Helsingista #2
Perjantai
Let me sing to you now of smoke and salt.
You breathe through your mouth, in sauna; the air feels hot enough to turn your nostrils to ash. It takes a few minutes for your body to realize exactly how hot it is—who knows the actual temperature, the surface of Mercury, it might as well be, from the sudden flow of water out of your skin, every drop of moisture in your body, it feels like. Your ears are shriveling. The smoke sauna is impossible for more than those few minutes, the air sweet and heavy but every movement is agony.
It's 40º outside but balmy compared to the sauna, which is why it is not in fact crazy or some innate Finn ability to tolerate the cold that enables them to stroll along the wooden deck with a pair of ladders leading into the churning Baltic Sea. Everyone who has told you Finns keep to themselves is lying; men and women gaily chatter and laugh, the men boisterous and teasing, a group of older women playing along.* After two months of study, your correspondent is only able to catch every third word or so, but it seems to just be everyday talk, people decompressing on a beautiful sunny Friday afternoon.
Steam rises from everyone's scalding skin. The sea beckons.
Few people submerge themselves completely—your correspondent gets a few strokes away from the ladder before her body realizes exactly how cold it is and decides it's best to get back before her muscles freeze and she sinks immediately to the bottom of the Baltic—who knows the actual temperature, the ocean of Ganymede, maybe. Heaving yourself out of the sea, you are reborn.
You repeat the process; in one sauna, out to the sea, into the other, out simply standing in the air breathing mingled smoke and salt, keening gulls overhead, mind clear for the first time in what feels like years.
It's a mild miracle the American Wellness Scam Machine hasn't somehow appropriated sauna by now, Goop setting up a special Pacific-side combo sauna-hot yoga joint that costs $500 for a half-hour but includes a jade vagina egg. Maybe it's for the best.
Hugs and puppies,
Oriana
*This is a co-ed public sauna—"public" not meaning free, it's 19 euro for two hours here—and so everyone wears a swimsuit.