round and round

due to a few reasons - the busted ankle being one of them -- i've been forced to take it a bit easier in terms of running for the past week. the ankle is in theory good to run with, the problem lies more with doing yoga -- stretching the ankle sideways still causes noticeable pain, and i reckon it won't necessarily heal faster if i keep doing normal runs with it, and as i am beginning to feel not good for having skipped the regular practice, i am really looking forward to being 100% again.


so i've been doing just short runs in addition to going to spinning. spinning is a weird form of exercise -- in theory it sounds unbelievably dull, and in many cases it is (i have to say that if it were the only sport available i would probably end up being a couch potatoe -- spinning is, probably due to its nature as group exercise, something i can only do so much.). the reason why i bother going in the first place is that it can be terribly efficient; i doubt i would be able to wear myself out so much with running as i can with spinning. and i know it  is good to vary a bit, already for the sake of avoiding any kind of stress injuries.


that said, i truly and genuinely miss my normal runs and my yoga practice.

the choices you make

the clouds were such that they made the sky seem planar. the way they floated, heavy and light at the same time, gave the pale blue behind them borders and rendered it reachable; as in if you only had an arm long enough you could have reached out and actually felt it in your fingertips like a piece of fabric or a sheet of metal. F saw the sky curving over her head like it would have been a lid of a jar she had been contained in; and for a brief second she felt claustrophobic.


the morning was bright and clear, overly so. had that morning played the role of any other morning it would have made F uncomfortable; but today, as the nauseating brightness and cruel clarity were the characteristics of this specific one, they seemed to be very much in place. this was, after all, the morning, the defining one, a morning like no other; before this A.M. she had never been like she would be by the time the clock would strike noon. 


F made her way through the still sluggish town, slowly but unable to completely stop the rhythm of her steps. every corner, every crack, all the materials of the surfaces around her seemed to have much more detail than they normally did. or maybe she just paid more attention, tried to grasp the last moments as her old self as fully as she was able to before she would leave it behind for good. would the pavement feel the same under her feet in the afternoon as it did now? would the steepness of the stairs leading up to the museum she so liked spending time in burn in her legs in the same way? and how about the air, would it smell the same, would the feel of last night's rain on her skin still be her favourite thing in the world?


it was impossible to know; so F tried to remember it all, seal every single notion within her memory so that when she would emerge as the new her, she would have them to remind her of how she once was. she wouldn't be the same anymore, of course not, but maybe she could have this --  the memory traces to tie her into the reality that once was so that she wouldn't drift off to nothingness.


and at the same time F knew that it was in vain, all her effort to store the last fleeting moments of her current reality. she may have refused to admit it but she was very well aware that memories didn't exist in a container outside herself; and at the moment she would leave her old self behind she would do so to the perception of her past as well, and everything she would remember as the new F would be seen through the eyes of her. then this -- all of this -- would be gone.


and the only thing that would stop her from floating into space would be the planar sky cast over her head; and as she reached for the handle to open the door to the awaiting P.M. all she could do was to hope that it would be enough.

knock on wood

it wasn't a long time ago when i wrote something about the value of being healthy and thus able to run. i got a very good reminder of this as i managed to sprain my ankle last week; nothing too bad but enough to keep me from running and practicing ashtanga for a few days. it is horrible to be forced to stay still; luckily i was able to go to spinning so i didn't completely lose my mind, but being deprived of my two favourite forms of exercise is anything but fun.


today i ventured out again and was more than happy to find out that the ankle is good enough to run with. so back to normal, thank heavens.

what now?

adapt, adjust, get used to, acclimate --the great strength of our species that allows us to fit in to a new set of circumstances so as to survive and even prosper. this ability applies to both physical and mental settings and chances; and it makes it possible to continue existing in conditions you wouldn't have had they been such from the beginning.


the key is the subtlety of the change. a full-blown ice age tomorrow and most of us are as good as dead; but a gradual cooling of the climate and we adjust. a husband beats his wife to a pulp and the odds are she is gone the next day; but a slow shift from name-calling to pushing around and from there to the eventual hit and it so much more difficult to leave. 


we grow into out surroundings in a way so seamless it sometimes makes me wonder how much of our lives are due to what we chose and how much of what we ended up with.  i understand fully well that you can't judge things constantly, and that you have to give that time every now and then to see how the big picture develops in order to make sound decisions. but where does the line go? how often would it be a good idea to step out of yourself and honestly evaluate what the deal is and what is going on? to ask yourself if what you have is what you wanted and if it is, how can you keep it so and support it so that it won't slowly slide away, how can you appreciate what you have and not to start to take it for granted just because you grew into it; and if what you have is not exactly what you would prefer, truthfully consider what needs to be done in order to get back on track again. 


but where's the difference between trying hard and hitting your head into a wall?


wherever the line may be, it of course requires some courage to recognize it -- firstly to do the necessary evaluation and secondly to have the balls to make the required changes. it is especially so as the final aspect of the adaptability we possess is that it glues us quite tightly to the existing situation; and to break free from that can sometimes be quite distressing, even frighting -- i guess the human nature is often such that it is easier to stick with the slightly uncomfortable familiarity than venture out to the complete unknown.


but if you don't do it you only have yourself to blame.

love/ hate relationship

people who know me in real life know that most of the time i'm not a huge fan of living in finland. even if i haven't lived abroad that much - once in budapest and twice in prague, in total about three years -- i have found it to be quite fitting for me and absolutely prefer to do so in the somewhat near future as well. there are several reasons for me wanting to live my life in a country other than the one i was born into, one of the biggest ones being "why not" -- i am still young, i don't have anyone i would have to take care of nor i am planning to have, and as i find the experience of living somewhere else so wonderful and enriching on many levels i would quite frankly be a bit silly not to do it again.


that is not to say that i don't like finland, or appreciate it. there is the very worn out saying in finnish that states that being born into finland is like having won the lottery (the fact that this saying exists really only in the mouths of the finnish speakers might tell something about its validity, though) and in a way this is true -- there are many things which are fantastic and work really well, and it sometimes annoys me that people don't really understand how well we have it here. but there are the downsides as well, like everywhere else of course --  the climate, the national psyche and mentality (of which i myself am sadly a good example of), the suffocating amount of rules and regulations and limits, the taxation, things like that; enough so that the uncertainty and some other possible difficulties that can be the by-products of packing your bags and finding your place somewhere else aren't enough to deter me from doing so.


but my point in this all that there are times when i absolutely adore this country, and certainly there has been and will be times when i miss it all. one of these moments i experienced today as i was doing my long run in the small town (or rather in the surroundings of it) where my parents live -- i got to run through forests and open fields in the clean, beautiful nature, the warmth of the summer on my face, in a complete peace with very little to no traffic or even other people.


so even if i don't want to live here at this point of my life, i do love this country; how could i not, at least on a day like this.

tgif

i've felt a bit tired lately, both physically and mentally. nothing i couldn't deal with or would be somehow worried about; just in a need of a small break, perhaps. 


there is so much going on even when there is really nothing going on; a varying amount of responsibilities, expectations, tasks, commitments -- the things you have to do, should do and on top of those, the things you want to do. so many words, impulses, things demanding your attention combined with only so much capacity to handle it -- it is not any wonder, then, that every now and then one gets a bit worn out.


it helps to try to concentrate on things you like doing, and thinking about something you are looking forward to -- it's a little bit like throwing an anchor to some point in the future and then just reeling yourself to it. a holiday, say. or a sabbatical.


or even the bloody weekend.

not so

there are moments in life that can only be categorized as defining. they mold you, shift your course, erase the values and beliefs you had and replace them with new ones. these moments bulldoze over what you thought was real and leave behind a scenery completely altered; like a landmark or an iconic building that is taken down remakes the face of a city so do these moments remake your present and everything that will follow. after a moment like that your life is not what it was a second before, and the completeness of the change can make it difficult to comprehend that it has indeed taken place; and at the same time you know that there is no going back, and whether you wanted the new situation or not doesn't make any difference at all.


after he had regained consciousness it hadn't taken very long for B to understand, even in his dazed state of mind,  that what he was experiencing  would -- well, already had -- erased his life as he had known it so far. the realization that nothing would ever again be or feel like it had before had been so fast and so clear, so unarguably final that it had felt like a fist to the stomach -- in one second everything he had and all that he was had been overwritten with a new and frightening reality.


the nausea he felt was so strong it filled most of his conscious mind and in a way he was grateful for that; for when it would pass, room for other thoughts would be freed and the horrible guilt he already felt in his every cell would blow into the extent it rightfully deserved.  
he sat there, the world spinning around him with a speed much faster he would have cared for. the left side of his face felt wet and he wondered with surprisingly faint an interest if he had threw up on himself; but when he carefully touched his cheek and then observed his fingers B saw that the substance on them was blood. in the darkness it looked almost black.


it was difficult to focus his eyes so he gave up and allowed the world around him to blur together with his grasp of time and place. the pulse of the lights of the emergency vehicles, reflecting from the wet asphalt, seemed like a mock imitation of the strobe lights of the night club just some tens of minutes ago; but the shouts and noises surrounding him had no resemblance to the beat of the music he and J had been consumed in. they were too harsh, too real and too loud in a way that made it impossible to ignore them; and yet they weren't enough to drown the voices B heard in his head.


J's, hesitant and unsure; the look in J's eyes worried and the line of his shoulders tense and rigid.


his own, gleeful and certain, backed up by the stimulants circulating in his system. 


it's ok, trust me, i've done this before...


...we will be fine


even with his glazed vision B saw that J, or rather what was left of him under the blanket one of the paramedics had discreetly pulled over his body, was most definitely not fine. 

the bottom line

after H had left on that cold winter evening, together with the sound of the door slamming shut S had expected a surge of relief. he had anticipated an intoxicating rush of freedom to wash over him, his lungs to have room to breathe again as the heavy burden of expectations was lifted from him -- that he no longer had to feel that he was being held accountable for his actions for reasons he couldn't agree with.

to his genuine surprise, he felt no such thing.

this was because - and it would have been obvious to any outside observer - such a pressure had never been placed on him by H; the quiet and calm man had never expected anything nor made claims of any kind. the part S had thought he had been forced to play had not been presented to him by H, nor their relationship, but by his own folly; it was S who had put the stress and the endless list of expectations on himself. this was partly due to the fact that he more or less assumed that that was how relationships worked and partly because he didn't have a clue as to how they actually did.

so when H hadn't come back after that evening, and the reality - that he wouldn't - started to dawn on him, S felt, to both his surprise and shock, not relief but a strong sense of loss, and also - which was probably much more difficult for him to process and accept - a feeling of dread, of finality; that a chance had been given and he had indeed fucked it up. as intelligent as he may had been, this was something he couldn't quite comprehend - how was it that when something that had put such a strain on him was now apparently over, he wasn't able to rejoice? how was it even possible that when that strange, foreign object in his space, a one he had not known how to deal with - the intimate, emotional relationship with H - that had suffocated him so and driven him almost mad was gone, he still felt he couldn't breathe?

it was upsetting not only because the distress was not gone but because it was possibly even stronger. it also had a different, undefined tone in it; his anxiety now held a twinge of guilt, and above all, remorse; a feeling he really wasn't accustomed to at all. therefore, S concluded to his great annoyance and disbelief, his deduction as to the reason for his restless state during the recent past had, no doubt, been wrong.

and that was disturbing.

seventh day

usually the things that end up in this blog are due to running. today, however, i didn't run -- i've been told that it is good to take a day off every now and then, and that's what i did today. 


i have to say that it is extremely difficult for me. of course i understand that rest is important too, and i have suffered my share of stress injuries to know that this is not merely a hypothesis; and still i often find myself extending the periods between the days off, or tricking myself with thinking that i'll just do a short run or go to spinning instead -- that is a day off from running, after all. 


on the other hand, why should i take days off if i don't feel tired? this is the question i admit i sometimes have difficulties in answering to. especially as not running always casts a shadow on the rest of the day; on the days i don't run it basically feels i never wake up at all and my general view on things is affected by this as well. 


oh well, good thing there's tomorrow. and ashtanga yoga in the evening.


the picture below was taken yesterday as i was doing the second long run of the week. it is from seurasaari, a place i recently re-discovered and went nuts about. it is a fantastic place to run in, highly recommended even if during the weekends the amount of (japanese) tourists can sometimes be overwhelming.

sounds familiar

"The Hour of the Wolf is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The Hour of the Wolf is also the hour when most children are born."

Ingmar Bergman, Hour of the Wolf, 1968

show must go on

it was not so that the dreams would have been better or even more interesting than the reality. on the contrary, most of the time the images his brain painted were what you could only categorize as dull. sometimes his dreams were frightening and on a few occasions -- though these types of dreams had been recently increasing in number -- they caused anxiety that more often than not remained with him throughout the day. it was therefore obvious that it wasn't an escape to some magical wonderland that he yearned for; not a release from the grip of reality for the sake of bliss or a cheap rush provided by the unfathomable chemical processes in the organic matter that was the source of his being.


instead, the reason for the gradually growing number of hours he spent asleep was that when he slept, whenever he dreamed -- it was also when his life was his, his feelings were his own and everything that followed thus more genuine than anything he experienced in his so -called real life. even his control or the lack of it felt real, not fabricated. he didn't have to worry about things irrelevant to him, and he wasn't forced to take interest in things just because he should, or was expected to. so what did it matter if the events themselves weren't that interesting or if they even were unpleasant at times; what was important was that it was him experiencing them.


in his dreams everything that happened happened to him, not to the someone he had been made out to be. his fears and joys and uncertainties were his own and not of the man in the life of whom he existed when in the world of the awake. when he slept his hands still found the curve of K's back and their marriage hadn't been reduced to list of things he did in an unsatisfying way; when he dreamed the essence of what had once been the most important relationship of his life hadn't been shrank down to the annoyed but patient explanation of how the way he did the dishes was wrong.


he had realized the difference between the two worlds quite a while ago now. at first the notion had been passing and he hadn't paid much attention to it, managing to dismiss it with a shrug of his shoulders. but with time, as how he had ended up being slowly drifted further and further from what was really him, his acknowledgement of the situation started to bother him with a voice so loud it was impossible to mute down. that was about the time when he had started to add to his hours of sleep -- had it been out of fear of losing himself completely or because the man he was when awake was so foreign to him that it exhausted him, he couldn't tell.


he slept because in his dreams he was still him; the world in which only he existed was the only one where he still did.

sunday bloody sunday

to keep things real i have to confess that running is not always that great. take sunday for example -- i don't remember the last time running would have sucked so bad. granted, it was mostly due to weather; about ten degrees, wind and rain and yours truly seriously under equipped in a t-shirt and a very thin jacket, combined with low energy levels and a groggy head due to sleeping too much resulted in a miserable run that i couldn't wait to end. as i ran i tried to be zen about it and focus on the movement instead of the lousy conditions and the general annoyance i felt  towards the world; this helped maybe a little bit but if i said that by the end of that run i felt good i would be lying.

luckily today was the exact opposite. clear skies, bright sunlight, ease of movement and generally just a good feeling about it all results in a much happier me; a good place to start the week.