the first day of summer

the day that i, like many (most) of the modern day white collar workers spend most of the year looking forward is finally upon me -- the day before summer holiday. it is a fantastic day which mainly consists of cleaning your desk and setting up auto-reply (even if today i actually have to finish some work as well) and is often characterized by a strange feeling of ease and lightness.


i try not not think how sad it is that i work for eleven months and get one off -- maybe i'll think about that once the holiday is over.


so tomorrow i will fly off to sicily, where i will be spending the next three and a half weeks. i have every intention to keep up with my running and ashtanga practice; for me, holiday has never really been something to be considered as a break from exercise. are you kidding me, that's when you have the time to enjoy it better than normally! 


other things i'm looking forward experiencing during my one month of freedom are first and foremost taking it easy, relaxing, writing my scribbles, taking pictures, spending time with the man that i love, spending time by myself, experiencing a new place and culture very different to helsinki, eating some good sicilian food, drinking some nice sicilian wine, swimming in the sea warmer in temperature than the icy baltic -- enjoying myself obscene amounts, basically.


because that's what holidays are for.

i am

i sometimes wonder -- how would it be like to be something i am not? i don't mean that i would necessarily want to be somehow different, or that i would want to be someone else (or rather the image i have of someone else), but just for the sake of curiosity. say, for example -- if i got to spend a day as an extrovert, how would that feel? not as me with the occasional social flow but as someone who is at ease around people, always, and doesn't think of it as anything out of the ordinary. how would that be? would i still be me? 


i guess not -- i reckon all the goods and bads of our personalities, each and every aspect of them -- it's the combination of these things that makes us what we are. together, of course, with the physical representation; i will always be a short white female of this age and of these external attributes, of this nationality (not that i necessarily deem that very important but i'm sure it has made some kind of mark on me as well) and have the personality that i have. i simply cannot rid myself of these facts; sure, i can train my mind and body and try to improve my personality, behave better and so on -- but what i am, and how i am, is something i will always be.


i will never know how it is to be different from what i am; and no one will ever know how exactly it is to be me. this is a fascinating thought, and a bit overwhelming as well-- even though i share my existence and reality with the people around me, there still always is something that remains completely hidden. the personal experience of an individual; seven billion of them all around you. and even more, they are in constant movement, a never-ending dynamic process that ends (or drastically changes) only after we die.


and eventually one is forced to ask -- where does it come from, then? why exactly am i the way i am; where, in fact, did this all come from? what is the core of self, and why was it handed to me like this, in this shape and form precisely? sure, your surroundings have their share on it, as do the experiences in life you have gone through. but that's not all there is to it, of course not -- a newborn has a personality even when blank of any experience outside the womb; how could we then be merely the products of our environment?


and to be honest i haven't a clue where the self comes from, or why it is the way it is. even the more so when it at times seems that i still haven't figured even myself out entirely; i have this identity, i am like this, but every now and then new sides pop up or i do things i don't know the reasons behind. at times i feel totally lost with myself; and yet it is all i have to work with. but i guess, in this case like in many others, the journey is much more important than the destination. 

die trying

i never had a dream profession. or any other goal for that matter to be something or have something -- children, for example, or be rich, or travel around the world or whatever it is that people want. which is not to say that i wouldn't be ambitious or put my heart into what i am doing; it's just that i have never really seen myself in any situation or position i have not yet been in. of course i have plans, and dreams and hopes like everybody else; of course i want certain things to happen. but the feeling of having or achieving something after which i could say that now i am content, i have met my dream, and everything else will follow - that feeling is foreign to me.

i became an architect mainly because i couldn't think of anything else i would like to do; but the decision to go for it  i made only few months before the time to apply for universities came. and i guess when i studied i felt quite passionate about it, and truly thought that it was a good choice and a correct one for me; but even then, as i think back about it now, being an architect wasn't something i saw myself in. and now, as time passes, this feeling of detachment doesn't; and i have to seriously entertain the possibility that i am not perhaps doing what i should be doing.

i suppose it comes down to that i don't know what i really want; but it starts to be rather obvious that i am not there yet. i don't know if i ever will be, to be honest; i seem to have the type of personality that i sometimes wonder whether it is in the realms of possibility for me to feel completely content.

but that shouldn't mean that i should stop trying, now does it?

what does it say about you

some people sleep curled in a ball, in a position that echoes the nine months predating our birth. it is said to convey a personality of emotional, artistic and sensitive nature; perhaps these types of people still hold some kind of connection to our origins, whatever they may be. a starfish sleeps on his or her back, arms up around the pillow, open to the world and willing to bear the burden of listening and helping others. that's why they make good friends to anyone who is wise enough to notice them from the corner of the room -- starfish sleepers don't like being the center of attention. people sleeping on their stomachs, head turned to one side, are said to be freefallers -- so vital, so brash, so gregarious but also characterized by lack of tolerance towards extreme situations and impatience for criticism. these extroverts sleep as they live -- embrace it, arms open, ready for everything.


perhaps these patterns tell something about the sleeper's personality; perhaps not. if they did, what would it mean then if a person slept like life would have left the body? 


the first time K woke up in the night and saw J sleeping next to him he had, for a short, horrible second thought she was dead; so still and rigid her body had seemed. she slept on her back, always on her back; her long, thin arms resting on her sides, lightly touching the body, palms against the sheet. her legs were unbent, in harmony with the straightness that started from the very top of her head -- K expected, had he had the means to measure it, that the line her body created was in a perfect  90 degree angle with the edge of the mattress. her head was only slightly elevated due to the low pillow she liked to use, and in the dark, silent room it was next to impossible to see the rising and lowering of her flat chest. eventually you were able to see something that could have been the even rhythm of breathing, but at that point you couldn't be sure anymore whether you actually did see it or if it was just your tired eyes playing tricks on you.


no matter how long K stayed up looking at her, on that first night and on the many nights that followed, fighting the urge to fall asleep, she never moved. not even once. and she always, always woke up before him; K never saw her in that sleeping position in the early light of morning or the way she woke up; if she fidgeted or just plainly opened her eyes and breathed life into her being. he had tried, a few times, to stay up all night just to see if she changed positions or to witness the act of waking up; but like a spell cast on him he always fell asleep, sometimes just for a few minutes; but always for a time long enough so that the next time he opened his eyes, J was awake too and the morbid aura on her had vanished.


he once said to her, "you always sleep in the same position, you know."


she looked at him with her pale gray eyes. "do i?" there was no genuine interest in her voice; it was like the statement he had just made would have been something very obvious to her and that it slightly irritated her that he would have brought it up.


"it's weird. nobody sleeps always in the same position." suddenly this was very important for him; he needed her to say that she didn't.  that she too was a starfish, or a freefaller, or occasionally slept curled in a fetal position. that she too had something he could grasp.


"you just said i do." the even tone of her voice didn't waver.


K didn't know what to say anymore.


that evening he left.

members only

i had such a fantastic long run this morning that i feel like i'm going to burst if i don't get to share it with  someone. too bad that running, especially long-distance running, is not very sexy a sport in the sense that there is not much going on and thus not much to share -- you just run, and that's about it.


and that's also the great thing about it. there was no drama, no sudden turns of events and the biggest personal difficulty i probably came across was when my phone ran out of battery and i couldn't listen to music anymore. i didn't even achieve anything tactile or get anywhere. i just ran, in the slot of existence and time created just for me, and it felt easy and light and i didn't have to think about anything else than putting a foot in front of another. the world around me didn't interfere with me but instead provided a beautiful background for the wonderful two and a half hours i was separated from the most of it.


so instead of even trying to describe why i had a good run or how it felt i'll just have you know that i did. anyone who has ever had one knows what i mean and to the ones who haven't i wouldn't be able to explain it, anyway.

quote of the day

by AARON FREEMAN:

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

mind over matter over mind

i was supposed to take a day off from running today, but as i had some trouble sleeping i went for a short run instead (which is basically the same thing). it was a lovely morning if a bit chilly -- the summer seems to have failed to show up this year -- and the overall feeling i had afterwards was pretty good. i didn't feel tired in any way, which is interesting because yesterday morning i did, hence the decision to have a day off. but today -- nothing.  


and this is not the first time. in fact the same kind of situation has taken place so many times that  it would almost seem that there is no apparent correlation between how much i exercise and how much i'm feeling it -- there can be weeks when it's a bit of a struggle to do anything at all and there can be weeks where the amount of exercise when measured in hours tops 15. logic much? and no, the first mentioned type of week doesn't necessarily follow the latter.


this has led me to the conclusion that it is, at least partly, entirely different things affecting the overall feeling. of course the limits of one's physique is a part of it, but it's not all; i would say that at least equally if not even more important is how you feel inside your head. human mind is an amazing thing, really, and its ways can sometimes be a bit confusing. your mind can make your ill and your mind can make you achieve remarkable things; the difficulty there is that your mind as it may be, you don't always have a complete control or even comprehension over it. or this is at least how it is with me, i don't know about the rest.


but like everything, i believe the mind and your access to it and thus a better understanding of it can be trained like any other aspect of yourself. it might take a bit more time and a bit more focus than slipping the sneakers on and heading to your daily run, but it surely can be done. and more importantly, these two -- your physique and your mind  -- can be trained hand in hand so that they work as access points to one another and back each other up. sound mind in a sound body, right?

buried alive

they build up, don't they. things. creep up on you slowly, unnoticeable and gradual, like the soft ring around your waist that did not use to be there or the lines on your face that are deeper than before. small things, ones you thought to be irrelevant and yourself who you thought to be able to deal with them; back in the day when these things didn't matter all that much these were still plausible options. or maybe it was in fact so that other things, good things, mattered more, and you didn't pay attention to these things that now eat your sanity. 


until they started to build up and broke the surface of mattering, of making a difference and of bearing relevance. emerged like the towers of atlantis would rise from the sea a million years from now; unapologetic, impossible to ignore.


monday mornings, the continuous rain, crumbs on the floor, the smell of her perfume that you never liked. the same route you take to get to work, the sound of the brakes of your car when you slow down to the crossroads to give way to the girls who look younger and younger every year. the feeling of vague panic that you experience more and more often not knowing entirely why; but it could have something to do with the fact that you are growing older and nothing really seems to work out the way you planned it to. suddenly you miss the hissing sound of the gas stove more than you thought possible, and at the same time you know that this is only because your stove is electric now.


and you honestly don't know what to do with this sediment of things that has grown into a size of a mountain, and that is maybe the worst about it all. gradual as it may had been, you still felt it, the built-up of things. you sensed it when you realized your patience had started to wear thin and was quite certain of it when the reflection in the mirror no longer felt like your own; and yet you did nothing. you could have, perhaps, stopped it -- shoveled some of it away, made some space, release some of the burden before the mass of it became too heavy to move. but you did none of that, partly because you stopped looking into the eyes of the person staring at you from the mirror and partly because you lacked the courage to even try. 


and now you don't have the strength anymore; the build-up of things has grown taller than your head and sealed you inside itself. so you go on as you have, day after day after day, because it's the only thing for you to do. and things continue building up, and you hope and fear for the day when you won't be able to remember how the gas stove sounded like.

click

i did my ashtanga practice yesterday. i had a bit of a break due to reasons beyond my control, some ten days or so -- enough to make me feel stiff as a stick and swear to myself that if it is somehow in my power i will not drop the regular practice ever again. this was now my third practice after the break and i start to feel rather normal -- can't even begin to describe how good it is for me to be back in the routine again.


anyway, towards the end of the series i understood one difficult an asana in a new way; realized a certain kind of movement, a minimal use of strength in a way i had not understood before. nothing major but a very revealing one, an eye-opener if you will. it felt somewhat insignificant at the moment but as i was thinking about it this morning when running it started to gain more weight. 


the clicking of that asana, a simple moment of realization after which i had a whole new understanding of not only the asana itself but also how my physique works -- and that i couldn't have arrived to this realization any sooner or in any other way, that it could have happened only after the countless times i had done that asana before, not really understanding it, no matter whether i thought i did or not --  wouldn't it be just fantastic to have that kind of epiphany about your life?


and in a way, silly as it may sound, i now have a little bit more faith that the click will come. and it cannot come any sooner than it will; and that the timing of that moment is not necessarily in my control. the only thing for me to do is to keep up with the practice, in this case living -- doing things, trying stuff, taking things as they are; and above all, keeping an open mind.

on the other hand

it could have been so that the cause of his lack of interest towards practically everything was the weight of the years on his shoulders; that the reasons for his cynicism and passive aggressiveness were something that he no longer had any power over. it was very well possible that love songs and enthusiasm of the young irritated him only because he wasn't able to recognize the source of them in himself anymore, couldn't even remember how it had felt when he had, and that the void left behind was now strong enough to dull his senses and turn everything into a gray mass of indifference.



he got up in the morning because he ran out of sleep, ate because he had to, worked because it was what was expected of him. occasionally he met a person he had considered a friend what felt like a lifetime ago, but those kind of interactions were fewer and fewer in number -- partly because he found them exhausting and tedious and partly because his company was not what it had used to be. he wasn't sad about this development just as he wasn't sad about anything else, or glad for that matter; the phone that remained silent and the doorbell that no longer rang were something that stirred no emotion in him.


it could have been that the moment when he had fell into this state of numbness had been a specific one, or it could have been that it had happened slowly, creeping up on him like dusk after a day filled with sunshine. he couldn't have remembered even if he had bothered trying -- it goes without saying that he didn't. the truth of the matter was that he was not unhappy, not at all; for with the lack of joy came the lack of grief, and in the world he lived in, this seemed like a rather good option. 

auto reply

i have been on a holiday this past week which is, together with my recent difficulties in terms of running, one of the reasons why i have little bit neglected my blog. as i'm going back to work next week and also expect to be able to run normally again, normal posting frequency should resume -- just in case anyone's interested :)


i didn't do anything much during my one week of freedom, and to be honest i don't really mind that at all. i've had plenty of the type of holidays in my life after which you would need another holiday to recover -- now, as i have done basically nothing for a week i actually don't mind that much going back to work. 


i'm not that good at doing nothing, i get bored quite easily and anxiousness is often lurking in the background when i'm idle for too long a time, but i don't think this is such a bad thing. it only poses problems when i feel that i should be doing something but don't necessarily have the energy or motivation for it; in these kinds of situations it might be useful to remember that one doesn't always have to do something, and that it is good every now and then just to lay back and relax.


i guess.