London Part 1: Aliens at Kew Gardens

I'm back from a week in London, my first time there. I stayed with my friend Liz who's from there but lives in Stockholm.

I got yelled at at the British Museum by a teacher who snapped "Read! Read! The answers are all there, but you have to READ." Only when she directed "Not YOU" at my startled face did I see her class of children behind me.

While walking on the Hampstead Heath (a huge green space) we came across masses of blue dragonflies hovering over a pond. They were other-worldly, zipping and flitting about in a blue cloud. They were mating very busily.

They were not the only other-worldly creatures we saw. In one of the greenhouses at Kew Gardens (which houses the largest living plant collection in the world!) there were ponds in and among the plants. In one of these ponds there was the ugliest, most alien aquatic creature I have ever seen. It was pinkish white and had white eyes. Yes, WHITE eyes. It was sort of part fish, part reptile. It had 4 legs that it used to swim around with, and also what looked like small extra arms dangling out from its head. In another separate pond, there were about 20 baby aliens. They had to live in a different pond than their parents, otherwise they would be eaten by them. Not a very practical design for the continuation of the species, which may be a good thing. They were very creepy, Gollum-like creatures.

The gardens were chock full of interesting collections. There were Alice in Wonderland rose gardens which were very organized and prim. There was a huge steamy greenhouse called the Palm House, so full of trees and plants it seemed to bulge. You could walk up stairs to a walkway that went along the top of the trees.

There was a cactus house, which housed the comedy group of the plant world. And there was a carnivorous plant collection, where the clever design was astounding. Plants that are traps! Plants that have built-in umbrellas so the rain can't ruin their traps! Plants that trap bugs with the sticky liquids they are covered in!And then slowly digest them with enzymes! We read about them on the information plaques, which, as Liz pointed out, it was too bad the flies buzzing around couldn't read, or they would have known they were seriously in the wrong place.

We also read about the plant hunters who originally collected species for the gardens. Then we saw a collection of plants that looked like antlers and moose heads growing out of soil swatches on the wall. There was an entire wall of them, proving that the plant hunters could be just as ruthless as animal hunters with their trophy rooms.

I am pleased to say that I just answered a question I was about to post here about giant Amazonian water lilies. I spent quite some time looking at them. I was impressed by their size and sturdiness but driven crazy wondering why they grow with turned up rims around their edges. My fruitful internet search revealed that the rims are thought to serve as a bumper preventing the leaves from overlapping one another and blocking their access to sunlight. So there, now we all know.

The fan

I stood beside the oscillating fan, letting it blow past my calves at timed intervals. There's something soothing about a thing that's timed and repetitive. Walking, and the time every 2 steps take. Repetitive music. Waves. It brings me back to the simplicity of a heartbeat or breathing. Those simple things underneath it all. Hugely simple. Simply huge.

From the balcony of our hotel on the island of Amorgos in Greece we could see a lighthouse on the other side of the water. It blinked on in the darkness every 4 seconds exactly. I counted, repeatedly, somehow expecting it to falter, but it never did. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand.

The striped dress

We sold clothes at Street (a market) on Friday. It was their vintage themed evening and we had a lot of clothes to sell, stuff we gradually imported from Nova Scotia over the past few years.

We were open for business from 4-9, and during this time a certain green and white striped dress became the main character of the soirée.

It was a real winner, a beauty: cotton polyester mix, nice cut, bright and slightly but not too 70's. Picked it up at Value Village last summer. I would have kept it but it wasn't quite my colour. We hung it up in the front. From the start it was being admired and caressed and held up in front of different girls. Then a girl asked to try it on, and I said sure, the changing room is over there. Go straight and it'll be on the right.

Time passed; an hour passed. We had a busy spell and only gradually realized that nobody had come back with the dress. The change room was pretty far away so I couldn't see if the girl came out with it or not. We started to speculate that maybe it had been stolen, which dampened our mood. All the work to set up and be there and then some bratty punk walks off with whatever they want.

Except that...it wasn't stolen. A woman from another booth walked by, holding up the dress and yelling "Does anybody recognize this?" "Me!" I yelled waving my arm like an idiot."I do! Over here!" I ran over and retrieved it. We hung it back up.

Next a blond woman came and tried the dress. It looked good; it seemed to be made for her. She went to the change room to have a better look. She was gone a long time and then her friend came back and returned it to us. We hung it back up and then another girl asked if she could put it on hold for an hour. Having never sold clothes at a market before, we foolishly said yes. (Now we know that 20 minutes would be more reasonable.) Just after that the blond girl came rushing back and asked where the dress was. I told her we had just put it on hold and she was really disappointed because she had kids with her and couldn't wait an hour but she had decided she really wanted the dress. She sighed and said she might be back and wandered off.

"That dress is nothing but trouble," I said. "Nothing but trouble, " agreed Per.

An hour passed, and the hold girl didn't come back. In the end the blond girl came back. She was thrilled to see the dress still there, and bought it. Which seemed like the proper fate of the dress. And here my knowledge of the history of the green and white striped dress ends.

Halloween

I didn't realize that I've been missing Halloween these past few years. I just accepted, each fall when I found myself still here, that Halloween wouldn't be much more than some expensive pumpkins at the grocery store and the occasional half-assed party for the kids at school. Halloween isn't the same in Sweden. It isn't one of the traditional holidays (they have All Saints Day, Allhelgonadagen, instead, where you visit the graves of loved ones and light candles etc.) and has only started to appear here due to the prompting of commercial forces hoping to cash in on it. Kids go door to door asking for candy at Easter instead, dressed as "witches": red circles on their cheeks, flowered skirts with aprons, and kerchiefs on their heads.

But now, as we're packing up and sorting through clothes, I find myself repeatedly holding up some skirt or belt or hat or nail polish and saying "This is definitely going in the Get-Rid-Ofs pile..." Then I pause, stare at the item distractedly, and say, "But it could be good as part of a Halloween costume. Maybe I'd better keep it." This Halloween reasoning/planning has led me to keep items for possible hippie, acrobat, coureur de bois, ghost, and queen costumes. I guess I've missed dressing up. I'll probably be so excited this Halloween that I won't be able to decide on just one costume, so I'll be like, 5 things at once.

Art + Truck parties

Went to see the group show EnVar (One Each) at Kulturhuset with Liz. My collage Vykort från Stockholm (Postcards from Stockholm) is in the show. Kulturhuset is in the centre of the city, in the main square. It's the time of year when all the kids who've just graduated from high school are driven around town on the back of trucks, blaring music, dressed up, yelling, screaming, and partying.

We got to see many of these trucks drive by today, since the main square is their main destination. It was quite a sight. I watched with a mixture of amusement, joy, disgust, shock, and admiration. My favorite part about it is that the trucks are decked out with fresh new birch branches, Swedish flags, and yellow and blue balloons. The birch branches are tradition, and a detail that keeps the whole thing on the better side of the fine line between pleasing and ridiculous. Without those birch branches, things would be different. I would see it as a bunch of kids riding around in the back of trucks yelling and waving. Silly, easily dismissed. But with the branches it becomes festive, exciting, maybe even touching. The branches are new and fresh, the kids are new and fresh, and they're right at the very beginning, new leaves, not having encountered the storms, the messiness, the surprises of life.

A truck stops. Kids jump off and run into the fountain in the main square, dancing and singing and yelling and drinking. It's a spectacle. You can't tear your eyes away.

Vitality over finish

How much of any of this do we need? How much of it is actually a hinder? What really matters?

Lots of reading. A book about Mark Rothko and his painting career. The Abstract Expressionists. "They value expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, the unknown over the known, the inner over the outer." It's more a process than a style. Goal is to express feeling through the act of painting (etc) itself without fixating on the actual product of that act, the artwork.

Don't struggle, ALLOW. Inte det man borde göra; det man inte kan låta bli att göra. (Tove Jansson) Translated: Not what you should do; that which you can't help doing.

Being open.

What was today? Sorting things out. Getting ready for selling the clothes we brought from Canada at Street this Friday. Trying to get our heads around what we have to get done in the next few weeks. Listened to a new free release by Buck 65, really good.

Feeling sort of exhausted. I always need some processing time after travel. Also these days are unstructured: I can't relax enough to work/play because I'm too aware of the practical work that needs doing. Too aware of the big change coming. No way to prepare for it, in some respects. Have to concentrate on one thing at a time.

So much seems about letting go lately, allowing things to go the way they want to, not letting myself get in the way of a different kind of life that's trying to form. Letting go of control over my life in some ways. Letting go of the way I thought my life should look by now, to make room for how it really is, and for how it wants to be.

Objects from a well

I am brain dead like I always am after a flight. We got home late this afternoon. Watched 4 episodes of Seinfeld on the laptop on the plane. Saw Gotland and the Archipelago from the window. There were lots of boats going by which were small white specks.

It's summer here now, 28 degrees or more. The lilacs are out, and lilacs are one of my favorites.

Greece and Sweden are a mixed up soup in my head right now. One minute I'm still swimming in that clear water, looking at fish. The next I'm here- tired but restless, watching the water, boats, the slow, long light of June. Then there's the airplane like a tear through the middle of it. Now this trip has reached the stage where it begins to exist in memory. Certain details swim up to the surface, others are already sinking and settling. Travel can be so dreamlike. Was here real? Was there real? Can they really both be real at the same time? So much in so many places is real at the same time.

I keep thinking about this one collection of objects at a museum in Athens, 4 glass cases containing the found contents of a well that was in use from 1000 B.C. until 100 A.D. There were all manner of buckets and jugs and lanterns, a spoon made of bone, a key, nutshells, fruit pits, seashells, and a pair of dice. You can imagine so many different stories behind those objects. Which ones were dropped by mistake and which on purpose? Maybe a young girl who dropped her lantern when she went to draw water walked home, stumbling, in the dark. Maybe someone spent the whole day thirsty after they lost their bucket. Maybe someone threw the key down the well after locking a door or a chest, something which would maybe be locked for hundreds of years, or FOREVERMORE. Of course the fruit pits were thrown, not dropped, likewise the nutshells. Just a guy walking along having a snack, say, 2500 years ago. Whoever it was, I'm sure they would never have thought that the peach pit they casually threw into the well would be gazed upon, thousands of years later, in a glass case, by us, the people OF THE FUTURE.

Greece

I am in Greece. We have been travelling around on Greek Islands for a week and a half. Now we are in Athens for 3 days before we go home. Of course I had the ambition to blog more on this trip, but I got vacation lazy. Here are some bits.

As we get further away from it on the ferry, Athens looks like crushed chalk lying scattered at the foot of the hills. Like bleached bones on a beach.

There are so many different kinds of sand. One beach has sand like sprinkles for ice-cream, crushed peanut sprinkles. Another kind is so fine it sticks to everything.

A man throws away some moldy lemons. A woman waters her garden. Outside of a hotel a man tends the flower garden. Sunflowers and others I don't know the names of. This idea of tending. I see it everywhere here. It's good to observe. Tending something specific - your area, hotel, garden, all that concerns you. I look out over the water and suddenly miss everyone I know. I look up at the mountains and feel new.

Donkeys and mountain goats. I had never heard a donkey braying before. I didn't know what braying sounded like. It makes you stop what you're doing and sort of freeze and listen. Goats - I try to videotape one climbing a mountain. It seems to know that so it stops all the time and waits and looks at me defiantly.

Fruit trees. Lemons, limes, oranges, apricots. There are a lot of trees and plants to love here. Flowering trees, and odd, wonky Dr. Seuss trees and bushes. Luscious colours, strong and full against white. No pastels except in the aftermath of sunset.

And the white buildings like sugar cubes perched on the islands. The islands with their soothing forms passing slowly from the ferry. They are the shape they are. They want to sit how they're sitting. They watch us go by in the morning but in the afternoon they close their eyes and sleep. Then they don't know you're studying them, their lines, their highs and lows and hidden coves and cliffs with holes. Secretly learning to know them, programming the image of them gliding by for when I later close my eyes.