I actually haven’t touched anything university related for three days. Not even with my thoughts. In the weekend I guess that’s fine, but today it’s Monday and officially I should be reading articles and planning my landscape ecology project. But I have felt I needed this. Or, rather, it has not been a conscious choice. Studying has simply not crossed my mind.
It really was a very tumultuous weekend. Saturday started off well with cafe breakfast with Hanna in the sunshine, and then a very uplifting visit to the library that resulted in me borrowing six books. I am like a child in a candy store when it comes to libraries. Few places can make me as happy. I have told you this before.
But on my way back home some stuff happened that led to my mood spiraling downwards and then an ill-placed text message led to drama-hell breaking loose and all of yesterday was spent trying to handle the emotional mess that I had created (and other people fueled) both for myself and several other persons. But then finally, coming home to Lina, we watched three episodes of Community and I could go to sleep feeling pretty content with life, despite all the drama.
So, today, the plan was to get back to my articles. But. Lying in bed felt so nice, and after waking up and reading a chapter in ”The end of Mr. Y” by Scarlett Thomas, I decided to fall asleep again. So I did, and when the day care children outside woke me up at around eleven, the sun was shining and I haven’t allowed myself to be outside in the sunshine once during the last couple of weeks because I’ve been so busy studying. I’ve been so focused. All that focus is gone now, from the emotional roller coaster weekend. So today I simply couldn’t keep myself from going out to the park, buying an ice cream on the way and then sit down on a bench underneath a tree that had just started to blossom with tiny, milky pink flowers. I finished ”The end of Mr. Y”.
It’s an amazing book. It really is. A bit wacko at times, and some of the popular science physics that is part of the plot might be taken out of context from a scientific point of view, I have no idea, I don’t have the expertise to judge that. But. It is exciting and challenging and also very pleasurable to read. It is an adventure, without being cheap. It is about language and consciousness, what is real and what is constructed by thought, particle physics, philosophy and religion. A thought experiment that goes to the core of existence itself. At the library, it is categorized as fantasy, and sure, it has some aspects that are pure imagination – but it is just the kind of fantasy I like. Way out there, but still very close to what could actually be true.
In the evening, I had dinner with dad and then we went to a concert. Nina Ramsby and Martin Hederos, a 10 year anniversary concert for one of their two albums at Södra Teatern. The venue in Stockholm with the best location of all public establishments in the city. The view is. Well. The most famous passage in any of August Strindberg’s novels is a description of this view. Probably the most quoted first paragraph in any novel written in the Swedish language. It is a heavy view.
I remember listening to Nina Ramsby’s and Martin Hederos’ albums so much during my last year in high school. The spring before high school graduation was very tough for me, I was very unhappy due to people dying and other shit, and I think that one of the things that still got me through it with amazing grades and, you know, no total breakdown, was Nina’s clear, intense voice and Martin’s perfectly attuned piano accompaniment. And I got my dad to start listening to them too. The two of us even went to a concert with them back in 2007. There was a time when I wrote on my Helgon (a Swedish precursor to Facebook) profile page that the music I listened to was Nina P, Nina S and Nina R (as in Persson, Simone and Ramsby). Nina Ramsby and Martin Hederos has meant a lot to me.
And this concert. On the theater’s big stage, with the golden mid-19th century decor. Nina’s humor in between the songs. The electricity in the room, everyone in the audience listening with every cell in their bodies. The presence in Nina’s and Martin’s performance. It was overwhelming. Like a flood.
After the third encore was finished, when they said that this actually is the end, every single person in the audience stood up and applauded. Walking out, I could barely get down the two flights of stairs to the bottom floor, because my knees where shaking. All of me was shaking. As if the intensity of the music had rearranged the atoms that made up my body, and now my cells didn’t really know how to communicate anymore.
Outside, stars were showing and the moon was full.
So. I have not studied today. Still, I feel I have spent my time wisely.
Katja Malmborg 