First day is thinking day.

Today is the first day I have had time to think in Finland.
So far it has been a long day spent rotating between bed, desk, kitchen table, couch, other kitchen table inside the library, and back around again. I haven't gone outside since last night at 2am.

I officially met my roommate, Mayuki, who I have been thoughtfully paired with by THE MANAGEMENT. By thoughtful I mean that she is friendly and her art is very good. She makes houses out of paper mache that you can look into. There is a series of houses with secret lives happening inside, viewable through a peephole, which are titled something like 'Light comes from the outside' or 'the house of Jack' (I am becoming more sure by the moment that my attempts to remember the titles are only approximations)... Anyway, I hope to interview her in the next few days. We don't speak the same language exactly so it will be a face to face writing/speaking interview of sorts. A buffet of the senses for understanding of a person, all at our little ikea kitchen table in the woods.

Right now I think that we are both trying to figure out what we are doing here in Finland on the edge of many forests and lakes that the weather prohibits us from wandering to.


One thought I had this morning when I woke up with a start at 8am is that in NY I have been in the CHAOS-EFFICIENCY-ARMY, and it has prepared me for the trenches of the silent-order-forest. Like, maybe I can complete a thought or something here. Maybe I can finish a sentence and follow it with another completed sentence about the same idea. But I might not have been ready to do this ever before. Nor would I have known enough to want it. The good news to self is that all signs of schizophrenia melted off of me as I flew over NYC. It is not just me, it is me mixed with the kinetic humping thumping grinding big time city that makes it difficult to concentrate enough to remember that the water is on because I was going to take a bath.

Last night as I was too excited to sleep after a little wandering in the snow, I began to read If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino. How appropriate to come to this:


'It’s all very well for me to tell myself there are no provincial cities any more and perhaps there never were any: all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place. I, in fact, find myself here without a here or an elsewhere, recognized as an outsider by the nonoutsiders at least as clearly as I recognize the nonoutsiders and envy them. Yes, envy. I am looking from the outside at the life of an ordinary evening in an ordinary little city, and I realize I am cut off from ordinary evenings for God knows how long, and I think of thousands of cities like this, of hundreds of thousands of lighted places where at this hour people allow the evenings for God knows how long, and I think of thousands of cities like this, of hundreds of thousands of lighted places where at this hour people allow the evening’s darkness to descend and have none of the thoughts in their head that I have in mine; maybe they have other thoughts that aren’t at all enviable, but at this moment I would be willing to trade with any one of them. For example, with one of these young men who are making the rounds of local shopkeepers collecting signatures on a petition to City Hall, concerning the tax on neon signs, and who are now reading it to the barman.

However, I don't actually feel much envy for the people I have seen yet as I usually do. I think that is because I have had very limited experience of people because I am in an extremely remote place. People really don't have nearly the effect on the environment that they have had everywhere else I have ever been. If they have had an impact, it is well covered by snow and trees.

Everyone that I have met has boasted about homemade breads and family recipes, home remedies, ice fishing, and singing, and their clear skin and rosy cheeks brag about their simple life and great skin care products. Ha, just kidding about the skincare products.