Helsinki, you failed my expectations and exceded my unexpected possibilities

The night before taking an international city by storm is probably not the best time to try to share a bottle of vodka with 2 other people. It's certainly a questionable idea to stay up sharing that bottle until just 1.5 hours before leaving. It affects the storm. The storm that could have been energetic and strong hit a stronger frontal boundary and the result - rather than an electrostatic discharge of pent up energy built from hovering over the snow in the countryside fizzled. There was no lightning, no thunder, just an overwhelming need for sleep.

I slept in the car. Though I had a great curiosity about the shifts that might occur in the landscape between Tampere and Helsinki, I had to at least rest my eyes. I don't know if I slept, it didn't feel like I slept but I kept my eyes closed. At one point, I opened my eyes and looked at the two other passengers sharing the back seat with me and they had collapsed on one another, one pressed firmly against the window and the other sprawled across her, her fur coat making it look like an unusual twin with one Japanese head and one French head had wrapped themselves in the skin of an animal for warmth. This is my only concrete memory from the drive.

We arrived in Helsinki. As I awoke, the people in the front seats debated how best to drive around the massive Olympic stadium to find our Hostel. They consulted maps but only after consulting one another about the logical placement of roads and the inaccuracy of the construction of the stadium. "The Hostel should be right here". They consulted the map, they made a plan to follow a truck that seemed to find a route that had a secret entrance. We found the Hostel.

Do we have a reservation? yes. Can we check in? yes. Check in, fill out forms, show ID, go to room, make bed, drop off stuff we don't want to carry, back onto the icy platform that served in winter as a parking lot to regroup and take the city by storm. Everyone speaks English. No problem.

We walked to the Tram and decided to make our first move - we would take this tram and not the one that had been recommended. We were going rogue! Our carefully laid plans (actually, I had not made plans... I had just come equipped with desires of experiences for the city) but the plans of our group began to unravel here and now and the city began to do what the city would persist in doing for the next 24 hours. The thread had been pulled loose from the fabric and it would unravel now, slowly and consistently until we left the place and plotted course to new destinations.

Lunch, was weird. That's kind of all I can say about it. We entered a building that apparently had 3 or 4 restaurants in it, though it appeared they had 2 restaurants. We switched tables no less than 3 times until I finally decided I would go to the place where I could order my food. All sandwiches in europe come with mayonnaise on them. You have to know the word for mayonnaise in every possible language and to reiterate your disgust for / fear that some mayonnaise may contain a vinegar to which I'm allergic repeatedly to increase the odds that you'll get a sandwich with no mayonnaise. During my stay here, these efforts to make plain that I think mayonnaise is the excrement of Satan have produced the following results: 4 sandwiches blessedly mayonnaise free and 3 sandwiches with surprise mayonnaise filling. Anyway... I couldn't order a prepackaged sandwich. All sandwiches have mayonnaise on them in Europe, especially if they are prepackaged, so I had to go to the restaurant where I could order food ingredient by ingredient. Lunch was a struggle. It was not just the throbbing that had begun shortly after we arrived in the city (probably from the vodka), nor the fact that I was famished and we'd just done an inelegant dance trying to locate the table that would prove we were in the restaurant where we wanted to be and would result in receiving food but it was a question of desire and purpose that made it a struggle. Plans, no plans, wants and wishes conflicted based on the strength of the personality asserting theirs at the table. I had to relinquish control of my own questions to a guidebook printed only in Japanese and Finnish that was translated by a dear and sweet person who I am not always certain understands what I've said. I think I was speaking lowly. I think I was being too casual in my language and not paying attention to our language barriers. During lunch, I took the entire burden of the intensity on myself. I doubt anyone else felt the weight I did. I was probably projecting anyway, so in that way, the blame did belong to me. But blame... maybe a bad word to describe it. Responsibility? dunno.

I wanted to go to the zoo. It was my biggest desire for the city, to go to the zoo. The Japanese / Finnish guide book said I could go, it was open and there was a ferry. I announced that I was going to make the effort to go to the zoo. I headed out on my own to find the ferry.

to be continued.

Tokio

"Newscasters, previously dutifully reading the official notices, have begun to question the accuracy of previous reports." - Sky news.

"They've been telling us that the radiation levels aren't high enough to worry but there remains the question of whether or not they're telling us the truth. I am very worried." english translation of a street interview of citizen of Tokyo.

Japan

In Haukijarvi, Finland, I'm not able to use my phone. I could use my phone but it would be costly and I'm not here that long. At first it was entirely decided by the cost but the longer I go without looking at my iPhone to get email, twitter feeds and calls, the more I forget that I have a phone. The technology that drew my attention to it 40+ times / day because of its multi-functionality in the US has become an ipod and a place where I use my music generator apps much more than I think about the possibility of receiving anything from this device from the outside world. It has become a private device. I am quickly, and gladly forgetting what I perceived to be my "need" to be connected.

I realized this was my growing feeling about constant contact when I got the news, several hours late, about the earthquake in Japan. A friend at the residency was very worried because of her lack of contact with a wider world. Contact with family and friends who live in Tokyo. Remembering 9/11 and the flood of phone calls into and out of New York, power failures and other disruptions to the constant communication infrastructure that day left people in and out of the city worried and confused about the safety of their loved ones. We looked, that day, at our cell phones cursing the fact that they can't actually do everything that we want, they aren't magic and life is bigger than the place they hold in it. Within 7 hours, my friend was able to contact her family and they are all safe. It was a relief.

It's been a long time since I've waited so long to get information about something big. There are times and reasons that people may withhold information from me for days or even weeks but that is a different kind of relationship than the democratic access that I've come to believe is embedded in my phone (right under the sim card I guess). It was an emotional and exhausting day. It left me without words and wanting to be very private and disconnected from the technologies that might give me the immediacy of information and facts that I had craved those many hours that I couldn't make that connection.

I've been following the problems with the Japanese nuclear reactors since the following morning and have great fears and concerns for the impact these dangerous devices may cause for so many in the world. I began this post thinking I would talk about the hypocrisy of the people in Washington DC who have been promoting nuclear as a "clean fuel" option. I guess I did just talk about that but somehow the 7 hours of disconnect, emotion and fear for the family of my friend feel larger in my heart than the criticism of others at this moment.

Thinking of Dwight D. Eisenhower today.

Abilene (The Eisenhower Waltz)