Happily Ever After

What happens to Snow White and her prince after they are proclaimed to live happily ever after? What is happily ever after, even - does it mean happy on average, or more than half of the time? Is there room for any unhappiness in happily ever after?

Does happily ever after mean that Snow White and the prince never argue, that the prince never drinks too much which makes him say brash things because Snow White used to live with seven men? Does Snow White ever overreact, get moody over PMS, does she ever nag about the socks on the floor or how the prince should get a better job so that the prince gets annoyed and escapes to the pub with other princes? Does happily ever after mean that Snow White doesn't need professional help to process the several murder attempts on her by her step mother, and is nobody questioned by the authorities over the death of this murderous woman? Do they ever get sick, Snow White and her prince - in the land of happily ever after is it possible for Snow White to get Alzheimer's and the prince prostrate cancer? Or does the prince leave Snow White in his 50s for a younger woman who he claims looks at him like Snow White used to? And what does happily ever after mean once they get old - do they die the exact same time for natural causes or is the other one left behind to live the happily ever after by themselves?

Of course the concept of happily ever after is as magical as the rest of the fairytales, and we all know it; and yet we seem to seek it, even if we don't properly even know what it means. It is a vague idea of things being better than they are now and this is why it is so easy to be unhappy, stressed and frustrated. Clinging onto something unattainable and undefined could really not lead into any other outcome.

There will always be things which you cannot influence but that do influence you, things that make you angry or sad or afraid. Just like there will always be things that are wrong in the world, that feel unjust or unfair; and the thing is that this is alright.

It's perfectly fine not to be happy all the time. 

What matters is how you deal with your expectations not being met  - in other words, how much power do the things outside your control have over you?

Dealing with that is, in the end, what happily ever after is made of.

goes around comes around

If you take the remains of what you believed in and stack it all together in a nice, neat pile, will the height of it be enough for you to climb on and see into the future you thought you would have? 

Perhaps not, and maybe it is better that way. Those poor dreams aren't enough to carry you into that future anyway, already you can feel how shaky they are under your weight; so much so that you have to wonder how you ever thought possible for them to be able to last.

But as they break down and make you fall on your face, as they tear and turn black so that you can't recognize them any more, worry not - hidden under the dead mass is already hiding something alive. 

You might not see it when you sit by your dead dreams weeping for them,  but it is there and your tears are making it stronger. Eventually it will break out through the bones of your gone future and grow past and above them, covering the dead so that you no longer see them. And time passes and you think about the old dreams less and less, and the new ones are now starting to flourish and soon you won't remember why you are crying.

You get up, dry your face and start climbing up, and the horizon that now opens up in front of your eyes is so beautiful; and for now, your feet are steady.

With or Without You

Your body is a temple, it is said. The word brings associations to concepts like purity, holiness and worshipping. A temple is strong, durable, it is to be treated with the respect it surely deserves; a home of gods, after all, created to serve something higher. What don't spring to mind as readily but are equally applicable are decay, ruins, the demolition that is time; that even temples will fall.

And of course the body is really not a temple at all. It is a collection of tissues, a patchwork of muscles and bones, cartilage and fat, held together by a fragile tree made of blood. The human body is a sophisticated machine, complex and fine-tuned to the extreme by evolution; and yet it breaks so easily, squashes into a mush from the power of an impact. The body yields, the soft tissue gives in and tears and the bones shatter into pieces; the life sustaining blood spills and runs dry. Through the injuries life leaks out and all that is suddenly left is dead mass, surprisingly heavy to move.

That is what your body is; not a temple.

The body is faulty, it gets sick and it fails; and even if you can build it, make it stronger and faster, there can still be a glitch in your code that will take you down completely unexpectedly. You have no way of knowing and nowhere to complain. 

Because your body is what you have to live in, your true home in this reality and the only thing that is really yours. Your skin is where you end and the limit of your knowledge; everything outside it is guessing. 

And this is why you should respect your body; because really, what would you do without?

do you still run?

often when i meet people i haven't seen in a while i get asked the question 'so do you still run?'. sometimes i think why they pose this inquiry - do i look like i don't, don't they have nothing else to ask me, are they merely interested whether my obsession of over 10 years has suddenly ceased  - hard to say, but the answer is always  'of course'.

i'm obviously way too far gone to ever reply anything else than that, as in if it is up to me i know i will keep on running as long as i can; and maybe this is why i find the question somewhat strange.  because i am so used to it, because for me there is no other way than running practically daily that i sometimes forget that not everybody has same kind of things they repeat day after day after day. 

and this is not to say that running is always fun. most of the time it is, yes, but there are also times when i run just out of habit; i think this is normal and i don't consider it a lack of motivation or anything like that. but even at times like that i still rather go running than not; the feeling i still get from it even when it's not at its best is better than the feeling i would get would i not run. 

in fact i don't even think about it like that. i don't wake up in the morning and think if i should go running or not; i honestly do not remember asking myself this question unless it has been a case where i have scheduled myself a day off and still thought if i should go running after all. on a normal day i run, simple as that, and how i feel about it has very little to do with it.

and this i think is one of the greatest habits i have crafted for myself. so yes, i do still run, whether it rains or shines or i'm little bit tired or bored with the same route. i run because i'm a runner and i'm a runner because i want to be one. and i want to be one because running is awesome.

Girls' Night Out

O didn't know what to do with herself so she stepped into a tram traveling on a looped line through the city. It was a spur of a moment kind of decision but she immediately took likening to it; and not the least because for once she would know what she was getting into and could be certain that she would end up in the same place where she started. It was a refreshing feeling and one O had not experienced in a while, so when she ascended the two steps into the vehicle she felt better already.

There was a free spot next to the window. It was the type where you had two seats next to each other and although normally she would have strongly preferred a single seat where you had no possibility of ending up in an awkward situation - having to have to ask the person next to you to give way in the event of wanting to get out before they did - she decided it did not matter now as she had nowhere in particular to go. In fact her current state of mind gave O reason to believe she would be sitting in the carriage for quite a while. Quite possibly until the tram would stop running even, so by that time the odds were that the seat next to her would be empty again.

O sat down, nudging herself close to the wall so that she could feel the even surface supporting her, placed her bag on her lap and looked out of the window. The doors of the tram then closed accompanied with that familiar beeping sound and the tram budged forward, its electrical humming in perfect sync with the sensation of sliding forward. The afternoon sun had already dropped quite low and shone straight into her eyes making her squint, but O knew she didn't have her sunglasses with her. This irritated O a bit but then again, a lot of things irritated her these days so she paid no particular attention to this annoyance; it just slipped in and out of her mind like a fish that makes a jump out of the water to catch a fly. Instead she tried to look away from the direction of the sun and thus soothe her annoyance; and if O noticed the similarity between that small moment and the larger metaphor of her life she actively chose not to think about it.

The tram rolled onwards and O in it, through the streets and around the curves, interrupted only by tram stops and the occasional traffic lights. She very much liked the feeling of being transported from this moment to the next; O imagined how her existence moved through the fabric of time and space. None of this you could have read from her face though as she stared out of the window almost feverishly, completely cut off from everyone else in the tram. The truth was she could have not bore to meet the eyes of another human being right now as it might have well been the needle that poked through a balloon, the thin layer of whatever that kept her together. And as O really didn't want to explode there, leak all over the filthy tram floor and have people looking the other way in a shared awkwardness, she stared out into nothing and everything, and the soundtrack of the tram moving forward gave her something to focus on.

The scenery changed outside the window and O recognized all of it. It was true that she had been away for a long time but things had not changed that much; in a human lifetime nothing ever does. You can say it does, you can even think it does; but it doesn't. The core remains the same and this applies to everything and everyone, and if you say you have changed you are either a liar or a fool.

She, of all people, should know this.

The tram stopped and she saw a man and a woman stepping in. Maybe they were a couple, maybe not, O really could have not cared less because really, why on earth would she have. They sat down on the seats in front of her and immediately she smelled the alcohol oozing out of their pours; the pungent odour did not exactly make her feel sick but she wasn't pleased about it either. Yet O felt it would have been rude of her to change seats - why she felt the need to be excessively polite to these strangers she did not know - but she remained where she was. O tried to breathe through her mouth rather than her nose in the somewhat failed attempt to escape the smell which awoke memories she didn't want to think about now. The couple conversed of something rather irrelevant O didn't want to listen to but what choice did she have, they were so close and their drooping voices swirled around her head like drunk bees. So even if she didn't want to O suddenly knew a lot about the lives of these two people she would never see again, well not a lot but too much anyway,  and it occurred to O as her irritation grew that her own history would have been equally annoying for someone else to listen to even if for O it was the most relevant thing ever.

But such is life, she reckoned, and inhaled through her parted lips.

She didn't know how long she had sat in the tram when she finally decided to get off. O noticed it had turned dark outside so it must had been a good while; judging by the tension she felt in her shoulders and back due to clutching the bag on her lap O guessed the amount of hours to be at least three. She straightened her back, slowly and carefully, and stood up, moving towards the door with caution so as not to fall on her back like a beetle and embarrass herself. There was only few people in the carriage now and none of them paid particular attention to her. When the carriage came into a stop she pushed the button and stepped out with haste, like she would have not just voluntarily spent hours in the very same vehicle. 

But this was exactly how she was; and by now she had learnt to live with it. Most of the time. 

The fresh, cool night air hit her like an open palm to the face, bringing her back into this reality that was not the same at all as in the tram. She stood there for a while, on the street, and reconstructed herself like she had once seen in a film a robot from the future do; all the little pieces of O that had wandered off during the lengthy ride crawled back and she was able to recreate herself again. Certain parts, faulty parts, she hid; certain parts she placed on the outside so that they would catch the attention of any observer the first. They didn't really fit any more, at least not in the same way they had used to, and maybe they were a bit worn out too; but that is where O put them anyway because she knew no other way to make herself.

When she eventually felt ready O looked around to see where she was and how she would get home from there; and yes indeed it had been a great night with friends and maybe they would get together again soon.

vous êtes ici

i've been back in paris for a week now and it does feel like being back home. i find this quite interesting given the fact that i've only lived here for four months; and that four months have gone by very quickly. i don't know if i am just so eager to attach myself anywhere but finland or if paris just sits well with me - either way, i am happy to be back.

and this doesn't ofcourse mean that everything would be perfect. it doesn't mean that it's all fun and games or that i wouldn't get sad or confused or angry; it doesn't mean that i would know what i am doing or even what i want.

and that is fine, really, because i wouldn't expect it to be any other way.

but the things i do know - that it is such an inspiring environment here, that i like my coffee black now, that i can find things i'm proper excited about, that i want to learn the language, that i again have the need and want to do something of my own - these things are enough for me to know that this is a good place to be right now.

stupid is as stupid does

most of the time, and it didn't matter what he did, J felt stupid. not in a way of lacking intelligence but in the way one might feel when doing something you don't see the point of doing but still continue doing it; useless, and at the same time annoyed by the fact that even if you didn't exactly know what you could be doing instead, you knew that it would still be better than what you're stuck with.

this feeling of pointlessness infiltrated every area of his daily existence. it started the moment he opened his eyes and ended, if only momentarily, when he finally fell asleep; practically every action he performed in between made him feel stupid.

waking up. brushing his teeth. eating breakfast. putting the milk back into the fridge. getting dressed. kissing his wife goodbye. dropping his son off to daycare. going to work. working. talking with people. going to the bathroom. lunching with colleagues. working some more. making phone calls. looking out of the window down to a construction site next door. driving home. following traffic rules. mowing the lawn. eating dinner. watching tv. turning off the tv. having sex. taking a shower. undressing. falling asleep.

everything. even dreaming felt stupid, at least afterwards.

the reason he felt the way he did was that nothing made really sense when you thought about it, and lately J had. all these actions you kept on repeating until your dying day; same monotonous tasks, none of which would ever be completed. what was the point, really? it was so arduous, just staying alive, and so unbelievably dull, and there was nothing left that would have given him true pleasure or happiness.

and yet, at the same time, J didn't feel particularly sad or even down. he didn't agree with being depressed, something his wife had suggested when he had once made the mistake of talking about the subject to her. J had no desire to end his existence nor did he have any difficulties in getting out of bed or taking care of his responsibilities; basically he did everything that was expected of him, sometimes even more, but he just felt stupid about it.

it interested him somewhat how other people seemed to miss the fact that everything was pointless; but few failed attempts to bring it up in a conversation and his own inability to express the depth of his own experience in this matter soon made him stop trying.

not that it would have mattered, anyway.

but how people had the energy to build barricades and climb on them because of something entirely irrelevant was almost exhausting. so what, he felt like saying every time his wife or colleague or friend brought up some heated topic that happened to be under societal discussion at the moment. so what, what did it matter, soon they would be agitated over something else instead even if the previous matter would have not been solved at all. this ability to make fleeting emotional investment into something and then move on to some other equally stupid matter didn't cease to puzzle J. why did they bother?

didn't they see how stupid it was? their behaviour as well as the matter itself?

but of course he didn't say so what, he was too aware of the reaction this would have more often that not caused in the people talking about something they found meaningful; and J didn't have the interest to stand up for his opinion as it really wasn't that important at all. it didn't matter to him what other people thought, he really had no need to try to make them see how stupid they were being; so he just sat through the conversations reacting at appropriate times by humming approvingly or throwing in a short comment, delivered with a required amount of enthusiasm so as not to be called insensitive or selfish or some other word reserved for those who seemed not to care enough.

and if this charade sometimes made him want to bite his wrists open he certainly didn't let it show. 

J didn't quite remember if things had always been like this; wether or not there had been a time when he hadn't felt stupid. he did recognize the feeling from his childhood, recalled hiding in the bushes next to the field close to his childhood home in the midst of a game of hide and seek and thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was. he also remembered with clarity how as a teenager he had found it unnecessary to chase girls or prove his masculinity through fighting with other pubescent males. as a young man, when going to university, he always did the bare minimum required so as to get conveniently by; because even if he thought it to be stupid, he himself was not and by this age he had understood quite well that this was the way the world worked and in order for him to exist in it he had to play by its rules. so he went through the required steps, smiled in the right places and danced the necessary dances, and it all turned out rather alright.

and he didn't mind, really. he was used to it. but sometimes - it was very rare these days and to be honest he didn't remember that last time it had happened - he came across someone who had such joy and such passion in them, in everything they said and did and were - and for a fleeting second he thought it to be possible; to experience life like that, so that it didn't feel pointless. for a fraction of a second he thought that perhaps he was wrong after all, maybe there was a trick to it, something he had missed, maybe everything wasn't stupid; but then the moment always passed and the feeling of stupidity resurfaced, and he would shrug his shoulders and drink a glass of water.

but whether it was these fractions of time that kept him actually going and not the general acceptance that he had adopted as his daily guise was something he didn't know the answer to; and to be completely honest, he didn't even care.

first day of autumn

the air is fresh and a bit chilly; the acknowledgement of the upcoming fall hangs in the air and makes it feel sharp in your lungs. the puddles on the ground stand as evidence of last night's rain, and in their still surface reflects the sky that is the shade of blue you don't have the words to describe. the sea is somewhat calm, as calm as a sea can ever be, and it looks like some of the sky has fallen in it.

the rock is dry and your feet find their way on it effortlessly; and to think that you are running on the same rock that has been there longer than you can fathom and will continue to be there long after you're gone makes you smile. it feels genuinely good to be outside and running, to feel the energy converting in your cells; and whatever problems there may or may not be, they don't exist now. there is just now, and the sea and the rock and the sunshine and the sky.

as long as you move you are fine; because that's when you know you exist.

c'est la vie

and so this was what life had become, early mornings in a suburban apartment block, bread crumbs and milk splashes on the floor and something always missing when it was time to leave for the daycare. 

the son was almost four years old now and impossibly difficult, and it didn't really help that she didn't enjoy being a mother all that much; but that is one of those things you cannot say out loud and if you do it's when you're drunk and feeling desperate and even then it makes the room around you go quiet in a horrified unison. so she didn't say it any more, tried not to think about it either because what good would that have done, it was as useless as dwelling in the fact that the marriage had gone foul and she hadn't really felt anything else than indifference towards her husband in ages.

but the good thing was that most of the things that life now consisted of rolled onwards as if on an autopilot, she didn't have to do much - just try not to pay attention to the details. as long as she didn't bother herself with the fact that when she hugged her son she felt nothing or that not feeling uncomfortable or awkward was the best she could hope for when intimate with her husband, she was fine. and it was fine, really it was, or this is what she told herself because it was the only way for her to keep going, and that was close enough to things actually being fine.

the son is healthy, she reminded herself, healthy and quite smart even if totally lacking the amiability all the other children of the same age seemed to possess. he will grow up, eventually, and will not define my existence as strongly as he does now; this phase of symbiotic, or rather, parasitic relationship will pass and i will be an individual again.

the son is healthy, and that is enough to be grateful.

and the husband is kind, most of the time; he is not violent, he does not drink too much, he has a job and he is responsible. he takes care of the son when she sometimes reaches her limits and cracks a little bit, closes herself in the bedroom and cries for hours, wails almost, claws her own skin and tries to rip a hole in her chest for her bleeding heart to escape from; and when she emerges, puffy-eyes and snotty and somber, he doesn't ask and this is good because she wouldn't know the answer.

and that's the thing, isn't it, that she just doesn't know. she refuses to adopt the easy explanation, the obvious one, the same her psychologist seems to be an avid supporter of  - that she feels trapped in the setting that is her life and the unhappiness brought about by the choices she has made is the reason for her distress. it cannot be so because every choice she has made she has made willingly, knowing the consequences; and even if one could argue that perhaps it might be the unexpected combined effect she could have not decided on, this doesn't ring true, either - for it would mean that the removal of the current setting would make her feel better.

and it's not so. she knows this as well as she knows the weight of the walls when she tries to keep them from falling on her, there is no mistaking about this one - the problem is not the current setting in itself. or it is, but in a way that doesn't make a difference - like it doesn't make a difference if whether you are shot or stabbed to dead. 
the process might be different; it might feel different. you might experience more pain, or less, or it might be over faster or it might take ages. but either way the outcome is that you're dead, and this is why it is not exactly so that the setting of her life would have been the real reason for anything it all.

she is still dying, from the inside, and a change in the way of it happening makes absolutely no difference.

so what is there to do than to deal with it; to do the best she can to silence the voices in her head and feign the affection needed to keep the son and the husband from suspecting anything. because even if things can't get necessarily better, she suspects they could get worse; therefore it is important to keep going. and so she kisses the son goodnight even if the son tries to slap her as she does and goes to bed next to the husband in their generic suburban apartment even if it makes no difference to her whether it'd be the husband or any other man. because that is what life has become to, and she deals with it.

and finally, when she closes her eyes and waits for the sleep to come the terrible hollowness that is life lets go, just for a while, and in her dreams she smiles.

it's normal

the past week or so was hectic. not only did i spend two nights underground which was an amazing if somewhat exhausting experience in itself, but also made my way from paris to london and onwards to manchester where a friend was wed surrounded by the picturesque english countryside. from there i flew to finland a few days ago in order to spend the month of august in the motherland; something which i am not overly excited about as i have a sever case of fomo-syndrome (fear of missing out) when it comes to paris.

this, however, i feel is a good sign. paris is definitely growing on me, and actually starts to feel like a home. and of course is not _that_ horrible to get to see and spend time with family and friends. not to mention i get to go to my shala.

something which i desperately need after having practiced only by myself for the past six months. even if i have been able to keep up a steady schedule of 3 to 5 practices a week, it is nowhere near the same to practice alone as it is to go to a shala; and during the past month or so i feel this has started to influence me more and more. i often find it difficult to concentrate and don't get the same feeling out of doing yoga as i used to. right now my practice keeps me feeling normal but not much more than that.

although this state  - feeling normal - is something i shouldn't overlook. due to the hassle of the past days i didn't have the possibility to keep up with my yoga schedule, and i must say that the outcome of this took me by surprise. it might have been a combination of many things, but in the end the way my body reacted to not practicing in about 5 days was very unpleasant and very painful; all the muscles in my back seemed to shrink about 20 percent which then caused a significant amount of discomfort, up to the point that it was very difficult to exist in my own skin.

i find this quite interesting partly because i don't know how to feel about it. even though i'm sure that the lack of yoga wasn't  the only thing contributing to my awkward state (i was also missing sleep a lot, had some fever, did a lot of traveling in a sitting position to name a few) it did make me think why it happened in the first place. is my body so used to being used on a regular basis that an interruption to this causes a some kind of shock reaction? am i doing something wrong with my practice?  do i have some underlying condition that slowly turns me into a rock unless i stretch? 

whatever it is, i'm not necessarily very worried about this as a few light practices restored my physical well-being back to the above mentioned normal (which, to be fair, is more like excellent after that ordeal) but it does puzzle me a bit. but whatever the reason, at least it serves as a good reminder to keep up the practice even on the days one doesn't necessarily feel like it - like, say, after six months practicing at home.

Cry Me a River

He had always hated her tears. Not disliked, not been uncomfortable with, but hated. Partly because he had never known how to deal with her crying, partly because seeing her cry was almost an eerie sight; her tears were silent and steady and her act of crying composed - her eyes merely welled up and then the tears started falling, ran down on her face like rivers run towards the sea. And then she would just sit there, crying calmly, and her eyes would get red and puffy and K absolutely hated that. And maybe he had hated her tears also because they came often, way too often for any standard there were for tears coming from the eyes of an adult; whenever they argued, no matter how small the matter at hand was, or whenever she was sad for whatever reason - and she often was - she always cried. And every time she did K hated her tears even more, sometimes up to the point that he momentarily hated her as well.

There were times when he felt she cried just because she knew K hated it; but most of the time, it seemed, it was just because she was the type. Sometimes he asked her to stop crying, told her how it agitated him it and how it made him even more angry (in the case her tears were due to them arguing) but that had very little effect. She said crying was a form of expressing an emotion just like shouting or name calling or ridiculing, and maybe it was poor behaviour but she didn't do it on purpose and couldn't just snap out of it. K didn't have a way to respond to that, because she was right when saying so and he himself certainly had unfortunate ways of delivering his point every now and then. But just like two wrongs don't make a right this perfectly valid point did very little to lessen his resentment towards her tears; if anything, their justification only annoyed him more.

His profound hate towards her tears was then as well-founded as was her tendency to shed them. Considering that it took him surprisingly long a time to realize that she cried less. It was during a conversation about some relatively irrelevant topic that the thought suddenly occurred to him; she hadn't cried in weeks even if there had been situations where she usually would have done so. The other week they had argued about something mundane, and two days ago he had snapped at her for leaving her shoes in the hallway which had caused K to almost fell on his face when he had come home in the dark hours. This sudden realization was enough of a revelation for K to stop talking mid-sentence; and when she asked what was the matter, he brought up the subject of her crying - or the recent lack of it.

She looked at him with a somewhat peculiar expression on her face; later on K realized that the flicker he had seen on her face but hadn't been able to name had been one of the first signs of what was coming. "I cry less? Shouldn't that make you happy, then?" Her tone was dry. She was more than aware of his resentment towards this particular bodily fluid of hers.

K shrugged his shoulders, trying to keep his approach nonchalant. "Doesn't it make you happy? I mean crying is not exactly nice, is it." For anyone, he thought to himself.

The line of her mouth tightened; but even a careful inspection showed no signs of tears forming. "I guess so." 

K sighed. "I just meant that it's nice that you are more in control of your emotions."

"Or maybe there is just less emotion." Her voice was equally void of the said emotion.

K nodded. "That's exactly what I meant."

She looked at him for a few seconds and then turned back to the dishes she was doing. "Yes, I guess you're right."

K stared at her back for a while, a bit unsure of the outcome of the exchange they had just had; but as she seemed calm he figured they had came into an agreement.

During the next months the trend of less crying continued and if anything, got even more prevalent. For some reason they fought more but she cried less and less, until the nastiest of arguments couldn't make her shed a single tear. K was more than OK with this; he found it easier not having to have to deal with her visible emotions, and even if they clashed a bit too often for his liking, he reasoned with himself that it was partly because now he was able to clear the air more profoundly when not silenced by the anger brought about by her reaction, and that eventually this would lead into a more even relationship.

And it happened exactly like that. As more time passed their fights became fewer in number; and K was very satisfied with this. And yet at the same time he felt there was an undertone, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. She seemed distant, a bit detached, and if they argued, she had less fight in her than she used to. She gave up an argument before it developed into a fight and seldom came up with any opinions of her own any more; a person who had always been very particular about getting their point through suddenly seemed almost completely uninterested whether her side was heard or not. More often than not she just shrugged her shoulders and let things pass, agreed with him or just stayed silent.

It was then when K realized that as much as he hated her tears - still did even if they hadn't surfaced in quite a while now - it was the lack of them that was amiss. He looked at her as she was sitting on her computer, concentrating on whatever she was currently working on with an expression of enthusiasm K hadn't seen in ages, and suddenly realized what she had meant when she had said that there was less emotion. She hadn't meant what he had thought; that there was less emotion to surface as tears because she was better in control of herself. What she had meant, and K understood it now, was that there was less emotion because there was less emotion, simple as that; it no longer made her sad enough to cry if they had an argument.

There was less emotion because she no longer cared; K had became a person who no longer had the power to make her cry. And suddenly her tears were what he needed to see the most, he missed them more than he had ever hated them; now that she finally was how he had thought he had wanted her to be, she no longer was someone who was in love with him.

They moved apart two months later, three days before their five year anniversary; and even then, she didn't cry. 

paris je t'aime

with a little bit under four months in paris under my belt i can definitely say that the city is growing on me. it's not that i would have disliked being here in some point, i just didn't feel very strongly about it; sure i was happy to get away from helsinki but paris in itself, well, i think i would have been equally happy to be almost anywhere outside the nordics.

i know it sounds amazing on paper - hey, i live in paris. but after talking with quite a few french people, parisians if you will, i've come to notice that they often tend not to think so; and i have to say that i can understand why. the traffic is insane, the city is too big, filthy at times, there's poverty and crime and congestion. it's expensive and summertime heat (yes, it finally hit) can be exhausting. the bureaucracy, i've heard, will drive you insane and the term 'parisian attitude' has a whole new meaning for me, and not necessarily in a good way.

but.

it's also so full of life, it has secrets and quirks and magic, and there is so much history everywhere it sometimes overwhelms me. it has the early mornings when i go out to photograph and the city is empty, as if it would exist just for me; and watching the sun come up by the seine is so beautiful i don't quite know how to describe it.  it has long warm nights and parks and opportunities waiting around every corner, and some of the happiest moments i've had this summer have been biking alongside the canal in the middle of the night and it just hitting me that i am here and i have all the possibilities to make this experience amazing. and huge as it is, it also means that you have never seen all of paris, or come in contact with all of her faces. there is the polished, shiny facade and then there's the other side, abandoned and worn-out and crumbling, and the mixture is just incredible.

and it fascinates me. paris fascinates me.

i'm flying to finland in a few days for a month; and the hint of sadness this brings about in me is the final proof of the fact that i have learnt to love the city. that i will miss being here when i'm not; that i would rather be here. and even if i know that i most likely won't spend the rest of my life here i also know that the time that i will end up living in paris has all the potential to be quite good.

it is, after all, paris.

made in/ of

it is a somewhat widespread belief that every cell in the human body is replaced in a seven year cycle; that every seven years (or ten, depending on where you get the story) we are basically new people. this belief, even if not entirely accurate, is not entirely faulty, either; it is true that every cell type has their own life span, and once a cell dies it is replaced - only the process is constant and doesn't have an exact start or end.

when you think about it, it does give one a sense of renewal; if the cells you drag around as your body aren't the same ones you were born with, doesn't it make you feel.. newer? doesn't it make you think you can start again, treat your body better? doesn't it give you a feeling that starting again is really physically possible?

however, not all the cells in our body are replaced. the ones to break this cycle of renewal are the neurons in your cerebral cortex, the number of which doesn't increase after birth; which also means that cerebral cortex neurons are not replaced when they die. another group to regenerate very slowly are the cardiomyocyte heart cells as they are replaced at a slow rate that only reduces the older we get; a person of old age has had approximately less than half of his or her cardiomyocyte cells replaced, and those that haven't been replaced have been there since birth.

so what stays - our head and our heart. it's a simplified thought but in its naivety almost endearing. but what makes it and the thought that perhaps follows - that maybe here could hide some kind of clue into our consciousness, into our sense of self and concept of existence - truly fascinating is the application of the fact that your atoms are not yours, that energy is in constant movement. 

or, as steve grand has said it:

"Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t you? How else would you remember it?

But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there.

Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place … Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you.

Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, read it again until it does, because it is important."

and it is. it really is. even if i don't quite know what it means.

bored

if there is something B is good at it's wasting time. it's maybe because his attention span is often quite short; not that he couldn't get into something and dwell in it for hours, forget to eat and drink and sleep, because he can - it's just that these days this kind of devotion seems to avoid him, B feels uninspired perhaps, and he is left with the concentration abilities of a goldfish. more often than not B is easily distracted and then frustrated by his own failure to focus, which then only feeds the inability to do so.

so what he ends up doing, because his time is divided into these small fractions, is that he does random things with them, and he does them over and over again in rotation, almost compulsive in his franticness to move on to he next thing. sometimes it feels he is looking for an excuse to be distracted, to do something else, anything at all, as long as he doesn't have to keep doing what he is doing. which is strange because B likes the things he has going on; he just gets bored. so fast actually that it is starting to be a problem - people walking slower than him on the street and blocking the pavement annoy B, just like do words (often his own) that come out too slow; and an activity lasting longer than six minutes feels like time would stand still. this then means he does things only for a short time until he switches to something else, which makes it a lot more difficult to accomplish anything sensible.

this, obviously, is not a good thing; and this is why B feels he is wasting his time.

he doesn't quite know where this lack of focus comes from, and why does it apply only to certain areas of his existence. maybe it's because he lacks a clear goal in terms of what he is doing with his life, and this is somewhat confusing for someone so used to having a defined structure. maybe he has too many options, or maybe he doesn't have enough; maybe he is locked down by his own thoughts and ideas of how things should be and how matters should progress. there is not a balance at the moment concerning where he is and where he would want to be - not that he can exactly define either one of these.

and, of course, he could try to think about it, get into the core of the issue; but when he does it often happens that he gets bored with it, and does something else instead.

sleep now

being tired in a way sleep cannot help is maybe the worst thing, or one of the worst things at least. the kind of tiredness that makes it difficult to get out of bed even when you've had a good night's sleep; the kind of tiredness that makes it difficult to sleep.

and you wish that something would change but you don't quite know what that something could possible be, because in theory everything is fine. or maybe you do know, on some level, but it is so deep that you don't want to look at it, maybe because you are reluctant to find out what it actually is that is eating away your energy; maybe you are reluctant because part of you already knows. maybe it has all just got too heavy to bear, and that's why you feel drained, maybe the transformation of your youth and the idealism that comes along with it into something more sinister, more real, more responsible is what is dragging you down. 

there's a lot of maybes, that you know, but the problem is that none of them feels entirely feasible; and you don't have the energy to investigate the matter further.

and they say you are depressed, and that you should get help; but you can't agree with this because you are not tired all the time. there are moments just after waking up, and times when something makes you laugh a true, honest laugh; granted, that doesn't happen so often these days but it's not entirely gone yet, either. and sometimes, when it's really quiet, you close your eyes and then you don't feel tired, because it's then when you don't have to give anything and it's then when all those expectations are lifted from you; and you can just be, and you're not failing in it.

but eventually the noise starts again, and you have to open your eyes, and again you feel tired.

healthy mind in healthy body and all that

i very much dislike being sick. for the obvious discomfort of course, but also because being ill prevents you from doing things; i hate the feeling of being constrained by my body. in other words, if i don't do something i prefer it to be because of my own choice, not because i physically cannot.

and yet at the same time i am strangely fascinated by the change that happens once a flu takes over. how the previous day you can be running around, doing things and staying up as long as you please; and the next morning you are a pile of useless flesh, unable to bring yourself to do pretty much anything but to sleep and just feeling generally miserable about everything. and all this because of something external, some small thing that's not supposed to be there got into your system; and it does make you think how easy you fall.

and we're talking about a flu here; i dare not even think how it feels to get sick in a way more severe and long-lasting. 

so even if i have been suffering from just a flu for the past few days, it has yet again served as a remainder how incredible it is to be healthy, generally speaking, and how important it is to do your best to support that health. something for us all to strive towards to, i would think.

cataphile anonymous

earlier this week i had the incredible chance to get into the quarries of paris. the vast network of tunnels and rooms and strange, forgotten things that extends beyond one's strength to walk was an experience that has sat with me for days now; and i must confess i feel slightly obsessed with all things underground.

i didn't quite know what to expect before going into the quarries (often referred to as catacombs which is a bit misleading as only a part of the tunnels was used in this purpose), nor had i much information about them in general. i did have some kind of guess as of how it might be having visited similar places in other countries, but in retrospect i must say that any assumption i might have had was completely misplaced. and in all honesty i do understand that it might not sound that mind-boggling, going into underground tunnels; and yet that is exactly what it was.

apart from the excitement and haste of getting into the tunnels, the experience as a whole was almost meditative. everything is different once you're 30 something metres underground; the darkness, how the air feels, how everything sounds and how the lights of the torches reflect from the crystal clear water you come across with every now and then. and i can't even begin to comprehend the amount of history that nests in these endless tunnels; when our cataphile guide pointed the wall behind which was located the bunkers of the french resistance during the second world war i could not help but to be fascinated, and when in the catacombe part of the network the countless amount of human bones in messy piles emerged from the complete darkness, it did make me think the lives of those people and how the world would have been when they were around.

and the fact that this all and more just sits there, this whole word of its own, under our feet all the time; it is so detached from everything that is your daily life and it is so incredibly interesting. once you're down there the world above ceases to exist, and you sort of lose your sense of time, distance and place; in some way it condenses your own human experience into the present moment and present moment only. there is nothing else than the quiet tunnels full of darkness, and as surprising as it may sound, it feels almost comforting. and then, after hours and hours in the darkness, when you eventually surface and are almost violently pushed back into the everyday world with all the lights and noises and smells and what not - you do look at it differently, at least for a while. and of course, when taking the metro home in your dirty clothes and wet shoes, grinning like an idiot for a good part of it - the everyday world perhaps looks at you a bit differently as well. 

and i have to say - before i went in i thought that it would probably be a one-time experience for me, that it would be the kind of thing that once you've seen it, it's enough. but, and you might have guessed this, i do think i was mistaken.

don't even know

the thing that was these days was the limitless, shapeless uncertainty that extended into all directions. had she felt compelled to find a comparison to it G would have thought of her childhood, living in the small farmhouse next to the open fields were his father grew barley and wheat; and how every fall, after the crops had been cut, the vastness of the open landscape was almost too big for her child brain to comprehend. then they had used to go, her and her father, in the early mornings when the air was cool and the colours of the approaching winter were already painting themselves into the landscape, and walk on the fields; and she remembered how the ground under her feet continued further than she was able see, stretched so far there were almost no borders, and the air smelled like earth and her father like cigarettes.

it was that feeling of being small and standing in the middle of something extending beyond your strength to travel that she would have tried to describe, had someone asked her how she felt these days. only now her father was not there to carry her home when she would get tired, and the air didn't smell of earth any more but of fumes and garbage and cheap chinese restaurants. and, in all honesty, there was no one to ask her the question about how she saw things, so the slightly faulty comparison didn't really even matter.

what did matter, though, even if G had no one to share it with, was the helplessness she felt when faced with her own confusion. she didn't know much about anything, didn't know where to go or what to do or what to want, even. furthermore she knew that she didn't even have the right to be feeling the way she did; G knew that in the grander scale of things she had it remarkably well. 

every day she read from the paper or saw in the news the sad and horrible things that people had to endure all the time, everywhere. war, crime, hunger, abuse, natural disasters, poverty, accidents, death, rape, child abuse, every possible bad thing she could have ever imagined and more was happening to someone else all the time. every time she left the house she saw people who had it worse than her; she saw families living on the streets, drugged children resting on the arms of tired-looking women begging for money in the metro stations. she saw people talking or rather shouting to themselves, covered in their own filth, and she saw the empty look in the eyes of the prostitutes she passed on her way to work. and here she was, in the middle of her safe and relatively steady existence, daring to say that she was not happy and didn't even know why.

and that was really the worst; the not knowing. had there been something she could have focused on -  an unsatisfactory job, bad relationship,  30 kilos of overweight, something, anything - but instead there was absolutely no reason for her unhappiness. it just sat there, rested on her like big bird sits on a branch of a tree, unmoved by the wind that was her attempts to get rid of it. and of course she recognized that the guilt brought about her unjustified lack of happiness made things even worse and added to the length of the road she would have to travel; and so the thought became even more exhausting, and the motivation to start the journey lessened.

it didn't mean that life would have been somehow bad; it's just wasn't good, either. it was an existence with little ups or downs, and even if G felt stupid most of the time for keeping it up and doing the things that came along with it, everything from greeting the clients ay work with a smile to cooking a dinner in the evening, the other option was even more unappealing. to start to take down the constructions of her life, one by one and not knowing where to begin in order to find out the one that had a fault in them sounded arduous, so much so that even the thought of it made her shy away from thinking about the matter.

so what was left then was to see if something would surface. and she would again think of her childhood; when they had walked the fields with her father every now and then he would bend down and pick up a stone the plough had brought to surface. he would take the stone and put it in the big pockets of his work pants and take it away from the field; and just as impossible as it would have been to find that particular stone from the vast fields when it was still inside the dirt, hidden from view, it was equally difficult for G to start looking for her own stone when she had no idea of the general direction of its whereabouts.

so she walked on the fields of her mind, on the ones that had no borders, ploughing it by living her everyday life; hoping that eventually the stone would surface, and that she could finally name it and grasp it and take it away.

of running

i sometimes - not often, but every few months or so - think how i would be if i wasn't a runner.

because that - a runner - is what i am; even if not a professional athlete or even a solid competitor on an amateur level, it still categorize myself as such after doing it on a regular basis for over a third of my life now. the definition of a runner is one of the few attached to me by myself (and possibly by others) that i am completely sure of and that i whole-heartedly agree with. 

i think running has changed me in many ways, and i think most of these changes have been good; but yet i have no way of knowing how i would have turned out had i not started running. would i have picked up something else? maybe i could be a skillful musician now, or perhaps i would have written a book. maybe i would have surprised myself (and others) and picked up a team sport of some kind. or maybe i would have just gone mad. 

who knows, really, and of course it makes very little difference. it's just interesting in a way that i find it very difficult to imagine a state of not being a runner; not waking up in the morning and self-evidently putting on my sneakers as the first thing. it would definitely be a different kind of existence to the one i have now - not saying it would automatically be worse, but in all honesty i'm not so interested in it, either.

that's why i hope i don't ever have to find out how it is not to be a runner; that i can keep on being one as long as i want to. because even if sometimes running on the same route over and over again can feel tad boring, or if there are times when bad weather makes the whole thing unpleasant, or if every now and then my legs are tired - even then it does feel good to recognize that running is a constant in my life, something that stays and doesn't ask any more than i what i give. a thing that is mine and what makes me me; something without which i wouldn't be myself.

say what?

it is interesting, incredible almost how two (or three or four or seventy five) people can look at the same thing and get an entirely different experience out of it. how something that is the air and sun for one doesn't mean a thing to another, and how even in a conversation when talking about the same topic you still speak of two different things.

and sometimes you fall into the trap of thinking that people understand you, that they think or at least could think like you; that your experience of the world is somehow transferrable. it is a slippery slope to assume that what you say is what people hear, as the meanings and tones that words have are only yours. they might be similar enough to those of other people, at least close enough to make your point across; but if you think that the message you intended to deliver is done so without any alterations, you are often mistaken. 

and it's not merely a question of words. you pay attention to different things according to your preferences and interests which basically, in the end, renders parts of the surrounding world invisible to you. there are things you see as well as things you choose to look away from; and it all springs from the same place and that place is you; the being and identity and consciousness that is yours and yours alone. and it's not to say that we couldn't connect, or anything of the kind; it's just that we all connect in our own unique way, and sometimes the link between us is faulty. 

and it's an easy thing to forget, that people don't look at the world the same way you do and vice versa. easy to get annoyed when people don't respond the way you would want them to or act how you would expect them to; just like your own behaviour can at times irk someone else. and the thing is that no one is in the right or in the wrong here, we just see the world differently.

because that is what it really comes down to, in the end - how you see things. and from there on it is relatively straightforward, as in how you see things results - or rather, should result, in how you behave and what choices you make. in case the two - how you see and what you do - don't go hand in hand, a problem emerges; a threat of a misunderstanding of a more fundamental sort. because if you go against how you see things, if you can't justify or explain even to the one person who speaks your language why you do the things you do, how can you expect the rest of us to understand? it makes everything incomprehensible, both to yourself and to the world, and that is the situation where one is completely alone.

it's not you, it's not me

Finally he was back there, on the streets of the city he had missed so much. He recognized the silhouette of the cityscape like he had in his dreams during the years he'd been away; and even if it had been long, his feet still knew the way on the winding streets without his head having to have to trouble itself. The smooth surface of the worn-out cobblestones was familiar to walk on and the sounds that echoed from the walls he couldn't stop himself from brushing with his fingertips every now and then had a familiar ring in his ears . The rattle of the tram as it passed by; the incomprehensible mixture of languages that swirled around him when he walked through the herds of tourists. Even the smells were the same; the invitation to eat from the street vendors selling everything you shouldn't be eating but absolutely wanted to, especially after a long night out, and the unmistakable combination of bodily odours in the overcrowded metro train.

There was the bench they had sat on after a night out, he and his friends, still drunk and merry as you only can be when you're twenty and in love with life, watching the sun come up over the roofs and not having to have to worry about anything besides perhaps the next day's headache. There was the bridge leading over the river, the same one he had walked on every night to get home from their favourite hang-out, sometimes stopping in the middle and staring down to the murky water that flowed underneath. And of course there was the street that led to his old home - it was strange to think now that he had had a home here - and on that street there was the small niche in the wall of a building, and there were memories nesting in that niche he could no longer bring himself to think of, so he looked the other way.

It was all there, just as he remembered; and yet it wasn't. It was no longer the same him who had walked on these streets and breathed in the intoxicating air of freedom and love and youth and friendship. The person who he was now no longer had access to the feelings that are possible to experience only when a memory of previous night's madness is still clear. He no longer remembered the details, just knew they were, or had been, somewhere; and even if walking on the streets of the city was able to revive some of them, he knew with painful certainty that many he had lost for good. And he could walk on the streets forever and in theory it would be the same city, his city; he could travel back in time in his mind and think about the things he had thought of then. But he could no longer feel them or understand them in the same way and he could not bring back the person he had been back then. No matter how long he would stare down at the dark water it would not be the same water, and it would not wash over him and his being the same way it had. 

And what he also realized, to his surprise and disappointment as well, was that the city wasn't an interesting place at all. Sure, it was beautiful, in a way that any city of the same age and geographical area is; but it was the kind of beauty that you get used to very fast, and after that you don't really pay attention to it any more apart from the moments when you have nothing else to talk about and you ooh and aah about the decorative facades and pointy church spears. But that was about all there was; the old historical centre, filled with generic shops selling useless trinkets and touristic restaurants were food was expensive and service below average. There was no magic, no energy contained in every surface and wall and no secrets behind ajar doors just waiting to be unveiled. Time had rendered either himself of the city unrecognizable; and one by one he watched how his memories turned insignificant and incomprehensible. 

After four days he left the city without the memories he had arrived with. The city had took them back very much like it had once given them, effortlessly and unapologetic. It was consoling, in a way, to know that the forming events of his life were stored somewhere in the seams of the cobblestone pavements and in the dark passageways known only by a few. He no longer had access to these memories in a way that would have done justice to their importance; therefore it was a relief to leave them in the place that had given birth to them. He no longer was the person who he had been and he no longer needed to be; the city had done its task.