How do you get rid of anger?

On my skin, in my dreams, and through my breath I start to see signs of repressed anger. It might actually be so repressed that I'm not entirely sure what I'm angry over. Which makes it very difficult to know how to unrepress it, let it out, and get rid of it. The main source...

Sunday 6 February 2022. All day

I'm scared and sad because my father is in hospital. The blood around his heart is running slower than normal, which means he is at high risk of blood clots and a heart attack. It's been discovered very early, and he's receiving excellent care at the Academic Hospital in Uppsala. Thanks to this discovery he...

“He knew, though, that the prize of his intactness was incompleteness”

Excerpt from Tender is the Night, F. S. Fitzgerald, 1934. This edition: Penguin Classics, 2010, p. 125. Photo: J. Zarins, 2022 I don't believe that we ever become complete, or finished, or actually ever grow up. At least I believe that people who do, are unhappy, boring, and unhealthy for themselves and their surroundings. This...

Cambridge midwinter

Moomintroll normally hibernates through the winter. Being full, warm, surrounded by loved ones and asleep is perhaps the ideal way to spend winter. But it was when he woke up and faced the winter that there was a story. Pre-sunrise winter morning on Coldham's Common, Cambridge. January 2022, photo by Jessica Zarins Moon in the...

Tuesday 19 January 2022. Evening

I'm thinking of moving to the coast. It might be remote and isolated from everything and everyone I know, but maybe I'll meet someone. Make a friend. Even if it's just myself. Or the sea. But maybe it's not right, I'm not sure. Sweden is upping its defence presence on the island of Gotland, in...

The entropy of anxiety

Bo Burnham and Sally Rooney are both a few years younger than me, and more talented brilliant and successful than me. But they both seem to suffer many of the same anxieties as me, as our entire generation. Natural and ecological decline, economic hardships, and political uncertainty have been the backdrop to the millennial coming...

Tuesday 28 September 2021. Afternoon

Someone wrote to me: Wasn’t that the night I saw you in the theatre, I was in the cheap seats so I don’t think you saw me wave And I thought that might be the most beautiful message I’ve ever received.

Thursday 26 August 2021. Afternoon

Diesel, faeces, fish bone, fruit, leftovers, plastic polluted water. The bay is paradise but at a high cost. No rain since May, forest fires out of control in the east, and a rise in Covid cases. Greece is a very old country, where no water, island or mountain remains unchartered or untouched. And it's a...

The houses in the hill

Villas in Sivota Bay at night. Photo by Jessica Zarins, August 2021 The villas in the mountains, so beautifully located. An L shape has been cut straight into the hill, and is filled by three homes in sleek shapes, whitewashed walls, locally sourced stones and greenery growing on the roofs. It keeps the heat out,...

The virginal

Sivota Bay, Lefkas. Tuesday 24 August 2021, afternoon Spending time with my parents for the first time in nine months is comfortable, safe and relaxing in a childlike way. My mother pays for lunch, my father pays for dinner. When there are sounds outside the boat at night, my father goes up to check. When...