Snusmumriken

Jag har en vän som vet att han har hittat hem
Fast han aldrig sett sig om
Jag har en till och hon kan aldrig sitta still
Hon har alltid nåt på gång

Ibland så vill jag följa med
Ibland så står jag helst bredvid
Ibland så vet jag inte vad jag vill
Eller vad jag vill se

Men jag avundas er för ni ser nåt som jag inte ser
Ibland så känns det som ni lever så mycket mer

Mimikry

During most of my still relatively short life, I’ve been continuously looking for someting else. Something that wasn’t what I was currently doing. No matter what I’ve been doing, or where my life has been going, I’ve been longing to be somewhere else, doing other things. For most of my childhood, I always had some sort of an escape plan.

I guess it made me behave a bit strangely. When I was eleven for instance, I always carried fishing gear, and although a fishing line, a sharp knife and a ball of string hardly makes it possible to survive, it reminded me that I always had the possibility of leaving. I used to borrow “how to survive in the wilderness” and “which plants out there are edible” - books from the local library, so that i would be able to survive in the wilderness, and I wrote lists discussing whether I thought the shore or the woods would be the ideal place to settle.

But someting has happened during the last half year.

I realised during my exams this december, that my thoughts weren’t wandering like they did some years ago. Earlier years, I have always been browsing for other subjects of study during my exams. This year I didn’t, because I know I have ended up just where I want to be. Earlier, I’ve been looking for study abroad programs, or plane tickets for a country far away. This year I didn’t.

It feels weird to be at peace like this. To know that my field of study is what I want to keep on doing, and that my hobbies are best suited to keep on being hobbies. To know that some people are restless and lonely, even when everyting is the way it should.

It feels good to relax, but it also feels a bit strange. I wonder if I’ll get used to it.

It’s the summer of 1996. I’m listening to toni braxton, the beatles, blur and santana. I’m eleven, and a few months later, I would go and see the backstreet boys playing in oslo. It’s the year where I really start trying to figure out why I don’t fit in at school. The year I start wearing copious amounts of makeup. It’s when I start obsessively washing my hair, start dieting and stare into the mirror for hours at the time. As if that ever helped anyone.

I’m eleven, and because it’s in the middle of the holidays, the hard things in life are far away. I like music, reading and words that are long and difficult. I hate to write with pens that aren’t green, but have experienced that green inked pens never last.

This is the day I decided to become a comic-maker, and although i never became one, I can still remember it in vivid detail. It’s july, and it’s so hot that the air is shivering over the warm asphalt. I’m wearing shorts made from old jeans, and probably my favourite green tee-shirt, which by the way is identical to the one my second cousin has. I’m sitting on the stairs in front of the house with a horrible sketchbook made from the kind of recycled paper which mechanical pencils cuts straight through, a cup of tea and a Beetle Bailey magazine. I’m drawing miss Buxley over and over and over again. My green pen is digging into the cheap paper.

.

I know that the comic-strips that features miss Buxley are considered sexist. Most of them are also sexual. I didn’t see this when I was little, and the strips with miss buxley in them were what made me keep on reading Beetle Bailey for years on end. Not because they were sexist, but in a world where the literary characters were all smart and popular; a world of Nancy Drew; a world where the indie comics i read today, packed with the lives of alienated kids who read too much didn’t exist; - miss Buxley was the only character I knew of who was pretty, sexy, popular and still remarkably stupid. For a girl like me, who wasn’t doing too well in the social aspects of life, it felt wonderful. For me, miss Buxley doing something stupid and brainless became a symbol of how the popular kids in my class probably weren’t too smart either, in spite of their looks and their popularity.

But today I found the comic manuscripts from that summer day. I read it, and was embarrassed. The two miss Buxley’esqe characters, Zonia and Zubretta are as stupid as I remember them, but what I didn’t see then, is how quickly the theme of the comic changed from “let’s laugh at these popular, pretty girls cause they’re obviously stupid and shallow” to a sore description of all the things I longed for myself. Having loads of friends. Being wanted in a sexual way that I, being a child hadn’t yet articulated. Being wanted in spite of all ones flaws.

When reading through these little snippets of dialogue, it becomes clear that when making this comic, I was trying to convince myself of how the popular kids in my class really were shallow and stupid. I almost find it embarassing how easy it is to see the real message behind it all:

The one that goes: “Oh god. I want to be just like them.”

When I was six, I started reading The Bobbsey twins, and just like every single book I’ve ever read, those books put funny ideas in my head. In one of the books, they were eating fried ice cream. Me, being quite the sweet tooth, always wanted to follow their example, but I never got around to maing it. For some time the idea of fried ice cream grew bigger, and bigger, although my mum said it wasn’t too tasty at all.

Last night me and mikael went out to eat sushi at some place I had never been before, and which was really fancy, although it was in torggata on the second floor. After dinner, while drinking coffee I was lazily browsing the dessert menu, and there it was, the fried ice cream.

Sometimes, when you have been wanting to do something for years (17 in this case), and you finally get to do it… it’s just as awsome as expected. I ate fried ice cream. It was warm and cold at once. It was awsome.

I’ve always taken a small amount of pride in my ability to dress well, and by well I mean “to avoid freezing during winter, and to always have a scarf, a cap and mittens when it’s cold”. Unfortunately, I managed to gain a few kilos this summer, which again rendered my winter clothes too small, and the trousers riding too low compared to my jacket. I’ll be the first to say that there’s something wrong with the clothes, when there’s a gap between the super-underwear and the trousers, but I guess we all have to deal with what’s available, so I’m doing that.

In the meantime, when people asked me “aren’t you cold, with that thin velvet jacket”, I decided that admitting that I was freezing because I actually didn’t have any winter clothes would be embarassing, so, almost clappering my teeth I kept responding that “nah, I have mittens and super underwear, why should I be cold?” But my jacket was too tight to fit a knitted jumper into, and the wind goes straight though knitted garments. I gradually grew sick of being cold.

Today, I decided to go to the salvation army and buy the most practical jacket I could get for less than 200kr, and although not too pretty, it feels like the best thing I’ve ever bought. It’s got a) oilskin, so I won’t get wet. b) reaches the middle of my thighs c) waterproof lining under my butt d) small sleevelets that prevents the cold from creeping up my wrists e) pockets f) room for a knitted jumper underneath. All these are things that the prettier other jacket doesn’t have. I’m in love, though I assume that the other, pretty jacket increases the chance of other people loving me.

On another note: I finished my exams on friday, and I’m slowly regaining my ability to think about non schoolrelated things. It’s odd that there actually is a transition, but after hardly doing anything else for a month, it actually is. Now, after reading some literature, and after catching up with the newspapers, i think I’ll grow back in the shape of a normal person once again.

I read. I read alot. I’ve read until all the thoughts I’ve accumulated have gotten messed up, until all that’s left in my head is a thick, sticky porridge made from one part marxism, one part new cultural history and one part postmodernism. It’s all methods and riots.

I’m trying to sort it out, and I’m trying to make it less messy, but right now, it feels like I unlearn everything I read. Like I every word I read makes me less knowledgeable.

Perhaps it’s because it’s a saturday night. Perhaps I’ll feel better tomorrow, when I go to school. I’ve bought good bread and boiled eggs for my lunchbox. Most probably I’d feel better if I stopped feeling that it’s a Really Big Deal.