Every Friday afternoon in Uppsala is filled with tinkling. It is a gentle, rhythmical, magic, fairy type of tinkling. If you were once a student in Sweden, you will probably guess what I am talking about.

Whether I bike or walk, I hear the tinkling around me, starting from lunchtime on Friday. If you don’t know where the tinkling comes from, look around; you will notice people biking or walking with some black or blue unidentifiable bags: anonymous, plain, but mysterious. It is them that are a source of this gentle tinkling, that makes you think of something expensive, warm, and friendly.

Those of you who have been students in Sweden, or the most perceptive readers will have guessed by now what I am talking about. Of course. Booze. Alcohol. Beers and wines. Whole plastic bags of them, which practical, far-sighted Swedish students transport around the town starting from Friday afternoon. They know well that Systemet (the state monopoly liquor retailer) is only open till 18.00 on weekdays, and just for a couple hours on Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays. So it is important to make a little stock in your little nest, that will help you and your friends to make a smooth way through the weekend, a richly deserved haven of umgås, of friendly chit-chat and social drinking. This right seems to be as sacred as the right of fika during the day, every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year (there will be 366 days of fika this year, by the way – happy year!).

There is something so touching and naïve in this custom of regulated, scheduled arrangement of liquor-buying and utilising. Something so sweet about this dling, dling, dling every Friday, from the onset of the early Northern dusk, especially conductive to alcohol consumption… although you will not tell me, surely, that the French or Italians have a poor wine culture?

‘Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life’, wrote Annie Dillard, and I still have no idea what she meant, even though I thought about it at length.

I came at 10 am, and before I noticed, it was evening. While packing my computer and books, I was wondering, how a day could run by so fast? A morning is always a promise. The promise of how much you will do and how much you will enjoy it.

It was in the Karin Boye library of the Humanities department, so I dove into an anthropology reader. I dissolved in it. The hours might have been ticking away, but I wouldn’t have noticed. I was there, with those strange, unfamiliar people, I was a stranger there, and I awed at my own courage. I will never have the courage to become an anthropologist, I thought sullenly, emerging from the book. Come back to reality. You are who you are; you are timid, squeamish, indifferent, and cowardly. Face the facts.

But I am an observer, a tiny voice squealed. I am an accomplished listener. I am perceptive. I am complacent, I am benevolent. I love being a stranger, a foreigner, an outsider. And I am not indifferent, I am curious. But no-one seemed to listen to the tiny voice, and it faded away.

The library is quiet, but not silent. I hear the steps and voices hushed by books and carpets. I hear rustling pages, but I see no-one; I am hidden behind bookshelves. I look around. I am sitting in what looks like some Greek cartographic section, with piles of what looks like ancient maps, lying around casually. I pick up one of them. On closer examination it turns out to be not a map, but some ancient photographs of more ancient hand-written texts in Greek. I can read Greek, but I don’t understand anything. I put the volume back. In front of me a poem by Karin Boye stands printed out and inserted into a plastic holder: Jag känner dina steg. I understand enough of this poem for my heart to squeeze, and to beat faster, and for shivers to run down my spine, and all over my body. This is one of those amazing poems of the invisible, the undertold – not told fully, partly concealed. This is one of those poems where you don’t know whether it is a love poem or an ode to the divine, one of the best poems.

The day promises so much; but now it is gone, it fell into the bottomless gap of the past. Not gone fully though: a girl from my anthropology class taps me on the shoulder, and when I leave, I give her the books and have a small chat; I walk in the darkness to another library to pick another book; I find in that book a check-out notice in the name of another girl from my anthropology class, who I like a lot. It is a type of serendipity that makes me smile inwardly. I should find her on Facebook, I think. Unable to resist the library temptation, I settle there, by the wall of glass reflecting the brightly lit rows of shelves. I still have the evening, where I will speak to my fiancé on the phone, and read, read, read to sleep.

Yeah, well… it did. I knew it might give a crack, but didn’t realise it would fail completely once I go home. But I don’t care, because it was someone else, not me, who started it, and I don’t know that person.

Who are they, these hours? Where do they come from and why do they melt so sweetly, discreetly, relentlessly? I look at the clock, and it seems, I have time, and suddenly I realise time is no more; it has elapsed, melted away minute by minute, no matter how hard I tried to keep it still. My life is a dream, I look how night comes to change the morning, and every day brings something and takes something away, like the tide, and, seemingly, I am the same.

Who are they, these miles? Sometimes it seems that the road is a ribbon which makes up my heart, and when I set off for a journey, it unravels, it hurts. Sometimes it seems that the road is a tightly stretched bow string, or an arrow which I shoot, and I shoot myself through with it. Sometimes it seems that the road is me myself, and the weight of the trains rushing along me, and the weight of the planes landing on me is unbearable.

On the doorstep
Of a big journey
I hesitated.

The wind
Wrapped my shawl round my shoulders
Carefully.

The door
Nudged me in the back,
Shutting behind me.

I made a step,
And the world crumbled
And smashed into smithereens.

And a new world appeared,
Slightly rougher and worn,
But true, too.

Hang out the whole day in the library, eating oranges. And chocolate, of course. The snow falls and melts. It feels like spring.

I thought about the person who 10 years ago gave me the Dummy cd by Portishead, and I heard Mysterons. It was a spring like this one. Only it’s not spring now of course, but nevertheless.

Yeah, so… It kind of split my life into ‘before’ and ‘after’. He kind of split my life. Which was very nice of him. Hail to you, wherever you are, the guy who gave me Dummy.

It’s such a conflict, between the visible and the invisible. Who said it? That life is a drama of the visible and the invisible. Or something of the kind. Sometimes it’s ok; sometimes it turns into a torture.

I need to learn haiku. Or something of the kind. Then I would reveal the invisible with one stroke, and conceal just as much. Then I won’t need to be clumsy any more; I will be immaculate.

Who invented those breaks and holidays? Who invented those long trips to the other side? I don’t know how to find the strength, because each time it’s cutting so much. Both ways, it’s cutting away pieces.

Two days before I step into the abyss – again.

The smell of oranges in the room. The orange clock is ticking.

My favourite part from the Art of Stylish Poverty is where von Schoenburg describes luxury. It is a hand-written letter and a walk in the park on fresh snow, he says. Well. I’ve had double dose of the former and a fair amount of the latter – today, especially for the occasion, the snow fell for the first time in earnest this winter, and they say tomorrow it’ll be gone. And I received a piece of true luxury from a friend, and multiplied the luxury manifold by reciprocating. The best thing about these luxury items is that they are non-rivalrous and non-exclusive. They proliferate when shared and/or consumed.

At the bus stop, I watched the snow glitter and listened to silence. How is it possible that in the chaos and commotion, and after Indian railway stations and the craziness of Purani Dilli; how is it possible that while the world is hell for millions of people, there is still a place like this, where the snow falls so undisturbed, where the air is so pure, and the silence is so absolute, and the christmas decorations glow in the dark with eerie beauty?

Walking home, I listened to a piece of absolute scandinavity, and it was all about the dark, dark nights, which I cherish and love and desire as much as the endless days of summer, when the sun never sets and I grudge even more the sleeping hours. I love those days for the restlessness they bring, for the devotion they make me feel to the world. I love these dark nights; I welcome the darkness of my soul, the coldness, the despair, when my heart hibernates, it’s not beating, it waits, and I go inside to meet the dark side of the real me, to offer a handshake, a kiss, a sisterly bond.

Oh pain. Oh torture. I hate this stupid skunk project. What was I thinking when I got myself into this?

Ok. Concentrate. What has this day brought?

Every day is like the ocean waves; they roll on and roll off, leaving an armful of debris. Today it was:

- a very, very sweet orange
- a morning which promised an endless day
- an evening that came far too quickly
- a chocolate I discovered on a shelf hidden among my scarves by a friend: 70% cocoa
- this
- a report on my first interview (am I already an anthropologist or not yet? I have managed to create 5 pages of text out of two pages of scribblings in my notebook)
- snow.

More conversations. Good food. Wine. More situations when I feel so out-of-place I want to stand up and run, but instead sit glued to my chair and smile stupidly and self-consciously. More situations when I try so hard to overcome something, and afraid to tear the thread that already connects me…

But on balance, nothing of this matters. What matters is what I manage to do for others and how deep my compassion will run. How deep can I feel? And that will also determine how deep my sleep will be.

Shower gel that really, really smells like a strawberry candy in the morning and a cup of hot milk in the night. And in between – rain, conversations, and libraries. And glögg. And cosy chats with candles. Oh, and a Chinese neighbour feeding me second day in a row. I’m soon going to start thinking I deserve all this. Dangerous. I better get back to my decadence moods before it’s too late and I lose reputation. Something like this.