Roadkings

Hi folks, writing from a Helsinki cafe today. We're visiting Miia's aunt Aliisa and it looks like our stay will be extended. We had expected to go to Lapland but our visa for Russa will take a week to process so we're staying put, taking care of visas etc. while here. Lapland will have to wait. Here are recent updates:

July 8, 2006, 12:58 pm, return of the roadkings

The other day at Eeva and Harri’s, while the kids ran amuck on sharp little stones, Eeva’s father whom none of us had known before told us Finnish war stories through Miia’s translation. All his uncles except one died fighting the Russian invasion. Miia explained that Finns still talk about the war; more than their Canadian counterparts of the same generation. Eeva’s father felt this was because the war here was at home, not in some far-off exotica, but right here on Finnish soil. And the per capita death toll rung much higher. “I [or my uncle, or my father] was the only surviving male in the family,” is a common theme to these stories.

The theme runs in Miia’s family too, on both sides. Her father’s father had a bum knee that left him home suffering his own great shame while all his brothers went off to die defending Finland. Her mother’s father was on the frontline until he became the last survivor of four brothers; then they made him a medic and he survived the whole colossal ordeal. He remains a bitter and cruel man in the memories of his children, of whom he was jealous during the war because that is all his wife’s letters spoke of.

These are the kinds of stories we shared in a gazebo go-around over Kosken Korva, true Finnish potato gut-rot that loosened our tongues and hearts and greased the springs of the closet door; out came the ghosts. We dissected the great tragedy of living in family, the deaths and the abuses, the hurtful words and the tensions that are kept inside. I choked up talking of the death of an uncle I never met because the story told by my parents affected me that strongly. Imagine then what it’s like for the Suokonautio clan, who lost their eldest child biggest brother when he was still a very young man. Miia and Mika disagree on the details but two things are clear: by the end he longed for death’s mercy, and he was angry and embittered by what cancer stole from him: his future, everything he ever could have been or done.

Resisting the temptation to dwell on the negative Reijo talked with fondness of Liisa’s family, how when his own father said “I have two kinds of children: good ones and Reijo,” Liisa’s father became his best friend, took him on 100 kilometre hiking trips where they shared a Finnish love of nature’s treasury. “Kylla, luonto on kaunis.”

“Liisa’s family made me human,” he marveled, the way his wife marvels at every individual thing in life with aggregate amazement, at how sometimes the cliché is true and love really can conquer bitterness and anger, if not all. Miia claims that my family has done similar work with her psyche, taken her in as one of her own and esteemed and honoured where others failed to take notice or criticized without reason. And here in Finland, her family has given me so much honour and continued Miia’s work of taking me higher. In our case I think we are not making each human but making each other better humans…human 2.0s.

The profundity ebbed and flowed as the sun too descended then rose and about two bottles in, at around 2 am, Reijo philosophized, “Moments like this aren’t made, they just come.”

Mika responded, “all these heartache stories are why you’ve got to enjoy every thing good in the world at every chance you get, while you still can.”

Miia agreed, but also, “all these heartache stories are why I do the work I do, to try to stop them from happening to other people.”

“Me too,” agreed Mika the schoolteacher, “Thirty kids a year.”
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July 9, 2006, 1:23 pm, back in Kerimeki

Finally we’ve returned to our own little hovel, for a few hours anyway before the big opera at the world’s biggest wooden church in a couple hours. Tonight is the world cup final between Italia and Ranska…go France, I guess. All the underdogs have been over’d.

Miia and I wrote a poem in the car that rivals the best in Finnish pop music. Here it is without proper umlats:

Mina rakastan Miiaa
Han on niin kaunis
Hanella ja minulla on hauskaa

Chris on viisas mies
Rakastan hanta paljon
Me ollenme iloisia

Roughly translated, it means [warning, some readers may find this nauseating]:

I love Miia
She is so beautiful
She and I have fun

Chris is a smart man
We are happy


Now, something in English by me:

Suomi, by Risto Matka Suokojamin

Land of 400,000 lakes and as many rules
No need to excuse yourself when in the right
And others in your way are doing it wrong
Linguistic rogues making a go on their own
No need for colonies nor patience either
A refusal to be the colonized too
No outside controlling presence allowed
To take control of birch pine hills
Visitors welcome to the heated saunas
Available on all campsites and homes
Where you may also make camp for a night
As long as you don’t come too close
Or overstay your 1-night welcome
You can have all the sausage you want
Remember to replace what you break
Clean up after yourself so that
Everything is ready for the next guest
If we all respect these Finnish things
Then we can live in peace and harmony
Uninterrupted by the invaders of ages
Who can’t keep it together at home



Not exactly a masterpiece there, but sums up some of my observations on Finnish culture, values, and way of being.

July 14, 2006, 1:27 am

Miia and I agreed to split up our Mika and Sian sitting duties: yesterday I stayed home and wrote, cleaned, and stacked wood while Miia went to see the medieval castle in town with them. Today Miia biked to town and learned to weave, then came home and cleaned and piled wood, while I went to see the Retretin art gallery in the nearby town. Much of the art is installed in an underground series of caves. When we walked down the first sight you see is a slew of illuminated crystals hanging from the stalactites in the shape of a man. Nearby is a woman made of chicken-wire. Visually quite stunning. The primary display was above ground and featured works of the Frenchman Jean Dubuffet, the work of whom resembles my own artistic endeavors most closely. He was the master of using unusual materials to capture the spirit and imagination of the untrained child artist. Also on display were nature scenes by Finland’s own Hugo Simberg. His work reminded me a bit of Canada’s G7 artists. Next up was Finland’s most revered ceramic artist: Anu Pentik. I’m not generally a big ceramics guy but the colours were vibrant. Lastly were a series of prints by a bunch of famous Brits I never heard of. Some of it was good. Seven stages of art in all but the most gorgeous to me was the light displays in the caves, including a time-lapse photography series of a bowl of tomatoes decomposing, and a reverse film of a child’s hands pulling petals from a rose. Reversing the footage gave the appearance that she was in fact creating the rose. And the caves themselves were quite beautiful.

The book is coming along; in terms of quantity I’ve completed three chapters here in Finland, that’s 80 pages, or 24, 408 words. In total I’ve completed 11 chapters and started the 12th, or about 237 pages, 68,000 words. I have 16 chapters planned in total, so all that means I’m about 2/3 of the way toward a first draft. Those first 8 chapters I wrote in Canada took 3 years, much of it hacked out in notepads on the subway or bus. So, the progress here feels good. Quality is another story that others will have to judge. But I think it’s pretty good stuff.

As of tomorrow we’re off to the west side for a week, then down to Helsinki for a week, with Mika and Sian, to visit the dad-side of the family. These are my 2 BIG REASONS for being here: family and the book. It’s not an easy balancing act. The book is work to me and the more I get into it the more ideas I have, the more problems I see that need fixing with it – well it becomes quite the beast and it’s always on my mind. Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out this language thing, which by the way is not as hard as people say but is just very different from English so I’m starting from square zero. The fam, particularly Miia, all seem so impressed if I can string together a few words, really they’re just happy that I’m trying and all they want is to spend time with us, and get to know me. But I don’t feel they are getting the real me because I can’t express my thoughts properly – even through Miia’s translation is not quite right, is not quite natural. And because I need, or want, to work on the book every chance I get it makes it hard to work on Finnish every day. If I was planning on staying here much longer I’d enroll myself in full-time Finnish for Foreigners school. Being an illiterate mute is not fun, especially when it puts you in a position of complete dependency on your partner for the simplest things, like feeding my caffeine addiction. I’m just glad my foot is healing like an X-Man so I can at least do physical things for myself and contribute something in that way (like the afore-mentioned chopping and stacking wood).

All this is to say that I need to keep my patience with the book, and not rush it, be grateful for my progress and the chance to work on it here. However, sometimes I do feel the need to draw those boundaries and say ‘no, can’t come over to visit today, got to work.’ And I feel that I disappoint people that way. When I am away from writing, I need get over my frustration and enjoy Finland’s 24-hour summer and my remarkably hospitable in-laws..

July 17, 2006

This weekend my grandfather turned 90 years old. Every time we leave him after a visit we say “see you next time” and he says something like “you’re coming to see my tombstone are you?” We’re not great fans of this particular joke but you have to admit, making it to 90 is better than most people expect. We’re sad to have missed the barbeque in West Dublin Nova Scotia, but hopefully we’ll be at the next one, and the 95th, and the hundredth.

We missed the party because we were en route to Jyvaskyla (you-vah-school-ah), which is a few hundred kilometres north of Helsinki, to visit Miia’s dad and grandmother (who lives 90 minutes northwest of her son, in Lehtimaki which means Leafhill). The good reverend welcomed us and informed us that there were no rules as he gave us ingredients to make pizza, which we lived on for a couple of days. Each couple chose a cottage at the church camp and stacked the floor full of double-stacked mattresses – the most comfortable thing I’ve slept on in Europe.

We took a “shopping” tour of the town, which is about the size of Halifax, took in the view from one of Finland’s many watch-towers, looked over convergent lakes and a drool-inducing football field. Up in Lehtimaki was another look-out tower, which happened to stand on the old Suokonautio farm near the old homestead, now a museum and at the moment we visited doubling as an art gallery. Mr. Suokonautio took us up inside the roof of the barn which used to serve as his clubhouse, with the names of the boys he wouldn’t let in etched into the outside of the door. Butterflies danced with horseflies in the windows and cobwebs crept across last century’s alarm clock. In the main house there was a story for every room, the chores done there or functions it served. “My dad used to work all day in the fields, then change clothes and go into town at night for community meetings. It was then he had a twinkle in his eyes; it was then that he lived for. He was on every committee the town had; he was so community oriented.” Vainu Ilmari, after two characters from Finland’s national epic, whose grave we visited with his wife Aulikki, who waters it along with those of 13 other relatives, including the brother who created the name Suokon-autio, birchtree clearing. The names around Lehtimaki are all based on place, and the place of the Suokonautio clan (formerly Rantekangas) is on the farm with the watchtower in the birchtree clearing.

We followed the Finnish custom snapping photos of the family with their loved ones gone to the beyond, who are after all still loved, still part of the family and Aulikki also showed us around the church, also speaking fondly of Vainu, with whom she had many heated rows. Looking up at the church ceiling, the latest and prettiest in our church tour of Finland, at the softly painted farmers tilling field, she said, “That’s how I remember my husband.” Miia explained how he worked every day except Sunday, church day. Saturday night, as the song explained, was perhaps the most relaxed period of waiting and contentment, waiting for the Lord’s day. When the retired volunteer church tour-guides, who are new to these parts, recommended the watchtower Aulikki puffed up proud and said, “that is our watchtower.”

We talked with her for hours, pouring over her atlas showing all the places we’d been. We showed her the pictures we had just taken on the old laptop and she marveled, astounded, “who invented this?! It’s insanity. You just took these pictures.” She quite liked the one reflecting her image in the war memorial statue.

July 18, 2006 – Finnish Baseball

Warning: this will make no sense if you don’t understand baseball and very little sense if you do.

Some time ago a certain Finn found himself enraptured and frustrated with the game of baseball’s slow in-betweens and dominant power-game. His solution: a bizarre 8-inning mutation of the game with rules as complex as the language. So lemme explain:

Okay, 9 batters aside, simple enough start. Add in 3 ‘jokers’ per side, each wearing a checkered joker uniform, who can bat once per rotation but can be moved around the rotation rather than remaining in a set spot. They are usually either the best batters or the worst fielders. Not too much of an alteration. A half-inning ends with either 3 outs or when all 9 batters have batted without scoring a run. Unusual occurrence, you may think, and you’d be right except than in addition to outs are ‘wounds.’ You see, each batter gets three attempts to hit the ball. The pitcher stands facing the batter from the other side of the plate and lobs the ball in the air, complete with all the spins and trickery of a major league master. It is rare that a batter will miss the ball completely, but these deceptions stand between a good batter and total control. If a batter hits the ball too far or too far to the left or right, it is out of bounds (taking away the pure power game of a Mark McGuire), and doesn’t count. If the ball is hit inbounds during either of the first two pitches, the batter can decide whether to make a break for first base, which is to his left, or try again. If there are runners on first, second (to the right of the batter), or third (about 60 feet past first in the same direction), they have the same decision to make but their choice may be different than that of the batter. So, a batter will often bunt the ball to move a runner over on the first pitch and stay put himself, leaving him with two more chances to bat the runner home. (Strangely, teams will often purposely allow their opponents to load the bases in the belief that this will allow for more opportunities to create outs, especially if they can load the bases with slow runners.) Throwing a runner out at any base (the force out is always in play) is the only way to get an out. Fly balls are usually meaningless, except when it is the batter’s third attempt, in which case he must advance. If there is someone on first, he too must advance to make room for the batter. Anyone on second therefore must advance to make room for the man on first, and same for the man on third for the man on second; if however there is someone on third and not on second, he can stay put. And, everyone who does advance is wounded. It doesn’t count as an out, but they are done for the inning (unless there happens to be a score before 3 outs in which case they may get to bat again). That’s the flyball on the third try. The ground ball on the third try allows the defense the opportunity to make some actual outs.

The field itself is a large diamond and usually the best way to get on base is to whack the ball hard on the ground; it bounces well, or find a hole in the outfield, which is difficult because it is smaller than in American baseball (i.e. real baseball). Before pitches, the infielders will usually throw the ball around shouting out numbers, directions, colours, whatever, mainly to distract the runners and batter. Sometimes, like in real baseball, they manage to pick off a runner who is taking too big a lead or breaks for the next base at the wrong time. On the rare occasion that a batter gets to third on a hit, it counts as a run, and he stays on third and may get to score again. When this happens, loud polka music pounds through the speakers and the whole team piles on the batter in jubilant circus celebration.

The game is played in two halves of four innings each, but the scores from the two halves are compiled for the final score anyway. If there is a tie, an additional 4 innings are played. In the game we saw the home team won the first half 3-2 and the second half 17-0, for a final score of 20-2. Howzat?!