This Is a List

5 things I say a lot

- svin(mycket/jobbigt/gott)

- Jag vet inte
- Jag är så trött
- Jag vet inte hur jag ska förklara
- Kanske

(I honestly don't know.)

5 things I think a lot

- I am so ungrateful/useless/worthless/a waste of space

- I love women so much

- I am depressed

- Don't think about that

- *What I would say at this moment to someone if I met them right now.*

5 things I dream about a lot at night

(I dream very little, but these are the few recurring ones)

- Being in love and being loved by someone I don't know.

- Having frustrating and stressful conversations

- Being trapped or stressed or in a hurry--often involving a murderer

- Getting stuck at something unable to finish it

- Being pregnant and about to give birth (this happens so often!!)

5 things very few people know about me

- I am depressed/have anxiety/social phobia

- I have seen therapists and am now doing cognitive behavioural therapy online

- I write on this blog!

- I am bisexual, undecided or very uninterested

- The very few people I have liked or had crushes on

5 things I love to do

- Read and find myself in other people's writing

- Walk in the forest

- Be completely alone in a foreign city

- Cook and do the dishes with an entertaining podcast

- Organise

5 things I want to happen before this year is over

- Visit Iceland

- Go back to Leeds

- Get to know someone I adore

- Finish something written

- Move

5 things I order abroad

- Veggie burrito or something at Chipotle

- Red velvet cake

- Anything vegan or vegetarian

- Eggs

- Breakfast!

5 things I miss in my wardrobe

- A perfect winter coat

- A silver grey chiffon midi skirt I saw on a girl in London

- A pashmina scarf

- Tops that look good with skirts

- A raincoat

5 things that smell wonderfully

- Ground coffee

- The forest

- Horses

- Bird cherry

- Summer mornings

5 things I want to get better at

- Writing

- Talking to friends

- Feeling things for people

- Making bread

- Languages

5 things I laugh at

- Podcasts

- Parks & Rec, Broad City, Friday Night Dinner, and so on

- Clever jokes

- Howl's Moving Castle

- Texts posts on tumblr

5 things that make me who I am

- My insane love for reading

- My somewhat insistent/annoying/clever joking

- My cleverness and good reading-head

- My independence and craving for solitude

- The space between everyone else and me



p.s. I adore the new design on the blog.

Writing Exercises

I have started an online writing course this semester. So far, I really like it. We haven't done much yet--only read some texts and sent in a shorter essay about ourselves and our relationship to writing, and done some shorter, simpler writing exercises. But I love that I have been forced--or able--to make more time in my day for writing. I still think I need to do more of it, though.

I thought I could post some of my own writing execises here. Not the ones I'm submitting because I don't know, but some of the extra ones I do, mainly in order to keep my writing up and get used to eat and become better. So here is a short taste of what I write.

∞
These are two exercises/challenges I found on a blog.

1. Take a book, close your eyes, randomly select a word. In 10 minutes, write exactly 101 words about that word.

(I selected the word blood från The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, which I am reading at the moment--it's very helpful in the writing process too.)

I think my blood is infected with poison. When I am sad or anxious, I imagine the poison running through my veins. Blood reaches into every corner of my body. From outside, it brings oxygen, poisoned air, to my heart. There it is condensed and given a purpose: ‘Take it to the head, to the limbs.’ The blood carts the poison, which is enriched along the way, to the fingertips and the brain and the uterus. That blood is everywhere and I would have to empty myself to get all the poison out. (If I’d guess, the poison is merely life.)

∞
2. Pick a book and open a page at random. Take the first ten lines on the right-hand side and write down the first word of those lines. Write a poem or a story where every sentence starts with each of these words in order.

(I'll use the same book.)

Have a glass of water
And bread, coarse bread with nuts and grains
They are not much, but they will give you
Life
Must not, need not, have not, be not. I
Am
So much more.
And you are too. Eat the bread
Which is life-giving and true
The clarity of water will help, too.

(My words were not great. Here is another try with the same words. I cannot be bothered to edit.)

Have you ever felt the intimacy with someone reading on the train next to you? And felt almost proud when you, too, bring up a book. They exist in that book’s universe and you in yours. Life is lonely anyway, but next to each other, you and they are in parallel universes, less alone perhaps. Must not escape no, perhaps not. Am just passing time. So they read to pass time. And you read to escape. Which is not to say that is is working; that you actually do escape, or that time passes—but you pretend, with them. The universe is not only in this train, it is in your head and their heads and it is unlimited.

∞

Undecisions

I think at times of becoming a nun. The life style appeals to me, at leas the life I things they have. It consists mainly of silence, contemplation, reading, studying of texts, helping out in the community, taking in visitors and taking care of them, teaching and living with only women. (It is the last part that appeals to me the most.)
At a moment of more indecision than usual, in the middle of a spiritual period I had a while back, I even looked up what kind of orders I could join, and was disappointed and discouraged. It would take long time--to not speak of the fact that most orders are catholic... Which does not appeal to me. Where is the vaguely protestant order which you can join and participate in after a year? Or even better, the agnostic order? I do like the idea of serving some kind of higher purpose, even if I don't believe in that Abrahamic god.

This is ridiculous and unrealistic, naturally. But nevertheless, I want to be in place of quiet and solidarity and where I am less and just part of a whole. Oh the quiet, and the space, and the slow passing of time.

November

I am having a bad time.

I try writing and I end up deleting it all.

I imagine myself saying it out loud and my skin crawls.

There is something with the dark that makes it impossible. I cannot get sunlight, not even moments of sunlight, not even moments of light.

I got home at four in the afternoon and made dinner. Got ready for the night. And there are hours left of the day.

I sleep too much.


I tried, sitting down at dinner, to follow along with my heart when it reached out and forward for something. When it searches for another time, to a future place, to something I will do or could do.

But my heart was flailing and I realised that it is not going to get better.

A doctor told me this week I was depressed, so I am looking for symptoms (is this depression?)

I suppose being unable to look forward to something is a sign of depression.

But it is also true. What could get better? What, in a single day, could be better than this? It is all up to my mood and my mood is such a slippery thing.

It does not matter if I change the house. If I live somewhere where I move differently. If I eat something else or see other people. It is still. Just. This.

Is this depression?

Or is it just facts? That, to an extent, it all comes down to my mood. (Is the world only my perception of it?)

There are hours left of the day, that I could use writing, but I just want to go to sleep. I imagine that I might need sleep. Sleep is always good, isn't it? I have to get up early tomorrow.

And tomorrow night will eat more of the day and then it won't be anything left and can't the night just eat me, too?

Is this depression? Being unable to organise the day to use the hours I am awake to write essays and not transform them into night hours (November helps me in this).

I am clearly doing something wrong. Something I ate made me this. Something I did not do. A book I read at the wrong time. A class missed, where everyone learned how to be human beings.

I don't believe I am depressed because that seems an awfully easy way to solve the meaninglessness of life.

Is that depression?

I don't have to tell anyone, honestly, and I can write it only to myself. And imagine that I tell you.

Nevertheless, it is not the easiest time. This November (and October and September and August). And I don't believe it can be any easier.

Introduction

I love writing. But I find myself uncomfortable in my languages. It's an extravagant discomfort, but an important one nevertheless. I can't write in my first language because it does not go well with my thoughts, and anyway, I read too little in it. But I'm not entirely skilled in my second language - English - either, even though I read most things in English. So I figured I should practice my English writing. Writing on a blog seemed an easier way to structure it and to actually do it well, than the run-on thoughts I type down in my journal.

I have another blog. Or I had one, as it is hardly still alive. It has not been a space I'm comfortable in for the last year. Mostly because I know who reads it and they are not people I really want to be reading it. Not people I can be honest to the way I only am in writing. But also because I want to write about what I read and books and poetry in English. And mostly because I need to practice my actual use of the language.

So there. I will try to write here once in a while. I'm thinking a lot about metaphors right now, so there might be some of that. I'm quite unhappy as well, so there will probably be some of that. And maybe some love; love for the women writers I read and adore. That is one things about me: I love nothing more in the world, than women writers.



Oh, before I finish up for the night (it is such a hot warm night), I'll explain about the name of the blog. For the benefit of future me, mostly. I listened to a (Swedish) song in which the first line goes 'Jag kunde se dig under lindarna'. I think that line and its melody is so pretty and liberating that I fell in love with the idea of naming anything after the lime tree. I translated it. Found the possibly prettier kind, the silver lime, and so there it goes. More importantly, the url was available. I suppose I need some kind of layout or design with a silver lime now?