Uffe and the sunset

I get irritated by the asthmatic, hissing voice of my dog - and I get irritated by my own irritation. It is eleven o´clock. He does not want to go to sleep. He wants to sit outside on the steps looking at the garden and smelling the sunset. It means that he could be sitting there for nearly three hours until the sun starts rising again, because the sunset is immediately followed by the sunrise. There is no darkness in between. Uffe, my dog wants to enjoy normal early-summer life in Finland now.

Daytime is filled with all kinds of scattered and dispersed items - irritating and encouraging. It is the chronological order of the daily anyway items that makes the chaos look an organized, premeditated whole, normal life. Maybe Uffe is collecting his daily experiences and organising them into a coherent, dog-formed whole.

Why do I want to write about normal life in Finland? It is because of my very good friend Tobias. I have regularly read his descriptions of normal life in Finland - vida normal en Finlandia - and I have become more and more interested in what he considers to be normal here. Thank you, Tobias.

For two more weeks Tobias can take pictures from his kitchen window at one o´clock at night with the Näsinneula tower and the sun embracing each other in the horizon. From my own windows I can see just the night-blue-coloured sky having a clear hint of yellow in the north. I used to think that the early summer nights here in Tampere are dark. My reference point was Lapland. Tobias´s reference point is the Mediterranian summernight. All is relative.

Julio was driving me to the airport at Barajas in Madrid. "Why do you go to the llegadas?" I asked. "I´m leaving. We should go to the salidas." "All is relative." Julio said. "The indication is for cars, not for aeroplanes." Had I been driving, how could I have known that in this special occasion llegadas refers to cars and not to aeroplanes? Maybe this is why we need friends - to make sure what llegadas y salidas really refer to.

Tobias writes in one of his native tongues. I envy him. His blog is well written and it can be read anywhere around the world. I`m writing in a foreign language. It takes more effort that I would like to admit, but I do it because of maps.

Once I told Russian teacher students that Finland is a maid. They found it surprising and amusing. Later I saw the Russian maps of the world. Finland was a small formless spot in the left hand corner in them. To see the maid of Finland you need to change the perspective and that changes the relations between items. What is normal becomes different. My own map changed.

I am lucky because I need not get worried about my own ability to tell the difference between the normal and not-normal. My dog Uffe knows the difference. He also pulls me back to normality. If I went downstairs into the kitchen now, made some bush tea and sat at the kitchen table to read something, it would not be normal. Uffe would come and look at me with worried eyes as if saying that I should not disturb him like that. "Take your tea and go upstairs, because that is what you normally do."

When there are visitors in the house, I need to sit where I normally do. Otherwise Uffe comes and politely reminds me where I should be sitting.

Somebody has said that our dreams reveal, what we would do if the body didn´t stop us. Our definitions of what is normal function in the same way. They stop us from seeing what is normal as well, which is a nice contradiction. This is why I need my dog Uffe and my friend Tobias. Uffe shows me what I normally do. Tobias shows me what I could also do.

Lately I have been reading Dreams of Trespass. Tales of a Harem Girlhood by Fatime Mernissi (Spanish: Sueños en el umbral, Memorias de una niña del harén, Finnish: Unelma Vapaudesta, Lapsuuteni haaremissa).

There is a border between the normal and not-normal. In her book Fatima Mernissi refers to the separation of men and women in the harem. Maybe her words would be valid for the borders of normal and not-normal as well:

.. una frontera cósmica divide el planeta en dos. La frontera señala la línea de poder porque dondequiera que haya una frontera, hay dos clases de criaturas que caminan por la tierra de Alá: de un lado, los poderosos y, de otro, los impotentes.
Pregunté a Mina còmo sabría yo en qué lado estaba. Su respuesta fue rápida, breve y clarísima:
- Si no puedes salir; estás en el lado de los impotentes.