Home

What makes a home? It cannot be simply a place, for then it could not be moved. It cannot be simply the items it holds, for then it could be moved whenever. It cannot be simply the people it's associated with. So what is it? What makes a home be a home? What changes an appartment - a cold and drafty place with echoes in the corners - to a warm and welcoming home?

Consider for a moment your current home. If you don't have one, consider the one you had. Remark or recall the smallest details. The little dents in the kitchen floor from when you dropped the knife. The pressings that never dissappeared even after you changed the table in the living room. The ripped piece of wallpaper behind the painting from when you were hanging it up. The paint stains on the desk from when your hand slipped while painting. The window handle that would never turn all the way in. The creaky cupboard in the kitchen where you never put much anything because you hated the noice. The top shelf of your wardrobe that kept falling down if you put anything heavy on it. The little sounds that the heaters would make if they weren't on. The way sun would shine trough the windows.

None of these things listed might even apply to your home, but I'm sure you have something thought out by now. These tiniest of things: stuff that people visiting might never find out, are something essential to your home. They are a part of it, a part of what makes it home. You could not have your home without these things in it, for it would have something missing, yet they are not what makes it home.

You may have moved lately, or perhaps not. You have probably moved atleast once during your life. How long after moving did it take for the new place to start feeling like home? Is is subjective? Should it be?

I have no answers to these questions. There's something in a place that makes it home. Perhaps it's just us, deciding "this is it. This place is mine, and I'll have it be so." Perhaps it's something else. All I know for sure, is it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

On fleetingness, fatality and other beatiful points in life.

It seems only fitting that, as the first post was in Finnish, this one is not. Welcome, again, to the booze cabinet of the platypus. Tonight we shall ponder for a while on the fleetingness of life. Some of you may now wonder how this came to be. I'm ill equipped to explain, so I'll show you. Come along on a journey I made last weekend, and see what I have seen. Maybe even think upon it.

 On Saturday morning, we woke up to a light snow. It wasn't enough to keep us inside: it was barely enough to chill the cats' paws and send them scurrying for warm cushions. The sky seemed clear enough when we packed ourselves and the gear into the car.

 Here was our first stop. Down the river had, years before, come a huge ferrying of wood every summer. Only a few kilometers downriver was the watermill and the saw that it powered. Here was where we were headed.

 

 Across the street from the riverside saw lies an old, now abandoned farmhouse. Left on its own for some dozen of years, it has now crumbled down and decayed. It's a spooky place, to say the least.

 After browsing around for a while it became apparent that the place had never been properly emptied, nor made ready for anyone to move in again. As I stood there, camera in my hand, I couldn't help but wonder who would just up and leave a house like that. Probably much more than a house: a home. Old clothes, christmas decorations on the windows, everything simply left there for time and weather. What motivates that in a person?

  

The old sawmill had fared even worse than the house. After some browsing we found the blackened boards under the snow: the place had burned down, and had never been repaired. There was abandoned bits of gear lying here and there, like we had jumped to an alternate now that was in a steampunk era. Everything made of wood was starting to sack and break.

 The mill coop, now devoid of it's water wheel, had not fared much better than the saw. The water house's door, hanging on it's last hinge refused to lay down the secrets of the place.

 The weather fluctuated quite a bit during the day. We had some light snow, some less light snow, and even a bit of sunshine. The color changed oddly from minute to minute, almost as if time was moving on triple speed.

 

On the way back to the world. So odd that less than an hour away from our everyday lives there's such detachment, a place that's just been left for it's own. In the end we were left wondering what must have happened for all that to be simply left there. What makes a person leave half of what they own, the whole house and simply go? Why was it never sold forward? What even makes a home? I'll return to this later, if I feel like it. For now, I hope you enjoyed the day we now spent in the old farmhouse and mill, abandoned by the river.