Igår Var Bäst Dagen!

Yesterday was the best day I have had in months. I started by heading to the only open coffee shop I could find to fill up the tank for a day of reading the most inscrutible book I have ever seen (hence the previous post on the ad). I got a big cup of strong coffee that had me shaking like a leaf midway through. It was raining so I thought I would sit there for a while despite their incredibly uncomfortable chairs.

While there three things of note happened. First, I ordered in Swedish but then did not listen to what the girl said in response. This is my biggest problem with Swedish, not listening and having a somewhat tough time picking out words when I do. This has led to my revelation that I must not listen much in English either, but I have become so accustomed with the mechanistic way we have conversation that it does not matter...language is 74% anticipation. She asked "Med mjölk?" which I know...it just means "with milk?" I had to switch back to English and then the jig was up. Later on when you have to ask something again you feel stupid switching back to Swedish...you have been exposed, "please just give me one more chance...I promise this time I´ll listen to you!" The second was that the obnoxiously difficult book I am reading became engaging, beautiful, and readable all at once! This happens with Heidegger if you are willing to put the time in and make it through the tough parts at the beginning. The final thing was that I met an older couple from Southern California doing a 3-week tour of Scandinavia. They had some of my initial feelings about it (minus the dark and the blistering cold in January)...so I had a few nuggets of wisdom to pass their way as I have become a lover of all the finer sides of Scandinavian life. Very lovely people and a real treat of a conversation in my mother tongue.

I decided to move on because the uncomfortable seats were threatening my vestigal coccyx, and because the rain had stopped outside. In the summer in Scandinavia it seems to rain a little most everyday, but it also seems to dry up instantly. So I figured I would make my way down to the sea to sit and read a bit. Its a treat for the senses! The warmth of the sun pouring over my ghostly pale body (my self-given nickname is "the Geist" now...its at once self-deprecating and narcissistic!), the sound and smell of the fresh sea as it rolls past below me. It was a wonderful time. Fresh, cool saltwater air mixing with the warm and never-ending sun of a Swedish summer...all accompanied by one of the best essays I have ever read. Hypothetical London counter-example:

I swatted the gnats away as the sweltering heat and humidity beat down, before me rolled the filthy chocolate milk Thames River, hauling an entire debased city´s worth of cocaine from the night before. The air was filled with the pungent odor of sewage and automobile exhaust. As my body set to auto-immune self-destruction in the confusing chaos of toxins it was currently being force-fed, I opened my book. Just then I felt a swift kick in the back and I turned to see what had happened. A fat English man in a suit missing most of his teeth looked at me squarely and told me to, "F### off!." I heeded his barely coherent warning and got back to my business when I felt another jab to my back...I turned again thinking it was some thug looking to sell me drugs, a prostitute or in the process of stealing my money...it was the collection man, "That´ll be pound-fifty to sit here." I said to myself, "forget it, I am moving back north."

I am falling in love with this place more and more everyday. I know, I know...I will hate it in the winter. But you all may be surprised. I have come to like, in theory at least, the cold dark winters. I have always hated the feaux cheeriness that accompanied the weather in San Diego...I was one of the few people who loved "May Gray" and "June Gloom" because it cooled my living conditions, kept the crowds in the ocean manageable, and kept the human filth from East County out of PB. All I need is a few friends and the winter is manageable. I love my apartment. I could see me under a blanket watching DVDs on the laptop, or movies with my friends or roommate (who is also awesome) or just reading a book. We´ll see, but for now I am not sure I ever want to leave! Scandinavia is everything I have ever looked for in a society (I speak of "Scandinavia" as though its one place...it will be eventually when I force unification and the new language I am creating out of speaking all three Nordic languages badly!). They value education, the arts, a quality standard of living for all, peace and safety, efficiency (not in the stupid market sense, but in the sense of being orderly to avoid the frustrations of chaos). I want to be here to watch it rot from the inside as the London-US model of top heavy capitalism and bottom-heavy stupidity and soul-loss creeps in from the southwest ;)

Today I am going south to the canal town (I am going to start using names like that for the smaller places I go...since Södertälje means nothing to you). Hopefully the coffee shop is open, but if not I will sit on the canal until its time to come home and watch Sweden-Germany. A battle for the title of Nordic superiority! The Teutons vs. the Vikings...I am going for the Vikings in this one cause they are the home team...but I still love ya Tyskland! After all, it seems by default that the nation of poets and philosophers has cleared out some living space on my bookshelf...all of it, as the Germans tend to do...and won my heart. So really I am split today...just hoping Sweden shows up and that its a good match. So why might the coffee shop be closed? Cue the next topic...

---This week´s weekly excuse to only work four days in Sweden ("holiday") is called Midsommarsdag---

It means just what it looks like it means...a festival to celebrate the middle of the summer. In true Swedish fashion they clear some space out on the calendar by also making the three or four days around the holiday "holidays." Why work! Scandinavia wears its pagan roots more on its sleeve than other countries, and this is, I believe, a pagan festival. Christianity usually melded with paganism and then covered it over...how many Christian events happen to occur on solstices? I do not know much about Midsommarsdag except that its beautiful out today, the sun is not setting ever at this point (technically it does, but at the darkest point in the night you could go out and toss a dark blue baseball without problems). It also seems to be occasioned by flowers all over the place...I am a lover of the flower as I have said in the past (see the Denmark blog). Girls put flowers in their hair, which is very cool...I do not really know what guys do, but I am an American guy in Sweden, I have no real excuse for knowing what guys do.

In a way I feel bad for Scandinavia guys...eventhough they are all a foot taller than me...they really contribute nothing to their society! Just kidding, I am friends with Scandinavian guys who may be reading this...we all know that, genetically, you are at least half-responsible for bringing Scandinavian girls into the world and thats doing more than enough...

Off to the canal town! Ha en jättebra Midsommarsdag!