My current residence seems to be situated at the point where BBC World’s frequency is eaten up by a Finnish Polka station. Which is lucky, really. As much as the soothing sounds of British accents make me comfortable and sleepy, the information that they convey can be incredibly depressing.

So it’s good that I’m not getting overwhelmed with stories about:

• the varying combinations of Middle Eastern conflict
• global warming
• John Howard’s decision to hang around for another election (the station occasionally broadcasts Radio National’s PM program
• Darfur

But hey, all that’s going to change in about one month when I get hold of my laptop care of the incredibly handsome and generous Stubby. I can get all the depressing news I want, update my blog as often as I want and skype and IM y’all too! Glory, I’ll finally be able to get the photos of my camera and upload them!

Anyway, I do feel a little isolated at times. Those times are some days infrequent and other days they are continuous. Anyway one of the ways I’m dealing with that is by sending snail mail letters and parcels to people. I’m hoping that this investment will pay off and I’ll get bucket loads of mail back any day now. Yeah, it’s old school penpal time.

So if you want to receive mail from me (or ideally get my address to send me a care package of music, vegemite and white knights), just get in contact with me.

Everything is really going quite well. I’m writing more and creating more, sleeping less and drinking more. But that is just an occupational hazard.

Just a quick post before my internet time runs out and I need to run back to work so I can pee for free (damn European paid washroom facilities!).

In Finland they’re really into using their mobile phones. It may or may not have something to do with Nokia being based here. But Nokia made rubber boots too and while they are popular most people are just wearing boots, not using them for amazing stuff.

• Anyway, some cool things you can use your mobile account to pay for are:

• a tram ticket (you sms a number and receive a receipt message valid for 2 hours)
• Going to the laundromat (I ring a number, my account is debited and the machine switches on)
• Paying for car parking… (Don’t have change? Well just use your phone instead).

And at Secco shop (one of the cool places I’ve found here in Helsinki) you can buy necklaces made out of recycled mobile phone keypads!

The future is here in Finland!

My reality is here and now. Everyone feels like a dream, a memory of someone I might have met, and they only become real when they email or call. I only read his blog entries now, no email or anything. I’m not sure if he reads mine. He’s fading. I miss him. I love him. Just the memory of him. I’m not in love anymore. He isn’t existing in my life right now. You can’t be in love with a memory.

We blocked each other from doing what we wanted and needed to do. Maybe the distraction of the other made it easier for us to block ourselves. Don’t ask me why I couldn’t write while I was near him, why he didn’t make videos. We just couldn’t be ourselves because we were so busy being “us” and it began to send him and I crazy. It didn’t work the first time. It didn’t work this time.

There are books about this stuff. Titles along the lines of it’s called a breakup because it’s broken. Which makes a lot of sense. As signs go, seeing that hideous self-help dating guide cover the other day in a bookstore was reassuring.

I worry that one day he’ll turn up, someone who feels like an old friend and it will be just like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

*****

I dreamt that my Dad’s house had been turned into a service station. Some girl I knew was working behind the counter. It looked like no-one had been there all day. The fridge used on the terrace at work was in my dream. There was cake in it. The girl behind the counter and I discussed whether we should eat it or not.

Out the back was a big animal run. A super lux palace for cats and dogs to hang out in so they wouldn’t eat the birds. Carrie, my family’s dog (shared custody like my youngest brother) and other animals were there too. Perhaps they talked. I woke up at that point.

I write about the dream because Alex sent me an email and he told me that Carrie follows him and Mum around the house all the time. That she’s getting old and neurotic.

I just finished reading by Jonathon Franzen. The father is suffering from Parkinson’s and the onset of dementia. It helped me to understand what my maternal grandmother, Torchie must have gone through. Reading that book and talking with an Aussie mate about how we said goodbye to our elderly relatives reminded me. I’m going to be away for a while.

Until Stubby arrives in Finland!

And there’ll only be 50 hours to fill with activity and catching up before he heads away again.

Sauna, lake swimming, beer, Kiasma, perhaps a band.

Back in the day, back before sex and rock and roll truly came into my life (the drugs arrive later on) I used to date a boy who was in a band. They mainly played at high school parties, covers usually: Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Violent Femmes, Rage Against the Machine. Those were the songs that got the kids jumping up and down. This guy also wrote his own stuff too, and they were melancholy songs.

I can remember asking him why he always seemed to write sad songs, and he said something along the lines of “because it’s easier to write a sad song, and unless it’s really a very good song, a truly happy song will probably suck”. Over the past 11 years I’ve remembered that response again and again.

Guess what?

I’m actually happy. And I have been feeling pretty darn good most of the time. But just in the way that happy songs are harder to write, the bits of me that are sad come out way more easily when I start to write. In addition, the feeling of loss and missing increases incredibly when I get online, because there are emails received from people I miss or no emails from people I miss.

Anyway, all of these sad blog posts mean that I’ve been getting concerned emails from friends, which is good because people have been prompted to write to me, but here are some of the reviews:

Also, could your blog be any more heartbreaking?
Sonja Dechian

I thought that you sounded near bloody suicidal in your blog lately, you have a very powerful melancholy in your writing that draws the heart in.
Seamus Anthony

Melancholy. There’s that word again.

Juha, one of my awesome new Finnish friends, is pretty much in charge of my education when it comes to Finnish music and is in charge of telling me which bands are worthwhile seeing. Which is pretty lucky, since half the time I don’t know what is a name and what is just another crazy Finnish word. At karaoke a couple of weeks ago I’d ask “What’s this song about?” and almost inevitably the reply would be “Well it’s a pretty melancholy song, it’s about heartbreak” or “It’s about summer, but it’s melancholic because the singer knows that summer will soon pass.”

At Ruisrock last week he suggested that we go and see Egotrippi play. I joked that they were probably yet another melancholic Finnish band, only to be told that Egotrippi’s thing is that they are pretty much “anti-melancholic pop”. And when Juha described the songs, hardly any of them were melancholic. There were even songs about riding bicycles. It turned out that Egotrippi are the band which play a song that I’d kept on hearing everywhere and which I kept on asking people about, the song that is defining my time here in Finland. The song that’s going to go on to a mix cd for y’all eventually.

One of the great things about the performance was being in this crowd of people who were enjoying the music and who would sing along together. It was beautiful. Even though I didn’t understand what the lyrics were about, I just knew that it was happy music.

So, yesterday I was able to see Egotrippi play again, this time at a free concert in Kaivopuisto (Well Park). And they were playing with Varttina, the other band that has been defining this Finnish experience for me. The second night I was in Finland, Ninnu and Sid took us to a party for one of Ninnu’s best friends. At one point a specific Varttina song came on, and one of Ninnu’s friends said “Ever since high school we’ve always danced to this song in a very particular way, and because you’re here now you have to dance with us too!”

I swear, that dance made me feel so welcome and so belonging. I can remember looking over to Dan and thinking that he looked happy to see me having that experience as I spun and leapt and danced around in a circle of crazy beautiful Finnish women.

During Egotrippi and Varttina yesterday I managed to see about half of the people that I’ve met whilst in Finland, including Ninnu and her beautiful friends and pirate princess daughter. And once again I was able to do crazy, barefoot, sweating in the sun, Womadelaide style dancing to Varttina’s melancholic angry Finnish woman folk music. I felt incredibly happy and belonging once more.

Thankyou for leaving me here and now babe. You made a good choice. I’m meant to be here.

Seamus has recently written about the ways in which the universe tells us that we need to change our life. And it’s true, you get clues all the time, you just don’t pay attention to them.

When I arrived in Finland, I felt like I was going to be really comfortable here. It had a lot to do with the tomato soup that Ninnu gave us, but somehow I knew that I was meant to spend time here.

Regardless of what has happened with Dan (who I miss so much, who I need to be friends with if nothing else) I am so glad that I’m here in Helsinki, right now.

The first week that I was here I got a library card so that I could get hold of all the books, cds and internet time I needed. One of the first books that I borrowed was a collection of writing about Helsinki.

The final story is Adieu Paris, by Markus Nummi. A couple of years ago I wrote a post about this story and I didn’t realise until recently what an impact it had made on me.

Helsinki. My gosh. I’m actually living [t]here.

There’s a deal that I made with someone. Not to talk to them or write to them for a while. Not directly.

The time’s not right. We don’t know how to talk to each other anymore, how to have fun. Somewhere along the way we forgot and learnt bad things instead. When we should have been out drinking and dancing in strange discos, we were hiding in hostels watching television. Things got bad and now that someone is somewhere. Else.

It probably wasn’t going to work out anyway, but we made mistakes and I wish that we hadn’t made them. Wish that we could rewind. I said things that I shouldn’t have said. Reacted with anger when I should have been a friend.

I love this person so much and I don’t know how to be just their friend while I am still in love with them. Don’t know how to be calm around them when I wake up breathless and drowning knowing that they aren’t there anymore. How to just love this person for who they are, when all I want to do is fight to keep them.

And now that person is feeling lonely. That they are going to be lonely and homeless for the rest of their life. That they have no one to look after but themself. That they have no one to travel with, no one to be mates with. No constant.

I’d type into the volunteer form on their website, but I’m not allowed to.

But you know. I needed to say something.

Finally, I’ve started to write again. By hand. In a notebook. Though I can’t wait until my Stubby brings my laptop over. And the writing, it’s not morning pages or diary entries. It’s writing, words coming out because they need to come together and form a story.

In the same way that Duck, Duck, Goose ended up being a sign that I should quit my day job, what I’m writing at the moment is primarily about what’s going on in my life. I don’t know what I’m going to end up discovering at the end of the story, but this time I have to pay attention to what it’s telling me.

Signs about the change of attitude in my life, the big realisation that was going to hit were coming at me from everywhere.

On a train in Russia, I asked Dan to cheer me up. And this is what he made:

and then there was some more:

Despite everything that has happened between Dan and I in the past weeks, whenever I look at these videos I feel that my dearest friend is right next to me.

There’s a point when you realise that what you’re hoping for won’t happen. Maybe something gets said to make all the thoughts condense around it. And however sad the realisation is, it makes sense.

When I’m sad at the moment I allow myself to be sad. Then I take a deep breath in and keep on going. Smash some empties into the bottle bin and explain that once again, no I don’t speak Finnish very well and I’m here in Finland just because.

It does seem that the fashion here is for Australian guys to fall in love with Finnish girls and move here, so a single Australian girl living in Helsinki just because is quite a novelty. Yeah, I’m from Adelaide. In the south. You know that Coopers beer we stock? Well in Adelaide the kids are weaned on to the stuff. You should try some.

Getting me happy at the moment: sunbathing and Vitamin D, Radio Helsinki, random listens to The Pipettes (a cross between The Ronettes and The Go Team), MBar, the Helsinki Public Library (so many cds and English language books!), a chance encounter seeing the vocalist from Mum perform, a new mug, green striped towel and pot plant, new and old friends and going to Turku on Sunday to see Morrissey, The Cardigans and Tool play at Ruisrock.

I do miss out seeing Lordi and Mogwai play tonight, but hey there is always the opportunity to try out Heavy Karaoke…

Yesterday I became more official in Finland and got myself a bank account. Had a coffee with some of the guys at work and then I spent the rest of the day reading. I read The History of Love from cover to cover. Not in one sitting though – I did move from patch of sun to patch of sun and then into MBar for some chai.

It was lonely by myself. And glorious too, in the sun with a punnet of strawberries to myself. And very sad too, because the book was about love and loss. But happy too because everything worked out (in its way) in the end.

Yeah, this book is going up into my Top 5 and should be there for a while.

I want to quote entire passages from the book but instead I’ll direct you over to Amazon, where, if you can login, you can read my favourite section, the chapter “” from the book which lives inside the first book.

Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar for Now I realise I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go around with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, there were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly.

Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me.