From the spring of 2003 to the late summer of 2005 I lived in Malmö, Sweden. I moved there to live with my then boyfriend, now husband, Per, who I had met in Australia in late 2000 and promptly fallen head over heels for.
The move to Sweden was supposed to be romantic— and in a lot of ways it was. But it was also a really difficult time for me personally. I never quite fit in there— the friendly, open, loquacious girl from Texas trying to connect with a people who— though nice (and seemingly impressed with my self-taught Swedish speaking skills)— could, as one Swede put it, “take ten years to call someone a friend.” Who has time for that? I thought.
If I’d had a job, I would have at least had a way to meet people, but entry-level jobs were sparse and closely guarded by the personal referral system. And I had no friends to give me a foot in the door. The closest I got for most of my time there was a basically unpaid position I took at a local cafe and record store for credit in my “Swedish for Immigrants” program.
I loved being in the cafe, and the owners said I was one of the hardest workers they’d ever had, but when my course-work was up, I was only offered the option to keep working for peanuts— the practicum rate of about five bucks a day. “Det är en fis,” the owner admitted gruffly as he signed my papers of completion with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth: It’s a fart. Still, that was his best offer, apparently.
I left with my dignity, having refused to work for “a fart” voluntarily for any longer than I absolutely had to. Once again, I was jobless.
. . .
I spent a lot of time alone in those two and a half years— Per was working as a mail carrier and later went back to school to finish his degree.
Being the early days of the Internet, but pre-social media (MySpace was just coming on the scene), I spent a lot of time seeking out new hobbies. I bought my first yoga mat and a small book of poses to go with it. I learned about Tarot cards online and eventually bought myself a deck.
I was drawing (doodling, really), writing poetry and lyrics, and learning the most basic HTML to create a simple website for myself. During that time, I also discovered some simple music and video editing tools to play around with.
One winter day early in 2005, when the idea to leave Sweden (to return to the United States myself while Per finished school) was just starting crystallize in my mind, we took a walk to a nearby cemetery— the closest thing to a park in our immediate neighborhood. Per filmed me as we walked around on the snowy paths and sat under the low sunbeams in the afternoon light.
I later set this footage to an instrumental track of a song I’d written to create a moody, deeply reverby, video that somehow managed to capture the vibe of that time better than anything else I’d created before.
. . .
Since moving back to the states just a few months after that walk in the cemetery, most of our old digital files have been saved to external hard drives and packed away in storage. We occasionally get them out, searching for some old relic. I’ve often thought about the video, but no matter how many file folders inside of file folders I search, the video has always eluded me.
After two decades, it became almost mythical in my mind. I could hear the music, see the snowy ground and the sunbeams, and feel the melancholy, warm tones. But I’d started to wonder if it was lost to time, if maybe it no longer existed.
Then, just yesterday, as Per and I sat side by side, digging through old hard drive files to better arrange (and delete) things, he suddenly found it. It is so old at this point that we had to download a special video player to play it, which we immediately did. And then… there it was.
We watched together, remembering that walk in the cemetery on that snowy day, remembering that time in our lives, remembering how I’d turned to my creativity to deal with the loneliness and depression I felt in Sweden. The video is only two minutes long, but it represents so much more than that two minutes. It may be one of the last things I made before I decided it was time to start planning my exit from Sweden and subsequent return home.
So, without further ado, I present the long lost —and now FOUND— video, a virtual time capsule from early 2005 and a very formative and important moment in my life captured in film and music.
. . .
Footnote:
After almost two years in Sweden, I finally landed a part-time job at a kitschy dollar store called “Tiger” (a Danish word that referenced “a ten”— an sum of money that was around a dollar). I’d gotten my foot in the door there thanks to Per, who had been moonlighting as their fish tank caretaker for several months (yes, really). For months, I took the train to the next town over, to stand behind the cash register and ring people up for small household items and trinkets. That first real paycheck felt earned and I was happy to buy myself something nice— a super-long, chunky-knit green scarf and the matching fleece-lined mittens. Practical clothes for the Swedish winter (something I still had relatively little of) and a perfect souvenir that I could keep even if I moved away. I’m wearing both of these in the video. And although I gave the scarf away a long time ago, twenty years later I still have the mittens, and they are one of my most treasured possessions.
Post Script:
I did return to the U.S. in the summer of 2005. But instead of moving back home to Austin, I made my way to a new place far from Texas— I moved to Seattle, Washington, where I ended up living for more than 15 years, most of that time with Per, once he was able to come and join me in the States. It was one of the best decisions I ever made and I credit Seattle for bringing me back to life after I’d all but frozen over from my time in Sweden.
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