Outdoors

Spent a lot of time outdoors lately:

*digging a trench for old bushes with new neighbours, chatting and getting sweaty together in the spring sun.
* Hanging out on the beach with selma and sister, one sunbathing, the other collecting shells and the third shewing old dried mussels and smelly sea weed.
* Raking grass and moss into piles by the summer house, full of contradicting feelings of home, happyness, opposition and sorrow.

Spent a lot of times with good friends lately:

* Bobo came over, ate, watched buffy with me and stayed over on the sofa.
* Sara, Vanja, Nedine and Sara came over for dinner, playing games and laughing loud. I felt distant but enclosed in friendship.
* Little Sara and I made a translation test together, biking home and going it over in our heads, then making dinner and eating it out in the garden while the sun set.

Thank you life for that.

Highpoint: all of the above.
Lowpoint: feeling distant and restless for many days in a row.
Mission of Tomorrow: getting out of bed at seven for a (semi - I dont do the waving of arms thing.) power walk (or the frantic pace...)
getting back into writing.

tip

I will soon be going to bed but first I want to tip you about this remarkable homepage: http://www.bakemyday.se
So much imagination.

Today I have worked some, cooked twice, eaten, biked, danced and watched the first episode of the first season of Angel, which took just over a week to download.

My balcony is a mess of empty pots and boxes, half filled bags of dirt and shivering plants. I am impatient for the seeds to grow on my windowsill, and for my five articles to be finished.

highpoint: either missing or forgotten...maybe making plans with bobo about tomorrow night? Or coming up with a disposition for the first article.

mission of Tomorrow: Interview Vasudeva Das at Nimai house. Transcribe and work on article two and three. If sunny, plant peas and spinach in the boxes. Hang out with bobo and watch some vampire slaying,

Treasures

Yesterday I was out in the country fighting rasberry weeds, when I found something. I have come to this place every summer in my whole life, still, it held a hidden treasure, half burried in the ground under some pine trees: A magnificent swirl design made out of rusty iron.

One of my favourite things in the world is hunting for treasures. Walking or climbing with eyes searching the ground and then that pleasant feeling when something lovely or wondrous appears before them. The excitement of picking it up and holding it in my palm, or dig to find out what it is.
Some days ago me and Sam visited an island, where I have lived a few times. It is ful of ancient history in the form of celtic crosses and whitering ruins, but my favourite place is an old dump: an environmental catastrophe at the northest edge of the island. It holds broken bottles and ancient medicine jars, ugly plastic wrapping from the sixties and an abundance of rusty metal. I love it.

lowpoint of Today: not doing any work but still staying inside the whole day pretending that I was.

mission of Tomorrow: Write an article. Buy balcony boxes and plant some more seeds.

All of a sudden

All of a sudden it was summer and we found ourselves up on a montain overlooking the city, having pick nick with purple eggs, fennel sallad, whiskey and comforting chocolate cake, playing games where we pretended to be things like porridge or tornados or business men needing to pea or dogs with three legs, falling over in the soft moss and laughing like children. What a great day. I need to pack now for my trip tomorrow.

Nedine told us about her dream of a half manta/half sting ray that killed itself in shallow water. I checked it out and dreaming of a manta ray means:

Fluidity of movement and the ability to lay low and camoflauge oneself (especially emotionally). The dream can mean that you either have to much or too little of these qualities.

Anything that swims in deep water is normally symbolic of deep unconsious aspects of the dreamer...are you realising something about yourself, something that is moving towards the surface...?

I once had a close encounter with a sting ray in Belize. I swear I could feel it thinking.

Prejudice about Värmländska /Warmlandish

Yesterday I met with the guy who owned the apartment before me, in court. We sat on opposite sides of a table saying opposite things about the stupid floor issue.

He looked a bit like an elf with pale alabaster skin and huge black eyes like ponds deep in a forest. His features were very fine and kind of frail. His hair, straight and black, fell in strands passed his high cheek bones down to his chin. Like an elf or a vampire.

But he had this way of speaking: his voice very loud and deep and a thick accent that made me think of tractors and countryside, and he blurted out the words so that I started imagine him on a trimmed moped somewhere on a country road, on his way to "town" to get a hot dog with "the boys" at the local hangout kiosk.

Then I realised that a famous and admirable writer must have spoken like that. She lived on a big mansion in the area in the last century, writing books about very serious things, but also books that children would love. Also, she had mistresses.

We reached an agreement on 5000 crowns.

-

So days pass all the time and they are filled with things: a long train journey, books and thoughts and favourite candy from grandma days.
A quiet and peaceful place in a pine and birch tree forests, over looking a frozen river. A girl wearing sandals in a landscape covered with snow: I had never been to that part of Sweden before.
A meeting, listening, discussions, thoughts. The whole world and all the trees and fields and little cottages outside the window and one question: Am I only living on the surface of it all?

Thinking of the picture my friend Vanja gave me when we were picking raspberries in the woods last summer: That the trees with all their branches are really upside down, that the branches are in fact roots that reach into the earth that we are enclosed in. Try that image next time you are in the woods or in a park, and let me know how you felt.

Highpoint: getting seeds from Paulina. Having cookies and coffee with sara and oli. Managing to work concentrated for five hours straight.
Mission of Tonight: phoning mamma.
Mission of Tomorrow: Finish transcribing, get hold of an atheist, dance with all my heart and write with all my heart

Need to breathe...

When I watered the crocuses on my balcony today I accidentally soaked a little bumblebee...it hummed very angrily at me and flew away. Later on I caught a rabbit eating off all the spring flowers on the ground outside our apartment building.

It has been an emotionally draining day. I feel as though Im being uprooted, if thats even a word...as if the ground that I am resting on is being taken away. And it sounds kinda silly to say: It's a house, a house is the ground that I rest on. I even pondered on such things as the meaning of life and life after death today.

So I think calmness is needed, som space to breath in, borrowed from a bus ride in the United States, in another time.

Highpoint: Sitting by the oceac watching the sun set with Paulina.