Over There

Wrote this two days ago, so it is not really current- but thought I might post it anyway:

 

Landed yesterday, or today actually, I texted mom and Vanessa when I had landed and you were awake- on your way to work. Great flight, made two new friends, one South African girl my age, Bailey; and one L.A-girl Mea,  both living and working here. We’re gonna keep in touch and I think I’ll take them to a dance, whenever one shows up. They gave me a fast-track intro to the city, what to do and what not to do. Places for cheap fun, hairdressers, cheapest pedicure and all that haha…

 

I apologize to those of you who are most close to me and still needs to read this in English. Well, see it as an exercise or somthing, I dunno, I am gonna keep this language because of my international friends, Really hope you don’t mind.

 

Time is now 08.05 and I just woke up beside a tired Skye. Seeing him is like breathing out again, I missed him so much, and I need to reassure myself I am not just a victim of a crazy crazy dream. Getting up because I can’t sleep, am so tired but equally excited and awake. It’ll all hit me in the afternoon

 

I woke up just now, as one wakes up, slowly taking in the surroundings, the time, the place, the life- and wondered if I am really here. Yesterday was so surreal with the 24 hour traveling and the lack of sleep from the night before. Feels like I owe my body something, maybe a bath, maybe a good breakfast, or maybe a stroll down Times Square- which is right outside our hotel window.

In wondering whether I am really here, I lay in bed listening and smelling. The total hotel room quiet, the level and clarity of different sounds; the room A/C, the sounds around me could be any hotel. I press my ear toward the mattress- listen to the springs echo in the big bed- I listen but I can’t hear any cleaning lady, no foreign accent, no high-pitched shouting. But then I listen again, try and listen beyond the window glass, out there in the morning, And I can hear it, the deep buzz of the city outside, the sounds of motors and horns shielded from me by  tall houses and the empty echo they have betweeen them and in their slow morning back-alleys. I can hear this city, and the sounds that are it and only it, feels like I’m inside of something living, like I can hear blood pulsating around me and a heartbeat and air drawn in and pushed out. I am microscopical, like part of some signal substance that flow around. And around here is a buzz and there is peace and they don’t fight each other- there is space for everything in the air, even though it is different shapes and forms- it works- like a big reshapable puzzle- like all the organs pressed together in a stomach, sharing space with that heart, those lungs, all that blood.

 

I felt so little in the taxi last night. It was all so big. The realization of what I am actually doing, seeing Skye, seeing Manhattan grow closer, all the landmarks, all the roads that look like something out of a gangster car-game, the Brooklyn Bridge, and then suddenly we stopped just off Times Square -it hit me in the left ear-lobe when we passed it- and we were at our hotel. It is such a nice place, all left original 20’s style, but not totally refurbished, so it doesn’t feel restored retro, it feels like we’re there and F. Scott Fitzgerald might stay in the room beside us and in the lobby I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hermés hat boxes dropped on the ground.

I need to get up now. try and get some work done, housing, job, I have letters to write and calls to call. I have a city to explore and a man to enjoy, but first of all I have a breakfast to eat.

 

Just gonna share a poem I wrote in Central Park last time I was here 2003:

 

Straight towards ends of endless streets

crossing the marks after poor mens’ feet

It makes me believe in all I’ve been told

so in love as the story unfold

 

As the story unfold I find holes in the ground

My mind has been sold

A home has been found

I certainly know “this is love this is it”

as the wind starts to blow

and the streetlights are lit

 

 

Love/Mimi

Captain Mimi

“You are a walking catastrophe!”

The Swedish equivalent of this were the exact words my father used, when I talked to him about an hour ago. It is now late Sunday night and I am sitting in my bed licking my wounds. I am a walking catastrophe, a bundle of hybris, a wandering menace. Who lets me out on the streets, tell me anybody?

Frida, Skye’s dance partner and her boyfriend Kristache came to visit me today. They were on Sunday Adventures that had brought them to my island of Tjörn. They called me and I asked -House or boat?, upon which they both answered -Boat!

-Great, said I, let’s meet there and sit and chill while the sun goes down. 

The evening was warm and there was no wind blowing. The seagulls were all sitting on the cliffs tired from fishing and enjoying one of the last summer days. So I met them by the boat and we cabbed down and had some cozy times. Off course I had brought some candy, and the boat key, in case they wanted to take a little tour along the close coast of our boat place. This is an area I know well, I know where the grounds are, I know on what sides to drive of the buoys and I know how to handle meeting another boat out at sea. All cool. Let’s go out for a mere quarter of an hour, just hear the sound and smell the smell of the sea and the engine. 

Skye and I had been out a few weeks before, we had done so well, we were ever so careful and made sure everything was done right. So what was there to fear? We went out, had the coziest of times, talked, laughed, drove slowly and calmly. It was all going so well. Relaxing into it I stood up driving, they were sitting in the front, I was standing through the hole in the ceiling with my foot on the wheel, as my father always does. Swimmingly, I thought, it is going swimmingly.

After twenty minutes we turned and went back the same way we came from, the sun was setting, the sky showed off in brilliant pinks, oranges and blues, and the sea did it’s best to reflect it all in it’s mirror. It was so beautiful. When we were about three minutes away from landing the boat, I heard a POW, and I jumped high and disappeared into the boat. Frida said later when we came home, she had turned around and couldn’t see me- the boat had filled up with evaporated water- the motor had overheated completely and stopped! 

They hurried back into the rear of the boat and we were all giggling nervously, pending between astonishment and stress, how could this have happened?

Kristian was quite calm though, his experience with old car motors told him we had very little to worry about, the engine was too hot and exhausted, and it needed us to wait for it to calm down and get cool again. I went through everything in my head, had I forgotten some elementary thing before starting the motor? Had I accidentally pushed some button? Or was this just my nature with technical things, just the way it goes when I believe too much in my own ability?

You are so able, my boyfriend tells me, you make things happen. That is a beautiful compliment, and yes, I had made this happen, but how?

Kristian asked me, is there a pump going, cooling down the engine? There it was, thought I. When I steered the boat with my foot, I had accidentally toughed the key with my foot, turned off the electricity and stopped the cold seawater pumping through the system. Motor overheated, in minutes. Of course. How stupid isn’t that?

The big problem was that, now, we were stuck at sea really close to our final destination, but a little too far from land to shout to anyone, and oh, my phone was turned off yesterday from an unpaid bill. And none of my friends had a phone with them. Kristian found a vent to screw that let the excess steam out of the unhappy motor. It sighed and everything was quiet and very warm. We took the lid off the hot engine and warmed our sea-cold hands over it. It was hot enough to cook a whole family dinner on. Too bad we didn’t have any eggs. 

A man looked out from a balcony and saw us sitting there, after half an hour. My voice carried clear and strong over the still water. -Do you have a phone we could use? -Yes, but how on earth do you think I could get it to you?

That is a problem, thought I. So we needed to try and start the engine and drive to him, to get the phone. The engine started…for five seconds. After about ten little spurts of five-second motor startings, we had drifted close enough for him to take hold of the front of the boat, let us ashore, and I called my dad. 

-You are a walking catastrophe, Mimi. He just sighed the words, as if he had somehow anticipated a phone call from me, having made his boat explode or burn up, or crashed against some rock. He knew it could happen and that it has always been a risk he had to take, in his eagerness to teach me to use his most faithful and loved companion. Mmm-hmm, thought I, so that’s why he told me these things so many times, he wasn’t just being daddy-like. He actually thought it was something likely to happen, as I was involved. Of course. Did you accidentally turn off the electricity?  Yes. I thought so.

Then I called my mom. She just said, Go home, see you later. But, shoudn’t I stay til you get here? No, just go home. These tired voices, they didn’t even let me clean up my own mess. Now the neighbour and his even more able son, were going to go out and pull our little dunk-dunk-dunk-boat with their freaking bathtub of a soul-less boat, to our boat-place. I was put out of service. 

But Frida comforted me, as I was half laughing, half worrying, she had left her wallet in a shopping mall sofa earlier in the day, and she had called her landlord earlier this month apologizing for an unpaid rent that wasn’t unpaid, actually paid for for months to go. We are walking catastrophes, many of us, there are more from the planet I came from.

Now I’m at home, thinking about my mess. Even when I plan to be careful, there’s something frighteningly adventurous inside of me, something that makes me think I am too able. Sure, this thing makes me pull together big projects and make them happen, this thing pushes me on and makes me the person people like to be around, things are not boring in my near surroundings. 

But what have I learned today? Will I most likely make the same mistake again? No. I will most definitely not make the exact same mistake again. That key will be as watched as a baby taking it’s first few steps. But there are endless possibilities to Mistakes Makeable. There are versions of the same mistakes, there are other vehicles I can think about driving, other routes I can think about taking. 

I am moving to New York in seven days. Bigger city- more possibilities, more chances. This island turned out to not be Mimi-proof. Is New York City Mimi-proof? Most likely not.

Impaired Speech

Just talked to my love on Skype, or, I talked and he wrote. It was so good though, his writing was him and my voice was mine- it is just very rarely one combines two ways of communicating at the same time. But I could sing him a song over the phone and he had no way to make me stop, I could give my own private radio show, it was funny. Plans are now set for first NY week. I land, see love, hang out with him, Peter and Gemma for a few days. Eat french pastries at daytime and Krispy Kreme at nighttime, and NY-pizza in between. Then we go to Rosendale on the 3rd or something, to see his mom and then we go to Ithaca for a couple of days to meet everybody, dad, brothers, niece, and it is going to be so exciting to see the waterfalls I’ve heard so much about-

 

Which brings me to today’s rescue mission. I have to tell you. So, we got these alive sweetwater crayfish the other day in the fish-car. And normally, what they do is put them dry, on ice, and within one or two days they slowly die and people buy them alive or dead, to cook. They are the coolest looking little dudes, with their antennas and ball eyes- little dinosaurs- with little claws and little souls. So I started looking after them, putting them on display, sure, but keeping them in enough water and flipping them over when they had fallen, and they clung on to my finger sometimes when I did, they knew I was gonna help them. So, today, I had kept them alive for 4 days in the shop- and it was Saturday- time to throw all the leftovers. So I sneakily rescued them and took them home in my bag. Then I found a little bowl and put them in the car, and drove to this little lake up on the mountain. It is full of waterlilys and has a brown rich soil around it, lots of mosquito larvae in the water- Perfect. So I let the 6 survivors (about 10 had been sold, and another 10 died. Huller om buller on top of each other, they must surely be traumatized for life) out into the water. And they seemed tired at first, but soon their antennas started whiskering around and all legs started to move the little dudes in different directions and they were gone. I swear, one of them looked back, up on me, and said Thank you Mimi with his little bubbly voice. Made me feel good.

 

My friend, the crayfish

 

 

Must go back to my song now, just recorded some flute and added some strings. Pompous and orchestral, as we like it.

A new song

Thinking a lot about leaving, and I realize more and more that I’m gonna miss Michael’s studio so much. Making a new song every night right now, made two last night- and it is so much fun. Just had dinner with my folks and had a well-deserved glass of Merlot. I won’t have the same gear in the States, Vanessa and I will have out iBooks but they are very weak. I wonder what it costs with a new computer, and a Logic… Guess it cannot be my main priority. My economy will be very weak, at least in the start.

Got my lust back for singing a few days back, and it is such a blessing- right now I am longing to practice, to find a place where I am allowed to be at any hour- and just get started. I am leaving in a little more than a week, and I feel so unprepared in a way. I feel that I am just leaving and in some ways I have this sense that I am gonna be gone for a long time. I feel I am leaving a lot of things behind, but in a really good way. 

Everybody’s moving on, and so am I.

Late night at Tjörn

So, I am moving to The Big Apple. In 10 days to be exact, and it feels so unreal- feels like something so far-fetched, something I considered impossible for years, but it was only a step away all the time. Guess it was just not time to go until now.

In the basement of my folk’s house making some late night music, squeezing all the love out of my dad’s gear before I have to leave with a tired iBook and a bad version of Logic. I will make music happen though, I must.

Things are coming together quite fine before I go, lots to do, so many authorities to visit and letters to write. I want to do things right, and leave free from left over paperwork so I buckle down. As I said to Skye the other day, if I had these organizing skills any time else in my life than when I am moving countries I would have a blossoming career by now. But, still struggling with the old organizing and structure, always.

Where will I live, where will I work, it is all open right now. I only have the ticket and that feels great- to be out of school- I thought it would be something so defining of the future, but it is just blurrier. Not blurry like a pond, but blurry as an impressionist painting or something-

Need to sleep, fish wagon tomorrow again. Today I played with live crayfish, they crawled all over the place and hid under fish- they needed the dark, and did everything in their insect bodied might to get there. They’re probably dead when I get to work tomorrow.