The poet who gave me a kiss on my cheek

While the morning lights are rising at the moment, I wanted to share an amazing story of me with reading a book this week and the interesting happenings around that couple of years ago.

Yes, it was almost 2 years ago, when I was feeling alone as usually in that city, Stockholm, in my student room in Gärdet. On a Saturday night I headed to a place called Marie Laveau in Södermalm. There while I was trying to get a drink from the bar, a woman she was also in a hurry trying to catch the bartender. Then she started to talk to me in Swedish. At that time I couldn’t ever do the basic Swedish talks, so I asked her to speak in english. We met with each other. Her name was Kristina. She was little bit tipsy and on her good mood. Right there she wanted me to listen a song from her mobile phone using head phone. It was a special song that was written and performed for her. I listened the music and I don’t remember really if it was a good song. 

She said to me that she was a writer or poet and that she had her own book a little while ago published called “Sjöpojken”. She wrote down the name of the book in to my hand with a pen that she had in her small bag. We talked pretty much about what we think about literature and our point of view on different subjects but I really don’t remember what we ended up with. Anyway, after a while she asked for permission to go to bathroom. And she also asked me to stay at the bar so that she could find me as she comes back. 

I stayed there for long time but she didn’t come back. After I was sure that she would not return, I was thinking about why the girls do lie so same, asking for going to toilet as a run. I was demoralised and wanted to leave the place, on my way to exit we saw each other, she was even drunken, she looked at my face with her dizzy eyes. She came close to me gave a kiss to my cheek and went away again without saying anything else.

I checked out her book on the internet the day after. I found her web page; http://www.kristinasigunsdotter.se/

There was a lot of information about her works which were quite impressive. She had her phone number as well in that page, so after being quite interested in her world, I just wanted to see if it was possible to have a “fika” or a drink so that we could talk little bit more about the works she did. For me it could be an opportunity to have a friendship which would let me go into a world of an author or an artist which I was curious in terms of the city I was living at that moment. After couple of attempts to arrange a meeting, it ended up with each time that she had some other plans. Ok I gave up texting her so far. So I shut the case there till this week when I suddenly remembered about her book “sjöpojken”, because I was becoming better and better in Swedish after getting some Swedish courses and reading some Swedish books with the help of dictionaries. I ordered the book from the internet. In two, three days it was driven from the opening on my door with some other mails. I started reading it directly after i jumped into my bed. I read it nonstop without berathtaking. First, it was only a 64 page book, and secondly the flow of the book was dragging. 

There were some parts which I found very strong.

“Till Lyosha och dom andra ensamma pojkarna”

I was almost shocked with this first sentence when i opened the first page to start reading. Oh God! How much I felt alone during the time I was living in this city. And there was not any other place in the world that could sweep away this feeling from me. Finally I there I found some people considering the lonely guys in this world.

Then came another part;

“I bakgrunden ser du Staden, det pyr ur skorstenar och kloakhål, upp smogen som är så tätt att den täcker solen och gör det omöjligt för dig att veta om det är natt eller dag. Det finns heller klockor i Staden. Tiden existerar bara genom Pianistens, mina, toner. Det är jag som bestämmer när natt blir dag och dag blir natt. Det är jag som bestämmer invånarnas sinnesstämning. Jag är nyckfull. Ibland låter jag det vara natt i flera dygn, ibland tar morgonen här aldrig slut.”

There is something so powerful in these words which I cannot express and I won’t. They are just whispering me some feelings that I was struggling with, living with, and familiar with. I had many times very high impulse in lots of words and phrases that I read through the book.

So an interesting relationship for me with a book and its author, from a run to a lovely reading…