Category: Nostalgia
Right Night Company
Terrorists and Lucky
As if it’s some kind of absurd rule – I dreamt about Lucky again. First night in Malmö and there she was, together with me amongst terrorists with very low intelligence occupying some kind of school building that we were hiding in and trying to escape from. Now, I have surrealist and strange dreams quite often and they are usually very entertaining once I realize that I am dreaming – what hurts is having my dog there, as she usually has a very vulnerable position and I feel that I have to protect her. I also kind of know and realize, at some point in the dream, that she is already dead – and that I need to save her because I want to spend as much time with her as possible. This is very strange, I know, and unlike other dreams that I usually realize aren’t real – these actually manage to drag me in and make me sad. The psychologist in me is going bananas with theories, but I guess I better go to sleep now and see if I get to meet her again.
Butterflies, birds and bumblebees – the story of a lone child.
Here’s an excerpt from my top secret cook book/diary/adventure book from when I was 10 years old.
These are carefully written down instructions on how to create a little “butterfly farm” – the instructions invlude catching butterfly larvae, keeping them in a specially prepared plastic container with nettles, wait for them to build their chrysalis, and then watch them fly out as butterflies.
Animal rights and all those things were not really something I understood at that time (I once kidnapped a little duckling from the park..) although I was really into protecting and saving hurt animals. From a very early age, all kinds of insects were my favourite animals to study (maybe because they were all I could catch). I caught grasshoppers, spiders and big beautiful moths and I would run around with my magnifying glass and look at their little heads and legs and compare what I saw with my big encyclopedia of animals that was like my bible. I took care of several birds and kittens, and once I “saved” an injured bumblebee from a group of ants and kept it in a jar for two days (filled with leaves and other things that I thought bumblebees eat.. haha) until it could fly again. The jar had breathing holes of course. I was very happy.
Photo from 1995 with the magpie “Skrollan” that I had for a week. She had an injured wing.. but I was still sad when she finally flew away.
Every time I had to say good bye to an animal I had to make an effort to combat the natural urge to own, and accept what I knew was right. Learning about breakups at age 9, life was hard. haha
Did I mention that I didn’t have any siblings? Thank you for an exciting childhood, oh big black Polish book from 1989.
Random post
Did you know that there is a button in the Archives that says “Random post” ? Clicking it, you get to a random post from between June 2009 and today. It’s risky business for me, haha, but it’s all me and I have told you before that I use my blog like a diary, and that it has the ability to throw me right back into a moment and the way I felt at that point. Like this picture, when I clicked random post just now, it took me to the days when I used to stay in the office at UNICEF Nicaragua until long after working hours – because I had a deadline that was very optimistic from the first place. But hey, a deadline is a deadline – especially when you’re a consultant, and I really don’t mind working late when I’m excited about what I do. Not kidding!
On another, dead serious, note. I was just at the gym. And I realized my arms are ridiculously weak, while my legs are kind of super strong. After realizing that, I drove back home and ate almost an entire bar of dark chocolate. Because dark chocolate isn’t not really candy, right? haha
Click the picture above for a random post. And let me know which one you got!
My beloved Lucky
After being away for a long time, I always notice her absence when coming back to this house. I have the strangest dreams, and she’s always in them.
We spent so much time together, Lucky and I. I would take her for long adventure walks, teach her how to jump really high and play with her for hours.. it was only the two of us – she was like my sister and best friend from when I got her by the age of 10.
At one time when we were away on a trip to Poland she escaped from the family that was taking care of her here in Malmö. They apparently had the police and taxidrivers look for her in the entire city, but had almost lost hope to find hee again. In the morning, an elderly man called the police and said that he had found a little dog that refused to accept food or water from him, she had made her way to the other side of the city and spent the night in a staircase. When we came back home the next day she wouldn’t leave my side for days. I was only told the horrific story a week Iater, but I always hated to leave her behind.
Lucky was with me through the easy happy childhood years and those hard times with dramas and break-ups, she loved going by car and she loved sitting in the basket of my bike with the wind playing with her fluffy ears. She wanted to be everywhere, hang out with me and my friends, and always cuddle up really close to me in bed.
Lucky got blind by the age of 6, but continued functioning the same. She needed more encouragement, physical contact and a leash for guidance, but she was still an energetic and playful little poodle – always up for going by car and going for adventures. She had weak teeth and a pretty bad breath, but she wasn’t afraid of anything.
It was when she got her first epileptic schock by the age of 13 that we realized that she was actually old. I couldn’t find any reasonable way to cure her – keeping her healthy would mean having her drugged and tired and in pain most of the time, it just wasn’t worth it.
She slept with me the entire last week. She was too afraid to sleep alone as she got the attacks when she was asleep. I had to hold her close to me for her to relax and she was shivering with fear, it was breaking my heart. It all took less than a couple of days, but she was gradually loosing her senses and on her last day she couldn’t even hear or smell anymore – she panicked when left alone for a second. Seeing my best friend like that left no place for doubting the appointment with the vet even the slightest.
I was sad, but I couldn’t be anything but truly happy about all the adventures we had lived together for the past 13 years. All the times she had helped me out when I was sad, and all the times I had chosen to bring her along to movie nights instead of just going out and doing something else. I was convinced that she had enjoyed as well, that she trusted me and knew that I always had done everything I could to protect her, and that was what mattered most. We had both done our best.
I do miss her, though. Her intelligence was striking and her cuddliness irresistible. And she just always knew. A wonderful friend.
my passport 2005 – 2013
A quick run through my old passport that has been joining me since I started travelling five years ago. I had to renew it as I only had two pages left for stamps and will be travelling soon again. Receiving the new, empty, modern passport felt like starting from scratch, like rebooting the system. What’s next? What now? Was that it? I don’t know.
After speaking to friends who’s biggest obstacle to travelling is the whole process of standing in line for, applying for, paying for, waiting for and hoping for a visa, I have become increasingly thankful for my EU passport that opens doors of trust in most places. Truth is, I’ve only had to apply for visa through an embassy for three of the 38 countries I visited since this passport was printed. Thank you, Sweden.
Little Falcor
Dimensions and childish distractions
That was in 1992 and I’m not sure what those 3D glasses did, but I was completely hooked on my VHS cassettes with My Little Pony, Resan till America and Wielka Podroz Bolka i Lolka. Today, I never turn on a TV to watch it by myself. In fact, if I have a TV, I take it out of my room because it only takes up space. This creates a little issue that my friends always laugh about – if there is a TV in a room that I enter, I can’t help but being very distracted by it, especially if it is playing the news, a bad Mexican soap opera, ridiculous commercials to laugh about, or cartoons. My favourite TV activity of all is to watch Cartoons together with kids. And random movies, of course, preferably in the company of curious and analytic adults. And I will talk during the movie, just so you know.
Wielka Podroz Bolka i Lolka (1977)
Telewizja Polska S.A
