So what now?
‘So how was Sweden?’
I have been asked the question more than once since my return from the writer’s residency in Björköby.
Besides the fact that there is no answering that question without 1) resorting to clichés, and 2) shattering the dream — and neither is what you really want to do — the question that truly sticks for me is: so what now?
Do you return as a changed person from a fortnight abroad?
In daily life, one doesn’t think twice about a fortnight. How long does that actually take? You have to take your kid to a dental appointment or a teacher’s meeting, there are board meetings and a lot of hassle at work, and thank god for the weekend when you can meet up with friends or relatives, go for a bike stroll or a film, or play couch potato once the grocery shopping is done. Times two.
Over in the blink of an eye.
But the point is: it doesn’t matter how long something actually takes. It’s about the intention with which you left, the intensity of what you lived while you were there, and the room you allow those impressions to work themselves into you afterwards. Like alchemical reactions they will go about their business inside you, and what they produce can reach so deep that it changes you from the core. Whatever the outcome, they have the power to change you for life.
What I am trying to preserve and (in an inevitably different way) am allowing to take shape in my life here, is the deep peace I experienced in Sweden. Part of that was of course due to the the fact that we didn’t have to bother with ‘real life’ in any way. Cooking was a chore both Jurgen and I enjoyed, and two tiny rounds of laundry weren’t a chore at all. Even the groceries were delivered at our doorstep. If we didn’t feel like leaving the house, we didn’t need to — except for a stroll through the woods or a bike trip, and yes, those we did fancy.
The feeling of peace ran deep. When I reread the chapters I wrote there, I catch myself thinking: this is powerful writing. But even more powerful is my experience of Being, through creativity and companionship, through flow and living from moment to moment.
For those who can only appreciate the language of the material and the physical… a nice illustration by means of a very concrete anecdote.
For years, I have suffered from bouts of lower back ache. The muscles in that area tend to stiffen and cramp, a residue gift of the pelvic instability I suffered around the birth of my son. It never hesitates to seize the opportunity to collaborate with the tensions building up in my neck and shoulders, working their painful way down my back. The last few months hadn’t been easy on that front. The combination of a positive adrenaline rush and a number of negative tensions enhanced each other gracefully, having me leave for Sweden with a constant nagging pain in my lower back, and living nights that ended somewhere around five a.m. due to the fact that turning over in bed sent painful spasms through my body and left me in fear of dislocating something.
Lack of blood flow, my manual therapist diagnosed, as she worked on those tightly drawn muscle knots with merciless love. Keep that area warm (hi there, Swedish cherry stone heat pillow), and make sure you move a lot, was her advice.
In Björköby, except for the rather short outings to catch a bit of fresh air (walk up to the like, picking apples in the garden, bird watching on a nearby field), I was sitting hunched over my laptop for whole days on end. Not exactly the dream remedy for back aches, right? Yet the last few days in Sweden I slept like a baby? And upon my return, my therapist was astonished at how supple and relax all those muscles turned out to be, that had been drawn painfully tight only a fortnight before.
Body and spirit work together, we would be idiots to deny it. So if I listen to my body, I learn that being connected, in a deep way, to something I love, and working on it at a pace that suits my inner needs and natural rhythms is nothing short of bliss.
Will society bend itself to my needs, all of a sudden? Of course it won’t. Just like my family won’t stop to ask for my undivided attention at every possible (and definitely impossible) moment. We still need bread on the table, and endless engagements require to be met.
But frankly, I don’t mind. For what you have found and what has found you out, you can take with you. You can, little by little, allow it to fill part of the space in your life.
From Sweden, I take home a deep resonance. A very special sibling bond to someone I feel deeply connected with. But also a different, very own, resonance. It bears a resemblance to the wash of the waves on the lake, to the clouds riding on the capricious winds, to the thick mossy layers covering the ground between the pine trunks in the forest. It is whispering about roots, about sinking slowly and deeply, and bringing up treasure, perhaps wordless at first, but not for long.
The world changes, every time we allow it to change us.
I am very willing dough in its big, kneading hands.
