The Line Of Fire - Rock 'N' Roll Will Never Die

This is my little brother's band Line of Fire playing one of their (three) songs, Rock'nRoll will never die :)

Earth Hour

On friday I went into town with my parents to watch my little brother play the drums. His band (that brings a smile to a sister's face) Line of Fire, was the opening act for Gasoline Queen and a Falu band called Billion Dollar Babies at Verkstäderna ("The Workshops", the only youth recreation centre still standing in my hometown) and lo and behold, he was actually really fucking good. Who would have thought that one day I'd watching my little skrutt of a brother rock out behind a drum set. I was quite proud actually. He was the best in his band too, the others were good for their age but they were too careful and nervous I think (but they're only 13-14 so it's understandable...)

Last night was Earth Hour, so my mum and I left dad and Simon to watch the game in the dark (Sweden-Portugal) and went into town again. People were gathered at the square. Andreas Håberg (the kindhearted enviromental activist who grew up in the house nextdoor) was organising the get together. It started with a short film clip on a screen showing the highlights of Earth Hour last year and the concept and the origin of the whole thing. Then a group called Naked Monkies put on a fire show as soon as all the lights switched off. It was really magical. Just the dancing flames and the tribal music in the dark and the cold (although I couldn't help myself and had to stage whisper to mum, "and what does those speakers run on, do they think? happy thoughts?") after the fire show, two troubadours sang a few songs (again, microphone and speakers equals electricity...) and then an elderly lady was reading some texts that she wrote, but it wasn't really to our taste so we left... and went to the Norrtulls Church, which was also entirely lit up by candles, for an ongoing acoustic concert and sat and listening to that for about half an hour. Then it became overly religious, so we left and got pizza on the way home.

The pizzeria in Ljusne (my village) is the image of sadness at ten o'clock on a saturday night. The decor hasn't changed under the 22 years that I've known it, but it has seen better days, like any business still treading water in the village, refusing to accept the gone era of rural communities.

When we arrived on the scene and sat down to wait for the pizzas, there were two other people there, besides the owner who was watching the game. A tragic-looking figure nursing a beer bottle, who was gazing unseeingly out the window. He looked ready to jump off the roof of a building and like he was mourning the fact that no building in this village is high enough for the fall to kill him. When we sat down to wait, we sat down at a table from which mum could see the TV as she wanted to watch the game as well, bringing him also in our field of vision, something that made him slightly more self-conscious and as a result, he decided he needed a glass for his second beer.

The other person, also a guy, only older than the first but equally lonely-looking, was sitting by the one fruit (or slot) machine and gambling away all his money, also nursing a beer, no glass (he wasn't in our field of vision however)

In the land of the Living Dead

Like everything else, blogger was working against me when I first got back home, and I couldn't get the entry to post. This is what I wrote:

"Almost exactly twenty-four hours has passed between the cup of instant coffee in Ana's kitchen area and the strong brewed one in my parents kitchen. I ache everywhere, arms and back mostly, but as much as it annoyed me somewhere between montreal and frankfurt and pissed me right off between frankfurt and stockholm, now the pain is rather soothing. It distracts me. It didn't quite feel like coming home, and yet it did. All my energy drained out of me the minute I entered the house. Like I'd been going on auto-pilot up to this point and now, fully planted on the ground, my engines turn off. All those options and possibilities I was reviewing for the future kind of fell away in that instant. My mum told me, "Well, first thing on Monday you'll have to go and report to the job office so they'll give you unemployment support and benefits. You're not on holiday now, you know." (Note, she didn't say 'start looking for a job', but 'report for unemployment support', that's how impossible it is to get work here. But that's probably a good thing, I can't afford to get stuck here, I just can't.) I'm already feeling depressed and hopeless. It'd better me jetlag, because I can not afford any self-pity right now. I have so much stuff to do. It's my dad's birthday tomorrow. I completely didn't know that. I'm a terrible daughter. "

Now, today was a new day as well as week, I went into town with my dad first thing and registered at the job office - she gave me a piece of paper with three dates for meetings with introductions to the job market and courses in how to write a CV and such, the very same meetings I've suffered through twice already in my life and really don't feel inclined to suffer through again, so with the first one being on the 31st I aim to get a job before that so I won't have to attend. I say down and wrote my CV as soon as I got home, then I went for a walk in the snow storm, I took my mum's camera with me and took some pictures in the woods and at the cemetery. It's become my daily ritual: when things get to negative and mind-numbing at the house I go for a walk and end up at the cemetery (ironic, I know) and as I was telling Ana, in Vancouver I would go to the nearest or nicest coffee shop and spend and few hours there, do some reading or writing, but here... well, we don't have a coffee shop. We have woods, deserted factories, the frozen sea side and the cemetery. Oh, and the grocery store. But I don't want to go there, I might run into some locals...

Ana actually called me today, that was great. So uplifting to actually speak to someone who speaks my language (and I don't mean english) I know it's only been a weekend but it feels like a month. Anyway, I'm going to do the dishes right now, then cook dinner, since there's no point in trying to do anything creative until They have gone to sleep, and I need to keep myself busy doing something.

Ana, Cesar, I miss you.

Here we go again.

Ana and Cesar just saw me off at the gate, and can you imagine, as anxious/excited as I am to be facing the next stage of my life, I'm feeling a bit teary over here. Maybe it's the view outside the big windows in front of me; an endless stretch of pale gloom swallows up the toy aeroplanes as they take flight, and then they're gone.

Life in a box

spent the night on Ana's couch, we attempted to have our last (for now) writing session last night, but I think we created more problems with the dialogue than we came up with solutions, but in Ana's research she came up with a couple of things that I didn't know about butterflies, that I know now. Hanging out with people later in some sort of farewell coffee consumption. Tomorrow Cesar gets back. I'm already packed and ready to go, I just don't know when I'm going, where I'm going, still waiting for a reply from back home.