while it lasts

it has been a little bit extreme in terms of weather for the past few days - well, not proper extreme but enough for me - which means temperatures around -20 degrees celsius. to be honest it's not quite as bad as it sounds,  i'm currently inland and therefore there is little to no wind. still air with -15 is much easier to handle than -8 with strong wind, hands down; but it still does require some adjusting and certain things have to be taken into consideration when running in such low temperatures.

the cold is not really a problem when you run for about an hour; it's short enough time to stay warm due to the body heat generated by the movement. all you need is a few layers and you're good to go; the tricky bits are really your hands and face. i don't know about other people but for me it seems that my hands (fingers) get frozen very easily, and that is a very uncomfortable feeling, even worse than face freeze - which tends to happen as well. but like said, when the length of the run stays in about an hour even these don't really pose very big problems, and longer runs than that i don't do when it is this cold - i am too keen to be comfortable for that.

but i have to say, even if there is some strange fascination in running in a cold weather, i can't say that it is my favourite conditions. and certainly when i leave finland (for good? for now) in a little bit over a month, this coldness and darkness are amongst the things i won't be missing any time soon.

because i want to

why do we want the things we do? is it all learnt or a result of some kind of external influence; or is there some kind of inner driver that steers us into whatever direction? if so, what is behind this driver and what sets its goals? a coincidence? can you influence what you want - can you cease to look after something you previously considered worth striving for, or can you just decide to go for something and it that case, when does the decision to want something become automated so that you no longer view is as a conscious choice?

when is a want real? how can you tell a difference between the things you are supposed to want or you think you want because of some other motivator and the ones that you actually do? if you tell yourself long enough, do the first two become the third?

our wants is what really makes this world turn. the want to do something and be something, the want to be in a place you currently are not. or maybe, in some cases, to remain in the place where you are; but even that takes constant effort. the day when you don't want anything is the day when nothing can touch you, move you, hurt you; but it is also the day when nothing can bring you much joy or happiness. it is a static state, a one i don't know is possible or even desirable achieve; it might as well be the day you're dead.

but the question i would really like to know the answer to is that if you want something, is it enough? does that want in you, if it is genuine, is that enough to make the thing you want happen? does it make you so that it is possible to achieve the thing that you want?

if you just want it bad enough?

almost there

so it's almost christmas and all. not a devote to the occasion itself but i do like the luxury of having a few days off; especially as the past week or two have been  particularly hectic work-wise. 

today i'm flying to stockholm for a few days to meet a friend i haven't seen in years. the joy of that aside, i actually feel rather irritated by the fact that i have to take two days off from running. this is mainly because these days i feel the effect of it more strongly than normally - the days when i don't run are really dreadful, i feel irritated and restless and overall just not right. and more, i really don't wake up at all if i don't break a sweat in the morning - for example on tuesday i had to come to the office super early so i moved the exercise regime into the evening, and that day was just not good at all. it feels like being stuck in tar surrounded by a cloud of smoke that fills your head and eyes and lungs; and the tiredness i experience those days is very different kind to the type of tiredness you get from actually doing something.

but yeah, i guess i'll live. it's only two days. and a holiday.

so merry christmas to you all!

deeper down the rabbit hole

"that's where i draw the line."

because there always is one, isn't there, a line, your personal maximum. a line of how much you can and will take, a line of your moral and of your integrity, a line you refuse to cross; a line on the other side of which you can't ever imagine being.

there is so much lines and they are set in a way that they form a web, a spider web of what is your limits and borders. outside these lines you think that you are not you, that these lines are what you are made of, that they create the structure inside which you are defined. you don't know what you would be without these lines, maybe you haven't even thought about it, but you surely wouldn't be you any more; because in these lines you end.

they draw you, very much like an artist would, create you from the blank of a paper; the lines, your lines, the artwork of you. but different to a drawing where the lines are, once drawn, immobile, your lines are flexible. there are lines you want to push, move further, and there are lines beyond which you are not willing to go. and what would happen if you would, if you were to cross a line you held holy, what would happen?

would you break? would the web of your lines collapse, would your mind derange, would everything that is you escape through the hole created by that broken line? would you die?

of course you wouldn't. maybe you would find out that the line wasn't there after all, that you had just thought it to be there; and now, once in a place you thought to be on the other side, you realise that the real line is much further. and maybe this realisation makes you stronger, or it may make you something else entirely, but what it makes you for sure is something you didn't previously thought you could or should be.

and once you are on the other side of that line, and it doesn't really matter if it was really there in the first place or whether you just thought it to be - once you are there, the new line is now somewhere further, and once the line is further there is no way for it to come closer again; there is no way you will be the same person again. this is both fantastic and frightening, and it is the cause of the greatest of achievements and most horrible of actions; the simple fact that the lines always move; but they move only further.

i do

do you ever wonder, between the moments of your life and in the midst of your reactions, whenever you feel justified or mistreated or whatever it is that happens to be flushing through your nerve system; do you ever stop to think how it transfers to the outside? do you ever ask yourself what is the projection you give; and do you ever remember that your experience is not the only one?

it's a constant flux of emotions, of feelings and responses; everything reflecting from the individual background and filtering through the fabric that is your life so far. words can never relay this experience, you can never really truly explain how you see and feel things. a word is a symbol, a rough draft of something that cannot be described in more detail. it is the personal experience that sets the finesse of an expression, that colours the words and adds the unique amount of weight to them.

so when you say love, it doesn't mean the same thing at all when your loved one says it; because your experience of love is different to theirs. when you say hate it has an entirely different content than the hate of your enemy; because for them, hate means something that it can never mean to you. and when you say sorry it might not matter any more because the damage is already done; the weight of your words in the reality of another can be too heavy to bear.

so does it ever intrigue you how you appear; do you ever think that what you say is not what other people hear? and does it ever overwhelm you, this individual experience, this life, the details and wholeness of which you can't ever share? and do you, at the same time, find it comforting - that no matter what, this is yours, and it is right, and even if there are billions of rights in the world, as many as there are wrongs - that this right and this wrong, they are yours and they are you, and that is just simply incredible?

well done you

i'm slowly getting back into the routine of long runs. i've had a bit of a gap in terms of them since summer - no particular reason, i just haven't felt like it, but now as the marathon is four months away i thought i had better get back to them sooner than later.

this is for a few reasons, but a concern of not being able to make the 42 kilometres is not one of them. in all honesty i could probably run a marathon now - it wouldn't necessarily be very enjoyable, but still. and this is one the reasons i started hitting the long runs now; i want to keep things feeling fine. mentally this isn't really an issue, i love long runs and the feeling they give more than any other aspect in running; but rather, i want to keep things fine physically as well.

i have a tendency to overdo certain things, and running certainly is one of them.  i have done it before, started training for an event and ended up with stress injuries just because i make the amateur mistake of building up the distances too fast. partly because i like running, partly because i can - my physical condition is such that it is not the factor setting limits to the distances of my runs. so as i feel i can run longer and more frequently without being too tired, i do so too fast; and my poor feet and legs and joints, lulled into a state of not being asked to do this so often, get this abrupt wake up call too fast.

so, i reasoned with myself that if i start early, i can trick myself a bit. that if i feel that there is plenty of time (four months is not _that_ long but it's still plenty) i can have more relaxed an approach and not necessarily feel the need to lengthen the runs so fast. we will see how this works, but today for example it did - i ran 20 on thursday and felt the temptation of doing a long one today as well, but managed to talk myself out of it with this very reason - that there is enough time, i don't have to be running much longer ones yet, and that i would be wise to give my body time to adjust.

so wish me luck.

all i want for christmas

hibernate 
intransitive verb
\ˈhī-bər-ˌnāt\

1 : to pass the winter in a torpid or resting state

2 : to be or become inactive or dormant

i would very much like to crawl into a cave and wake up when the spring arrives. it starts to feel that this fatigue doesn't go away no matter how much i sleep, rather on the contrary; this week i have overslept twice, which is more than the last five years combined.

things pile up like the snow that covers bloody everything outside and i seem to be missing a shovel to dig myself out. 

all one can do, really, is to trust that eventually this will get better. it sort of has to. right?

winter does

that year winter came suddenly and without a warning. 

the cold descended abruptly and froze the nature to a standstill, stopped everything like a pause button on a film might; and the snow covered the town faster than a spilled glass of milk colours the surface of a table into a pure, uninterrupted white. the birds that happened to be flying when the winter came froze into blocks of ice and dropped to the ground like stones, and when the sea froze together with the arrival of the winter the fish too close to a surface became a part of the icy lid.


suddenly it was quiet in the mornings, a different kind of quiet than before; not the kind you enjoy before a busy day but the quietness of a grave, of oblivion and forgotten names. it was the kind of silence you hear in the end of the world when there are no voices left any more; it was  like the white blanket covering everything would have muffled the sounds of traffic and blocked the words of people in their throats. not that you saw that many people now that the winter had came; the cold closed all the doors and drew thick curtains in front of windows, and any light that might have been on was carefully hidden from the winter behind them. the air smelled of cold, the unmistakable scent of winter, sharp and clear as frozen water; the only smell the thin, cold air would carry for the following months to come.

so winter descended upon the town but also upon S and K. in the end it was hard to say why things went awry when the winter came; was it so that when everything froze they were too far apart and couldn't make their way to each other any more, once the places were cast; or was it because their relationship was too young, formed of the long, light nights of the summer past and moulded in the warmth of the gone autumn afternoons, and once the winter set in it withered and died like a shoot of a plant that has been left unprotected. whatever it was that brought their demise, it grew with every dark winter day, gained strength from feasting on the remains of their dying relationship that was locked inside behind the closed doors and unable to escape. it grew until it couldn't be controlled any more, or contained; and it broke free, exploded out of their skins as shouts, accusations, angry words and bitter remarks that tore into shreds whatever there might have been left of them.

so in the end it was winter that killed them; because that is what winter does.

but winter didn't care about it, didn't pay attention to the destruction and death it had brought about; because that is not what winter is for. winter can't help itself, can it; it kills and smothers and strips bare because it is the only thing it knows, and this cannot be held against it.

it never was anything personal.

in other words

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.”

— Douglas Coupland

within

there was a room, familiar but impossible to place in any specific context. the furniture was familiar also, but there appeared to be something off in the combination of them with this particular room  - like the chairs and the tables and the pale blue curtains hanging in front of the mute window would have been taken from somewhere else and inserted here, in a room that should have held some other kind of furnishing items. J thought she recognised the big table under which she was currently hiding from the home of her childhood friend, but on the other hand, she didn't remember ever actually being under that table, so how could she have known how it looked like from this point of view?

the child was crawling somewhere outside of her field of vision, she heard the ruffle of his clothes. J knew she was supposed to be looking after him, but at the moment the birdcage in front of her was much more important; and the small colourful bird inside it, so small it fit inside her cupped palms, for some reason it was crucial that it would not escape through the holes of the cage. that stupid child had broken the cage and now J was busy trying to cover the holes with her hands, so the bird wouldn't escape - but it did, there it went again, and she had to catch it and put it back inside the cage. the bird objected vigorously, she felt it flapping its small wings against her palms; but she had to put it back, absolutely she did.

it had all started to feel rather bizarre, so she took the cage and left her hiding place under the table. the woman with purple hair, sitting in the corner of the room paid no attention to her, or to the crawling baby in the corner for that matter. J placed the cage in the middle of the room and glanced down to see whether the little bird was still there. she saw that the holes in the cage where much bigger now, but instead of the bird out came some kind of small mammals. they could have been rats but they were not, the were sleek and long, perhaps they were minks? uuf, she thought, i hope they didn't eat the bird. but the bird was still there, so she just started to pull the minks (if they were minks) out from the cage, one by one, their glistening eyes staring at her intently as she did. there were so much of them, too much to be honest - no way they could have all fit in there.

this was getting rather silly. perhaps it was a dream?

J looked up to the purple-haired woman who was now standing in front of her. "can you grow a pair of horns? so that i know if this is a dream?" she asked of her, reasoning with herself that although things did seem rather genuine, if the lady she knew from somewhere would grow horns, surely it would be a dream.

without hesitation she replied, "like this you mean?" and grew a pair of horns.

it was a stunning realisation - being in a dream - and J sprung on her feet. "marvellous!" she shrieked. "it's a dream, we can go and fly!" and barged out of the room.

.

waking up felt as if falling through something; and the feeling of regret of not being allowed to stay in the dream was tangible and heavy, heavier than her consciousness falling through the non-existent matter. grey things around her everywhere, as if scattered clouds, and she sank through it like a stone cast in water - the experience was fast, but enough for the feeling to register.

and then darkness, and the awareness of being in a bed. not in the one she went to sleep in, but somewhere else, somewhere unrecognisable; and next to the bed, in the black space around the bed, an outline of a person. sitting there, as if part of the darkness; like the dark would have materialised. still, unmovable figure, a mere silhouette of a being but yet bearing such presence; all the night horrors of her childhood condensed into one. 

watching her in her sleep; controlling her dreams. hovering.

and then she fell again, and this time the darkness was real, and the bed was her own. the racing of her heart and the fast pace of her breath, the grip of horror around her chest - they dissolved as her consciousness cleared from the dream, blended into the darkness around her so that when she was finally fully awake they were only a faint memory of something that once happened. 

and there was no one sitting next to her that she could see.

want to run

i signed up for my eighth marathon - marathon de paris, mere four months away in the beginning of april. 

it has been a few years since i ran one. if my memory doesn't completely fail me the latest one was in prague back in 2009, and i recall it being the least pleasurable out of the marathons i have run. i didn't train properly, and also didn't rest enough before the race; this resulted in a little bit arduous last few kilometres, and i very clearly remember the moment of realisation i experienced due to this - it was the first time that i actually understood that it is not always possible for a person to finish the 42 point something kilometres. even if i was by no means close to quitting, i do remember my legs feeling a bit... heavy.

that said, this experience has really nothing to do with the gap that followed. up until 2009 i had ran a marathon per year, in 2007 i ran two; so i guess i sort of just had enough of it for a while. i lack the competitive nature in the sense that i am not that interested in improving my time or anything like that; the marathons i have run are there because i like running. in other words, i don't run in order to be able to run a marathon; i have ran marathons just because i can, and that's enough for me. deep down (not even that deep, actually) i am a very lazy and disorganised person, and  the idea of following some kind of program or planned training schedule in order to get better results, well, that's just not going to happen. put a 'have to' in front of something and i don't like it any more; this is one of the faults in my character.

so i haven't ran marathons in a while because i was perhaps a bit bored with it; but now i feel like it has been long enough, and i want to experience the whole thing again. the excitement on the starting line, the excruciatingly slow start when you can't even run because of the masses surrounding you, the mock of the kilometre signs that say 2 or 4 or something small like that; the little buzz you get when you pass 30 and the moment sometime after that when you know in your bones that you are going to be able to do this. inevitably, breaking the magical 40 and enjoying the last two kilometres, pushing yourself as far as you can, to the very limit, running a bit faster than you would actually have strength for; and finally, crossing the finish line and getting that cheesy medal you have absolutely no use for but you still take it, and feeling rather good about yourself.

i want that, and this too; i want to train for it. run the long runs alone with my thoughts, my small weekly escapes from the reality of it all. i want to feel the high you can get from only running and from nothing else, want to feel how my legs work and lungs expand, how my heart beats and becomes a bit stronger with every step i take. i want to feel the freshness of the air and the freedom of being able to do this, of being healthy and strong and running wherever i want.

in other words, to put it short; i want to run.

spider webs

fill in the blanks for me, would you, because i can't seem to remember the whole story -- if any of it. i can't remember the exact route i took to get to where i am now, and i can't bring back the words i said to make myself believe that it was ok to do so.

it is all more or less a blur for me now, and when i try to make sense of the unfathomable maze of events and people and reasons it feels overwhelming to say the least; and to be completely honest the fear of what i might find in the core of it all starts to strip me of my motivation to try. 

all i know now is that i don't know anything any more, of what i wanted or needed or hoped for. i have realised that my reality is based on the expectation of how things were supposed to be and not how they actually are; and the gap between the two makes the ground i'm standing on very uneven. the constant search for balance causes my patience to wear thinner and thinner, and the frustration that has been building inside me starts to poke its needles through my skin until i feel like a hedgehog turned inside out.

but i don't know, maybe when i'm torn into shreds, when i'm so full of holes that you can see through me, like a spider web or a shattered glass, when i'm almost invisible; maybe then i'm light enough to see things clearly. perhaps when there is not enough left to contain the weight in me i can let it go; perhaps then this will all make sense.

home sweet home

i've had 15 homes in my life, the current one included. the first one i don't remember much about; we moved out when i was less than three years old. the second one is what i consider to be my childhood home, the one which still holds the 1st place in terms of years lived in. the remaining 13 homes i have been through in the course of the past eleven years or so; three of these in tampere, five in helsinki, one in turku, two in budapest and two in prague.

i have my favourites, the ones i miss more than others and the ones i dislike. thrown in there is the worst time i've ever had anywhere as well, naturally; when you make a list, something is always left as the least preferable option. i have lived by myself and with people, in a single-family house as well as crammed into a one bedroom apartment with four other girls.

all these places i have considered a home, and for me home is a very important place. it's a base camp, a door which i can close and be left alone. home it is not important to me in a sense that i would want it to be of certain kind or have some particular characteristics; i just need it to be there so i have a place to hide into. i like central location over square meters (as you often do have to chose) and a hassle-free block of apartments instead of something with a yard and neighbours you have to socialise with more than greeting them in the staircase. i don't like owning things and buying an apartment feels about as appealing as casting my feet into concrete and jumping into the sea.

so in other words home is not a specific thing for me, the childhood one perhaps excluded. it's more of an idea, something that it is not tied into particular walls or place; and maybe this is why i find it very easy to pack up and go. next year i will be having a new home again, and i am more than looking forward to it; there's so many homes in this world i still want to have, and it's good to get going sooner than later.

deal with it

i find myself to be in a somewhat peculiar phase when it comes to running. on one hand i have definitely slipped into a winter mode; i don't clock my kilometres (even if i do know approximately  how much i run due to the familiarity of the routes) or time and my pace has slowed down. i don't feel any need to perform, so to say; i just run for the sake of it. on the other hand, i find it exceedingly difficult to take days off every now and then, even if i know that in theory this would be recommendable, and even when at times i feel the effects of daily runs in my legs.

i think it is mainly because running is one thing i can influence, of what i have control over; when other areas of life are sometimes a bit more chaotic, stressful and overwhelming, running is my corner stone  -- something that is mine, and there, and i know what it is all about.

everybody needs their coping mechanisms. 

small town

it's a peculiar feeling, visiting your childhood home. outside the familiar house is the small town where you grew up in, similar to the countless number of other small towns in this country where the majority of them are just that, generic and unimpressive and yet each a world of their own. all the places that you know probably better than any other only because you spent so much time in them; the somewhat strange mixture of fondness and dislike. hate and love are too strong words to describe your feelings towards this town, and this fact alone probably tells more about the nature of it than any lengthy description ever could. 

running on the streets of the town on a quiet sunday morning when the sky is grey and bleak makes you feel almost nostalgic; the empty shop windows, telling their own tale of the direction this town is heading into makes you feel almost sad. you see the town differently now, mostly because you yourself are different; when you were a child this was the extent of your world, and even when you got a bit older and started to realise that it isn't, in fact, so, this was still the place you returned to. now, when it is the place you visit and home is somewhere else you can't see it the same way anymore; and you never will.

but even so, this is where you are from; and you are the way you are partly because of it, whether you like it or not. you can't erase it, and why would you even want to, really; after all, you do have a soft spot for the place, in spite of yourself.

right now

nights were the worst, really.

during the days he was numb. when awake his mind was able to build barriers against the pain, close the gates of the walls enclosing his sanity and stop the grief from crushing in with all its force. it was a simple but arduous task, getting through a day - the act of breathing had never required so much conscious effort before - and it managed to keep him busy. he didn't think about G, didn't go through the events leading to his death; didn't allow his mind to wrap around the fact that he was not anymore. the knowledge was there of course, H did see the empty rooms and heard the deafening silence that occupied them now; but during the days, he was able to look the other way.

but nights, they were different.

when he slept his conscious mind gave in to the unconscious, yielded before what had happened and what that meant. it barged into his dreams, loud and rude and as impossible to ignore as a high speed train barging onwards when you are standing on its tracks, paralysed and panicked like a deer in headlights. and night after night it hit him with a force that swept him off his feet, overwhelmed his dreams and visions and left him shattered; just as shattered as he had been when G had fell.

every night H was there, and every night it happened; he was never able to stop it. G always fell, always always always; he always fell and he always hit the ground with the same, sickening thump that made H's stomach turn.

he always died.

and every time it felt as if it had been the first time; it never got any easier. in his sleep H had no way of stopping it from happening, witnessing the single most devastating incident of his whole life, and every morning when he woke up he couldn't tell which hurt more, his heart or his soul.

he knew, of course, somewhere in the back of his head that eventually he would have to admit to himself also during the daylight hours that G was dead; that even if he would sit in the living room of their home and stare at the door until his eyes went blind, it would not open and bring G back.

but right now it was too early. right now getting through the days that followed each other, each similar to the one before and to the one after, was really all he was able to deal with.

right now it was OK just to sit and not think.

not so

what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, it is said.

of course this is not true. it doesn't kill you to be put down, day after day, to be taught through the hardest of ways that your opinion doesn't matter; that what you are is entirely wrong and crooked and that you should, in fact, change yourself to the core. it doesn't kill you to be stripped bare of your joy of living, be spooked by harsh reactions and sudden, irrational bursts of anger so that you no longer dare to express yourself at all or live in a way you would want to. it doesn't kill you to swallow your self-respect and shatter your identity, doesn't take your life to tone yourself down and give in, give up, lose yourself for the sake of something you can't even name any more.

you don't die of humiliation, of the excruciating feeling of being robbed of your life or of staring at the ceiling throughout the sleepless nights and hoping you would be somewhere else, that everything around you would cease to exist. your heart won't stop beating because there is nothing of you left; your heart doesn't care about this.

it doesn't kill you. but when you are a shadow of what you used to be, when before every uttered word you think whether or not you should say it, when you spend your time tense, careful not to move or breathe or be in a way that is considered incorrect - it most certainly doesn't make you stronger either.

swans

after everything, after all that had been said and not said and all that had been done, after all the things that hadn't seen the light of day, i knelt down on the shoreline of my consciousness. there was still some grace left in my movements but the tiredness was visible now; i could have not stood even if i had tried to.

in front of me opened a sea, nameless and faceless and odourless, so vast and deep i didn't have the comprehension for it. the horizon was further than my eyes could see or mind understand; this sea was not me, not mine like the sand hugging my knees and shin bones and toes was. not for me to venture on; this shoreline was where i ended.

i stretched out my arms and one by one let the memories go. paper birds, origami swans of different size and colour; all the nooks and crannies, each and every fold held a memory and told a story. every surface, be it wrinkled or smooth, was something that up until this point had made me me. there were the strobe lights of a night club and first rays of sun on a cold winter morning. the laughter of my loved one, loud and clear, and the smell of her cigarettes in my hair.

there were a lot of them, i saw that now as they silently drifted away from me; more than i had realised. some of them were black and burnt and it hurt me to look at them; some were bright and beautiful and so lightly carried away by the invisible current that they barely touched the still surface of the sea. one by one i put them down and released my hold, and they disappeared into the horizon i could not fathom; dissolved into the infinity that opened beyond and outside of me.

i was not sad; i did not cry. i had no reason to any more. 

each to their own

due to unexpected circumstances yesterday i did my run in the evening instead of morning. it is bizarre how different it feels; not in a bad way, just very peculiar. the whole setting is different, there are more people, more traffic, more everything. even the darkness is different, it has more tones and totally another feel to it.

but i have to say, i would imagine that if i ran regularly in the evenings i probably would run less; it would appear that it might be more likely to reason yourself out of it every now and then. i guess it could become a habit like running in the morning, but for me it seems that there are too much variables involved -- for example, stressful situation at the office that extends the work day; or the headache you get as a result of that; or a lunch that doesn't sit well with you. even a nasty weather would probably be more likely to deter me than it is in the morning hours. so kudos to everyone who runs in the evenings; i probably couldn't do it.

so even if i had a nice run yesterday, and even if change is more often than not good, i definitely won't be making a habit out of running in the evenings. i am too lazy a person for that, and why should i, really; starting the day with a run really is the best way for me to get it going.

just you wait

you say you can't wait. you say that the awareness of what is to come fills you up with such anticipation that it feels that it won't fit inside you and that the comparison between what will be then and what is now is too big, too much, too everything except gone fast enough.

you say that what is to come looms in the horizon like a huge crescent moon, one that turns into full so slowly that it drives you mad. the agitation caused by your impatience prickles under your skin and makes your head ache; and all you wish for is that the day would come faster, that the day would be here tomorrow; because you honestly can't wait.

and every night you pray, from the bottom of your worn-out heart: let me have this, let it come; please please please don't take this from me like you have taken everything else. let me have this and i will never ask for anything more. you don't know who or what you are praying to, and in the end it really doesn't matter; maybe you are praying to yourself.

and at the same time you know that the reason why you want it so bad is because it is not here yet; that it exists only in the unfathomable future, in a one time hasn't touched or reality ruined. you can't wait and at the same time all you want to do is wait, wait for the rest of your life so that what is to come will always be there, so that you will always have a future and a reason to pray. 

you can't wait because what is to come is the only thing that's left for you; it is the last straw without which you will drown.

you say you can't wait; but of course you will. 

insert nike slogan here

there are mornings when waking up at 5.20 am feels slightly more difficult than on others. reasons can vary, but it is usually to do with either being more tired than usual, or the weather being horrible; in some cases, the combination of the two. today it was the former, i was for some reason extremely tired and surfacing from sleep felt as if trying to swim in a sea made of tar when someone the size of a blue whale is clinging on to you.

so it was not easy. this sometimes happens, so you do know in the back of your head that it does get easy the second you are out of bed; but there are those few minutes between the alarm going off and the act of physically getting  up that can sometimes pose a difficulty. but even so, and i realised this particularly clear today, the option of not getting up and going for a run and instead sleeping some more doesn't enter my mind. it doesn't because it isn't an option, and i am not quite sure when it stopped being one.

i find this rather interesting. especially so because later, when i am already up and equipped with relatively normal brain functions, i sometimes think why i bother getting up when most people are still asleep; why i day after day get out in the dark when i absolutely wouldn't have to, when i could be sleeping as well. i might even think that i should have just stayed in bed. but in the haze of half asleep and half awake, when you would think that this kind of thought would have the most standing ground, i don't think like this; it simply doesn't occur to my half-awake mind that in theory i could choose not to get up and go as well. 

i am extremely happy about it, of course, to be hard-wired like this; but i still sometimes wonder why it is so.  is it because i have been doing it for so long that it has become automated, or is it because of my obsessive nature; or is it because that not even once, even after the most tired of mornings or the most dreadful of runs, not ever have i been sorry that i went.

like you and me and everybody else

it was surprisingly late in his life when L realised that other people didn't hear the voices that he did.

they had, after all, always been there, as long as he was able to remember, and he had never had any reason to question their existence or validity. the voices  -- there were two of them -- were as self-evident to him as were his arms or legs or the colour of his eyes; something you didn't pay much attention to, something that just was. some of his first memories were to do with these voices; how could he have known, then, that they weren't - he was told - supposed to be there?

so when he learnt, at the age of  23, that other people didn't share his experience (by then he had already figured out that they didn't hear the voices in his head; but somehow he had assumed that they had their own voices, ones that he himself wasn't able to hear), L was somewhat puzzled, and strangely enough, disappointed. why hadn't the voices told him this? shouldn't they have known? or were they as clueless about the improperness of their existence as L had been?

it was no use asking them because that's not the way it worked; the voices in his head were at the other end of a one-way channel. to talk to them would have been like talking to a radio and hoping for a reply; thus he had never even tried, never even thought this to be a possibility. in other words, the constant, unasked presence of the voices had never bothered him before; but now, as he knew that they weren't supposed to be there, it became annoying, almost offensive. his inability to turn them off started to agitate him; he couldn't sleep at night or concentrate on anything during the day. 

something that had been an instrumental part of him had became a nuisance. it was like being bothered by your heart, or reflexes, or rhythm of your breath; being bothered by something that is you and that had always been you.

it was exhausting.

so eventually, partly due to the torment it brought about and partly because he was told he should, L sought help from medication. it worked with an almost frightening accuracy; two pills, twice a day, and suddenly there were no voices any more.

it was completely quiet.

and as he faced the world by himself for the first time in his life, his head occupied only by his own thoughts, he couldn't help but to feel lonely.  there was too much space now and his orphan self wandered in the vast hallways of his mansion of a mind, frightened of the empty rooms.

but at least he was like everybody else now. 

raven

the rain is heavy, it falls from the pitch black sky without hesitation or a pause. the drops bounce from the wet asphalt, making the ground beneath my feet seem alive; it takes only a few minutes before my shoes are thoroughly wet. it is useless to try to avoid the puddles that cover the vast majority of every even surface; when i was still in my bed during the hours of the night and listened to the drumming of the rain behind the windows these reservoirs of water were already here.  

the wind is strong as well but not as consistent as the rain. it grabs you unexpectedly, trying to push you off balance. when you run against it you can feel how you have to work harder to keep up with your pace; they say that this is not true, that running against the wind doesn't increase the effort required -- but right now it sure as hell feels like it does. then, suddenly, the wind disappears again, for a while, or eases up a bit; but don't make the mistake of thinking that it has ceased for good.

the wet ground reflects the street lights where it's not covered by the thick, squashed layer of dead leaves; it is the corpse of the summer gone that i run on. for now they still hold the colour of the sun, they are yellow and bright and seem to bring some light to the darkness -- but the edges are turning brown already, the process of decay is inevitable; and soon, sooner than you can imagine, the yellow will be rotten and with that all colour will be washed away from the scenery.

and in this darkness, how can you see any colours anyway. it is everywhere, this black, it is thick and impenetrable and even the bright neon lights of the advertisements on the walls of buildings seem defeated by it. it sucks everything in and lets nothing out, sitting on the world like a big, black bird: and even if the sunrise, still some hours away, will drive it away, the time of the year is such that you are aware of its presence even when its not there. 

it is a typical october morning, then, and as i ran through it i am smiling.

i must be going slightly mad.

good luck with that

anyone who has ran more than once knows that sometimes it feels better than others. sometimes from the first step onward you feel like you could go on and on and on; sometimes the best part of the run is when it is over.

i had the latter type of run yesterday. for no reason in particular, or at least none i can name, i had one of the most dreadful runs in quite a while. you know, the kind you have when everything under your skin is just a little bit too stiff and your muscles feel like there would be not even zero but negative energy in them;  when your movements have the grace and ease of those of a war elephant's and the speed with which you feel comfortable running is slightly slower than the grandmas nordic walking past you.

not that it actually matters so much.

and today, on the other the situation was quite different. absolutely beautiful, sunny autumn day that really just makes you happy to be alive; and a good reminder, especially when comparing with yesterday, that there are and always will be ups and downs, in running and in everything else; and the best thing to do is to try to be zen about it.

emphasis on try.

you must

the recognition was there, most definitely. the recognition that something needed to be done, that things could and would not go on the way they were; that among the infinite number of parallel universes there was none in which the current state of things would have been allowed to ensue. and more than the recognition, there was the need; an actual physical and emotional burn to do something about the matter at hand.

and yet he couldn't. O wasn't able to trigger the necessary nerves in his system to make this happen, even when the acknowledgement of the required change was so strong that ignoring it had become next to impossible. he couldn't quite understand why this was so -- why, when he so clearly realised the sheer unacceptability of his situation he still could not bring himself to do anything about it?

it wasn't so that the issue would have been overwhelmingly big. sure, it would change his life on many levels, and of course he couldn't be entirely sure that all that would follow would be only for good -- perhaps, had it been so, he would have been able to push himself to action with little to no effort. but whatever the consequences might have been, there was no way his overall situation would have got worse. that alone should have, he knew, been enough of an incentive to make the necessary steps. 

but instead the issue just sat there, in the middle of his existence like a big prickly blob of stuff, and he had no idea as of how to approach it. ignoring it hadn't made it go away, not at all; if anything, it had just became more obvious that it was up to him and him alone to do something about it. on some level O had hoped that someone would have appeared out of nowhere, a deux es machina, and made the decision for him, showed him how to go about it; but no such saviour had emerged and slowly O had been forced to accept that it never would.

thinking about the matter further didn't really help, either, as there was no actual uncertainty whether he should or should not tackle the issue. O knew he should, that sooner or later he absolutely must -- the do or not to do had ceased to be a question a long time ago. but even as there were no options, none what so ever, he lacked either the courage or the strength or the knowledge to execute the inevitable; and so, O decided, the only thing to do was to wait a little bit longer.

perhaps the strength would emerge; perhaps the courage would present itself. perhaps, if he just rested a little bit longer, he would know again how to get out of bed that morning.

counterreaction

i don't remember the last time it would have rained so hard as it did this morning. i'm not usually deterred by water falling from the sky, sometimes i even enjoy running in it, but today the amount of downpour was such that for a while i actually ran back and forth under the setback of finlandia hall (it's a relatively long one so this wasn't quite as weird as it may sound, even though i readily admit that the city employee emptying  the trash bins gave me an odd look) until the rain became humane again. in terms of this morning that means that i was able to see and i didn't have to worry about my phone getting damaged.

but i had a very nice run all in all, and the fact that i was soaked to the bone didn't bother me all that much. so even if it's monday, i didn't sleep all that well, it's raining cats and dogs -- i still feel rather fine; go figure why. 

(you guessed it -- i did not take this picture today)

bit by bit

i had a very good run this morning. the weather was really nice -- it had rained during the night so the air was humid but it wasn't windy or cold; if there is something i adore it is these lukewarm, still, autumn mornings when the sea looks like it is still sleeping and the darkness around you is not oppressing but rather protective.  added to that the lightness of feet and the ease of the run made it quite a nice way to start to day.

as i was approaching home a woman sprinted past me, heading towards the same direction as i was. now, it's not to say that i am a fast runner, or that i never get ran past -- it just doesn't happen very often (mostly because the amount of runners in the time i run is somewhat low) and it does sometimes awake a slight competitive spirit in me. so as she was running a bit faster than me,  i decided to speed up my pace as well and  kept up with her for a while and eventually ran past her. as i was on her side she made a fake spurt as if to start racing; i must have had a surprised look on my face as in the next second she laughed it off and said she was merely joking. we continued running side by side for the rest of the run -- it just so happens that she lives in the same building as i -- and had a nonchalant discussion about the conditions that morning and running in general.

for some reason this unexpected, good-humoured, short exchange left me with a good feeling for the rest of the day; perhaps it served as a welcomed reminder that it really can be the smallest of things on which a good day is built.

it's OK

acceptance doesn't mean that things are OK. it doesn't mean that H is fine with what has happened, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt anymore. the pain has become dull instead of sharp, and even if the knowledge will never leave him, he doesn't think about S constantly anymore.

S no longer dies in his dreams every night.

what acceptance means, and this really is the best he can hope for, is that he has come to terms with reality. he has learnt how to live with it, how to deal with it so that it doesn't paralyze him anymore. it means that the number of good days exceeds the number of bad days, and it means that he can now live again. that breathing doesn't require conscious effort. it is not always easy, but these days he manages.

it has been two years and seven months since S walked in front of a truck; and tomorrow H will be wed to the woman who pulled him out from the darkness that his death pushed him into.

life goes on; and so must he.

even if there are things that were never said.