about a year and a half ago I posted a list of 100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…. I wrote the list when I was in a more active phase of my DIY Masters, a very slowly ongoing project which I can say has led to many good things in my life even if I haven’t yet earnt and given myself a DIY degree. Anyway, the list had a lot of random skills and activities which ranged from learning how to cook family recipes to more advanced work skills.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.

    (more…)

Slice up fruit. It has the familiarity of a lover on Saturday mornings.

Add the muesli that you made by hand, roasted, toasted, made the most of: oats, triticale, pepita, sunflower, sesame, coconut, almond and cinnamon (call it kaneli, Suomi style). You’d stirred in melted honey, oil and grapefruit juice before crunching it in the oven. And finally mixed in chopped up dried apple, pear, apricot and peach bought at the farmers market.

Now pour the milk, from foreign sounding Alexandrina Jersey cows.

Chew your breakfast and think about plane tickets you’ve already bought, waiting to be booked and used.

I could, today, have turned catlike as I lay in the sun. One sip of tea, a turn of a page and then stretch, inch the blanket back into the light and away from the shade. Tending towards the feline, when around people I seek out the warmth of their company, but otherwise I’m happy to sit proud, alone.

Or maybe my love of the sun makes me more like a reptile, a skink, a snake? Or, as I’m not as cold-blooded as that, a she-bear who hid herself through winter, and is now warmer and shaking off the torpor.

Australian voices singing and bantering.  Indie kids in dead men’s pants.

Finally she feels at home.

Maybe it’s the Jade Monkey, not green anymore but black.  He once said “I used to see you all the time at the Jade Monkey”.   She expected him to be standing beside her when she finally saw an Australian band play on the other side of the world.

There were new friends instead.  People she’d found in trams and bars.

Songs sweetly gifted tell about too much time spent travelling together.   She learnt that eventually she’ll know this as a hiccup in her happiness.

Her morning pages have been forgotten for a while. There has to be some type of daily practise maintained whether that be yoga, meditation, painting or 100 words of the third-person singular.

Her walls are pretty much bare. At the moment there’s only a borrowed mattress and disorganised belongings on the floor.

Once the sun goes down she won’t be able to get outside as often. She decided to make forest garden on her wall. At the moment there’s just A4 paper worth of painted grass and a ladybird but eventually there’ll be birds, fantastical flowers, butterflies, dragonflies and trees.

On the way back into Helsinki from visiting friends she bought green woollen yarn and needles to knit with.  She always knits scarves at the start of the knitting season.  It’s a good way to remember how to knit.

Moss stitch.  A stitch that reminds her of a dear friend half a world away.  Occasional ribbed sections.  Just for visual interest.

Someone told her that in Finland all the blogs are about knitting, heavy metal music or taxi driving.

Socks, gloves, mittens with strings so they don’t get lost.

She really has no idea how cold it’s going to get.

In the cemetery near her new house, beside the beach, she took photos of squirrels. They were little and red-brown, with bushy tails like bottlebrush flowers. Her expectations were exceeded when one sat on its hind legs and gnawed on a nut.

A few squirrels came up close to her, stared with their bright eyes and decided she wasn’t a plant. Then they ran away and climbed real trees.

Conclusion: Squirrels are a little like possums. But they come out in the day time, eat nuts instead of fruit, are melancholy (they hang out in graveyards) and they speak Finnish.

Life shifts and buckles.

She gets sweet emails and spicy sms from halfway across the globe. She notices that her writing triggers responses, recollections and emotional regurgitations. She thinks about painting something bright on a big piece of plywood, but she still doesn’t know where to find a lot of the things she took for granted back home.

She can’t believe she never was a brunette before. Her body has changed; she has tanned toned arms and can carry two cartons of beer at once. She: writer, artist, dreamer, bartender, brunette, beautiful and strong must be some man’s dream girl.

She found a list of the fun stuff they did. Thought about destroying it, but figured that she might want it later. After all, there will be times when she will need to remember the good things. Though at the moment there are usually times when she thinks about what went wrong, mainly so she can justify moving forward with her life. She debates with herself, is it possible to forget something (maybe someone) on purpose?
At her old flat she remembered to pick up her shoes, but the poster she bought from lux sits rolled up in the hallway.