I'm currently on holiday, for quite sometime as well, 2,5 weeks :) We did have plans on going abroad this week, but the urge kinda faded out. I don't know whether it's all the talk about flying to Thailand or even southern Europe is the ultimate proof that you're an environmental culprit or just that there were no really interesting last minute flights available. We had been to all the cities available, even lived in one of them so... Instead, I "wasted" my money on a new SLR camera, a
Nikon D40. So far, I'm more than happy, rather excited really, I even neo-launched my
flickr account that has been in a respirator for quite sometime now.
And today, I was again reminded of why it is so important to me to always carry around a camera, to always document things. The breakup of the ice in the rivers and streams has occurred unusually early this year. So when discussing this, my mum comments "yes, it's rather early but the ice breakup has been this early before too" and she tells me the year. Same thing happened when the past December was unusually warm, a friend of our family could pinpoint the exact year (I think it was in the 1930's) the weather had pulled similar tricks on snow sick Finns celebrating Christmas. And this is what bugs me, people remember things, they store knowledge in the nervous system well hidden from complicating factors like oblivion and they can more or less with little ease pull the information out of there. Whereas I don't. Sometimes, when I solemnly swear I don't know/remember something although having told a friend about it earlier, I'm told "I know you know that". That's pretty bad. And this is because I have to see an image in order to recall something. When I do, or when I'm told the scenery or surroundings of the situation I try to recall, all sorts of information comes to the surface such as who participated in the event, when and where it was, et cetera. It's the same thing with books or magazines, I always know on what page an article or even a piece of information is. And since I'm very interested in time spans regarding the weather, fashion, music, politics et cetera, taking pictures and storing them with a time stamp and a short, descriptive tag or is the only means I have to ever recall anything. Perhaps this is a form of
photographic memory, on whose "to be or not to be" there seems to be a controversy going on...
It's been a hell of a winter, pardon my French, but it has. There are few positive adjectives I can come to think of when describing it. It's been dark, quite warm, little snow but instead very rainy, resulting in unusually wet forests and no frost in the ground. The river running by our house is usually covered with ice in January but not this year. And since we're currently living January, the festivities of Christmas and mid winter are all behind us leaving little mental nor physical light to cheer for. And when you add that to the usual polar night spirit (or Kaamos which is the term in Finland), only keeping the eye lids open is a task comparable to walking ten thousand miles. That's why I jumped out of bed with a big grin on my face this morning, the sun was rising, the temperature was -10 and a white blanket of snow reflecting golden sunbeams. Beautiful! I grabbed the camera and headed out. Let's hope it stays this way for a while longer. Otherwise, I need to indulge more in my survivor trick during dark winter times, knitting, needlework and embroidery (the angel came about last November...).
