Today after lunch, I felt sleepty and unfocused, so instead of not being able to concentrate on the scientific articles, I decided to go on a walk.

There are a lot of trees in my area. And it was a windy day. November has turned cold and wet. The end of the year is seriously here now.

Walking in my rubber boots, though, I felt surprisingly light. And while I was watching an oak leaf dance in the wind on its way to its final resting place, it hit me. I hadn’t walked like this for years.

I used to go on long walks all the time. Especially the last spring of highschool. Oh, I would just walk and walk and walk. There’s something very calming about walking. With the fresh air and the very material existance of trees. It gets me out of my own head.

For some reason, though, I stopped. I got busy. Now, I only go on walks as a way to spend time with friends. Kirke, Jenny, Hanna, Jonatan – my walking partners.

I felt really good after that solo walk, though. Watching the leaves fly made my thoughts more coherent. I’ll have to remember that. The next time my head doesn’t make sense. It’s been known to happen. Occationally.

I’m currently in the middle of a module called Peace and Security. I’m reading about different kinds of threats to the state, societies and individuals. Intriguing stuff.

And today, I listened to a radio documentary from the Swedish Radio. They were interviewing politicians in the US. A politician in Tennessee said that the US had to start taking the threat from the Muslims in the United States more seriously. That if they didn’t do anything NOW, Islam would take over completely.

The “immigration sceptics” in Sweden say exactly the same thing, as do the corresponding movements all over Europe. And I’m just, WHAT THE FUCK?

What has first Europe and now the US been doing for hundreds of years? Spreading Christianity, western civilization, liberal capitalism, the English language all over the world. The way of the American man has become an ideal across the globe through Hollywood. Litterarily NOWHERE can you escape Coca Cola and McDonald’s.

So no. Islam is not The Expansionist. We already have another reigning world order. I really shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many idiots in the world. But still, it hits me like a slap in the face every time. Evolution has given humankind reason. A surprising amount of people seem to lack the ability to use it. Or they’re just lazy.

Here I am. The grumpy old man again. I guess I’ll just have to accept it.

In my early teens, I had a lot of opinions. I gladly took the discussion, whenever anything concerning politics came up. And I was easily provoked. I talked a lot.

I still do. But after highschool, I kind of gave up on the politics. Not that I stopped caring. And not really talking about it either. I just couldn’t be bothered to venture into the unknown territory of political discussions with people I didn’t know. I didn’t feel I had the right to try to make people see my point of view if they didn’t agree with me. Most people aren’t open for that anyway. I started talking about other, less risky things instead, like TV shows.

But lately, I have become so touchy. People start talking about stuff, and I just can’t keep quiet, I get provoked and throw all my cool diplomacy out the window. I don’t know why.

This last week, it’s been the question about eating meat. I’m not militant in any way, but I hate when people are inconsistent. They want to seem like good and enlightened people, but then they say things like “but meat is so good”. Yeah. Of course it is. I love meat too. But I choose not to eat it more than a couple of times a month, because there are other things I value more. Like making sure there will be a livable Earth for the next generation.

I’m not saying everyone should become vegetarians. I’m not even saying that anyone should reduce their meat consumption. People will do whatever they want and whatever they do is on them. I don’t judge. But don’t come saying that “meat is good” as a valid argument for why it’s still OK to eat sausage and steak and bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meat production is the one industry that is by far most responsible for the environmental degradation in the world, a development that is fast making the Earth more and more inhabitable for humans. I just can’t see it as an issue like any other.

Eat meat. Enjoy it. But know what you’re doing. Don’t say “I care for the environment, but meat is so good”. As of lately, that comment will make me want to throttle you. Come on! Responsible meat consumption, maybe a couple of times a week, from organically and naturally raised happy animals, would that be so hard?

So, instead of making new friends, I alienate people. In class, at choir practice, at parties. I’ve become angry and easily provoked again. I don’t know if that is a good or bad development. I kind of feel like a grumpy old man. Which maybe isn’t the most attractive trait in a 24 year old girl. But I just can’t seem to help it.

This fall, I have been feeling like a rather poor student. At first, it felt strange being back at university, and combined with the confusion of having just moved to a new city, I guess I didn’t get started as fast as I should have. And then the whole thing with peace and conflict research was kind of unsettling. I didn’t feel comfortable with the way it was studied, the culture of the field so to say. I guess the study of peace and conflict stems from political science, which has one way of seeing the world. Me, on the other hand, have been trained in the geography field for three years and have become so engrossed in the scientific geographer’s way of thinking that I can’t even stop reading the landscape when I’m on vacation. Especially when I’m on vacation. And now, here I am, in Uppsala being told that the world isn’t to be explained like that at all. That geography isn’t relevant. That place doesn’t matter. It has left me so utterly frustrated. Like everything I’ve studied before doesn’t matter, like I’m a beginner again. I have felt like a really stupid student.

Now, halfway through this term, I guess I should realise I’ve overreacted a little bit. That the fact that I was 0,75 points short of a perfect score on the exam and recieved the highest mark on my conflict analysis with barely any negative comments from the teacher means that I’m not a worthless student, not even when it comes to peace and conflict research. But instead, I focus on the oral presentation when I started stuttering, even though speaking in front of people never used to make me nervous. And all the seminars, when I’m not at all as well articulated and in with the political science lingo as my political science bachellor’s programme classmates. I focus on the bad stuff, and ignore the good. I’ve got to stop doing that.

But I heard them talking about that on the radio the other day. That remembering the bad had had an evolutionary advantage. That, if you remember what you did wrong, you might know how not to fail the next time. During a period in human history when a mistake could mean death, focusing on the bad stuff instead of the good turned out to give you an advantage. And so, that’s how the self-underestimater got to pass on their genes through the genererations, all the way from the horn of Africa to me here, sitting on my couch in my appartment in Uppsala, with my laptop on my lap.

So maybe I shouldn’t feel bad about focusing on the bad stuff. After all, you can’t really fight evolution. Instead, I should be thankful, but not let it make me give up. Because, I’m pretty sure that’s also a gene that has been passed on through the generations: persistance. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. Without persistance, those very early ancestors of ours would probably have perished in the heat of the eastern African savannah. The day you stop trying to improve, that’s the day life becomes boring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This fall, I have been stealing apples. The houses on my street all have apple trees in their yards, except mine, but no one seemed to care for the fruit. The beautiful red and green apples fell to the ground and were left there to rot. It broke my secret housewife heart to see such perfect fruit go to waste. So, from the end of September and all through October, I went out at night with my bicycle lamp and my cloth bags and picked the fallen fruit from the wet grass. I filled bags and bags of them, bought them home and started exploring the wonderful world of apple cooking.

I made Lori’s apple pie, I made apple buns and apple sauce and apple juice. I had apple rings drying on my kitchen counter for weeks, so that eventually my entire appartment smelled of apples.

When the first frost came in the end of October, I realised that I had to give it up. The apples in the trees wouldn’t be good anymore. It felt like a relief. The apples had become an obsession for me. A couple of days ago, I put away the last dried apples from their drying sticks and could finally start doing other things at night. I had no more apples to peal.

But I’ve kept a record. I ended up carrying home 50 kilograms of apples this fall. More than half of my freezer is filled with more than 16 liters of apple sauce and 6 liters of apple juice, and I have an entire shelf in my cupboard filled with bags of dried apples. My grandmother would have been proud of me.

And yesterday, I was at a party and started talking with a guy about my apples. It turned out he had done the same thing, only, he had made wine of the stolen apples instead of sauce. And it was a delicious wine, too. After half an hour’s intense conversation about the adventures of apple stealing and fruit processing, his girlfriend came up beside him and put her hand possessively on his shoulder. She probably took our lively conversation as me trying to hit on her boyfriend. This came as a shock to me. I was just so happy to find someone who could talk about apples with me. Someone who understood my obsession.

I guess these apples have made me just a little bit crazy. (As if I wasn’t before…)

You should know about my weakness for numbers and figures by now. In another life, I would have become a great accountant. Or archiver, if you prefer. But now I’m almost done with my bachellor’s in geography and am running out of student loans. I’ll have to stick with the aquifers and the eskers.

But here, I may do as I please. The last time I went away, I made a list. My five months in Bolivia and Peru in numbers. Well, I’ll just have to do the same with my five months in Canada and the US. And compare a little bit…

Number of photos taken: 8200 [Bolivia: 10 294]

Number of earrings bought: 9 [Bolivia: 15]

Number of books read: 4 [Bolivia: 10]

Number of dresses acquired: 5 [Bolivia: 1]

So, I have a weakness for earrings and dresses. No surprice there. The reading is a bit of an embarrassment, this year looks like it will be the year I’ve read the smallest amount of books ever since I started reading novels at the age of twelve. But, on the other hand, Anna Karenina could be considered to be worth atleast three normal books. In Bolivia, I read The Game and On the road. Not really anything to be proud of.

And the photos. I’ve always been crazy with the photos.

I was out dancing. On the bikeride home, through the dark and wet streets of Uppsala, I listened to a podcast. A philosophy professor in Berkley was being interviewed. He was talking about what we should believe in, in this very secular day and age. He said:

We have to experience both good and bad things, in order to live a good life.

The sad thing is that I probably will have forgotten this feeling by the time I wake up tomorrow. That’s the sad thing about 3 AM revelations.

Sitting at home, putting the finishing touches on my conflict analysis of the civil war in Darfur. Looking up, glancing out my big bedroom window.

Outside, it’s snowing. Only a couple of tiny flakes, but still. Snow. Light grey edges on the pavement.

Pretty soon it stops, the only thing left the yellow maple and birch leaves twirling in the cold autumn wind.

Uppsala is beautiful this time of year.