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.