Of course, the more correct approach to react to my good news yesterday would have been to only feel good about it myself, and not even write about it here. That would have been more in line with this summer’s mission.

But I do have this blog. And it is basically all about me. Anyone who reads it knows that already, and still there are people who read it. So. There must be something generalizable about what I write, occasionally. I feel that at least here should be a place where I don’t need to second guess myself and work on my behavior all the time.

It is exhausting. Growing up, working on becoming a good human being. I’m walking around in total confusion, lost and rather desperate.

I’ve been trying to work on becoming more humble lately. Everyone has talents, and one of mine just happens to be of the kind that is graded and put on paper. In Swedish, there is a term, läshuvud, which translates to “reading head” and basically means that someone has an easy time learning things from books and studying in the traditional school way. I definitely have that. The principal gave me a book in ninth grade for having the best marks in my year. I graduated high school with the highest grade in every course except one (and I took three courses more than I needed). At university, I haven’t always been on top of things, but I still have more A’s than B’s and any lower grades are really really rare.

But ever since my early teens, I’ve also developed this tendency to be quite up in people’s faces with it too. It’s like I always have to prove I’m the smartest in the room, not consciously, but I think that’s the way I come across. And I have no trouble admitting when I’m good at something. I’m also quite good at admitting that I’m bad at things, but since my special talent is studying and that’s the context where I’m in right now, I think this combination of me being a high achiever and very talkative leads to me coming across as braggy and quite insufferable, actually.

So my mission for the summer is to try to tone down this part of myself. Not that I’ll stop studying as much, that wouldn’t make sense, but I should just not talk as much and in a less competitive and authoritative way. I don’t need to show off all the time. Other people should be allowed to shine too.

But because of this mission of mine, I couldn’t tell anyone of the biggest news of my day yesterday. I got an A in my landscape ecology course. That means that, unless I get a C or worse for my final research proposal (which I probably won’t, since all drafts of the proposals got A’s), I managed to get an A on both courses that I took while studying 200 percent. I’m a mess and most of my relationships suffered from it and I can’t remember when my self-confidence has been worse than it is now, but at least it won’t stand in my way in a future competitive job application situation. I might be egocentric and moody and controlling and very insensitive at times, but at least my läshuvud is still going strong.

I just needed to get this out there. To be a little bit proud of myself. It hasn’t happened too often lately.

Celebrated with mostly old friends, and some new, in Hundby. Herring and potatoes, BBQ and Lina’s amazing cake, schnapps, songs, games, dancing and flower picking. It was chilly, but it didn’t rain. People were happy.

And the day was rounded off with a swim together with Ashley and Cecilia. The sun was just about to rise again after never really setting. The lake was still as a mirror. The fairies were dancing in the mist above the water. The birds had already been singing for hours.

The perfect ending to an eventful day. Just like midsummer should be.

On the grass in the Vasa park in Norrköping, while eating strawberries, I read a book of poems by Rut Hillarp. It was – –

Well, there just are things that cannot be described in prose. Things that need the brief nature of poetry. Where the few few words actually can carry the impossible weight of being human. That, which is so hard to understand and even harder to describe.

Some poets just can. And Rut Hillarp turned out to be one of them.

Two extracts, in my inadequate translation:

Song

 

Dream me a forest where all the spruces get lost

dance me a cloud a dragonfly a meadow

drown me a well from the wingbeats of your pulses

and embrace me an ocean

 

kill me a bridge between the mountains above your hand

forget me a ring of silver around your forehead

 

Dazzle me a world without eyes

* * *

You are the path where every step judges me and destroys me.

And one day when you leave me, it is yourself that you abandon, not me.

Friday evening

I’m on the train, on my way to Norrköping to visit Jenny. I haven’t been on a long distance train since I came home from Tarfala last August. I like traveling by train. I haven’t gone anywhere since last August, so I haven’t had the chance to choose the train over any other means of transportation, but I definitely would have, had I gone anywhere. I chose it now, even if it was more expensive than the bus. There’s just so much more room to think in a train.

I’ve been doing my traineeship for a week now. Nine days ago, spring term came to an end. I’m finding it a bit hard to let go, though, it’s like I’m still carrying around on this heavy thing that is making my shoulders ache and sometimes me feel like I want to cry for no reason.

This past year has been so demanding. In so many different ways. On all levels. You must be sick of reading about that by now, and people have been asking me why I do it, when it’s making me feel so bad. I don’t know. I guess there must be something wrong with my survival instinct, constantly failing to avoid all the most complicated circumstances.

If I’m being honest, this past spring has just been a long struggle to survive. This week, I’ve been feeling the aftermath of all that fighting. I’m drained and exhaused and have no confidence in anything I’m doing. The only time I haven’t felt broken and half was when I’ve been searching for spatial data on the Arctic and making some simple maps for my traineeship. Because geography, that is still something I can do.

I’m sure I only need some rest. Some time to let all of my parts find their way back to my body. I need to be nice to myself. Crochet pillow cases and swim in lakes. Start biking to work. Hang out with old, unproblematic friends. Like Jenny. Eat ice cream. Sleep. Eventually, I will be able to believe that I’m not a terrible, insufferable and completely self-possessed person. I just need a little bit of time.

Later: Jenny came and met me at the train station. Small towns and their train stations. So sweet. And being able to walk home to Jenny’s apartment. You just can’t get that kind of freedom in a city.

Saturday

It was a sunny, but incredibly windy day. We spent it walking around in Norrköping, looking at the sights and eating froyo.

Due to construction work, the Motala river was almost emptied. You can find many interesting things at the bottom of a river.

There was a traveling Harry Potter exhibition in town, and the real flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter was on show in one of the malls. Imagine my excitement!

Once we felt done with the sight seeing, we went to the Vasa park and ate strawberries. It’s a really cute little industry town, Norrköping.

Lovely Jenny.

Norrköping might not be that original as a whole, but the most interesting building in town was definitely the library. I seriously can’t decide if it was cool or just incredibly ugly. But you should know about my passion for libraries. I love them all. And especially of the design is interesting. This definitely goes up there, with the public city library in Seattle, Stockholm and Amsterdam.

Sunday

Norrköping’s working class past is evident in the street art. Karl Marx, if I’m not mistaken (which I very well might be).

We took a walk by the river, and then had some incredible ice cream, before it was time for me to go back to Stockholm.

All in all, a very nice weekend.

It’s summer now, but I think I’m still stuck in spring. I think I’m fine and then someone says something that makes me think that I’ve done something wrong and the need to cry returns. I don’t. But parts of me wants to.

Anyway, the reason why I’m telling you this is that when I’m feeling this unstable, it’s hard for me to sit down and write. Often, the feeling comes over me in the evenings too, when I return to my piles of papers and dusty corners – this overwhelming feeling of never being done with anything. So instead of doing something useful, I put too much butter on a rice cake and watch episodes of Grimm and continue crocheting on my first pillowcase. I don’t sit down to write, even if I have planned to. Edited pictures and everything. So even the blog posts keep on piling up on me.

But now: catch up.

Term ended and I managed to turn everything in on time. I had a oral presentation that I can’t remember, but Andy and Giulio said it was a great presentation. I choose to believe they weren’t lying through their teeth.

I also had a couchsurfer staying on my couch for a couple of days: Nick from Madison, Wisconsin. An incredibly easy-going, friendly, considerable and in every way likable person, definitely on level with Miles and Max as couchsurfers/hosts go. He especially hit it off with Lina. Unfortunately, his and Jessica’s team lost the brännboll game on Sweden day, but otherwise I think he had a good stay in Stockholm. (The incredible eloquence and praise of his CS reference made me feel inadequate – how would I ever be able to match him? She’s a beacon of immense knowledge coupled with an insatiable curiosity about the world around her. In short, I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone with the same ratio of intelligence, curiosity, mindfulness, passion, and fun as her on this planet. I don’t deserve it, but I can’t help feeling speechlessly happy when reading it. I must be doing something right, at least in my role as a couchsurfing host.)

Me and Jessica spent a weekend in Uppsala, teasing Hannes and searching for butterflies in Hågadalen-Nåsten nature reserve.

Healing, the ease with which I can hang out with Hannes. The words just come and I never feel like too much. (And isn’t it amazing, with road signs warning for frogs crossing the road? The recently awakened ecologist in me gets all warm and fuzzy inside.)

The nature reserve was beautiful too. It’s no Pacific Northwest, but even a Swedish forest can be quite lush and green and fairy-tale-like.

So, you see, I’ve done some great things. I just haven’t been in the right place, mentally I mean, to write about it when I’ve had time to do so.

On my way to the center today, I saw several groups of high school students on their way to graduation. They’re easy to spot, in their white hats, carrying champagne glasses.

It made me think of my own graduation. We’ve had an incredible couple of days now, warm and sunny. Just like when I graduated, seven years and four days ago. My graduation day was probably the warmest and sunniest day of that summer.

But SEVEN years ago?! Has it really been that long? That makes me dizzy. What have I accomplished since then?

Well, I have a bachelor’s degree, and am halfway through a master’s. I’ve spent a total of 14 months abroad, divided into five trips on four continents. I’ve learnt a language and forgotten it again. I’ve worked as a receptionist, janitor, archivist, tutor and student ambassador for Stockholm university. I’ve been the student representative in almost all advisory committees and boards at the science faculty of Stockholm university, as well as being chair of both the geoscience student council and the science faculty council. I’ve volunteered in an animal shelter in the Bolivian rain forest, a horse ranch in British Columbia, a chicken farm on Vancouver Island and a blueberry farm north of San Francisco. I’ve become active in Couchsurfing, and through that, my travels and the international students I’ve befriended at university, I now have friends on all continents except Antarctica, just waiting for me to pack my bags to do another around the world trip. I have a driver’s license.

I’m not the same person as I was seven years ago. Many things have happened, now that I list them like this. I’ve learned so much, about myself and other people and life and the world. So maybe it isn’t that strange, after all. That time passes. Seven years. I’ve managed to make quite good use of it.

 

Me on graduation day, together with aunt Kaarina, mom and cousin Jonatan.

And we define ourselves in the contrast between ourselves and others.

Never during my 9 years in a Finnish school did I feel particularly Finnish. There were other people who spoke the language better, whose both parents were Finnish, who might even have been born there. In the Finnish school, I wasn’t particularly Finnish. But as soon as I started my Swedish high school, I became the Finnish girl. And I liked it. I identified more with my Finnish heritage when everyone else around me were Swedish.

And that’s how it is now. In Sweden, I often point out my Finnish heritage, because it gives me an explanation for why I feel different in certain aspects. But when I travel, when everyone else around me are neither Swedish nor Finnish, I morph into this purebred Swede – beause there, being Swedish is also special.

My identity as a geographer has been growing over the years, but never has it been as strong as when I left the Geoscience building at university for Stockholm Resilience Centre. There, all my classmates are biologists and economists and environmental scientists and suddenly knowing maps and thinking spatially gave me an edge. I became defined by what made me different from the rest.

This means identity depends at least partly on the situation we’re in, and the contrasts between us and the people around us. Today, I’m a Swedish-Finnish geographer – but tomorrow, who knows?

At the book launch party on Friday, I was reminded of my past.

First, there were a couple of people there who went to my high school. My high school was a public inner city school on Söder, the artsy/bohemian/hipster/nowadays heavily gentrified neighborhood in central Stockholm. It has one of the best music programs in Sweden as well as one of the best drama, art and dance programs in Stockholm. It has a reputation of being artistic, radical, intellectual and with a left-wing turn. For the pre-university programs, science, social science and language, you need really good grades to get in, and even for the academic students there are plenty of artistic classes you can choose as your electives. I took art, photography, film, choir and creative writing. It’s a very popular school. For the three years that I spent there, seeing people playing their instruments, singing scales and stretching in the bombastic, high-ceilinged hallways of the late 19th century building was a everyday occurance. I felt completely engrossed in that world of creativity and art, I read poetry and wanted to become a photographer, and I was so jealous of all those truly talanted people that got to create, every single day.

Later on, after graduation, I’ve kind of let go of those high school ideals. Studying science suits me so well, I wouldn’t want to do anything else, and I’ve let go of those elitist ideas that only the truly talanted can, or should, create. I do plenty of creative stuff in my free time, what with all the knitting and baking and photography, singing and writing. My identity has changed, from someone who wants to become an intellectual artist/philosopher, to being more pragmatic and sciency.

But there, at the launch party, I was also reminded of another part of my past, namely, my dream of becoming an author. Right after high school graduation, I applied to one of the, maybe, top three best creative wrtiting schools in Sweden. I didn’t get in, and I hadn’t really expected to, because I knew they generally wanted some more life experience from their students. And slowly, the dream of writing has become more and more distant. Not that I’ve let it go, but I’ve been so busy with other things, creating this geographer identity for myself, that the writer me has had to step down. Well, obviously, at a book launch party, there will be plenty of writers of different kinds, and Jonas actually went to the writing school that I didn’t get accepted to. I felt this slumbering writer in me starting to stir, and I wondered if I had lost something important by not letting it be out for all these years.

So, with these people around, old high school people and graduates from the creative writing school I didn’t get in to, I was pulled back in time, to a self I had forgotten I had been. I wanted to say: I was like you guys once too, artistically ambitious and taking part in all kinds of small scale artsy projects. Now, I might be a master student of science, but back then.

Oh, well. That was then. I’m happy now, with my maps and scientific articles. It’s just good, sometimes, to be reminded of who you used to be. In case you actually took a wrong turn somewhere, and would like to find your way back.

I think, this summer, I’m going to try to write a short story. Just to see if I still can.

It is cloudy and cold now, but during the end of last week, it was basically summer. I was wearing a dress and a sweater, and didn’t freeze while walking to the tube from Jonas’ release party at around midnight, and on Saturday I went swimming with Lina in Flaten. And on Sunday, I baked a Swedish cheesecake (not at all the same as the American kind) and went to Haga to spend the day in the sun, doing sports and reading, with some resilient classmates of mine. I had the camera with me, and oh how lovely the colors become in the afternoon sun.

A good friend to have, Jessica, always up for a posing session. That Bolivian scarf of mine has become a real staple item for photo shoots. It brings out the colors of the eyes of my green-eyed friends, who for some reason happen to be disproportionately many.

And I finished “Orlando”. I will write something about it soon. It really deserves it. This lovely, daring character. But sleep is also a necessity. Especially if you spend your days locked in a lab, looking at a computer think for days on end. It really creates weird connections in the brain, you know.