Rauhaniemi 1993

A. listened to old techno tracks on his Walkman as he walked through the main street in Tampere, "Hämeenkatu", as the Finns called it. I was a rainy and snowy night, something that is only possible in Finland, a weather combination of both rain and snow for the maximum fuck-you weather experience. The dark gray streets were almost empty save a few drunks trying to find their respective ways to homeward bound. The subtle hints of hi-hat continued to blast their way into A.'s ears as he listened to "Music reach (1-2-3-4)" by The Prodigy. The sampled and sped-up female vocals smoothened his gaunt and made him feel very happy as he walked down the street towards the Central Railway Station. He was already 10 minutes late.

The song had progressed to the three minute mark on the second playthrough when he arrived at the station front yard (as it was not uncommon for A. to play the same song twice or thrice. The reason for this is that he just enjoyed this method and manner of music-listening for some reason (i.e. no reason)). His target and destination was the part of the city known as Rauhaniemi or to be exact, the sunny beach cliffs of Rauhaniemi. The simple idea of that name (ed. note. Rauhaniemi in Finnish means Peace peninsula or Peaceful peninsula) brought him a simplish, borderlinely adolescent feeling of joy. The kind of feeling you get when you are a seven year old child and you receive your best Christmas wish for present . That toy car or video game you wanted so bad after hearing about it or seeing it somewhere. This feeling made A.'s walking very quick and pleasurable, as he turned from the broken concrete of Hämeenkatu to Tammelan puistokatu. The trees in summer bloom in the park of Tammela gave the location a kind of Sherwood Forest of Ye Olde Romantic English feeling to the part of street encompassing the park grounds. "My mind is glowing", spoke the vocalist in The Prodigy's "Claustrophobic sting" playing in A.'s ears.

He was almost there when the ticket was finally bought. The ride was taken.

The air was filled with transparent overlay images reminiscent of Incan pottery designs or Spanish pottery-painting patterns with binary colors of black and white zig-zagging towards infinity. They seemed to "bump-map" (ed. note: a computer graphics algorithm which basically entails using a map of height information which is then used to calculate a three dimensional picture of an image with height information available) the air with their rectangular and symmetrically pleasing shapes. Moving his eyes or his head also seemed to "color-cycle" the patterns with a slow gradient colors. All these little quirks were very enjoyable for him, as it didn't really bother him at all. In fact, all the images seemed to react to the music pounding his eardrums as well, so it functioned as a sort of "music evaluator" for his current state. "I feel like a computer", said A. out loud for nobody particular. The green trees were his only audience in the darkness of the Rauhaniemi harbourside.

He caught the first glimpses of the lake in the midnight darkness. It was a beautiful sight with a Picasso-like composition, and A. couldn't help smiling and thinking of the New York Museum of Modern Arts. "A masterful composition", he hought to himself then switching his thoughts toward René François Ghislain Magritte in a connection of the words "composition" and "Magritte".

Everything was alright.