"That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run..."

Distance: 21 kilometers
Time: 2 hours 1 minute (one minute, for God´s sake...)
Average Speed: 10,4 km per hour
Most Encouraging Information: 1277 calories burnt 
Personal achievement:  and a completely new feeling of knowing myself better.  

It was not before my body had completely gotten over the torturing experience of running for good two hours non-stop;

It was not before I had generously helped loading it with tons of chocolate, pies and sugar in the following month with two birthdays of my daughter´s and my husband´s;

It was not before a month had passed, 
when I actually felt ready to come out and talk about it publicly -
- my first and largest masochistic experiment - taking part in the Reykjavik marathon. 

It started at 8:40 am on a most boring and wet late-August typical Icelandic morning. I will abstain from the chronology and detalization of the events, but will instead share my experiences and interesting moments of taking part in that "most unnecessary and disturbing" (thank you, mom) event.

My moderately handsome husband was running full marathon (for those blessed who do not know, this means 42 kilometers of pain, misery, blistered feet, and occasional self-pity) that day. We started together and he, in a rather gentlemanly manner, was accompanying his lady the first ten kilometers, until, of course, he felt rather bored and got tired of, actually, walking.

After the first five, I got a recurrent thought circling in my mind, measuring the distance: God bless Drinking Stations and good people working there. This is the actual measure for a runner, an occasional oasis of life and hope, not the abstract kilometers which seem only growing longer with every step.

A half-conscious crowd sharing a common blurred state of mind, hardly seeing anything through the pain in the lungs and with the leg muscles dying with every step, can hardly be expected to observe the manners and etiquettes and avoid throwing paper cups under the feet, but miracles happen: a moderately handsome gentleman of mine was actually running with his cup in the hands for a good mile looking for a trash bin, under the judgmental look of his not-so-well-mannered spouse, until one of the cheering people took it from him. Apparently, manners are always manners.

People standing outside and cheering was the highlight of the trail. Honestly. Thank you all for being there! If you haven´t been at any side of the path, just try to imagine how all those people got up on an early cold and wet morning, went out with the kids and occasional water and pastry, were standing outside in the rain, clapping, smiling, playing music, encouraging us, to get over ourselves, to keep on going, to believe we can do it. (When I stop running, I,  hereby, in this piece promise to all of you - witnesses reading this - I will put up all my grumpy, irritated and sullen kids at 8am and go out at every marathon to cheer and support those crazy courageous people). Here and now I can only say, thank you. Probably, you have no idea how much it mattered!

Other words of gratitude I should address to my brave and determined step-son just only for the fact that he, in his teenage anarchic-nihilistic prime, put himself out of a warm bed at 8am on Sunday morning, went out alone into the cold rain and wandered for hours in the streets of Reykjavik with a camera, trying to catch us on the trail to take good pictures... Indeed, that day was full of personal victories.

A rather (believe me, this is just a literary understatement) lean Japanese man was running somehow around me most of my twenty kilometers - overtaking lazily and lagging behind for taking pictures of the most beautiful scenery and places that we were passing by, until he quite (again, understatement) easily and gracefully turned into the full marathon path and lost himself for his next 42 kilometers with more pictures to be taken with grace and ease of running. Speaking of the cultural labeling.

Interesting (I am not sure it was the exact emotion of the spur of the moment) it was to see the cocky sporty super guys running already back fresh and frisky when me, my pain, both of my lungs and each and every of my leg muscles were only hardly finishing our first ten.

Rather amusing was to realise that both feet started to blister on the 12th kilometer (9 km more to go). In my defense - I did prepare! I did read all those numerous advice web-sites about how to prepare for the marathon. I did put on my old comfy running shoes and all-proven professional socks. I just failed to take into consideration the high dampness of the day, and on several occasions in the beginning, when we all were still running in one big crowd, I stepped into the water and that irrevocably for weeks, for many a painful shower, settled the sorrowful destiny of both of my feet. The professional running socks, eventually, were the only serious loss of the day.

People show their true colours in the long distance running. Or is any demanding situation working as a touchstone and depriving us of the craftiness and pretense? Spending two hours with more or less the same people around you, one can see how different we all indeed are. Someone runs pushy, overtaking and stepping just in front of you, someone steps into the big pool and makes the feet of everyone around a wet mess, and someone (there was one guy) completely exhausted, sweating and already hardly running, who saw a glove drooped by a guy running in front of us; with everyone just passing, he picked it up and followed the guy for six more kilometers unable neither to get up to him, nor even to shout anything, but just carrying his glove.

Finishing the last kilometer with the rain in the face was not what a girl with a makeup on the eyes would dream of (you know exactly what I mean, sisters), especially with the full awareness that my step-son would be waiting for me to take pictures of me beautiful finishing. Nothing doing... Passing by Harpa (a national opera house) - a grandeur manifestation of the small and proud nation´s self-consciousness - encouraged me to hold my head high and whole-heartedly believe Christina Aguilera that we are all beautiful... no matter what.

I do not consider myself an emotional person to weep in the movies, on books or cute stories but going through the finish line, at that very moment, I blessed the rain washing down stuff from my eyes.

I did it.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

An Always Within Never

"Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that´s what life is about: there´s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It´s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. 
Yes, that´s it, an always within never." 

(Muriel Barbery "The Elegance of the Hedgehog")


Have you ever stopped completely absorbed by the moment? It could have been anything: a purity of nature, a breathtaking landscape, a stunning sunset, a pale sunrise, a piece of music, a line of a poem, a frailty of a flower, a tenderness of a bird´s singing, anything? As if, in this particular moment, we get the revelation of life, if only we could read through it...

Have you ever been able to almost physically feel the bliss of a perfection, a unity of the nature and a human, a state when everything around you and inside you come together despite the most disturbing circumstances, states, dispositions, griefs, sorrows, concerns - everything gets washed away leaving you cleansed and pure, ready to absorb this momentarily gift of the universe - the gift of being.   

...by its definition to make a day perfect something special should designate a senseless 24-hour existence or even a better definition would suit a chain of desirable events (to cover a 24-hour senseless existence) in such a way so that by the time one is ready to hit the pillow and send oneself into the oblivion one actually feels (for once) accomplishment and a positive attitude which justifies the meaningless dwelling and fulfills unyielding all-human existential Angst (at least until a warm encounter with a cup of coffee, appeasing with the harsh reality of the following morning).

My perfect day started at 5:30 am, with the sun still enjoying the nap, and my own daughter slapping me by my own pillow into my own face. As the weekend morning are primarily my duty to wake up before dawn with our smiling early bird, with the angels still sleeping, I greeted my usual 5 am friend, the devil, who was already dancing in my head, running shivers through my body and with a tender whisper tempting me to run away and join the circus (until it's too late and everyone wakes up).

I took the smiling happy angel out of our bed and let my lucky bastard moderately handsome husband watch his I-am-using-my-laser-to-kill-all-aliens-in-space dreams (I, quite groundlessly and naively, still choose to believe it is only scenario that is running under the warm cuddling blanket in the sweetness of early mornings since his age of fourteen).

At 5:30 am I went out of a warm bedroom into the coldness of an abandoned living room to face the unbearable brightness of being in the five electric lights with the demon of electricity (seriously, what is this thing?) snapped out into the human world by a switch.

And that was still long before God created coffee that day...
Or roosters had finished with the demons for the third time that lonely September morning...

Holding the thought of the roosters, demons and a protective happy baby in the arms I have proceeded to open the balcony door to see... an Eden - a quiet, completely calm, warm September morning - air standing still, motionless; thin salty smell of the ocean layering the gray transparent air, like the jasper seaweed curls gently threading through the solid waters of the ocean; and all was peaceful, still: houses, trees, posts. Grass, roofs, tarmac saturated their colours with the sprinkles of mildew and turned up ever so bright and sharp in the dullness of the air. Beauty.

I packed my angel into the overalls and we went out. We walked to the playground in the complete silence of being. While the little one was quietly exhilarating herself on the swings, tuned into the common mood of the nature and the city around (babies are strangely sensitive to the nature talking), I looked at the damp jade thickness of the shrubs circling the quiet playground and sheltering our bliss. Time stopped. We were in a parallel universe, standing in our quiet transparent world in the middle of the noisy and loud playground, children running, shouting, mothers chatting with an occasional yell for a bully to stop or a toddler's cry after falling on the ground - and at the same time - only me and my daughter, in the silence and tranquility of the damp morning, and a raven cawed harshly three times, flying pass by above our heads, pronouncing our fates, and us, blessed in our ignorance, incapable of knowing...

When we came back home I had my morning coffee. Many things happened through that ordinary September Sunday, none of them would seem obviously special. But the perfection lies in simplicity, and the beauty in the eye of the beholder, doesn´t it?

It is just about a beautiful morning, a smiling baby-daughter, a loyal husband, safe home, and a good coffee. And once, an always within never.


Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson

That Moderately Handsome Husband of Mine...

The Russian proverb goes as paganly as it can be: "A husband and a wife are one devil", bearing a direct reference, of course, to the most sacred book of the mankind: "...and shall cleave into his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gen. 2:23). I think I have already mentioned that unique spiritual blend of paganism, mysticism, eastern beliefs and Christianity in its splendid and grandeur case of Orthodoxy which makes up an ordinary religious vision of a commoner and explains the appearance of the proverb, but today it's nothing of a religion or of a commoner.
Today it's about someone very special... 



Some years ago (let's leave diachronic precision to the historians) in a far away land, in the most improbable circumstances, deep in the sweat of the work exhaustion, in a state as remote as it can be from any romance potentiality, despite all the odds, in the middle of my relatively set and content life, I am meeting a moderately handsome man - "my heart's desire", "an apple of my eye", "a flesh of mine", "my bread of life" and "the fat of my land" and so much more... whatever that above-mentioned Holy book may produce on the case.

Many things have happened since, and a lot of water passed under the bridge. As two pawns on the tricky checked field of a relationship we have suffered both our losses and our victories and certainly walked a long way to the other side of the board in understanding each other. Almost a year of a long-distance relationship with its inescapable emotional roller-coaster (to be honest, mine mostly), smoothed by the exuberant means of communication complimentary of the XXI century made the first years together Heaven on Earth (hence so many biblical references here). Then we became fruitful and multiplied and brought a brand new little human being into this wicked world.

And then we got wed. In the church. Twice. In two religions and in front of one God. Let no man therfore put asunder, yt which God hath coupled together.

But what I want to say, really, what I need to say now, is that I am grateful to him, to my moderately handsome man. And as now he sits on the couch, remote and deep in a silly movie, with a silly smile understandably provoked by the same silly movie (you know, that boyish "I-am-so-cool-fighting-aliens-with-my-laser" type), which he is so fond of watching, and has no idea that I am writing about him...

So, my love, there it goes:

I am grateful to you that you came to the (literary) End of the World in the temperature far below freezing point and common understanding and made us happen.

I am grateful that through that first dark year of a long-distant part of our relationship every day you were leaving "a morning message" for me. Always.

I am grateful that you always translate all those Danish movies that we watch together, even when sometimes I am not much interested.

I am grateful to you that you can make any call for me, and take me any place.

I am grateful that every day you try to make my life better.

I am grateful that you accept my neuroticims, depressions, and complexities with the exceptional sense of humour which kills it all.

I am grateful that you accept my mother (boy, that says it all, doesn't it?)

I am grateful that you take me as I am (basically, as my mother).

I am grateful to you to put Katya to bed and wake up with her when I do not even ask.

I am grateful to you for all the excellent food that you can cook from scratch.

I am grateful that you motivate me for something which I would have not even dreamt of doing otherwise.

I am grateful that you always believe in me.

I am grateful that in the quarrels, as stubborn as you are, you always come and hug me first.

I am grateful for you always patiently listening to whatever verbal emotional (not always, but mostly) trash I have to produce on the remains of the day.

I am grateful to you for Katya, who would have never existed if it were not for you.

I am grateful that you are an excellent father: loving, understanding, fun, caring and strict.

I am grateful to you for finding my apple earphones yesterday (seriously).

I am grateful that you show me better.

I am grateful that by your actions, decisions and thoughts you teach me to be better.

I am grateful that you love me (and I try not to take it for granted).

I am grateful to you that you are what you are...


Long time ago a rather mystical scenario ran out in the streets of my native city, when quite an elderly lady that I helped to come all the way home asked me what I want in the life most. My inborn sobriety, skepticism and politeness replied in chorus that I was quite content with what I had. In a proverbial pause, effect strengthened by a deep look, she said that I would soon get my halves back together, hinting in an obvious way on the romantic aspect of being, which I scoffed out, but apparently remembered, setting somewhere on the depth of the consciousness.

Years passed. In a relationship like this one, as close to perfection as it can be, one can easily allow to remember and cherish that episode with a witch. So, my dear single girls, there's an answer: open thy eyes and look for the old ladies around. Quite possibly most of them are just ordinary old ladies, who will benefit greatly from your help, but the beauty of it - you never know...


To conclude I, hereby, call upon you, commoners: let's eat, drink and be merry, as my cup runneth over - today is my husband's birthday!

Happy birthday, my love! And thank you for being with me.



...and seriously, just so you know: there's absolutely nothing moderately about him!
(you know what I mean ;-)




Copyright © 2013 by Olga Johannesson