Perkele!

Searching nothingness

PERKELE! I planned to shout when I got there, the most remote island on the Gulf of Finland. Later I would feel like a repowered survivor from my life before, a reborn tabula rasa heading towards a better era, what will be called “The Roaring Forties.” But I didn´t shout PERKELE! I didn´t yell or even say anything because I felt shame.

https://fennica.pohjoiseen.fi/en/2020/07/21/ulko-tammio/

I took a pill just in case of seasickness, which was a mistake. It opened up all the locks of behaving like an introverted Finnish person in a social situation, and I talked my guts out on the table. They were thoroughly examined without free will by fellow passengers, which made me ashamed because all I said was a lie. I made them believe I was a happy camper, an experienced life survivor who has learned the lesson the world tries to teach. I haven´t learned shit.

When I tried to scrub myself from the smell of self-deception by escaping the crowds and finding water, I realised standing in front of the well, there was a note “not suitable for drinking, even when boiled” and the boat was leaving with people who didn´t stay overnight, with the water.

“Sea is like a wet desert: the view is simply a glistening sheet of nothingness”, wrote Tapio Lehtinen, Gold Globe racer, in his book “Alone on the Seven Seas.” I thought I had nothingness and wanted nothingness, but how utterly wrong was I? The island was crowded with the thoughts I had brought with my back bag, and when I unloaded the content and set up the tent, the thoughts surrounded me, and there was no direction to escape. Where ever I was, I heard the sound of my thoughts, and clearly, there was one message, “your daughter is like a rusty nail in my back.” This message was coming from the life before, and I heard it the first time even though it had been said many times before.

Who lacks common sense and goes to a remote island without water and wants to feel reborn? Who goes into a relationship without ensuring that your daughter is genuinely accepted? The happy camper and this happy camper faced the inevitable outcome: shame, no anger, no PERKELE., just crippling shame.

I remembered how happy I was in the life before when I laid inside the tent and looked around, smothered mosquitos and black flies from our previous trekking trips. How reborn I was in this relationship because I left myself. I´m now seeing that it was the same lie I told before I came here. There was the rusty nail in our relationship, and travelling the adventure of a lifetime without water is surviving in the wet desert. Tears are too salty to drink, and eventually, you´ll be like a dried sculpture on the tent´s wall, like the mosquitos.

They call me Gladstone Gander because, almost always, something unexpected and luck happens. This time it was raining. With this rainwater, I made pasta myself. Because I had plenty of water, I prepared a white cheese-chorizo sandwich with honey; for the dessert, it was wild strawberries and a mouthful of rum. I felt like a survivor because I knew I would survive this shame. Wise and mature thinking is born from crises. No need to shout PERKELE. I just threw the tent in the bin.