The Foreigner Speaks English

It is me, the Foreigner. A Northerner, I’d like to call myself. I like the echo of it: a smell of ice and snow, a sight of windy mountains (or, you know, they’re not technically mountains, but that’s as close as the English language allows me to go), a feeling of solitude in the rough beauty of nature. That is how I’d like to present myself, as an independent, strong figure from the mythical North, wandered off to the green island of Smithwicks and hash browns to experience wild youth days outside the familiar, expected and pre-approved. However, that is not me. I am from hopefully only a metaphorically inbred small town, terribly afraid of snakes and sudden noises and certainly would not survive in the wilderness. I need the Interwebs. I don't think the coverage is all that great there. Saying so, I disappoint even myself.

Nordic I am still, not one of those stunningly good-looking Scandinavians with long legs and fair skin but a potato-nosed, thin-haired Finnish girl. I have inherited my grandmother’s nose via my mother, and I believe it will get larger as I age. I have my father’s thin hair that sometimes seems to require even a bus ticket of its own, so independent it is of me. While my youth days may not actually be wild in the sense how the word is commonly understood, life is far more surprising and, oh yes! see how I dare, exciting in Dublin than in my hometown where time has got stuck in the sticky dance floors of the only night club.

I have a tendency to ramble on and repeat myself, which probably is one of the main reasons why I cannot keep short stories short – let's not even begin with the long ones, while we still can move on. An escape from myself, so to say, moving on so quickly that there's not time to start pondering what length of a story still qualifies as short, or how to decide whom to betray when making cuts in a story. Is it more powerful to say a thing or leave it unsaid? I am with Chekhov on this one.

If I open my mouth, there’s no knowing what’s going to get out and how long the never-ending string of consecutive but necessarily not related words will last. My Facebook posts have become increasingly long and nonsensical, which is why I thought it might be about time to use another channel for all that. Posting all that on Facebook would just be silly. To describe it pointless might be more accurate. Twitter, then, is an arch enemy of mine, largely because of the character limit. 140. 140. Useless, I'd like to add, murmuring and squinting and feeling profoundly incompetent when it comes to compressed wittiness. I truly admire those for whom it is enough. Also, stalking people on Twitter is less fun that on Facebook, or maybe I just don't get how it's supposed to work, but I sincerely believe that blogs are the best sources of information used for... purposes. Conclusions. Don't pretend, you know exactly what I mean.

I enjoy writing. In other words, if I didn’t write, within 30 days I’d be found in a padded room chewing my own toes and ah well, why not someone else's if I got the chance. I’d like to become a better writer than I am now – you can only imagine my excitement when I found out that my college offers a module in creative writing. Oh yes, thought I, I am definitely going to take that! Despite English being my second language and occasionally on an awfully fragile basis, I am definitely going to take that. So besides a platform for my self-centred waffling, I consider this blog as a writing practice. Let us not speak of the previous blog that was supposed to be something similar as well but now it's been months and months since I've last written anything. How amazing would that be, though, if someday I actually learned how to transfer the irrational ends of thoughts into coherent, sense-making combinations.

That being said, there’s my goal. It is to be doubted, though, will I ever reach that. It is approximately sixteen years since I learned to read and write. My collection of successfully finished essays, short stories, and poems has not quite been what one would’ve hoped. I could say I only write for myself and for my own amusement; and yet I keep posting all that all over you-know-what. What do I want, I have asked myself, but I cannot bring myself to admit the obvious.

Notice me! Listen to me! Like me! Even a little bit, if by any means possible, if not too much trouble for ye.