Text: Mark­ku Ka­mu­la

Trans­la­ti­on: Sirk­ka-Lii­sa Lei­no­nen

It came to pass, one day in De­cem­ber when I was away on a wor­king trip, that I found an email in my per­so­nal mail­box. I chec­ked the tit­le, saw it was so­met­hing about blogs, and al­most swi­ped it in­to the junk fol­der, so it would not dis­turb my thin­king. I have an in­for­ma­ti­on ma­na­ge­ment sys­tem whe­re­by all un­ne­ces­sa­ry and dist­rac­ting mes­sa­ges are im­me­di­a­te­ly scrap­ped, those about so­met­hing that can be de­le­ga­ted are for­war­ded, those that re­qui­re at­ten­ti­on are de­alt with, and anyt­hing ne­ces­sa­ry is arc­hi­ved. My daugh­ter, who is stu­dying eco­no­mics, re­cent­ly told me that, wit­hout kno­wing it, I have been using the traf sys­tem.

Then I re-read the tit­le and de­ci­ded to open the email. That was fol­lo­wed by 28 hours of pon­de­ring. Then I made a de­ci­si­on and pro­mi­sed to start blog­ging for on­li­ne Päi­vä­mies. I pro­mi­sed be­cau­se there is not­hing to read for any­bo­dy un­less so­me­o­ne wri­tes so­met­hing. This will be my turn to ser­ve you who want to read!

I have li­ked books and texts ever sin­ce I le­arnt to read. But I have had mi­xed fee­lings about wri­ting. In pri­ma­ry school I found the wri­ting of let­ters and short words in tidy cur­si­ve so pain­ful that my wrist and fin­ger joints still cramp at the very thought of it. Luc­ki­ly, my five-ye­ar-old lit­t­le sis­ter was ea­ger to do my ho­me­work, so I got pro­mo­ted to the next grade and then on to the next.

But I did en­joy the pro­cess of pro­du­cing text, trans­fer­ring my thoughts on pa­per. Let­ter by let­ter, word by word, sen­ten­ce by sen­ten­ce the story that was scur­rying around in my ce­reb­ral cor­tex was sta­bi­li­zed as wri­ting, on­ly to be awa­ke­ned in­to a new life of scur­rying in the cor­tex of so­me­o­ne el­se. To be read aloud or qui­et­ly. So de­light­ful!

At school I ex­cel­led in com­po­si­ti­on wri­ting all the way un­til gra­du­a­ti­on. There was even a pe­ri­od when I tes­ted my wri­ting skil­ls in prin­ted me­dia. I wrote opi­ni­on pie­ces to lo­cal and re­gi­o­nal pa­pers on high­ly di­ver­se to­pics, such as the de­ve­lop­ment of the price of milk and the sig­ni­fi­can­ce of the Christ­mas tree. It was pos­sib­le at that time to write un­der a pen name, and one got paid if the text was pub­lis­hed. That was a nice ad­di­ti­on to the fi­nan­ci­al si­tu­a­ti­on of a pen­ni­less high school stu­dent.

As a yo­ung man I even dre­a­med about aut­ho­ring a book, but I ne­ver got anyt­hing writ­ten. Not even a tiny short-story! Over the ye­ars, ho­we­ver, I at­tai­ned many ot­her won­der­ful things, such as a wife and child­ren, stu­dies and work, a hou­sing loan and more work, and so on. For de­ca­des I comp­le­te­ly for­got about wri­ting. Du­ring the most pain­ful mo­ments of life I was ins­pi­red to squ­ee­ze out a few po­ems, but then again not­hing. It was not un­til the re­cent ye­ars that I be­gan to pub­lish sto­ries of my dai­ly life or me­mo­ries on Fa­ce­book.

Now that I have pro­mi­sed to start blog­ging, I need to be se­ri­ous about it. One has to keep one’s pro­mi­ses, as my child­ren so­me­ti­mes re­mind me. I gu­ess the har­dest part is the be­gin­ning. If you do not know where to be­gin, there will be no end eit­her. Anot­her dif­fi­cult thing is to find a ba­lan­ce bet­ween the sup­p­ly and de­mand. If I write about things that I find in­te­res­ting, will any­bo­dy el­se be in­te­res­ted? On the ot­her hand, if I write about things that I as­su­me my re­a­ders to be in­te­res­ted in, will my wri­ting be stiff and awk­ward – like com­pul­so­ry Swe­dish writ­ten in Fin­nish?

It is al­so chal­len­ging to ar­ran­ge the words in such a way that the text is good to read and ea­sy to un­ders­tand. Words are fun­ny in the way that when they are ar­ran­ged in a cer­tain or­der, they arou­se men­tal ima­ges bet­ter than when dif­fe­rent­ly ar­ran­ged. And that al­so ap­p­lies to me­a­ning. A gi­ven word may have comp­le­te­ly dif­fe­rent me­a­nings in dif­fe­rent con­texts. I pay at­ten­ti­on to the or­der of words and their me­a­nings both when wri­ting and when re­a­ding. When word or­der and me­a­nings are okay, the text cap­tu­res the re­a­der’s mind like a coun­ter­cur­rent of wa­ter.

I would like to ar­ran­ge my words in a good or­der and to pre­sent to my fu­tu­re re­a­ders sen­ten­ces that de­light and en­cou­ra­ge them, make them pau­se and think, re­vi­ve me­mo­ries and arou­se cu­ri­o­si­ty. I would like to ar­ran­ge my words in such a way that they in­vi­te as many pe­op­le as pos­sib­le to read the thoughts hid­den be­hind them.

I am going to write about or­di­na­ry things that are close to me. I will write about na­tu­re fro­zen stiff by the cold, ref­res­hed by rain or bat­hed in suns­hi­ne and al­so about the pas­sa­ge of time and my jour­ney from child­hood to adult­hood. I will write about the joys of life and al­so about sor­rows, be­cau­se joy can on­ly be pro­per­ly ap­p­re­ci­a­ted against a backg­round of sor­row. I gu­ess I will al­so write about work and hob­bies. I may even write about wis­hes and dre­ams, and some to­pi­cal so­ci­al phe­no­me­na will li­ke­ly be dis­cus­sed.

I am not sure if I will write about things that I un­ders­tand not­hing about, such as gra­vi­ta­ti­on or the in­fi­ni­ty of the uni­ver­se. But why not? I could write about them from the grass-root pers­pec­ti­ve of a tiny hu­man. All works of the Cre­a­tor de­ser­ve exa­mi­na­ti­on and exp­li­ca­ti­on and, most of all, ad­mi­ra­ti­on and ama­ze­ment!