I’m back in Uppsala now, writing the last finishing touches to my last paper for my peace and conflict studies course. But last week, I was working, in a reception, and since most people still were on Christmas holiday, I didn’t have that much to do. So I surfed the internet. One morning, I happened upon Abbie’s blog.
Abbie, you know, one of my fellow wwoofers at Duckworth Farm, the Harvard graduate, the soon-to-be Cambridge student who arrived so full of enthusiasm and wonder. She started reading Proust at the farm, and I talked about Anna Karenina with her. She had studied Russian. And I think we could have become friends, we had so many interests in common – books, politics, architecture, photography, horses – if only we’d had some more time. Or I could have been a bit more spontaneous with my English. I get hang-ups on people. Feelings that are quite similar to having a crush, but without the sexual undertone. Abbie is one of those people.
So I started reading her blog. She started it just before she went to California, so I read it from the beginning and all through her stay at Duckworth Farm. Mostly, it was about her impressions of the farm, but she also wrote some short bits and pieces about the people living there. And it felt strange, seeing myself described, having a supporting role in someone else’s story. Abbie never went into long descriptions of any of the people that she met. Instead, she wrote a sentence here and there that, put together, painted a picture both strange and vaguely familiar. Like the first impression:
First thing Lorri showed me the horses. Cantering into the barn all flight and attitude for their dinner. Her baby, Batage (who is enormous and all quivering bay muscle), and Katja the Swedish girl in messy clothes both intimidated me.
Or a couple of days later:
And it is so warm and rewarding when Katja’s eyes widen and she dips her head and laughs, probably because it seemed so rare at first.
And then, closing in on my last days at the farm:
Katja sang to herself, absolutely flying down the rows, blueberries tumbling into her hands.
On the way to San Francisco:
And after a bus ride of migraines and foggy traffic, Katja’s bright laugh delighting the old drawling men who questioned her in ragged voices, dropped off at 4th and Mission in a stream of people with only a vague sense of where to go, we are here!
And lastly, in San Francisco, when she met Eric:
Eric, Katja’s leathery bartender friend, leaning against a fire hydrant with his sweet and sour beer in a crinkling paper bag, talking of elderberry and pesto cocktails, the black front of Beretta shining as one more standout in the dirty patchwork neighborhood of exceptions piled on top of one another.
/ … /
We walked past the ponderous, bright-white stucco of the Mission Dolores, oldest building in San Francisco, onto Valencia, where we met Eric and his friend Noah, smelling of beer, Noah pink-eyed and dark-haired and an aspiring chef, Eric tall and sun-wrinkled and with a strange rough Southern accent. One can tell he’s good but difficult, his soul loyal, his life motion and good beer and the confidence of a broad-shouldered man who can banter with anyone on the street without fear. His approval ensconces Katja the competent Swede in something which is irregular and irrational and gritty, American, a caged-bird soul with a cigarette. Or perhaps I know absolutely nothing about either of them. Many other things could be just as true.
I feel like a character in a book. One of those witty, contemporary novels by a young author who is smart and quick, but with almost as much precision in her descriptions as Tolstoy. I was fascinated, and a little jealous. I felt like I should do that too, twist my sentences into as delicate puzzles of words as her. Unfortunately, English makes my writing poor. Maybe I should switch back to Swedish again. Mom thinks I should. Maybe I will.
It was exciting, anyhow, reading someone else’s story. Seeing myself being described in the periphery of someone else’s life. I really hope that I’ll have the good fortune to meet her again, some day. Abbie from Minneapolis.
Katja Malmborg 