hope. In the meanwhile these scatterings of thoughts comfort me like nothing else.





(Also, I wrote something about the Kony 2012 campaign on my other blog. You can check it out here, if you want to.) 

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.

hands and knees

skeleton me

(On a completely unrelated note, I might have started another blog for my rants and things. 

Go check it out if you are inclined to enjoy reading, well, rants. And things.) 

mornings

Today I had a massive exam and my hand is cramping and my head is hurting and my brain is decidedly not working.

My favourite things right now: 

yoga class first thing in the morning, 

lying on the floor of my room drawing massive time lines (history revision), 

collapsing into bed when I know there's enough time for all the unslept hours to flee my veins, 

holding hands,

going to see some real live ballet tomorrow with V.

Also I wrote some poems for my final creative writing diploma thing and I actually like some of them, 

which is new.

Augghh I'll be back maybe when my head is back on my shoulders and heart back in my chest. I feel a bit dislocated you see. (But the blogging hiatus, that's still officially going on. So. It might be a while.)

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.)

things

I wish I were far away and yet I don't.

Tomorrow is my last day of school ever and that thought alone is so spectacularly odd and wonderful that it will keep me going through the feet of snow and the darkness.

I feel like I'm stalling and not making much sense but at the same time I'm moving at such a speed my head can barely keep up with my feet. And occasionally I am happy. That's enough for me, for now.

I'm thinking thoughts that are deep and silly and writing essays until my hand hurts and my knuckles turn silver.  I have posts sitting in my drafts that are long and detailed and I might rustle up the courage to publish them soon. Soon-ish. In the meanwhile I hope you're all feeling flabbergasted every day.

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.)