Just had to share this amazing installation, read all about it over at design boom.

After I wrote my last entry about things, and how I do not feel such attachment to things anymore, I looked in my jewelry box. I’ve had this thing forever, I can no longer remember who I got it from or just when, but I always loved this box and kept it in storage when I moved to Japan. It is like a time-stamp, I stopped filling up this box with even more new things about 2 – 3 years ago, and opening it up again I found all these precious little things I used to love. Not ready to wear them any time soon, but at least they looked sparkly in pictures.

Nothing like waking on a clear Sunday morning without any kind of hungover and ready to hit the books! Have a wonderful Sunday!

I was browsing modcloth (all items above are from modcloth.com) just to look around, try to get some inspiration, try to see if anything tickled my fancy. I encountered two problems.

1. I see things I think are cute, but the styles of the things are all over the place (as you can see from the above collection). It is like I have lost any kind of direction in personal style, and mix and matching stuff like this doesn’t always work. It is hard to wear a classy mad-men type of dress and combine it with a pug-party-ring. I don’t know what happened to my sense of taste (or lack thereof), but god, I can not seem to settle for any sort of style. And I have been feeling, maybe for the past two years or so, that I am getting to old for quite a few styles, and I feel that I need to grow up and not dress like a teenager anymore. And I am kind of stumped, because I still come across things that glitters like god and go “ooo! I want that!” even though the item does not match a single thing in my mostly black closet. So – how do you guys solve this? Settle for a style and keep to it?

2. The second “problem” I encountered is not really a problem; I do not feel inclined to actually buy things anymore. I look at things, think they are cute, but I don’t feel that yearning or longing for all sorts of items like I did when I was younger. I can easily walk into several clothing stores now, look through their collections, conclude that yes, certain garments are pretty, but I don’t feel like they are pretty enough to spend my money on them. After I have moved back and forth to Japan, I do not want to carry a shitload of clothes and whatnot with me, and right now I am living in a 5 square meter room, and I simply do not have enough space to keep a huge wardrobe. And it feels strangely liberating. Owning fewer things, getting by fine with fewer things. When I was younger I would keep closet upon closet filled to the brim, but going through old clothes now, I realize that most of the items are unnecessary, so I have thrown most of them away.  And you can do it as well! Clean out your closet, and just throw out all the old junk you are never going to wear again. There is no point in letting things clutter up your life. That being said – I miss that feeling of really falling head over heels in love with items. The only thing I have truly been wanting to buy all year was a pair of JC shoes. What do you do to get excited over items? Winter is coming, and I lack a couple of base garments, but I can not bring myself to go out and look for them, because most things are just so utterly uniteresting to me.

今宿題がいっぱいあるけど、宿題をしながら、この歌を聞く。♥

Aaahhh. A little over a month, and I can go back home. These past months have gone by so quickly, and quite frankly I am still not sure how I will be able to get everything done in time, but things have a magical way of working themselves out. Fingers crossed. I can not wait to actually have views like this a short train ride from my apartment again.

I don’t think I ever showed any pictures from Disneyland the last time I went? That time around I didn’t bring my camera, so all I have is a couple of keitai-pictures, but looking at them, I miss Japan. I wouldn’t recommend anyone going to Tokyo Disneyland for the rides, because the lines are insane, but if you like to take pictures, bring a camera and ignore all the rides and spoiled brats, and you will be fine 🙂

(Oh philosophy seminar how much time you give me to waste on other things ♥)

I have not read books for several years. Not because they do not interest me, but because I have been so terribly afraid of losing myself somewhere between the pages. I used to read a lot when I was younger, several books a week, plowed through both classical literature and quirky newcomers. I discovered Jon Fosse when I was 14, read through classical Greek plays, I loved it all, it moved something inside of me. I felt a lot, but – feeling – it is such a two-edged sword. Being able to experience so much emotion jumping off the paper, but not knowing what to do with it all once it hit me. So, I started avoiding books. Just like I still avoid movies, for the most part. It is too much. It is not enough.

For my Japanese course this fall, I had to read four novels by Japanese authors, and I chose Banana Yoshimoto’s N.P. and Kitchen, and I choose Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the shore and Norwegian wood. I have spent the last weeks evenings curled up in bed, gulping down the words on the pages, rediscovering reading. This is what it feels like to read fiction. I had forgotten. Upon rediscovering books, I realized that there was something about them which I missed immensely. I am not sure if it is the literary drought inside of me, the fact that I have not read books in such a long time, that made all of these four books so stunningly amazing to me, or if I just hit the jackpot and managed to pick out four amazing books to read in a row, but needless to say, I loved them all. Yoshimoto writes in such a clear and crisp way, so tangible and concrete about difficult subjects like death and complicated love (spiced up with incest and transexualism), and maybe just by pure chance, Murakami covers the same topic in Kafka on the shore, but writes about it so differently it is hard to think they cover any of the same topics at all. When Murakami makes everything surreal and floaty and you are not sure what is reality and what is a dream, Yoshimoto drags you down to earth and explain things in laymen’s terms. The combination of these books made my October evenings spectacular.

First Sunday in a long time, just hanging out with nice people, and even making time to read a book alone at Blom. Bliss!