Thursday, December 17, 2009
It feels like time is flying. I am stressed and can not keep up with things. It is less than seven weeks until I go and it is hard to understand what it all means and all the little things I have to take care of before I leave.
Maybe one is not supposed to be able to plan for such a trip.
I should be sleeping, there is so much I need to do tomorrow, but still my thoughts are spinning. I’m wide awake and hungry in the middle of the night. Words and sentences formulate in my head, sometimes in a beautiful way. The pieces fall into place, my words on paper. I long to write them down.
In my soul I know that there are eight hundred books waiting to come out. Words to be caught, which will be formed to sentences and paragraphs to be written. Chapters to be merged on to some form of invisible whole that I did not even know what it is when I wrote them.
For the first time, I long to find peace to write, time to get peace, the oppurtunity to get time and the strength to take the oppurtunity when it appears.
I have been my biggest critic in my life. Therefore, I have been passive, never allowed myself to go deep into the work of writing, expressing myself, to articulate how I look at myself and my surroundings. Sometimes I think that it is because I’m not finished yet, but a nagging feeling in my back of the head tells me that it is really about fear.
All my life I have shown fragments of who I am to the world. I’ve never exposed myself, but only ever showed aspects of it. Now I dream of silence, stillness and being a whole person in everything I do.
I am afraid that some people do not want to listen, that I will loose so much because of it, but I feel more and more that I can no longer hold back. To live a fragmented life is not to live any life at all.
I have a strong desire to be both the deepest part of me and the extreme end of my superficiality in everything I do. Integrating all parts of myself in every moment I live.
I know there are many people who are not interested in all these aspects of me, but it’s ok as long as I’m allowed to be there anyway. I know what the price for it might be, but I also know what the price is to continue to live my life one fragment at a time.
The people I admire most in life is the brutally honest people who refuse to adhere to someone else’s idea of how life should be lived and it is the same way I want to go. To live my life the only way possible, my way. Then I must dare also to be brutally honest with myself and to everyone else. That does not mean that I know how life should be lived, I will still feel like Bambi on thin ice. I will be scared and insecure and wonder what I’m doing, but I will allow myself to live life fully.
To fall over and hit myself, that is just a bonus.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
To find myself standing with my feet on the red sand of India and realize that for the coming ten months, there are no other than “me” around. Having everything in a backpack, carrying it with me as my legs move with no musts, no stress and no direction or goal. I have no friends or family, no things or events to distract me. Just me alone in an enormous world that sometimes is very very small.
This is the ultimate fear and my deepest longing. It scares the shit out of me and makes my heart thrilled. To not have anything to do whatsoever.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
I have decided to put up a new blog for my upcoming trip, so that everyone I know can follow my trip. I don’t want everyone to see what I write here for the reason that, one, they wouldn’t be too interested in my philosophical side and some of the more private stuff is meant more for my closer friends and unknown people.
So, if you would like to read my travel blog, just head over to http://mandalay.se
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Some funny things has happened these past two days.
I went out for a few beers with a friend the other night and we were talking a lot about my upcoming trip, him giving me advice and tips about travelling, seeing that he has been back-packing a few times in different parts of the world (the longer trips being south-east asia and central america).
We were talking about my budget and he said that you will need more money than that to be able to actually have a life during those ten months. My budget is at the moment about $5000 which is survivable given that I’m planning to visit people and work in Australia for food and shelter, but it won’t give me that much room if stuff shows up. Anyway, the nice part is that he at the end refused to let me pay my part of the bill. He said, just save that money for the trip, you will need it. That was quite unexpected.
Another unexpected thing that happened was that a woman at work, that I haven’t really talked too much with started asking me about the trip (it’s kind of official at work that I’m going) and it turns out that she has travelled alone quite a few times.
She said that India wasn’t really her kind of place, but sent me an e-mail with links to domestic airlines that she recommended there and then she also said that she had some rupies left that she wanted to give me.
I have also had three people interested in renting my apartment while I’m gone. Don’t know if anyone will work out, but it suddenly feels easier to find someone I know that might want to rent it.
In a sense, it feels like all the pieces of this puzzle is finding it’s place in the whole picture much on it’s own.
Sure, I probably need about $2000 more than I’m about to get together, but it feels doable somehow. I don’t want to say no to everything that happens just to save a small amount of money, but I’m cutting back on all the luxuries I don’t need and think hard before I buy stuff (except for the chai latte I just discovered at “Espresso House” that is making me a bit of an addict), so we will see how it turns out.
When I look back on my life I realize that this trip started already back in february in 2007 when I visited India the first time. The person I was then is just a figment of my imagination, but all these changes since then was needed to get me to now, and I would never have been ok with doing a trip like this back then. In that sense the preparations has been long, but since a few weeks back when things got sorted at work, I can really feel the excitement and joy of it all and it is not just a trip that will start in february, but a trip that is going on right Now, and has been going on for quite some time. It just looks like there is going to be a change in scenery in a few months time. Like a movie with no beginning or end, just different scenes playing on the screen.
Monday, August 10, 2009
The other day I was surfing around the internet (don’t have much else to do at work) when I happened on a site called the ”Rickshaw run”. It is a charity race where a group of people get a rickshaw each and then drives from one end of the Indian subcontinent to another end about 4000km away.
It usually takes about two weeks and it is complete madness to drive a rickshaw built for short, in the city distances on a trip through the rough landscape of India. The idea is basically that you get a rickshaw, a destination and then you get there on your own. No help from any organisation or anything. When (not if) the rickshaw breaks down, you find ways to repair it and any kind of mess you get in, you solve yourself.
The purpose for the run, is that every person must raise at least €1500 that is given to charity, but I guess that is just an excuse for people that wants to go crazy for a while.
Allthough the website clearly states that this is not a simple task or tourist thing, there is a slight risk that you might die, and a good chance that you will be injured in some way or another, I thought it sounded like a really great challenge! It sounded so insane that it could be just the greatest adventure I know of, and I usually never really like this kind of things!
So, who knows, maybe to combine this with a backpacking experience in India/South east asia for 6-12 months would be a really nice thing to do. I’m putting it all out here and we will see what happens.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
I have now been home for about a week. First few days was a bit troublesome because of the jet lag, making it hard to sleep. I woke up very early in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep again. A few days later though, I’m sleeping well again.
In one way, it’s been a bit hectic since my return. Bought a new guitar, new shoes, been sorting out all the pictures I took, getting used to my new iPhone, trying to assimilate myself into work (luckily it’s been a slow week since most of our customers are still on vacation).
In another way, it’s been very relaxing too. I haven’t really done much during the evenings after work, just hanging out in my apartment and plucking on the guitar and stuff.
It feels good. Very good.
Despite that it feels a bit strange going from hanging out with 15 people every day for two weeks to being all alone in a silent apartment it only took me a few hours to get back to being alone.
I notice a relaxation around this and I really enjoy it. I guess it was time for me to spend a bit of time on my own.
So all in all, things are moving on smoothly.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
I’m sitting next to gate A11 in the middle of a continueous buzz of activity in the Philadelphia airport, again immersed in what is known as civilization. The flight so far has been survivable although sweaty. I am hoping for a good sleep on the next flight. We will see.
Further reflections on what has been will be given later on. At the moment, all I know is that I have had a wonderful time. That is enough for now.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Me and U went to Amsterdam between the 18th and 23rd of February. Since getting back from there I have had a lot to do, so I haven’t had too much time to post here.
It is a beautiful city with it’s canals and old buildings and there were very few cars in the city because everyone is cycling, so it made it very nice to walk in and enjoy the atmosphere. I think we probably walked like 10 to 15 miles a day, going up and down the streets and bridges going in to all kinds of shops and stores, cafés and restaurants.
Except for the Anne Frank museum, we also visited the Amsterdam historical museum which was really nice, allthough it had 24 rooms and took way to long to go through. We also visited the photographic museum which at the moment had an exhibition by Richard Avedon an american photographer famous for his portraits of famous people like Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and lots of others. His pictures was all in black and white and all neutral white backgrounds to really capture the person and usually in a more personal way than most portrait-photographers. It was almost 200 portraits and some of them really got me staring. Just beautiful pictures so full of life!
On the way home on saturday night we went down to the red light distric (at 4am), but when we got in there it felt really creepy with only a few strange people walking around and a group of young guys that had had too much to drink (which I had had too of course), so we quickly turned around again and went there sunday evening instead when there was more people there and still daylight.
It felt surreal to walk around with women in different shapes and sizes almost with no clothing standing behind glas doors dancing and making signs to people passing by to come in and take part of their “services”. Growing up in a country such as Sweden where buying and selling sex is illegal in every form, where there are no strip clubs and escort services and other types of sex-business is only existing underground, seeing it so publicly open feels strange. And to know that some brothels are even owned by the government (to get rid of trafficking) feels so completely opposite to what I’m used to. Sweden is open-minded when it comes to sex between two adults that do it of their own free will, but prostitution would be social suicide.
Also next to these places are coffeeshops where you legally can use drugs, that is just unheard of. Sure, in many ways, Sweden would be on the more “conservative” side when it comes to these things compared to continental Europe, but that these two countries lies in the same part of Europe is fascinating.
I can really recommend going there just for the canals and bridges and the general atmosphere. But remember to bring cash, because a lot of places don’t accept visa or mastercard, only their local pincards… 
