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PUBLISHED IN RED LINE BLUES 2: NIGHT DRIVING, FALL 2006

Driving at night wouldn’t be any different—the sun never sets during summer in Finland. In winter the country is cast into twenty-hours-a-day of darkness with sub-zero (Celsius) cold, but I was there in July when the “white nights” make real time a living dream. The vacation from my grinding spin cycle of New York life had all the charming hallmarks of a European sojourn—immaculate subways, impossibly cozy cafes, and the sense that whoever planned the city streets employed the fullest talents of their mind and aspirations of their heart—but I also had a host who shared her country with warmth and grace.

Aamu is the Finnish word for morning, and it’s the name she assumed when she came from Korea to study design in Finland. We met last year in New York at a design exhibition, and we quickly took to staying out all night swapping stories, design philosophies, and becoming fast friends. She had resolved to beware close ties overseas after forfeiting cherished contacts in the move from Korea, but our bond slipped through. It’s grown into just what you hope a serendipitous international connection can be—finding kindred spirits in far corners of this planet.

Could be that Finland would have been great anyway, but I landed in Helsinki without itinerary, map, or address where I could find a bed. Aamu and her partner Johan were waiting as they said, and they showed me to an apartment of a friend on a scuba-diving trip, with assurance that the sheets and towels are clean and the Helsinki tap water is unparalleled. They handed off a map with an * on their apartment and an × on mine.

We took off on bikes the first day around the city and ended up at the waterfront, on foot and tracing the city’s edge. At a small point in the shoreline, Aamu remembered first coming to Finland from Korea, and remarked that this jetty was her refuge. She lived without much human contact in a foreign land, and she had come to know each rock that jutted out of the water on the point. She would say, “Hello, rock, how are you?” or “Hi, how is your day?” Aamu shared Finland with me through her eyes and her own experience. As I made my way though this new place by Aamu’s lead and sparks of culture shock lit across my face, I noticed from her a little knowing smile of commiseration.

Walking our bikes through the city we came upon a park with an old wooden house in the middle of the grounds. The trees were massive and gave a startling break from the narrow corridors of the old city center. There was a simple black granite slab in the park where we stopped to put on our jackets as the afternoon waned. I said casually what a wonderful open space the park was, and Aamu agreed, as she also felt it was special. She told me the park was the spot the city chose for mass burial of its citizens who fell to the plague. Could be why the trees are so solid, but it was the reason for the black granite marker. I felt the presence rush through me as we sat dappled by the sunlight through the trees in the old city.

Early next morning we stumbled out of a bar, fed up with the thick air and raucous crowd, and walked in the direction of the * and the ×. Before crossing a canal we walked down to the side of the bridge, whose old arches were lit at a hard angle to reveal their texture, riddled with pockmarks. This bridge was an important battle front in the war for Finnish independence from Russia, Aamu told me. The battered bridge wore its bullet holes without revealing their gravity to a casual passerby. Standing on the banks in the tall grass, it was as if I had already seen, or already knew the things Aamu wanted to show me of her city. These are the things I would pick out of a place, the kind of things I had discovered back home.

We took off sailing from Helsinki around the archipelago between Finland and Sweden on a boat called Swan. The sailboat belongs to a friend’s father (captain), and we would stop off each evening in the harbors of the larger islands. Every harbor had a bar filled with sailors, and we would naturally share tables and swap sea stories with the rest of the gangs that had drifted in from the docks. Another crew in one bar knew a swimming hole near the harbor, and we all stumbled from the bar down the shore after last call and stripped down for a swim before retiring to the ship. Captain, who was not in on our harbor bar jaunts, bedding down early on the boat, insisted on having all hands on deck in the early morning, and so we dutifully took our turns at the ropes and controls while others could sneak off to out-of-the-way parts of the boat and catch a nap.

We rented bikes for a day on one island and rode around the forest paths, stopping when someone would spot a patch of wild berries along the road. At the end of the bike trip, we bought a liter of ice cream back at the harbor and loaded the berries into the mixture. Every harbor had a sauna—an important part of Finnish culture—and I had no idea what the protocol was for cleaning, clothing, or conversing. Following the lead of Aamu and the rest of our gang (stripping, drinking, stoking the fire, beating each other with bunches of wild branches, wading into the chill Baltic Sea), I didn’t have any problems.

One night on the island we went fishing for our dinner, and by chance I caught the largest fish, a pike which was to feed the group. It was my first time eating a fish I’d caught and cooked, and so the Finns walked me through the steps. Start by bashing the fish’s head in with a rock to curtail the suffering, then the classic photo op, then gutting, scaling, chopping into medallions, and grilling over the fire. I had to take frequent breathers from this survival mode, as the fish watched me with its round eyes as I did my work, and the still-twitching fins seemed to writhe as I made my cuts. When my fish was roasting, Aamu asked me how it made me feel, and I think I said something like, “too human.”

Back in Helsinki we spent an afternoon exploring an old fort first used by the Russians, then the Swedes, now the Finnish civilians. Walking along the retired embankment where small clusters of teenagers drink and carouse, Aamu stopped under four massive trees whose branches were hanging low in bloom. She motioned for me to come closer, not saying a word, and I took a few steps back to join her under the trees. The grove was humming with the concerted buzz of throngs of bees, who were working the blossoming branches. Lying still under the trees, looking up through the body of the trees looked like a stretch of American highway on a hot day, shivering in the radiant vapors. The bees’ hum put the teenagers completely out of earshot, as we lay there lost in the resonance of this massive microculture.

Of course there was no sleeping my last night in Finland. We rode the wave of our contagious energy from studio to restaurant to bar to dance club to seashore to apartment, soaking up the final hours we would spend together for a long time. Aamu and the rest of our party all came along to the airport, finishing off the roll of film and nursing cups of coffee before I walked down the jet way at the last moment. I cried all the way to Stockholm, and dreamed hard through the flight to New York. I landed in a weary-eyed daze Sunday morning, just a couple hours later than I had departed, as though the sun had held still in its course through the summer sky, or at least slowed way, way down.