Snow

This is exactly the kind of an evening when I wouldn't live anywhere else, exactly the kind of an evening when I love my home town and country dearly. I just returned home walking on the lake, a big lake in the heart of the city, on my way from my friend's place on the other shore. And it was a beautiful night, the kind of a pink cloudy sky of a Central Finnish winter night, city lights spotting brightly the shores and a light silent snow falling around and over me, and me, alone and small and yet safe in the middle of my town, finding my pathway across the lake that has turned into a vast snowy field. The open sky above me reminded of my solitary walks and runs and bicycle trips in the midst of the endless fields in Ostrobothnia - something like this you rarely come to meet in my hilly and foresty part of Finland. And I felt freedom and comfort and somehow even longing, walking my way on the ice, and after that up the hill I live on, and through my beloved campus that once seemed too big and important to handle and now is a home. Since it occured to me this might well be my last winter in here, next year this time I might well be anywhere else in the world. Or I might not, but it is possible, and the time I leave, I am somehow sure I won't return to stay anymore. And to be honest it's ok, but I cannot help feeling sadness, too. Even though my time in this town has been contradictory and is full of memories many of which make me just sad nowadays, I have also grown to love it over the years. What can I do, I am helplessly nostalgic. And then I come to think how there is so much more to the life to see, so much more to the world to be done and I am ready for it... Today I was listening to Katie Melua since a very long time, and this song was playing in my head while I wandered on the ice. I was playing it on my piano at home last weekend, too, and there is something in it that says everything is going to be ok. Here's just one of the verses, other parts are a little more melancholic and tonight I don't want to be melancholic at all. Actually, I have decided to try and avoid the feeling in general. Instead, I am going to stick and believe in good, more than ever. Sure there are many signs this world is not going so good right now, but of course, I'm a rebel.


Bright before me the signs implore me:
Help the needy and show them the way.
Human kindness is overflowing,
and I think it's going to rain today.