My November

The subtitle of this blog is "Meditations on the rich fabric of life", and the past weeks, with their heavy darkness, rainy days, solitary windows gleaming through the gloom and long nights spent turning under the covers for reasons which seem irritatingly out of mind's reach, certainly make up a very convenient season for as much meditating as you like.

However, this is not the first November in Finland, and it certainly will not be the last. No matter how unnatural it may seem, darkness and rain (and wind and cold) probably are not all that meaningless as we would like to think. As we struggle to keep up with our tasks, rush halfway across town cursing the public transport all the way, and plunge from deadline to concert to assignment to lessons to further deadlines, it is good to remember that this is meant to be a time for self-reflection. So it's dark outside and I don't feel like doing anything: then why do anything except take a moment, lie down and just let the thoughts come. After all, another year of hard work is coming to an end. Surely everyone can afford some moments of peace.

For me, 2007 seems like a year of many milestones. It's easy to say this after every year, but this time I really think there is no comparison to the past twelve months, during which I lived in two different cities, met a huge amount of people who became very important figures for me in very different ways, and confronted turns of events which affected our family.

Only since coming back to Finland in the summer, it feels like things have been picking up pace at a great speed. I moved in with a friend to a new part of town. I finally founded my own choir, and our first performance is in a month. I went to my cousin's wedding in Germany. I also attended my grandfather's memorial concert in Damascus, less than a month ago. I found that the oldest of friends can still feel like the newest of friends, and that there are few things more valuable than friendship. I also found out that you can call many places home. It can be the place you think about when you listen to "Unta da Lindn" with the lights turned off and tears in your eyes. But usually you know the real one when you touch down at the airport, with the midnight sun about to set, and underneath you: the glimmering Baltic Sea, the house you grew up in, and the people you played with when you were a child.

In this endless darkness, it is the small things which become flashes of light to make the day feel easier. Sometimes, the smallest of joys is enough to set in motion a train of thoughts which can make all the difference between a smiling face and an empty face. This is what I thought just a while ago when I was chatting with Petra online and she complained about her laptop which I remember using on her blue sofa at our home on Merangasse, where I will be in exactly a week. Or when I got an SMS from a friend who was on her way from Italy to Lithuania by bus, with six pieces of luggage, telling me how fantastic Schütz's music is. But actually, the joys are all not all that far. They are where you are: on the way home from the metro station, at the rehearsals, in your room and at the grocery store. It doesn't take that many people to make you happy. Sometimes it can be just you.

Soon the days will start getting longer again. As summer approaches, happy things, laughter, friends and family will start feeling like things to be taken for granted, things which are always there. There is no better time than this to appreciate this quite nice and agreeable life we are living.