On time and postcards

And so the time passes. For anyone keeping count, I have roughly about a month to go (a little over, I think. Month and 1,5 weeks?) before I get to reintroduce myself to the Finnish culture.
I don't want to.
There, I said it. And it's probably not the first time I've said it in this blog.

I don't want to go back.
Not in a physical way or a psychological way.

Ok, so the second part of that is kind of already taken care of. I'm going back with much more than I packed coming here. The trick with utilizing what I've learned about everything so far is to try and somehow recreate being around people and meeting new ones as much as possible in Finland.
Yes, I will be attempting to hang out with friends and family as much as possible in the country famous for people not hanging out like that.
Never let it be said that I didn't take on more challenging tasks.
Not sure if I'm packing my heart with me when going back.
I'm not. Yup, sure that I'm not.

The intention was that I should start applying for jobs this weekend. Sending out applications and trying to figure out what sort of benefits I might be applicable and can I start applying now or do I have to wait until I'm in Finland. The plan was also to meet friends because boy howdy, when you open your heart to people and let them get comfortable there, the feeling of loneliness is SO much more intense when they're not there. I suppose this is why people have a lot of friends. I get it now. Do I always have to be the last to know how much I like people?
Needless to say this plan failed miserably this weekend. There was a little reading of government sites then a really good book (Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. If you haven't read it, you should. Now. It's not long, so shoo. I'll wait.... Ok.. did you read it already? it's on Project Gutenberg, so now you have no excuse. Come back when you've read the book) and then attempting to go see a fun movie for a change - Sherlock Holmes - only to wind up seeing possibly the most depressing movie I've seen in a long while.. even if it did have a cute naked young man. We Need To Talk About Kevin: it's a good movie, but women will remember it for the same reason they remember Donnie Darko.
Dear movie people, you really need to stop doing that. It's very inappropriate to start feeling that way when you're supposed to be immerged in psychological torture.

So yeah, not quite what I had in mind and at this point, I'm starting to feel the days slipping through my fingers, but the inevitable doesn't have to be bad. Just challenging. Winter. Finland. Please for the love of god someone get me a cute young man to wrap myself into to protect me from the cold!
Ok, this might have something to do with the fact that every single person I talk to keeps asking if I have a husband or a boyfriend in Mexico and then telling me I should just get married to one since it's eazy peazy for me to get a fella what with being cute and blonde.
I appreciate the compliments, but somehow, even after almost 5 months, this has not happened, so I'm thinking it would require more.
The canadian girl in my class met her mexican BF the first day she was here. Oh, and i'm the ONLY single person in my class.
*le sigh*
This schtick, it's getting mighty old and blunt.

So because this area of my life is non-functional, I have to entertain myself with sending useless promotional postcards back to the companies who made them.
Yes, this is how I spend my time.
Don't judge me, you would've done the same if you were given a pretty postcard as a promotional gift at a restaurant only to find out that you can't send it to a friend to tell them to go eat at the place because the address field is pre-filled with the restaurant's own address.
Promoting: UR doin' it rong!
I sent them feedback in Finnish.

Yeah, this being a better person thing might take a wee while yet. Though I did give them mostly positive feedback, so maybe I feel more guilty than I should.

Fear comes from doubt and doubt comes from things left unspoken. There are a great deal of things that still need to be said. In the chain of events that holds the past, the present and the future, only this moment counts in how the chain will shape out in moments to come. The heart fears when it has things to hide. This I still need to fix before the time runs out.

2011--->2012

2012


2011

There are probably no short summaries of last year or no easy lists of hopes and aspirations to be made of 2012. Nope. Last year was all breaking points and big words. This year, 2012 and holy crap does that sound like I should be wearing a jet pack on the moon, is even bigger words with exclamation points.

Let's get one thing straight here though: I don't often go into terribly vivid details about what goes on inside my head, mostly because it can get kind of dull. Since it's the new year and all this traveling stuff is to make me understand things better, learn myself and appreciate myself better, this might get a wee bit... heavy. If I have the time I'll post a silly picture under this post at some point. Otherwise, you have been warned.

2011. It was. It was a whole lot of things. There was a job that was never intended to last as long as it did and there were people there who though good in their way, only served to keep each other small. There were bruised bodies and over-sized clothing. There was a family renewed and old grudges laid to rest while some old friends had to be let go. There was an exception that proved that the rule was indeed right.(And I'm SO never again sleeping with people I don't like. Not worth it, not one bit.) There was a new perspective, a plane ride, a warmer sun and the start of a new life. There was a mystery stalker, a cabbage patch kid, a junkie and a 60-year old who tried woo me.. because my love life is still a complete disaster. And in the final days, there was also a new job. Oh yes, I actually have a job that I love... even though I barely speak the language. Hey ho, I guess you learn while you go. :D
On that note, I can't actually tell much about the job quite yet. It might or might not affect taking spanish lessons and I might or might not have a week off right now. Yeah, it's all a bit hazy still. But when I can, there'll be exposition. New job does, however, require me to learn how to use Illustrator. Which is nice. Now if I just had the time to install it...

On 2012. Man, I don't even know where to start. It's a brand new year. 365 days (well, 362 as I'm writing this... 361 days +2 hours) for all the shenanigans. Ever. To work in a job I love, to make new friends, to get into a university and learn. To shed those last remaining bits of my old skin. 365 days of being completely myself, inside and out. What an enormous freedom. Most of the shenanigans for this year are basically down to working very hard, now that I'm learning how to work right and how to use my energy the right way. But there are a handful of things I can't create for myself alone: I wish to keep on working in jobs I love. I wish to enjoy my friends. I wish to spend next New Year's with people I love, in Times Square, in non-sombre moods, kissing a man I love until his brain falls out of his nose. I wish for my skin to heal. I wish to be wiser and draw better. I wish for my friends to be healthy and happy. And I wish that I would stop attracting advances from 60-year olds (unles they're Sean Connery) and junkies and stop whatever it is I do (emit radiation, probably.. which would beg the question "what sort of radiation?") that makes the people I have a crush on deathly scared of me.
Maybe it's a body odour thing.
Anyone want to test that with me? Anyone? Bueller?

On account of having Teh Dumb, I also have a basic reading list for 2012. Still debating whether to include 100 Years Of Solitude in this, or would the irony crush me. Otherwise, this is what I'm using my weekends on:

Olive Schneider: The Story Of An African Farm

Sven Lindqvist: Tappakaa Ne Saatanat (Exterminate All The Brutes)

On the history of genocides and Euro-centric thinking.

G.M.Gilbert: The Psychology Of Dictatorship

Pretty much what the title says.

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Minna Ahola – marjo-Riitta Antikainen – Päivi Salmesvuori: Taivaallista seksiä, Kristinusko ja seksuaalisuus (Heavenly sex. Christianity and sexuality)

Joe Sacco: Palestine

And then a bunch of other books that I've failed to write down for some reason or another and need to look up again. Now if I could just learn to write things down as they come to my head...

2012? It's gonna be a trip. :)

When will you just learn

Christmas time will probably never stop being busier than all hell, regardles of if you actually celebrate it or any other end-of-the-year holidays. Even if you might have nothing more strenuous than ordering pizza planned, rest assured if you have even one living relative or a friend that's not imaginery, the holidays will cause extra work. Relatives calling, baking like the world was running out of flour, the cat disapporving if there's no turkey. If your holidays are actually peaceful, then you're doing something wrong.

Now that mum's cookie factory (it's a long story but bascially she cooks traaditional holiday foods for a WHOLE bunch of people. We're talking about several kilos of any given food item and this year, 3 legs of a pig.. which sort of makes me wonder what they did with the fourth one or if they found a three-legged one especially for her. How would one go about locating a three-legged pig to eat it's legs?) has mostly closed for this year, the current projects are in no particular order: learn spanish (it's shamefull, really, my spanish), create portfolio (to sell myself), get a job (so I wont end up selling myself), read more because my brain is starting to get lazy and figure out what exactly do I need to do and to have in 2 months when I'm applying for schools in Finland.
Yeah.. I'm going back to Finland in 2 months.

*sigh*

Just to point it out, I don't actually wanna but I gotta. Laws and all that. Oh and free school. I would hurrah, but I don't really want to go back. But good on Finland for having free education. It's a great thing to have.
Now just to do something about that cold and that spiritual void and that drinking and what else... I'm sure there was something else that'll come screaming back to me as soon as I start understanding what people around me are saying again.

BUT, it ain't all gloom and doom. There is a plan being hatched. The plan would involve a lot of work on something or the other and still applying and studying in Finland for some time, but it would also include moving back to Mexico much much sooner than only after I've graduated. I like this plan. This plan makes me happy and gives me something to look forward to. That and the idea of at some point owning an apartment in Mexico City. I got goals. These goals also include learning a musical instrument, books, school, a work I enjoy, traveling and kissing people.
I think those are good goals.
Oh and possibly treating friends to holiday meals. And if I should ever make them cold fruit soup, then I would call it cold fruit soup and not a fruit salad with lettuce and beetroot. True story, bro. Maybe the beetroot just suffered in translation. Yeah, that's what it was. That's what I'm going to tell everyone if they question my cooking skills: "it's not the same in Finnish and in Spanish".

On post offices and ailing

This is a post office.
This is also a post office:



The difference between these two is that the former is an administrative building and currently serving as a museum in the historical centre of Mexico D.F. and the latter is a very actual post office, where people deliver mail and buy stamps and whatnots that go on mail. The latter is located across the street from the former. Never let it be said that Mexico wouldn't know how to appreciate what it's got.
Should you ever happen to saunter anywhere near the historical centre or one of it's museums, be prepared to get completely lost for several hours because nothing here is small or half-hearted. One could very easily, for example, visit a holocaust museum and end up spending 5 hours there.
Yes, there's a holocaust museum in Mexico City.
Yes, it is very large and thorough.
And yes, having excellent company is a must. Someone you can trust in case you get attacked by wilderbeast or need to be dragged out by your hair.

It's finals week in Mexico. Possibly this is a universal thing with all universities everywhere, but since I'm just learning this university language and life-style (apart from the sexual experimentation which I already did) (and the drugs, since I'm still trying to overcome the nausea caused by too much arnica tea.. it's for my foot... this isn't a tangent, I swear) I'm not going to swear on anything. So let's just say it's finals week in Mexico. Oh and next week also. What I've learned so far about our teacher and the few others I've run into is that they're generally very awesome and tend to pay more attention to your willingness and ability to learn than filling out papers to measure progress in terms of percentages and pie charts.
Mmm .. pie....
Er.. they might even give you a tip of two that are not entirely by the book should you exhibit enthusiams for more than sleeping in class. They also show patience beyond any normal human capacity. Personally, I would've whipped out The Ruler Of Doom a long time ago....
I've also learned that japanese guys are a tiny bit on the uptight/reserves side and it pays to have korean friends who know just how to make them feel uncomfortable. This is when things get funny. And that if you hang out with said korean friends, you get to say things like "You don't know 32. This is 32." and wave your finger in a very assertive way. And physically pester japanese guys into giving out their email addresses while saying "What's wrong with you?".
Good times.

It wasn't until Friday when the good times came to an abrupt halt when I accidently on purpose cracked my foot while trying frantically to out-manouver a stationary vacuum cleaner. And then I blacked out making arnica tea in the kitchen. And some people might have gotten a little worried. So they laid me on the livingroom table and taped magnets on me. Then I got cold, because christ it's bloody cold indoors in this country, and had to get off the livingroom table. Which is ok, because the lady who laid on the table after me, fell asleep on it. If there had been two of us asleep on the livingroom table with magnets taped on us, that would've just been weird.

All in all though, I just feel slightly nauseous from drinking too much arnica (apparently it's a poison and no one told me this before they told me to drink the tea) and the foot doensn't really hurt, it just looks like a purple waterballoon. Or a muskrat. Either one of those. So nothing is broken and I got an "oral" exam on Monday which my therapist found hilarious. And if I hang out with the korean friend some more, we might be able to force the japanese guy into giving out his home address for shenanigans.
Not that I'd really TP his house much....

The story of the roots

Once upon a time, there was a girl with a multitude of different hairstyles. Her hair was long and then short and then curly and then long again. It was blonde and red and purple and brown and chocolate. She liked almost all of her hairstyles except for the pudding bowl one she got when she asked the hairdresser to cut her hair like Red Sonja's. She also didn't like it when the same hairdresser cut her left eyebrow off.
The brown one she liked most of all, but because of her pale nordic roots, it was a pain in the buttocks to maintain. But maintain it she did, for nearly 10 years and all the while she felt very intellectual and noticed she could easily fool people into smart(ish) conversations when pretending to be a brunette. At least she didn't have to flash them quite as much boob.
But the day came when she noted that she wasn't quite happy working a shitty job and paying 120 euros every 3-4 weeks to fool people into not treating her like a sack of weeners. So she asked her fairy godparents (who also happened to be her real parents) to get her the fuck out of the situation. With a wave of a credit card, they did and she was magically transported to Mexico.

In Mexico her fairy godfather told her: "You are pigheaded and plagued by bad spirits and you has Teh Dumb." And to prove his point, he rolled an egg on her head and neck and the egg broke and she was covered in goop and everyone went "eeeeeewwwww".
"See? Bad juju." said the fairy godfather.
"To fix your Dumb, you need to visit one museum in Mexico City per day" he started. "And you have to work hard on something you really enjoy. To fix your bad spirits, you need to wear lots of perfume and ditch the crap (people) you've associated with in the past. Why do you want to hang on to people who have even more Dumb than you do and who have no desire to fix their situation? Your soul is so burdened by sad history and filthy people that your neck is cracking. And since you feel so badly about your body that you feel like hiding it way constantly, we're going to give you these pills that will make you kind of hyper and bleach that hair of yours to get you back to yourself."

So she took the pills that made her only a little bit hyper but otherwise more like she used to feel when she was just a wee little ankle biter and they bleacher her hair though the hairdresser recommended they cut it all off because of colour-damage (but her fairy godfather insisted that rubbing eggs on it would do just as well just as long as she didn't take a sauna with the egg on her head) and she took a good hard look at who the hell she was keeping company with and noticed that her fairy godparents were pretty damn right about how infectious teh Dumb was and so she clicked "unfriend" a bunch cuz thankfully, a lot of the people on her FB account were never really friends of hers. Not when she stopped to think about it. And when she thought about it a little more, she also discovered that the answer to "if we sleep together, will you like me better?" is always "no".

And then she went to a museum with her fairy godparents and altough she felt a little bit lonely (she hadn't had sex in a really REALLY long time), she noticed that her posture was better and she was understanding the art and what she drew better and she kind of liked her damaged hair because the colour was almost her natural one. And her boobs looked pretty good too.

And she felt really really confident that she would enjoy it if nice people would ask her out on dates and that she'd be totally cool even if  they didn't turn out to be the Man Of Her Dreams, cuz let's be honest, she didn't have a type per se and she was pretty darn content to be working on things she liked.




She also felt that it was necessary to mention that she deleted her personal MySpace account (so this is the only place this blog can be found anymore) given that MySpace is a broken pile of ick. Sorry, Justin. I'm not keeping that thing even for you.

And then there was a goat on the dance floor

True story bro.
We went to Tehuacan for Day of The Dead celebrations. And by celebrations I mean doing-some-definitely-non-touristy-things-besides-that-cactus-reservation-bit and by "we" I mean my family and my friend Rachael who is in fact a real person and not a figment of my imagination or a piece of fruit. The sheer shock of going outside at all kept me quite busy for a while but the best bit was actually doing things outside. Like normal people things. Yes, things like walking and looking at stuff and talking to others. And that got me thinking: this is really nice, this talking to people bit. And being outside. Oh and this walking thing is simply brilliant! I must do this more often. Am I doing a Carrie Bradshaw monologue in my head? God I hated that character. There was so much "me" in her monologues it sounded like Beaker talking. Oo, shoes! No wait, a butterfly! Weee! YES I WILL HAVE SOME OF YOUR DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE! OMG WHY IS THIS TOILET NOT FLUSHING, FLUSH, FLUSH DAMN YOU!!
And then I calmed down and we took a look around Tehuacan.

The short version of how and why is that Tehuacan is little city about 4 hour bus ride from Mexico City with a population of about 500,000 people. It's tiny and quiet compared to Mexico DF. It also has a town hall with a mural that has dinosaurs in it. And the last time I was there I could've sworn I saw a hummingbird. Though with my eyesight, it might as well have been a giant mosquito...
But the real reason we went there is because my family's family is from the area and we wanted to show my friend a more traditional Day of the Dead.
Surprisingly the celebration doesn't include zombies. Not really anyway.

We started off with a toilet that didn't flush, just slowly filled with water and floated pieces of whatever you left in it on the surface. Then there was no shower. Hey, no problem as long as everyone in the company is equally stinky. By noon we had hiked up a hill at a nature conservation area, gotten bitten by mosquitoes and learned that one area of Mexico likes calling a plant Bad Woman while the same plant in another part of Mexico is called Bad Man. There might be a seed of an interesting socio-historical debate there. Or it could just be a case of "oh yeah, well we'll see how you like it!". The conservation area is gorgeous, btw. It's well worth the trip just to hug the Elephant's Foot Tree. Which we did.
There were also snakes in jars and some sort of a coyote-squirrel hybrid, that could very well be just a coyote with a fancy tail. What do I know. I can't even operate a toilet.
After the hike we spotted a school throwing some sort of a traditional fest for the holidays and sauntered in to secretly photograph the whole thing. Should've guessed there's no such thing as "secretly" in Mexico, not sure if there's even a word for it. What happened was that as Rachael and I were taking pics of the kids dancing, we got tapped on the shoulder and asked to move to the front. And by front, I mean we were asked to go sit on the front stage. And then our little troupe got introduced to the whole dang school by the two young ladies operating as MCs. AND and, then we were given tamales and told to dance. Yup, that happened. And there was a guy carrying a goat around on the dance floor.
It's tradition.
(sidenote: all of this was really quite lovely. The dances we saw were traditional to the area, depicting war and how important the goats are to the people there, mainly because they can thrive easily and  pretty much all of the goat is used, except for the balls. Thought I've heard that balls are usually the best, most meaty part in an animal, so I don't know if someone was just messing with me because they like saying "balls". Anyhow, the dances were wonderful, and us perfect strangers were treated with nothing but kindness. This is something a jaded westerner like me has sometimes trouble adjusting to: being treated like a welcome guest when you don't know the people from Adam. After getting danced around, we were offered traditional local treats. How mindblowingly hospitable are these people? Mind. Blown.)

There was initially talk of going to see some goats getting sacrificed.. I mean slaughtered.. wait, somehow that doesn't make it sound better. Um..  killed? Stewed? Ehm.. anyway, they have this thing where they "eliminate" goats once a year to cook their heads and use the ears and hooves for mole and that once a year happens around the time of the Day of The Dead. I swear it's a lot less macarbe than it sounds. The goats are delicious.
Eh, yes, well after carefull consideration, it was decided to nix the killing part and just go straight to the "eating goats" part. Which we did. There was also tequila. And then we got lost at a cemetary. Which is a lot nicer than it sounds (was actually really nice. Definitely the place to get lost in a cemetary at). And has a lot less to do with the tequila than it might appear. And since our little altar for the deceased was left in Mexico DF, we asked around and were invited to go in people's homes to take pictures of their altars. Yes, people were totally ok with us bumbling camera geeks coming into their homes and taking pictures of the altars they set up for their dead loved ones.
Us westernes, we know nothing about how to be open to one another.
After a day of hijinks, we got back to the hotel to find a working toilet. It's true when they say you don't know what you got 'till it's gone.

What it actually made me consider is that I really love this place. Even with the giant bugs and tree coyotes and the polution that makes your eyes sting. That's nothing compared to all the things Mexico has to offer. You want spiritual growth? Goa is for tourists looking for new alternatives to pot. Mexico is where you want to go if you really, truly, want to know how to open your heart right to the bone.

That's not to say the traffic still isn't completely deranged and that all this "emotional and spiritual growth" business means I have done sweet bugger all as far as drawing goes. Curses.
Eh, mañana mañana... Thems the seeds of wisdom. :D

Serious matters are semi-serious

Now what does that even mean. I guess it means that yes, serious business is serious, but there's a very absurd side to almost everything. It means that while you need to invest yourself 100% to whatever it is you want out of life (or more precisely, whatever it is you want your life to be), if you do so by furrowing your brow so hard your eyes start bleeding, you're doing it wrong. Working hard doesn't mean stop laughing. If you ever find yourself doing that, you're in trouble. What are you really looking for in life if whatever you're doing is not bringing you joy? Are you waiting for someone to come and do things for you? Are you waiting for the unpleasantness to somehow magically turn into whatever it is you're dreaming about?
Life is not a montage.. fortunately. We are priviliged to be present and take part in every single moment of our lives. Even the bits we don't like.

What I'm getting at is a bunch of clichés that make more sense the more you think about them:
"Whatever you do in life, make sure it fulfills 3 basic rules: 1. it serves a purpose, 2. it has beauty, 3. it brings you pleasure." (think about that outside the measures of beauty = photoshopped model in Marie Claire or pleasure = getting your naughty bits out and rubbing them)
"There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going."
"We're all in a rush to get in line to reach our goals until we realise there's no goal, just a line." (Mexican version of the buddhist lesson of not doing your dishes to get the dishes done, but to do them to do the dishes)

Should you choose to accept this mission, you will have to invest +100% of yourself to your life and happiness, be present in every situation of it, listen carefully, love your heart out, wrap yourself in a blanket of awesome positive people and speak up for yourself.
Oh speaking, you elusive beast. As much as we like to produce words and talk, it seems actually talking about the things that matter is the second hardest thing in the world. It's a skill that you have to learn. Learn it, be happy.

On a side note on people who didn't worry too much, it's said that da Vinci had 3 dinner rules:
1. You are not allowed to murder anyone in the table during dinner.
2. You are not allowed to wipe your mouth on anyone else's clothing because..
3. .. that's what the cat tied to the table leg is for

On a side note to that side note in a completely unrelated subject... sort of...; this week will get some art/comics blog stuff going. Hold your breath, plaz. ;)