Saturday, September 23
Bridge over Sörnäisten rantatie, 18:20
I got up to discover that Irma had laid out a range of pans and implements for me, along with a food mixer. I had expected to buy these this morning, so I packed them quietly and left home with a smaile on my face.
I got to Pixelache at 10:00 for the meeting that Egle had called to find that most people had partied until 4:00 in the sauna or at the sound system. The meeting began slowly sometime around 11:00 by which time my mind had already left the room to focus on this afternoon’s workshop.
At 12:40 Oliver and I left to walk to Sörnäinen to get some money to give away. Oliver suggested that we should eat before the workshop and so we went to Fafa. I had never entered one before and it turned out as good as Naa had suggested. I had a goat’s cheese and hummus pita bread, with falafels, with a lot of chilli and thus a lot of water; and felt very nicely full afterward.
We wandered back and set up the workshop which, following the mood of the day, started late and slowly as people wandered in and sat down. We had sixteen or so in the group and as far as Oliver and I could see, it worked.
My attempt at demonstrating how easily one can make face cream proved successful in that the final product closely resembled face cream. Several participants asked for the recipe afterwards and one woman asked if she could have a second bottle because she had tried it and liked it so much.
Oliver’s attempt to give away 100€ by getting the group to use various decision-making processes to decide what to do with it, proved interestingly complex. In the end the group gave the money to one person, to go and buy beer and snacks, having abandoned donating it to various causes, or dividing it up. Or buying a six year old in the audience a smart phone, which she argued for at length.
By the end I feel exhausted, and decide to wash my pots and pans and take them home in daylight. I wash, dry and pack them, and then walk up to the metro. I stand on the bridge over the highway looking back at the Suvilahti area, which all seems in the middle of total renovation. I looks at the various layers and levels of graffiti and, when my foot no longer hurts, I continue walking.
In the evening Irma and I will share a bottle of wine and look for something on television to watch. We will end up watching Fifty Shades of Grey, which must count as one of the worst films ever made. We will spend almost three hours watching nothing happening and then the film will end with no conclusion and no resolution. We will find ourselves so hypnotised by its supreme purposelessness that we will feel unable to look away.
In the end we will look at each other and say, “there went the evening”.