• Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    AWOL | I still exist

    OK, this post really doesn’t have a purpose other than saying, „I still exist“. I have been awol due to spontaneous traveling (yes, I do feel blessed to have such opportunities). I am back now but only for a couple of days which will be filled with work, so I doubt there’ll be much blogging happening. And then I will be gone again for another week. Possibly with more time to myself, though, so hopefully with more time for writing, too. Meanwhile: enjoy the view I had yesterday on the ferry from Puttgarden, Germany to Rødby, Denmark.

    Sunshine – not just a friend of M. I. A.
  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Facing our demons | Say yes

    Yup. More rantage coming up. Writing yesterday’s post felt liberating but it upset parts of me that are afraid of the path I’ve begun to walk, parts that are afraid of letting go, afraid of letting something new (= unknown) in. Parts that try to hang on to the old, no matter how destructive it may be.

    I ended up doing what I do when I am deeply anxious – binge eat. Or rather: it is what I do when something inside of me tries to raise its voice to tell me something I don’t want to hear. And it works, too. By creating another problem that I can focus on – eating till I feel sick to my stomach, beating myself up over it, asking myself why I keep doing this to myself (but only on a physical level, of course) – I don’t have to look at the real issues. Really convenient, right? Except for the part where I’m destroying my body, and oh yeah: that keeping an issue from coming to the surface of my mind doesn’t solve anything, it just suppresses it – until something else triggers it. Apart from those minor details, this method works perfectly well.

    I have been using food/eating as means of reacting to emotional stress since I was about 16. I don’t find the clinical terms („eating disorder“, „anorexia“, „bulimia“, etc.) helpful anymore, although I used to define myself that way. I could recognize myself (to a t) in the various descriptions you find in self-help books etc., which I read at some point.

    It is definitely comforting to know that you don’t do the things you do because you’re crazy but that your behavior can even be construed as „normal“ given the circumstances. From that perspective, this rational/scientific/psychological way of dealing with these issues has its merits. However, putting a label on things can also become a way of stigmatizing yourself, of locking yourself into a box. A box that is difficult to climb out of, even though really it only exists in your own mind.

    Every time this „happens to me“ (well, if you read my previous post you know I don’t believe in that), when I am overcome with the feeling that I just have to eat, and that nothing else will make this anxiety go away, it scares me. It makes me feel like a failure that no matter how far I seem to have come I still resort to this self-destructive  measure. Sure, these binges have decreased in frequency. There was a time in my life when they could go on for days, I couldn’t even go to school, I was completely overpowered – now there can be months in between. Sometimes I even think I have „beaten“ this „thing“. Usually, that’s when it comes right back to prove me wrong. I have laden this behavior and its side-effects with a lot of meaning. Doing it means there’s something wrong with me, not doing it means everything is ok. One side-effect is obviously my weight, and me attaching meaning to that as well. So, in accordance: weighing less would mean I am normal, gaining weight = failure.

    I don’t like to talk about this part very much, not because I am ashamed but because I find it frustrating that no matter where you turn, no one seems to be happy with how they look, and somehow it usually boils down to their weight. I know that I am not obese, that my weight in fact is „normal“. I know that I could, SHOULD be happy with myself, and I really wish I were. I would love to be one of those examples that I myself am looking for everywhere – someone that has not been affected my the media brainwash, someone that is truly happy with themselves and how they look even though they don’t fit the mold. Sadly, on a lot of days I can only pretend to be that person.

    Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, binge eating = something’s wrong, not binge eating = everything’s peachy. I’ve come so far to realize that the key is not to think in these kind of opposites. I find myself best protected against these self-inflicted attacks when I am aware and accepting of the fact that this is part of my life. I guess just like alcoholics or addicts of other drugs still refer to themselves as addicts even when they’ve been sober for years.

    Obviously, this is not easy, because who wants that, right? I don’t want this in my life, so why should I have to accept it, let alone embrace it?! Someone (I should probably know who, like Buddha or the Dalai Lama, ehem) once said that pain is not something we choose but suffering is. And if you’re into this „spiritual stuff“ (I only got into it two years ago, so a lot that may be old news to you is still new and revolutionary to me) you run across this realization sooner or later, and maybe you run into it even if you’re not into „spiritual stuff“: the only way we can suffer is by trying to reject what already is, which of course we cannot succeed at. No matter how much I don’t want something that already is, my not wanting it to be cannot undo its existence. It’s a waste of energy.

    So, if you cannot change something, allow it to be. Obviously, this permission isn’t really about the external thing, for it is what it is no matter what you think about it. That permission is for you. Allow yourself not to judge. It will spare you the suffering that you will inevitably go through if you try to fight what already is.

    Please don’t get me wrong: this is not to say that there aren’t things we should change in the world, that we should just sit back. But you have to know what is and isn’t in your power to change, and when the time is right.

    This concept may seem simple, and in theory, I guess like the best concepts, it is. I can also see how I could/should/want to apply it in interactions with others: there is no point in me getting mad over something someone else already has done. I mean, getting mad is important, too, to not let anyone run over you but there has to be a limit. After you’ve expressed your discontent, you should try to get over it and move on, instead of dwelling on it. As I said: simple in theory …

    Where it gets tricky is when it comes to one’s self. For intuitively I want to claim that anything I do is in my control, so how can I accept the things I don’t like about myself? Well, I think just that last part kind of questions my premiss: if I am fully in control, how can I do something which I do not approve of? Sounds kind of schizophrenic, don’t you think? Yet I am going to be so bold as to state that we all do things we later regret, we even do them over (and over and over again), and regret them over (and over and over again) – and that at least most of us would say that they are in control over our own actions – who else would be? I mean, sure, you can argue that we are products of our environment, the society we live in. But on some level, the individual does make a choice for a concrete motion it is about to undergo (whether physical or mental), right?

    I have gotten side-tracked again here, I see the term „ego“ coming up, which is not what I had in mind when I started this paragraph out, so please excuse if I am bringing this one to a screeching halt before I get into something I cannot possibly cover in a paragraph or two. Once again: yay for the internet, feel free to go ahead and read about the ego elsewhere now – or continue here with me.

    What I did want to get at was this: our experience tells us that – for whatever reasons – we are not free from contradictions, we do things that we later wish we hadn’t, we detect character traits in ourselves which we’re not happy about. Therefore, this notion of allowing what is applies to ourselves just as much as it does to our interactions with others/external factors.

    I try to do this with my eating habits, and obviously, it’s not easy. Because I really don’t want to have this in my life – but somehow that is not for me to choose. I don’t feel guilty about it afterward as much as I used to, even though that is hard, too. I try not to punish myself. Again: not easy.

    Yesterday, I tried something that in a twisted way felt especially difficult because it made the whole binge-eating episode obsolete: I looked into myself and asked that voice that I had shut up by stuffing it down with food to speak to me, and tell me what had upset it so much. It spoke to me, and this confirmed what another part of me knew all along: there is nothing to be afraid of when facing our demons. They are parts of ourselves that cannot actually threaten our existence. They are scared themselves and need healing.

    May we remember that there is nothing to fear but fear itself, that our souls are indestructible. And may we be kind and forgiving to ourselves when we act cowardly.

    PS: I first came across this concept of „allowing what is“ when I listened to Eckhard Tolle’s The Power of Now and Realizing the Power of Now, something I can recommend to anyone. I think it is pretty accessible even if you think spirituality is „mumbo-jumbo“ but then you probably didn’t read this far, so …

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Recipe | Hazelnut almond muffins

    I deviate from recipes a lot. But this time I went so far (not all on purpose … unforeseen turn of events demanded improvisation!) that I think it’s fair to claim I made this one up. Kind of.

    Some are meant to be scones, others are meant to be muffins. That’s just how it is, right?

    It started out with wanting to try to make scones but substitute the flour for ground almonds and hazelnuts. Then I thought: why not add some cocoa, and make them chocolate scones? Then I thought: why not use the hemp milk that Peter made instead of regular milk? The first batch sort of melted into one cake on the baking sheet (I later cut them into cookies but it got kind of messy). So for the second batch I poured the batter into muffin forms. Hence, I call them muffins. Gluten-free but not really low-carb (the sugar, I suppose you can exchange it for a low-carb sweetener), and due to the hazelnuts obviously not for those allergic to nuts. Do almond only, I guess.

    For 12 muffins you need

    • 2 3/4 cups (6,5 dl) ground almonds and hazelnuts (I went half and half)
    • 1/2 cup (ca. 1dl) sugar
    • 2 tsp baking poweder
    • 1/2 tsp salt
    • 3/4 cups (2 dl) firm butter, cut into small pieces
    • 1 cup hemp milk (just search „hemp milk recipe“ – you’ll get a variation of the same: this, this, or this, … Peter used dried dates as sweetener)
    • add raisins/fruit if desired (I didn’t, maybe next time – I imagine banana would taste great, and make the muffins even more juicy)
    • I also added some psyllium (don’t know how much, though, maybe about a tablespoon), which is used in a lot of gluten-free cake recipes to make whatever you’re baking more fluffy, and keep it from getting so dry and compact

    Mix the dry ingredients, cut butter into crumbs, add, stir in milk, knead until the texture is smooth. I let the batter stand for a couple of minutes (I think that it gets a little more „doughy“, less „liquid“ – I suck at speaking bake – my apologies!). Use spoons to fill the batter into muffin shapes, bake at 400°F/200°C for about 30 minutes.

    ***

    Oh yeah: did I mention that they tasted really great? Well, they do.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Jewelry | Sternenkind Creations

    I did it! Just sent in an application to à la London – Gothenburg Design market. Now I better get busy making more jewelry. I’ll post pix and all things related on the Sternenkind Creations page rather than as a blog post. Feedback – yes please!!! Wish me luck!

    Related posts:

    Going with the flow

    Pearls + neon yellow nylon thread = true

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Plant life | Nomad daffodils

    When I looked out onto the balcony yesterday, the daffodils had gotten a little sad over night. So I took them in …

     

    There, there, nice and cozy on the bedroom window sill.

    … and today …

    … happy! Please disregard the dirty window – it’s what I’ve been doing, too.

    Wishing you a good start into this week. Let the sunshine in.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Desert yearnings | Desert remedies

    After several weeks of excessive energy and restlessness, I suddenly felt really tired last night, and went to bed (and to sleep) around 9pm. I knew then that today was going to be one of those lazy days. I had planned on going to a mini film festival with a friend. Canceled that, went back to bed, read 1Q84 and listened to Tori Amos. Suddenly I was overcome by another one of these longings for the desert.

    The pix in the first half of this post are not mine (would have had to upload them on my flickr first). But luckily, there is the creative common search function on flickr! Thanks Chelsea (http://www.flickr.com/people/chexee/) for licensing your Pahrump pix as such!

    I find it hard to put in words what exactly the desert means to me. This longing is both something melancholic but not in a foggy, gray kind of way but somehow very vivid, alive (while, yes, there is a sadness to it, too). Obviously my yearning has something to do with my past, the exchange year I spent there, which was a most amazing and wonderful time this my life. But as I’ve come to realize, this feeling doesn’t not just stem from reminiscing about a time and place in my life when and where I was very happy. I have felt something similar since then, here in Sweden. It has something to do with nature. I don’t need to tell you that the landscape in Pahrump (the name of the small-town north-west of Las Vegas where I lived then) is very different from the scenery here in Sweden. However, what they do have in common is just the thing that moves me so much (and which in turn may very well have to do with me growing up in Germany, a place relatively dense with population, where you can cross from one town into the next without even noticing that they are two different cities): the vastness of nature.

    Pic: Chelsea Otakan | http://www.flickr.com/people/chexee/

    I particularly remember a Sunday trip out into the mountains surrounding the valley with my host family. We took the Rollo and Shadow with us, the family’s dogs, and walked around in the heat. I think my sisters may not have been as thrilled by that as I was, the whole thing probably wasn’t very exotic to them … just plain hot. My dad was enthusiastic, though, he’s a geologist, and us being in the mountains, you know – there were a lot of rocks, so … He and I made our way to the top. I remember passing rocks with Indian carvings, which isn’t exactly something you come across in Germany every day, either.

    Pic: Chelsea Otakan | http://www.flickr.com/people/chexee/

    All the way up there, we placed my camera somewhere so we could take a picture of ourselves (it was before you did the holding-the-camera-while-pointing-and-shooting – you know, analogue). I remember looking around, seeing nothing but sand and stones, joshua trees and other cacti. (Back in Germany we struggled to keep pathetic little creatures that don’t even deserve the name „cactus“ alive on our window sill, and here they just grew like weed, in fact: people regarded them as weed.) All this under a huge bright blue dome of a sky with the sun radiating from it like the queen she is (sorry, in German unlike in most other languages the sun is „feminine“, so in my mind the sun will probably always be that).

    Pic: Chelsea Otakan | http://www.flickr.com/people/chexee/

    In my memory, my eyes couldn’t detect any traces of mankind in this view, which is probably not true, I am sure the town must have been somewhere in the background, the road we came on, maybe even Vegas. Either way, the emotions standing on that mountain top evoked where true. This was something that I had yearned for, something I had wished for to experience at some point in my life: to stand in a place where you could imagine you’re the only human being in the world. Maybe that was a longing for truth, for a place that is a more accurate depiction of reality. Here, the natural order is still intact, you are forced to face the fact that you as a human being are not above the rest of nature but part of it. It makes you feel powerful, while at the same time you can’t elude the awareness of how small a piece of the puzzle you are. I write „you“ because I don’t fancy myself being uniquely sensitive or poetically inclined to notice those kind of experiences. I would argue that this is something very human, and one of the reasons why the desert (or other places where nature couldn’t been tamed completely) is a fascinating subject or backdrop for stories. Also, it is a magical place (but I am kind of running out of „flow“ here to go into that one, too).

    ***

    Although there is no desert here in Sweden, and the sun is a definitely more shy in comparison (even more so here on the west coast) I have still been able to encounter that common denominator, albeit in a different guise: the vastness of nature.

    Marstrand (my own pic)

    The size of the country (449,964 km2/173,745 sq mi) is slightly bigger than Germany (357,021 km2/137,847 sq mi) – almost double the size of Nevada (110,622 sq mi/286,367 km2), while the population is nearly 10,000,000 (Germany: ca. 82,000,000 | Nevada: ca. 3,000,000). Meaning: a lot of land with not a lot of people on it.

    Love the green of moss.

    There are mountains and seemingly endless forests, also seemingly countless lakes, and you can find yourself driving on a highway with no car (or the same car) driving behind you for hours, going on the road for miles without passing by a town. In fact, Swedes measure distances in miles, too. 1 Swedish mile being 10 km (roughly 6.2 „American“ miles).

    Who wouldn’t want to hug this tree?

    Looking at it from this angle, moving to Sweden has increased my chances of soothing my yearning (although that is not why I moved here … I think …). I am sure my longing for a life on the country-side springs from the same source. Sometimes, however, I just miss really miss the desert. Period.

    ***

    Maybe it was playing Tori Amos that triggered me today (somehow her music makes me feel the same kind of melancholy, especially „Rattlesnakes“ and „A Sorta Fairlytale„)  though there is no more specific connection than just the feel of the music.

    While I was lying on the bed, that wave of melancholy washing over me, some films came to my mind which both somehow nourish and heal my longing:

    Gas Food Lodging

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmUS7oKpcc8]

    *

    Bagdad Café

    [vimeo http://vimeo.com/52340684]

    *

    And obviously the theme song from Bagdad Café, Jevetta Steele’s Calling You:

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4fYqLPmCpM]

    *

    U-Turn

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUK79LRP-Nc]

    *

    Breaking Bad (a series, I know, but let’s not split hair here, ok?)

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLWaqVbBvJ4]

    Last but not least: a book that was actually written by someone from just the town where I spent my exchange year. In fact, we even had a class together (but I cannot claim that I know her, and she probably has no memory of me):

    I apologize for only throwing trailers/images at you at this point but this turned into a very long post, much longer than I had intended. Maybe this will inspire me though to write more detailed about each of these „desert remedies“ at a later point.

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Project of the day | Staging Spring

    I did get the balcony fixed up. Then I went to a store that as I discovered yesterday had locally grown hydrangea. So far, so spring. Then, on the way back – guess what – it started snowing. It would appear that sometimes wishful thinking isn’t enough (who knew?).

    Since desperate times require desperate measures, I resorted to what any home-story-teller who is worth their grain does anyway: I faked it. Rather: tried. As will become apparent in a moment, this is probably one of the worse attempts at staging spring. So … here goes nothing.

    Yeah, that table cloth under the hydrangea is not ironed. Neither is the table-cloth on the table, which is actually a curtain. I mean, the table-cloth is actually a curtain, not the table.

     

    I must say, those teacup candles are versatile. I need more so I can have them EVERYWHERE.

     

    Hyacinths. Just noticed that one of them is molding a little bit. Meh.

     

    Hello beautiful!

     

    Or should I say: hello bluetiful?

     

    Less elegant, more playful. You might say this balcony’s style is all over the place. I choose to call it „eclectic“.

     

    Unless I don’t show you the picture I just showed you, and show you this instead. Doesn’t work with real life visitors, though. Unless I make them leave the balcony frequently so I can rearrange things according to what they’re going to look at next. Seems like a lot of work, though, so … probably not.

     

    Now we’re getting somewhere with the spring feeling!

     

    So … another picture of the same just from a slightly different angle.
    And another! OK, I’m done.
  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    More than words

    Today started out …

    … pancakey.

    I wasn’t very patient with the camera here, so it’s a little hard to see but …

    … I hope you do see that THERE WAS A LITTLE FLOWER IN MY TEA.

    Later my day turned …

    … outdoorsy. Met up with La at Trädgårdsföreningen. Couldn’t get over how nice it was with the sun out and all.

    And it ended …

    … kladdkaka-y. At Dina’s. My second mud cake this week. The chocolatey tastiness was preceded by a most delicious dinner. Thanks, Dina!

    Lucky (imagine me saying with a Napoleon Dynamite intonation).

  • Bewusst Leben,  Sarines Göteborg

    Junk food – for real 2

    I did make those burgers for dinner today – with homemade BBQ sauce and hamburger dressing and all. Only the ketchup and the mayonnaise in the dressing were not made from scratch, even though there were recipes for that in the Junk food book. I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me this fast food faux pas.

    Do you too see a face in this picture? She’s frowning, right?