Photo of the Year

I simply love this photo, taken by Chai Maibert

Suicide suspension @ CALM Body Modification

Chai gave me 4 large hooks in the back

and Fredrik helped me get off the ground.

The most amazing experience ever...

December in pictures

I'm hooked

Tired today, yesterday was very exciting, with the suspension and everything. :) It was not what I had prepared myself mentally for; the hooks didn't hurt to put in, but the suspension itself... It was a mental hurdle I found very hard. To force your mind to do something it knows it doesn't have to do is much harder than I could ever imagine.
But Im so happy I did it!
Chai & Fredrik at CALM Bodymodification here in Stockholm did an amazing job, I'll post photos soon.
It was a great experience and I am sure I will do it again.

And today is Johannas birthday: Happy birthday sweetie!

So close to Christmas, and I'm off from work for 9 days, which is such a luxary! I really need some time off. :)

ending 2009

Last few weeks have been painful, with the extraction of a tooth and all...
But now i'm recovering and planning ahead. Can't believe it's just a few weeks left until christmas!

Think this year will end on a very positive note, I'll have fun and experience new things (photos may be published later on).

And i try to figure out what to do in 2010... It's a chance to try new things and see new places. A chance to be less stuck in an uncomfortable situation. It's about time i broke free of the chains, so to say.

Internal rage

I'm trying to decide if this has been a great day of writing or a lazy day for doing nothing but writing... At least I've enjoyed it. And it went by far too fast. Not that its over, but its way less productivity out
of this day than I was aming for. I need structure and I need a little bit of ass-kicking when I don't do what I'm supposed to. Not that theres anyone around to kick it...

This new home of mine irritates me. Or to be exact; my attitude about getting things done here irritates me. I have lost my balance. I expect things to be fixed and sorted before I even build a base for it to be fixed on.
I'm shit. More or less.
This month was supposed to be an adventure, but it's turning out to be a long wait for things to start happening.

And I now know that I hate the walls here. They are cement (or whatever it is), and any thing to be put up needs to be drilled. Wich means that I have to ask Peder, it sucks.
Can't wait until I made this place more livable.

Prison with spiders...

Im trapped in my home today, it's no joke.
There's a huge machine (a digging thing) that's neatly parked right across the only exitpoint... What to do? Not that I need to go anywhere, but it would be nice, in case of a fire or something. So I'm stuck here about to go bananas over the cage some worker so thoughtfully made my home...
What a day...
I guess I have to do with what I have and get going on the curtains I never manage to find time to make. Now I have no exuse at all I guess.

There are quite many spiders here, too many if you ask me. Any spider relocation center out there?

tour 2010

Decided to make my summer vacation next year all about live gigs. Nice theme i think. A bit personal and far better than anything else i can think of!

Nine Inch Nails & IKEA

These last few days have been a struggle.. things just keep fighting me all the way.
So I do what I always do, I find a good band and let the music swallow me whole. This time it was (to noones surprise) NIN that got the honor of being my anchor to sanity.
I spent too much time on YouTube and got myself a good laugh.

And this evening me and Peder won the great war against IKEA, which was takin place in my basement kingdom, and will forever be remembered as "the day mankind won over the LACK-shelves".
But as soon as we got them up, I realised I do not have all that much to put on them yet... So I'm gonna invest in some beautiful books, perhaps frame a photo (got one particular in mind) and just let the shelves grow more and more personal with time.

Stress

It's taking way to long (not really, i'm just very impatient) to get my new home ready. I want it all right now! It feels like every day i want something to happen. And every day i feel like nothing gets done... is it gonna take forever? Am i too hard on myself?
I know it's just been 6 days since i moved in, but i didn't get done what i should have gotten done. I spent money on things that couldn't wait, that i hadn't calculated... shit, filling new space from scratch isn't a quick and definately not a cheap thing to do!

Life is moving in such a slow pace, some days is feels like it's standing still... today is such a day. I can hear people outside, getting things done and living their little lives. I envy their simplicity, days are predictable and in a comfortable rutine.

I need to do so much (on so many levels) that i end up just feeling like i'm doing nothing. Even though i am doing plenty!

the beginning

Fall turns to winter and the first snow came a few days ago. Got time now to do the usual winter-reflection.
Not that i have that much new... just time to think without the usual cloudy mind.

not again...

A mad rush, a cluttered mind at work to prepare the move next weekend. Not the easiest thing in the world!

Everything is made difficult and im pretty fed up with it all.

The journey

Words don't come as easy as they used to.
Fragmented and disoriented, disturbed. I grow, but i dont keep up with myself. Some days i stop and think: so much has happened, but where am i in all of this?

Am i the same? Am i something new and to myself umfamiliar?

I have no idea, cause i really havent had a chance to stop and look deep. But i must be different. I feel like i've grown and have to fit this new me into the frame of who i see myself as.
Im not as connected to my life as i used to be. I float, see glimpses of myself, reflections in someone elses face, as they look at me diffrently now.

Its a journey and i feel like i know where im going and i cant wait to get there.

one day at the time

There are things i dont know yet, questions left unsaid.
I roam the field of the obvious and grase the shadowland, but stay away from the dark waters edge.

This autumn has been strange to me, a stranger. My life is so changed, its confusing to see it as mine sometimes.
What i thought would be hard is in fact easy, and unfortunatly, what i thought would be easy turned out to be hard.

What i need to remember is that ill get through it. Day by day, this will be taken further and soon enough it will be done.

My love to all of you who help me, you are fantastic!

Sofas - can't live without them, can't decide which one to get...

With changes in life, one has to adjust on a material level as well. So I'm browsing around for a nice sofa. Preferably one that turns into a bed. But the ones I find are either ugly or expensive. I try to convince myself, that all that is needs is a few pillows. But honestly, they were ugly and would have needed to be covered in a non-penetrateble layer of pillows and blankets. And if a sofa is that ugly, I rather go with the pricier ones!
But life is cruel and I'm not rich...
I've decided to get a sofa in August, so you'll hear more about this drama.

On monday I go back to work after a 2½ week vacation. 2½ weeks spent doing nothing at all. Well, that's not entirely true. I visited my sister on her birthday in Gävle and I've been out shopping quite a bit.
Remarkably, when I checked my bank today, I'm not poor! Yay!
Who would have believed that the way I've been throwing money around me :) I bought 3 pair of shoes, 2 pair of jeans, paintings for the kitchen and plenty of other things. I should be broke, but by magic I'm not! So I'll pretend that I planed this all along and that I haven't been panicking for 2 days about what a terrible person I am for spending so much on shit.

Now I just have to make the switch in my head to be a responsible adult again...

The future

I need to figure things out. Seriously, I do.
I'm more confused than clear and I need some kind of fixed point, some kind of strategy.
Right now I live day by day and it's not good. It's a badly planned way of living and leads to confusion. I'm off three days from work and I plan to use these days to the max. Planning, organizing and making decisions. Cause I can't go on like this. It's fucked up.

An ocean of hours and minutes

I'm back in Stockholm after a lovely weekend with Sandra & Martina. It's always so nice to meet them, but now they have just moved to a great apartment in Gävle, big, light and with the cats running around and being a bit crazy. I'll be visiting them alot, I imagine.
I'm a bit tired, but in a good mood. I had a fantastic time, as always, and felt that I needed to see them.
You know how you sometimes feel a strong need to see specific people, it was like that for me with them.
The three of us went to mom and dad's grave today. It felt nice, just hadn't been there in a few years (I'm bad , I know) and when we got there it had some uncut grass and stuff to take care of. Felt so good to tend to the grave, a feeling I wasn't expecting.

Now I'm back in the chaos and back to every day life...
Or almost at least.
I'm not really about every day life now, just going from one day to the next. Drifting along in an ocean of hours and minutes. No need to be fixed or driven now, I'm just going along in life. In a flow that's supposed to bring some answers and some goals.

I don't know... I'm not too philosophical right now, so everything comes out like shit.

Saturday night - turn on the summer heat

A month has gone by in the new apartment.
It's bigger, better and more peaceful.

I did a lot of shopping this week. It's dangerous to have a day off from work two days after payday :)
I bought three dresses, one skirt, one pair of 3/4 lenth pants, two tops, a bag, two kitchen towels, a teapot, six drink-mixing spoons, earrings, a necklace, and more... In other words: I had o lot of fun!

Tonight I'm having a pre-party at home with some friends and then we'll go out in Södermalm for more partying and fun.
But before the fun can begin: I have laundry to do. :/

Valborg

Spending the evening with good music, knowing tomorrow will be very hectic and crazy. We move to our new apartment, everything packed and ready. Almost.

Yesterday was Valborg, a holiday when you light a huge fire and just stand there and stare. Masses of people gathered as if they never seen fire before. Then when you get bored of the fire, you go to a bar and continue the celebrations with drinks and good company!
Saying that, you might draw the conclusion that I'm a bit hung over today, but you'd be wrong :)
The only part of me suffering from last night are my feet, since a chose last night as the perfect night to use my new shoes... Yes, people loved them and commented on them, but my feet sure suffered... Poor little feet!
So tomorrow will be insane and surely stressful, so to wrap up the weekend, I'll go to dinner and a movie with Johanna on Sunday.

In the news

What could possibly make a 47 year old man want to marry an 8 year old girl?
There are some things that I will never understand and never accept as anything else than repulsive. Children should be kept out of the problems of adults, not be forced to settle some debt with their own life as the prize. It's disgusting that judge Sheikh Habib Al-Habib didn't annul the marriage, and even worse that the mother of the girl was not allowed to represent her in court.
I don't think it's a defense to talk about culture in these cases either. To say that, is to say that there is no individual choice and that everybody in Saudi Arabia feels like marrying little girls are ok. People don't think it's ok. Not in Saudi Arabia and not anywhere else either.
This is about changing the law to protect children, no matter where they happen to be living. A child's situation must be taken into concern every time there is a legal issue involving children. Anyone has to be able to defend a child, if that person has a reason to think that the well being of that child is questioned.

The captain is free, cheerios to that, but why is ransom ever paid?
Every time someone pays the ransom for a kidnapped person, especially in such an infected situation like the piracy along Somalian coastline, they give a boost to the pirates, that it is a sure way of getting money.
There are other methods to fighting for the freedom of a kidnapped person. Rewarding the kidnapper with cash is hardly a way to show that the method of earning a buck is wrong.
The methods I'm thinking of is more along the line of using military personnel to get some fear into the pirates. Free the hostage at a higher price, perhaps, but who would continue to kidnap people if all they got out of it were a crew with gunshot holes to the head?
If you wanna win, you have to be more of a bad ass than your enemy.
The reason I even mention violence as an option is not that I'm bloodthirsty, cause I'm anything but that. The reason is that I think the situation is very infected and I think negotiations are a lost cause at this point.
If the path of riches is continued, I think the situation will get worse, to the point of companies not daring to have their ships sent on that rout any longer. Is that really the result we want?

Travel around the world

I feel a strong urge to just fill a backpack and
travel around the world.
I'd love to have a theme, like visiting places with funny names or
just go to cities that start with a particular letter.
But right now... I guess all I can do is fill up with inspiration for the
future. :)
I've invited my sister along for the trip, and it will be done. I guess such simple
details like life comes in to play a big role, so I guess
it will be a while before I can gather up a budget large enough to
take me around the world. But hey, I'll have time to find all the great places, so
not to get stuck in some turist-trap, drinking pink drinks and getting busy doing nothing.
What about Borneo? I'd love to go there!
Not to mention Machu Picchu in Peru, that's something I have to experience.
Well, the list goes on and on!

Turtle in the waters of Malaysia.

A Kenyan landscape.

Iguazu waterfall in Brazil.

Accompanied by Pearl Jam, U2 and The Doors... what could possibly go wrong?

An evening captured by music and too many cigarettes, lovely and with a cup of tea to warm my spirit further, as the hours pass. Choosing music is always so much fun, as it to me is to show personality. Whatever song you pick, it says something about you.
A movie muted on the TV, someone trying to save mankind by taking a trip to Mars. I think it is Val Kilmer, if Rami got it right. I really don't know. It doesn't matter.
I'm in the best mood I've been for quite some time, and I must say the conversations I have had in the past few days with wonderful Rami and the best sister in the world Sandra is the cure for any blues I might have had.

Having a three day weekend now, this being the first of the three days, is just what I need. My mind, that usually is calm and a great place to be, has been a mess lately. Today I have done absolutely nothing and it's been fantastic!

Many answers, many solutions and plans for the future... Life is better that good, moving towards great and I'm enjoying the ride, accompanied by Pearl Jam, U2 and The Doors... what could possibly go wrong?

It smells like spring outside, finally!

Fact Update

I feel it's time to update the facts I wrote here in the summer, as I love facts and guess I'm not the only one :) or at least I hope so.

Updated facts:

The top ten countries visiting (% of total number of visitors) Petra's Notes are:
62,05% Sweden
13,63% United States
6,29% United Kingdom
4,40% Jordan
1,89% Bulgaria
1,47% Canada
1,47% India
0,84% Finland
0,84% Ireland
0,84% Spain

8,2% visit longer than an hour.

31 countries represented among the visitors.

53% of all users use Firefox.

53,40% use Windows XP and 0,20% use Linux.

I must add that the facts are collected from the newest 500 visitors, not the total amount of people that's been here :)

The result from this summer can be found here.

Zipp me this and zipp me that...

A new day, never seen before, takes form right in front of me. I'm still a bit tired, but I know it will be a good day.
I can't believe it's snowing outside, I really thought spring would be here with the little birds and so on. But I guess we'll have to wait some more.
My right hand hurts, or it hurts if I forget it's bruised. This weekend, I think I set a new personal record in how many times I can shave skin off it by accident. My knuckles are red and small pieces of skin is missing. Very pretty!

1½ hours left until I leave for work. I like these weeks, when I start work so late that I get plenty of me-time in the morning. The bad thing is that by the end of the day it barely feels like I have a life...
The zipper on my jacket broke yesterday. That's just my luck, off course it just HAD to start snowing last night. :(

Does borders feed fear and breed war?

You see them everywhere, borders.
They come in all shapes and purposes, but have one thing in common no matter where you
find them - to define us and them, what's yours and what's not.

To devide the world with pencilsharp lines, is to limit the mind and the body. There are
no such lines, they don't exist. We can build all the walls we may desire, there will be
no line between us. Nothing but air to unifi us in all time, for as long as we will exist.

Dividing power while sitting around a table, these politicians have through history
defined the world in their weird minds and forced the population to accept the side they
happen to live on. Families separated for years, sometimes generations. As it is not a natural
state of the human mind, there has taken much violence to keep these borders real on the planet.
Much blood, too.

Curiosity has turned in to suspicion, as friends turned in to enemies.

But what are borders? What good do they do? Do they make you feel safer? Does the us-and-them
mentality work on you? Do you buy their speeches about enemies and safety?
Or does borders feed fear and breed war?
In modern time, no country is isolated, no market of trade just local.
We interact in many ways and I dare to say that everybody (except the really recluse
loners and tribes) knows people from almost every continent. Most people understand more
than one language.
It is natural to explore and travel. To see new places is a right we take for granted. We feed
our soul and our mental healthiness with new impressions and views of life. We understand
culture and climate, we take part in global ideas and thrive here on the Internet, where
we really don't have a passport to define us. Your nationality fades in to a formal detail,
your mother-tongue becomes irrelevant. We are all the same, even more so than in reality.
We are showered with photos from all corners of the globe and one thing I never see are borders.
As the people are internationalized, why not the political way of acting too?

What ever good borders might once have brought, I don't see a real use for them anymore. They
bring grief and violence, which we have enough of anyway. There is no us-and-them. It doesn't exist!
Borders split ideas and divide greatness in to confusion.
We can try and justify borders by sitting on our lazy butts and say how much we do together these
days, but that's really just because we were born blindfolded. Nations are a joke, there's nothing
natural about it.
But if we keep evolving our tribes on Earth as we have been so far, I have every reason to be
positive. We formed small tribes and then villages, that became groups of villages as pacts of
trade and peace came about. Roads shaped the look of the lands and soon we had metropolitan
cities. Power-hungry rulers wanted more, and war became a frequent fact of politics. Show me
yours and I'll show you mine. Soon they all lost too many men in their armies and they had to
figure a way to live side by side. Voila! The pencil sharp lines where born.
But as we grow both in experience and in dreams, we have steadily become more interactive,
more understanding and more of our natural curiosity comes to the surface. So if we keep
evolving, we will soon be too great to be kept inside politicians borders.

Update on the things in between

As the tight grip of winter is disolving, I can feel it in my body as well. And in everybody's spirit. People seem to fill up with hope and romance, talk of the future and what is to come. It feels like my brain is over-active and I love it. Dreams seem more real than ever and I have a hard time keeping myself grounded as I smile at the thought of my future.
It is chaotic now, and I'm fine with it. Life, stress, work and too little time to just be. But it's ok, cause life is brightening up and soon all of us will trade in our gloomy winter-outfit for a fresh, colorful spring-outfit suited for days in the city.

More and more, I am wrapping my spirit in smiles and I can't feel the stress of life. It's there, but not in my head the way it used to be. I'm not the light-hearted kind of person (well... Rami might say I am, but really I'm not), but I can't help but to let my light and easy-going side come out and completely engulf me in 'so what' and 'doesn't matter'.
Life is not so rigid in the sun, I guess.

Rami is cooking and he's like a sientist, measuring, stiring and making noise. I love it.

Photography - Frustration, love, hate or something in between?

I can't say I have had time to do all that I would love to do,
but I have had time for photography.
I love angles and capturing objects from a view few put focus on. May it be a classic object
left in the bushes, like the discarded rose. Or a roof so low I can get a rare glimpse of the tiles.
Finding a small park deserted in the middle of the day, making the city appear empty.
Or a snowy evening with the church surrounded by a comforting light.

I have questioned myself why I don't take more photos of people, and I think the final
answer is that people just don't challenge me. It is more difficult to take a somewhat unique photo of an object
that has had the same pose all through its existence, than of a person who can change pose
every ten frames.

Fleeing moments, forgotten details in a city that rushes from one day to the other without much thought
as to what is happening close by.
How many walked by the rose placed on the bushes?
Was it thrown there or carefully placed? What is it a sign of? Frustration, love, hate or
something in between?
I don't know, and I guess I'll never know. And that's the charm of it. Objects brought to life
by the imagination of its audience.

Karlstad

I went to visit Martina and Sandra in Karlstad this weekend.
We had so much fun, played games, sang, had a very original photo-shoot, which
you will not be seeing here :)

Sandra and I went for a walk in the beautiful winter landscape.
It hasn't really been anything like this in Stockholm and
it was nice to hear the crunch of snow under our feet.

The stillness of winter, everything looks so calm and
everybody dresses up in thick jackets and hats, to feel
warm when the snow starts to fall.

This is Sahara, if I'm not mistaking, and it's one of the two cute cats
Sandra and Martina has gotten. The other cat is called Strumpan.
They are the cuddliest and sweetest little things ever!

Natural Shape

I wanted to capture both the depression of nature in winter and

the solid state of Stockholm. Södermalm, the island where I took
all photos published today, with a population of 90.000 people,
is mostly built on rock. It shows in both how buildings have had to adjust
to the natural shape of the landscape,
and in the way rock is used in many ways when it comes to decoration,
sculptures and many other uses. It's a peaceful and mighty material and it's strength seeps
through giving me a feeling of being protected as I walk
alongside these massive gray building-blocks of Södermalm.

more...

more...

more...

Field of Frustration

Winter is moving on ever so slowly, and I must say I'm quite bored of this none-winter we had here in Stockholm. There were never any snow to mention, no romantic touch to the cold... This winter lacked so much, which just led me to a numb state of mind.
Well, now it's the end of January and 2009 seems to be shaping up to be a good year. Better than 2008, at least. I have high hopes :)

I have a million ideas, all fighting to come out first. I'm in a constant struggle to produce anything at all... Right now I give myself a break, but end up surrendering to my inner desire to have something to show for all this time I've been active. I'm a silent whisper in the field of frustration. Where is that big studio I need so badly? Where is the inspiration to a fantastic novel? I don't know... I just don't know. My ideas need to be sorted out. Filed and organized. I got so much to do. No time to waist, right?

The diplomatic route

Christmas has come and gone. It is a new year, with new challenges and new things to dream about. And new things to invest in, such as in a camera, which I bought today here in Stockholm. Promise to post photos very soon :)
The new year began with a lovely party at Mia, where we watched the fireworks after having a wonderful dinner. It was a great way to start the new year and I have good feelings that 2009 will be a very good year, in deed.

It is colder than usual here in Stockholm this winter. Maybe global warming is to blame, but for the moment I'll take the diplomatic route and blame it on the temperamental Swedish weather. Less snow than it tends to be, I fear the worst is still ahead. By now, the streets usually are lined with dirty, mushy wet snow and a calm silence rests over the city (any city, for that matter). But with the absence of snow, the sounds are the same as always, it's dark and it's bitterly cold.

Now it's time to end this week on as high a note as possible - so I'm off to do some laundry!