The Word Is...

I'm a pacifist, a hippie, living in a flow, never planning my life too far ahead. As a teenager I used to close my door, listen to The Doors and pen out poems to my small black notebook. I wanted to be a beatnik, travel like Jack Kerouac and write about my travels. I wanted to figure out life.

My father being as far Left as a Finn can be used to dis my creative dreams and push me to study politics, especially Left side of it. I remember getting really mad, saying 'politics is bullshit, I'll never, listen NEVER!!! get into that crap.' Little did I know that there would be a day in my future when I would willingly open the huge book of Vietnam war, and begin to figure our what went wrong in the US politics about 50 years ago?

Should I blame JFK or LBJ, or their administrations in general? Was it the strong will power and demands of General Westmoreland, or 'peace candidate' Nixon who took the office in 1969? The fact is that something went badly wrong during many years, and no coverups were able to take care of that mess. There must be somebody to point my finger to? But is there? Do I need someone to blame to better understand what happened? Is that why we write and study history and politics? So that we can blame and then learn from their mistakes, and hope that we won't make the same mistakes again.

During 1960-1970 the global politics took the harsh step down in people's appreciation, never getting back up to pedestal again. Pentagon papers, Kent State, Watergate Scandal were just the beginning. The atmosphere of the politics changed in 70's. And folks, we're now living the outcomes of that, globally. During the same time we were given a television to see and better understand reality. Now we have internet. And the world is fast.

I'm still a pacifist and a hippie as I have always been, but now I'm figuring our life through the history, through wars, and through stories of people who lived before me. They say that you need to travel to other countries to understand what you have in your own country. I agree. And you also need to travel back in time to understand your own time. The decisions made by politicians is our future. Sometimes it feels that people who make these decisions haven't seen much world, or haven't studied the past enough to really understand and have compassion. Sometimes it seems that although they look serious and confident in their ties, suits and with black briefcases, they are hippies who go with the flow. And they just want to save their butts as they go.

Kindness is the word, the other word is respect. These are the bases of diplomacy. And humanity.

Next week I'll meet Tim Page in Brisbane and continue this conversation with him. He was in Vietnam war taking pictures that were showing the truth of war, at the time when public didn't have anything but the word of their trusted politicians to lean on.

My next documentary film WARPEACE will be an interesting conversation between two sides of human behaviour: LOVE and ANGER. Stay tuned!

The Earth loves you, love it back!

One of my long time hobbies have been taking pictures of signs that tell me what to do. I understand that many of them are here to protect us. But when they appear in plenty it's amusing. Sometimes they are also visually beautiful, such as this one I found in Sea Cliff, Long Island:

… or this one somewhere in Manhattan, close to Park Avenue:

This was painted on the bottom of a water fountain in Baldwin, Long Island. Just in case they didn't use water in it either:

This lady in a subway station in Manhattan is not obeying the rule, she IS RUNNING:

The message that is always important when traveling with any vehicle:

Before you wanna step on tennis court, make sure that….

If in America they use many words to state what I should do, and especially what I shouldn't do, in Finland we have no words. This does it:

And finally... I found this in Kaivopuisto, Helsinki few years ago:

I'd love to see more of these. 

'The Earth loves you, love it back!'

KEEP THE HEAD UP!

In the beginning it was very innocent. We had our giant Nokia 1611 phones placed on the table when meeting with friends, to show our status. We were living in the front line of cellphone era. Text messages had just become to take place in the world of new communication. I think we, the Finns were the first ones to really start the trend. In 1998 I studied Filmmaking in New York and only one of my 15 classmates had a cell phone, and was texting! Meanwhile all my friends in Finland have done that for few years.

Now it seems that cellphones have become a social problem. Last week I was on the subway from Crown Hights to 57th Street. On my way I studied cell phone behaviour. No matter of class, race, social status or age there were cell phones in almost every hand or pocket. At the same time I hear people wondering why time goes so fast nowadays, that we don't have time for anything anymore. It's not all that. Time is not going fast or slow, it only seems that it's going fast. It's difficult to just be and do nothing, but that is when time stops moving, it becomes still. We need to GIVE time for ourselves.

Life is about human connection. Everything we do, we do to have a connection to other person. Nokia advertised their phones long time ago with a slogan 'Connecting people'. But while we make a connection through device we disconnect ourselves from people around us.

We had a family gathering few weeks ago, and it was lovely to sit around a table and have a real conversation with one another. Older people didn't care about the phones, but younger people continuously took their phone to check out something, and to disconnect themselves from the conversation. So much is going on around us that we don't see, hear or get when our heads are bent down to check out Facebook, E-mails, Twitter, Pinterest or thousands of other applications.

When I arrived to 57th Street I walked down few blocks to see art in MoMa. Nothing in the museum touched me as much as this artwork painted on the sidewalk close to Grand Street in lower Manhattan. It made me realise that I have to stop wasting my time with social media and to look for real life around me. I wonder if I'm able do that!

YOGA ROOTS

Exactly twenty years ago, in June 1995 I lived in New York City for the summer studying acting. It was nice, but I felt I needed to do something else too. And then I found Crunch Gym on 13th street. Weightlifting didn't bring me into the studio, but the yoga they offered. Jivamukti Yoga. My teacher was Sharon Gannon, one of the founders of Jivamukti. Yesterday after 20-years I decided to go back to my yogic roots. I attended to a class close to Union Square in New York.

I had a terrible headache when I entered to the class, caused by the heat, but even more by absolute craziness of the city. Earlier I was able to take in three months of Manhattan, before I had to leave, but now three days was plenty! I hoped the yoga could help me deal with outer chaos.

In Kundalini Yoga we have one teacher teaching a class, in this Jivamukti class there were three teachers. One was leading the class and others helped to correct the poses of students. Right after we began, one of the assisting teachers massaged tiger-palm on my neck and shoulders. It started to heat up my body, and together with stretching I immediately felt the headache going away. What a relief.

Although I had't done this form of yoga for many years, the feeling of the class took me right back to where I started from in 1995. I felt like I had come home. This is where I PRACTICED to do yoga in my early years. Eventually graduating to DO yoga with Kundalini. This was a valuable realisation I did yesterday in that class. The head teacher said: 'We are not here to do yoga, this is not yoga. We are here to practice to do yoga.' This was great, I finally got it. Asanas and concentration while correcting poses teaches us how to breath deeply in motion. When you learn that, you're ready to DO yoga everywhere and anytime. When I left the studio I felt great in the midst of the crazy Manhattan. My body was breathing in all the wilderness of the city, and I felt happy.

ROOTS

During our life we change and reborn many times. The roots are there, but do we really ever set them down to one place? That is what makes us different from trees. We never settle. That is our freedom. There are manmade borders to fence us inside or outside, but they're nothing but decisions made by people. They don't exist in real life. We believe in borders, we don't question them. These borders keep us away from being free.

I'm writing this in New York, actually in Long Island. It was exactly 20 years ago when I first set my feet on the sand of this country, inside the American borders. I still remember how it felt to drive with a yellow cab from JFK to Manhattan, to see the skyline first time, so familiar from movies and TV. I remember how it felt to keep a styrofoam coffee cup in my hands, bought from a corner-deli, and imagine making a hole in it and letting the coffee run free. Now when I watch old Friends episodes I realise how much everything has changed in twenty years. Taxi cabs are still yellow, but so different. Nothing stays the same. Every moment is a new beginning.

I'm starting this blog because there is an era that is now ending in my life, and a new one is just about to begin. I'm moving forward, leaving this house behind for good, it was never my house, but I lived here during past 15 years for shorter and longer terms, in a way it has been my safe-house in America. Nothing in life is for us to own, they're here for us to borrow and give back with respect. Connection is the reason for our life. To be connected to the Earth, to a land underneath our feet. And to be connected to one another with respect. That's why we are here.

It's Summer Solstice today! Let's swim in Light! In Peace!