These double courses are turning my world upside down.
I seriously have no idea of what I’m doing most of the time. Searching for articles, reading research ethics guidelines, modeling habitat connectivities, learning how to handle the stereo aerial photo software without becoming all cockeyed, supervisor meetings, trying to remember to eat, sleep, being made dinner to by friends and family, who have I told what to? Who needs the simple version of what I’m doing, and who can I go into the details with?
It’s not that I’m stressed and that it’s making me feel bad or unhappy or anything like that. It’s that I’m doing things, constantly, (probably being stressed), without ever really having the time to contemplate what I’m actually doing. It’s a race, and I’m still managing to stay with the crowd.
I went to the grocery store today, because I haven’t bought food for more than a week and I’m starting to run out. I came home and realized I had only bought vegetables and fruits. Onions, carrots, haricot verts, kiwis, grapefruits, oranges, physalis, apples. Origin countries: Sweden, Italy, USA and Colombia. I do realize, now, that I might need to consume some proteins at some point too, but while in the grocery store that part of my brain wasn’t activated. I ate butter right from the package. Not very protein rich, maybe, but fat is also important. I have one egg in the fridge.
Somehow, while doing my snowballing article searches, I ended up listening to “Ayla” by The Maccabees. Seriously, man. I will never be able to resist piano scales-whatever-they-might-be-called-in-English. It reminds me of Bach’s Prelude 1 in C major. That was the last piece I played at a recital, before I switched from taking piano lessons to starting singing in a choir. I must have been thirteen. My grandpa loved Bach, and I remember that both he and my grandma was there, at the last recital. After my parents divorced, my grandma gave me her piano, the one she bought with her own money when she was young and also taking piano lessons. So that I would be able to practice in both my homes. Now I own two pianos that I never play on. The prelude might sound kind of advanced, but seriously, it’s so simple it’s almost embarrassing. But so pretty. I’ll always have a weak spot for it. And now I’m listening to “Ayla” on repeat, maybe because it reminds me of the prelude. Everything to connect the dots of our lives, eh?
And speaking of nothing at all, whatever happened to my knitted clothes line? The one Jessica thought I should start? Because Katja said so. I even made a logo, the embroidered acronym of the line. Since I finished the second hat for Jessica in, what, February?, I haven’t started knitting anything new. Maybe that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing presently? Knitting is a way for all my parts to catch up with each other. I think. The sketch of the logo is still lying on my table, waiting to be embroidered into thread and yarn being.
The weather’s been amazing lately. I’ve noticed, through the windows of my computer labs and libraries and bedrooms. The “Ayla” video biking trip looks so incredibly liberating. Or just driving. I helped Anna pick up her new car yesterday. Driving is nice. A road trip would be nice. I need to find someone to fix my bike. It hasn’t been used since the crazy cold and snow overwhelmed it in Uppsala more than a year ago.
I think, right now, I might be listening to “Ayla” for the twentieth time tonight. Time to call it a day. To think of the refrain, as daddy would say.
Katja Malmborg 