20+ hours of sun and still so cold?

I didn't think it was bothering me, all this sun, after all, I'm the one my mother has always referred to as a "champion sleeper". Sleep is what I do and not much interferes with it, not fire alarms, not my cat pouncing all over me, and certainly not something as insignificant as daylight; so I've responded to all concerned inquiries about my sleeping and comments about how difficult most tourists find it to adjust to 20+ hours of sun with a smug "not me". Yeah. I've discovered a small addendum to that.

I don't have a problem falling asleep to what may look like a sunny afternoon when it is, in fact, 11pm at night but I am having a difficult time staying asleep. You know that feeling when you open your eyes to a much brighter day than normal and you have that full body start accompanied by a feeling of dread knowing you've slept in? I do that pretty much all night, every night from 3am onwards. I wake with a start, look to the window, see how bright it is, and groan because I've totally slept in and I'm going to be totally late and, oh God, what a pain before I realize that a) I'm on holiday, I have nothing to be late for and b) I'm in Finland in the summertime, it always looks like it's 1:00 in the afternoon out.

Last weekend was a visit to Turku where, in addition to marveling over a place where baking bread is a part of normal weekend preparations and trying to follow inside family jokes (in Finnish, no less ;) around the dinner table, we collected photo-evidence of the ridiculous amount of sunlight Finland hogs throughout the summer months.


8:30pm - The riverbank that runs through Turku is lined with restaurant boats, grassy shores and heaps of people engaging in what must be Finland's unofficial national pasttime: picnicking



9:00pm - At the pier engaging in my official personal pasttime: chilling out


10:30pm - On top of the hill, looking out over Turku


And, yes, I am sporting my spring coat and a scarf wrapped several times around my neck; although Finland hogs the majority of sunlight throughout the summer months, it seems that Canada is hogging all of the warmth.

postcards from finland

Julia is fine. I'm not sure how I managed to miss that the handle bars were facing the wrong direction but the person who parked their bike beside me didn't. As I was sitting upstairs bemoaning my 'broken' bike, they were noticing that the front wheel was facing backwards and spinning it around to face the right direction. That's it. Problem fixed. I smile to think of just how many of the things I interpret as 'problems' are also so easily fixed if I could stop bemoaning them and look at them with a more objective eye.

Yesterday the sun came out late in the afternoon and I walked for hours by the ocean enjoying the golden evening sun, watching the kayakers, and listening to the sounds of the city by the ocean. I came across two Canadian geese. REAL Canadian geese, regal with their long, graceful necks as opposed to the strange, squat little birds that have managed to usurp the name here. I was glad to see them, these birds from home, and I stopped to watch them for a while, thinking about how far they'd come. As I sat, a couple of ducks came right up to my feet quacking for food while the geese kept a respectful, safe distance, evaluating the situation from afar before deciding not to bother me - just like any good Canadian.

As I type I listen to a radio station from home streamed over the internet and keep pausing, surprised, when I'm told that it's 2.30am or 29degrees as I automatically look toward the window to confirm before remembering that I'm not there. I'm here.

Here is a good place to be. I toy with wondering why - because I'm on holiday? because the size of the city makes many things easier? because I've none of the responsibilities of home to attend to? because I 'get' people here in a way I don't 'get' people at home? because of the company? It's probably a combination of all of them but, to be honest, I don't spend too much time thinking about it. I've very much checked out and taken a mental as well as literal holiday this last week. It's been better than good.

And, below, an actual postcard from last Sunday: late morning, great yoga, sunny bike ride, and basking in the sun by Toolo Bay before headed to the nearby park for a rollercoaster ride. Perfect.

so close

I've had an almost perfect morning.

Sunny bike ride to the shala along quiet roads where I enjoyed the bright, new green of the trees and thought about how nice it would be if every trip into the city at home were this civilized. Long, slow, lazy yoga with only a bit of pain as opposed to the non-stop agonizing pain that has typified my practice these last few weeks. Without work to rush off to afterwards, I was able to sit and meditate for 20 minutes after my practice while the others slowly finished off theirs. Coffee in the sun while I caught up with the world online and thought about which route I wanted to take home - the scenic one or the quick one.

I was starving so the quick route won and off I went. Riding a bike is still a novelty, doing so in a city that doesn't hate bikers is even more of a novelty and to be able to jet about on my bike on a day as gorgeous as today? Well, if I were in a movie, there would have a 'Paris in the Spring' type soundtrack accompanying my ride and a voice over narrating my happy thoughts "tra la la, here I am riding my bike home on this gorgeous sunny day, how very European of me, tra la la". Until I fell.

A full-on, sprawled on the road fall after my tire got caught in a streetcar track (same exact place as yesterday as matter of fact, but I didn't fall then). I haven't actually seen a local doing that yet so I think my cover is blown. As is my pride. I escaped without a scratch, which is good, but I broke Julia, which is bad. I'm pretty sure it's a fixable break but it's still a break and Julia is still my new novelty friend that I've only had for two days so I'm feeling a bit useless and sad. I'm not sure what the movie soundrack for my afternoon would sound like but I'm damn sure there aren't any "tra la la's" in my voice overs. So sad, this North American. I need to get my tra la la back.

me & the pink ride

I'm in Helsinki. Did I mention I that? I could have sworn that I did but emails from home bearing invitations and asking where I am make me suspect that this is one of those plans I made using my inside voice. Either that or this trip was on again/off again so many times that people lost track, heck, I lost track myself at times.

The flight was uneventful save for the fact that I forgot my carefully prepared bag of vegetables in my mother's car and had to settle for 12 hours of airplane-style vegetarian meals (read: white rice and bread rolls). You'd be amazed at just how many times I thought longingly of those vegetables and that one, perfect fuji apple perishing in my mother's back seat on the trip between Toronto and Helsinki. Vegetables + fruit make me very happy.

I arrived to a bright, sunny afternoon and am unlikely to see anything but as the sun currently rises at 4am, sets at 11pm and the days grow longer as the summer progresses to a point where I can expect only "a short moment where it's dark-ish". My yoga pass is purchased, my mobile set up, and some visiting has happened. The best part though? The best part is that my very own bike was waiting for me when I arrived. A pink and white bike with "Julia" scrolled along the side, however, since we're in Finland and they insist on doing things differently with this crazy language of theirs, that would be YU-lia not JU-lia as one might safely assume back in normal-language-land.

Not only is Julia the first bike I've owned in 17+years but she's the first pink thing I've owned in ever. She might also be the closest I'll ever come to my Nordic stereotype of quirky blonde women spriting about town on their bikes clad in striped socks and bjork-like eccentricities. I'm neither blond nor nordic, I can't quite pull off striped socks and will never bear bjork-like eccentricities; however, I have a bike. A pink one. Score one for the touristi.

it's nothing

So. Colour me surprised. It turns out my stomach does hold more than static, it holds something with a long name and many scary-sounding possibilities followed by a whole bunch of "we'll have to wait and see's". It's most definitely nothing at all...or it's something. No way of knowing so I've decided not to worry until I have a reason to worry.

The rub of it all though? The long named-something-that-could-be-nothing is essentially a result of this: even my body parts are trying to overachieve and, in doing so, just thoroughly mucking things up. Sigh. This realization is absolutely the theme of my year on all counts - mind, spirit and now body too. All this time I thought going full-on and working my a** off was a good thing when, really, I had it all wrong. All I've really accomplished is the completely idiotic act of driving myself to the point of breakdown (which I mean in more of a mechanical analogy than a psychological one). I'm pleased to be learning this now as opposed to later.

Nothing works quicker than my family grapevine. No sooner had I told one sister than the other was calling me with a thorough report on her research which was a blessing since, quite frankly, I don't want to know everything. Something she pointed out was that all of the things I should be doing regarding diet and exercise, I'm already doing and have been for years. Our bodies are just so amazing, they know what's best, know what they need, and will gently nudge us in the right direction - we just have to listen.

Not to go off on our collective Canadian mentality or anything but I have been thinking about this, about what it would be like if the message was to respect our body's wisdom, listen to our gut, trust our instincts instead of push through, work harder, do more and do it better. It makes me smile just to think of it - so kind.

renovations

This week during yoga I've been working on correcting my stance which has had a snowball effect on the rest of my practice, it feels very much like rebuilding each pose from the ground up (quite literally). This morning I was thinking about the parallell between what I'm doing with my practice - breaking it down to rebuild it in a stronger, healthier way - and what I'm doing with my life. Now that my Master's is done I'm toying with the question of what I want to be when I grow up all over again and, in doing so, revisiting questions about what's important, what I want my life to look like, what kind of people, energy, and values I want to invite in, and where I'm willing to compromise (or not).

So far, nothing that has come up even closely resembles working Monday to Friday, 9-5 for one organization. Split between several roles or organizations, maybe, but one? No. So I finally and officially resigned from my job and will explore other possibilities. First though, I'm taking a break, a sabbatical, a vacation, whatever you want to call it, what's important is that I'm going to do nothing. I came across a zen quote this week that matched my feelings about this coming summer perfectly, it said something like "A man cannot see his face in running water, only in still water can he find himself". I love it. For the next few months, I'm doing my best to stay still (even when I'm moving).

I'm going to ignore the guilty voice inside that says I'm being a suck, that everyone works hard and I should be no exception, that wonders who I think I am to whine so much about what a hard year this has been and I'm going to focus my overachieving tendencies on overachieving at doing absolutely nothing. If the last few days are anything to go by, I don't think it will take me too long to get the hang of things as I am, actually, really good at doing nothing it's just that I'm not very good at doing nothing in Toronto. A friend pointed out that I have two speeds: full on in Toronto or doing absolutely nothing on vacation somewhere else. I'm not sure I've ever learned to be in Toronto living a normal, every day life that didn't involve doing way too much. That was my intention for this summer, to find a more balanced way of being here, which may make the fact that I'll be posting from Finland next week a bit strange but that's the way things turned out.

Although I do feel a need to be in Toronto, let the dust settle and see what life wants to bring, there's a question mark elsewhere that also needs to be respected. It came to feel that, as much as I feel a drive to stay put (there's no other words for it), I also recognize that staying put would have been like leaving a chapter left unwritten, it would have been a premature decision and, I think, unforgiveable. So I'm off to explore doing nothing in Finland before returning to Toronto to transfer my Finnish doing nothing skills to life at home. One good thing for you, since I'm returning to the land of he-who-has-a-camera, I'll probably be able to talk less and show more.

oh f*ing hell

Just ran into the demon family from hell who live below me and they're pregnant again. Very, very pregnant. Their three year old still doesn't sleep through the night and hasn't learned to communicate beyond child-of-lucifer screeches which translates into three years of sleepless nights and cozy evenings punctuated by the sounds of horrible tantrums.

Sigh.

Love, love, love my apartment but I think it's time to move.

working hard for his money

I was at the specialist with the ultrasound-thingy-place today and it was a bit of a disappointment. I'm always excited to see pictures of my organs and stuff on screen and then disappointed when I see that, really, it's just a bunch of static punctuated by more static and I have no idea what I'm looking at (and it's in black and white, what's up with that ;). Today's session started a bit tense as the technician was irritated that I hadn't drunk enough water to see what she needed to see and she ignored my repeated defense that "I FOLLOWED the directions". I'm pretty sure she thought I was lying and the madder she got, the more defensive I got until eventually I wanted to pee right then and there because THAT would show her but I didn't because, you know, I'm not 5. In addition to learning that my abdomen, that place that I thought housed my stomach etc, is actually just home to static, I also learned that my body processes water very slowly - at least in the land of ultrasounds.

Worse than her irritation, though, was the procedure itself. I thought that ultrasounds were taken from the outside, a little cold jelly on the skin and a mouse-like thingy zips around and takes pictures - easy - so you can understand my confusion when she asked me if I was allergic to latex, and maybe you can understand my misgivings when she applied a giant-sized condom to a giant-sized thingy and told me "don't worry, he works hard for his money". Turns out, ultrasounds may also be taken from the inside. Live and learn.

Perhaps even worse than the hard working ultrasound thingy and the technician's irritation combined is the fact that not long after she stopped sniping and began doing her job, she suddenly got very, very nice. It made me nervous. It made me think that she saw something and decided that it wasn't good karma to be mean to a dying lady just because she didn't drink enough water. I think there should be a rule, if you start off mean, stay mean. Or, you know, you could just be nice in the first place, especially if you're about to assualt a poor unassuming young maiden where few have gone before with a giant camera-slash-dildo.

stuff

Last Friday I had dinner with a group of friends I've known since I was just a fledgling, 12 year old, bekasanahh. In my mind they're the girls I've known since high school, I think they always will be. For that reason, my first thought when A sent this picture was one of idle curiosity, as in "Hmm, who are those women I'm sitting with?". It only lasted a split second but, hey, look at that, if they're women now, I must be too.



Mi, to my left, is my sister-soulmate-friend who knows me inside and out as I do her. I forget when or why it started but we've referred to each other as "mi" for what seems like forever. She's me only better. In high school when the rest of us were reading "Sweet Valley High" books, following each other to the shopping mall, and doing everything we could to avoid being different, Mi was reading "Jude the Obscure", attending protests and peace marches, and quitting much needed part-time jobs because she'd discovered they were using wood from endangered trees or something along those lines.

As if that's not enough to garner my undying love, she's crazy fun. When I think of her, I think of this: she called me over to help her wash her new-old car inherited from her grandmother and, when I got there, she was sitting in a tiny bikini on her driveway, beer in hand, scraping the "Don't Drink And Drive" sticker off the bumper while her neighbours struggled between pretending not to notice and shaking their heads disapprovingly. She was 16, she shouldn't have been drinking and anything. Funny Mi.

In other news, yesterday's journal entry: "Sun today, lots of it, face lifted to the sky in thanks. Man entering the coffee shop as I exited offered a surprise 'Good Morning', it was nice. The parking lot attendant waved me through for free just as I was mentally lamenting the $10 parking fee. Came across a very lost, very recent arrival to Canada and walked him to the subway stop. Took ages to understand what he needed and then where he needed to go as he spoke almost no English. Reminded of just how hard people work to create a better life for themselves. I'm working hard too. Feeling like I'm re-building myself from the ground up and it's hard but I'm lucky, lucky, lucky and grateful for the opportunity to do this at this point in my life".

Nothing profound there, I know, but after spending the better part of the last few months wondering how I was going to get myself out of bed and through the day I can't explain my relief at noticing the sun, it seemed so dark for such a long time. I'm getting my mojo back.