Touring
For a full week of sunny days I wanted to write about how the sky up here looks so limitless and deep that I could fall in if I just let go of the balcony. I've missed seeing the clouds stretch far away to the horizon. I've wanted to write of much more, but first I couldn't find the words and next I couldn't quite even find the time to search for them. Life somehow got in the way. (Packing up and moving out, peppered popcorn and movies and music with her by my side, intense joy wrestling with guilt and despondence with a laissez-faire abandon trying to calm them down and have them just trust the future...)
Some times you have to do things that might seem silly, pointless, or even outright stupid. Just for the sake of doing them. Yesterday I had just completed my morning deliveries when she asked me to accompany her and her friend for a ride north with the intention of hitchhiking back. There was no preset destination and I had work this morning, but I still agreed after a single act of goading. (She says "jump" and I ask "how high?" But as they said in A Record of Lodoss War: "One should never pass a chance for experience", much to the amusement of the nerdy crowd watching it years ago.)
We drove, watching the scenery roll by and become more and more archaic. A gas station named "Teboil Love", tractors on the rooftops of farming equipment stores, old houses, a nature still in the tender stages of spring. Our driver remarked it was almost like a form of time travel; Going back to the sixties, going back to spring from the full summer of the south. At times it did feel we weren't constrained to moving only in space. I listened to them talk, commenting occasionally and towards the end, dozing off.
Somewhere between Kemi and Rovaniemi we spied a group of shaggy bovines grazing on a field. After a closer (though still from the other side of the electric fence) inspection that yielded some photographic evidence and a discussion on the nature of cow couture wrt. hair styles we parted with our driver and began the business of securing a ride back. Two hours - seemingly days - later we finally gave in to despair sufficiently enough for the last truck we stuck our thumbs out at to stop and pick us up. (I know that where you find a thing is always the last place you look, but at that point we had resigned ourselves to trudging yet another kilometer to the next bus stop to try again. It could have taken a considerably longer time, but luckily didn't.) What's more, its route passed by Oulu, so it was a real jackpot. The driver was an amiable fellow, apprenticed and now fully employed in the tiling business. Listening to his tales of massive income and flexible working hours had us both seriously pondering the merits of higher education. (I also got to smoke in a car for the first time in my life. At 90 kilometers per hour, the cracked window was an excellent ventilator and the air rushing by eliminated the need for flicking ash off the tip of the cigarette. Thoroughly enjoyable.)
On the short walk home from the E4 offramp we laughed at everything and nothing in particular, relief duking it out with exhilaration; A happy ending for a reckless adventure, which I'm in no hurry to repeat. (Still, there's this small part of me that's bouncing up and down, going "when can we go again, when can we go again?" Exp whoring is such a disease sometimes.)
Some times you have to do things that might seem silly, pointless, or even outright stupid. Just for the sake of doing them. Yesterday I had just completed my morning deliveries when she asked me to accompany her and her friend for a ride north with the intention of hitchhiking back. There was no preset destination and I had work this morning, but I still agreed after a single act of goading. (She says "jump" and I ask "how high?" But as they said in A Record of Lodoss War: "One should never pass a chance for experience", much to the amusement of the nerdy crowd watching it years ago.)
We drove, watching the scenery roll by and become more and more archaic. A gas station named "Teboil Love", tractors on the rooftops of farming equipment stores, old houses, a nature still in the tender stages of spring. Our driver remarked it was almost like a form of time travel; Going back to the sixties, going back to spring from the full summer of the south. At times it did feel we weren't constrained to moving only in space. I listened to them talk, commenting occasionally and towards the end, dozing off.
Somewhere between Kemi and Rovaniemi we spied a group of shaggy bovines grazing on a field. After a closer (though still from the other side of the electric fence) inspection that yielded some photographic evidence and a discussion on the nature of cow couture wrt. hair styles we parted with our driver and began the business of securing a ride back. Two hours - seemingly days - later we finally gave in to despair sufficiently enough for the last truck we stuck our thumbs out at to stop and pick us up. (I know that where you find a thing is always the last place you look, but at that point we had resigned ourselves to trudging yet another kilometer to the next bus stop to try again. It could have taken a considerably longer time, but luckily didn't.) What's more, its route passed by Oulu, so it was a real jackpot. The driver was an amiable fellow, apprenticed and now fully employed in the tiling business. Listening to his tales of massive income and flexible working hours had us both seriously pondering the merits of higher education. (I also got to smoke in a car for the first time in my life. At 90 kilometers per hour, the cracked window was an excellent ventilator and the air rushing by eliminated the need for flicking ash off the tip of the cigarette. Thoroughly enjoyable.)
On the short walk home from the E4 offramp we laughed at everything and nothing in particular, relief duking it out with exhilaration; A happy ending for a reckless adventure, which I'm in no hurry to repeat. (Still, there's this small part of me that's bouncing up and down, going "when can we go again, when can we go again?" Exp whoring is such a disease sometimes.)