Nights like this

 

It's currently two o'clock at night. Or, some would say, in the morning. Sensible people are sound asleep by now. Not me - I'm engrossed in schoolwork. Not because I have to, I could just leave it until the morning. Only that's not a very good idea: Try to get me to concentrate on my writing at eleven o'clock in the morning, or at three o'clock in the afternoon - it will not happen. Trust me, I've tried. But as midnight approaches, I find myself becoming more and more focused by the minute - all of a sudden, I'm blind to things that normally provide huge distractions (cleaning, arts and crafts, a new episode of Pan Am...) and will write for hours if you let me. That's what's going on right now.

Make no mistake: This is not me "buckling down" or reluctantly sacrificing hours of sleep  - this is just me getting happily wrapped up in the task at hand (which tonight is pretty mechanical, as it has to do with translating), taking advantage of these wonderful midnight hours of distraction-free work. I'm quite content to be working for another half hour or so. This, to me, is part of the beauty of being a student: I can allow myself these kinds of nights when I feel like it, since I'm quite often free to sleep in the next day. I won't have to be at uni until one o'clock tomorrow. It's all good.

Snow globe

Sometimes I feel like I'm a little too detached, a little too cut off from the "real world". I hardly ever even read the papers anymore - I'm too busy being a nerd within my field of research, doing arts and crafts and just existing in this little bubble I've created for myself. It hits me whenever I travel to the capital doing thesis research, seeing all the grit and gloom of a big city. I realize it when I encounter people living outside my bubble.

But the thing is, I like it that way.

 
I really do feel like I'm living in a snow globe. A safe and secure, fairly idyllic little snow globe containing sweet friends, caring family, beautiful surroundings, whimsical dreams and academical analyses, art and writing and all things inspiring. A place where worries and problems are temporary and managable.

They say the only way to evolve as a person is to get out of your comfort zone. There's some truth in that, but I'm saving it for later - for now, I'm perfectly content within my comfort zone. At some point I'll be thrown out of it anyway, so until that happens I'm staying in it. Staying safe and sound in my snow globe.

They danced down the streets

I can't even tell you how much I'm looking forward to this film:

 

I have tried reading On The Road a couple of times, but I can't seem to get into it. Which is embarrassing, really, since it's such a cult classic, and I do love Kerouac's style of writing. Yet there's something that just doesn't resonate with me, so I'll lose interest in the story and start skipping pages... Which doesn't really count as reading in my book. Anyway - for some reason, I'm completely convinced that the film is going to be amazing! A road movie in the truest sense of the word, with lovely actors (I have developed somewhat of a girl crush on Kristen Stewart after watching The Runaways and Welcome to the Rileys) and that beautiful, nostalgic feel... How could it not be amazing?

After a week of train travelling and exams (My Italian exam went better than I thought it would, thankfully) I'm itching to do something with my hands again. I'll run out to the shop in a bit to get some more wire for my candle holder making, and I had an idea to pick up some sort of clay while I'm at it - I really want to make a ceramic owl for my desk. On that note, aren't these animal trends kind of random? A couple of years ago, all you could find in the shops were elephant necklaces, and now it's the same with owls... If it were up to me, seals would be next.

 

(And yes, I changed the name of the blog to the name I first had in mind, to better match the url. Thinking about these things is probably a sign that you have too much time on your hands...)

November love

How absurd - the last day of November is here. October felt like it went on and on forever (albeit in a good way), but November just whizzed past. A quick look in my planner tells me I've had quite a few tests and presentations, more lectures than usual and several church related activities along with a couple of visits from friends this month. Over all, it's been a good one, although I haven't got nearly enough things done. (Then again, I feel like I'm always saying that... Not good at all.) Tomorrow, I'll be starting my December off with a bang by taking my final Italian test. Madonna mia... I feel like we need an inspirational, uplifting picture here:

(This one will do.)

November favourites:

Mint chocolate milkshakes. 
I'm getting into a habit of bringing my laptop to my favourite café in order to escape the distractions of my apartment. (So far, it seems to be working.) I usually get there too late in the afternoon to be able to order coffee (as it would keep me up all night if I did), and they happen to serve the most fantastic mint chocolate milkshakes on the planet. Plus drinking it makes me feel very 50's American. I quite like that feeling.

Painted nails. 
Just painted nails in general - nothing makes me feel so instantly polished (no pun intended) and put together as a good manicure, preferably in bright red, ink blue, lavender or burgundy. Right now I'm wearing my vampiest, most Marilyn Monroe-esque red, so that I'll at least have something nice to look at while I'm trying to conjugate irregular Italian verbs tomorrow...

Academia.
Aside from struggling with my language classes, I've been quite into the rest of my studies and the whole university thing this month. I've recieved surprising support regarding my work, I've done some research of my own, I've picked up a couple of lovely thesis related books, and I'm just generally feeling good about that part of my life right now.

Christmas card making
Er, yeah. Some people go out dancing on friday nights, I make christmas cards. Several november evenings have been spent with a friend who's just as much into arts and crafts as I am, covering my floor with paper, glitter, old magazines, sequins and everything you could possibly need to make christmas cards. I do feel slightly ridiculous looking at the giant pile of cards stacked on my desk, but we did have heaps of fun making them.

Not that exciting, huh? I'd love for a month to come when my favourites are things like "going for spontaneous roadtrips with the windows down", "skinny dipping at midnight with new friends", "getting a poem published in a super pretentious anthology about the power of nothingness" etc... But, alas - it's too cold for skinny dipping, I don't have a car, and my poems really aren't that good. (They are very pretentious though. Brownie points?)

The last red berries

  November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows

...and we're somewhere in the middle of those two stages right now. Winter is very late this year. My university town is looking very Tim Burton-esque: The river running trough the town reflects the starry evening sky, and all the naked old maples provide quite a haunting sight - it's very Sleepy Hollow, very Corpse Bride. Beautiful.

Even I, the most easily spooked person I know, cannot bring myself to be afraid of the dark in this town - it manages to look charming even on the darkest of November evenings. And they are getting dark alright - darkness falls at four in the afternoon now, and soon we'll be down to just a couple of hours of daylight every day. (I told you I live high up north...)

I do find it quite cosy. It's a great excuse to indulge in some way-too-early christmas decoration-crafting (I'm very much into making beaded metal-wire hearts and fabric flowers right now) while watching cozy movie of choice. Personally, I've never really fallen for Love, Actually, so I'm going with one of my favourite guilty pleasures: Dirty dancing 2. Yes, the "Havana Nights" one. It actually features a christmas celebration, so I think it's justified... But really, it's just such a sweet movie. And so visually beautiful.

We just wanna make the world dance

I got up unusually early today (I normally have fridays off and sleep in) for a meeting with my professor, but he cancelled - which means I now have a whole long lovely friday all to myself! Considering that I've been out of town for four weekends in a row it will be so, so nice to not go anywhere this weekend.

My Big Friday Plans:
-have an early lunch
-bring text books to café, study
-write overly pretentious poetry while people-watching in said café
-draw something colourful while watching inspiring movie of choice
-make birthday card for dear brother
-sing along to Price Tag, Pack Up and other happy tunes

(I really, really liked the original 90210. I kind of still do.)

This week has been slightly packed - since I got back on monday, I've been working non-stop with thesis stuff and an art presentation. My Italian and French classes also take up way too much time, but they're fun in equal measure, so it's been worth it. The problem is, I never seem to have the time to just sit down and read for fun, or even read thesis-related texts, as I'm so busy producing text myself or learning grammar. This is probably why I find myself getting all excited at the prospect of emerging myself in books on postmodern theory and narrative method... Which is exactly what I'll do today.

Whishing you all a lovely friday!

Oktober love

I had a surprisingly lovely weekend, going back home to attend a celebration with the whole clan. My relatives rarely gather, but when we do, there's singing. A lot of it. And it's kind of awesome.

Anyway, October is over. That month was a whirlwind of doing things and going places, and for most part, I loved every minute. Of course, if I could relive the past 30 days I'd enjoy them even more, because I wouldn't allow myself to worry so much about every task and every trip - but it's still been the best month in quite a while.

 

My October favourites list looks like this:

-Green tea. It's basically the only tea I drink these days. Once I got used to the green kind (that is, once it stopped tasting like hay!) black tea simply started tasting too bitter and sharp for my liking. I do love non-flavoured green tea, but my favourite flavours are vanilla, cranberry and orange blossom.

-cardigans from the men's section. I recently bought a dark green one, and I've been living in it ever since.

-stormy weather. Few things make me as happy as a really windy day! (I feel like I can say this, since where I live, we haven't yet had any storms of the dangerous kind.)

-blue-tinted nail polish. I normally prefer my nails non-sparkly, but recently I mixed together an old silver polish and an ink-coloured one that I had a dupe of, and ended up with a lovely dusty metallic blue. 

-Unexpected coffee-breaks. This one is quite obvious, but there's nothing like running into a friend on campus and deciding to head for a spontaneous coffee to brighten my day.

 

This picture describes my university town perfectly - over the course of a weekend, all the gorgeous leaves disappeared. Just like that. And thank goodness for daylight savings - my mornings were getting unbearably dark. 

Still, I'm embracing November - this month with its foggy dawns and early twilights brings a very specific kind of calm and tranquility, and I intend to fill my days with lots of studying, arts and crafts and painting. October was hectic but wonderful, and here's to an even better November for all of us!

Things my teachers say

All of a sudden it feels like we're expected to choose the direction of our whole life. All of a sudden there are not as many options as we thought, and that feeling is absolutely paralyzing.

Whenever that happens, I try to remember something my professor once told me:

You really need to stop thinking that you need to know what you want to do with your life. Because really, you don't.

He's probably right. After all, not all decisions we make are lifelong and crucial. Those are very comforting words to hear from a respected adult in academia, and possibly the best advice I've ever been given.

Another teacher of mine, one with whom I've shared hours of exciting academical banter, once said with a sigh: "Kids these days - you think life is so short. It's not!" This exclamation was prompted by my rant about wanting to read too many subjects and not having the time to do it. These men are both in their forties, and looking at their careers, it's clear that they practice what they preach.

At some point next year, I will be graduating, whether I'm ready for it or not. (Probably not.) I love my studies, but I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. The plan, for now, is to work on my thesis and enjoy the process. And then I guess I'll just have to take it from there.

Gracious.

Happy Monday! Today, I have two curve-related musings that I want to share with you. Yes, curve-related as in related to female curves.

Curve-related musing no.1: I just finished reading The Lessons. (Lovely piece of campus fiction by the way, wonderful prose and interesting characters.) In that book, I found this description:

His girlfriend was lusciously plump and beautiful, poured into her dress to the point of appetizing overflow.

Isn't that just beautiful? Who wouldn't love to be described in that way? Probably the nicest description of the female form I've ever come across.

Curve-related musing no.2: No matter how much I like curves (my own as well as curves in general) I do feel like mine rob me of a little something - namely the option of going braless in public. After class today, I chatted a bit with the girl I'd been sitting next to. In the middle of a sentence I noticed that she was very blatantly braless. My reaction to this was an instant urge to compliment her on it, just like you would when someone has changed their haircut or wears a particularly nice shade of nailpolish: "Oh look, you're totally not wearing a bra today! Cool!"

That wouldn't have been a weird thing to say at all, would it?

I guess that's how I see the whole going-braless-thingy: like something nicely bohemian that I would definitely go for myself from time to time - if only it wouldn't cause as much, well, bouncing and discomfort as it does. To me, it's mainly just a way to slightly change up your look, and I will never fully understand those (I've talked to several) who will tell you how offended/disgusted they are by it.

(Just in case you were wondering, I obviously didn't say anything. Because, at the end of the day, boobs are boobs. And as we all know, thou shalt not comment on thy neighbour's boobs. Because chances are, thy neighbour might think thou art slightly odd. Even though thou only ment it as a compliment.)

September love

I would quote one of my favourite Bon Jovi songs, it's pretty cold for late September... But that would be blatantly lying. We had 22 degrees celcius in my town today! For us, that's about as normal as a snowstorm in July. I've been sitting in my favourite park next to the art museum all afternoon, reading and taking photos. Lovely.

So, September is wrapping up. For years now, I've been making these lists in my diary, here's this month's:


Favourites of the month 

-old-school aerobics classes (my gym is very retro and kind of dodgy, and I love it!)
-jojoba oil (Has done wonders for my skin this month)
-my new blue teapot (Need I say more?)
-Jean Paul Gaultier: Classique (My favourite perfume of all time)
-dark red nailpolish (Suitably vampire-y and autumn-y)
-homemade facials with tea leaves and honey (Better than any store-bought face masks)
-wire craft (You know, making candle holders and bowls out of wire? I love it)
-my new fringe (Best. Decision. Ever.)

I've been reading a lot more books than usual this month. Favourites have been One day (I'm really looking forward to the movie), The Lessons och La dame aux camelias. I've also been buying cheap but ornate picture frames and made random collages to put in them. 

(I do admit that both the reading and the collage-making have diverted my attention from my thesis work more than they should... I'll do better in October, I swear!)


 My favourite discovery this month has to be the Yale lecture series that I randomly found on Youtube. Yes, apparently Yale University posts a handful of their lectures online. You probably have to be slightly nerdy to appreciate this, but I was over the moon! So these last weeks, in the evenings, while cooking or drawing, I've been attending Yale lectures on gender studies and American literature... Kind of amazing.


All in all, September has been a fairly good month, even though it started out stressful and chaotic. To me, October is usually less stressful and more cheerful - it is my birthday month, after all! I'm planning to spend this weekend making carrot cake, celebrating with various friends, visiting the art museum and hopefully get some studying done as well.

Much love!

Tiro avanti

Life goes on. That's one of the truely wonderful things about life - you can wallow all you want, but life goes on, and at one point it's going to drag you along with it, weather you like it or not.
 

(I do like it.)

Finally, we had our first real autumn day in my university town: The trees and bushes outside my window are starting to turn orange, and the air has a crisp, smoky, almost wintery note to it. Since September has been unusually warm so far, I'm perfectly okay with this - the winters here are certainly very harsh and long, but I'm still always looking forward to the change of seasons.

The change from early autumn to late autumn is for me also marked by my birthday - I'll be 25 in a week. And just like I'm looking forward to winter every year, I'm also still looking forward to my birthday. I don't like throwing parties for myself, but I do like to have that one day a year when I'm allowed to feel like it's all about me. That's what birthdays are all about, really: Simply celebrating the fact that you exist.

Because it truly is worth celebrating.

I'll be celebrating by cutting a fringe, buying the perfect shade of red nail polish and baking toffee-filled raspberry cupcakes. Sounds mature enough.

My birthday whishes this year:

The perfect red lipstick (I've found the perfect shade for my nails, but not for my lips)
A fragrance locket (because I love perfume and the idea is totally romantic)
Juggling balls (I learned to juggle when I was 18, and I really want to take it up again)
A new scent (I'm thinking a cheaper perfume, perhaps a Bodyshop one)
Metal wire (I'm really into wire craft and I'm constantly running out of material)
A negligee (I really want something silky and sort of boudoirish... Which seems to be hard to find in reasonably priced stores, since everything is either hot pink, leopard or flannel)
New skincare (because I seem to be running out of everything right now)


And of course I'd love to get flowers. And flowery things. And flowery pieces of clothing. My year-long obsession with flowerprints shows no sign of fading yet, even though I should probably be looking at knits and wintery things instead... Oh well.

I wish you all a sweet sunday!

X

An aquaintance of mine died a few days ago. I guess it's not really dawning on me until now. I'll write "aquaintance", because formally we only knew each other from singing in the same choir for three years. But that choir toured quite a bit, and nothing brings people together like travelling: Durings those trips I've shared lipbalms and fears with him, skinny dipped with him, dealt with grief and stagefright together with him. He was a couple of years younger than me, which enabled us to develop an uncomplicated, siblinglike relationship.

Choir ended two years ago, and we lost touch. This year though, he was a freshman at my uni, so we've been bumping into each other on campus every other day. When I first heard that he passed away, my first thought was "Well that can't be true, I just saw him yesterday!" A very logical thought indeed, but for a while I simply couldn't take it seriously. I didn't even want to call a mutual friend to tell her, because I was half-subconsciously waiting for someone to tell me it wasn't true - it felt like a cruel joke, and I didn't want to fall for it.

Nobody is as loved as when they die, that's true - suddenly everyone has nothing but wonderful things to say about you. This is why it feels like such a cliché to say that X was remarkable, unusual, exceptional. But he was, which is why it is so hard for me to believe that he is gone - him of all people. When I first got to know him he was only fifteen years old. Let's face it, most fifteen-year old boys are either hopelessly awkward or overtly cocky. X was none of these things - he was relaxed, warm and funny. And as he grew up, he continued to be these things. He was open, caring and compassionate beyond belief. Once before a concert when I was quietly upset because the boy I fancied back then had failed to show up, X determinedly took it upon him to entertain me and brighten my mood, playfully hugging me and making me laugh. I hadn't even realized I was behaving differently, but evidently he had sensed my sadness - and cared.

A friend of his recently wrote: "Someone so loved can't just disappear, can they?" And even though that may sound naive, that's a tought I've been entertaining myself. He was such a lively person, he had so many dreams, so many friends, such a big life, such a warm heart - where is it all now? How did that elusive thing we call life just slip away, leaving only dead materia behind? Death is truely a mystery, and even though I have my beliefs to help me handle this, the fact still remains - the world just lost someone who could have made it into a better place. Of course, he already did, by spreading love and compassion like noone else - but still, why him?

These things are impossible to write without resorting to clichées. But I felt the need to write it anyway. The thing is, I was never so close to him that it would make sense for me to show up at the funeral, and I know his truely close friends are having an awful time right now - I don't want to be intruding on their grief. So this is me grieving.

Mischief managed

I haven't really grasped the fact that it is autumn yet. The leaves are still so green, the weather is still so sunny. I had quite a lovely weekend, doing pretty much what I said I would: I read up on some French, went to the gym and embroidered "Mischief managed" on to my grocery bag.

That last part now feels like a rather good excuse to talk about Harry Potter. And frankly, one should never pass up a chance to talk about Harry Potter.





I've been addicted to Harry Potter ever since I started reading the books at fourteen, ten years ago. I remember realizing that I'll be in my twenties when the final movie airs - and then adding, "but I'll probably have outgrown the whole phenomenon by then". Oh, how wrong I was!




The thing is though, I have kind of outgrown the books. I've read them so, so many times over. And to be honest, even though the main storyline is obviously great, I was always interested mainly in the subplots. The marauders, the people in the Order of the Phoenix, the village dymanics of Hogsmeade, the Weasley twins and their crowd... These were the things that really triggered my imagination.

To be honest: even though I no longer read the books, I do find myself drifting of into Harry Potter-related daydreams ever so often. I simply love the HP universe, the aestethics of the films, the magic itself and the well-written characters. Oh, and the fact that it fuels other peoples creativity as well - as proven by all the parodies, the photo montages, the hilariousness.




Well, I'm off now. I need to drop by Flourish and Blotts to pick up Spellman's Syllabary for my Ancient Runes class.

The List

On this beautiful blog, I found a lovely list of "theoretically achievable things", little dreams to fulfill and goals to strive towards. I've made several different versions of this list myself before, and if I were to make one right now, it would look like this:

1. Buy some really beautiful, boudoir-ish sleepwear (just for the fun of it)

2. Do backstage work at a play
3. Rent a little beach house somewhere warm
4. Translate a novel from English
5. Find a local pub or café to truely feel at home in
6. Actually write a book
7. Work abroad for a year or two
8. Take a proper roadtrip with friends
9. Become fluent in French
10. Walz with someone who really knows how to (once again)
11. Change my hairstyle
12. Go stargazing with someone who loves it just as much as I do
13. Throw an outdoors autumn party like this:

So that last thing might not happen - I just adore that picture - but those other things could actually happen at some point. The point of making these lists, to me, is not to frantically start working towards all these dreams, but just to remind myself that they are still there, if you know what I mean. It's so easy to lose sight of them and start focusing way too much on everyday life. Right now, numbers 1. and 9. are definitely the easiest for me to work on, so I guess I'll start with those...:)

On the list that inspired me to write my own, there was this one thing that I especially liked: "Read aloud with someone I really love". That is such a wonderfully theatralic, Jane Austen-y thing to do, and I feel like noone ever does that anymore. I definitely want to, some day.

A river's disguise

Now in Wienna, there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where Death comes to cry

It's friday evening, Leonard Cohen is singing softly in the background and my first week of classes is behind me. It really exhausted it more than it should - thank goodness for weekends. Mine will be spent drawing (I'm really inspired by amusement parks and vintage circus pictures right now, and I'd like to channel that into some pencil sketches) attending an aerobics class (I've really been waiting to get back into my workout routine after the summer holidays - I definitely need to!) and brushing up on my French grammar in order to stand a chance in my advanced French class.

Take this walz, take this walz
Take its broken waist in your hand

Plus I need to figure out if there's anything I can do to make my study feel more like an actual apartment and less like, well, a room. I've lived here for tree years now, and during my first year here I had blood red curtains, a dark red comforter on my bed and a red carpet. I loved it for about a year, then I got super tired of it and gradually changed it into what it looks like now: white and slightly romantic, with a beautiful old lamp and black-and-white photos on the walls. Still, it feels more like a bedroom than an actual apartment, if you know what I mean.

I've actually loved the cozy dorm room feeling this study has ever since I moved in, but now I'm all of a sudden longing for something, well, more home-like. Decluttering it a bit and removing some old pictures might help, I guess. Any ideas are extremely welcome!

I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise...

To-Do-List on the fifth of September:

-Start planning thesis
-Go to the store, get sesame seeds
-Pay rent (urgent!)
-Go pick up book from library
-Start blogging

Well, that's one down then!