Travel Diary - Florida 10 days in.

I may have presented the US in a bad light in my previous Florida post. I can go to the movies for cheap where the space is nice and the sound excellent, the pizza is great, and I did see both a bike shop and three people biking today.

Today was the first day of Storms, and when I say storms I mean that places with this kind of weather tends to have thunder/rain storms, although in this case it means "light showers and exceptionally sudden and horrendously loud thunder". The electricity went out for a few seconds and the first bang nearly blew my head off. First thought: that would have scared the shit out of Loki. I instinctively looked around for him to make sure he was alright. I miss him tons.

I miss some other things, like my own bed, my own space, my clothes... I'm not entirely sure how my reasoning went when I packed but it wasn't flawless. I also have to make some decisions. Things are cheap here but I can't buy everything. There are space and money constraints that I must consider.

I sound super negative but that's not the full story. Good things are just more abstract. And I am slow to get used to things, I think.

Florida

I know I said I'd start again and then disappeared for a week. Bear with me, I'm still getting used to the whole blogging thing.

Also I'm in the states. Pretty cool. I read somewhere that it takes about a week to get into the homesick stage, and true enough, yesterday I started missing "normal" things terribly. Everything here makes me slightly uneasy, although I don't know why. The nature is nice, people are very friendly...

Things I think about Florida:

1. This town is super perfect for bikes. It's 100% flat land here, with big wide roads, warm weather... and not a single bike. Everyone drives. I don't think I understood how much the US is built around cars. There's drive-in everything. The town itself is so incredibly spread out, stores are scattered all over the place, because you drive between them.
2. There's signs everywhere, probably because stores are so scattered. And there's stores for everything, like auto parts, pesticides, pet massages. (Still haven't seen a bike shop though.)
3. Variety. There's much more different types of cars, different shapes and sizes and brands. Low old Americans, next to super polished Toyotas, next to fat pickup trucks. There's tons of different trees, just outside the door there's probably like 10 of them, thick branches crawling across the ground next to thin tall palm trees, next to little fat things that look kinda like pineapples. Sitting outside I was visited by a bunch of birds, and a few little turtles coming up for air in the pond. A crow-like bird taking a bath, a pair of canards, two black turkey-like ducks (that for a moment I thought were attacking me, because they decided to walk by so close) and a beautiful white egret.
4. Store people are very friendly. Every one of them say things like "You have a very nice evening", or "Have a wonderful weekend". It should make me happy, but I'm Swedish and socially challenged and just find it creepy. There's also people putting your stuff in bags in convenience stores. Which also makes me uneasy, because it means I'm just standing there awkwardly.
5. Obviously it's warm, but it's warm in the humid sense. It's lucky most places have AC, although I guess it's not super good for the environment, but I don't handle heat excellently, especially not the humid kind.
6. Stuff is pretty cheap, but in some places there's a sales tax that's added after the price you see on tags, so it's hard to keep track of how much you're spending. Also buying like a pizza or a Chinese food box for 5-7$ I could eat 3-4 times of each. Not healthy but certainly pretty cheap for food you don't have to cook.

Things I think about me:

• Traveling is great for reestablishing that I like Sweden. Even if we've clearly forgotten why we're such a great country and how we became that way.
• My actual location matters less because the things I like to do are mostly not location-bound. Long as I have electricity and internet, I could probably live anywhere. 10h on the plane was fine because I was writing and watching movies, which is what I do at home too. Actually living in a place is more about the... people? Culture.
• Leaving Loki alone for a month isn't so much a problem for him as it is a huge problem for me.
• I have a big need for alone-time. I like people and talking to friends and stuff, but I need a lot of time to myself to feel at ease. It's okay having people around if they're not in the way and they ignore me and my activities.
• Not recognizing any labels or store names is very tiresome. You have to actually look at everything. Didn't quite realize how annoying it was, I mean sure the first time in Lidl many bottles and stuff don't look like you're used to but it's much more tiresome when everything is that way.
• I think of tons of things to blog about, and then promptly forget them once I actually sit down and make silly lists instead.

One important piece of advice: if you for any reason are offered a wheelchair at airports, just accept them. Forget honor, forget whether or not you actually need it, just say yes. It will save you endless amounts of time and annoyance. Trading pride for two and a half hours of standing in line? Hell yes.

A Different Kind of Travel Diary

Berlin.

Now nothing but a token in my head, like a notch on a bedpost. I didn't want to take general pictures, at first, because I wanted it all inside, I wanted it to be all mine. No one and nothing can steal memories. They can take them away or destroy them, but never steal them. Then I took pictures, on my "sightseeing day", because the girl I was with did it. Conformity, mimicking to make a bond, more than trying to preserve visual memories. When I came, I knew there were only two photos I wanted and was going to get at any cost. The big arc, and the pieces of the wall at Potsdamer, and I wanted those for one reason only: proof. I was there. I had been there, at those locations, which were exactly where JYJ had been two days earlier. But when I took those two, I thought, in this modern age of internet, photoshop and reality-like graphic technologies, what kind of proof is a photo? No. I still cherish those two photos, but in reality there is only one proof: memories. All mine.

I've been emotionally haywire, it's starting to settle now. Haywire in my own quiet way. And though the dust has settled, the pigments sunk to the bottom of the glass and the water is clearer, I can conjure it back. Just take my little finger and gently draw it over the water surface and see the colors swirl. All I need to think is "I walked away, I left of free will." Being on my own in a foreign environment, I realized, happiness doesn't come in many forms it comes it one. One. And it has not been here for a while. I walked away, I left of free will, I willingly walked back into my cauldron of despair.

Loving someone you don't know is like an addiction to the pain. A pain that makes you feel more alive than ever, and then, when it settles, makes you want to claw your eyes out, just to a moment later be chasing the high again. I must never let go of my vow to never drink alone. I must never smoke a cigarette, and I must be careful with medicine. Because it's so easy. It's so easy to want the addiction, and once you want it, you're not longer steering the boat, you're just riding the waves, the ups and the downs. It's wonderful, it's liberating, it's an illusion of freedom so strong you can no longer see any other freedom.

Berlin.

Without JYJ Berlin is just a city like any other city, filled with people like any other people, and buildings like any other buildings. Sticks and stones, flesh and bones. But it's not about JYJ, you know that, just like it's not really about alcohol or pills or cigarettes. It's about that through my own madness, for one day only, I gave Berlin wings and turned it into something beautiful. And like all true art, it lasted only for an all too short time.

So Little Time To Think

I was packing for a week-long trip knowing I'd spend hours on end on a variety of trains and busses, some of them alone. I like traveling alone. Anyway, the first things I packed was my PSP, the iRiver, my math-book and another book although after some consideration of weight I left that one at home. But why is it that I pack all those things before considering what clothes to wear, even before I check if I have cash in my wallet? Not because I'm a tech-freak. But because in my head is the idea that "what if you'll get bored on the bus/train" and that idea apparently is so loathesome I have to guard myself from it before I put on my glasses for the day. Insane, isn't it? Because when this comes to that, I like being bored. Being bored means forcing my brain to think, come up with new ideas and solutions, going over things I otherwise shy away from. That's why trains and busses are awesome.

My brother, who's grown up even deeper into the internet-generation than me, brings his MP3 to the bathroom. I'm not quite that far gone, but the thought has fluttered over my head once or twice. He SMS:es practically until he falls asleep. He claims it's because he get's bored otherwise. I wonder then, when does he think? When does he turn all other senses off and just let his mind fly?

What kind of world are we creating where boredome and time for thought and inflection are things that must be fought with every last ounce of electronics we can muster?