right at the borderline
that's where i'm gonna wait
for you
warning! monster entry!
I took a chance and decided a bit of frostiness was endurable for the chance to sit outside on this glorious autumn afternoon. It's cold-- today's lowest temperature is forecast at a nippy -1degC-- -1! we're only at the start of autumn!-- and my fingers are already protesting in pain, but this is worth it.
(this kind of reminds me of that poet's 19-year-old lover who would sit out in the cold composing sonnets to stars; he caught a chill and died of pneumonia)
Oh but I wish you could only see what I see-- slate-gray clouds thick and furious in the distant skies, shot through with indifferent light; tall trees noble against the sky, variegated green-and-yellow-and-russet; fallen leaves of gold, swirling in little flurries upon beds of downy grass already tinged with silver, as if anticipating winter's first snow.
I see racks of bicycles against autumnal bushes; cars lined in parallels, their metallic sheens somehow congruous with all this sylvan finery. I close my eyes--or just look down, to the blonde wood of the bench where I'm sitting and typing!-- and I hear a forest symphony, a hushedrushed whisper and rustle of sweeping winds in branches and leaves. It sounds like sighs, like waves, like seas. It sounds like magic. And now I look up and I see lightwinged sparrows in swoops against the sky, dipping to kiss the tops of trees and suspended in the updrafts of the cold winds.
I cannot imagine a more peaceful sight; my words fail me.
My fingers are hurting too much to type. I'm going to have to continue this inside.
Oh, but how loathe am I to leave this...!
____________________________________________________________________________
13th october, tuesday:
Well that was yesterday. After that I went indoors and, happily oatmealed-and-warmified (and unhappily chilled again, with frozen strawberries in iced milk and a window flung wide open), proceeded to spend the rest of the day and night in a mental and physical declension. I mean, sure, I read a bit of Troilus and Cressida for fun, but all the wordplay was lost on me. Then I started watching Vampire Diaries. Oh, stuff it, it's better than True Blood, and I was entitled after my crazy weekend of essay writing that was by turns desultory and desperate; at one point espresso didn't prevent me from falling asleep and waking 4 hours before the paper was due. In any case I handed it up with 35 seconds to go but was wasted for the rest of the day; Vamp Diaries was the perfect restorative. Damon is insane-- "Girls can't resist me... my charm, my good looks, my unflinching ability to listen to Taylor Swift..." Damon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Stefan kthxbye.
see what i mean?I have so much to write I don't even know where to begin. It's been a while since I wrote properly, and my updates never make it to publication-- they're all sitting in drafts, incomplete. I've let so much slip away; reading others' blogs I know I'm going to look back on this and regret all that I've forgotten, because the human memory is really like a sieve. Nothing gold can stay.
Perhaps I'll start with today: It snowed, so I went for a run. Congratulations to you if you followed that line of reasoning, because I didn't; I only know that had it NOT snowed, I might not have pushed myself out of my room to go. Collen is right, it's next to impossible to breathe properly in the cold air, but I loved it-- I couldn't figure out how I had stayed away from running for so long.
My first experience of snow was a tad... underwhelming. I'd peered out my window all the previous night on the offchance that the weather forecast's "chance of snow" might materialise; all I saw was rain. I woke to lots of sunshine and a very, very, very, very light drizzle... wait a sec. That wasn't rain, it was snow. SNOW.
And that was it.
But running was another affair altogether. It was bitterly, painfully, bitingly cold, but for the first few minutes I couldn't stop laughing every time I breathed out and saw my own breath coalesce into white clouds in the air. I got completely and totally lost, of course, but I found a humongous graveyard about 8 times the size of the one I had to hike through in the middle of the night (there sure are a lot of dead people in Sweden); in fact they were digging a grave just as I was there I veered off in another direction. I ran through forests and alongside highways and to Flogsta and ICA Maxi and froze throughout the whole of it and when I came back and removed my gloves my fingernails were a very pretty delicate shade of lavender. But I'd do it again, and then some.
___________________________________________________________________________
September 24th:
Today as I walked back from class at Engelska Parken I noticed the way the trees lining my avenue have been dusted over with a smattering of russet. The lush glorious greens I knew only a month ago are giving way, slowly but surely, to richer hues of tender reds and dusky purples, of burning umber and sunshine gold-- as though, having basked in summer's rays all season long, they've trapped light within their layers and sun within their stems.
Even the yellow roses by the roadside have taken on a pinkish hue. Autumn's claret abounds.
Everything's changing and I don't/still feel the same.
I've settled in quite nicely, I think, even if I still do feel the gaping lack of dance quite acutely. It's kind of bizarre-- I feel like I have more on my to-do list on exchange than I ever did back home: my readings never end, and I've yet to go for a single class where I actually knew more than 60% of everything that was going on. Law is the usual "I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-here" scenario; thank goodness that my seminar group is really quite hardworking, especially this German guy who's incredibly smart and nice and funny. Every class has just served to reinforce how much I don't know compared to everyone here. But it's good-- I've at least got it reinforced in my head that Singapore operates on a common law system and strict liability offences are distinguished by the lack of a requirement for mens rea.
Literature however is wonderful. I've never enjoyed my classes more (except maybe in secondary school-- Twelfth Night!); my class has 5 people including me, but so far there hasn't been full attendance at a single session yet (we usually number 3). I really have to do a lot of reading to catch up with the rest, they've all got backgrounds like Historic Criticism and Latin {LATIN?!?!} and Classical Studies and all that. The teacher-- Anna-- seems to be quite mystified by me: I think she can't understand why the hell I'm majoring in law instead of literature. Truth be told? I've wondered that so many times myself. But we can't always have what we love, can we.
I'm grateful for small blessings-- my parents have stopped demanding that we skype everyday, for one; all that's left of whatever ailment afflicted me the very weekend my parents flew off is a temperamental cough that only acts up particularly nastily at imes (like today). Now that was kind of scary-- I was sneezing and coughing up blood (okay, traces of, it wasn't that bad), burning with fever on random days and stuck with a throat so sore I teared up every time I swallowed. Both Ning and Ni got quite worried for me; Ning in particular was convinced I'd pass out in my room one day and no one would know since I refused to tell my parents. Which, in hindsight, was the right choice-- they heard me cough two days ago over skype and fretted themselves half to death over my ill health. Imagine how they'd have reacted if they knew the worst of it.
It's kind of lonely here in Sweden, in the sense that I'm not really close to anyone. I kind of like it that way-- I don't understand how people have so much time to go for corridor parties and clubs, and the freedom is refreshing-- but I do wonder what I'm missing sometimes. And on nights like Wednesday night, walking home under an unimaginably crisply cold and clear star-spangled sky, I really wished I could have the random one with me. She's the one in love with Europe-- with its airs, its temperaments, its people, its foods. I think I could do with a good dose of her daring and her madness and her unstudied spontaneity.
So what else have I been up to? I've been working at a cafe (for the experience, and to pay off my dance course fees-- I'm going to register for another one if I can); I've signed up for work at a bar/club, but there's no news on that yet; and I've joined a dance group which I shall call BW for short-- they're passable at times and absolutely abysmal at others, but the people are friendly and I am desperate for any form of dance I can get at all. Last practice Klara asked me to do something I'd jokingly (or rather, in utter despair) declared to my sister I WOULD do-- the response to which my sister said would be "They'll either kick you out or never let you leave."
In short, I am content, if not madly ecstatic and in a frenzy of fun every clubhopping night. I am enjoying myself, due in no small part to the fact that I finally stopped trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Jonssons, in this case) and feeling like I ought to be partying my head off and drinking like a fish. I simply had to ask myself what I really wanted to get out of this exchange.
I don't want a thousand smoky too-bright-flash pics; I sure as heck don't want even bigger eyebags from insane partying. I don't mind making more friends, but I don't feel like the parties help a lot-- you just make acquaintances, and I feel like I actually have more meaningful conversations with the people throwing pebbles at my window (I mean it. Really. I think they're just grateful when I get up and unlock the doors and let them in out of the cold).
Maybe what I really wanted when I went on exchange was, simply, the change. In one of my conversations with woonhowe ages and ages ago, he said something along the lines of "once you hit 18 your character/nature is pretty much fixed. Nothing much changes after that unless something really big happens". It wasn't something I wanted to hear then and even now it rankles a bit-- we are creatures of habit and inertia, but I like change. Change for the better, that is. Am I happy with the person I am now? No. Am I willing to stay this way for the rest of my life? Hell, no.
And so life trundles on. I started this post-- oh, ages ago, I've been adding to it gradually. It is now Friday night as I type this, having just finished a rather satisfying dinner and an unsatisfying book, read reclined in an armchair with a fleece blanket thrown over myself, windows open to the cold night air and the night's medley of random strains of guitar playing, Coldplay, and the sound of tyres on gravel. I finished MoV yesterday-- I suspect I am the only person I know who gets shivers up and down her spine when reading the words "In sooth, I know not why I am so sad". Today I decided that I'm reading too little and headed for the library, so I have a satisfying stack of books to read-- trashy and not-so-trashy; Charlaine Harris is a strange bedfellow for the RSC Complete Works of Shakespeare, but well. I've paid my rent, topped up my bus card, set out my to-do list for tomorrow, and am slowly coming to grips with my essay topic (argh due in 2 weeks argh).
_________________________________________________________________________
October 13th, again:
So there-- change. I think I've become so much happier and content with what's been going on here in my little corner of Sweden because I finally sorted and worked out what exactly I want from exchange. Like Michelle (Ong) said, people call it the experience of a lifetime, super fun, eye-opening, yadayadayada... but after a while it blurs together, does it not? Three million and one photo albums later the only difference that exists anymore is in your head... and your heart.
Your mind.
Your soul.
And that is what I'm hoping to take back from this. Sweden is giving me independence, freedom-- an inspiration to be who I want to be. It's a tabula rasa for me, as I am for it-- we may mutually inscribe our words, tattoo our thoughts, upon the other. I don't know how different I am going to end up becoming, or if I will change at all-- but I am hoping this is going to make me stronger, more confident-- more willing to be who I am instead of who another person wants me to be. That's something I've never been able to stand about myself; even if I don't like you I'll end up trying to make myself into someone you'll like. It was like that with kate, wednesday guy, mr teeth-- throw up any of the code names the creatures have dubbed random people over the years and it'll probably fit the scenario. What gives, man? What gives?
Maybe it's because I don't like who I am, anyway. At one practice I got quite irritated because one girl kept stopping in the middle of the choreography to stand, hands on hips, looking out of sorts. Then as we were going through the choreography again there was a loud thud, and I looked around to see her flat on the ground. My first thought was "oh my god come ON quit with the drama". The truth? She'd REALLY fainted; she has low blood sugar. All the turns and floorwork had made her dizzy, which was why she kept stopping in the midst of the choreography. And me-- what the hell kind of way to react was that?
Yes, for all those and more, so much more-- change.
So what's new? Mms. I've submitted a dearoldlove (which actually got published), worked a bit, tried to dance more, not replied emails (whooops), gained TONS of weight, had plans for scaling Kinabalu in January scrapped (sigh), had a taste of what it was like to be stalked (don't ask), spent time over skype whacking spoons at my sister (eh she started it), had a bunch of inebriated (and hence purblinded) guys trying to pick me up with the words "sexy mama", went to Behnaz' place for fika and Mitzi's for a crayfish party complete with "assembled" cake and dirty japanese... oh wait okay now THAT is something worth elaborating. Apart from Erik's immensely good assembled cake and getting to see what a crayfish looked like, I was also offered the opportunity to watch "the most expensive porn flick ever made" and learnt far more information about the porn industry than anyone could possibly want to know. We also baked two chocolate cakes for dessert that started to burn because Mitzi dear set the oven at 300degC instead of 180, watched Vampire Diaries, Flashforward (so so so good), and er watched as Erik and Rhoda read out choice selections from Mitzi's dirty Japanese book. Really, the title of the book is Dirty Japanese. I kid you not.
mmm chocolate cake!
Dirty Japanese-ingOh oh oh-- I rearranged my room, and now my bed is right by the window so I fall asleep to the stars in the night sky and wake with sunlight upon my eyelids. And I retreat there when I have a really good book to read in the daytime, or when I need to study AWAY from the internet-- it was there that I headed with my laptop over the weekend; my LAN cable is too short to stretch all the way across the room. Unfortunately, because it is on my bed, I ended up dozing off even with espresso in my veins on Monday morning and woke at 6.30am with a half-done essay. But those last hours were the most productive of all my efforts.
Forgive the camwhoring it's the only way I could truly convey how wonderful it is to read Oscar Wilde by the window. Even Salman Rushdie. Even the Report of the Democratic Audit of Sweden 1999.And, before I go:
sculpture just outside Stadsbiblioteket
same structure seen through my sunglasses. perspective is always important :) (i call them my autumnal glasses, now-- they gave me a glimpse of autumn even before the leaves changed)
getting lost on the way to Flogsta. How oh how could I not want to get lost if I am afforded sights like these?
letters written "a la P.S. I Love You style", only-- and I quote-- "not that I'm dead like Gerry". I cried like an idiot when I found them in my suitcase, and I still haven't figured out how my sister managed to stuff them in when I couldn't even get the stupid zip to close.______________________________________________________________________
As I type this #ruleofrelationships is trending on Twitter. Boy do I have the ultimate one (although maybe it's pre-relationship, but still)-- "He's just not that into you". Totally saves everyone a world of grief.
And frankly I deserve to be shot. I'm looking at my electives timetable for Sem 2 and the first thought that leapt to my mind when I looked at the timetable was "hmms ok which ones leave my days free for dance?"
-______________________________- part-time student full-time wannabe dancer. But in any case, okay confirmed not taking family law (crap i'd better hope year 4 has a good slot for that).