Mrs. Dalloway's Coffee Break

Hello, my dear Facebook friends, Instagram friends, friends who wandered on this page by accident, those friends who actually sought to be here, and personal friends whom I have coerced into reading these stories, and all haters, too, should there be any. About a week ago, a bit of information was brought to my attention. Turned out I had almost lost someone very dear to me in an accident, and I hadn’t even noticed it until that person called to inform me about it. I don’t know which was worse, the feeling of hearing that person tell me it had been this close, or knowing that, since we are not in touch anymore on weekly bases, even monthly, sometimes, I would have just carried on with the small details of my life’s trivia book for god knows how long before finding out. So, today, let’s take a different route. This is an older story, part of a longer narrative. I wrote it about four or five years ago, in Finnish, so here it is, untouched, faults and all, in its original form.

Once, when she had climbed up the steep hill along with a bunch of out-of-town friends to get on top of the Linnamäki mountain, where the wooden watchtower guarded the village – it was the sort of place where she always climbed with friends from out of town – she had taken in the landscape consisting of lakes and forests in all directions, as far as the eye could see, and burst into quiet, subdued tears. If you could see inside me, this it what it would look like, she had said so quietly the words were mere breathing, and, luckily, no one had seemed to hear her ridiculously emotional whispered confession. She was sitting on one of the Viennese chairs at a café, just by the window, with her back to the rest of the place. It was her spot. It was that moment in spring, when, without it actually being springtime yet, nature, the wretched scoundrel, brought out its worst. It completely lacked all the signs of spring, signs that in a month or so would wake the hell up all Finns back

Monday evening, as I was riding on a bus, returning home from work, I received a brief text message from my bank, asking me to please check my credit card status and balance right away, since they suspected unusual behavior and were under the impression that someone other than me was using the card. I hurried home, not wanting to check the balance on the bus, and opened my bank account on my smart phone. Indeed, someone had made purchases on my expense, and the balance was negative, by a lot. Panicking, I forwent my usual after work routines, such as snacking and taking a shower, and dialed the customer service number attached to the text from the bank. Of course, the time being what it was, no one was there to pick up my call although they claimed it was a 24/7 service, and after fifteen minutes of panic growing inside, listening to horrible renditions of Eighties soft rock, and, it being me, starting to fume at the ears because no one was fucking picking up from the number

Every year, ever since she was eighteen, Mrs. Dalloway watched Jaws, most commonly in early spring. She adored Jaws. For all intents and purposes, for her, it was the perfect movie: exciting and surprising, the story was meticulously constructed and balanced and evenly carried out, Richard Dreyfuss looked so fine he reminded Mrs. Dalloway of a young god. The characters were complex and interesting, the atmosphere genuinely frightening, and the legendary theme music of the creature ingenious, inspired and economical. It included an exceptional opening scene: the predator from the deep, completely disguised by the waves of the sea, mauls and kills an unsuspecting summer girl gone swimming. Jaws pioneered in coming up with interesting cinematographic solutions concerning filming in water, and the shooting was altogether marvelous. It was also a wonderful, heart-melting time capsule, and there were countless fantastic stories documented about the making of the film. And last, but not

Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor, or, how the music world knows her, Lorde, is touring the world right now, promoting her already hugely successful second album Melodrama. Do you know it? Of course you do! And that’s good, because she was there when I spoke to Roxanne last. Remember Roxanne? The punk goddess writer, with whom I spent a leisurely afternoon in our town a little while ago? Okay good. Here we go! Conversations on Popular Culture I was a little late from meeting Roxanne because I had needed to rinse those gourmet whips and wipe them tables, and, on my way to meet her at Deli 1909, I fell into an argument with Lorde that just would not wait. Don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk? No, Lorde, I think talking is great! To some extent, that is. I mean, I have never been one to yap in the bedroom, I’m like Miranda on Sex and the City who just wants her partner to shut the hell up during sex: in my verbally suffused life I – Making smart with their words ag