The air is crispy fresh and that’s what I’ve missed the most. Also, today I saw the first.. Hepatica I think it’s called in english? And dear friends, to me that flower is the banner of spring, it means winter is beaten.
^Chilling watching some Pretty little liars, relatively unrelated to the rest of the post but randomness is my motto.
The world is collapsing in on me, suffocating me and pressing me down, collapsing me in on myself. I spend too much time in the presence of only my own simple being, and my latest theory, the one that I came up with on the bus on my way home, is that it’s ruining me. It’s breaking me because it’s making my world smaller. I realized that I haven’t been out of the house without reason for a long time. I make my way to school, I make my way to the bus and back from the bus and a few times every day I go out to my house, since I live in a little cabin in our backyard. And every time I go there, I take a few seconds to just stand in our garden and look up at the clouded sky. And I never realized that I need more of that, it’s droplets when I crave rivers.
Today it’s hate-weather, the type that makes my friends sigh, but I suddenly realized the freedom of it. The sky is clouded but the spring is closing in and the days aren’t as dark anymore. Small drops of rain are falling from the sky, but it’s fresh. And I suddenly realized that I need a freaking walk. I need to leave my headphones at home and just walk through the forest. And I realized that I like this weather because the world feels so empty. Empty, yet open. I need to go outside of all the things we humans have built for ourselves and I need to make the world feel like mine and let nature feel like I belong to it. I need to breathe.
I have this thing, especially in maths, where I write my notes really really small. Because, well, I think it looks pretty. And making something beautiful kind of distracts me from how boring it is. Or not that boring, I kinda like maths, it’s just… ugh, not my favourite activity first thing in the morning. So anyway, I present to you, the most environmentally friendly way to go through school, I think this book is gonna last me until I graduate.
Well, at least it’s good to know I’ve done something with my life.
Sometimes I question why I live in Sweden. Half the year, the sun barely makes it over the horizon, and when it does it’s like it’s still having trouble finding out how to actually warm something up. I love winter, sometimes I just think about my friend in France who can live close to the alps and close to the snow while still not having that dark season.
Then I remember the hidden days. You might have heard about the midnight sun. In the north of Sweden the sun doesn’t set at all in the middle of summer, it just sinks down to touch the horizon until it rises again. It’s not that extreme where I live, but still. I mostly think about it when travelling, when I see places where it’s not like that. And then I realize how much it’s worth to me, that extra amount of day you get when the sun diminishes the night into nothing. The hidden days, hiding after what would be sunset in the wintertime, but now is laid open for us, free to invade with late walks, midnight swimming and laughter while looking for berries and inhaling the fresh forest air.
There’s a bittersweetness about the swedish summer that used to make my teenage heart uneasy, longing instead for more exotic adventures and freedom from family, but I realize that I was falling for it during all that time. Falling in love with the hidden days, so fleeting in their passing and so easily broken by winter, but smelling like grass and wild strawberries and oh so sweet childhood memories. They’ve nestled into my heart together with the people I used to experience them with and now they’ll always be home to me.
People that work exclusively as a group, that look so lost when they have to stand on their own. And people that don’t want to tell me things they do because apparently I’m too… kindhearted. When a group of people are so wrapped up in the way they think and always have that when they get an outside perspective they do not want to hear it. And this is a bit more extreme than my friends, but when people try to take you down to their level so that you can’t judge them anymore and they won’t feel as bad about what they do? It bothers me a bit. People in general find it so much easier to ignore things in their silent minds than when they hear about it from someone else, and a lot of time they quiet that outside voice to quiet their conscience. It’s a classic case of I can put a hand over the mouth of my mind but not over yours.
My dance school always has this big dance show in the spring time, and I love it. I love the time spent on stage and I dread the moment I have to leave it, but I almost love the waiting time more. The minutes before going on stage and the time between the shows that you spend backstage. Somehow I have this dream in my head of myself then, imagining I’m a dancer in New York who got accepted to an exclusive school of ballet, and that I spend the dark evenings carrying my dance bag on the buses between my auditions.
I’ve read a lot about minimalism lately and it has seriously sparked my interest. Not as related to design, but as a lifestyle of owning less, so that less of your affection will be aimed at your belongings. Owning less so that it won’t be your focus, so that you’ll have less things that own you.
Now, imagine being able to fit everything you own into a few suitcases, imagine the freedom of being able to go anywhere you want and taking your home with you.
Though I would make an exception for my books. I guess that if you go all out you should give them away and instead retort to the nearest library, but that’s just one of those things I don’t at all have the desire to do. Don’t get me wrong, I love the library and used to never buy books, but now when I got myself a decent collection of the favourites I continually re-read, I like the way they look laying around in my room. Piled on top of small tables and on the floor with teacups balancing on top of them.
I get the point of a smaller wardrobe. Buy fewer but higher quality and perhaps more expensive pieces that will last and even make you look better, making it easier to choose your outfit in the morning and makes you spend less time worrying about how you look. I get the point of getting rid of things you just keep because you relate them to certain memories. I will keep my diaries and my photos, but that’s about all I need.
But I do not have any desires to get rid of my books. I could leave them with my relatives or someone I know instead. I could travel the world and go seek my safety with people instead of possessions, but whenever I move somewhere, whenever I settle down long enough buy a bed overlooking whatever cityscape or view of the landscape I have, then I will want them there to stack my teacups on.
I want those days back. We’re on the verge of spring now, and I know, I just know, that summer will be here in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, then it will disappear just as fast.
Conversation with myself
“I’m an artist, I am never really here.”
“So where are you then?”
“Constantly outside of it, right next to everything, witnessing it. In a picture of a laughing crowd, where do you think the artist is? A few steps away, taking the picture.”
“So you do actually want to be with them, in the centre of all things, laughing with the crowd.”
“Why would I want that?”
“How could you not want that, when you’re the one who sees everything as so beautiful?”
“I suppose. The curse of the artist. That by the sight of beauty being torn between participating in it and taking a step back to be able to correctly document it.”
eirians 