All Good Things Are Wild and Free

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Eirians under life

I stayed behind yesterday. We went downtown to have a photoshoot and I stayed when my friends went back. I walked around in that detached-from-reality kind of way and looked at how the city I stay in looks like a postcard. Clear skies and shiny metal buildings and palms and palms and palms, sun that makes your face melt off.

Then I sat down on the rocks and was happy.

And this might sound sad, but I loved going to a sea that wasn’t full of memories. In Sweden it’s tiny towns and cozy houses and driftwood, people with wrinkles too deep, an ocean that slowly breaks everything. Here everything just is. No childhood memories. Just sturdy rocks and people dancing.

The bridge before I ran over it.

The bridge after I ran over it, resting on a bench in the shade. My face was so red people gave me worried glances when they saw me.

My postcard wish is that you don’t send me home.

(Also, backstage from the photoshoot..:

unspecified

wow)

Zambia Travel Diary – Day 11

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Eirians under Zambia travel diary

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).

Vacation-ish

Posted on August 2, 2015 by Eirians under life

I’m happy now, which is nice. I’m at my grandmas summerhouse next to a lake and I got to sleep in the big glass room with all the plants. They only have candles out here. Candles and the strong scent of flowers I didn’t quite notice during the day. My body is itching with this, the need to get away, get out of places, maybe that’s why I’m happy to just fall asleep under a different roof, regardless of where I am. My wanderlust is so unpredictable, sometimes barely there and sometimes so strong that I get happy-sad just from talking about islands far away. Anyway, I’ve also been so fascinated with conversations lately. I’ve always been allergic to small talk, meaningless conversation, but I’ve realised I’ve got no clue what constitutes meaningless. A few days ago I went to pick up a friend at the airport, and on the way there I spoke for ages with another friend, conversations that might not always have been about the deepest stuff, but still were exactly the social interaction I needed. Today I spoke to someone else and I suppose the topics were sort of serious but I was just very bored. And this is no expected ’teenager bored of her family’ stuff, I just didn’t get anything out of it. Maybe it’s because the conversation was just different people speaking. It didn’t have any life in itself. Sometimes conversations soar and fly and run away to places you could never expect, and you get excited, because you want to catch up. And sometimes it’s just one person talking about something, and then someone else talking about something different. Don’t you want to spin on, dig deeper into the subject, speak fast or slow but have the sort of conversation that’s a journey instead of a silent destination? I love the run.