Home Now

with cousin Maria and second cousins in Järvenpää

At the Railway Station in Helsinki

A Journal Entry: Dec 8

Home now. The Finnish language recedes as the plane carries me west. The flight of eight hours, to Rejkavik, Iceland for an hour layover and then onward over the tip of Greenland, the arctic, Hudson Bay and Canada. The flight makes the sun never set until we're down in Minneapolis and then it's dark. I grew up in the Finnish language and it recedes like a tide. I have been traveling many years away, and I have been traveling many years toward this question of home.

Going to Finland is like going to my grandmother's home. My grandparents and my parents are long gone, having passed when I was much younger.  I'm not sure what I should do or where I should be.

Meanwhile, we are at the airport. We check baggage, get our boarding passes, go through security, and walk through and past merchandise. Last chance to buy! Duty free! Snacks! I find a bathroom in the Helsinki airport that is for children. The toilet is miniature.  At the Kiasma museum, and at several public places, I have seen children's potty chairs in the bathrooms.  It is so kind of the country to think of their children and make places for them. I have never seen a bathroom like this in America. Because I can't find the adult bathroom, I use the tiny one, fast. It was urgent.

At the boarding call, we line up and walk up the ramp through the tube into the plane. I can't quite stand upright between the rows, but must lean sideways as I walk. The person behind me is very sick with a horrible cough. Meals on the plane now cost 14 Euros. Earphones are 4 Euros. Non-alcohol beverages are free. The passengers are trying to read, trying to watch a movie, trying to sleep, or trying to get over the sleeping passenger blocking them from the aisle while stewardesses are trying to sell merchandise from carts that block those wanting to walk down the aisle to the bathroom. I am trying not to be sick.

A reverse culture shock: The American media feels like a bombardment. I can't bear watching the news or on social media, the rants, preachings, images of terrorism, guns, Trump, atrocities. Maybe the foreign language has been protecting me from knowing all this. All of the news is flooding my mind now and I am ill.  Downtown Minneapolis is much too corporate. When I walk between the hotel and a restaurant, I wonder where are the children, the old people, the dogs? All I can see are people who look like they are in their thirties, and they are dressed for corporate jobs.  They walk mostly in the skywalks, and on the sidewalk, I encounter mostly homeless people.

In Duluth, my house feels too full. There is too much stuff. I want empty rooms. I want only a desk, a chair, and a window. I want to look out of my window and see Finland.  It makes me sad not to hear the Finnish language.  On the internet, I google more residencies. I try to find an opportunity to get myself back.

I think about creating stories. Sometimes they only come during a transformation of the self, because of a transformation of the self. Is that possible? I ask myself.  One doesn't just tell a story, one must live through it.  One must enter and pour the self's compassion out among the characters. One must pour out the self completely. Then something new can arise.

But first, sleep.