Text 2

Both Feet Together

14–19 January 2009 | Evo – Finland

Marika Kinnunen | English translation checked by Katariina Kyrölä

Step 1

I lay inside a sleeping bag in Ahti’s cabin © Wild North Finland. I was awakened by nightmares so that I would come here to open the damper plate and to set on a fire. But after my arrival I noticed an inoperative fire alarm. Instead of warming myself by the flames, I decided to put on more clothes. I was still alive despite hearing electricity run above, beneath and in front of me. These ready-made fountains of infrastructure were more or less what I had paid for when I booked a lair away from the periphery. To get-up-and-go with the establishment, I switched the light back on in the outhouse. Superfluous to flush, much less to pull any punches.

I came to the forest to commit to some basic principles of life: taking care of myself, feeding myself and resting for(est) existence. I took along books to find out if I have enough strength for the ideas of poets, poems of philosophers and philosophies of writers. That proved impossible. Mistrusting oneself is a subtitle for understanding writings upside down. But when I stand on my head and hold the floor in my hands, I risk suffocating in the discolored roots of my hair. To distinguish the primary from my posterior, I turned over, opened my fists and read the current paths from my palms. I saw lapses which are to be travelled by foot against deforestation, unpublished aesthetics.

Step 2

Contents of the Cabin Book inspired me more than the exceedingly sharp Gilles – I built my own critical clinic to save the razor-bladed love of the misspelled belletrist. At the cabin It is good to know you are welcome. Activities can be found between the lines What you can do at the cabin To explore your surroundings with Everyman’s right and to Guide the travelling in the wilderness. Emergency and Safety Instructions as well as Operating Instructions should be written down in case of momentary loss of comprehension for one’s faculty.

First check whether you can wake the collapsed person up by shaking him or talking to him. If the person does not wake up, shout for help. Feel and listen to the air stream from his mouth and nose... Place one of his arms to the right side of his body. Bring the other arm across his chest. Hug yourself. Further aid from the Red Cross is not available without wireless networking.

Step 3

Many lumberjacks have done their logging here since 1892. During winter time they chopped trees for the following summers and rafted logs along the river until the 1960’s. When the Evo forests were relinquished to Finns, the dignity of the land was dug full of tar pits. To picture this in a postcard to be sent later, I used imaginary linguistics of an unfolded map to expand the horizons into lingua franca. I followed the edges of Lake Alinen Niemisjärvi (Spit for Downers) that have once descended, once risen.

I walked on the banks of this almost-ocean to point out some of its most prominent protuberances. I conversed with one of Ahti’s ice-fishing descendants. This spitting image asked if the berry picker had found any mushrooms lately. The maiden asked if the fisherman had jigged any prey today. Despite declining answers, regardless of outgrown mycelia and scales fallen from eyes, both performers decided to keep on practicing. The lady in labor was again worried if the ice would be strong enough to keep the fearless tramp from falling through his id, with so many snow-covered holes already punched through it.

Step 4

Soon after the first visit to the lake I grew brave enough to knock on wood. I stepped on ice. The sun shined so bright that I was half-moon walking to avoid turning my back to its rays. Five hours of sleep earlier I had been recruited to a pro-signs campaign of basic semiotics. The challenge during daylight was not to walk on waters but to whitewash my youth as an athletic musician. I circled the lake Splitting Unconscious five times to make sense of my atonal satisfaction. I draw empty staffs on the glittering snow with powdered paws and put into practice my first avant-garde prima vista exercise. I marched in 2/2 time to make space between the track lines, not meant for running with spikes, and to time a lee with a new baton. The only thing I specified was the length of the desired notation, defined by the delightful shadows trees cast on ice.

Changes in weather composed a waltz which the lake boomed to me. It is good to be too idealistic: one’s chances for daring increase. Innocent exploration enables many activities: you won’t get lost alone. Everyman’s rights guarantee that you will be found by some other artful fish with whom you might share a robber’s roast once upon a full moon.

Step 5

During the third star bright night, I woke up sweaty but freezing. I didn’t know whether I was in Siberia or on the Riviera: these locations I had circumvented despite my bad coordinating. Minus 12 degrees of Celsius on the outside and plus 17 in the inside forced me to take the risk to getting smoked out of the cabin. I re-read the instructions How to make a fire from the Cabin Book, the very same I had smiled with before. I don’t know much about using lumber, other than as material for paper industry. I checked my mobile phone and reminded myself that 1+1 is not always 3. General Emergency Number in Finland is 112.

I bled while carving sticks with a knife and tore a wasted card board box of a six-pack into the oven. Firstness was the pitchiest: I only tasted burning for five minutes. Secondess was more amusing: I carried the fuming, far too big log out of the cabin, thinking that switching it to another piece of firewood, as big as the previous one, would help me somehow. Partly because the chimney hadn’t been heated for three months I couldn’t make a fire indoors, but outside the cabin there was plenty of vapor floating up to the sky like a memory trace of a chain-smoking Indian. After thirdness, I happily gave up, thinking that the situation was worthy enough to be inscribed as my fortress. My toes needed warmth to melt away my frosty smile. My eyes weren’t filled with tears because of my failure but because of carbon monoxide - this was not the first time it caused me headache.

Step 6

The third night turned into the early fourth morning – in between them I kept on writing. I couldn’t sleep while waiting for tissues to dry so I could burn them with branches the maintenance boy had brought me earlier. If I was to fail again with my ardor, I couldn’t freeze in the drafty cabin any longer without calling for rescue. I put on some music¹ and then some of my mistakes failed. I was so proud to hear the sound of a blaze fading away through the roof. And suddenly, I had a lot to do. Instead of chopping logic, I took care of a stack of firewood which needed to be relocated back and forth within these horizontal stories.

I was filled with my frequent morning routines, pouring salty gratitude into the boiling water on the stove. I was grateful enough to make new plans while eating carrots, relieved even more as I succeeded to forgive and remind myself through writing again. For a while I could dance eyes wide shut in front of a black mirror, above estimations, presuppositions and vague allusions. A window separated me from the darkened landscape and reflected back my movements in 2/3 plurality. I jumped over the gun and dreamed myself beyond seas to confront fatherland’s mother tongue once again. I continued sleep walking towards the land of Nods and reached a home, my nature, despite smoke and mirrors.

The merry fairytale of the braided ponytail is to be continued. Déjà-vu.

¹ The Levellers: Green Blade Rising (2002).

LILLI KINNUNEN

lilli.kinnunen@gmail.com +358-50-534 8279 HELSINKI FINLAND