Tag Archives: home

Identity (The Garden Inside)

Posted on by under poetry

I have chosen dirt over flowers, and picked up the places I used to grow my values in, to move them inside of me.

I have been blue flowers, from the places I grew up in and the family I’m in.

I have been pink flowers, from what I found along the streets in new countries, from what I decided to be in new places.

I have been a collection, I have gathered them from around me, and (tried to) let the influence shape me into something I like.

I am now picking up the roots of the garden and putting it inside of me, so that I never run out of colours from different continents. So that I never have to starve in a place that’s barren.

Now, I’m growing (myself) up inside.

Goodbye (again)

Posted on by under life

(Sunday 11/6)

I say again without knowing when last time saying it was. I feel like I’ve said a lot of goodbyes, but maybe that’s just generally a very human thing.

Anyway, I travel to america in a bit more than a week. My sister has graduated and all my relatives celebrated her and said goodbye to me. Today I led the meating in church and they prayed for me before I go. Happy happy sad sad.

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Graduatioooon

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Spending some time with the cousins so that they don’t forget me when I’m gone.

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The whole family, out in the garden a random summer evening at nine pm.

A lot of ‘lasts’, makes everything shine a little brighter.

Night.

Zambia Travel Diary – Last Day

Posted on by under Zambia travel diary

2015.09.22 02.02  There’s someone screaming on the plane. Not constantly, just every now and then, but imagine a man’s voice sounding like a baby that’s almost crying. Also the movie I just watched left me with a bit of a bad feeling. I know I shouldn’t be scared, and I don’t know if it’s offensive that I am, but I decided to take a short walk and must’ve walked past where he sat so he started screaming and clawing with his hands (he sat a few seats in by the windows though) and I jumped and almost ran a few steps. Now in my seat with my heart still hammering, but it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think I could have gone to sleep anyway and now at least I’m not stuck in some middle stage.

This made me think of what a good story idea it would be to have someone mentally ill try to take control over a plane, and then make it really disturbing (Not to judge this man in question, literally don’t know anything about him), but the story idea creeps me out even more.

09.09 We’re landing. I can’t decide how much I mind. But I do want to take a walk through the forest behind my house. Just a short one. Because that’s a part of me and my childhood, but not, never, part of the frustrating feeling I want to move away from home for. (Sidenote: The 2nd Law by Muse on low volume is a very suitable background for flying today)

16.32 It wasn’t as cold as I would’ve expected when we stepped off the plane. Sweater was quite enough even though I could feel the colder air on my face, clear and crisp. It’s definitely autumn, but the leaves are still green, the sun still brings warmth to your face and the sky was blue. It could almost be a spring day, one of those early ones when you make an attempt at walking barefoot but the stones are cold under your feet. Or an early morning at a summer scout camp, or taking a break from skiing and having your body warm and the sun reflecting on the snow to melt your icy face even though the air is cold. I love these things so very deeply.

I did take a walk when I got home, even though it had started to rain and drops slid down my face. I found some colourful leaves then, that showed me that maybe this is autumn, but I don’t mind, that’s what I had expected. I am, however, gonna take a warm, long bath now. (I realise right before getting into the bathtub that my hair still smells like Zambia)

21.52 I’ve never been very patriotic. I love and very strongly dislike my country in the way you do with things that are what you are, yet so very different and they don’t understand. I love the way the world looks now, with the possibility to be international and unbound by cultures and borders, belonging everywhere and belonging nowhere, and it was first recently that I realised that regardless of the rest of my life, I will always be Swedish. It’s too late, I’ve already spent too much time here. I still try to ignore it though, maybe because most of the time I don’t even feel it. It’s like what I wrote earlier, that I don’t feel like I’m coming home, I’m just going to a different country. Lies, lies, how could I believe that it wouldn’t affect me to see it from the sky, forests and small fields surrounded by tiny red houses, like toys my brother played with when he was younger. How could I believe I wouldn’t react to the smell of it, like I’m inhaling lakes and forests, or the way everything is green green when we drive from the airport under blue sky dotted with tiny clouds, the sun shining down on my from the side window and the air bright in my lungs.

I feel like this is the thing I will never remember, and always be taken back by. I can see it, the type of life I want, filled with travelling and differences, and the way I always forget until I’m welcomed home, like the way I was welcomed home today while walking through the forest, the rain drawing tears on my cheeks like a sacrifice, like a purification, like a reminder that you’re here and you’re tiny, these forests knew you before and will bloom for many afters.
It’s a weird thing to have, such a big home.

(And I’m happy now, curled up and warm under white sheets, with the misty and dark autumn night outside. It’s different, jumping into autumn like this, because I like time to long for things, like eating chocolate and savouring each tiny bit, but now I’ve mashed it into my mouth and life is big, grander, great and waiting for me outside the door.) Goodnight.

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Zambia Travel Diary – Day 12

Posted on by under Zambia travel diary

2015.19.21 11.16  I don’t feel a lot about leaving. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’m so inspired for the rest of my life to continue, inspiration usually comes after travel, but maybe because I’ve been here so long, it has already managed to sink in.

15.30 This is not sad, because this is not going home, it’s travelling to yet another place and then you go somewhere else from there.

16.04 I’ve never been interested in finding myself, I think while on the bathroom at Lusaka airport. If I was, I think airports would be a good place to look.

Anyway.

I read about bicycling in the magazine on the plane, and while sitting here it makes me want to be on a bike instead, inhaling fresh air, seeing bright colours and feeling my muscles work. I want to travel by my own strength. Maybe not far, but at least a walk through the woods when I get home.

20.50 At the airport in Addis Ababa. It’s a good one. If I were to travel the world I think I’d like it here. It’s not too big, but not small enough to not feel international. People of different cultures everywhere, the most beautiful Ethiopian scarves in the gift shops and a prayer room at the end of the corridor. The cafés are crowded as well, and they remind me of how the streets outside might be (not as if I know that) with traditional coffee making and people laughing.

Also they have these chairs everywhere that you can lean back in so they become almost like beds. When we finally found an unoccupied one (and now we found two more) I left my bags there and went to look around. I must have looked a bit strange. With no luggage, taking really slow steps and just walking around looking with a blank expression and soul far away in some way, while still being very present, maybe the deepest form of present, because I’m aware that I am. And maybe the least deep form. Then again, no one was probably looking at me.

I’ve been living in that good place in my head ever since I saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and it changed me in the way good art does. It was beautiful, and inspiring, and maybe actually the sort of thing you should watch before you travel, and I knew of it because of a song from the soundtrack that my dance group danced to once. In the movie they played it during the credits and I just leaned back and listened to it while the lights of Addis Ababa closed in underneath our wings. White lights from buildings and yellow from the vein-like streets. Yes.

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The hidden days

Posted on by under Longer thoughts

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.