Dear friends,

I am as lost as a nomad, living in limbo, drifting from one place to another without any reason. During this time I keep writing letters that have never been sent, scribbling poems that have never been recited. Yes, I've found someone who is compatible to me but it won't work. Then I am not sure whether I should continue it or not. I am struggling with the dilemma between leaving or staying. Deep in despair, I don't want to think, so I choose to cast them away. In stead, I am reading, from Gide to Hemingway on the way. Even sometimes I place myself in an unknown town, drown in the vast alien language. From Paris to Borgå, from Borgå to Helsinki, to Stockholm. Where am I located? Where I am heading off next? However, I value the confusion that I endure. It is the fate, as if the immense ocean surround the old man. The name of the stream doesn't matter because when you are in the middle of the sea, confronting the nature, all doesn't count. We are as insignificant as sand, or even less. La Mer, here I yield to you.

"In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean.

He was very sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea."

Always gentle,
A