Two Suns in the Swampy Coastal Forest

My intention was to go to do a writing experiment in the forest of Mustavuori, a famous nature reserve next to my home. To my disappointment, the walking trails in the area had now been converted into ski trails for skiers. The prohibition sign made it clear that I could not go into the woods. 

I then walked after half an hour of walking to the shore area in Vartiokylänlahti. There were trails there too, but without prohibition signs. It was also possible to walk between the trails. In addition, there were several paths trodden by walkers. Stepping and balancing on narrow paths in the twilight of the setting sun was nostalgic and fun. A dog and a dog owner came against me. I passed them with a smile, stepping aside in snow. The dog owner thanked smiling. The landscapes were reminiscent of childhood skiing trips in the countryside, in Metsäkylä ('forest village') a small village in Kymenlaakso, Finland. I hurried to take a few pictures on my cell phone, before it would be too dark. I didn't know if there was anything to write about the walk. I checked if I had any unshakable picture, in the case I would write about the walking in the blog. I was greatly delighted by the picture, in which it seemed like two suns together behind a tree between branches. In the sky, I still saw only one sun, and at the same time I was excited about the idea of ​​two suns.

I thought of people's different cultural ways of giving different cultural meanings to the sun. I thought about the energy economic debate and people's efforts to secure sustainable energy production for the people of the planet. Then 'two suns' came to my mind as the title of the book. I didn't remember the author of the book, someone from the northern Finland, I thought. At home, it turned out that it was Kauko Röyhkä's novel from 1996. Röyhkä is from Oulu, from the northern Finland. I haven't read the book. On Wikipedia, the Oulu City Library presents it as a book of the time of the war, which brutally describes the life of musicians in the war, as follows: Both parallel worlds are present in the novel's most impressive image, with the band playing on the deck of a riverboat, and magical music intertwined with the stench of bodies rotting in the water. --- The name of the novel also refers to the orchestra's song "Two Suns," which will stay alive on the radio as a jazz song after the war, but as a new, cliché version. "

What Röyhkä's novel has to do with this blog post? With these very different topics, I can reflect on the role of the artist. I wanted to go out into the woods to write, but the excursion became an environmentally conscious walk in the coastal forest. I was delighted to find two suns in the photo and soon found myself pondering energy issues for the sake of the entire common earth. The trip led me to find out about a novel written by Röyhkä 25 years ago, in which two suns mean something completely different than where my own thoughts in winter nature led. These two different ways of thinking and reacting to the two suns help to illustrate the fact that art makes it possible to see and do differently in every conceivable way. I fully understand that the link I have made from the two suns in my photo to the two suns in the novel may seem hypocritical. The processes are like from different planets: writing a novel can take years, while taking a walk and writing about it only takes a few moments. Only few can write a novel. Instead, anyone can go on an excursion to nature. These two different things or processes should not be compared. Instead, it is possible to juxtapose them. The juxtaposition itself, as well as what it produces, serve as an example of how in the art world there is the freedom to think, act, express, and seek and find connections. By placing them first in my mind and then also in writing in parallel, I understand what the different components of the processes bring about. How, for example, time, era, context, historical and political situation, and different forms of expression guide and define the development of something into art.