Light means shadow

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Summer keeps slipping away from me, running through my fingers in a blur of laughter and sun. sand has ended up in the corners in my room and I’ve gotten more freckles than I can count and for once I have time to do what I actually want to do, but also time to feel guilty about not doing it. About getting stuck in front of the computer instead of reading in the sun and checking out the new tv shows instead of going long boarding. I love the clear sky but long for rain and the excuse to stay inside. What I upload here though, are pictures of actual summer, the things that my soul loves, that my heart breathes, that fight to make me see more than myself and every now and then find their way beneath my skin.
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Summer

I never used to like summer. It was too bright and too much and the sun kept bouncing of the pages in my books so that I had to go in or find a place in the shadow for it not to blind me. But now, now I’m a battery, constantly waiting for the sun to recharge me and warm my heart up enough for me to survive those long winter months, full of cold and never relaxing muscles. I think it’s a pity that we have to sleep. Were that not the case, I could see it all, stay up between sunset and dawn when it’s never really dark anyway because the sun may drop beneath the horizon, but never far enough that its light doesn’t still reflect on the cold sky. My creativity is fading though. Because I’m happy and some part of me doesn’t need the words flowing out of me at the moment, so I force them because it’s times like this I actually want to know how I feel.

The hidden days

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.