Out in the wild

I met knitters.

In case you've forgotten, I sometimes knit. I took one of the nearly eternal sweaters for the way from Italy to Sweden. On the train to Bassano, during the flight from Vienna, in the bus to downtown Stockholm and so on. I finished it two days ago, after having it reknitted two or five times. Since I finished the sweater and since I'm a chickenshit to go shopping for yarn, I had nothing to knit so I was only sitting there. There's another s'n'b on Saturday in a yarnstore so I'll get me some knitting material then.


Stockholm showed me its elusive face again. I got lost. Again. Somehow, the good ole left and right doesn't work the way it should, and the farther bits of the city seem to lack some comprehensive street plan. Or something like that.
On the way back, I waited for the metro and a guy started talking to me. I made a puzzled face, said Studip furriner no speak Swedish, then he asked in nice English whether I had by chance a cough pastille, I said No, sorry, and he apologized for bothering. There's something barren and melancholic about Stockholm's subway stations, they lack the opulent lustre of, say, Moscow or Prague's metro, or that well-inhabited messines of Italian metropolitane, they are neat, spacious and somehow sad. The guy was nice and sort of worn out and the whole situation felt as if it happened in some Aki Kaurismäki movie.

On the way back to Östermalm, I continued being sad. For being a sociophobic chickenshit, for not being able to learn this damn language well enough to grasp more of the general culture. Sigh. I forgot to get to the surface on the right place so I went around the Royal Library. Lousy pic of a place where I spend my days:

It's pretty.

In the hostel lounge, I met Karina, the knitter from Skåne, who, as I reckon, has something to do in Stockholm. I wasn't a chickenshit yesterday when I asked what was that pretty yarn she was using, and today she was finishing another washcloth, we talked for a while. There's that social element about knitting which I totally love. It connects people.

Another hostel dweller started chatting with me and upon seeing that I sort of know Swedish, he managed to make me switch into it (I'm not the worst chickenshit on the world, at least) and then laughed that I sound like a Finn. Erm.... I'm not absolutely sure that it's not a nicer way of saying that I sound like an idiot.

Random observations

A girl fell asleep in a book a few tables away. She looks so peaceful, apparently dreaming of something better than the book provided, I guess she was studying some highly exciting municipal regulation regaring sweeping the sidewalks in timely manner. I totally understand.

I discovered an article on late Comnenian frescoes on the isle of Gotland. Translated into normal language, Byzantine frescoes in Sweden. Who said that globalization is a modern phenomenon? Phew, liar.

Murasaki Shikibu would be an excellent blogger.

It's still sunny and wonderful. I'm meeting, if I find the place, Swedish knitters today.

Random observations

Someone wanders around the reading room wearing a rather oppressive melon perfume.

They are moving the card catalogue somewhere. Well, in fact, they are moving it to the internetz, but also physically. I just saw two guys transporting the chest of drawers on some sort of industrial wheelbarrow. They looked very concentrated and serious, after all, moving a catalog is a serious business.

I puzzled the photocopy lady by getting the form right but not actually speaking Swedish. After having adapted to the environment, I don't find this discrepancy unnerving but rather funny.

Some books come with cushions. Cushions to make the books comfy, not the readers.

Kittens

Just to interrupt the endless ranting about my mental states.






In case of popular request¨for something irritating, though, I may put up some pictures of my current rash.

Chickenshit memoirs

In fact, it's not that bad. Today, for example, I boldly went to Svante the Librarian and boldly asked where the lecture on medieval bestiaries takes place. He didn't bite me and went to show me where the auditorium is. There were days when only the idea of possibly going to a library would make me shiver.

I'm firmly decided to find some professional help. I'm not sure how long will my resolve last, I've seen way too many professionals in the field to harbour rather a deep mistrust and, frankly, I think that shrinks are idiots and I have a reason.

There's one particular thing about boring family holidays. People have nothing better to do so they rant.
For reasons I don't remember, my mother started digging up things she didn't want to talk about. It's no secret that I was depressed, had a nervous breakdown and all that stuff. Or, at least, I don't make it a secret. It's not my fault that I have mental problems and that at a certain point, they were severe. But that's another story. Well, mom started with that.
To put things short, I had social phobia to an extent that complicated my life at least since I was 14 or 15. I don't really know when I started to be depressed, I was diagnosed when I was 18, based on things that were going on for at least two or three years. I was drinking. Not that I'd be an alcoholic but I needed something to get me in a state that I wouldn't be scared dead to go out of the house and walk ten minutes to go to school. I did make it home somehow, though. And, I literally spent not one afternoon sitting under my writing table, being scared. At a certain point, I was around 17, I stopped thinking. My brain wouldn't work, my attention span was a few seconds so when finally a few molecules of noradrenaline made their way through the synapses, I thought to myself something like Oopsie, I'm at school, I somehow forgot, before falling into obliviousness. And there was a paralyzing fear, almost all the time.
Nobody was really aware of all this.
I was seeing a counsellor. It was my mom's former colleague so I took the liberty to be very wary. That was one of the good points of social phobia, I was too scared to share the real stuff. Anyhow, when I admitted to drinking from time to time, the counsellor promptly sent me to a real shrink since he interpreted it as alcoholism (1). The shrink had more of a brain to see that I was depressed, gave me a prescription... and after several years, I slept something like normally.

I knew that my mom somehow got to know that I was seeing a shrink and that she had access to my files or the information from them. At that time, I was of age and I didn't give any consent to the shrink to spread the material around, nor to anyone to go and see it. Which meant that someone somewhere commited a felony. When my mom proudly announced that to me, to see how powerful or how caring or what the fucking hell she is, I did a bit of shouting and thought something about arseholes.

However, we had a discussion, mom started digging up how I was a normal teenager, how there were no problems and that I had to be lying to the counsellor and to the shrinks and how everything was made up etc. It didn't make too much sense to me, I never understood the depths of mom's delusion about her little sweet princess (2).
Mom continued on the theme of how she got to know what was going on between me and my counsellor and psychiatrist. That, well, the counsellor knew her and that he found it important to inform my parents. Erm. Let's admit that at least until a certain point I was a minor so legally it would be borderline okay, ethically, however, totally off anything. It's simply not done. But, at a certain point, I turned 18, got the right to vote and to get bank loans and simply became a citizen with all civil rights applicable... and apparently, nobody cared. Not my counsellor, not my shrink, nor my mother. The counsellor told her stories about my alcoholism (3). Either him, or mother when telling me, omitted the fact that I drank not to get high but to overcome my anxiety. The shrink, as I learned, felt compelled 'to hear the other side of the story' (4) and invited my mother for a chitchat. Despite knowing that I didn't wish my parents to know, explaining the reasons. Despite the fact that it was simply illegal. Both had to be aware that it wasn't in any perfect order.
Mom also gave a long rant, how the shrinks are studip because I apparently lied to them that I was an alcoholic and that it's not true. Because, behold, she never noticed that I'd be coming home drunk. I didn't comment it because I had hard time not to giggle or, in fact, to fall under the table laughing my ass off.
The other thing that almost made me explode was when my mom claimed that I told her that I didn't want to kill myself, that I was sick and may have taken more meds than it was healthy. Sure, a whole pack of benzos. Even if I had said it in some weird state of mind, it's around as believable as pink unicorns.
The legal debate was nutritious, too. The Righteous One said that there's nothing wrong at all when a concerned doc contacts a family member and blabbers everything out. And that there's no reason to be angry because it was only with the bestest intentions towards yours truly. And that there's no reason to be angry because it was long time ago.
I couldn't reply that well, it was against the docs' own code of ethic conduct, that it was totally illegal and that, in this light, Hitler was a nice guy who did so much good things for the workers and built nice highways and who cares about those few mishaps that happened to the Jews and Commies and whoever else.
Mother started to sulk and kept it for quite a while

Gotta love delusions.

Not that I would be absolutely against messing into people's lives for their own good, it needs to be done sometimes, legal, illegal, nice or mean. The same rule as for using coconut-rich perfumes or brain surgery applies, though: Proceed with extreme caution.

If I ever show such a level of self-delusion, please, euthanise me before it's too late.


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(1) Shrinks are stupid
(2)namely Cinderella. The shoe stories will follow someday.
(3)see note (1)
(4) because everybody knows that there are the good teenagers which are good and the rest is problematic young delinquents and generally bastards that are not to be trusted evah, regardless of objective facts, developmental psychology and such nonsense. For more explanation, see note (1).

The post-it problem

I think that everyone who had the dubious pleasure of my company noticed an OCD (1) strain in me. And that I can be damn irritating with that one.

I also make a frequent use of post-its. I evolved a habit of using those green ones, 7.5x7.5 cm for the bibliographic.... how do I say scheda in English? Well, sort of like index cards. Neon yellow ones are permissible, too. Not those regular pale yellow ones, nor, say, pink or blue ones. Gotta be green (or, in a sheer necessity, neon yellow).

I usually carry handfuls of post-it blocs around, I have some in my diary, but I happened to have ended up here with a single neon yellow post-it left. I need to write and I have nothing for my bibliography! and I'm in a country where I have no clue where to actually go and buy post-its (back home I'd go to the department store to the stationery; or to Esselunga; or to Ufficio moderno di Firenze before they had closed down. I'd know places).

I went to Historiska Museet yesterday. I love it there because they have nice things exhibited.
Admittedly, I'm an intellectual snob so I was constantly near banging my head against something hard. What I love about Sweden is that it's rather an user-friendly country but sometimes they just go too far. Like, the tags lack basic info like origin, dimensions, material used. Rants about their function are highly useful to the general crowd, an emulation of a Romanesque church space is neat, too, but, what if an art historian wanders in and wants to see, o woe, details ? In clear light? And that exhibition on Virgin Mary and a general ideal of a woman was neat but the clear light whine is still valid, and I'd want a catalog. With pics. In colour. The large and neat works on Swedish medieval scuplture are rather old, with pics in black and white, you know, so that there'd be something. And, anyways.
Admittedly, most of the place was empty, one thing I like about Medieval stuff is that as long as it's not that colourful 14th century Italian stuff or International style, nobody is too much interested in it because, well, it's not colourful and pretty most of the time. Apart from that stomping teenager and stomping guards chatting on the cellphone so I could mess around and stick my nose to the hollowed-out backs of the statues and such, while whining that there's no catalog available and that I'm stupid not to have studied more.

I have another rather OCD issue. I don't like going to places where I can't understand the native dialect. And, I don't like going here up north because I look like a native. My command of Swedish is passable but I don't speak it. I mean, in, say, Italy or in the Reservation, I generally look foreign so people are pleasantly surprised that I speak Florentine or Moravian (instead of textbook Italian and Czech) and even if I make a neat blunder, they are fine. Here I'm expected to be a Swede and to speak, obviously, perfectly. I thought that maybe getting a massive Finnish accent to my English would at least make the things self-explanatory... well, for the next time.

On my way back, I passed a secondhand bookshop. I sneaked in - I don't really like shopping in places where I might be approached by the staff, especially in this country, that's why I sneaked in. I would like to get the whole five volumes of Aron Andersson's Medieval Swedish Sculpture in Wood (or how the hell it's called) so I thought it would be worth checking. It was, I found volumes III and IV of Andersson, that book on English influences on Norwegian sculpture that was a pain in the arse to find and which I have only in a lousy photocopy. Then the bookshop guy came to kick me out ("vi stängs" or something), I grabbed the two books and asked whether, by chance, they may have volumes I, II and V. The guys said that they should be somewhere around, that they may have more books that may interest me and that I should drop by some other day. If I were a cat, I'd purr.

The issue of green post-its and the resulting inability to do something in the library remains unresolved, though.

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(1) Obsessive-compulsive disorder. A thingy that makes folks check ten times that they really turned off the gas stove and such.

Bal d'Afrique - perfume review or something not resembling one at all

I had never heard about Byredo before I started digging on eBay, felt an urge to check something, found something else and when I was at it, I checked what else the seller had. Bal d'Afrique sounded quite exciting as a name of a fragrance so I looked for the company... and found out that it was a Swedish one.
Not that I doubted that there'd be a perfumer or two in Sweden, they seem to be everywhere but, well, it was somewhat surprising.


The whole range comes in identical bottles - to enjoy a piece of good glass sculpture, one needs to turn to Guerlain or some other huge fragrance house that can afford to have their own designs made in bulk. I however love the packaging. The ornamental logo, stickers with some trellis pattern sealing the box... as a neat coincidence, the perfume arrived when I was reading Ernst Hans Gombrich's The sense of Order.... Or, not actually reading, it was a library copy and several arseholes made so many underlines and notes that I couldn't, I only checked that the book is highly useful, I want to own one, and bought it on eBay, in the lovely first edition with ornamental designs on the dust jacket. While speaking of books, Byredo has a range of candles, featuring one named Bibliotheque.
Back to the fragrance. After the very citrusy start, there indeed is quite a handful of violets - I read them spicy and woody, that's maybe the reason why I perceived the whole fragrance as citrus-oriental, a sparsely inhabited realm. In fact, the notes taken from the Byredo site describe it rather as citrusy-floral but those are the weird flowers which I don't perceive as typically floral. Violet is simply peculiar to me, I guess I need to get a bottle of ionone (there's a bad drugstore back in the Podunk and they should have food flavourings, not the bestest start but good enough, and I love violet bonbons so I could make some when I'm at that) to get the fragrance separated from disturbing elements. Jasmine - nope, this is not a jasmine fragrance as such. I know jasmine when I meet it, I wore jasminum sambac in my hair for the whole May and I do have several jasmine perfumes; I guess that jasmine stays hidden, only making the whole thing seamless and generally neat.



There was a neat little envelope with a neat little card in the box. On the card, there was a romantic rant. Something about a hut with floor of red mud, and how the people gather there. I'm not romantic, I'm afraid so I had a nice laugh - my imagination immediately produced some highly serious gathering interrupted by a wandering chicken. My grandparents lived in the countryside until relatively recently, cottage with mud on the floor (not mud floor, it was concrete, but people went in their wellingtons to the kitchen so the result was pretty much similar) and it was much less cute than one would imagine.
Escapism is easy with the abstract nature of perfumes but it can be somewhat tricky. But... the fragrance is nice. It doesn't evoke exotic natives and red soil to me but I suppose it doesn't matter. I like it anyway - if nothing else, it's one of the fragrances that are prominently citrusy but don't turn foul on me.

Top notes: Bergamot, Lemon, Neroli, African marigold, Bucchu
Middle notes: Violet, Jasmin petals, Cyclamen
Base notes: Black Amber, Musk, Vetiver, Moroccan cedarwood

You can get the whole range of perfumes for 950 SEK /115 euros for 100mlhere.

I tried the whole range of Byredo perfumes at Fragranze back in Florence. Their new Blanche didn't really impress me but I'd happily get Pulp. Apparently, the authors imagine smashed fruits under the word pulp where I'd go for ground redwood tree on its way towards a bajillion of sheets of copier paper.

Thinking of it, it's maybe the creators that long for somewhere exotic else. Bal d'Afrique, Chembur, Gypsy water... one cannot but think about, say, Patou's Normandie, Colony or Vacances. I'm really tired by travelling and the idea of creating something like I'm Not Leaving My House (with notes of three days old bread, wilting plants and dust bunnies on a bleak autumn day, for example) is already kicking my shin.