One of the cottages where some members of the families of dad and aunt Eva stayed was owned by Gunnar. A middle-aged man, a real Södermalm original, who lived in a small cottage on the same property.

He had a cat. She would only come close to him. Pitch black. He called her Satan.

The summer has been so hot, which has led to there being wasps everywhere. The first night, one even stung me on the foot in the middle of the night, when I turned in bed. The pain! I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. To distract the wasps, Gunnar put out bowls of Fanta. Apparently, the most potent wasp magnet there is. My foot was still aching. I felt no pity for the stupid, drowning monsters.

One of Gunnar’s neighbor’s had beautiful roses in front of the house. Somehow, they had survived the summer’s drought.

I danced in the rain again. The drops were big and plentiful. Like having a shower under the open sky, washing the salt from my ocean swims off my skin.

Then sitting in the rocking chair, watching the rain slowly recede, while the feeding of the young took place behind me. Families are complicated things, and children all-consuming creatures.

But now the house is quiet, except for the grasshoppers’ melody slipping in through the open windows. It’s pitch black outside.

The air is tangible, soft, and smells like a children’s choir singing Handel’s Hallelujah.

I’m sitting on a cliff, watching the heavy clouds come rolling in. I’ve been walking on the bedrock outcrops today and discussed fieldwork methodology with my cousin Ellen. Been swimming twice.

But all the while, we’ve been waiting. The heat has been pressing, choking, strangling. Everything is yellow here. The water in the well is turbid because the surface of the groundwater table is reaching the well’s bottom. The meteorologists have said it would rain today, but the purple clouds have stayed as dramatic trimming on the horizon over the mainland. The sunshine has been paralyzing.

But now, they’re rolling in. Like a blanket, blocking out the sun, making dusk come several hours early.

Thunder has been rumbling for an hour.

I feel the first drops fall on my head.

Now it’s pouring.

Waves and wind sculpture what uneasy tectonic plates left here millions of years ago. The lines and curves, soft surfaces and rough edges, all collaborating to feed my gluttonous eyes.

It fills me with a kind of calm. This thousands of years art piece on a million year canvas. There’s no rush. Time will tell.

The heat followed us here. The sun went down in the Skagerrak, and I went for a swim with dad.

Families are complicated things. I knew that. I just haven’t been reminded for some time.

I’m on the train. We’ve been traveling across Sweden, east to west, through this very patchy landscape we get in the middle. Small fields, golden among the otherwise dense green of early August. For five hours I’ve been sitting here. There’s only half an hour left. Then, the ocean. My head feels weird. I think I need breeze.

I’m thinking about traveling. And about my need for order. About roots, and landscapes, and about feeling that you belong. I’m thinking about how my handwriting seems to change depending on my mood and the pen I’m using – from neat and pretty to almost unintelligible. I’m thinking about family. Mine in particular. The legacies we carry, the priorities we are taught. I’m thinking about other people’s minds. And a dog.

Cecilia and Isak have bought a dog. Natalia turned 26 and yesterday she had a picnic to celebrate. Cecilia and Isak arrived by bike, Cecilia with a bag on her chest, the tiny head of a black cockapoo puppy looking out. Possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. The curiosity and joy and presence. Like a magnet she pulled everyone to her, to the now, away from whatever work or studies or future they were discussing.

I need that. An anchor, to keep me grounded. Otherwise, I risk floating away. That’s how my mind works. I grew up among animals, the very hands-on activity of taking care of horses. It taught me balance. A way to restrict my mind.

But it’s been years now, since I had the responsibility to take care of another living creature. I get lost in my own head.

Tilda and Kai, my cousins’ two-year-olds, are running around in the train carriage. Children are great anchors too. But having a child for the sole purpose of having something to keep me in the present, that’s way too egocentric and selfish, even for me. I can’t afford to have a horse.

But maybe a dog. Or a borrowed horse, from someone who can’t take care of it every day. I will have to look into that. The year I have ahead of me, thesis work, holds a high risk of me loosing my footing. Like never before.

Now I’m on the road again. Sitting on a train, headed west. To Strömstad, the home of the Smith clan, my paternal grandmother’s father’s family. Our end destination is Koster, a group of islands just outside of Strömstad. As a matter of fact, the most western community in Sweden. After that comes Norway, Scotland, and the Atlantic ocean. My dad went there every summer growing up, and for a long time, so did I. But now I haven’t been since the summer after highschool graduation, in 2007. But now we’re on our way, me, dad, Anna and brother, aunt Eva, uncle Terence, my two cousins and their families, my grandmother’s two sisters and some of my dad’s cousins. Almost the entire Ragnar Smith clan – of which no one is named Smith anymore. I’m actually quite excited. In my opinion, it’s one of the most beautiful places in Sweden.

Being on the border to Norway, the cellphone network received there is Norwegian more often than Swedish, so I’ve decided to turn off the internet function on my phone and go analogue. I don’t have my laptop with me either.

So, the plan is this: I’ll read books and write in my notebook and take long walks on the cliffs by the ocean while listening to podcasts about literature and philosophy and world events. I’ll take photographs and make notes, that I’ll then transcribe when I’m home again. I’ll spend time with my family. I’m looking forward to the quiet. And the waves. Salt in the air. The highland cattle in the national park. The cliffs and crevices that I know so well, the perfect spots for hiding away, reading for an entire day. The wind that will almost blow you away.

Over and out.

During my North America trip in 2012, I ate blueberry bagels with cream cheese almost every day for breakfast, and sometimes for lunch too, during the periods when I wasn’t wwoofing. It became my favorite thing. Since then, though, I haven’t really had them. They aren’t a thing here, you can hardly buy them anywhere, and when I once tried to bake them myself, they only tasted like ordinary, dry home baked bread.

But now I’ve found a place that sells them. Proper blueberry bagels! I’ve been eating them for breakfast again, this time while sitting in the shade in the gazebo, reading “Great house” by Nicole Krauss. A really good book. About loss and longing. Another piece of Jewish culture. It is catching, this longing to Israel. Ever since I read a novel about a Jewish family and their citrus farm more than ten years ago, I’ve had this secret wish to go to Israel, to eat oranges and pomelos and just seep in all those millennia of history.

But I can’t want to go there now. Not with what is happening. Oh, it’s just so incomprehensible. I do the cowardly thing, and avoid thinking about it altogether.

I’ve been having them coming from all directions now, the ideas. For thesis, future travel plans, short stories, knitting projects, paintings. I’m overwhelmed, can’t get started with anything. Can’t go to sleep at night. I need to choose something, and stick with it.

I made a pillowcase. Borrowed Anna’s sewing machine, and actually made two. A mitten design. I started a new notebook, for the short story ideas, I’ve made notes. Let’s see if any of them turn into anything useful.

And I made a template. A checkered image to be filled in using Photoshop or Paint with my knitting patterns. Oh, how I like making these small things, stuff that will make this messy mind of mine and the world in general slightly more organized. I’m going to have so much fun with this template!

My fish design, from the spring.

I’ve bought a new pair of sandals. It’s so warm now, but we get shock summer rains too, and none of my summer shoes can handle getting wet. Also, I will need comfortable shoes for the field work in the fall. A new pair of shoes needed.

Don’t I look like a dork. But to be honest, I don’t care. They are comfortable. Water-friendly. And it’s like they were designed to show off my Orion’s belt tattoo. I guess I’m getting old. Not that I’ve ever really cared about fashion. Recently, though, I’ve almost started to wear things out of spite. Old skirts, t-shirts with ugly prints, weird shoes, wearing my hair in a long braid. I’ve forgotten who I used to want to impress.

Kirke goes the opposite direction, buys these on the internet. I’m speechless. But Zorro, the real old gentleman, is used to her whims.