While going though old notebooks to possibly find phone numbers that were lost during the cellphone theft in Bratislava in July, I found a couple of pages in the end of the lilac notebook from Europe last summer where I had copied wise or smart or funny quotes that I had happened upon during my trip. Oh, you should know, I have a weakness for quotes and maxims. I have a whole box, painted in gold and decorated with plastic gems, full of them. Alphabetically by the originator, of course.

It filled me with such childish pleasure, to read them and marvel and remember the places where I read them and the circumstances surrounding my being there. I just have to share them with you too. 

Printed on a several meters long poster hanging in the Palm House at the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden:

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

Edward Wilson

(Oh, how particularly relevant this feels tonight, after just having turned in a group assignment on the failures of governance in Brazilian Amazonia and how these are causing the devastating and terrifyingly extensive deforestation there.)

Written on the wall of the lobby at the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney, Scotland, where dad was going to do an interview:

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who can dream of things that never were.

John F. Kennedy

Painted on the entire end of a four story building, facing one of all the idyllic canals of Amsterdam:

Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.

Benjamin Disraeli

Right there, right then (having spent two full days walking around in Amsterdam, having been in Scotland, Cambridge, London and on my way to Munich, Vienna, Budapest and on southward) that felt true. So true.

Written on a wall of the Museum of Broken Relationships, the most quirky, heartbreaking and hilarious museum of my trip, that I fell into just as the sky opened and thunder suddenly crawled under my skin, tickling, in the middle of my day in Zagreb:

I experience time as a terrible ache… But the good things of life when I have to leave them and think with all the sensitivity my nerves can muster, that I will never see or have them again at least not as they are in that exact, precise moment, hurt me metaphysically…

F. Pessoa

I’m not sure I know how something can hurt metaphysically. But still, especially for a traveler, this seems like the curse and the blessing of life. All these moments, like gems in a leather purse, that I carry around. People, places, trees, waves, melodies and sunshine. Getting drunk on a Cuba Libre, not able to stop laughing, at the bar at the end of Death Road, Coroico, Bolivia, after having biked down from 4500 to 1300 meters above sea level in four hours. Playing catch with Troubles in the orange afternoon Sonoma sun, California. Watching the evening prayers at the start of Ramadan, people spilling out into courtyard of the Sarajevo mosque, me standing next to a young, beautiful Danish philosophy student while the rain was pouring down. Skinny-dipping in a mirror-like Brunnsviken to the laughs of Lina, Hannes and Johan, the setting September sun painting the sky pink and purple. Moments left behind. Bittersweet, treasures I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Painted on a wall in the suffocatingly raw photo exhibit at the Srebrenica museum in Sarajevo:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Edmund Burke

Waking up from the sun shining in through the gap in my blinds. Not having to get out of bed. The choice of getting out of bed anyway.

Sundays. A stillness you can almost touch.

Catherynne M. Valente, always:

Saturday wanted to say: Listen to me. Love is a Yeti. It is bigger than you and frightening and terrible. It makes loud and vicious noises. It is hungry all the time. It has horns and teeth and the fore of its fists is more than anyone can bear. It speeds up time and slows it down. And it has its own aims and missions that those who are lucky enough to see it cannot begin to guess. You might see a Yeti once in your life or never. You might live in a village of them. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can go, the Yeti is always faster than you, and you can only choose how you say hello to it, and whether you shake its hand.

Also from The girl who soared over Fairyland and cut the moon in two.

And my quite recent realization. Growing up, most of us hunt for love like hungry wolves, ravaging and thoughtless. We’ll do anything to be seen, appreciated, loved. Being without it seems like the scariest thing of all. But getting older, realizing that love was there all along, ripening in you like a persimmon. Rich and heavy, sticky and bright like a traffic sign. How completely overwhelming it is. Suffocating and a necessity for breathing, all at the same time. That is the scary part. It has me completely terrified.

My heroine and idol, Catherynne M. Valente:

“But what my car needs is gas, not memories! How can you make a car go on memories?”

B.D. scratched under her Admiral’s hat. “What’d you think gas was, girl? ‘Course there’s all sorts of fuel, wind and wishes and chocolate cake and collard greens and water and brawn, but you’re wanting the kind that burns in an engine. That kind of gas is nothing more than the past stored up and fermented and kept down in the cellar of the earth till it’s wanted. Gas is saved-up sunlight. Giant ferns and apples of immortality and dimetrodons and cyclopses and werewhales drank up the sun as it shone on their backs a million years ago and used it to be a bigger fern or make more werewhales or drop seeds of improbability.” Her otter’s paws moved quick and sure, selecting a squat, square bottle here and a round rosy one there. “It so happens that sunshine has a fearful memory. It sticks around even after its favorite dimentrodon dies. Gets hard and wily. Turns into something you can touch, something you can drill, something you can pour. But it still remembers having one eye and slapping the ocean’s face with a great heavy tail. It liked making more dinosaurs and growing a frond as tall as a bank. It likes to make things alive, to make things go. And that’s what’s in my bottles here – sirops if sunshine, sunshine that remembers so fierce it burns itself right up. Strong stuff, not for the faint! Drink up yesterday to make today go faster.”

From The girl who soared over Fairyland and cut the moon in two.

So, now I’ve turned 26. I had a birthday party together with Lina.

Natalia made my hair and I wore my San Francisco dress, but to be honest, I don’t really remember what happened. Not due to alcohol, I don’t drink like that, but. Something about all the people, and being happy but at the same time feeling the need to be on top of everything, making sure that Mattias didn’t turn up the music too high or Isak open too many windows, Jocke not scaring off too many people with his extreme argumentatory exercises and people in general just having a good time. So, I guess it could be called stress-induced memory loss. But of what I do remember, I did have fun. Three smashed pots and a burned tin box can attest to the party at least not being dull.

My birthday started with mom calling and the sun shining. At school, my amazing classmates surprised me with an extensive morning break fika spread, and when I got back to the lecture hall, I found yet another sweet message on my lecture notes. (Suspect: Roweena).

Every year on my birthday, my mom used to wake me up in the morning with candles and a semla (a kind of Swedish, whipped cream filled bun). Now that she isn’t here, I decided to go get one with some members of my SRC family instead, at the fanciest bakery we could find. And it was fancy, alright, with servers dressed in white and black and chandeliers in the ceiling. Perfect birthday treat.

I then rounded off the day by going to an exhibit on Yoruba art. The Yoruba are a people in present day Nigeria, but the peak of their culture and kingdom was between the 12th and 15th centuries. Incredible copper heads of kings and queens, exhibited in an old military bunker. Amazing.

The following days, I had to write a home examination, but it was as if everything had left me. Inspiration, excitement, agency. Suddenly I didn’t see the point. I simply did not want to.

And then snow came and you know I can never concentrate when it snows. Snow feelings tingling in my body, making my thoughts lose structure and purpose. I used to sit at psychology lessons in high school, writing poems about life as a snow flake, not caring in the least about Pavlov’s dogs and the id.

So I turned in the home exam late and so poorly executed I would have felt shame hadn’t it started snowing again. I might have to redo it, but then again, sometimes the generosity of my teachers amazes me. I passed the economics exam. I might be lucky and pass this too. Or not. I find it hard to muster any kind of concern about it.

Maybe I have a 26 year crisis. Could be an interesting turn of events.

Time is a weird thing. I take photos with my phone, thinking I’ll write something nice about this, and then assignments and birthdays and family drama happens and I forget.

I don’t remember anymore what my thought was with this picture. I was walking with Jenny, it was the beginning of January and I felt Stockholm was beautiful, I guess. With the lights and the purple sky. Now, the picture mostly makes me think of how the quality of photographs have decreased since cameras were introduced into phones. But also that there is a certain kind of lure in the pixliness. The grains and blobs of color. Something that I definitely could work with.

The croquis class that I took last fall also had an exhibit at the Skarpnäck Kulturhus (loosely translated, community center, I guess). My piece is the very black, slightly bigger one to the right. Men are so much harder to sketch than women.

And I found a beautiful doorway while strolling along Sveavägen. Detail in architecture, you know. I think it says something about the view of humans and cities. The eye needs to be challenged, to keep the mind alert. Boring architecture turns us into city-dwelling zombies. Uninspired, apathetic. Stagnant. Trees challenge. And water. In environments where these natural shifts and surprises don’t fit, we have to create them ourselves. Street art, colors. More decorated doorways!

Sometimes, I find notes in weird places, in my course folder or on my computer or in my calendar. Small, sweet things.

They’ve all been left by a classmate. I strongly suspect Jessica (because it’s her hand writing, and one of them was in Flemish), but the computer post-it could be Hannah.

When I was fourteen, I started leaving letters with nice quotes and small poems and encouragements on seats in the tube. I was all into sweet, quirky things back then, and I thought finding one of my letters could make a stranger happier in the public transport rush.

It feels like this is karma. Finding sweet little notes in unexpected places. And they make me so unjustifiably happy.

Today an almost two week block of role play began. We’re supposed to simulate negotiations between the countries surrounding the Baltic sea, with the goal to agree to a convention to save the fish stocks and ecosystems of the sea from total collapse.

This first day was intense. It’s hard to describe. Allow me to paint you a picture:

Outside the conference venue, on a gravel path by a frozen lake, a member of the Russian delegation (aka Ashley) offers a sip of red wine to two members of the Danish and Finnish delegations (aka Hannah and me), respectively. It was meant as a joke, but Denmark jumps at the offer (just to calm the nerves a little bit, like) and there they stand, on the gravel path at three thirty in the afternoon while joggers run past, drinking red wine straight from the bottle. For the imaginative, it could be seen as fraternizing between the delegations, Russia offering the easily duped Nordic delegates a bribe.

A researcher from the SRC walks by and says: “Cheers!”.

True story.

 

The black currant pie burst out all over the table, but except for that little mishap, we had a lovely pie breakfast, Lina, Ashley, Anders, Kate and I. Perfect way to spend the grey and rainy morning after a night of crazy dancing at Fasching soul club.

I wrote the economics exam today. I sat there, feeling what’s the point. Really. What was I doing there. It could go either way, the exam. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to redo it. If that happened, that would be my first re-exam. Ever. That would be just like me. To fail the last exam in my master’s program. I have a history of falling on the finish line.

I might also be getting a cold. I’ve been saying things I shouldn’t, hurting or offending. Not on purpose, but. That doesn’t make the feeling go away. I’ve been hiding underneath scarves and blankets today. Someone asked me if I had turned into a Bedouin. Some days, showing my face just feels way too naked. Revealing.

So, lying on my bed, trying to cure this cold before it hits, I started thinking about things that make me happy. As a way to not wallow too much, like. Things that I can do when I’m done being ill and out of sync.

Carrot juice I like. Starting a new knitting project. Cooking for people I love (even though I’d never dare tell them). Going to the dentist. Having someone touch my hair. Veronica Maggio’s latest album. Going to the library. When it’s snowing. Singing in the company of others, without them telling me to shut up. Dancing (even though I’m really crappy at it). Rice cakes with lots of butter on. Any kind of citrus fruit, really. When Hanna Hellquist and Kodjo Akolor are bantering on the radio in the mornings. Lina’s little sounds when she’s happy or excited about things, especially if the things involve me. Jessica’s excessive expressions of affection. Ashley’s concern (even though it annoys me sometimes too, because I simply don’t feel like I deserve it). Roweena’s accent. My huge, winter down blanket. Fazer chocolate. The Geoscience building, all the people there who smile and seem genuinely happy to see me, whenever I have the time to visit. “Don’t wait” by Mapei. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be alone. If it wasn’t for you, I’d have to hold my own.

That’s quite a list. And it isn’t in any way done. I just have to sleep. It’ll all be better tomorrow.