6. Finland.

A lot of the time, I'm vague about my home country because a) it's cooler to be someone from Wessex/Scotland/Ireland/Australia and b) people sometimes have strange responses when they hear the name Finland. (My favourite being an earnestly curious, "Aren't you horny all the time?" Also, the fish slapping dance.) Finland is, however, a huge part of my identity and a country I'm madly in love with. No, we're not the socialist utopia that Americans critisizing their own system like to depict us as, but I do still consider myself incredibly lucky to have been born here.

This was written a few years ago, but it's still my love song to this land:


On January 27th, 2005, I fell down a hole. Triptumbled like Alice down the sewer system, lost my hold on the string of now Billy clutched as he swung about. My feet never grazed the walls of the tunnel when I swooshed down and landed on a pile of fabric and flesh soft as feathers. I struggled up to lean on my elbows.

(A friend says she carries her home with her, inside her. It's a beautiful thought, but I'm tempted to say it's utter bullshit. Sometimes I feel like I know where I belong, but I doubt I'll ever find out when I belong.)

So, I thought, this is what hell looks like.

Someone cartwheeled past me in a whirl of purple, and someone else blew fire on my face. The red and gold were almost blinding, and the candlelight reflected from the walls like hell’s flames. It was as beautiful as it was macabre, the greedy touches equally exciting and appalling. The scene overwhelmed me and I fell, people catching me like cushions. Time curled into a tight spiral, a whirlwind of moans and wandering hands and tangy wine. I lost myself in the spiral until I saw Her, Her fur a dull grey against the glitter and glow of everything around me. In Her eyes I found my sanity, and I saw the horrors surrounding me. Glistening mouths stretched in moans, soft boy flesh like cotton under your fingers, the dead eyes of the lost. I lifted my hands in prayer and cursed the sluts, whores, gluttons, capitalist bastards wallowing in filth. The Wolf raised Her head in a howl to the heavens. There was a mirror on the ceiling, and I grimaced at the lewd limbs of the whore in it. I realized it was me. She roared and I fell deeper.


We create history, but at the same time we destroy it. Everything used to be better, yet we wouldn’t survive a day without our electronic can openers or sliced bacon. The grass is always greener on the other side of the present, yet we are always wiser than the generations preceding or succeeding us. Will future generations find the concrete bunkers we build beautiful? Will they lament over the ruins of functionalism? Will they despise us for blowing up crumbling buildings like I detest Napoleon for wrecking a pre-Roman castle in Bratislava, or the layers built on top of another in Turku? We live in a layered world; we build on the remains of the past. To move on is to destroy; to stop is to die.


I fell with the paratroops, gravity merciless and making my bones ache. The earth was ash grey like the men surrounding me, but the devil’s breath and napalm kept us warm. I covered my mouth with my sleeve and looked. Cologne was on fire, the Rhone and Danube ran red. My hands were wrinkled and I felt old, old. I’ve never been Hamlet, but the bombs made the words leave me. I concentrated on my tweed trousers instead, and on the peach an Italian girl offered me. The Lion, the only survivor of a Jewish circus, left red footprints in His wake. “Mama, I’m coming home,” sang the Wizard (of) Oz as he panted out his last breath. It was a soft melody, but the earth crumpled from beneath me and I fell deeper.


I lay flowers on a grave in the early autumn moonlight. I sing of my land, to my land, to the night and the crisp air. My voice is weak but in tune, thank goodness, in spite of the ethanol running through my veins. I sing to the man who never saw winter, barely made it to autumn. But he saw the summer, the high skies and bright nights. He squeezed the dandelions and used the essence as his ink. He wrote this land and its people, giving song to the granite and poetry to the trees. This ungrateful land drove him insane like absinthe, then drove him away.


“Sacred justice moved my architect,” he said. “And yet, I am here. In the hollows left between His great plans.” He raised his arms towards the skyscrapers and spun around exactly once. “He didn’t count on any of this, you know. Wall Street, Broadway, houses that poke His ribs. Oil wars.

“We were supposed to be His image, but turns out He’s not that great a painter. Or maybe He just has a love for the absurd style. I don’t know, I kept nodding off during Art. Always was more of an Economics kinda guy.” He glanced up at the veil of smog before continuing. “What I know is that somewhere along the way, we got fucked up. Some of us less, like me, and some of us more, like you.” I tried to protest but he merely clucked his tongue. “There’s not much point in interrupting. Eternity is plenty of time to chat, I’m just helping you while away a fraction of it.

“I never had parents, so I had to learn to listen to the world.” He pressed his ear to the concrete and petted the surface. “Can you hear that? The hum of existence. Almost gone. We pump earth’s blood into the heavens. God must be the ultimate smoker by now. Pretty soon we’ll all have a nice tropical climate, not just us down here but everyone. If your Porsche hadn’t killed me, the exhaust fumes from it would have. So thank you. I must get going now, do enjoy your stay. Plenty to see here. You can almost spot the Gate and the Purgatory if you take a right at the next corner.” He limped away in his ragamuffin clothes and little black wings, and I took a look around.

Everything looked the same, down to my smashed Porsche in the middle of the street, but something was shifting. I could feel time slowly collapse on itself, bending underneath the evil of the deeds it was supposed to heal. I saw Evolution, and it was beautiful like the creation of a monster. I saw myself on top of it all, king of the hill. Then I saw Her face on shiny marble twist as I left Her and a thousand others. All She wanted was a bit of love, a hint of caring. But I am an empty cup. The Leopard stalks past me and smiles.

So this is how Judas feels.


I hear my grandfather’s voice every time I tell of my childhood. I hear it in the steady beat of time, the tick of clocks, the swell and retreat of the sea. It’s a constant, and I’m so used to it I need to listen carefully to hear it. The quiet hum of DNA lulls me into believing I belong: that I have a past, a present, a future, five tenses instead of equations of space and velocity. It’s a comforting thought, but a lie nonetheless.

When the tsunami came, he said we have a good, frozen land. A good frozen land, forged in the fires of eternity out of droplets of lava. But can something born out of change be unchanging? Will the bounds holding Prometheus crumple one day, will the birds haunting him shed their feathers, dashing to meet Poseidon and Hades? A strip of paper becomes a mobius strip only when the ends are glued together; do we talk of linear history only because we don’t see far enough? Can eternity be torn apart like the mobius strip? Will it snap under the pressure of change and fling time off its back to wander aimlessly, or will I be born again when eternity starts over?

(Welcome to my world.)