cardigans and a green bottle

A few drops of scent from a tiny, green bottle. A long cardigan that even warms my knees. Walks among dripping fir trees and in neighbourhoods with wood smoke and friendly dogs. My favourite books with yellowing pages. 

These are my October weapons.

the lost era of kissing strangers

The strangest things right now:

The closed doors, closed nations, closed faces. It used to be a comforting thought, that there were always places in the world just waiting to be experienced. I used to hate the fact that everything in my town closed down for the night. It made me feel alone. Now the whole world seems to be closed down and nobody knows for how long.

The utter paradigm shift in how we live our lives. I watch movies less than a year old and they seem to be from another century - a time when people kissed strangers, elbowed their way through crowds, laughed when somebody sneezed in somebody else's face, pressed elevator buttons without any compulsion to wash their hands afterwards.

my new virtual reality

In the not so good old days I used to go to work coughing and sneezing. I only called in sick if I felt that I might be dying.

Now, if I sneeze just once, for any reason, I'm expected to stay at home. And I do, of course. I don't even have to go to work if I'm in perfect health - I can do my job without ever leaving home.

My city is closing down again, battening down the hatches. Schools close, restaurants close, it's a ghost town after dark. Teenagers go for wild drives, every one else goes for walks. People walk in the woods, by the sea, in the parks. The virus is making us a working-from-home, ordering-take-away, video-conferencing, country-dwelling, walking people with very clean hands.

I had drinks with my friends last Friday. There were snacks, candles, a great atmosphere. We chatted for hours - via video conference.

the procrastinator and the American

If you're a procrastinator, you will always be a procrastinator.

It could have been that American guest professor I had at university who said it. He taught me what the word means. I had never heard it before, my mother tongue Swedish has no such word. 

He had his good sides, that professor, although all the students were scared of him. He was too demanding and then disappointed in our efforts during his courses - like most of the other guest professors who came from the UK or the US of A to a small Finnish university where the students at the English department were surprisingly good at English but terrible at analyzing literature and writing essays. (Finland is a country that teaches languages but not literature. Strange but true.)

"Do NOT procrastinate when you write your essays during this course," he warned us, with something vaguely threatening beneath his charming American smile. I of course procrastinated wildly and handed in my essay after pulling an all-nighter just before the deadline, as always. I hated writing essays (and receiving disappointed feedback on them later). I hated all-nighters and deadline panic even more, but that didn't help. They were a constant ingredient in my university life. I was a procrastinator, preferring instant gratification to self-discipline. Born that way.

But I'm not a procrastinator anymore. 

Maybe I finally had had enough of instant gratification. For a while I did only what pleased me and it didn't take long before the inevitable emptiness of that life caught up with me. It was probably that and the hatred of deadline panic which changed me eventually. It took years.

The heady feeling of accomplishment and the unexpected pleasure in having set routines for work/study are strangely addictive. Also, I am driven like never before. I was never ambitious. But I have an urge to get things done because life is short and you don't want to waste time fretting over chores when you could just get them done and then go do something more fun, or something great and meaningful. 

And studying is much more fun if you're actually interested in learning something. Which I wasn't for years. But I am now. Life is full of fascinating facts and the more you know, the more fascinating it becomes. 

So I'm not procrastinating anymore (except when it's about washing the dishes). I'm not scared of Americans either.

more like a creation myth

she fills the cracks in her sidewalks

with honeybee forgiveness

monsoon hair hanging into

a mug of lukewarm tea

she is less like a love story

and more like a creation myth

                                (- ap)

a minor invasion

Someone out there is in love with me. It's strange, how it should feel wonderful but always feels like a minor invasion.