Same time next year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si_1mpmVECA


I have this distant memory of being a little girl and seeing this movie with my mom. I remember how she thought it was so lovely and I remember the female lead's blond hair. In many ways, this movie has always been with me. Not so long ago, maybe only a few months ago, I remembered and looked it up. Watching it felt like this thunderstorm of feelings I didn't really realize I felt.

Hearing the song, the little piano notes that serve as bridges for the scenes take me back to thinking about what love is. It reminds me that we never really know the part someone plays in our lives until much after. It also showed me that couples are not perfect, that fairy tales are not how they seem...

Hearing the song makes me miss a life I didn't have and makes me like the one I live. Weird.

No(r)Way

So after three or so months of living in Bergen full time I can safely say that I will never EVER in my life seriously move here.

Blackbird

All your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free

Things that I have

When I moved to Umea, I left many things behind. I left my apartment and it's beautiful view. I left the house I shared with Ana. I left my clothes, my furniture, my paintings, my postcards and my life.

So what do I have here?

I have a green duvet cover that reminds me of spring when it's not here. I have some posters that give me colors when everything is dark or grey. I have a scarf that a friend brought all the way from Indonesia just for me. I also have pictures of the people I love and they are up in the wall in front of my bed so that I can see them every day.

I have a small TV and a little potted plant with purple flowers. I have knitting books to help me make things for the people I love, an occasionally for me. I have winter boots and spring boots, and coats and sweaters. And I have a plate full of oranges so that I can just have one when I feel like it.

I have a glass of wine I got at Ikea for 10kr and a little tea-candle holders that make my room seem like there are a tens of stars here, warming my night and lighting the dark.

And soon I'll have to leave all of them behind again and start collecting new things and fill them with meaning and love. Every time I do it, it gets harder... and every time I feel like I need my life here more. I wonder why out of so many things that I chose to leave behind, I thought to bring my fear with me?

Hands

Hands are one of the most beautiful part of the human body. We dress them up with rings and nail polish to try to make them look better but there is just something so warm and soft about a pair of freshly washed hands that makes them seem so earnest, so real. The kind of hands that are a little red from all the washing, are the ones that I like the best right now. You can always tell if someone washes their hands a lot because no matter how much lotion you put on them afterwards, the palms always look red and the nails always look wet. Working in a public health department and being surrounded with physicians and nurses, I can see red-palmed-scrubbed-clean hands all the time. They are all so different, but they all kind of look the same at the time.

It makes me wish I was artistic (aka, had any talent other than singing out of tune when no one is around) to draw them, to play with clay and make them. Instead, I watch and try to remember how they make me feel: taken cared of and safe. It's always the littlest things that do that, isn't it?

Running my time away

My knees are sore. My calves hurt I have to do about twice as much laundry as I had to do before. I also seem to have developed a new found appreciation for those tight running pants and I always make sure I have a ton of bananas in my fruit plate at home.

What has happened to me? I'll tell you: I have been running all semester long. I got my self a little training app for the phone and I do what it tells me. It basically tells me when to run and for how long to do it... and it lets me manage my own speed. It's been really nice and I can see how my days have changed since January.

But there is always a but and I can tell how it's eating away at the rest of my life. This week I have to plan around doing that silly 90min run on Friday and still being alive enough to bike to my friend's house. I won't complain though. I figure that I'll burn so many calories doing those 15K that I figure I'll run that I can totally suck on a sugar cane and still be good.

Secretly, that's what I like the most about running: all the chocolate and candy I can eat and burn :)

Birthday month

January came and left, and February mornings were far to cold in the north of Sweden for me to sit outside and smoke a single, guilty ciggie while day dreaming about what this year will bring. March is here and my birthday is just around the corner. This is a big year (but then again, they all are) and I'm turning 30. I don't quite understand how that happened, or when.

I think about the past and the present, and I like the path I chose to walk. Sometimes, when I'm having fika with my friends and making K cry/chuckle I think about the sad little girl I used to be. When my family calls and says they miss me, I remember that for many years they never really cared (and that they do now makes me deeply happy). I have grown to be a woman that has wonderful, good people that love and care for her. And for that I am very grateful.

Living in three countries spread over two continents means that I will never get to have all the people I love around for the anniversary of my birth (or for the celebration of me still being alive, which is how someone that has been sick like I have looks at her birthday). However, when I blow out my candles in a few days I will carry all of them with me, along with the wonderful certainty that I am not alone in this big, blue world.

Jordan Catalano

I've been watching 'my so-called life' lately and not having seen it for the better part of a decade really helps me to remember what it was like to be Angela. We all were Angela, weren't we? We all had brave friends that seemed to fit into the social arena so well, and we all felt totally excluded from what was happening.

I remember feeling like I didn't 'belong' and how amazingly meaningful one single line in a poem or a story could be. In many cases, I still feel like that. Like it´s easier for others to cope, to understand, to grow, to love. I am not a teenager anymore, and almost not even in my twenties, but I remember. I remember and I understand. One thing, though... I don't miss the angst I use to feel over my own Jordan Catalano...

Party like it's 1999! (or 1995-1999)

As any person with as many iconoclastic tendencies as yours truly will tell you, this time of the year posses terrible contradictions between our desire to free ourselves from symbols and cultural obligations and, well, just having time off from work and school. Usually, I cope by calling everything by its 'proper sociology of religion name' and wishing everyone a happy hegemonic deity birthday/randomly set beginning of the year not really marked by the solstice (like the Iranians, who celebrate new years on March 21, when the sun wins the fight for time against the dark and the cold) and by working.

I will admit to going to new year's parties with my cousin Hugo and the lovely Marielos... and to randomly convincing complete strangers at the Café No Sé to chant wonderful pro-welfare state propaganda (yes, healthcare and eduation SHOULD BE FREE), as we all found out two years ago via a random MPHer from Johns Hopkins and a bar bet which I lost).

This year I ended up at a party at Andy's (Mg's friend) and while I expected a quiet, fun night of puns, Monty Python references and a great dinner, I got me a dance party complete with 1990s flashbacks which made me feel like I was 15 again and getting ready for my fiesta de quince. So to the tune of 'rhythm is a dancer' I welcomed 2011 and then proceeded to walk the 5km back to Mg's house at 4 am (got home at 5.30). No more dancing today, though