January 9, 2012, 1:00
Music: Ding Dong Ding Ding by George Harrison
Mood: Optimistic
Weather: –11°C!
The sun, that long-lost long-hidden long-forgotten coldly unfiery impotent circular patch, makes a small but graceful rainbow-like arc across a cloudy sky. The continuing greyness and wintry chill are momentarily dispelled by the shining brightness that almost seems like an afterthought, an accident, a mishap. I stand on the threshold of the balcony looking at a newly lit world about to welcome a new beginning…to a new semester and new adventures. The days are still short and the world is grey and white, but time it is to sling a bag across one’s shoulders, sing a song, and begin journeys.
Time, indeed, to forget the old, to begin, restart, or renew, and to walk ahead and look forward. With the occasional backward glances. For this month of January, named after the two-faced god Janus who looks at the past and at the future, is a time for introspection and cheer, a time for transitions and beginnings, a time for thought and reaffirmed movement.
Indeed, it is also time to restart this blog that has been slowly throttled by the large, vicious, and muddy hands of procrastination and the consequent stagnation. Like a dying animal, it has lain beaten, injured, and in despair, crying for attention, and it is now time to revive it with the magic of words and smiles, deeds and pictures, frolic and music, and thought and motion.
This blog restarts in the spirit of the newness and freshness heralded by this new semester that promises new friends, new classes, new subjects, and indeed new adventures. At the same time, the past shall not be forgotten, lessons shall not be unlearnt, and the worthier experiences of those unwritten days will not remain unrecollected. To wipe the slate and start clean is reasonable at the end of journeys, but mid-way, its wiser to polish and perfect, refine and revise, and thus complete a more compelling picture and tale. Like grandmothers with their poor eyesights but sharp memories, this blog shall recollect old tales and remember old adventures; whereas, like young maidens with hopeful eyes and colourful hopes, it shall also be much decorated and improved. Perhaps with more pictures; perhaps with more useful information for students and tourists who would wish to enter this magical world of elastically stretched sunny days, snow-white carpets, seemingly unmitigating greyness, littered frozen lakes, and dancing snow flakes; and perhaps with a conversion into a complete website. Perhaps with just better and more writing. Or, perhaps with just continuity.
And, hopefully, this blog will become better just for having woken from its lazy hibernation; before the ending of winter too, but a timely revival surely! For what else is life but timely action, transformation, and progression? In other words, evolution.
Lappeenranta Sojourn 