It could be home, it could be home, it could be home.

You didn't know where to go
Walking around in this flag-waving town
I saw you waiting for a train
And you disappeared
Your face pressed up to the window
You went so far away
And I want to come there too
I want to be with you
I'm just waiting until you say these words :
"Come back, come back, come back, oh, to me...
I'm living near Gdànsk, there's a train, you'd be here soon
There's a life for me and you
The East means so many things
But it could be home, it could be home, it could be home, it could be home
For you and me
It could be home, it could be home, it could be home, it could be home
Come back, come back, come back, oh, to me..."

06.25.2008 MGMT, Marie, Matias och Magic.

These past few days I've been listening to MGMT's Kids on repeat. I was just smitten by it. It makes me feel good and alive and strong and brave. I remember that MGMT was also in Accelerator in Stockholm but I didn't know them then so I didn't watch their set.

I was looking through my videos of Stockholm and was shocked to see this! I remember that this was when I found Marie and Matias, my lovely festival friends, after the St. Vincent set at the tower stage. The three of us tried to go the outdoor stage to see who's playing, but there were so many people. It was MGMT, and it was KIDS!!!

I remember exactly what I was feeling while filming this: electric happiness, a buzz in my soul. This is the view that I will remember forever - Stockholm's Norr Malarstrand, Lake Malaren and those construction cranes that tug at my heart everytime I see them. My dreams coming true one after the other in a parade of electric days and nights such as THIS. Twilight purple and blue skies because the sun never really sets in this place, summer forever. The buzz of people talking, the synths.

It was KIDS! And there is love! And there is fate/faith! And there is hope.

06.20.2008: Leather Bay Mountain.

Filip and I met at the Burger King at Sergels Torg, apparently the hang out and meeting place of stoners and dealers. Hehe! While waiting for him, I saw these magical fusion of lights and water below (or beside? Which exactly is the square? The one above or the one below?) the square:

One week metro card, tunnelbana, Slussen for the first time, SLUSSEN!!! Katarinahissen and that spectacular view I already knew in my mind. Mosebacke and all your stories about it. The train all over Soder. Mariatorget. Zinkensdamm. Shivers inside, knowing you live here, just somewhere in one of these apartment complexes, yellow ochre and brown and red. Blue skies. Walking to Skinnarviksparken (which translated in English is Leather Bay Mountain) and climbing dangerous rocks and telling each other stories: dreams of travel, Peru and the Amazon river, Germany and future plans, the best Kraftskiva parties ever and best friends lying on the forest floor. He said we should go because we were wasting time, but I couldn't imagine where else I wanted to be and what else I could be doing.

All I ever wanted was this view and this city.

06.20.2008 Midsummer: Riddarholmen comes true.

Stockholm in my mind, 01.11.2007

And I'm off! With Katrin, the German girl I met at the hostel. Germany! What a coincidence! We walked around Gamla Stan together, shouting:

"STOCKHOLM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"SWEDEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"AAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

and my favorite:

"RIDDARHOLMEN!!!!!!!!"

Because I draw it all the time in my notebook, that jutted piece of land with a high tower which is always shown as "Stockholm" in touristy websites.

and sometimes I shout:

"THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"THE SKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I was just so overwhelmingly happy to see this and that and this and that, buildings and streets and corners that I've only seen in pictures, websites and imagined landscapes in my mind. And they were real and they were here and I could touch them and inhale the air and look at the sky and oh wow I'm alive.

The view from Riddarholmen. Stadshuset in the distance.

06.20.2008 Midsummer: On the Radio

I woke up to the peak of summer, where everyone in Sweden is supposed to be the happiest they've been all year: the day of snaps, herring and potatoes. The sun's longest day. My first day here. I looked out the window and heard early morning noises: the fountain across the street, an old man walking talking to a boy, his son maybe. I remember the light and the sun and how everything feels just RIGHT. I lay back down, looked at the ceiling and sighed and smiled. I am HERE.

At the hostel's cafe, I heard The Concrete's On the Radio playing while I was on my way out. This song follows me all over the world. In Shanghai (or I think it was Can't Hurry Love? haha), at an H&M while I was trying on some clothes. And now here, in my first morning, while I was getting ready to go out and explore the city of my dreams. THE CITY OF MY DREAMS! I smiled as I recognized the familiar tune and I felt that there will be a whole world to explore once I step out that door and it is all for the taking!

I must say it was love from the start
when you gave me a tune to sing
But I guess you'll never know
'cause some things are meant
to stay unrevealed

I heard a song on the radio
and it was sung for your ears only

When you're lost though you know
all directions by heart
take a look what's behind the scene
There are hills and trees to be climbed
when you know someone awaits your return

MAGIC.

I wrote something a few months before I went to Sweden.
I can't believe it!

my suitcases, my fondest hopes/ grew small and pale as envelopes
04.14.2008

...but the more intense ones are the memories that are yet to happen. these are like seizures, they grab me full force, slapping me with snippets of cold winter air, streaks of yellow night lights, a taste of snow.

i see a silhouette of a boy standing outside centralstationen, hands in his pockets, waiting for me. i see myself getting off a train and walking up to him, trudging my suitcase in the snow. i see myself sitting on steps facing a big square, early morning, a Brämhults juice bottle in my hand, waiting. i see a small room with a boy typing something on his mac, a bed on the left side. he looks up, smiles and beckons, come here. a cafeteria, buzzing of life. a cottage in the woods, the smell of something cooking, a red rug. a living room, beer cans, laughter. a train. a vast field of tall grass, me running across it, almost sunset. i can almost hear my own ecstatic cries of happiness.

http://dream-hotel.livejournal.com/8912.html

The only thing missing is the snow.

2008

"1995 is missing buses
It's walking 15 miles to see your love
It's knowing you're alive through all the fuzz
It's never coming down from going up"

More like, 5,797 miles.

/// Parrots, toucans and penguins.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.

---

I will not die, not for all this, not for a long, long time.