December will be magic again... i hope

Now it has been an awful long hiatus again; i've simply felt too blank and overwrought most of the time. Now i'm back to whine about the weather again; this autumn was unusually warm, and after the two last winters being all they should have been with snow and mostly cheek-pinching cold, this december has been hopelessly warm and damp with merely a little frost and absolutely no snow. Today has been grey and rainy and i wonder when and if this will turn. This is sweden, mind you! -and yesteday was able to eat a wild strawberry from my own balcony, as much as i love wild strawberries that only adds to my distress. I really don't like this at all and desperately hope that december, at least the remainder of it, will be magic again!

Kate Bush: "December will be magic again", Christmas special from 1980:

A sign of life -and a little talk of death.

Summer just exploded in my face, and now it's almost over. Luckily i am very much of an autumn-person, even though i adore all seasons -even winter if circumstances are right... -and as last winter was so remarkably cold -albeit with many beautiful, perfect Narnia-days -i just longed so badly for summer; and during the spring -which was rather an extension of the winter -if it weren't for the budding trees one might have thought it was mid november. -and now summer is nearly over; a summer that has been unusually warm, sunny and lovely when swedish summers are often known to mostly rain away.

I hope -as i've said a hundred times before -to at last be able to post more frequently here, i hope to finally get my cluttered apartment tidy, -it has become a veritable mayhem of piles of papers, half-filled bin bags full of assorted trash and wobbly towers of books, cds and dvds -even dishes which feels so nasty!-very Grey Gardens; minus cats, raccoons and Jackie O.

Time has -as it usually tends to do- slipped mercilessly through my fingers, and i've been battling slight bouts of depression and haven't had the peace of mind to tend to anything, -i haven't even drawn for months, no, years!

Early in the spring, my dad moved into a nursing home which has been a terrible ordeal. -not to mention watching his alzheimers - or whatever it is, he hasn't been diagnosed - advancing more and more; he used to at least have some moments of clarity. -but at least i'm sort of prepared for it, and it has been a long drawn-out process- not like it was with my mother who, aged 64, went from her old brilliant self to a hapless spectre within just a few days, before she passed away. That was a shock i still haven't quite recovered from, even now, five years later.


I hope you like my new look and my new header -a picture of my mother and her first "mother in law" -probably taken by her then-boyfriend in the spring of 1966 in her little apartment -which was in the attic of a rustic 18th century building with no electricity or running water, where she cooked on a wood-fired iron stove, and might've sat and enjoyed a cup of lapsang souchong in the light of a kerosene-lamp.

She loved it there and lived there for the rest of her life -even though she later moved across the yard -where I was to grow up...



Me with mum, (above). Me, aged 5 (below).

Hope to be back soon. See you!

An icy blast, at last!

Ok, I might have whined too soon - yesterday it felt colder and the air was crisp and cool - I even think i saw a light sparkle of frost in the grass and the ground felt harder, and this morning it was positively freezing out there. -though i won't be fully satisfied until there's a blizzard or even possibly complete snow-mayhem and that i'm able to walk across the ice to the City Hall!


Top-illustration by Wenzel Hollar
Bottom, Moa with the City hall in the background.