the end of an era

Two more days. In 48 hours I'm getting off the plane in London.

Today Maria is flying from Sweden to New York.

I was reading old, unsent emails. It was like looking at a very old picture, or seeing something through water, I remember it of course but it's not real anymore. It's not my life anymore. My life used to be pretty crappy but now it's awesome. It's funny really, how you can feel so bad and so good about the same things, or the same people.

I know I have made the right choice.

heavy happiness

I really want to write something about what it feels like leaving Cork after two years, leaving my job, starting a new life in a city I can hardly remember, leaving my friends, returning to my old friends, but I cant think of any way to express these feelings.

I want to write about the very beautiful necklace Maria gave me, and the beautiful card that almost made me cry, or how strange it feels that not only do I not live with Maria anymore, I'll also be living in a totally different country.

And it feels so good to leave and it feels so strange and life is thrown upside down and am I going to be a stranger in my own home? Or will it feel like coming home?

Home is where the heart is.

Now I'm going to buy a Hotpot at Berries for lunch for the last time, I guess.


Listening to: KROPP - Ordning

festive

So very soon Electric Picnic is starting, and I am not going, and it breaks my heart a little. So extremely many bands that I really love and a festival that seems like it was made for me!

And to make me even more miserable, I'm missing FFF this year. And if anything breaks my heart it's that.

Apart from the heartbreak of missing these two festivals, one that I've never been to and one that I've visited many years and worked with the last two, and love more than I love any other festival, or event at all, I have other thoughts: all the people I grew up with are so old now. They look so different, bigger, more worn. Am I old as well?

Now: time to wash my dinner plate and put my lunch box in the fridge.

Listening to: My Playlist on Spotify
Days left untill I go home: 23

a plea (and other stuff)

Oh I have been so active today! I was going to go to the gym but as I was trying to convince myself that I really should do the dishes I realized that however good it is to go to the gym, when you would rather do dishes... well, it's not that important. I don't want to take the joy out of it.

So I went home and did all the dishes, sorted the washing, cleaned up my room lots, finished a painting, started a new one that I've been thinking about for ages and listened to Neil Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book for a couple of hours and I love it. And I ate Peking Duck.

If, or when, I leave Ireland I will miss Eva House. I'll have to come back now and then to eat Peking Duck here.

So yeah that brings me to the other point: I am looking for jobs in Sweden and I'm hoping (um, obviously) to move home. At some point. If I can find a job and place to stay. In Ireland you can find a place to rent in an afternoon and move in the next day. I'll miss that too.

And I'll miss how the hairs on Joe's arms are almost invisible untill the sun shines on them and they light up like fiery copper. It's very pretty.

Anyway if any of you Swedish people who say that youre going to visit me actually do, that would be great, because you could do me a huge favour: (and this is the plea) come over and bring stuff back. I have so much stuff. I won't bring it all home but there's so much that I really don't want to leave. I've had a life here for soon two years. That means a lot of stuff. (Of course the same things work for people in Ireland, if you want to come and visit me in Sweden, but you guys are like... three. So yeah, not getting my hopes up there.)

I'll have to leave my very comfortable desk chair, Moses, that I bought in Belfast. I'll miss that. (I once had a cat named Moses, he was huge and black and he would look at you like you where insanely inferior to him. And a little annoying.)

Listening to: My Playlist on Spotify - Everything from The Aposte of Hustle to Howlin' Wolf, aw yeah.

home, boys, home

So in twenty minutes - at eleven - I leave work and take a cab to the airport, where I will be flying home to Sweden! Woop!

Also I'm in love. In love with a house.

travel

On the road again, pretty soon. But I'm just going to Lund. Or it's not so just, but I wont be going anywhere else. And woop! Joe is coming with me for a few days! We'll be arriving in Lund on the eighteenth and we'll be staying in my apartment. It feels great but I think it's gonna feel weird going back with no Ida here. She left today and I was crying most of the morning.

Been keeping busy reading webcomics like Girls with Slingshots and Hark, a Vagrant. I realized that there's a chance I like female comic artists better. I pretty much love comics, and there are lot's of male comic artists on my list of favourites, but the very very best ones often turn out to be women.

And then there's a crazy amount of crap. That's the nice thing about the internets. The crap. The unbelievable amounts of crap. And other stuff. I love finding pearls of niceness in the ocean of random bad and/or boring stuff. Haha.

Well, from the nineteenth this month and about a week forward I'll be giving away stuff, hugs, books, furniture, teacups, cd's, clothes, ducks, more stuff and some other stuff and accepting drinks, hugs and hangouts. You can't have my skiis though. I want to keep them. And a couple of other things. But apart from that, lot's of free stuff for pretty much anyone who shows up and grabs it! Yay! (Also you can spy on my handsome boyfriend.)

Also yeah not really getting used to that concept holy cow boyfriend? Wow. It's scary and awesome but mostly we have lot's and lot's of fun. Like the other day when we went to the beach and I hurt my foot. Uhm. Crappy anecdote yeah but it was a really good day. My foot still hurts.

Yeah scary stuff, boyfriends.


Listening to: Rachid Taha - Ida (by coincidence!)

home again

Home... Which in this case means "home from work" and also "not down at the pub". Tonsilitis and an ear infection made that happen.

Another angle: I feel more like a stranger than ever at the moment.

So I realized something, anyways. I got basically everything I need. There is a bunch of stuff i want but nothing I can't do without. So that feels kinda good. New attidude. 

This week has been mainly pain, art and anime. And Ghormenghast. Painting for the first time in years and man I like acrylics better than oil! Mostly staying in bed though. Ear infection equals dizzyness equals nausea. Sucks.

Found a new webcomic that I like; The Zombie Hunters. Also been listening a lot to Jan Garbarek and Deep Forest, great stuff to paint to. 

Wish canvas was cheaper. 

Watching: Crossroads, from '86 (not the one with Britney, the one with the blues! It's great!)

ghosts

Second floor.

So I'm back and getting settled in the me I am here. People are really happy that I'm back and they smile at me and say nice things and I was picked up at the airport and today they've started forgetting I was ever gone. Things are very different but also the same, of course. There's two new Swedish girls (and a couple of Danish boys and a Swedish guy) and they are supernice. It feels so wierd though. Everything, still.

Things have really changed, I have really changed. Maybe not during the vacation but well... A combination of moving here and going back again.

No regrets.

You are always there. All the time. Haunting me. I was wishing and hoping but now I feel like it would be so much easier if I could just talk to you sometimes. I don't know if I can stop hoping but it hurts to much to wish. I try not to think of you. It's hard.

I feel good though.

beautiful evening

Sara is back.

Johan and Viola moved out, Maria and I cleaned the whole first floor, I'm sitting in the livingroom, listening to great music, there's a gentle light over it all. From the sky and the candles in the coconuts.

My body is aching from to much drinking and lots of small wounds that I don't remember getting and not enough sleep and I should go to bed. But I want to stay down here.

We made a great chicken-bacon-feta cheese-spinach pie. And had some ice cream.

I wish I could be here to appreciate it. God I want to be here and feel like before.