Taas kaikki kauniit muistot

Those of you who remember me as a teenager may recall my acute sense of not belonging there and my adamant vows of never returning to Finland once I had left. I still don't know if I could spend the rest of my life there, and at the moment it's not even an option I would seriously consider. But the older I get the more I miss it. Sometimes I miss my family dreadfully. I miss seeing my little niece grow up. I miss speaking and writing in Finnish (so why am I writing this in English? I have no idea). I miss the scent of cold, cold air, the kind that you can feel in your teeth. I miss the unpresumptious trees that watch over you as you wander in the forest. I miss seeing my mum cooking in the kitchen, always with a tiny sense of stress but always willing to stop and do a little dance with her eyes closed if a good song comes on in the radio.

I miss Finland especially at Christmas. Today is the first Advent, and in my family that means going through a little ceremony of listening to "Hoosianna" the first thing in the morning. Someone will light the first of the four candles that count the weeks until Christmas, and we sit in devotional silence until the song is over. Sometimes I feel awkward listening to the song in religious silence, but I still think it's a beautiful tradition. Listening to "Hoosianna" permits you to listen to Christmas carols for the next four weeks leading to Christmas, and the anticipation in the air helps you get through the weeks of darkness and exhaustion that prevail at the end of the year.

I don't think I have a favourite Christmas carol, but I am starting to like the very traditional Finnish ones with allusions to snow and darkness. "Taas kaikki kauniit muistot" is one of my dad's favourites along with "Me käymme joulun viettohon". The former is the recollection of an adult thinking back to his childhood, going to the Christmas church service early in the morning, clad in his best outfit, and sleepily placing their head on his mother's shoulder, probably didn't understand much of the sermon, but recalling those precious moments and the snowy fields and parks that no-one can take away from him.

Growing up, I thought the carol was too earnest and too slow. But today the song reflects my sentiments...thinking back to my childhood, treasuring those moments of Christmas with my family.

So, I'll shed a little tear, light a candle and listen to "Hoosianna" all day.

2009

The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant...

Kate Chopin: The Awakening (1899)

Insomnia

Cheese. Damned cheese. It's what I have chosen to take the blame for my insomnia. Clearly my post-Christmas evening binges are what have caused my sleeplessness tonight.
That, or possibly the end of the year that is looming. Things left undone, unsaid. Looking back at the year gone by, gazing at the year ahead.
Possibly.
Nah.
A better scapegoat - in fact, not a scapegoat but the real thing:
Aloysius Lilius. Damned Aloysius Lilius. The man who came up with the Gregorian Calendar in 1582. If it weren't for him, these last few days that wind down the year, the ones I am living through as I write, would merely be like any other day...
Or quite possibly, we would come across these last few days within another rigid X-number-of- days-in-a-year system.
Why are we slaves to these numerical systems? We love our traditions and rules yet they suffocate us with their unrelenting dictation of norms and behaviour.
And why does this Gregorian system, on approaching day 360-something, make me reflect on my life, feel guilty, thankful, powerless, scared, excited...?
It's too late at night. My insomnia may be fading after all.
Just blame the cheese.

4 years

Another landmark in time. It´s been 4 years since the Iraq war started. I was in California then. I remember dressing in black that day as a protest. Didn´t do much good. Neither did the protest I had gone to two months earlier in San Francisco. But at least we protested. And we still do, 4 years on.
4 years is a long time.

Prediction

2007 is creeping up on us in a few days. It will be a year of changes and big decisions in my life, if I'm any good at predicting. Saa nahda...