straight into exile: continued journal extracts

wednesday 6 april
feel a sort of glum despair over the loss and irreplaceable nature of Mr Ryder. I summoned all of my energies to keep moving - sitting in the library and Reading about homoeroticism in Brideshead.

Letters (unposted) are starting to pile up on my tale. Books and bits of paper and receipts and hair pins litter all available space - chairs, cupboards, shelves...

thursday 7 april
Wrote to Lucy. Feel something close to loneliness.

I grow cold, I grow cold,
I wear the bottom of my leggings rolled

"when you're young, I think it's harder to know what you want, how much of others you're willing to take in... I was always reinventing who I was... I used to roam around the streets in the late afternoon, stopping for a coffee here and there."

- Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved

 

 

friday 8 april

"Stockholm is too divine, darling. You'd love it. I'm starting to forget what you look like, and what you sound like, it's rather horrid."

1.8.2011 (23.16)

 

 

saturday 9 april

met M for coffee. We talked well into the three-hour mark, on art, literature, life... touched on the subject of Donald Trump with the barista, leafed through a copy of Private Eye to read about George Osborne imploding (v. amusing), critiqued the art on the walls of crying children ("that one is Paul Merton", "that one is watching us eat his chocolate") and sea captains ("he's looking at us like he's on The Office", "he's experienced great sadness and lives alone on an island, but surrounds himself with beautiful things", "that one isn't even a sea captain; he lives in the city and wears the outfit to make people thing he is one"). We even discussed my future life as a '20s socialite with absurd scenarios including champagne breakfasts, furs, and visiting Claridges and animal sanctuaries.

 

Dried off a Little (from a sudden downpour) in the library, Reading most of my facebook correspondence with Mr. Ryder. It was a desperate situation, really. Half-shame (of my complete lack of social grace and articulation, compared to Charles's) and half grief. It is like I have lost someone almost as in death. Now Sebastian has gotten somewhere inside of my soul, I don't know how I will be able to enjoy (or, endure) the impending summer without Charles. I have skipped the Prologue, Et in Arcadia Ego, and moved straight to exile.



 

 

 

 

wednesday 27 april

my life is a real culmination of the LORD's sense of humour.

 

 

saturday 30 april

 "it was sad to see his tall figure receding in the dark as we drove away, just like the other figures in New York and New Orleans: they stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned. Where go? What do? What for?"

- On the Road

 



I want... total oblivion... until I am not quite here - not quite anywhere - somewhere where I'm not sitting with cold fingers and a throbbing heart and a brain in the middle of an infinite field of dry yellowed grass, starched stiff and withered by the sun. The only rain in sight is the salt water that wells & drips from my eyes and down my cheeks and colours my face grey.

 

 

 

monday 2 may

"'What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?' She didn't know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost."

- On the Road

 

it was a fine day; a perfect day. I went down to the park and sketched and read and Sal Paradise's prose became suffused with it all, it became a dream. The warm sun, fresh green grass and dark dirt filling my nostrils with its scent, birdsong, the sound of the fountain, murmur of voices, footsteps. And then time was up and I raised myself from that good place and cycled through the cobbled streets, bouncing over the stones, my head filled with Mexico and Dean Moriarty and the pubs had opened their balconies and people spilled out of them sprawled on the chairs, old men sat talking on white benches. Tulips and daffodils sung out in their brilliance, a white-bright colour of red and yellow in the grass. The rows of cherry trees lined the pathway and that scent of spring, that indeterminable fragrance, a bouquet of the freshest flowers, the curl of sap on the tree, a drop of dew, just lifted up and carried past me as I lifted up my head and tried to find more if it, the blossoms & branches throwing shade on my body as I cycled through that enchanted garden ~

spotlight: 'greener world' and 'genius loci'

The weather here in Lund is, as usually, unceasingly miserable. The rain somehow seems to hang suspended in the air, clinging to your hair, skin, clothes. Wearing all of your waterproofs at once is not only a glamorous look, but the only way to go out, if you must go out at all. To fend off the oncoming cabin fever of another day in the apartment, I thought I'd share the music and art that has enchanted me of late.

GWILYM GOLD - GREENER WORLD

'Greener World' is the first track from Gwilym Gold's newly-released album A Paradise and is best listened to through headphones. If my week was made into an unnervingly pretentious short film, it would feature this playing in the background as I stare at the buds blooming on the trees and bushes on my daily commute in the gathering light. Gold's voice is just divine... this song is divine. Needless to say it's been on loop all week.

ANASTASIA SAVINOVA - GENIUS LOCI

Sweden, Gotland. Collage print.

'Genius Loci' adorns the walls of one of my favourite cafes in Lund, Coffee Break. These pieces are the work of Russian-born artist Anastasia Savinova, who now lives and works in Umeå, Sweden. At a first glance, I thought these were painted works, but upon a closer look, they are in fact intricate architectural photo collages. Each piece is based off a city or country, ranging from Sweden to Russia, France to Israel. In her artist's statement, she writes,

"While architecture and landscape are visual components of the integral image of the Place, at the same time, this image is inseparably linked with a mentality and a way of life. It is saturated with “an incorporeal something”. Ancient romans called it “genius loci” – the protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, “genius loci” refers to a location’s distinctive atmosphere. A Big house on each collage is composed of many buildings, which are typical for a particular country or city, in their connection with the land and the spirit of the Place."

Belgium. Collage print

Skåne. Collage print

Sweden. Collage print.

This week I've started a new sketchbook/collage book, and a book for researching artists; celebrated St David's Day; played more Beyblades (or "bley bleys", as Linus calls them) than I think I've ever done in my life; and made some anniversary presents for my parents. And I've finally reached Harry Potter och dödsrelikerna (The Deathly Hallows) in my swedish reading challenge...

My leaving quote is, in a nod to my reading challenge, a quote from Professor Dumbledore's notes to 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' from The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

"This... speaks to the dark depths in all of us. It addresses one of the greatest, and least acknowledged, temptations of magic: the quest for invulnerability... No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental or emotion. To hurt is as human as to breathe." 

"every sound has its own handwriting"

Skåne is the Wales of Sweden: if you look out of your window, it is probably raining. It is quite easy to let it dampen down your creativity, and surviving winter still being able to occasionally produce art is something of a joy to me. I have to constantly remind myself that 'creativity' covers a multitude of things, from sketching, to weaving, to reading, to cooking. And just because there isn't always a finished piece or physical outcome, it doesn't make it any less of an achievement. 

If you had asked me a year and a half ago what I wanted to do in my life, I would have probably given a look of existential crisis. I was working as a teaching assistant in a rough school and although I loved the kids to bits, I spent my working life with my nerves in tatters, knowing that as soon as I left the staff room after my lunch I would be the one at the centre of gossip, just like whoever had left before me.

Coming to Sweden has been a life-changing experice, and I don't say that lightly. In addition to being able to speak the language better than ever now, God gave me a completely fresh start. It has allowed for my creativity, lifestyle, and spiritual gifts to blossom in a way that I never realised was possible. Every day is an act of thanksgiving for the wonderful privileges I have here. And even the rainy days hold something utterly dreamy to them