A day in the life of...

The dim light of my mushroom lamp reveals the shape of my guitar, the slanted whitewashed wooden ceiling, the herbs I’m drying from one of the beams. Bare feet on the cold wooden floor. It’s still dark outside. I’m the first one up of the three of us living in the attic, but downstairs in the kitchen Hanne and Maxi may already be eating breakfast. Cereal with yoghurt and fruit, and a boiled egg. Condensation on the window panes, a greasy heart shape drawn on one of them. The tiny flames of our Advent tea lights on a plate with spruce twigs, orange peels, birch bark and red winter berries. Outside the Swedes make their way to work. Daffy the downstairs poodle starts howling and whining and will not stop for another ten hours. The mornings are times to practice my German and talk about politics or potatoes. Harry will sit silently with us, waiting for his sleep to wear off. Patrick will come downstairs later, and do some animal impressions in the kitchen doorway. One by one, we’ll bustle and balance in the hallway, fishing ours from the mountain of shoes, wrap ourselves up in jackets and scarfs and hats and gloves and go thundering down the stairs headed for school starting at 9:15, a 10 minute walk or a 3 minute bike ride. Benni will only get up at 9:05. Maybe take a shower at 9:10.

There are many great things about living in a full house: there’s always food. When you lose your key or phone or wallet, just say the word and good chance someone will already have found it for you. The empty moments of your life become your most valuable ones, where countless commonplace interactions add up to make the stuff of family love.

And should you decide to tune into it, it is a backdoor into a torrent of fast-paced life lessons, confrontations with self, and a cask for maturing the wine. That suits me well, since the content and the character of our program already invites us into constant self-reflection and personal change. As do my personal relationships, the forest behind our house, and the lack of distractions in the backwater town of Karlskrona. The teachings they hold for me weave them all together. It’s a pressure cooker this MSLS year, forging gems of insight and learning. The only child in me is held up mirrors to her tendency for secrecy, and her dominance. Again and again, in a quick succession of challenges, I am given the opportunity to contract or open up, to assert or listen up, to protect or multiply. When I catch the first reflexes of my quick mind and my ego, the choice and the balance can well up from the depths of my being. Sometimes after days – and sometimes after months – of patience, letting my unconscious work and whittle away at me, while I try to sit still, unflinching, waiting for what will emerge. In the stillness, I engage my unconscious in conversation and we talk my options through. Voices from the heart and the gut talk to my mind, sometimes barely audible, sometimes slamming their fist on the table. The seasons help, as do mental models, to give structure and direction. And images and metaphors help surface the deeper meanings. In ceremony it all aligns, and in those moments the strength and the clarity I feel allow me to sit knowingly within the unknown.

The chats I’ve had, with all of my friends, navigating and negotiating, exploring and boring down into these deeper levels of awareness. Kitchen table conversations, evening strolls in the woods, one on one check-ins and circles with friends and housemates and classmates. It’s intense and sometimes they push me to the brink of spiritual exhaustion. But such is the nature of a year in Karlskrona, and my life feels rich and full and multidimensional. To share it with such wonderful people, to get to know their depths and inner voices, adds such understanding and appreciation to the simple joy on the surface of the social field. To crack jokes with a glowing, knowing glance is so much better than to crack jokes with a guessing, seeking glance.

It’s anyone’s guess in what state I will emerge into the world again when this year is complete. Many of us are going home for Christmas, breaking out of this container of personal transformation to take a breather. But three friends and I will only take it up a notch, traveling north together. We’ll celebrate Christmas with the four of us in a foreign city, before getting on the actual Polar Express to take us far, far away from the world, into the dark of the snowy Nordic midwinter, to a place where the mundane and the mystical live side by side. Jokkmokk, a Saami town just above the polar circle, where we’ll stay with Laila the Saami lady I met in Millemont, Paris last year. We’ll meet her reindeer, don ourselves in thick woolens and skiwear. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to hail the New Year not underneath the fireworks, but underneath the Northern Lights.

I come home, it’s dark already. Gold key probing for the lock in the black. The frost nips at my face. Thumping up the stairs, the clang of my key in the bowl on the seasonal shelf, and the warm light streaming in from all around. Voices in the living room, cooks in the kitchen. Dinner is being made from the spoils of Hanne’s last dumpster dive expedition. Patti is sitting cross-legged in front of the fireplace, staring at the crackling and poking the sweet smelling birch logs. Harry lies sprawled out on the couch. Maxi beams at me with his unfaltering smile. Benni’s voice and guitar play drift in from his bedroom. Tonight may see us erupt in crazy monkey screeches and deafening cookware concerts at the dinner table, or an impromptu dance party to practice our latest moves after Senap – our house meeting. Or we’ll lounge quietly in the living room, some playing chess, some reading for school. Or the living room will be dark and rims of light will shine from our bedroom doors. Some may go out into the steely cold night again, visiting friends or leeching off their Internet. Or the Mustard House may fill up with visitors, jamming in the living room, eating our food, and draping themselves on our lazy chairs. Or perhaps three of us will stand in the kitchen late at night, talking quietly, listening deeply, as one allows tears to come in the comfort of their housemates’ arms. Soon the others may follow, and in the soft glow of our champagne lamp on the window sill, clear tears will spill in each other’s trusted company, sharing our respective griefs and going to bed having healed a little more, on our minds a new memory that will bring warmth to the years in store.