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Tuesday, 22 May 2007 |
On Friday I travelled North, toward the Feak gig in Whangarei and then onward to Home, that fabled Treehouse. It's been an incredibly grounding experience. Firstly the concert, we were billed in the second half of the monthly folk club meet, and it was a hoot. Home crowd. I knew so many of the audience members it seemed almost that we'd spontaneously broken into song and music in the middle of a family dinner. All gathered were extraordinarily supportive and displayed much charm and humour. One set we played became a total disaster, tunes forgotten, wrong tunes begun, no hope of recovery...I ended up squawking with despair and curling up in the feotal position in the corner, much to the bafflement of the audience. The mistake was too great to pretend that it didn't happen, so we were forced to make a scene....well, I felt compelled in any case.
Mum and Dad drove me home at the end, we journeyed home in the dark, me watching out the windows for snippets of houses and trees illuminated byt the headlights. I stepped from the car at the Treehouse and this immense, rich scent met me, of trees, earth, dew, stars, clear water... slept out in the living room with the shadowy poplars stretching over me.
Was relishing the autumn, the intensely coloured leaves and the stark branches. The harbour was still and languid around the stilts of the cafe, where I sat for hours laughing with all my family's friends, people of my village, my home. Many commented on how I appeared----as if something had shifted and that now I was radiating not only own energy again, but something more complex and earthed. It felt marvellous to be told these things, after four months of grief and sadness, trying to find my heart again. |
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Tuesday, 10 April 2007 |
I've been hanging my head out the window, looking at the trees and the house and the mountains. I've been giggling with Emily and playing tunes and talking campfire rubbish. Yes, yes, we went to Hamsterfest. SO happy am I to have taken off like that, feel the wandering spirit in me have its' toes tickled! It was cosy as anything can be, a lovely little campsite, sun, stars and a chill during the night... I also came a joint first for the grand pace egg throwing contest, having nabbed Phil Harty from Streetworthy to be my casting partner. It was apparently the most terrifying element of the festival for him, but at least he went back to the bus with choccies for the kids...
Apart from all this good spirit, I live in a state of melancholy, in the sense that I feel an urge to live and breathe, yet within myself, I am tired and low on resource to fuel life. My dear friend Caspar ended his year of leukemia a couple of weeks ago, and it was heartbreaking. He lived in Switzerland, and his death seems too often to slip through my fingers, I wish to grasp it, and grieve it, but instead he skips on top of my thoughts, the little mischievious elf that he was. |
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Monday, 21 November 2005 |
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I went for my first proper swim yesterday, in the murky shallows of the unmajestic Hokianga harbour. I tentatively toed the surface, and my god it was like a SPA. Next thing I knew I was sprinting helter-skelter into the tide, splashing about while Rhys and Claire walked in like two arthritic penguins. What a difference to the waters of the Ljusnan up in Sveg. Swimming here means 20 minutes of idle soakage, compared to the mad arm flailing highstepping cardiac-arrest inducing dips of the Swedish summer. Gotland excepted. |
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Sunday, 21 August 2005 |
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SO- expect a new designed HOMEpage soon, where I'll be working at publishing some writing, cartoons, etc, as well as maybe some pictures of all those masks I've been bragging about making. Let the creative life begin! |
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Sunday, 21 August 2005 |
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I'm gone gone gone. This is the last missive that has anything to do with my adopted land Sweden. I left on Wednesday and came here Friday night and it seems like a trance, a dream transition between worlds.
The week preceding departure was, of course, Medieval Week in Visby, and I was pssscyched to say the least, because now I can get jovial with the locals in the own language, and had a slew of friends to meet and tramp around with at all hours. It was hilarious. I travelled over with Mia and the TRiX boys, after being mistaken for Pride Festival participants on the train. Mia and I camped out in the woods, until we had beer/swilling, trouser-less nieghbours move in so we were evicted by the police. Of course it chose to rain like it did on Noah, so all our stuff was soaked and our moods even more so.
After coming over these obstacles we had a mad time, me doing makeup for the boys' fire show, and meeting long lost friends for late night adventures and mischief.
After that it was two days of goodbye parties, and I have never been so touched by all the effort that was made. To all those involved, I thank you! After such occasions there is absolutely nothing at all I can regret about coming to Sweden, you ARE so dear to me.
I took off to the airport. 10mins before the flight left I noticed my wallet was missing. With no time to look for it I screeched onto the plane and said WHY WHY WHY in my head for 11hours. After that it was 12 hours in Bangkok Airport, without any money, exhausted and with an apple and a lollipop for nourishment. I feel asleep in a metal V behind a potplant, and woke to Arab tourists taking pictures of my wild hair, bare feet and fiddle case as a teddy bear.
But now I am home and the difference is markable. The custom guy was HELLLOooooo How ARE you this morning? Which made me laugh out loud and he laughed too. I cruised home in the twighlight, a sunset on the horizon, to pumpkin soup and sweet potatoes and the sound of trees out my window. The smell of damp green earth...I feel older and different, but it IS sweet to be home.
Again- all my love to the Swedes. |
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Monday, 01 August 2005 |
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WHHEEEEEEEE it's crazy. I'm running around like a chook with it's head cut off, trying to see everyone before I fly far far away. Every day there seems to be another tearful goodbye, followed by hours of ponderous silence as I travel onwards. I've been to Västerås, Stockholm, Göteburg and Småland since we're last seen each other, and it's been wonderful but very very fast. Stayed with Carolin and Kristina, complete with luxury vegetarian dinners and conversation about everything important. I rushed off to Korrö festival too, and was overcome with glee at the opportunity to play music all night and dance around and get mud between my toes because it rained so much. Met lots of people i didn' know were going to be there, and didn't sleep at all. Properly, that is. One night was on the damp stoney ground the next in a tent on a very slippery slidey reindeer skin (it felt like being at sea....) and the last in a car seat. Ah well. But it feels kinda complete, i saw all these bands that inspired me to go to Sweden in the first place, and i felt at home on the Swedish earth, just before i'm about to leave it. Feels cosy, oddly. |
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Thursday, 21 July 2005 |
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Hullo.
Back from Finland and Elisa and the festival....exhausting but exhilirating few days.
There are photos from Italy now in the gallery! Will try and set a few from Gotland and Finland over the next few days while I'm in Västerås. |
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