hey

my digital camera is away on repairs.

just some links today.

the portrait party. i might try this. such a good idea!

good movies i've seen lately (in the past couple months):
the namesake (sweetest love story between the parents. and just beautiful all around.)
half nelson (on video. really really good.)
united states of leland (on video. same actor guy as in half nelson. depressing, but good.)
the lives of others (had no idea what this was about when i went to see it. almost left in the first 15 minutes because i was unprepared for the torture/questioning scene, but am so glad i stayed to see the whole thing. timely.)

flickr favorites of late:
rocketina makes interesting juxtapositions
ou la la's yulove
cheer me up and all elif's photos
trinity
kaarel's beautiful light as usual

i feel like there was more stuff i was going to tell you about/link to. but i guess this is it for now.

come in

when i was little i wanted to paint my future car with polkadots about this size. it was going to be a bug or a truck with the big front. you know the old timey kind. (i don't own a car now.)

anyhow, i almost want to switch hair salons just because vertical clearance looks so damn good. look at these floors! and their sign. and that's not even the half of it.

today i had an ice cream on my way home at the newish ice cream parlor by dolores park. (i guess it's not so much a parlor as a tiny store, but ice cream parlor has such a nice ring.) salted caramel. salt + sweet = perfect. (the sugarcone wasn't the best though.)

the weather is perfect and tonight my housemate is having a dance fight party for her birthday. FUN. after that, it's ALL homework ALL weekend. but it's fun homework, so that's ok.

i'm glad so many of you are excited about sew green! thanks for all the encouragement. sometimes it seems like environmentalism has become a closeted topic. (can a topic be closeted?) so many of us are interested, but most of us don't talk that much about it (on our blogs anyway).

more next weekend. off to clean the house a bit, and maybe have a nap in preparation for the dance fight.

miss rumphius

a picture of miss rumphius sowing her lupine seeds. miss rumphius, (story and illustrations) by barbara cooney, is one of my favorite children's books. sowing lupines is the way miss rumphius makes the world a more beautiful place. (making the world a more beautiful place is one of the three life tasks/adventures her grandfather puts to her when she's a child.)

the new project i mentioned last week is a collaborative blog about environmentalism/consumerism. some crafter-bloggers trying to figure out how to preserve (admire, understand, replenish, frolick in) nature's beauty. come on over to Sew Green!

peekaboo

it feels like it's been forever since i've posted or sewn anything. finally had a little time this weekend and finally made this bag from a thrifted skirt. i love the fabric. you can't really tell in the photos that it has a ruffly texture.

starting next saturday, i hope to post again at least once a week. in the meantime, on monday, i'll post info about a new collaborative project.

hope you all have been well.

until next time, here are some flickr favorites of late:

just lovely
love notes
feels like another world
feels like travel
peace: yeahyeahyeah

oh and a (long) excerpt from the excellent book i'm reading, the intuitionist, by colson whitehead:

From Theoretical Elavators: Volume Two, by James Fulton

To believe in silence. As we did when we lived in bubbles. Sentient insofar as we knew it was warm: Silence provided that warmth. The womb. Ants have it easy for speaking in chemicals. Food. Flight. Follow. Nouns and verbs only, and never in concert. There are no mistakes for there is no sentence save the one nature imposes (mortality). You are standing on a train platform. A fear of missing the train, a slavery to time, has provided ten minutes before the train leaves. There is so much you have never said to your companion and so little time to articulate it. The years have accreted around the simple words and there would have been ample time to speak them had not the years intervened and secreted them. The conductor paces up and down the platform and wonders why you do not speak. You are a blight on his warming towards departure. You cannot find the words, the words will not allow you to find them in time for the departure. Nothing is allowed to pass between you and your companiion. It is late, a seat awaits. That the words are simple and true is only half the battle. The train is leaving. The train is always leaving and you have not found your words.

Remember the train, and that thing between you and your words. An elevator is a train. The perfect train terminates at Heaven. The perfect elevator waits while its human freight tries to grab through the muck and find the words. In the black box, this messy business of human communication is reduced to excreted chemicals, understood by the soul's receptors and translated into true speech.

i'm loving this book. have any of you read it?

blog nap

i'm afraid my blog is going to take a nap until about mid march.

i don't know how people work full time and go to school full time. not to mention those crazies (or poor people) who do all that, and have kids and/or a social life. i can barely find time to shop for groceries/make a meal working 20 hours a week while going to school full time. for an introverted only child who needs quiet by myself time, this being out in the world most of every day (and doing homework when i am home instead of blogging, sewing, relaxing with pinky leon, baking, looking on flickr) is challenging.

in mid march my all-day saturday letterpress class will be over, and then maybe i can get back here.

until then, sweet dreams all.

ps. i did manage to watch the last picture show last night. what a great movie! it's going on my favorites list for sure.

flickry friday

taking a little break. back for behind the picture next friday hopefully, if not before then. (whenever i decide on a break i am inspired to post for some reason.)

this friday just a coupla flickr favorites:

secret - i keep looking at this one.

sleepy sparrow's photos - good colors, moods.

have a good weekend!

behind the picture

i've been foiled about five times now for this behind the picture project. the most recent time i foiled myself (if that's possible), being just before this picture, at breakfast. erica and i went to a local breakfast joint, where i'd planned on taking my behind the picture photo, but when i took out my camera i realized i didn't have my memory card in it. err.

anyhow, here is a photo i just took in the backyard. i don't hang out in the backyard enough. i like it back there.

if you look closely, you can see a basketball going through the net in the yard behind ours, just beyond the fence. a boy and a girl were playing there. they didn't talk much and didn't seem fiercely competitive. occasionally i'd hear them saying something in spanish in a pleasant way of kids just really into what they're doing. mostly it was just the basketball thudding in the background.

and water draining in another yard, perhaps from the washing machine. trees rustling with the cool breeze. one plane flying over. and a constant, though far off hum of traffic. a wind chime chiming.

despite all these sounds, it felt very quiet back there. i sat down on the cold, cold concrete in the sun to write down what was going on behind the picture. my butt was freezing, but the sun felt nice. it reminded me of breezy days in laguna sitting in the driveway outside our house hanging out with the dogs. the air felt really clean. (it's one of those days when one really notices air.) i had a slight headache behind my eyes. a full tummy after eating a chocolate shake, eggs, potatoes and sourdough toast for breakfast. (yes, a shake for breakfast.) still appreciating the relief i am experiencing after this. and appreciating supportive friends, family and blog readers.

please check out the other behind the picture players. links in the comments in this post. grey dandelion feather's is quite poetic. please join us next friday!

on stress and plastic spoons

this past week was really really stressful for me. at the end of the week, i quit my new job (the quitting itself was stressful as well). i noticed that when i am really stressed, i have less patience with my cat and sometimes with people. made me think about people fighting in/suffering from wars. i never understand the atrocities people are capable of during wars. but when i think about the level of stress people in war are under, i begin to see how their brains might change under those circumstances (NOT that stress is an excuse for atrocities/crimes against humanity AT ALL).

i felt how i was headed into depression because of the stress this past week. that tunnel vision was beginning, and i realized i had to get out fast. i was obsessing about things. couldn't let go of thoughts to rest. to sleep. the smallest tasks seemed so difficult. i felt terrible about myself. imagined i was getting all sorts of physical ailments and actually got some physical ailments. i am used to putting responsibility/commitment to a job/task first. but this time i had to put my health first. i am relieved now, though not quite out of the blue. that will take some more laughter with friends, some blogging and creating. homework. some attention to the world outside of my worries.

my all-day letterpress class today helped greatly. the teacher is this old italian san franciscan who seems to have lived an adventurous life. he must be near 80 years old, but he's still full of zest, humor and life. he's the perfect combination of surliness and affection. i'm sure he has his faults, but today all i could see of him made me beam inside. he made me happy. (at one point he reached inside the top of his blue apron/coat to get his glasses out, and they came out with a plastic spoon. he just put the spoon back, no comment, though i think he probably was a bit amused himself.) can a 33 year old lesbian have a crush on an 80 year old man? apparently.

play date postponed

for me anyway. life has rudely interrupted over here, and i won't be playing today.

i will post a behind the picture (see previous entry) entry on sunday. but please leave a comment if you played along today, so i can visit you, and so i can mention you in my sunday post. i know risa played. tomato soup for breakfast!

i'm excited that so many of you want to play along. can't wait to see what's happening behind (or around, during, before, under) your pictures.

wanna play?

things you can't tell from this photo:

it was taken yesterday around 11:15 am. (very late breakfast)
it was about 50 degrees farenheit in the kitchen, before i opened the oven door to let out the biscuit warmth.
i was wearing my clothes and a blanket.
i had to heat up some old, stiff honey to pour on the biscuit.
i think i got sick from this old honey later on.
it was quiet and pinky and i were the only ones home.
pinky leon jumped onto the table and tried to sniff the butter. (if i wasn't there, i'm sure he'd have done more than sniff.)
i moved the organic brown sugar (for the tea) off to the side for the photo because it didn't look pretty.
i have four and a half biscuits left over.
next time i'm making pancakes from the trader joes mix instead of biscuits.

i am just remembering the above, but i think it would be fun to do a project where you take a photo and note everything else going on at that time. a different kind of five senses game. wanna play? maybe friday?

on jobs and peter rabbit

after my first week (last week) of my part-time, after-school tutoring job, i think i might be able to cross elementary school teacher off my list of professions to consider.

i certainly could learn how to be more authoritative and could learn discipline tricks, and i suppose i will learn some of this while (if) i'm doing this job. however, being authoritative goes against my nature to some degree. and there are so many things to think about at once when teaching. it's just a bit too hard for me. i like working with the kids one-on-one, but working with groups of students is proving to be quite difficult. i do like to be challenged, but this goes beyond challenge for me, i think.

besides it being so hard, there are the additional factors against becoming a teacher - the f-ed up (in so many ways) school system (this is a whole other long post), the low pay, the all-consuming aspect of the job. (and it would be even more all-consuming if one were to try and challenge the system from within it, finding alternative, more interesting and more appropriate materials for students for example. and nowadays i guess this might be quite difficult, as schools are so focused on getting the kids to pass/score well on the year-end tests.)

i am not even sure i will be able to stick with this short-term job, unless it gets easier. right now it is causing me a lot of anxiety and taking up (mentally) much more of my day than the 3.5 hours i'm actually at the school. (i can barely even think about blogging or taking photos!) and of course i'm taking it all too seriously. it's hard for me to relax/be at ease when i don't feel i have enough control of a situation. and the more stressed out i get, the less in control of the situation i become. a vicious circle. oy.

it makes me think about this post that andrea wrote a while back about the path of least resistance. teaching is certainly not the path of least resistance for me.

but i'm going to stick it out a bit longer to see how it goes. i remembered that i have a tendency to feel overwhelmed and/or depressed when i start something new and the something isn't as i expected it to be. (i got depressed when i started graphic design classes too, and they turned out pretty good in the end...)

in other news, i watched miss potter saturday and loved it. what a wonderful woman that beatrix was. inspiring, sad, happy and beautiful movie. (i'm bringing one potter book from the library to tutoring tuesday because i know this one little girl in my tutoring group likes rabbits, and maybe peter rabbit will be just the thing...)

two more kitties + flickr favorites

two more purple kitties for gigi to choose from.

i am very excited to find amanda j's photos this week. they are so rich, in color, mood, story, beauty....can't get enough of them.

another excellent find this week: martin pavely (i like the sound of that name)
this one
this one and
this one

and finally three lovely cup/teapot portraits by:
lisa s
windowsill and
nikopen

so much beauty!

oh gosh, i must also point out:
this kitty
and this one

anne's wintergarden
and iris.'s self portrait
and girl from mars pony

enough!

virtual tea party - tea party remembered

the virtual tea party brought back memories of the above tea party (which is looking very pixellated now).

for the first version of my mecozy website, friends of mine were kind enough to dress up and pose for the homepage. the homepage used to be a granny tea party that, when you scrolled over the photo, became a hipster tea party. the message: mecozy tea cozies are the tea cozies to use at the modern day tea party.

now these photos are back to haunt my friends. they will live to regret the day they donned handkerchiefs to cover their product-styled hair in the name of shash's little tea cozy website.

more pics from our photoshoot here:

i'm enjoying seeing all of the wonderful tea ware at this virtual international party. i particularly like this mismatched teapot.

cheers!

walking watercolor

puple kitty for gigi

a friend asked for a purple kitty for her daughter. at first i said, i'm not really making softies these days. but within about ten minutes, i had four purple kitties underway. (she has to have some to choose from!) anyhow, above are a couple of them.

friday flickrs

another (this time winter) display from this window in SF

not sure what happened to this first week of 07.

but here are some flickr favorites anyway:
this photo made me burst into tears. so so lovely.
i keep coming back to this photo. the light, the quiet. fragility.
a cozy + colorful place
this one

and i'm sure you've all seen the wonderful collaborative new mornings photoblog, but just in case you missed it, check out 3191.

for 2007

things to consider doing
(besides feel like the above as much as possible)

go to city arts and lectures
go to opera/ballet/other performances
go to storytelling night
take a dance class
check out ashkenaz in berkeley
enviro-consumer blog
look into "spiritual" activities/groups in SF
visit glide memorial (for the singing)
figure out how to sew clothes (a skirt at least!)
make another bed quilt
draw/paint/journal more
creative writing class?
take card portfolio around to some stores
research what it takes to open/run a store
volunteer again helping homebound elderly
consume responsibly
get involved in some kind of peace work (even just letterwriting)
start listening to NPR again (put radio in kitchen)
try to watch NOW on tv
do more silkscreening at mission cultural center or cellspace
visit alcatraz, coit tower (and design bookstore nearby) and walk across the GG Bridge (can't believe i've lived in SF 9 years and have not done any of these)
find swedes to talk with
get rid of stuff
take more hikes
visit cor in grass valley
make food dishes + desserts (have dinner parties)
check out osento
swim, take yoga
get health insurance
do more and worry less (always on my list)
fall in love

happy new year friends!

top fives of 2006

taking a cue from my cousin's best of 2006 many lists (for days she's been posting lists), here are some of mine.

music i listened to most this year:

*martha wainwright
*pinback
*the weepies
*the decemberists
*interpol

favorite movies watched

*little miss sunshine
*no direction home (video)
*the science of sleep
*dirty pretty things (video)
*everything is illuminated
*bobby (ok, that makes 6. and i feel like i'm missing an important one.)

books i loved

*the known world by edward p. jones (FANTASTIC)
*the chosen by chaim potok
*everything is illuminated by jonathan safran foer
*extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer
*crooked little heart or blue shoe by anne lamott

favorite eats (some discovered in 06 and some just newly appreciated in 06)

*mexican chocolate icebox cookies
*russian cabbage soup
*scharffen berger’s milk chocolate bar (and i’m normally into dark chocolate)
*i do not generally frequent chain food places, but on the way back from oregon, my friend liz and i stopped at the a&w root beer place and i ate fried cheese balls for the first time. maybe i was just really hungry, but those things were SOOO tasty. so salty. so fried. so cheesy. i’m afraid i may need to go back to A&W in 2007 and revisit the fried cheese balls. you know just to see if i was dillusional from all the driving or what.
*carrots (or baked yams, potatoes, beets) dipped in trader joe’s yogurt and chive dip (i plan to try to make this dip myself because it seems really simple)

monday will be a list for 2007...

reminiscing

back at my parents over xmas, i did my annual pouring over all their old photo albums. this time i brought some photos back to SF to scan and send back with my mom.

although i want the photos to be preserved, i do like the way some of the photos are fading. some photos seem to fade to blue, some to red, some to yellow.

i have decided i must get a holga, because i just like square photos best.

here are my mom and i on our old deck, with waldo the pointer. waldo seems to be enjoying the bubbles most. that rock in the background is a (naturally occurring or rather, occurred a long long time ago and now erroding) sandstone in our yard. i really like the tones in these photos.

circular knitting needle trade?

i bought too long needles. they are size 17 (12.5 mm) and 26 inches around. they are bamboo needles from crystal palace. they were 20 bucks and are nonexchangeable.

i am looking for size 16-18 (i guess that's about 11.5-13.5 mm) circular needles but only 16 in. around.

leave me a comment if you want to trade!

i'll be back to blogging shortly. hope you all have had nice breaks.

happy holidays

i leave you with my favorite ornaments, the tiniest of tomten and the most surprised of little santas.

and of course my mom's collection of tomten, which i love and will be seeing soon.

i'm soon off to my parents' house and will probably not post until around the 28th.

have wonderful holidays of all sorts and see you soon.

purple and grey

yesterday i collected some of these yellow leaves for a project.
candle flame leaves.

it's true the seasons are not as dramatic here in california, but it just means we have to pay more attention. and contrary to some popular belief, we do even wear winter coats. in fact, i'm wearing mine now. indoors!

thanks to those of you who made it through that last post and expressed appreciation. sometimes after i hit publish, i get a slight queasy feeling. did i say too much? (i'm sure many of you are familiar with this.) but then you all come with your understanding comments and i feel ok. ideally i shouldn't care so much about the response, but i'm not quite there yet.

late at night

alien-esque self portrait

ever since i decided (now many months ago) to quit my stable job with the pretty good income and the health benefits, i have spent many nights awake much farther into the night than i would like. my mind races with thoughts of the various life paths that i could choose. there are so many possibilites. i realize i am lucky to have these possibilities (and/or to believe i have them), but they also overwhelm me. i lie awake alternately excited, impatient for a new day, and anxiety ridden/fearful about having to make big and little decisions/choices.

this is how my mind goes:

i want to do something physical, where i am exhausted at the end of the day. i don't want to be in front of the computer all the time. maybe i should pursue baking. baking is beautiful, i love treats and i like to produce something useful.

but maybe i need more intellectual stimulation. maybe i should apply to grad school and study literature.

or perhaps i stick with my graphic design program and see where that takes me. i am enjoying it. (but am i really passionate about graphic design, or am i just enjoying learning and being in school again?)

(at each new idea, i can diverge into all the positive and negative aspects of these paths of course.)

in january i'm going to start, along with others, an environmentally responsible consumer type blog. i want to learn more about ecology, the environment, sustainability, organic products/food, etc. (at this point i start brainstorming about names for the blog, about how to design it, about emailing all the contributors and about what that email will contain.)

maybe i should go to sweden for a while, try to attend a school there.

i want to redo my website really badly. but i should wait until i get a mac. (should i really get a mac? they're so expensive. and i'd have to get all the programs....)

i wish i'd learned carpentry from my dad growing up. it would be cool to be skilled in a trade.

i want to contribute more to society. maybe i should pursue teaching. (that's what the tutoring job you're starting in january will help you decide, kerstin. you don't need to worry about that now.) what about working with the elderly?

i also want to make art.

and pursue some communal/spiritual activities. dance, sing...

and there's always the store fantasy brewing behind all this.

and on and on it goes.

this is all in addition to the nightly time it takes me to review the day, chastise myself for all the silly things i did/said, worry about money and my current lack of health benefits, sometimes think about/remember my grandparents, remember what i plan to do the next day, think about my friends and family and any interactions i had with them, think about any projects i have going on and about the book i'm reading, sometimes think about what's going on in the world (although a lot of these self-centered thoughts i have partially to avoid thinking about what's going on in the world i bet), try to focus on a breathing exercise, patiently lie in the uncomfortable position my cat is forcing me into, until it becomes painful and i just have to move....

it's a wonder i can sleep at all.

i wrote the above a few days ago. then today i decided to reread some audre lorde essays. they are so full, those essays. i reread Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. the whole essay is amazing, but below are some excerpts. made me think differently about my above list which, in a way, is my attempt to understand what path is most erotic. though i realize that understanding will come from some kind of emotional/experiential resonance, rather than some analytical process, so no amount of late-night worrying is going to lead me to the answer.

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society...But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

...

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women

...

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But once recognized, those which do not enhance our future, lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to supress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.

...

But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our soicety. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

again, these are poet and badass Audre Lorde's words.

friday flickrs

i found moonmuffin's art through jenny's flickr faves. (i always find good stuff in her favorites.)

my favorites this week are all from moonmuffin betsy.

dear diary
winter indoors
book_page
kitty buffet (heehee)
goldengirl

dec 13th: happy sankta lucia!

for show and tell in elementary school, my friend heather and i performed sankta lucia for the class. that is heather on the left, holding her battery operated candle tightly, and i am on the right, holding my left hand tightly. 1980. must have been second grade then. i don't remember the classroom having all those crazy shelves. we must have been in the art room for some reason.

camilla posted a good link to a lucia description.

so did my cousin karin.

bits from sunday

seems i'm taking pictures of a lot of circles and reflections lately.


first, fika/lunch at samovar with a friend.
tea, curry egg salad sandwich (not pictured) and a coconut rice pudding. mmmm.


ceiling of the nook in samovar

off to see for your consideration

then a walk through hayes valley. i never walk around in hayes valley because it's so expensive and somehow out of the way, but it's fun to look in the stores. there seem to be several scandinavian-inspired stores. there's one called scandinavian decor (or something like that), one called smak (which means taste in swedish, either taste as in taste this food or taste as in she has good taste) and is a clothing store, and some others that just seem to carry swedish goods. (there's also a swedish clothing store in the fillmore called flicka {girl} and owned/run by a swedish woman and a swedish american woman. they get to go to sweden twice a year on business. i need to have a store like that!)


on the way to my friends' house i passed this wreath,


this green globe,


and this house covered in ivy.

friday flickrs

friday flickr favorites:
sannah is a badass
undies
i want to eat these chairs. the whole photo.
cutest puppy
i like these colors and the feeling of morning, getting ready...
that blue pitcher in the background
mmmm, mav's avocado and photo. (or is that a pear!)

winter colors

the sun is shining and it's not so cold, but the trees are turning wintery. muted colors - greys, sages, maroons. but fall is still lingering with yellow and gold leaves in other places. and even green as well. so much color. right now i'm enjoying the quieter colors though.



i have a cold and am trying to take naps. it's hard not to go outside into the sun and admire the trees though.

(the poloroid with flash is quite forgiving. i wish my skin looked like this. ha!)

inspired by mav's beautiful poloroid self portraits.

thank you

well, the sale/party was a success! i completely forgot to take pictures. hosting parties is not really my thing, so i was pretty anxious/distracted throughout, but happy that the party overall went well. so many nice people came over. thanks all of you who stopped by and thanks to all the sellers.

above is a hat i received at the sale in a trade with blanche, who got one of my sheep.

my camera is not uploading photos anymore, so i may take a bit of a blogging break here until i get a card reader. also, i tend to feel like hiding out for a bit after parties. but maybe i'll try not to do that. maybe i will scan and post old photos instead this week.

thanks also for all your sweet comments about my last post about mormor. you all got me teary all over again (in a good way).

old photo

an old photo of my mormor and her sister. mormor is on the left. i can remember her doing this with her leg when she laughed, the top leg sticking skyward (often even higher than it is here), foot flexed with glee.

i like to recall how she moved through the world physically (as well as spiritually).

i can see her in her later years, in her apartment on john erikssonsgatan in stockholm, moving from the small kitchen table to the sink directly behind her. i sat across from her on the kitchen bench. the way she stood, perhaps somewhat unsteady (though not seeming to notice this herself), and swiftly cleared a plate from the table, barely moving her body, but quickly moving her arm in a fell swoop sort of way. it might make a stranger a bit nervous, like she might easily drop a plate, but it did not make me nervous. i was used to the way she moved.

i know all of my aunts, my mom and my cousins had special relationships with my mormor. she recognized and appreciated each of our unique personalities, talents and interests and forgave us our faults. and she was the person we all got along with. and i think those of us in the family who felt like outsiders at some point or another for our various reasons, all felt like at least she understood us, knew us and shared a closeness with us. what a gift.

the two years i lived in sweden, my mormor’s apartment was my landing spot. i stayed with her when i arrived, when i had vacations, and before i left. i feel lucky to have spent these times with her alone. walking to the store, post office and bank in kungsholmen, eating at her kitchen table, riding the bus and train together to various places. just occupying the same space and time. i was often quiet and she would tell me stories about her childhood and of morfar and their meeting. i like to think (and do think) it was obvious to her how deeply i loved her and morfar and that she knew i loved to hear about them, and that this was why she told me the stories.

it is almost a year now since she died. i think i will be thinking of her a lot this month. a friend told me she feels her grandmother’s presence more and more as time goes on. i hope i feel this way too. i do miss her physical presence though, her laughing foot pointing skyward. her short upper body (which got shorter with age as i imagine mine will someday too) and tall in comparison hips/legs, one hip jutting out more and more as she grew older and shorter, causing a bit of a lilt in her steps.

it's so strange and wonderful how people have such particular to them ways of moving and tones to their voices. even holding someone's hand, people seem to have particular densities or something. particular energy or consistency. spirit perhaps?

(for my cousins and mom. karin and mom, i think you're the only ones who read this...) kan ni inte hora hur hon svarar i telefonen sa varmt, "HEJ pa dig, du {eller ditt namn har}." jag tanker pa detta ibland for att jag kan hora det sa val o det kanns sa valkommande o karleksful. med morfar hor jag hur han svarade pa nagot man sa, "sager du det?" och "jaha, pa det sattet." det ar en till sadan dar daglig fras han anvande som jag brukar komma ihag, men just nu gor jag inte det.

i chose this photo because i haven't taken any new ones this week. i had only planned to write the first paragraph above, as a caption to the photo, but it became a long post instead.

see you tomorrow?