...kvar i nåt jag lämnat för längesen.

BEFORE:

Before I had split ends and was picking my nose.

AFTER:

The split ends are gone and I’m making a sexy pose!

Yeah, comrades, I think it is safe to make the conclusion that the photos above are the result of yet another fruitful visit to my hairstylist, who also happens to be my cousin – or could it possibly be the other way around? My cousin cuts my hair twice a year, in summer and in winter – which happens to be every time I visit Sweden – something she’s done for the past couple of years now; ever since I was forced to endure that terrible experience with the hairdresser in Siberia who thought it would be a fun idea to “experiment” with my hair because I had so much of it and it was so long anyway. Lucky for her she was already in Siberia – my anger was strong enough to have exiled her there otherwise, let me tell you, comrades! I’ve had pretty much the same haircut since I was… okay, so since always. I don’t do crazy stuff with my hair. Sometimes I might make it a little lighter, but that’s about as wild as I intend to be with what’s on top of my head. In my mind, my hair is an extension of myself, or as Ulf Lundell once put it: “flaggan på mitt kvinnoskepp” [I never ever thought that I would quote THAT GUY here on my blog – but see, it’s still possible for me to surprise myself!]. Once I tried to not have bangs. That was at the same time that I cut off all of it and colored it dark brown. It was in sixth grade. It was horrifying. I don’t want to talk about it.

My little sister also joined me at my cousin’s this evening, where we first drank cherry beer together and thus had a very pleasant time. I know, neither I thought that they sold cherry beer in Sweden – but as it turns out there’s actually ONE of the state run liquor stores in Gothenburg that keeps a small stack of it hidden away in the “special beer” section. Cherry beer is what it is all about. If you’re not rolling with the cherry beer, then you’re not rolling with me ‘cause cherry beer is how I roll. Yeah, comrades, my sister has been teaching me some of the most contemporary youth sociolect. Or maybe tried to ignore my efforts at speaking it so as not to encourage me nor make me get the idea that it’s alright. Live long and prosper, nubes!

In other news, on Monday I officially emigrated from Sweden. It was fairly easy done. I downloaded the proper form from the government website, printed it out, filled it in and posted it to the local state office. I also registered to vote at the Swedish consulate in San Francisco in upcoming elections in Sweden for the next ten years [it’s not a “you never know” issue, but that’s the standard time if you don’t send in a new form with a new address after a couple of years]. Furthermore I called the state insurance company and told them I was moving abroad for six years. They informed me that if I intend to be away from Sweden for that long, then I’m not going to be insured by my native country anymore. I didn’t enlighten them of the fact that I’ve already been away from Sweden for that long and during this time I’ve been just fine without them. Emigrating is something I should’ve done earlier – but I didn’t feel it was quite a necessity until informed that otherwise I’d have to pay taxes in two countries. This way, I’m exempt from paying those appalling Swedish taxes. Yay for me! And for the very first time in my life – well, counting “my” life from the day I moved away from home some six years ago – I’m going to get my mail to the place where I actually live. I’m very excited. At first I was a bit scared; I mean, this is it – this is the moment when I’m really going to grow up. Moving away from home is one thing; emigrating is a whole other deal. This truly feels like standing on the top of a mountain with your back turned against the steep – and suddenly you take a step backwards with arms stretched wide out, all the while you got no idea if you’re going to soar higher or just fall straight down…

Let’s face it: I haven’t got a clue as to what’s waiting for me in California. I’ve got five days left in Sweden now. And right now I’m mostly frightened – though still sort of excited. But mostly frightened. I’m afraid that I won’t make any friends, I’m afraid that my new department will think I’m terribly overrated and plainly stupid, I’m afraid that I’m going to fail all of my classes and I’m afraid that I’m not going to fit in and I’m even more afraid of not understanding anything at all and feeling completely lost in a new foreign land. The United States of America isn’t Russia, after all, for when Russian life [also known as “Life in Russia”] failed me, frustrated me, perplexed me – then I could always go to the Russian land, turn to the Russian soil, look up at the Russian sky and speak softly, silently to the Russian landscape and we’d find a way for the both of us to mend as well as blend together. In those moments there was no border between my body and the surrounding air. Russia was me and I was Russia. I love Russia. The longer I live, the more do I come to understand how little in this life I’ve loved so far; how few things I can actually admit to having loved – even fewer do I love now. Russia is on top of my list – because somewhere she’s only mine and I’ve been places within her where no one has gone before and where no one will go again and where I’ve seen such things that I can never speak of them for the words that describe them the best are secret and humble and not wanting nor wishing to be told. Sometimes now I read in the Swedish papers random articles about Russia – I even write such articles myself – and I always think “huh, that’s not it” or “yeah, but not entirely”, and sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t tell my stories about Russia instead… If I shouldn’t share my experience from Russia and my life in Russia with the rest of the world. But my life in Russia was MINE, and my union with Russia was OURS, and I don’t think anyone else would ever understand what our meeting was all about. But how can you not love a country when you know that’s the only place where everything is possible? Maybe some comrades now will react with comments like “ehm, but you got a blog called A Russia of My Own” and “you know, you write for this other blog about Russia, too” and “uh… I’ve read your articles on Russia, they’re pretty explicit”. And yet – believe it or not – that’s only a small fragment of my own Russia. When I was a kid I used to get angry with my grandparents [on my father’s side] for they never told me anything about their long lives and they never shared any of those exciting stories that grandparents are “supposed” to tell their grandkids once in a while and that was even though I was pretty sure they had lived interesting lives. But they never said anything about the things that mattered the most. I forced them to tell me how they met; now I’m the only person in this world who knows and remembers. That’s pretty cool. And no, I’m not going to share it here – I’m going to let it die within me. But the point that I was trying to make is that I’m becoming like them; I’m a very secretive person and I rarely tell people anything. About the things that matter, once again, I repeat: the things that matter. The things that are closest to the heart, or even one might say INSIDE the heart. Where in mine there’s always been this deep, stern sense of doing great on my own. The other day I was walking around on the island and suddenly it occurred to me how much fun I can have with myself.

Okay, so not THAT kind of fun – better yet! Now when nobody’s around and nobody’s looking I’m working silently on my next novel and currently we’re still in pre-production stage, which means I’m being introduced to the main characters and sorting out some central issues and sometimes I even get to catch a glimpse of future key scenes. My life is just a walking party; even more so because today I bought glittery pantyhose on sale at H&M. Yeah, comrades, there’s a party going on right ON TOP of my legs.

Endurance is the art form preferred by our sex.

Folket som älskar landets stenar allra mest. Citerat ur ”Är svensken människa?”

The past couple of days I’ve spent at my father’s house on Brännö, an island in the West Archipelago outside of Gothenburg – also known as the city where I was born and raised. Here I’ve been enjoying a healthy diet of several swims daily in the ocean, plenty of wine in the evening over dinners while conversing with my father, my two sisters – one is Lillbubb, the other one is my “plastic sister” [that’s what the children of your parent’s partner is called in Swedish] – and my father’s girlfriend. Yesterday me and my ‘plastic’ little sister – born in 1996 – spent several hours lying in the ocean on a float in the sunshine while trying to get a more even tan and discussing life in general. Eventually I had to ask her why both she and my ‘real’ sister Lillbubb pair their bikini tops with masculine bathing shorts that reach almost all the way down to their knees. Lillbubb obviously has her reasons; reasons which my ‘plastic’ sister does not share. She said something like “you know, you see all these perfect models everywhere on TV and in magazines and you get these ideas of how the female body should look like and then you realize that your body doesn’t look like that and so you want to cover up your thighs because they’re all ugly in comparison and stuff”. She’s fourteen and in my opinion her body looks just fine. When I was her age we weren’t allowed to cover up our bodies when we realized they didn’t look like they were “supposed to” according to the models on TV and in magazines – instead, we developed destructive eating disorders and starved ourselves for years so that we’d get closer to the ideal – and also so that we’d please our mothers. Back when I was a teenager, we didn’t have the option of wearing masculine shorts in order to cover up our imperfect bodies because that would diminish our opportunities of getting hit on at the beach and not being hit on at the beach was like social suicide. But the idea that “if you’re not even close, then you shouldn’t even try” is all new to me. And even more new is the idea that before starting eighth grade you should have to become aware of how “not even close” you and your still undeveloped body are and simply give up. It is so new and unfamiliar to me that I get upset enough to write about it on my blog. Of course, I’m not blind and even I’ve paid attention to the fact that the generation that comes after mine – mine being those born in the 80’s and the next one covering the 90’s – is much ‘fuller’ than what we were allowed to be when we were their age. In a way it feels liberating that they’re not succumbing to our destructive eating disorders – ‘cause that’s pretty much a ticking bomb and won’t allow us to have sex without thinking “does he think my stomach looks fat in this position?” when becoming grown women – but still, they’re victims of the same distorted image of the female body displayed in our popular culture today. For example, on my birthday one of my best friends Annie gave me the first three seasons of “The Big Bang Theory” wrapped in a package that said “all you can geek” – that was rather funny actually – and I’ve watched almost all of it by now and all I can say is that there are too many scenes in this show where they’re eating take-outs. In general, in that show they almost always eat. And a girl like Penny – the only truly hot girl in the show, by the way – could obviously not eat that much and keep her hot body simultaneously. But if you’re, let’s say, fourteen or fifteen, and watch that show – and several other shows with girls looking just like that and eating junk food as often – you’ll jump to the conclusion that your body must be somehow defect if you can’t eat like she does and still look like she does. Okay, so I’m twenty-five and for several years now I’ve heard people warning me of how my metabolism will slow down after twenty-five and so I should watch what I put in my mouth, but even without this truthful as well as helpful knowledge I know that the actress who plays Penny doesn’t eat so much as a bite of what she’s seemingly “consuming” on a daily basis in the TV-series. Maybe this is more my problem than the problem of the 90’s generation, because my generation was never served an option to under-eating and overtly working out so as to keep our bodies looking similar to what we saw on TV and in magazines. We were taught that if we didn’t constantly strain ourselves in order to remain thin enough to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated any given day of the year, then we’d never get boyfriends to have sex with us nevertheless have parents that were proud nor approved of us. Maybe this is more my problem. But the thing is that I didn’t even know that yet another generation will be put through the very same thing until I had spent so much time with this ‘new’ generation of young women going through their teens right now. And that they’d be shaped by the same pointless popular culture made by silly and stupid men who really only want a woman who’s “happy and horny”, but they’ll be stooped into thinking – just like we did – that men won’t make out with us unless we look like a playmate. I wish I could tell the younger generation that everything will become different and better when they grow up and but I don’t think I can. I’m still captured within the senseless ideal of those of us that were brought up looking on Britney’s unnaturally flat stomach for years and years… all the while thinking “if I don’t look like that, who will ever love me?” When my body actually looked the closest to the ‘model body’ I was eighteen years old and my boyfriend at the time had to endure awfully painful intercourse with me because my hip bones kept piercing into various parts of his body. But nobody tells you these kinds of things and no man – unless experienced and not a subscriber to the image of the flawless woman as portrayed by popular culture of our day [ha! good luck finding one of those!] – will realize it when he says “I think you should loose those pounds” until he’s the one with a bruised stomach.

During my time in Sweden I’ve come to understand where I stand politically with a little help from the geological spot where I take my daily power-walk when I’m staying with my mother. I walk over the bridge and find myself in an industrial area where the most of the traffic is different work vehicles – mainly trucks of various sizes – and whenever I walk through this area the drivers find they need to honk their horns and beep at me. This happens not every once in a while but EVERY freaking time and over and over again when I power-walk through this particular area. It is not heavily trafficked, so there’s not really any other need to honk. On the morning of my birthday this one truck driver honked his horn for so long that it turned out to sound like he was making me a small serenade. I – of course – gave him the appropriate finger. It sort of reminded me of when I was seventeen and tried “walking through Memphis” in Tennessee and couldn’t because I constantly stopped traffic. I am aware of the fact that I take my power-walks wearing a mini-skirt, but that’s not an invitation for men to show their approval by making loud sounds from their WORK VEHICLES. If you find that I look good from behind, then there’s really no need for me to be informed of this – I actually know that my behind looks pretty alright with or without any honking of horns. Also I’m against men groping innocent women on public transportation. This is a growing problem of which I don’t think everyone is aware. I understand that men are “the weaker sex” indeed and all that, but seriously – since when has honking your horn at a girl on the street or ‘innocently’ feeling up a girl on the bus got a man ANYWHERE?

To sum things mentioned in this post up: women in our popular culture and modern society are treated as objects and thus they feel as objects and if they do not measure up to the current standard of the ‘object’ per say, then they’ll hide their imperfect bodies – which means ‘not appropriate to be treated solely as sexual toys for careless boys’ – and feel less feminine in the process. Instead, we endure.

Why do I not currently feel like taking up dating again? Because I know far too well how it all plays out – and never am I pleased nor satisfied with the meager outcome of this socially agreeable diversion. Let’s say it’ll go something like this: you meet me and I’m exteriorly pleasing to you and so you try and make interesting yet pointless conversation dedicated to the sole end of asking me out on a date. I agree. We go out on a date. You order some kind of alcohol so that we both get rather tipsy with time and stop caring about the fact that we have little to nothing in common. After leaving the restaurant we kiss and you’re probably rather bad at it but I’m so good that you’ll never know. Then we go to your place where I come to realize that despite all of your degrees of higher education you still haven’t’ learned how to unhook a bra and so I do it for you and pretend like it doesn’t matter all the while I begin to pity you more and more. Then we have sex and while you try your best moves I remember something funny one of my friends said the other day on an entirely different topic and so I start to laugh a little bit and you think you’re doing something wrong and then I realize it is high time for me to start faking something or else we’ll be here ALL night long. We duly go to sleep; you do the famous “hug-snuggle-let-go” move and I’m relieved. In the morning we might have sex again and while you do that I can plan my day and make it look and sound like you’re the best I ever had. But the truth is that you’ll only have your chronologic spot in the list of men I’ve had before and will have in the future; not on the list of the best men I’ve had in all of my life at all. After three days – that’s the universal rule – you will call and I will not answer.

That’s why I do not currently feel like taking up dating again. I’m not saying I’m about to get a cat or anything, all I’m saying is that the next time it is going to take a lot more than an average man to get me to agree to a date. Instead, I endure – even though “we were not supposed to endure our lives”.

25

So it finally came to be that I turned twenty-five on the 16th of July 2010 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Everyone [who matters and lives in this particular country] and my mom were at my party yesterday! And yes, comrades, that IS a home-baked Napoleon cake [after all, he was married to Жозефина, right?] with strawberries and candles stating my age on it.

I guess almost everyone while growing up has some sort of image of how they’d like to see themselves and their lives at the age of twenty-five. The only such image of myself at the age of twenty-five that I can remember – which I cultivated long before even becoming a teenager – is of a blonde older me in [awesome, obviously] heels walking together with a [who?] man through an airport somewhere in the world. As a child this was how I thought my life was going to be like when I grew up, and it is both funny and ironic how true the image of myself in an AIRPORT – ‘cause even though I hate flying in particular and traveling in general, that’s what I’ve done the most as a grown-up – turned out to be spot-on correct. I know and I am not ashamed to confess that as a child I thought the man walking next to me would be my husband; but that was before I found out that marriage is a cultural institution and that there are plenty of more thrilling things a woman can devote her time, efforts and emotions to. On the 4th of August this man walking with me through an airport will be Aaron, and he’s just a friend. A great friend who might father my children one day, but that’s ‘one day’ that might never come and besides, it’s our friendship that I treasure the most – not our breed of potential Nobel Prize winners. I’m guessing that I also predicted I would have children – or a child – at this age. But no, I’m not married and I do not have any children; instead, I have a Master’s in Philology, a US visa until July 2015 and a surprisingly attractive exterior.

My birthday this year turned out lovely – not only with so many members of my family together with close friends congratulating me in person yesterday at my party, but also from all the beautiful, kind and caring letters that I received from friends all over the world yesterday. Their honest words of heartfelt congratulations to me made me feel so loved and so special and like being me at this particular moment in time is the best thing God ever created. I know. What is a day without a little bit of blasphemy? But I just can’t help myself! Especially I appreciated what my former more handsome half M. wrote to me – during our two years together he didn’t make me compliments so as not to “spoil me with affection” – that I am «сказочно красивая» and much more [he even elaborated on the subject!]. I think that once in a while that’s exactly what a person needs: confirmation of constant love… Despite the fact that life doesn’t always allow for us to display it on a day-to-day basis. Though we truly should. I’ll strive to that end!

If you’re in Sweden and/or the Gothenburg area, be sure to pick up a copy of Göteborgs Posten tomorrow [the 18th of July]. In it you’ll find an article about Russia written by me!

If you give because you have, you are not a very good giver.

What do these six big, black plastic bags contain? Two are only shoes [I’d say somewhere around 50 pairs], three are only clothes [there’s a surprise pair of jeans in one of them with bling-bling allover the thighs; “The early 00’s called – they wanted their jeans back!” my mother remarked], one is a mix of clothes and shoes and the last one is titled ‘random’. All of this once upon a time belonged to me and the large part of it had not been used since I was teenager. Today I donated the lot to Stadsmissionen.

In June I got rid of my Russian life; that was an experience which started out with the best of intentions [the very same that pave the road to hell] and in the end mainly involved strangers coming to my dorm and taking my things away. In the very same end it was surprisingly refreshing to be stripped of all these material belongings and I’d wish upon anybody to know what it feels like to leave a country after six years of living there with only 23 kg of luggage. In July I will rid myself of my Swedish life; and already today I took Step I: clothes and shoes. I no longer own any winter coat. I know! Scary, and yet so intensely revitalizing. The rest of this week will be dedicated to Step II: books. My sister’s going to go through my books tomorrow and sort out what she’s taking with her when she’s moving to Stockholm in August. She says she wants something ‘intellectual’ to display on her book shelves. But she hardly needs to make much of a stretch to look intellectual; she’s decided to become a physicist [hence the move to a better school in the capital] and whenever I see her these days she’s always got her nose in some book – be it Kafka or something random about astronomy. She’s starting to resemble me when I was her age – seventeen – except she has as of yet not shown any indication that she’ll start a shoe collection. Which I think is the wise choice; after all, she can learn from her older sister: the woman who owned more than 100 pairs of shoes only to give them all away to charity. In my defense I can say that at least I got to wear them once or even twice! During next week I’ll go through the rest of my stuff and shred some old documents, diaries and other papers which need not be available to the public nor history itself. I can’t bring them with me and there’s no need for them to remain in my mother’s cellar where they can be found, read and used against me. This evening I went over to Katharina’s to retrieve my passport [it was sent to her from the US Embassy – I know, I’m all about the tricks you can play – and now has a US visa in it that’ll last until July 5th 2015] and told her about my plans. “But what about when your diaries will be published one day, when you’re dead or famous, or both?!” To this I answered: “Nobody needs to read nor know nor even contemplate the existence of such diaries recording my disturbed childhood and distraught youth. What is presented on the internet I can not control; I can, however, control what’s in my mother’s basement”. And when I leave Sweden on August 4th [I’m flying to Detroit (is that in Michigan?) where I’ll spend my first weeks in the country together with my favorite American: Aaron] I do not intend to leave much behind in my mother’s basement. Only a few selected items with memorabilia status and all of my dresses. I don’t know about you, comrades, but dresses you can’t give away – even though you can only wear them once for they are like butterflies.

It really feels like I’m starting something completely new as I’m taking this well-earned time-out in my life to go through it: to sort out where I’ve been, where I am and where I’d like to go in the future. On Friday I turn 25. It’s not 30, but it’s a pretty big number. To me, at least. One of the biggest changes that I’ve decided to do in my life after my contract as a blogger is up [September 1st] is to work less. Less work means more time. Summing up my three years as a ‘working girl’ – I began teaching Swedish at Ural State and blog professionally during the fall of 2007 – I also realized that I wrote my last original novel in the summer of 2007. I write “original” because I do not actually count the novel that I wrote and published in Russian as a “original” in the same regard for it was mainly a re-write and together-put of several Swedish and English novels that I had produced previously. But less work means less money. Everybody loves money. It is a widely known and kind of accepted truth that everyone likes to make money, have money and spend money. However, I think that I’m speaking from another way of thinking due to personal experience in this regard – come August, I will have given away most of my possessions. Going through all of my stuff made me realize just HOW much I have bought, accumulated or simply owned over the years, but not only that – how LITTLE I have used most of these things. I’m not saying that I’ll stop consuming. There will always be a part of me that’ll crave popping by H&M just to “have a look” and end up leaving with two shopping bags. But I will definitely consume in a whole different way from now on. As a matter of fact, right now I’m pretty tired of the way we lead our lives in general. I’m tired of the constant noise. I’m tired of the constant commercial messages. I’m tired of always wanting something or needing something or being something or having something. I’m simply bored with the Western world. And don’t try and tell me it is because I just left Russia and I want to go back to Russia – Yekaterinburg, which was where I lived four years, happens to have the most shopping malls per person in the WORLD. In the Urals, shopping is a religion – not at all like what it is in the West. Just so you don’t get me confused, comrades, and so that I don’t end up confusing you. The Russia where I lived was very much an accurate impression of the Western world – at least it looked the same. What I’m talking about is much deeper and has to do with something entirely else: I feel such a deep need to do something that’ll take time and last time. I want to write. There’s no way around that obstacle; the longer I live, the more I understand that I was most likely put on this Earth – if for any reason at all – to write. But no longer do I want to produce text solely to produce a text. Of course this doesn’t mean that I don’t want to get paid. I will not write anything without getting paid. I sold my first article at the age of 20; I haven’t written a single word professionally since then without a contract. But I want to get more depth; I desperately want to block out some of the most pointless parts of modern life in our Western society. The last thing anyone needs is an iPhone. This evening I asked Katharina if God, who created us and in whose image we were created, and if we created the iPhone, then that also means that God was actually the creator of the iPhone. In my opinion, the iPhone is the most evil thing ever created. Katharina, however, pointed out that we were created in his image, but that we ate of the fruit from the tree of wisdom [or was it knowledge?] and that we now are able of both good and evil. The iPhone is clearly evil. But why? Maybe not for everybody. But definitely for me. I’m the kind of person that do not want to be reached when I leave my home. I’ve always thought cell phones to present some sort of catch 22: I go out [clearly a sign that I don’t want to talk to people] but I take my phone with me [so that people can reach me]. Madness!

Another thing that I have wanted to do for many years now is to find a local church that I like and that likes me and which I can attend not only regularly on Sundays, but get active in and contribute to with my time and my passion and all of my erratic doubts about God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit. During my years in Russia I’ve read the Bible five times – so much that my Bible fell apart in the Biblical sense of the word [pun intended!] after the flight from Russia to Sweden – and blamed the fact that I don’t go to church regularly there on the fact that I haven’t been able to find a church that I like and that likes me. I’ve always been almost a bit too content with my Swedish Church back home in Gothenburg and always attended mass when in town – also one of my best friends [Katharina] will be a priest in the Swedish Church next year. So I’ve kept up my beliefs and practiced my religion on my own and in silence as if in exile during my years in Russia. Though all along I knew I wanted to find another solution – find a community and other people and do something about this seemingly crazy part of me that’s weird and Christian but the best thing that ever happened to me for now I have eternal life, redemption from sins and God as my best friend. I liked the Pentecostal church my former American roommate attended, but I couldn’t join it because I lived with how she hid her drinking from them and I don’t want to be a part of a church where I have to hide something about myself out of fear that it won’t be “okay” – even perhaps considered “a sin”! I’m not going to stop drinking. It is a little too late to save myself for marriage. But these are in my opinions not the main issues in Christianity. Anyway, to make a long and at times tedious story of a lost soul’s search for deliverance short: the Swedish Church is represented in San Francisco so that’s going to be my first stop.

I think I’m going to write a new novel. I have no idea what’s going on in my head at the moment, but I think I’m going to make a lot of new friends very soon.

I decided to not see N. anymore – when I decide it is time for me to meet and be with a man in the future, it is going to be spectacular. Until then I’m not going to settle for something that isn’t. I want to fall in love with a kind and responsible man and build a relationship based on equality and intimacy. If that’s too much to ask for, I’ll devote myself to science instead. My mother asked me why I wasn’t going to see N. again. I answered: “With me you only get one shot. If you don’t make it, then you don’t make it. There’s no place for a runner up”. She said that’s a bit harsh. Well, I’m not known for being anything less.

If you excuse me, comrades, now I’m going to spend some quality time with Lisbeth Salander.

Det är aldrig en bra idé att placera ett könsorgan utanpå kroppen.

Summer 2010 Reading: the left pile contains books already read [though I’m only half-way through «Как выжить в зоне» - I’m savoring it slowly…], the middle pile constitutes of what I’m currently reading [I’m always reading «Дорогая Жоня» that Katya made for me on my last day in Russia – and no, I won’t let my brain forget you!], and the right pile is – yes, you guessed it – what comes next.

Contrary to popular belief, I have actually blogged here since leaving Russia some eleven days ago now. I published a post called “Scenes from the Swedish Bad Lands” on my darling blog exactly a week ago together with the following text: “What in the world?! Obviously, this is ‘yours truly’ wearing a skimpy bikini, thick gloves, rubber boots and some sort of hat while standing in the blossoming nature – but what does it mean? It can only be either a) a photo for my application to next season’s “Bonde söker fru”; b) a sneak peak from the brand new series called “Akademiker gör oväntande saker”; or c) a scene from the Swedish Bad Lands. I think option c is correct – no matter how you twist and turn the picture about…” The following morning – which was July 3rd – I deleted the post because I’m always terribly frightened that the majority of those who read my blog do not share my weird sense of humor and would have considered a picture of me almost naked to be an attempt to portray oneself as sexy on the Internet. What can I say? An alarmingly large part of humanity finds rubber boots to be a major turn-on. It’s not my fault.

Early in the morning on Monday the 28th of June I left Yekaterinburg, made a quick stop in Moscow and then flew into Stockholm at 9 am in the morning. In Stockholm I managed to get myself to my lovely professor M.'s house – despite being notoriously helpless when it comes to figuring out the public transportation system there – because he had invited me to have lunch together with him and his wife. M.’s wife turned out to be a wonderful woman and I took an instant liking to her. The lunch was splendid. We talked, we joked, we shared stories, we laughed, and they forgave me for constantly spicing up my Swedish with some Russian words here and there – at times even complete sentences… M. turned out to be such a gentleman when he followed me to the train station and insisted on carrying my huge red bag for me all the way and even into the train. But then again, I had never doubted that he was! The same evening I arrived in Gothenburg and was met at the train station by my mother, father and little sister. During my first days back in Sweden I was nothing but very tired, though I did meet up with some friends and had some coffee and visited H&M and bought some clothes. My first weekend was indeed spent in “The Swedish Bad Lands” – in my mother’s red house outside Borås together with her and my sister Lillbubb. [No, that’s not her real name].

During my time in the Swedish Bad Lands the weather was hot and sunny and very summery – thus I did what anyone would do: I swam in the lake, I biked around, I worked in the garden, I sunbathed, I went for long walks and on Sunday afternoon I began reading Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”. It turned out that my mother had a copy of “Män som hatar kvinnor” [“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”] and I finished it within two days. Yesterday I bought the two next novels and today I’m already half-way through the second one. I’m in love with Lisbeth Salander. There really is no other way to put this. I am taken by her, I am mesmerized by her, I want more and more and even more of her – I have invited Lisbeth Salander into my life and I don’t ever want her to leave. Lisbeth Salander is – just as I had suspected all along [maybe someone remembers my ramblings about ‘inconvenient women’ this past spring? yes, I’m back at it again] – the epitome of The Inconvenient Woman. She IS the only true inconvenient woman in the history of world literature; nothing else compares to her. Why is that? you might ask. After all, she’s not the first woman to state her needs and get her revenge and not give a fuck about what other people say [did you see that? I just used the f-word – and you know what? I don’t give a fuck] in the process. But what makes her different? What makes her the best female literary character ever? Because Lisbeth Salander has Mikael Blomkvist – and Mikael Blomkvist is THE convenient man. I can’t fathom that Mr. Larsson is dead; there’s so much that I would have wanted to discuss with him! Mikael Blomkvist never tells a woman “I want you”, all women always tell Mikael Blomkvist “I want you to seduce me”. And what does Mikael Blomkvist reply? “Sure”. If that’s not convenient, then I don’t know what is.

On Monday the 5th of July I took the train to Stockholm in the afternoon. On Monday evening I met up with Sara and we first went to have dinner together, and then prolonged the evening together with coffee at a café in Gamla Stan, which just happens to be Sara’s favorite AND located right in front of my future employer – Svenska akademien. My interview at the US Embassy was scheduled for 9 am on Tuesday the 6th of July. My dad’s girlfriend [conveniently enough, she lives in Stockholm and I spent the night in her apartment] drove me to the embassy and I was there almost an hour before my interview. That was a very smart move because it took me more than an hour of standing inline outside of the embassy before I even got inside of it. The whole process of being at the US Embassy and giving documents to this and that person and then having someone do a sloppy interview with me [“So you’re going to Berkeley for the summer?” “No.” “Oh, that’s right – you’re going there for six years!” “Yes.” “Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, huh? So what’s your favorite Slavic language?” “Ehm, Russian?” Silence. “I’ve lived in Russia for the past six years.” “Really? It says here that you’re a blogger. That’s cool.” “Okay.” “What do you blog about?” “The Russian language. It’s a really good blog”. “You’re not shy!” “I can’t lie. We’ve won prizes”. “I’m giving you a visa for five years. Only at Berkeley does it take six years do get your Ph.D. I did mine in four years”. “Okay, thank you?” “Oh your passport is so pink!” “I know”. “Have a nice day!” “You too”.] made me feel disgusted. I don’t know what really trigged such disgust in me – perhaps all the other Swedes around me at the embassy [I have a really hard time dealing with my own people, especially the kind of people within my people that travel to the USA for longer periods of time – in my opinion they’re all nerds, and yeah, I guess that makes me a nerd, too. I have no problem with that, though], perhaps it was the strange flag outside of the embassy which was not a Russian flag – but not seeing the Russian flag everywhere usually only makes me sad, not disgusted. Perhaps I was just feeling nauseous from the bad cup of coffee I had for breakfast the same morning. I’ve had two bad cups of coffee since my arrival in Sweden eleven days ago. I’m not going to name anyone, but seriously – what has happened to my home and native land? Or is it me.

I think it’s me. I’m feeling like a visitor in the country of which I’m supposedly a citizen. It felt so natural when the US Embassy took away my Swedish passport from me and said they’d put it in the mail and I’d have it within five office days. They might as well not have made me any promises at all. The past year whenever I’ve been forced to show my passport in Russia, I’ve made a habit of excusing it and myself with the words: “Yeah, I know, it’s in Swedish. It’s very inconvenient, I know”.

On Tuesday after my interview I had lunch with Malin – and Malin was [and is] as wonderful as always! She just gets a little bit more put-together, professional and excellent with every time I see her – and that’s a great indication of just how awesome she’ll become one day! But even now she’s a great source of inspiration, just like Sara is – they were actually both the first friends in my whole life that I choose ON MY OWN; before I met them in Saint Petersburg six years ago I had never chosen any friends AT ALL and as a result now I only have one friend left from my ‘youth’ – and it’s a shame that we don’t get to hang more often. After that I took the train back to Gothenburg and my quick stop in Stockholm was over. I’m not even sure when I’ll be back in that town. Maybe not until I’m going to apply for the next visa? Oh my God; by then I’ll be weeks away from thirty!

On Wednesday evening I met N. – this Swedish guy in whose bed I spent some nights in January after my break-up from A. in December – and we went for a walk along Gothenburg’s port in the evening sun. It is surprising – but not scary – how much a tourist I feel myself in the town where I was once born and even grew up… I spent the night with N. and it was a good night; though I still left his place around lunch-time on Thursday thinking to myself: “No, this was not the kind of satisfaction that I was looking for”… I think my problem was that I thought that with N. I could time-travel and jump right into what we had in January – and what we had together in January was great and satisfactory on all levels involved at the time. But January is six months ago now. And now other levels are involved. We’ve both changed and we’re both in different places now.

I think I’m in a place where I want to spend my time solely on what seems worth while. And right now reading books purely for entertainment and exclusively out of deep love and even deeper respect for Lisbeth Salander seems to be what I want to do this summer in Sweden. I want to take this time and read only in Swedish; simply meet up with friends, spend time with my family and not produce anything at all. I’m going to not do anything special. Yes, you heard me right – I’ve done nothing else but get this far in life the past six years so now I’m going to slow down. In a week I’m turning 25. I can’t hide it but I’m happy with what I’ve done in life so far, and not that scared anymore of what’s coming next. I don’t have anything left to prove. And I’m not afraid to say so.

Yeah, I’ve even decided to quit my job as a professional blogger as soon as my contract is finished on the 1st of September. I had plans to re-new the contract and stay for another academic year, but a week ago I got an e-mail from my boss and I didn’t like what it contained. I’ve never been pushed by the company to write more than I do and I always thought that they appreciated my work while being highly aware that my writing is not about quantity, but about quality [unless when it comes to this blog of MY OWN, where I can have the best of both worlds!]. Now they want to change the rules; but I am not interested in changing how I work. I’d rather spend more time writing less, than spend less time on each text only to have more of them. If some other blog wants me to write for them, then it can always be discussed. But actually I’m looking forward to be unemployed! I’ve worked two jobs as well as studied at two universities at the same time since 2007 – I’m sort of excited to be able to give all of my heart, body and soul to ONLY Berkeley! Not to mention ALL of my time! What I’m worried about is how my financial situation will look after September 1st… Ah, who cares? I need to lighten up and enjoy my youth before it is too late.

And that means spending this Friday evening at my cousin’s place together with a bottle of red wine. Does it get any better? Good conversation AND alcohol with a relative that’s ALSO a friend?

Oh and I forgot to mention that Robyn’s latest effort has been on constant repeat in my iPod since I bought it last week. It’s the bomb! I really should blog more often so that every post doesn’t have to compete with “War & Peace” when it comes to the length… Yeah. Like that’s going to happen!