Boat people 2

The more I think about boat people, my thoughts move in circles and almost spiral. I draw and list and try and articulate my pondering. Eventually I identify five different categories of boat people. I call them Leisure sailors, Adventure sailors, Luxury sailors, Explorer sailors, and Escaper sailors. This is crude and lacks the complexity...

Midsummer

My thoughts around boat people move around, inside and outside my head. They don't form a pattern or even a list. I like patterns, and I like lists. Maybe the thoughts need to float around a bit more before they form a pattern on a page. Or before I discern it. Yes that's right; the...

Boat people

When I was a little girl, my family would go on sailing holidays. The lifestyle was simple, like camping on water. You were constantly in nature and lived with it and the ocean. This is a common summer hobby in Sweden, and winters were spent repairing, maintaining and improving. [[[Stats: How many Swedish boats?]]]] The...

Wednesday 12 June 2024

I spread out all the literature and research I have done on my Latvia project on the floor by my desk. I dust the books and survey my work. So much knowledge. It's time to get it all back into the light. As a child I wanted to write about my family history because it...

Getting going

It’s 2024, the Year of the Dragon. I’m having a good year: I’m healthy, my family is healthy, I’m in an established happy relationship, I live by myself in a house I love, I have good friends and I just got a new job that I’m excited about. Sometimes I feel embarrassed to tell others...

Afternoon, 5 June 2024

On Monday, I started a new job. It's the Year of the Dragon, and things are going well for me. I am taking charge and making change. Today it's Wednesday, and I got drunk in the middle of the day. There was a power outage at work and no one could do any work, so...

Hellenic treasures

A still life selection of white pebbles, blue ceramics and small shells. Photo by Jessica Zarins, June 2024. On different Ionian pebbled beaches I searched for two things: perfect skimming stones, and the most spherical pebble of all. It was a fun holiday game to play on each of the beaches I visited on Lefkas,...

Train station Ely, 16 May 2024

It's the Year of the Dragon and I'm on a train. Being born in another Dragon year, this feels like my year. Things are going well for me. So well that I sometimes feel embarrassed to tell others about it. Now the train is moving. Things aren't perfect – they never are – and I...

New year

I'm reading a book about the past. Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov is about a man who opens a clinic of the past for patients with alzheimers, dementia and amnesia. First each room in the clinic represents a different decade of the twentieth century. This spreads to become whole floors, with different rooms for each...

Tuesday 23 January 2024. Evening

I found a writing competition I thought I'd enter. My boyfriend was supportive and told me to go for it. Reading the abstracts of the previous winners I was immediately intimidated. These were complex narratives of weaving together multilayered experiences, thoughts and academic theories. There was no way I'd measure up to to that quality....