According to the ancient law of Aries, the leader of the flock. “You are an initiator and your impulse is to meet life’s challenges head-on, without thought for the consequences.

‘I AM’ is the motto for Aries. You are the first sign of the zodiac and you put yourself and your desires first. However you do it with a childlike innocence that is very disarming. You stand for brave new beginnings and are frequently the one to get something off the ground.

You are fearless and courageous and will fight passionately for what you want. Your energy and enthusiasm are contagious and you are a keen competitor. You are ardent in love and won’t hesitate to make the first move.

You can also be impatient and outspoken. Your eagerness can seem pushy and your assertiveness can easily become aggression.”

Never before have I held with the stereotypical zodiac mumbo jumbo supersticious stuff, but re-reading this blog text from last night, I am beginning to accept that perhaps these are promenant aspects of my personality!  As a kid, my parents most most commonly directed the proverb “look before you leap” in my direction. Foresight is NOT my forté… and neither is maintaining my confidence when it comes to matters of the heart. I thought long and hard about whether to copy and paste, but I began this blog writing about how I feel and it seems stupid to start hiding things now. If I had had internet at home it would already have been published. At least now I have 24 hours consideration and and introduction!

Yes, my behaviour is far from perfect. I take responsibility… but not all of it!

When I begin to care the age old routine kicks in again and I forget to protect this little one inside. Alround stupidity dictates protection of the object not the self. Who wants this tired body? It hauls arround imperfections, imbalance, insecurities and fat. My insides tighten. It’s a knot. Self-disgust and jealousy. I want to reach out and touch. To feel comfort in physical presence. But I am tied into habit and act out only that which remains.

It has been ten years since I went under the first knife.

I still feel the scars.

There is something missing from my past and it is called exerience. A void. Three thousand days. Isolation. Can not relate. ”You do not belong here” and neither anywhere else. Sometimes I wonder if something was destroyed. Internal turmoil. I am terrified. I may never be able to maintain the balance. I am lost. I am swimming.

…Who swims? Fish swim. Fish meat!?! Fuck that! Double sided hypocracy. You know it! Call culture your cucoon and let the rest of us mutate. I’m tired of the ’say what you mean’ and do something different bullshit. This little lamb (read ram) is pigeon holed. In the corner. Not least because it jumped in and tried to swim upstream again. Must remember to take lessons next time… There is too much at stake.

Did I force an unwilling hand? If so, then talk straight! How bad can a sheep bite? This one is young and still needs nurture. Is it insecurity that breeds this jealousy? Or vice versa? All I know is that they co-exist and the compound sum is greater that it’s two parts. Perhaps on the back of their prickly green wings I have been carried to a misjudged conclusion. I am not altogether convinced that my addition is accountable. Perhaps I have been equally involved in creating unease.

Somewhere in these books, there is a dictation that says; when Clover cares for someone else she forgets to care for herself. Experience had taught her that she is unwantable. She must either alter or admit defeat.

Alteration is dangerous. It destroys the soul. Yes, I believe in that! (And who knows, maybe even the zodiac mumbo jumbo has some right!) I can not suppress (in other words - regress.) I was there before and the memory is excruciating. I hold my arms down tight. Locked by my side. I don’t reach out for fear of your flinching. Repulsion at my physical touch.

^^you eat too loud, you smell too bad, you look too strange, you sound too dumb, you are too fat, your hair is ugly and you ideals mean crap^^

Echoes.

You may feel my confusion. Frustration. Anger. I am still too scared. I would rather admit defeat.

It is much too late for this. I should be asleep, but somehow having no internet does not make going to be early any easier. Without internet I find myself engaged in activities which dissolve time. In other words, those thoughtful and artistic, both of which have been somewhat lacking of late. I am in two minds as to whether I should shell out the 200 kroner a month to reinstate my link with the virtual world. On the one hand, it is wonderful, this facebook free bliss where productivity becomes second nature… on the other, the removal of communicative links may prove to be crippling.

But enough of this information technology pondering. Back to real life, and disregarding a short blip in physical health (cough sneeze cough) things still appear to be going swimmingly. Has there always been war between Europe and the Middle East? I am considering the possibility that now is the time to start reading another rule book. Fools rush in, but a complimentary personality is helping to maintain stability. It’s been a while since I turned myself upside down, and I guess every time it feels different. There is still a lot to learn. Vad är det som har mest inverkan på en människa? Personality or upbringing? Is it actually possible to separate the two? Are we not the products of our environment? Of course… to some degree. But where do we choose to be ourselves and where do we unconsciously follow the path of our culture?

It is hard to blog when surrounded buy these people. I guess habit has more influence that I’d like to think.

Tomorrow we have our first exam. Swedish grammar. Time to study.

The bloodsucking fiend harassed me all night. With the lights on it conveniently disappeared into the woodwork, but once darkness descended again that electric buzz was back in my ears. Today my hands are covered in red swollen bites and my eyes ringed in purple. I needed to sleep.  I over slept.

I need a day without people. Time to collect my thoughts. Feed my brain as well as my belly. Now I have missed Mahgol. We haven’t spoken for so long. I am doing this and she is doing that and before we know it another week has passed without more than five minutes conversation time. She is studying and I have a social life. I guess we should be glad! And really, I am. Seeing the stress slowly slip from her face is a pleasure - as is getting to know these unusual friends of mine.

Somewhere in between this chaos I have managed to make some KAOS of my own. I am almost finished my first piece for next years exhibition. Some experimenting, new toys and cloth. Oh! What fun to play with paints again. Sitting on the bedroom floor in long black socks, a myriad of coloured possibilities spread out in front of me. It is proving more difficult than expected to create related works. Interpretation is everything and it is harder to dissect a picture than words. I never thought I would say that. Jag, the great believer in pictorial art. Ahh, but we are talking about digital reproductions. A cheap snapshot photograph recreated in pixels can not evoke texture, taste and smell…

Today I shall listen to Wish You Were Here. There is something on my mind, it’s eating at my insides.  I want to let it out.

Patience is a virtue.

My eyeballs hurt and my brain feels squishy. We had more tasty food at The Batu last night. Talking till late and time lines with literature this morning. I got my twin sketchbook, books booking booked another three scribbles before the end of term. I need to make posters but been consumed by ‘redovisning’. There is homework, always homework. I want to sleep. Sweet dream filled rest. Tomorrow is another day.

It’s not often I am stumped these days and so to be stumped twice in one week is an interesting feeling.  Requires some consideration.  What is this? And where does it come from? It is something unfamiliar… or maybe not. It is something so familiar, just wrapped in paper and left in the back of a dusty cupboard for a while. There was a time when I had no answers. None that I could articulate in any case. They ricocheted off the inside of my skull and lodged themselves, unheard, in the back of my throat.  Their extended echos ringing in my ears 24 hours later. There was no purge. The unsaid would torment me for weeks. Somewhere along this journey I met with courage, and eventually invited it into my home. Now the answers are part of my repertoire.

But then I found myself stumped. There was no answer. Neither a question. Tvärtom. There was silence. I was sat with a friend. A friend of a friend. Acquaintance, kompis, vad som helst. And I forgot how to talk.  But a moment of peace is a welcome pause sometimes. It allows time for reflection. Recollection. It was not so long ago that I required others to carry the conversation. Hiding behind a notebook and scrupulously observing. Where do these people come from?  How do they feel? What is there relation to one another? Are they really as relaxed as they look? How would I feel if it was me? Silence broke but the conversation is different. Somewhere between art and science there is passion for research.

My second stumping was wordal, not verbal. Beskriv din dröm resa. A simple homework task. My dream journey. The holiday of a lifetime. The ultimate adventure. Jag kunde inte. När man säger ‘dröm’ betyder det något som har inte redan hant. But it is done. Jag längter inte efter något mer. Jag kommer inte att vara snipig om jag aldrig resa igen.  There are journeys I would like to take. That saturation of culture, sights, tastes, sounds and smells is as heady as any other drug. To feel these breeze of another ocean, eat the fruits of another land. It is to live and grow. But I have survived my growing pains and now it is time for some kind of stability.

In six month I will fill first quarter century. The first has been nothing to sniff at.  Circumstances have made my life worth it’s weight in literature. But I do not wish to fill the next period with the same feeling of disattachment. I do not hanker after the dream journey because I no longer have a  great need for it. I have seen enough of the exotic, the foreign, the wondrous, the dangerous and the heart breaking to know what I am among the luckiest to walk the plains of this great green earth. I have found my place without religion, addiction or conformity. I dug out my bunker, started living underground, then it became a hut above the ground. It is becoming a way-side in. People come and go. They share their stories, their experience, the advice. Eventually it will become a library full of unknown authors. Those who made their impact. Ready to share with anyone who cares to take an interest. You are allowed to talk. Take a cup of coffee, try the cookies and the comfy chairs. They have memory.  There is wisdom in walls. Magic in the air. It is called a home.

I don’t think there is ever an end to the journey. But it is possible to travel on the spot.  The places we can be transported in good company are as remarkable as those we can attain by car, bus or train. The aeroplane has made it ordinary. The extraordinary. Thousands of kilometers become a small cloth package with free socks, a blockbuster film and a selection from three warm meals. Where is the adventure?  For the near future I am prepared to forgo that luxury in favour of mining local gold.

I begin to wonder if I miss this. I no longer have the time to write every day, or every other day, as I did in the summer. Sometimes I long for the lonely hours during which I play my heart on a keyboard, but truth be told, there is little to miss. Life is full. Not to capacity, but it is full in alla fall. Before I sleep I still rewind my day, playing over conversations, but I don’t re-write them any more. I make mistakes, they are not important. I could have said this, done that, made a better impression, but who cares.  Not me, and not the people around me.

Life is still a yo yoing roller coaster ride, but it is built on steadier ground. Last weeks drama was washed away in a weekend of social and alcohol. I consumed more than intended, and felt the worse for it on Sunday, but without any tinge of regret.  I had fun, I trust these people. Earlier this month I wondered if I was taking on too much, am I stressed? Is the occasional sleepless night a sign of something to come? But the passing of another lunar and menstrual cycle with the usual tormenting aches and pains confirms with my conscience that things are going ok.

Yesterday we had our second scribble meeting. Unleash your Monster was a roaring sucess! At least we had an attendace of 17, all of whom left happy and with suggestions, compliments and satisfaction apleanty. Hard work pays off. It is good to follow an idea through. Maybe snowball theory is worth it’s weight in associated papers.

 

Talking of which we have had our first snowfall today. I dressed up for school - one of the advantages of not being able to cycle is that I can wear a skirt and fancy hat! Oh what wonder to stand in the bus stop with biting wind chewing my ankles and that crisp dry snow smell in the air. This is my high time. Class with the pussycat, Javier and Bell. Everything is relaxed, there is something that flow through our classroom door - and we missed it last term. Debate på lunch, what constitutes a suitable sacrifice. Who should when it comes to affairs of the heart? Grammar spilling out of my ears, but even the teacher smiles more. Then lunch. Hugs and faces. Faces and hugs. To many to name one by one.

I talk too much.

These people are the ones I have been missing. 

Hang on to something good, but don’t be afraid to let it change.

 

Keep thinking.