you said something

friends are everywhere but I'm always leaving

[kraa]

frou frou foxes

the same kind of confusion and then undetectable/uncomfortable convulsions, just like there were the night it was too cold to survive, lying next to no-one; the bear rode a motorcycle around a circus ring in Minsk, they opened a KFC right below a soviet relief, and built a medieval village to where there never was one. my bones are frozen there is no core.

how does one survive these vicious circles; how does one master a new language without a change of thought; how does the summertime end before it begins; how are we getting so very old; why did my eyes burst in a dream? 

[kraa]

sun

Tuscany was gorgeous, lethally hot and so vast it was impossible to see any end to it, any end to anything. The horizon simply wasn’t there, and just when you were about to suffocate from all the air, you could escape into the narrow pathways between buildings, older than what would be reasonably comprehensible, with only fragile threads of light seeping through the window shutters, the darkness keeping you safe, carrying you when you couldn’t walk any longer.

You could never paint the setting sun the way I saw it. I will not remember anything.

[kraa]

sodankylä

You would not be able to meet me halfway, there’s not enough room between us for any approaching to happen. There’s a sheet of paper and there are scissors and then, a rock.

Helsinki is the second northernmost capital on the planet, yet somehow people refuse to understand it will always get dark and it will always get cold; you can’t fill 365 days with just three months’ worth of summer; it is a losing game. On the other hand there are the surreal night-days and day-nights when none of the normal applies and we are filled to the brim with a lightness that carries us again and again.

I flew to Lapland and took a train back. In between arriving and departing I saw the midnight sun, slept through several movies and then again outside, by the river, on a bench, drank beer and was quite content with the way things were and the way I was.

It will always get cold and it will always get dark; you are such light.

[kraa]

Sketches for my sweetheart the drunk

The 20th anniversary of Jeff Buckley’s drowning. We commemorate such random dates. The most distressing bit about this particular memorial day is that I can actually recall the news of Buckley gone missing, I was old enough already. 

(On a related note I think Everybody Here Wants You is one of the coolest love songs ever, and even cooler is the way Joan responds to Buckley in her Eternal Flame.)

My dear grandmother died in the spring of my graduation. I only remember the funeral, not the day I finally got to wear the white hat. I dated a significantly older person at the time, he played saxophone at the party, I think someone cried and everyone else just felt really awkward about it all. I didn’t have anyone to celebrate with.

This time of the year used to mark new beginnings, a transition from the third year to the fourth, the start of A Summer. Nowadays there are meetings scheduled all the way to October and beyond.

“Just in case you never knew I can't be the lighter Of your eternal flame”

[kraa]

friday

For a quarter of a person it is quite challenging to show up anywhere alone without having someone already there, without being able to casually latch yourself onto that someone. Friday.

Equally challenging is to drink more than two beers without an imminent urge to die of embarrassment the following morning regardless of any actions taken or, more likely, not-taken on that occasion. 

(How very unlikely that I would matter enough for people to pay enough attention to anything I have said, done, been, and yet again, impossible to believe they wouldn’t find me as utterly annoying as I do. I wouldn’t hang out with myself if I had a choice, the others are way more interesting.)

On an unrelated note: I need it to be warmer again, I’m done with these half-weathers.

[kraa]

97N

On any given night on any given night bus there are, on average, 2,78 insane people, this one’s no exception. The 97N (the N probably stands for something other than night) from Kontula to the Central Railway Station is being inspected by a spectacularly scruffy person with a plastic bag full of empty bottles and a broom, and the 1,78 others are cheering enthusiastically.

A premonition of old age; suddenly we count everything and time in particular in tens. Ten years ago I was a regular on this bus and now I don’t seem to have any recollections of a time that would have gone by since the last ride. I remember you, too, but only from ten years ago. Where were you yesterday?

Insane person exits and for a while we’re off balance but then a new one comes along and it’s all good. I’m very grateful for my green hoodie; I’m sort-of-invisible and you can imagine special effects on me. What would you like me to be that I’m not?

There are two cheery girls on the street outside our local hangout, I’m only half-embarrassed to ask for a cigarette like I used to do, it makes my head light and the lights up the hill look brighter and bigger and leave no room for comfort, I need to take a longer route home to stop myself from flying.

I don’t feel like sleeping at all.

[kraa]

”What I sometimes mistake for ecstasy is simply the absence of grief.”

Sarah Kane, Crave

[kraa]

Naples

They’re talking about replacing the old yellow streetlights in Rome with fluorescent-blue energy-efficiency. In Naples it’s all still gritty and nothing’s too efficient, not apart from the beer distribution. I would like to be drunk but climbing the Mt.Vesuvius is equally exhilarating: it, too, is dangerous.  

The youngsters are all dressed in black and I don’t feel old, I’ve got blue hair. 

We find a bench and drink our wines looking at all the beautiful people gathering around us, happy and excited and there’s something reminiscent of a past there, our past. 

Bars are bookshops and bookshops are bars, and everyone’s out on the streets.

It’s all incandescent.

[kraa]

156. Why is the sky blue? -A fair enough question, and one I have learned the answer to several times. Yet every time I try to explain it to someone or remember it to myself, it eludes me. Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal. 157. The part I do remember: that the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. As one optics journal puts it, "The color of any planetary atmosphere viewed against the black of space and illuminated by a sunlike star will also be blue." In which case blue is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire.

Maggie Nelson, Bluets

[kraa]

Stockholm

A time fold; I have a tendency of forgetting about myself and about others. I need to be reminded to be me.

The first time ever I was not afraid on a boat. The first time in years I was so out of it but happy. Just happy.

Stockholm has never been particularly important; it still isn’t, but how lucky that we have it.

[kraa]

trentham gardens

I was sick in Barlaston.

When I was little I was terrified of throwing up, so I stopped doing so at the age of twelve. I remember the last time I had to give in to the illness and decided that it was too much and I shouldn’t have to do it again. I didn’t, for 22 years I was able to hold back, every and all the time.

I grew up, the fear of throwing up grew too, and there was a point when I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to ride the tube or go to the cinema, sit in a classroom, meet people, sleep or feel good about anything at all. I was thoroughly crippled.

Helsinki - Machester - Stoke-on-Trent - Barlaston

It was yet another hotel room, the smell of disinfectants overpowering, the sink conveniently outside the bathroom, a warning sign asking people to close the doors while showering to avoid setting off the fire alarm, and the usual suspicious stain patterns on the carpet. I was so tired I didn’t mind the premier inn bed.

And then I was so sick I eventually threw up and there was something exhilarating about it, I survived, I felt better than I thought possible. I might never eat again but I am healed.

The path around the pond was closed so I turned back and in the lobby I had to hit the machine to get a bag of crisps to leave unopened.

[kraa]

putney

It’s so much like the ex for whom you still feel a melancholy fondness. Someone used to be all and everything and yours and you no longer have any claims but still can’t quite shake that sense of entitlement. London.

Every shade of early spring, months ahead of the second northernmost capital, so gorgeous it’s hard to watch. Even the tube’s soothing, lulling you to a comforting half-space that doesn’t exist beyond the gap.

Every trip since the first that mattered has eventually taken me to South Bank. I love the river and the concrete, even the people, there’s no fear of missing out on anything as it’s all there even when nothing is.

I stayed with extraordinary friends, people whose intellect and kindness elevate without any pretense. I fell asleep listening to the turning of just a few more pages, a soft conversation, candles burning out leading the way to the deepest dream in a long-long while.

It could all be me, mine.

[kraa]

ikebana

I’ve discovered the peace of arranging flowers.

Outside our window large blue-and-white ships arrive and depart, at 10am and again at 5pm, reminding me twice a day that this needs to be a choice. In a dream I was in my pyjamas in New York.

A hundred kilometres outside of Helsinki there's a large swamp that no-one has had the need to drain. In January everything looks extraterrestrial with the sun sweeping the frozen terrain and tiny branches piercing the shadow-and-white; the air’s easy to breath, though.

Yet somehow it still is difficult to see the things that are near for what they are.

[kraa]

aguille du midi

There’s been a lot of middle-class, middle-aged, middle-of-the-road stuff taking place lately. Maybe things are the way they are because of the current conditions, a regular job and a normal home, or maybe it is always a choice and this is the real me when I stop trying. 

In Chamonix, France for the New Year, everything very pleasant and civilized. Me and a thousand others losing breath up the Mont Blanc in a gorgeously lethal sunshine, eternal blue expanding beneath our feet, marveling the magnitude of the planet. On the way back the same people smelled horrible leaning against each other in a rocking cable car, yesterday’s onion soups and all kinds of gastrointestinal systems violently visible. 

Things escalated. 

I paraglided off a mountain, flew a thousand meters towards the ground and loved it. It was surprisingly intuitive running off a cliff. My hands and legs and voice shook, not because of fear, but because I felt like I had crossed over to another side, and the me that had been stuck was now loose again. 

[kraa]

silver cloud

Chicago was something new. I arrived late, took the blue CTA line from O’Hare towards the Loop and tried to stay awake.

It was surprisingly difficult to find the right street (East Ohio), I ended up asking a lot of people and felt surprisingly embarrassed and alone. These people are not San Francisco and they are not Sunnyvale, and I wish there were still traces of London left in me to keep me afloat.

America after the fall, paintings of the great depression took me to the Chicago Art Institute and I loved it, Nighthawks seen through sharp migraine auras and the anishkapoorian reflection of everyone else around but you. This is how a real city operates; alienates and glorifies while making you miserably aware of the limits of your being.

I slept in a dorm with three strangers.

[kraa]

heim

Did I know I’d be back home and that there eventually would be a Saturday night with nothing to do and that I would be undecided as to whether or not to panic, and then I would just sleep? I don’t think I did.

It’s been a few months since I’ve been back.

It’s been several years since I’ve been back.

[kraa]

harvest

I was already quite happy when I climbed up the hill to the Masonic to see John Grant and Andrew Bird. These are the end of days.

The gigs were quite amazing. I smiled throughout.

I think there’s something poetic about it, Andrew Bird playing Harvest as an encore - right before I left home I spent days obsessing about Harvest Moon. My dad brought the LP back from California when he was young. 

I have a funny feeling I’ve grown up to be very much like my parents, and I’m not sure I’m all that upset about it.

old man look at my life I’m a lot like you