There And Back Again
How to drop into and out of the Finnish timeline
There are two realities, I’ve discovered.
There is no other explanation. These two realities might be parallel and simultaneous. But they never overlap. You step into one only when you step out of the other. And then back again.
Unlike Severance you do remember everything about the other reality, but you never feel exactly the same in the two realities. I’ve tried feeling the same, and on my most recent trip I came the closest I have ever been to perceiving both realities the same way. But I didn’t. I was still in a different mindspace, just a bit more aware of it than during previous visits into this reality.
This makes me believe that experience and time play a part in all this. I have experienced both realities over a large span of time, but dropped into one of them less regularly over time.
I live in Florida and was born and raised in Finland. I visit Finland roughly once a year. I’ve been away for many years.
I will attempt to explain what it means to drop into and out of the Finnish reality. I have written about some of this before if you’d like to begin there and then continue here.
Note: this experience is of course subjective but it is possible that you also experience a version of it if you also have more than one geographic location in which you feel deeply rooted. I am curious to hear what you think of all this. Please comment and subscribe!
Dropping into the Finnish reality.
It is silent in Finland. The silence carries a calm. The calm is everywhere. Even in laughing and screaming children or in traffic in central Helsinki or in Prisma (supermarket) the day before Midsummer Eve when everyone is shopping. The background noise is removed. Literally. Something is absorbing the excessive sounds.
Perhaps it is the soft snow in winter, or the birch leaves in summer? Perhaps it is the stern faces of old women who silently judge you and form stories in their heads about who you are and where you came from? Perhaps it is the thousand lakes that dampen sound waves that hit the many surfaces and send them to the bottom of the lake where perch swim? Perhaps it is that so few people live here and personal space is a vast bubble that extends many meters in all directions?
Things are done in silence. Eating. Walking. Packing grocery bags — yes, you pack them yourself in Finland, and you do it quickly so that the next person won’t have to wait. Filling the gas tank. Removing your shoes when you enter a house. Sitting on a train (unless you’re very drunk and then you might talk about an old summer job cementing someone’s yard). Standing outside on a yard and listening.
Listening is part of Finland. I listen to the silence. I hear leaves rustle. I hear pine trees creaking. I hear the gravel sound under my feet. I hear more acutely here. A stillness surrounds me and opens up my ears and the birds sound more sincere.
Perceiving time in Finland.
We stand in the ship of time and we daren’t walk out on the bridge because it might not hold us any longer. The captain is long gone and the 180 degree views out over the road, the hill, the fields, the forests, and the clouds are gifted to us for only a moment. [Silent Echoes]
or
Why is it so still? Stiller than anywhere else. Is it the size of the leaves or the mist in the valley? Is gravity stronger here? Perhaps everyone else in this village feel it too and sometimes linger in it for a while, secretly. Something here is holding its breath. [Silent Echoes]
Above are two ponderings I shared from a previous drop into the Finnish reality timeline.
This time I notice that shrunken feeling many before me have described when they visited their childhood locations.
”Everything is so small!” they say. “Even the roads are so small!”
Yes, it is smaller now, even smaller than last time I was here. The distances between villages, and the time it takes to drive into the town we called “the city.” But more than that, time itself has changed here.
The lungs inhale slower. Yes, the green trees and plants are possibly hyperventilating and photosynthesizing like mad during the light midsummer nights, but animals and humans move slower. Time has a different value. I am no longer quite sure what that value is, but I know I am visiting from a reality where time is frenetic in comparison. Where I spend most of my time, the pulse of time is arrythmic at best.
It is midnight and I look out the window of my childhood room and see the beautiful pine trees and the vast fog covered fields below the hill. Time is measured in something organic here. I think time here smells like an old marsh, and when curlews sing in the ditches next to the arctic brambles, it lifts in small portions and spreads out over the fields and forests — and lands softly on our heads. Here in Finland.
During summer nights time holds its breath. Plants, of course, provide us with oxygen so we can keep on breathing. But it is not certain that the hands on a clock moves at a regular pace. The space between each second might be variable. If you look at the sun there above the horizon around 11 p.m. as its rays are sifted between aspen leaves and young spruces behind the house — how sure are you of time? Do you even care what time it is when the most important thing in the world is the light that shines through leaves (that work oh so hard) during midsummer nights in Finland?
Contemplating deeper things in Finland.
When I was little I used to sit and count those velvet knobs on the chandelier all the way up to the top. The church was almost full back then. Christmas concerts so packed that there were no seats left. Midsummer masses when people poured out on the church yard in their finest outfits celebrating newly confirmed teens.
The church is the only thing in my village and in Finland that has maintained the same perceived size as it has had since I was a child and first saw it. It is a beautiful and grand wooden church on top of a hill.
I sit down and look around. We are twenty of us here for mass today. Twenty. This church can fill hundreds.
The windows are old and have little air bubbles in the glass. Outside green trees are bending in the strong wind and creating a swaying sensation, as we are onboard a giant ship on an ocean. Inside the ship everything is serene. The mind becomes still. The mind becomes still — except it wonders why so few came along on the journey.
These few humans here, who show up week after week, are the tug boat. They tug the great ship in all weathers and on it presses into the future. But I worry about them even if many of them sing with strength in an almost empty church. They are holding together the ship on the hill while others below are toiling with averted eyes and many excuses why they couldn’t come today or all other days.
The mass is punctuated with moments of quiet. Up here in the far north, here where cold winter storms scream against the walls and the light summer nights send in solar rays through all windows, something of the divine has more time to permeate and be.
Always be still, I think. Always be glad that this was the religious ship upon which I sailed into my future. Not a perfect or deserving journey. Quite the opposite, but nevertheless a journey that has become a bit more steady. But here I found myself again, breathing in the familiar scent of the old church up on the hill. Glad that my heart felt at peace and welcome here, just as I had hoped it would.
And, worried about the future of this church I wonder if it is going through a sort of hibernation. Perhaps the villagers cannot see it, similar to a fairy tale where something has caused it to become invisible to them? Perhaps they will see it again one day and find it a comforting place to meet? Perhaps they will need a ship soon again?
Communication and daily flow in Finland.
What some would understand as a “resting bitch face” is simply a regular Finnish facial expression reserved for about 95% of their daily ongoings. Older people also add a sort of scanning glare that analyzes you quietly, but without printing out a small paper with a report.
Shopping at one of the supermarket I rarely hear the words: “Excuse me.” or “Sorry!” when trying to move past someone in an isle. It’s a silent bumper car tango with the grocery carts. A non-verbal stream of human beings who clearly notice each other but do not betray much signs of it. Smiling or talking is kept to the minimum, unless you meet a friend and exchange a few words! And you almost always see someone you know at the supermarket. I met a relative on the first trip there and we both smiled and talked loudly with positive energy for several minutes!
That’s why I became curious when I overheard a man loudly swear at his female companion near the sausage isle. He was clearly very upset about something they were going to purchase or not purchase, and he used the same swear word several times. People around him ignored him even though he was clearly mean to his female friend. He did not turn physically aggressive and eventually shut up. It was as if it had never happened.
Being different is not discouraged, but it is certainly not commonly accepted. Ideally one should be as average as possible, and not cause any ripples. Ripples cause most average Finns to feel uncomfortable and it is not fun to feel uncomfortable. Feeling uncomfortable causes one to have to rethink a lot and also to adjust one’s comfortable life, and that is no good. Things should run smoothly as a well-oiled machinery, and since most Finns are very law-abiding, things usually run very smoothly. That is why being different is a bit outside the social norm.
A small example:
While in Finland I severely hurt a back muscle which caused me to have to hobble around very slowly while in pain. When I paid my groceries at the supermarket I couldn’t pack my items as fast as the average Finn does. So I told the person behind me that I’m slow today and they might want to pick another line. The mere act of having been spoken to by a stranger (me) caused a couple of people to almost jump in surprise. All of them did express gratitude, and I ended up chit chatting with a lady who was very sweet and kind. Remember, not all Finnish people are the way I portray them in these examples!
Nature in Finland.
Since much of nature above ground has to die each fall and be reborn each spring, it yields a type of green that only occurs at these latitudes. It is fiercely green. It is abundant. It is sparkling and happy and fresh! It is nothing like tropical greens or the greens in California. Greens that are tired and dusty because they have to endure all year round. No, Finnish green is splendid and youthful, year after year and it practically storms out of the ground once the frost abandons the soil in May.
This is why I once cried in Beverly Hills one night when I thought I smelled fresh birch trees when passing by a golf course! The scent of a Finnish birch tree can drive you to tears of joy.
The weirdness of driving by places from one’s youth.
This is of course reserved for those of us who left. And then came back. And then left again. That strange feeling of hopping back on the bandwagon or conveyor belt but everything has changed, and not changed, at the same time.
Those who stayed behind saw it in slow motion. I see it as that scene from The Time Machine when the display window figure changes outfits as the years progress rapidly.
There, at 10 p.m. one night, I drive by the youth house. There, in the distant past, I would have stood on the yard laughing with friends and getting ready for an adventure. I drive on, and pass the spot where the village café used to stand. It’s no longer there. The school house closed down and a new structure has been built.
Farmhouses that were kept in pristine condition back in the day are now obscured by throngs of unkempt brushes and trees. The farm themselves are sagging and stand empty. Farming no longer pays off, unless you’re a large scale farmer and there are few of those.
The village is still breathing but I can hear the sighs of burden. Someone said to me: “Everyone’s dying. It’s a dying place.” I don’t quite believe that. There is much growth and new here, yet much has become overgrown like the old castle in a tale has become covered in ivy.
The reality membrane.
“Remember this!” I tell myself when I look at the forest that borders the field when I drive into town. “Remember this smell!” I tell myself when I smell the lily-of-the-valley and the Linnea Borealis. “Really really take this in, this moment now!” I shout quietly to myself in some vain attempt to make everything in this reality stick. I know it will not stick, but I resolve to at least attempt to stay as awake as I can and truly experience each moment as best as I can.
It is strange, this reality membrane. It feels different here in Finland. Another part of me returns or wakes up from hibernation. She remembers old things and knows how things work here. She meets me at the airport in Helsinki each time I land.
Lately, she has become better at listening to the other woman — the woman from the other side of the reality membrane. They’ve discovered that they can still communicate. Quite effectively even! But only one at a time.
If you stick your nose up against the lace curtain you can sniff in air from the other side of the membrane. Can you smell it?
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