#112: white guys who love japan, focusing on myself & hygge
i went to oslo so you don't have to
anyway, welcome back (okay, presumptuous of me!!!) to sent from my iphone with love <3
tea
a beach holiday
when the woman at customs asked me what i was doing there, i fumbled for a moment. i didn’t know. what was there to do? any suggestions? then i realised she wasn’t asking on a spiritual level, or even a social plane, she meant if i was on vacation or working. “i’m on holiday.” she stamped my passport. i walked through.
i was in oslo because i had to take two days of leave before the new financial year and had decided i wanted a beach holiday. i know this sentence doesn’t make sense, so let me explain.
i was triangulating my destination by (1) finding cheap flights on google, (2) looking up the prices of airbnbs in the area and (3) looking up the weather report. i was going by myself because it felt like a chic thing to do, but mostly because i had decided to do all this less than a week before i was leaving and no one wanted to/could take time off. what i really wanted to do was read my book for an extended period of time without feeling bad about it. after realising the water temperature was going to be the same as the outside temperature, with neither reaching above 20, i figured i could read my book in a cold place too. so oslo it was.
the plan was, originally, to go on a date and then just kind of fall in love for the weekend. i changed my hinge to oslo and the first person to come up was a 6’9 man called magnus sporting a viking-esque beard, which felt a little on the nose. the profiles sported men up mountains, paragliding, parasailing, wearing cycling glasses not for a rave, but rather for their intended purpose. the gays were all of the rainbow sock variety. i was scared. i’m not sure i know what to talk to someone like that about.
i had been trying to do some research about what to do beforehand and it all seemed a little elusive. of course, there was the time out lists with the accumulation of bridges and buildings you should look at, but i wanted the meat. the grit. i asked my matches on what to do, collating data on where to get my coffees and where to find the best vintagebutikk. i felt like maybe it was all exciting and underground, until i suspected that maybe, actually, it might just all be a bit boring.
there really did not seem to be too much to do, which was good, because it gave me time to focus on myself; to check how many new grey hairs were coming through, how the lines on my forehead crunched and remained for a while after i’d lifted my eyebrows, to monitor the bristles sprouting from my mole, to contemplating cutting my hair into a bob.
i was spending a lot of time in the airbnb, this apartment that looked like the back drop of one of those sunday reset videos men with tightly rolled up fisherman beanies and funny little clogs make. the more time i spent in the airbnb, the more i realised the guy who lived there was definitely one of those white guys who love japan/asia a little too much. he had a bonsai tree, various asiatic vases, a japanese knife collection, a dragon wall hanging and a selection of yuzu and dashi flavoured misos in the fridge. the biggest tell tale sign was the fact that he had a wok, but not a single fry pan. i began to look for a hidden hentai collection but then i started to feel like it might be a “breach” of this poor man’s “privacy”, so i went back to sampling the yuzus.
i have never previously thought that i would like to live by myself, but then i could really see the appeal of leaving your plates in the sink without guilt, or doing wees with the door open or not negotiating for a go on the tv. each night i watched a film set in oslo and thought about how good oslo looked through my screen. it looked really good through the screen. good enough to trick me into doing up my laces and getting back out there again the next day.
during the days i walked around. i set a destination in mind and then kind of meandered there, stopping to drink a coffee, look at some stuff, tap my card, and wait for things to get exciting. i though i was transmitting a frequency, or maybe a pheromone; chic single woman holidays by herself - please approach, yet no matter how many times i looked up from my book to wink at a stranger or lock eyes whilst twirling a lock of hair, they seemed to regard me as if i was twitching and ripping out clumps of hair. i walked through the botanic gardens and sat on a bench by a garden comprised of rocks. thought about how i imagine these gardens would really flourish a bit further into spring. i read the sign. it said rock garden. maybe not then.
i came to a realisation. by the end of the first day i had suspected- nay- confirmed the city was boring. i realised all these men were all up a mountain about everything because there was shit all else to do. this got me thinking about hygge. was it perhaps a plot from the scandi goverments? a conspiracy that had caught hold? was the purpose of inventing hygge to push the people inside the home? to put the onus on them to make their own fun? was it an outsourcing and a privatisation of the third space that i hold so near and dear to my heart?
so, i figured i best make the most of it and therefore spent a lot of time enjoying things that i couldn’t normally in london. i left a bouquet of my belongings in plain sight on a table in a cafe, and then went to relish in a leisurely shit in the cafe bathroom. i walked the length of the city and back, never bothering with public transport. i facetimed my friends on the street, gesticulating with my phone held loosely in my hand next to the road. and it was perfect. there’s really something to be said about making your own fun.
kyssss (that’s norwegian for kiss btw) xx
This is was an excellent bedtime story