A couple of weeks ago, when Jim Griffin was occupying the “guest blog” at boingboing.net (he was replaced by Kevin Sites, but replaced more temporarily than either one of them guesed), Jim penned an entry that has popped back up into my head several times since. He was writing from Finland, a country I’ve never thought about much except for my love of Sibelius’s grossly dramatic music and the WWII fight the Finns put up against Russia which inspired Sibelius to write such dramatic stuff. In Jim’s mini-blog he talks some about Finnish culture and character, and in this entry, he finds himself feeling just a little more Finnish after a very Finnish experience.

Still, it is in the Finnish nature to go to the woods and be alone when feeling great joy and happiness, or “onni,” and under the same circumstances we Americans can often be found beating our chest and yelling at the top of our lungs. Hell, if Americans were into Avantouinti there’d be a photo booth and souveneirs at the end of every pier.

It is now hours later, and I have less desire to discuss it, and more desire to reflect upon it, so there is something working here, the magic is spreading, and I am beginning to understand this country in ways so many trips before failed to communicate, how the cell phone can be extension of the hand and not the mouth.

Link to the entry.