Here’s a taste of my particular flavor of crazy: A couple of weeks ago I received a travel grant to go to Tucson, Arizona, for a workshop in May. My first thoughts? I need to knit something desert-appropriate! To wear at the workshop! And photograph in the desert!

I came up with two t-shirt design ideas, to be made in linen yarn. And now I’ve been on Easter break (yes, I took some days off, because, life got a bit crazy and I needed a moment to breathe), spending it hiking on the mountain ridges around Bergen, drinking tea and knitting my desert outfit with a view.

From the notebook, written October 9th 2022

I drink beer with a view of the ocean and read ”Liv Strömquists astrologi”. A sarcastic graphic novel take on astrology.

I laugh out loud to the description of Aquarius: Know-it-all weirdo. Visionary, but mostly through telling other people how they should change the world. Socially awkward. Doesn’t want to go to parties, but then somehow ends up demanding everyone’s attention, standing on a table, shouting (SINGING).

I’m Aquarius. It’s spot on.

I read another book. I picked it up at the train station when I bought Liv Strömquist’s, a spur of the moment thing, ”Notes on grief” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

I read it on the beach, with the still night-chilled sand running though my toes. I finish it with an iced espresso in the shade by the trees that line the main street of Paleochora. Crying.

It is about the death of her father. Her words are simple, it is brief, but there is something. I can’t stop the tears, and I don’t want to.

Things get intermingled. Time is not linear. Experiences are not unique. Adichie’s grief plays on mine. For my grandparents, who loved Paleochora. For my cousin, who died in June.

Sometimes, a book finds you in exactly the right place.

From the notebook, written October 8th 2022

That smile.

In Paleochora, Crete. I’m floating in the Mediterranean waves. I have no sense of time. It hits me: I can’t remember when I was this comfortable spending time with my own thoughts. There’s been so many years of chasing academic achievements, surviving pandemics, recovering. Silences, idleness has scared me.

But now. I’m here. And maybe I needed to find my way back to my own company to see: That photograph, the early August morning by the Lustre fjord, western Norway.

I got my first, hand-me-down, basic analogue compact camera when I was six. One thing that all these years of amateur photography as taught me, is that what ends up on the photograph is not only about the person being photographed. It is also about the person photographing, what they see. And about where the photographing takes place.

That morning by the fjord, being photographed by Natalia, Josh saying something out of shot that makes me laugh. This is not only a photograph of the cable-work on the green cotton dress I knit while finishing my thesis in Covid isolation.

It is also a photograph of Natalia, and of Josh. I wish I could be in Natalia’s gaze, always. In perpetual dialogue with Josh. I can’t. But I can return.

This, and the high salt content of the Mediterranean Sea, keeps me afloat.

From the notebook, written October 7th 2022

I’m in Paleochora, a small town on the south coast of Crete. I’ve been here before, once at four or five, and once at seventeen. I don’t remember much, though. Not the short but lively stretch of main street that is lined with restaurants and bars. Not the headland the town lies on, not the 13th century fort ruin that lies on top of it. Not the mountains that surround it, not the peaks that clouds cling to, making the town sunny even when inland Crete is rainy. Not the strong sea winds.

And then, on the second day, I walk down to the other beach, the sandy one, and it hits me: This is where we were. Seventeen years ago, during that trip that was supposed to be the last one we did together, all of us – until my grandma Lilian died unexpectedly, a month before the trip. The vacation that turned into a way to be together in our grief, grandpa, dad and stepmom, my aunt, cousins, brother and I, in the place that grandma had come to with grandpa every September for the past 20 or so years. I remember it as beautiful, and I remember spending days on end in this side of the beach, reading, swimming, having lunch at the taverna under the trees overlooking the sea.

I remember the perfect reading stone. I have a knack for finding them. I already have one, on top of Sandviksfjellet in Bergen. A stone or stretch of bedrock with the perfect angle and inundation to fit my back while reading. There is one on this beach. I remember leaning against this (what I think is) red basalt. Reading or writing. Occasionally watching my dad and then 3-year-old brother bathing in the shallows. (I don’t remember what I read. I could look it up. I keep a journal. They’re in my basement in Bagarmossen, though. I’m not due in Stockholm again until Christmas. Digging into my reading journal will have to wait.)

I find the stone. It fits me perfectly, still. Much has happened to my body since seventeen, but apparently the dimensions of my back are still the same.

I read ”The Anthropocene Reviewed” by John Green. It’s a collection of essays about living on a human-centered planet. It is beautiful, and sad. Funny, heart-breaking, and hopeful. Almost every essay makes me cry.

I dedicated my thesis to my two grandmothers. As a postscript in the thesis, I wrote a short essay about them, and about the linden tree they paid to have planted in a park in Stockholm for me when I was born. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as connected to my grandma Lilian, and grandpa Larsen, as I feel here, now.

Maybe it is the beautiful book. Maybe it is the perfect reading stone, with the sand between my toes. Maybe it is Paleochora. Maybe it is feeling open, after so many years of running after academic targets, surviving a pandemic, finding my footing again. I don’t know. I just take it in.

From the notebook, written August 11th 2022

I

It’s 7:36 in the morning as we roll out of Stockholm central station. I enter into that train-travel-state-of-mind. Winding thoughts.

We pass the Swedish parliament. I got my voting card ”for Swedes abroad” some time ago, in a couple of weeks I’ll go to the Swedish consulate in Bergen to vote.

I’m working on a scarf, using yarn from a local Bergen factory, made from wool from vildsau sheep, an old western Norwegian breed.

I applied for a new passport yesterday, had to turn in three times as many documents as if I’d still been registered in Sweden. They want to know the citizenship of my parents, when they got married. I learned: In the beginning of my life, I did not have any citizenship. Four months between my birth and when my parents got married, being born in Sweden to a Finnish mother meant I wasn’t officially registered as a citizen of either country. I hope the Swedish police won’t hold that against me. I’ve got conferences to travel to this autumn.

II

I have three hours between trains in Oslo. I know this walk now, find my way to the botanic garden. It is drenched in sun, difficult to photograph but full of sun-bathers and a heat perfect for strolling through herb gardens.

III

Later, I edit photographs while the still snow-covered mountains pass by my window. A windy picture of Hannes on the top of Ulriken – just one of all the visitors I’ve already had. Can that be one of the measures of making a new place your home: How easy it becomes to act the tourist guide?

It’s already dark when we emerge from the last tunnel, straight into central Bergen. Lights from houses strewn like stars along the mountain-sides. And like instinct, the thought: How nice to be home. Where does it come from? I don’t know what it is, but now, returning, this is what I feel. It took five months.