Tastes like summer.
(It’s way too hot here in Sweden, but at least they’re saying it’s gonna get colder again soon. My family is disappointed. I’m not. I think living in Florida for a bit has given me enough summer heat to last a lifetime.)
(Florida, love, I missed you)
(The sun falls into our garden at an angle, and it flows over the dead tree with five perfect spiderwebs in its corners. Threads grow from the ground up into it, my mum put them there for flowers to follow. They will continue next stummer. Right here, the sky is half blue, half dark gray. Water rests on the grass from ten minutes ago. It’s green still, and for now all golden, in this last rest of summer. For goodbye, go down with it.)
This is actually goodbye because I’m going to America again. Like, tomorrow. I’ll try to write there too, but here’s something I’ve discovered: This blog is about swedish summer, and about this cabin in the midst of it. If I continue, I need to figure out how to make it about the rest of my life. Possibly by figuring out the rest of my life. We’ll see.
Hugs from me.
(Yesterday, borrowing my roommates car.)
I’ve had too many days
In these last few days
To write about all of them.
I was thinking about it a few weeks ago, when we went to Walmart in the middle of the night to buy things for a friend’s birthday. That’s crazy! It was an adventure, such a day, such a whole day and night to write about. Maybe I’m too excited, or actually I don’t care if I’m too excited, joy belongs to the people too excited. But then the next day something new happened, and I never did write.
My life feels full of those days lately.
(And that’s good. I document things that are rare.)
Or: The inevitability of time
Wow, deep right?
See, we didn’t quite have time to finish our ice cream. I was eating my cookie dough extra chocolate chip caramel chocolate sauce deliciousness while stressing out about not stressing, and then suddenly the sky was dark and we were biking along the road as rain started to fall, fireworks going off in the distance. Violent in comparison to soft lights from the restaurants we passed. It was not bad. It was one of my favourite moments of the whole evening. But as we hopped off and stood next to our bikes the sentence ‘The inevitability of time‘ popped into my head.
We just bike alongside that time. Sing with it. Get rained on, messed up, as it flows by like the wind and grabs our hair and hands with the unforgiveness of a ringing bell. The sound of it is breaking my bones from the inside out. I was just supposed to be here for a short time. Last year was the fourth of july I was supposed to experience. Now it’s no longer just a small window or good perspective into a culture that is not mine, but it’s tradition for me too. There will be another fourth of July, and the sun will sink as a countdown until the fireworks start again, if I die, if I live, if I stop caring. It continually exists. Apart from me. Maybe that’s what I’m saying.
Anyway. It was one of those moments when finding a specific set of words and using them to define the moment, the experience, the lesson, made me feel better, calmer, satisfied with existence because it means I am here, I am growing, I am seeing this moment as being something.
(And is it ever something. My heart sings with it, beats with it, and I am just lost enough)
I got my visa. Just wanted to tell you guys.
♡
In Kenya.
One of the last days I was there.
Now the thing is, having lived without real bathrooms and beds for two months, I felt like it was okay to look forward to just relaxing in front of the computer when I got back.
But it fell into the ocean. With all my pictures from the journey, all old documents of things I’d written. And my phone fell as well. My camera, my lens, passport, notebooks, money, e-reader.. I fell into the ocean and I took my bag with me.
I felt empty. And sad, I don’t know why I’m always sad. But also changed, even now when I feel a lot better about it, I still feel different.Which is weird and pretentious, like something that would happen in a book. But I really do feel as if something inevitably changed in me.
And I like it, I feel free, but it also means blog posts will be more rare, and it annoys me to death that I can’t take photos. (So I guess I’ll have to write it).
My empty cup smells like salt water, and I leave Florida soon but I haven’t written about the ocean yet. My thoughts drown before I even manage to get my feet wet. So I remind myself of the tides that have been promised me, I don’t chase the waves but are lifted by the power of the moon.
In some groups I feel like I have to sit orderly in my seat, but in some I can just collapse on the floor without caring. My outreach team is that sort of group. The guys I go with on a missions trip to Kenya in a month, we hang out and prepare and feel like a family. And I feel like I haven’t been a good speaker lately, but I was gonna do a short preaching for them, for practice, and I could just relax and share my thoughts and I think I got some confidence back. It’s funny, like God knows that Kenya was not my first choice for outreach location so he surprises me by giving me the best people to go with instead.
And I started thinking about the backpack I will carry. I wrote a blog post about it more than a year ago, Here, where I said that it stands in the corner of my cabin like a promise. It’s here now, in the house I share with eight other girls in Florida, USA. I will carry it all over Kenya. And then somewhere else. And I can’t believe that this is my now now, but that backpack will also remain my promise.
Florida mornings and full moon.
eirians 