I’ve been to a yoga class, as a student. That changes my outlook. Yoga, and being with people who come together doing something that’s good for themselves, is good. I got the chance to take part of a pregnancy yoga class, because the usual teacher had cancelled the lesson I was to take. It was special and nice. 

I sometimes feel as the left-out little sister but most of the time that’s probably not what people see in me. I sometimes feel like I’m sitting at a table with soggy cereal to eat all alone, while the rest of the world keeps turning, with all the perplexity, anger and frustration of that situation. Maybe it’s because my mother died and I’m out of most of my old habits and old relations. Far from all the places where I’ve lived or to which I have travelled and found a temporary home during these last 20 years.
What is life like, then? I have a place to stay that is calm and nice enough for me to feel at home in.  I eat good food. Very good food, somtimes. I cook, clean, I sleep, sometimes I play the guitar. I listen to music and to the radio, read good books and articles. I ride my bike, I go walking. I’ve started taking pictures again. And I meet new people in interesting circumstances, which is a very big advantage, living in a city. Part of me is open and longing to take part. Part of me is saturated before I even try. And I don’treally know why.
I have people who care for my well-being, and make sure to help me in everything I need help with –even to find out why things aren’t quite working out at the moment. And, it seems, to be there to make things work out. 

And I have more family. Magda has a mother, Anna, and a brother, Tor. Magda and Tor both have kids. My father is alive, I talked to him on Skype today. He’s got a female friend who once called me her family, too – so she must be, to me. My mother’s cousin Bodil is family, and her husband and two sons, and grandchildren, too. I seem to have just fallen out of keeeping in touch. I’m considering hanging pictures on the wall of each of them, just to remember. 

This is about what I’m finding out about myself from my (inner and outer) surroundings.

About books, I found myself numbering some of the ones in my shelf that I, naturally, read or look at in parts: cook-books, dictionaries and encyclopedias, a yogabook that gives an instruction, travel guides, poetry books, picture books, song books. 

In the same way, life seems to be in parts, sometimes. My way of thinking of life and work, or my own earlier professional and personal experience, keeps going in circles, where I touch the themes of design – language (Spanish, being in Sweden) – yoga – aministration – and a general interest to develop a lot of related subjects. Maybe, more than circles, my thoughts move in spirals, and some days I’m almost surprised at my diversity that would seem to be completely non-directed and unfocused. Sometimes, I get frustrated with one area of experience and interest, and block it out or keep it inside – then, it’s the other. I sometimes make big leaps in the way I see possibilities, which at other times seem too daring, too undaring, or just not very directed. The last years I’ve been trying to think my way into a lot of different life and work situations, acted on those thougts and plans, and somehow not one has become a long-term, proper way of living. 

In the same way, unpacking my things out of cardboard boxes makes me see all the things I’ve collected and held on to over the years. One part has to do with sewing – fabrics, ribbons, buttons, thread and needle, pins, chalks and patterns. I put some of it in my grandparent’s old cupboard – stuff I’ve bought years ago, in Barcelona, in Myanmar, in India, in Stockholm.