The morning of flow music festival arrives, crisp and full of promise, the 4^th weekend into my much-awaited vacation. That fine-dining beer has been drunk, snus has been shelved – the upper shelf, not the forever shelf- and Tinder has taken me for a spin. I’ve padded the streets of our great capital like Hemingway in Paris in the roaring 20’s. The unsympathetic Finnish sun has been good to me, good to me and my Jesus friends. Good to me and my family.

But still, the voice of the obnoxious little man in the corner of my mind whispers to me that the blues aren’t far away, and as that taciturn sun of ours becomes less friendly and more reserved, I feel my fingers and the tip of my nose begin to get cold.

Flow arrives at the perfect moment to bring some warmth. The perfect moment to remind me that all is well in the land of the overthinker. Its been a tough 12 months. I feel like I’ve been tested truly for the first time and I have one thing to say to you life. Come at me 😀

Now its time to reward myself with that Christmas flow that Birthday flow that Easter flow that New Year flow that magic flow.

I think you get the picture. And for those of you who really have it rough and are not blessed with the support that I have, I salute you and I prostrate myself before you.

Then the words of that obnoxious man remind that Hemingway once said that an overreliance on metaphors is the mark of a poor writer. I become a little self-conscious. But I can also be proud of the fact that if this piece of writing reaches you as it is, it will be the first time I have published anything off-the-cuff.

To anyone whose shared even a part of the past year with me, thank you. If this were a dream, we could all go to flow together, hundreds of us. What a beautiful dream it would be.

Sitting at the top of an old ski jump, we looked out at the pine forest. One of my two companions marvelled “the shades of green seem endless.”

The memory comes to me as if she were whispering it in my ear, almost a decade later, whilst I sit on the terrace of a Kayan longhouse, in the heart of the Bornean Rainforest.

The huge man -my host- sits on a bench opposite me, leaning on one hand. Long haired and tattooed, his stomach balloons out in front of him. His round face is covered in a wispy beard and he has a squint in one, bloodshot eye. The strong smell of alcohol, tobacco and his heavy breathing precede him. Evidently, the 11 bottles of Chap Apek shared with him and his friends the previous night are a usual occurrence.

I begin to wonder whether I overpaid for my stay, but then the beauty of the place begins to sink in. Ornate patterns on plywood run the length of the entire building -black and white- above the doors into each family’s quarters. Brightly coloured plastic carpeting is found everywhere, from the terraces to the kitchens. Each family decorates their own entrance with Chandeliers of plastic origami and hornbill motifs. Little of the workmanship is professional, the materials are cheap, but the wooden building in its entirety is welcoming, pretty and heartfelt.

I try to soak up the comfort of the place. Out of the corner of my eye, from the other end of the magnificent building, a Kayan aunty hobbles into view. She has an ikat wrapped smartly around her waist and her shining, strong, jet black hair is in a tight bun. This bald writer will have some of what she puts in her hair, thank you. The light from a pungent conical Kayan cigarette illuminates wind beaten features. She is a fine-looking woman, elegant, dignified, and as she comes into the light I notice her tattoos. Each arm, from the elbow down to the nails, is black, with only her palms a striking white.

The practise of these ethnic peoples is to use tattoos as protective charms or to symbolize milestones in one’s life. Their tribal home and the one that I have just described is the longhouse. A stilted building that constitutes a small village. It can be up to 200 metres long with a shared terrace on one side and apartments on the other. They are mysterious and magical communities, just like the forests that surround them.

At first, I was afraid of hiking in the rainforest on my own, constant over-the-shoulder glances and anxiety at the different animal sounds. But after a few laboured and lonely attempts the therapeutic and peaceful effects of the greenery made themselves known to me. Weird plants that look like they’ve been sculpted by aliens. The buttress roots of trees like the huge sinewy arms of some god, and the endless canopy of green all around.

It is little known that the chances of having an aggressive encounter with an animal in the Bornean rainforest are non-existent. They are more likely to run away from us than towards us. In fact, it would have been nice to see more animals in Borneo, their scarcity is partially explained by the fact that our species is the meanest bully in the yard.

At a bus stop near the Niah National Park in Sarawak there is a food court. At the back of the food court, just before the entrance to the toilets, are a number of cages. They range in size from your bed side table to an airplane toilet. In them a variety of snakes, turtles and lizards can be found. The animals barely move, there is little light and not even a leaf to mimic their natural surroundings. They are an altogether sorry sight. Regardless of this, giggling tourists saunter past to relieve themselves without a care in the world. Many take selfies with these morbid celebrities. The manner we adopt at funerals or death beds seems more appropriate.

I begin to ask myself if we have a duty as the more powerful species to protect these animals? This duty is much akin to the duty we have to children. The innocence of these creatures is childlike, and their wordless grace astounding.

The beauty, diversity and the sense of adventure that I found in Sarawakian Borneo is one of the highlights of my life and came at a time when I needed it most. In a way, the rainforests remind of the humble forests of pine and birch back home, and, the seemingly endless shades of green.

<a href=”https://www.bloglovin.com/blog/19948239/?claim=mmdeudkbevc”>Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

 

The hot coffee warms my throat and my stomach. It also seems to warm my heart. I allow my mind to soar as my caffeine addiction is sated. I scroll through the various possibilities that I have ahead of me. Investigative journalism, politics, activism. All that bars me from these things is hard work.

Where to begin? this hopeful image of the future begins to flicker almost as soon as it arrives. The daunting amount of planning, research and practise that investigative journalism would demand makes me shrink away from the prospect. But somewhere within me, a voice reminds me that there are small steps that can be taken towards these ends. Reviving my almost-forgotten blog seems a good place to start.

In the months since I have last posted some terrible and wonderful things have happened to me. Inspired by this time, half-written blog posts, finished blog posts, even poems have begun to congregate in a file on my computer. Most of the content of these texts has become irrelevant, maybe even a little inappropriate. Reading through it now a lot of it is rubbish, but some of it is so good that I can scarcely believe I wrote it. It seems fair that I share a little piece of it with you, one of the few readers that I have.

The following are bits from the unpublished blog posts concerning my breakup at the end of January:

“The breakup was like the sudden, screeching sound of car brakes from the highway. Before that we had been quite comfortable, in the back seat. I wait for the sound of a crash, it never comes. Maybe the passengers just got out of the car, and in the shocked aftermath of almost crashing, decided that they could not and should not go on together. No crushed metal, no ambulances, no blood; just an empty sadness.”

“I cant keep from feeling lonely, I cant help but yearn. I cant help but be angry. I try to shirk this feeling and remember our relationship as it deserves to be remembered. With love. The feel of her small hand in mine. The sound of her voice when she said “music”. The weekends spent at her family home.”

“But I force a smile knowing that the future is bright for us both, and brighter still because we have had each other.”

These quotes may seem like scant acknowledgment of someone so important. In truth I have devoted many pages, and oceans of thought to her, but now that chapter has come to a close.

I strongly consider changing the name of my blog to “rantrantraskolnikov” or “rantrantrazumihin”. Then I decide that the allusion to the characters in Crime and Punishment -one a murderer and the other a picture of benevolence- is a little pretentious. Maybe by my next post the name will have changed 😉

“I used to be quite good at writing” the thought finds its way to me even as the silvery glow of the screen threatens to lobotomize me. No, that was just the high school teachers trying to fend off the apathy in me by claiming I had potential. One of the things I had to do to unlock this potential was my homework.

The paragraphs above sit in loneliness for a couple of days as I wait for inspiration to strike. It does, after I watch First Man. The abundance of shaky close-ups in the opening ten minutes prompted some anxiety and annoyance. Then I realise that this technique may have been used by the director to indicate the anxiety, the anxious grief that the main character (Neil Armstrong) feels at home after the loss of his young daughter.

This revelation makes me forget my anxiety and leaves me feeling quite pleased with myself (a state, as some of you know, I find myself in quite often regardless of whether it is deserved or not). Perhaps that’s the reason I enjoy the rest of the movie so much.

The Director, Damien Chazelle is an expert at placing the viewer in the characters shoes. This is proven in rattling shots of bolted surfaces inside cockpits and fleeting glimpses of perfect sky and space. Exhilarating. There is little sci-fi here though, and little is needed as the movie hurtles enthrallingly through real-life events towards its stunning lunar climax. Foy and Gosling give thoughtful, controlled performances. It is clear that the makers of the film have chosen to frame the protagonist with the loss of his young daughter. It is strongly suggested that Armstrong was driven to his feats by this loss and that of astronaut companions.

As promised in the earlier post, the cinema has been the main theme of this past week, and the other films I have watched have provided more inspiration. But the trip to the cinema has, in itself, yielded food for thought. As, trudging on crutches through the extravagant Sunway Pyramid (the nearby supermall that houses the TGV cinema) one cannot help but notice a difference in how I am received on crutches as opposed to in full health. Passers-by will flash a sympathetic smile, clerks and drivers and waiters and waitresses almost unanimously enquire about my injury. Otherwise stone-faced and distracted university peers seem to melt at the sight of me as I am showered with god-bless-yous and speedy-recoveries.

I suspect my reception (by strangers) in Finland would be more subdued, though I have not been crutched in the homeland as I am here. It is not that there is a lack of assistance for those in need but rather less visible sympathy expressed; and you can be almost certain that only a priest will ever give you gods blessing.

I look down at the faithful aluminium steed at my side and am thankful for the change in perspective. After all if you are to take crutches as extensions of the arms then the user becomes a gorilla, knuckle-walking through the brush. Once again that silvery glow threatens to hypnotise me, I slam my laptop shut before..

I am lying in bed brooding over my lost November trip to Borneo. Think Burt Reynolds for Cosmo, only in an ankle cast and a grimace.

The trip will have to wait, and I have to come up with something to keep the boredom at bay during the E-learning week. No Lectures, no tutorials and a limited range of movement.

Fantasising about sending those who don’t hold elevator doors open for invalids to Siberia will only get me so far. The same goes for praying that Anthony Martials hot streak continues, tinkering with my Fantasy Premier League team and reading Dostoyevskys The Idiot. Nurturing neglected friendships -both the long distance and face-to-face, as long as they have a car- seems like a smart move.

I set aside the unsettling thought that they’ll see right through my desperate self-pity and put out some WhatsApp dinner invites. Then another thought comes to me. I could go through every movie at Sunway Pyramids TGV cinema. Start off with First Man, The Girl in The Spiders Web and Bohemian Rhapsody. Then -when I get really bored- I can go through The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Grinch, the non-english films and, worst of all, the horror movies.

Nope, I wont stoop that low. I have never understood the infatuation with horror. One might think the novelty of someone or something jumping out from behind the corner and scaring the fuck out of you would wear off after the first time it happened. Apparently, one is wrong and the genre is thriving.

Last week there were no fewer than 4 trillion horror movies showing at Sunway. That was the week I watched A Star Is Born. The soundtrack is poignant and the acting sound. Bradley Cooper manages to breathe a little life into this remake of a remake of a remake. It is heartfelt, but some might find there is barely enough fresh content there to sustain it. Opinion seems to be divided on the standard of Lady Gagas performance -I thought it was quite good although I may have been charmed by that voice-.

I read an interesting article that questioned why all the meaningful dialogue in the film is given to the male lead. It is a convincing argument, then I think is it so terrible that the screenwriter should decide that one character should have more to say and the other less. Then I try to think of a similar kind of film in which the woman had more dialogue and the man less. My tea grows cold and no such films come to mind..

Returning to my problem, of course school work and hour-long phone calls with the girlfriend are the elixir of life; But I will need something more to sustain me over the now dreaded e-learning week. Then it comes to me! I have my freshly conceived blog to keep me stimulated.