days alternate: hiding on the island, and going to meet folks. wandering to the ferry through the ice-fog. while meeting Sanna in Café Succés on Korkeavourenkatu, Visa sees me and drops in. on my first visit to Finland, in 1994, and then in early 1995, when I did a gig at Media Lab, I stayed in what was his printing studio, around the corner from the café. to save money on the Nordplus teaching exchange, I had a tea and wienari (a cinnamon and glazed pseudo-spiral of pastry dough with a berry jam center) for breakfast. earl gray. bergamot. it was enough to carry me until the institutional lunch at the university which packed belly with the standard fare. pea soup with ham on Thursdays. all across the country. anyway, it’s my favorite café in Helsinki, they have the largest and best wienari in town, made on the premises fresh daily. there is a constant level of coming and going, intimate meetings, where old lovers can have tea and conversation that drifts through all the subjects that once were whispered with entwined and humid breath in nights of late spring, no longer dark in these latitudes. tulips on the table are chosen with a color to match the only dressy shirt available, and time is mapped in eyes and souls. nothing changed, and only the future is left. the past is past. dialogue after dialogue. one, another, another, yet another. life spent in this vocal dance. and occasionally in the Lighter dance of embodied soul, where corporeal centers of gravity press close and don’t need calculus to predict a potent trajectory.
if only. on the edge of the seat, looking onto the eyes. averting when the intensity of that looking is too much. trying to see heart behind glassy lens. but, after awhile, nothing to do but be. effort for this is neither rewarded nor punished, only just tolerated. better to stay in the moment, forget past and future. be an oracle for the self. and when wandering back slowly to the island, Lightly entwined for warmth, words slowly pressed from the atmosphere, silence filled with iced breath. first some tea to warm hands, then rearranging the furniture, pushing beds together.
the issue is, on this residency, what exactly to do? or not to do?? some things are done already.