My pocket moleskine, and what I’ve filled it with so far:
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Zambia Travel Diary – Last Day
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.
Zambia Travel Diary – Day 11
2015.09.16 16.19 Lord, give me patience. I’m getting bad again. My head. My patience. My ability to deal with myself when it comes to control of creativity and the irritation of people that irritate me, I’m torn between believing the fault is not in them and not caring because I’m still annoyed.
16.53 I’ve written about this on this blog before, but a few years ago I realised that moving away from home probably wouldn’t make me sad. It escalated to the point where I thought not moving away from home would make me sad. Now it’s easier, travelling is better because obviously I’m not as focused on my family. But then comes the normality of it. Or not really normality I suppose, but when the amazing strangeness of travelling becomes everyday life. My mind falls back into my body, and I’m conflicted again. I spend more time being annoyed, or doubting myself. But I don’t think I’m the type of person that by force of restlessness never will be able to settle down. Maybe it’s just that I need the passionate friendships of youth, and to be more with people who grow with me, are the same size, look at me and see me.
21.30 I finished ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ by Maya Angelou. It was amazing. It’s the first part of her autobiography, and I find it difficult to believe that a woman can have experienced all that in her early years, while I also understand that obviously that woman can become nothing less than extraordinary.
21.45 Sometimes I wonder what things humans would be if we didn’t die every night. I helped my brother with his english homework a few hours ago and while explaining the Swedish translation of ‘subconsciously’ the word suddenly lost all it’s meaning to me. You know the way words do sometimes, but I realised it only happens in night time. In the morning language is fresh. New. It grows old, like we do, both over spans of decades and periods of hours. It’s such an amazing thing, such a well thought out plan, to give us this rest so that during the day we can actually be awake and ride our roller coasters of up and down, because we forget anyway so why does it matter. (But some nights I walk above my mind, thread the thread binding awareness and hours, and sometimes I know, sometimes I almost know, before it slips away from me, forever, again and again.) (We’re not kids anymore and we don’t have the hope of a million more nights.)
22.14 Lusaka is such a quiet city. You hear the dogs bark. Birds sing in the morning and cicadas after sunset, but the sound of cars only passes by every few minutes and voices are rare, music and laughter not often close by. It sings a quiet song. (goodnight)
22.27 You have a nice garden, right Father? Take me anywhere on this earth, but I know you have a nice garden. (The music I listen to sounds like water drops falling off leaves).
Zambia Travel Diary – Day 9
2015.09.14 22.12 “You want to stay here forever?” Our safari guide said while we took a break to stretch our legs by the Zambezi river. He was really sweet, polite in a way you could be to friends and not “rich white people” and he knew everything about the animals and different uses of plants. Strong cheekbones and kind eyes, the type of person who seems quiet, regardless of how much they speak. I answered “What?” and he repeated the question.
“Yes. Yes I do.” I said but followed him and my family back to the car.
There was something about the temperature. I’ve been spending so much time getting too hot and cooling down, sweating and freezing, that the perfect weather soothes my skin and mind in waves of wind. We sat by the Zambezi river, where it’s still calm and not rushing down the Victoria falls, and I, someone who sleeps with three covers in the middle of summer, wasn’t freezing. My body totally relaxed. The definition of warm wind was blowing past and the late afternoon sun managed to keep the temperature from getting too high while still not making a single chill rung through me.
We continued on our safari after that, took pictures of elephants and impalas. And here I’d been thinking I would need to borrow my mom’s camera, since my 50 mm lens has no zoom whatsoever, but it turns out zoom wasn’t needed.
We had to leave the car and walk to the part of the park where the rhinos where.
Also I stole a part of a roof and put it in my notebook
A lot of trees are very short since the elephants break them down with their trunks.
Earlier in the day we went to the Victoria falls as well, but we’re going back tomorrow so I’ll have even more to show you! Goodnight.
Zambia Travel Diary – Day 5
2015.09.07 11.36 It’s easier for me to feel alone here because I don’t understand. It’s foolish, maybe, of me to look at people and think I know them through my first judgemental presumptions. But I do. And usually they’re close to me. Most people I see, I see a lot, and I like to imagine I solve them like puzzles even though maybe I don’t. Here I can’t even pretend. I look at people and my mind doesn’t trick me into believing I know what’s inside their heads when they look at me. I know that we’re similar all over the world, humans with sparkling nerve-endings and weird theories, but cultures still manage to change us until we don’t recognise each other. Myself as much as anyone else. I wish I could be here long enough to learn how they think, and that we could look the same and erase any visible distance.
12.00 My book is so good. The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman. Like daang, it might be one of the best ones I’ve ever read.
22.16 The streets are different here. If you were to drive to the sister of the woman my uncle’s marrying, it’s a right left right left, and you pass by kids walking around in school uniforms, people selling fruits and marble columns. And I found a nice book store today, in one of the slightly fancy shopping malls. Self help book after self help book and tons about business and career, but they had some fiction too (That’s what you need, learn to see from that, learn to see from that).
(2015.09.08 00.04 I just finished my book, The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman. I think it’s one of my favourites. It’s small in a way, not high and mighty, bigger on the inside. Not bound by logic in a way that’s inspiring, and magic seeping through every letter into my heart.)
Zambia travel diary – Day 4
(2015.09.05 I’ve got the world’s greatest grandma. She says she doesn’t care what colour her hair is so when I added some pink to mine she said I could add some to hers too. I put it at the back of her neck, because she suggested a pink fringe but I think it would’ve made mum a bit mad.
(Okay, so apparently that’s all I wrote that day))
My grandmother. This picture doesn’t look like her. Not like her personality, the way good photos sometimes do, but it looks like someone so I like it anyways.
2015.09.06 I’ve lost count of the days. Or the energy to count them. Maybe that says more. I’m in that moment of wanting to express everything, because what even is my life, at the same time as I’m living a lot, thank you very much, so I’m not sure as to when I should find time for that expression.
Today I went to a kitchen party. It was different. Try to imagine the most stereotypical traditional african party, but then mixed with I don’t even know. It’s one of the ceremonies leading up to the wedding and the woman getting married is brought in covered with a chitenge (piece of fabric in bright patterns that they make clothes of or just use as it is around the waist) and then there was something about the groom being led in to uncover her and give her gifts, but they did it in a bit of a strange order. No one knew exactly what was happening except for the older woman who led everything and walked ahead of us while dancing (shaking her booty). Everyone simply did what she said while everyone cheered and they played loud music on the drums and sang. We laughed a lot.
Where I sleep and/or hide from insects
Lizard next to the shower, they’re everywhere but since they don’t crawl into beds or suitcases they’re my homies anyway.
Ego pic before the kitchen party
Warm nights (but wrapped in a chitenge anyways). Night!
Art journal video!
So I practiced my editing skills a bit by editing a video of me flipping through my journal. And it’s not the highest quality of art haha, just whatever random things I feel like writing or doodling, but it’d mean a lot if you checked it out anyway! And I’m thinking about uploading more videos, so subscribe if you think that’s a good idea. Peace out or something
Skies and sleep
Today I woke up twice, once at dawn and once at sunset. When I woke up in the morning everything smelt like rain. The sky was blue but the early sun reflected in dark grey clouds sinking to the horizon and everything was wet so I suppose it rained during the night.
I went to school and found out that my only class was cancelled and went back home.
I walked half an hour to take the bus to go to the dentist. I get on the bus in the middle of nowhere when I take that bus, so I walk away from my neighbourhood and further until I reach the motorway and walk in the tunnel underneath it and everything around me is green fields as long as I can see. I left my things at the bus stop on a long open road and ran away to pick the flowers I saw earlier, but when I was almost there I saw the bus coming over a hill and had to run back. I picked a small white flower outside the dentist office instead and it’s pressed between the pages of my notebook.
When I got home I did the perfect four things that I know make me happy, but still rarely do; 1. Jog 2. Shower 3. Eat 4. Sleep. Without any distractions or pointless internet-browsing. So that’s why I woke up now in sunset again. At first I thought the sky was grey and that you could barely see the sun through the clouds. Then I just realised that it already had sunken right under the horizon and the sky was actually clear, but so devoid of colour that it was a light grey instead of blue. I lied in bed for a while, looked through my big windows. Picked up three different books and read a few pages of each.
And now I’ve gone back inside for that pointless interest-browsing and some toast. Though writing is rarely pointless, I think. And maybe I should not despise my internet-browsing so much, because sometimes I rather have to convince myself to like the person I am at the computer to make me stop wasting time on it.
Anyway. The sky is black when I walk back out. Stars and stars and stars above. It’s 29 days in school until our final grades are to be written into the system and then I graduate a few days later. And now life manages to be really calm and slow and stressful at the same time. Even though I’m excited for everything that comes after, it feels like I have an entire life to live until then. One of those eternities within eternities.
Drawings
Brighter life and longer days studying on a roof
The weather is changing and my world with it, there’s something about the light that makes me productive. And today my only homework is to spend one hour reading Jane Eyre, worse things have happened and I think I might climb up my roof and read there until the sun starts to set.
Had a freakin’ math test today that went okay, one lesson more and then the school day was over so we went to the gym for a while. Everyone at our school got a free entrance to a gym nearby for two weeks so that’s awesome. And then we went out and ate, my friend’s birthday is tomorrow so we had ordered a cake with a photo of her that she absolutely hate on, day couldn’t have gone better. And now I’ll have some time to do things I actually enjoy. I’m gonna start with running around barefoot, man I missed that.
So anyway, here are some pictures from yesterday, sitting on my roof and studying for that freakin’ math test.
eirians 
