Loud

it's all gonna be loud from now on. try tune it in. restring my guitar and 
forget about everything. get lost in the chords and just let go of the melody. 
at the ready. distortion. angry drums. I wanna make something 
new.

Moving through Crystal

all in chains. nailed to the corners of my head. I know there will
be a new day where I can see bright colours. but when when when.
I know there is a limit to my patience. Im going wild. I want to break free
from all these illusions covering my eyes like a silent blanket of snow.

all I have to do is stay strong. but what does it mean?
do I tell myself these tears falling down my face are
just part of my chemistry. the way my eyes goes puffy and
red is just a part of how... I hate it. Im out of words.
it's like they have no meaning.

for all the girls who had someone steal their honor and respect.
for those who had someone stabbing you over and over again with
a blade made of evil. for all the girls who suffer from trauma.
for all the girls who were raped.

you're not alone. Im here with you. we will find a way...

like a ray of light moving through crystal.

I have too many thoughts in my head

Hi there. I'm back. Again. It's been a while. Been busy living. . .

All these winding roads and labyrinths we have to get lost in. I have started all over again and again and again. Two years ago I started traveling the world alone. I visited Australia, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Norway again, back to Thailand, and now suddenly I find myself relocated in a small British country town. THIS IS ENGLAND. I now face new daily challenges like two separate water taps on almost every sink (one where you burn your hand off and one where you freeze) and other small unimportant things we Scandinavians find funny or interesting when traveling beyond our own borders. I am not taking the piss, I am happy to say that I do not have too many worries at the moment. I am fighting nightmares and old ghosts though, but I know when the winter is over there will be a new spring. I know like all the billion buds will flower I will eventually blossom as well. It will take time. Time to create a new perception of the world we’re all so confused and living in. The past years I have spent so much time running away from my old life I almost forgot to live now. Always holding my guard, looking back over my shoulder. I am so fed up with being afraid all the time. Sun is shining outside my window, yet I only stare out at it, not yet capable of moving my sad lazy ass out there to enjoy it. Lazy, that’s what depression makes you. I don’t even feel sad, but I know it’s lurking behind there somewhere.

It is strange being a foreigner in a country so similar yet so undeniably different from your own. I feel like I’m lost in translation half the time. But this is the place I want to be. I have decided to make a new life here for the time being… Forever lost. I never expected to end up here. Strange, how life twists and turns sometimes. Life is slowly adapting and changing for the better. I have met so many beautiful and inspirational souls the past years of traveling I almost find it hard to memorize them all. I sit here with a heart heavy with gratitude. We have so much to learn from each other, by absorbing new scenery’s, by drinking wine, passing joints and making conversation. In this western world I feel like everyone is striving inside their own bubbles. Their own self constructed universes displayed on screens, shining with glorified pictures of the life we hope so eagerly the rest of world will remember us for…

Alien, that’s the word I’m looking for. Alienation. Hibernation. I know there are others with the same kind of mindset. It will just take some time. I will crawl out of my hole. Did I mention that I have already started? One third, at least! I work as a drama teacher for year 5 and 6 at a school once a week. KARMA. WIN. HARD WORK PAYS IN HAPPINESS. Now all I need to do is convince them to pay me some actual pounds as well. It still feels good to do what I love the most. Working with kids and theatre make me think good things of the world.

I am still traveling. Still it feels just like yesterday I left Gardermoen Airport in Oslo, heading in direction Heathrow – Hong Kong – Brisbane. I left everything I knew behind. And I haven’t looked back since. Maybe, that is only half way a lie. As far as home is concerned, I cling to the ones I love and see them on Skype whenever we feel it’s been far too long. I didn’t post much when I was exploring South-East Asia. But, some scribbles made it to the world-wide web.

I became a part of a marine conservation group (Eco Koh Tao) when I was living as a PADI divemaster in Thailand. I wrote some articles during my Eco Internship at Crystal Dive: Project AWARE – Eco Koh Tao – Mooring Line Project –  Reef Check Ecodiver Course. Feel free to have a look.

It’s late afternoon. Time to force myself to go outside. Sun is shining. Put my shades on. I will update more later I promise.

Tunes: Listening to Skambankt – Voodoo. I’m sorry if Norwegian is a bit tough to understand, but this song describes all the thoughts in my head right now. It just makes sense. Listen to the tune anyway, they don’t only have real lyrics they also got bad ass guitars.

 

Love and light, Kris xx xx

Sunshine State & North Stradbroke Island

Life is finally as it should be. Yesterday a new Aussie friend of mine let me
borrow a skateboard and an acoustic guitar. I'm the happiest kiddo alive.

Everything’s okay now. It’s all really challenging you know, traveling around and living together with people with extremely diverse interests and needs. I’m like used to live pretty much on my own, have my own bathroom in my own flat etc. And why is normal hygiene always a big issue among flatmates? Fuck, pardon my language. I seem to have grown into a nagging old freak or something. Probably not that bad, but I can’t wait to be the queen of my own castle again. Won’t be that long though. Just ordered flight tickets to Perth, where I’m going alone to visit some family for about ten days. November 6th – 17th. Lovely! Can’t wait. Even though they got sharks, the surf in Perth is said to be awesome. I’ll go there four days after I come back from our two week trip to Vietnam where we travel as a group. I also ordered tickets to the Harvest Festival in Brisbane – November 18th. Santigold, Dark Dark Dark, The War On Drugs, Fuck Buttons, Dark Horses, Grizzly Bear, The Dandy Warhols, and Sigur Rós are some of the headliners. !!! Anyway. Saw some autumn pictures from Norway earlier today, and I noticed that the only thing I miss except my folks are the colours. Explored more of West End of Brisbane together with my new friend James yesterday, and found a music pub which serves nachos and live music. For my major assignment I have decided to explore how up-and-coming bands in the Queensland area can afford to keep on traveling around playing gigs, record and make music. My main focus will be how new bands work their way up from nothing to become recognised bands that actually get paid and gain profit from their concerts.

Most common, just like for us back in Norway, independent and unsigned bands play gigs for free just to get recognised by the audience. There’s a long way to go – to get acknowledged by the bigger crowds. I’ve been to a couple of band-stand nights already, but I guess there will be more research and digging into the musical environments here in Brisbane the upcoming weeks. Think I’ll place a holdon the AC/DC bibliography at the library. Gotta start somewhere. Now I have to focus on environmental issues faced in Norway and Australia. Minor assignment. Yay. Outside the sun is shining and the city streets are overflowing with kids and families back home on holiday. Tomorrow, hopefully, I’ll go to Gold Coast, Surfers Paradise or Byron Bay. Been trying to get someone or anyone from my class to join me for like three weeks (I seriously can’t believe people can be that dull), and I’m starting to realise I’m a lonely weirdo on this trip. But, now that I got a skateboard to follow me I guess I don’t mind fooling around on my own.

Last week we visited North Stradbroke Island, located in the state of Queensland, 30 km southeast of the capital Brisbane. Wikipedia says that before 1896 the island was part of the Stradbroke Island. In that year a storm separated it from South Stradbroke Island, forming the Jumpinpin Channel. It is known colloquially as Straddie. To get there we had to take a ferry from Cleveland to Dunwich for about forty minutes, and then our hippie bus took us to the other side of the island, up North to Cylinder Beach where we went for a swim in the Coral Sea. Afterwards we went back to near Dunwich for a boomerang and digeridoo workshop.

It’s a jungle out there! Heading for the salty water. Finally.

I’m a crazy tree lover so you can imagine how fascinated I get. The forests in Aussie is far more interesting than the boring Norwegian ones. Last week I climbed one just to get away from everything and everyone, at Kangaroo Point where I live. Trees. Haha. Recorded and made a song of it too. Monkey in a tree, that’s me.

A shame we didn’t go to the other side of the island, Main Beach, where the surf spots are located. Next time!

Since I came to Aussie I’ve been swimming in rivers, hot springs, pools and stuff, but nothing beats the ocean. I almost started crying when we finally got there. I’m too sentimental, I know.

Awesome! Looks just like the woods in Jurassic Park! And there’s baby dinosaurs all over the place! They say Australia has 755 species of reptiles, making it the country with the highest number in the world.

I just love sand between my toes. Sand, sand, sand. Waves, waves, waves. Ah, life. I guess I love my life right now.

Best feeling ever, except from surfing green, sweet waves.

Me and some other classmates at the beach!

Guess the picture speaks for itself. We had fun there body surfing and splashing around for an hour or so before we saw …

A live koala in a tree!!! Unfortunately he or she find herself living in the middle of a street in neighbourhood where you find dogs, cars and other things that would kill you – if you were a koala.

Then we went to learn some more about indigenous dance and music traditions.

Digeridoo. Women aren’t allowed to play, but lucky me has tried one of those back in Norway. The man who led the workshop was carzy good at it, and we were all dragged into the atmosphere and sounds he created with the digeridoo. He demonstrated and played us a song or a story, imitating different kinds of birds, water, humans and so on while he was playing.

Me and some of my classmates. Photo by Henriette Gauteplass Rygg.

Anne Berit in the mood. Instruments used for all sorts of occasions – like dancing traditional dances. We also learnt some hunting and fishing dances, but I didn’t get any pictures from it.

I had to try them too!

Indigenous face paint. Afterwards the awesome digeridoo-man painted all of our faces with clay, the native way.

Our mission for the day. Painting our own boomerangs!

All in deep concentration. Focused. Just like children’s school – we kids loved it!

Then suddenly it started raining, a storm on the way, and I had to finish my boomerang under a table. Photo by Una Brännström Sverdrup.

Photo by Una Brännström Sverdrup.

Me and my crappy painted boomerang. Photo by Una Brännström Sverdrup.

Haha. Then we we’re throwing boomerangs till the storm arrived.

Raining outside, happy kiddo and her new toy. Photo by Henriette Gauteplass Rygg.

Storm. It was raining cats and dogs and cows and whales and what have you. Photo by Una Brännström Sverdrup.

TUNEZ TODAY: FOO FIGHTERS – ONE BY ONE. Been listening to the album on repeat the last couple of days. And to the rest of you readers, I’ll be back with more photos and updates from Aussie later. Love K.

Oslo Queer Festival

I know I should be updating you and telling you all about Brisbane and Aussie, but a late update from Oslo Queer has to come first. Lack of internet makes the situation terribly slow. Aussie is good by the way. I LOVE IT. Anyway, September 1st me and a friend named Annelén had a forum theater workshop at Oslo Queer Festival 2012. It was a great experience and we had a lot of good discussions within our group. We took a closer look at prejudice in queer environments, and people from all over Europe participated. Unfortunately we weren’t enough people to make a real forum-play in the end, but next time we will make it! Heidi (red head in the picture below) finally arrived from Hong Kong to Oslo on Sunday 2, just in time to say goodbye before I got on the same plane going down under. She and a friend had been backpacking Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand for five weeks. Yay!

My fair lady Heidi and her friend Eva outside Blitzhuset.

My precious friend Annelén was happy to be at the festival!

This is somewhere I might wanna go. I dunno yet where I’m heading after Vietnam. Still haven’t got anyone to travel with – I’ll cross my fingers I’ll find someone who wanna go to the South East of Asia!

Suddenly the toilet at Blitz started to mumble and talk to me. That got me thinking. Actually the first thing I checked when I came to Brisbane was if the water in the toilet flushed the opposite way of toilets in Norway. It did. Or at least I think it did. Happy times. I’ll never quit being a kiddo.

Even Smurfs say NO TO NAZI!

Sharing of experience. Heidi passed on her travel books to me, and some Vietnamese and Cambodian money. Lucky me! They got good coffee at Blitz, almost for free!

Martine and Eva. Happy people.

PEOPLE NEED HOUSES. HOUSES NEED PEOPLE. BLITZ STAYS. THE FIGHT GOES ON!

Where we had our workshop!  The Pussy Riot Cathedral – in honor of the amazing russian girls.

Good volunteers recycling all the empty bottles! Miss them so much, these lovely folks.

In the end, life is all about balance. Eva was getting the hang of it.

Martine striking a pose for peace!

Hippies never die – they say.

Annelén always got something dirty on her mind, and I like it.

Cuties outside the Blitz House. That building’s got so much history. I’d like to tell you all about it but time is running away from me. Check the link!

Last goodbye! I’ll update more tomorrow if I get the chance to go to the library again. That’s it for no. Gotta go. Love and light K.

Back O’ Bourke

First night in Bourke went well, we’re staying with a charming family  who runs a restaurant and a motel in town. Just had a nice breakfast with scrambled eggs and bread at their restaurant named Diggers On The Darling. Our house is lying on the riverbank next to the Darling River. Now two girls from our class showed up and we’re off to our first photography lessons. Got my camera with me! Tomorrow I’ll add a bunch of pictures I promise you! Got so many beautiful views to show you. Peace and love from the outback, K.

Australian outback – Back O’ Bourke – that’s the place. Here they just call it paradise and I can see why…

HAPPY!!! Kangaroo and it’s alive! At least it was yesterday. It almost got hit by a huge truck as it tried to cross the road.

Me posing and playing with shadows.

Moments

This gallery contains 18 photos.

Posting some recent snapshots from my mobile camera. Sentimental moment. Nico just left to catch the night bus home to Asker. I find myself all alone in my sitting box, doing nothing, chewing my socks. What to do, I wonder. Malakoff was awesome. Four days later I still got bruises and beat up muscles all […]

Klisjé

Og det er greit. Jeg er en enste svær kilsjébæsj. Livet lager fortsatt ville vingedyr i magen min. Gjør meg kjemperar. Er så glad for at jeg får være til.

Peace and Love! Bildet er tatt på hippiefest i Volda sommeren 2011.

LYD I DAG:
The Dandy Warhols – The Last High. Hele Welcome to The Monkey House-skiva er passende.