Wednesday, April 30, 2014

hello there, little cheesy guy


Just like me


Niki: That looks just like you, mom!
Me: You think? What makes it look like me?
Niki: The head!

Best Tuesday night ever

I love the Met. I love it like Eloise loves the Plaza.
Each time I climb the Met steps , two words echo in my head: "Home" and "Mama". 

The Met is weird and wonderful and every time I go there (and I go there a lot) I see something I've never seen before.

Yesterday, thanks to my friend Natasha, I got to enjoy a special tour by her friend Luke Syson. Luke is brilliant and extremely knowledgable and friendly and funny. He knows how to explain the times and habits of the past in a way that makes centuries melt away and touch contemporary hearts. The closest I'll probably get to actual time travel.

Here's a Ted Talk with Luke:

Yes, Craig!


This man is as nice as the way he dresses. 


Till Cilla och Maja



Listen, children.



This weekend, I went to a party where I met many nice and interesting people. I also met one individual who was certainly not nice and only because of that fact seemed interesting. He kept telling me that the questions I asked him were "banal", "uninspiring" and simply "boring". He also implied that since I work in writing I should know how to ask better questions. My questions may well have been banal but the replies they yielded still revealed a lot about his person.  He seemed intelligent, sad and lonely - not really surprising if this behavior was his regular pattern.

Children, mine and others, don't do this don't. If you meet someone who just puts you down: walk away. I woke up feeling I'd wasted a good part of the evening hurting myself, gaining exactly nothing for it but a lowered self-esteem. There are enough nice, sympathetic people out there for you to spend time with instead of wasting it on people who think you're not up to their own standard.

Ps. The odd thing is that I didn't even dislike him, just disliked his ways. Felt like elementary school all over again.

Friday, April 25, 2014

I'm every woman.






















Constant pressure



The other day I was with my kids at the local zoo in Stockholm.
While sitting on a bench, talking to my mom, I saw a goose walk around.

And this went through my head:
That goose doesn't know if she's fat or slim, if she's in good shape for a goose, if she's in the shape or her life, average or really needs to step it up. Would that goose look different if she went on a diet or tried a goose fitness program? What's the ideal goose for a goose? She's just a goose, living her life.

This is what daily daily daily reminders of staying in shape does to a brain. I wish my children didn't have to deal with this. I hope they'll go free, I wish them a goosier existence than I've had. I've fought it daily but you have to be so strong to whip the words out of your head and just live your darn life free of body image nagging.

BE STRONG! BE A GOOSE!

Ps. Yes, I know those are wild boars (or really oxymoronically: kept wild boars) but the same goes for them. You think that mama boar gives a shit about building a better but? I think not. Let's be swines.


När ens liv plötsligt känns som en Ilon Wikland-bild


Thursday, April 24, 2014

Queen and princess


More pics and horrific truths about a not so very distant past, here

Which painting would you like to have at home?

I've been thinking so much about Cornelius Gurlitt and the Nazi looted art trove. How he kept to himself in his apartment and rarely ventured out, doing so only when absolutely needed. How he felt his arrest was unjustified, that he deserved to have the paintings, etchings and sketches at home cause who could love them more than he did? One writer described Gurlitt's life as a Gollum-like existence, which rings true - How the love for what does not righty belong to you in the end does you in and ruins you.

The two paintings I would most like to have at home are

Madonna at the fountain by Van Eyck.




and

Lucrezia Borgia by Dosso Dossi (neither subject nor painter is 100% verified in this case, but I don't mind).


And a Memling or van der Weyden or so.


Which would you go for?

Which paintings or other works of art would turn you into Gollum?

Precious.

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

World book day

It's book day every day in my life.

Love my books.

I was recently asked "which book changed your life" and I could only reply: ALL OF THEM.

Next on my wish list:


Is it just me?

Wherever I try to sit down for work, the music is too too loud.

Need to justify your procrastination? How about support from a 2-time booker prize winner?

"I used to think when I set out that doing the research was enough, but then the gaps would emerge that could only be filled by imagination. And imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you. For me – I'm a now, now kind of person – that was hard."

Hilary Mantel in this interview

Back in NYC










Moves like Jagger. 


Thomas!