Norwegian solidarity

After being completely unenergetic for a few days, I had to gather the pieces last night, and do something normal. For the last couple of days, I have, like so many other, been in a vacuum. Friday afternoon, Oslo, Norway, was struck by unbelievable acts of terrorism: a bomb went off by the government buildings, killing 7 people, and only two hours later, the same perpetrator set foot on a small island a few kilometers away, dressed as a policeman, and gunned down more than a hundred youth and children, of which 85 have now been declared dead.

By the principle of proximity, this hit me hard. Not only because Norway is Sweden's neighboring nation, but also because the kids on Utøya, who were there attending a summer camp, were part of a political youth movement with views very close to my own. I feel as it is my children who have been killed, the next generation supposed to follow the path of justice, equality, peace and solidarity. They were shot because of their political beliefs, and because they were young - this crowd was targeted for a reason.

I do not usually wave flags or national colors, being a firm believer of international solidarity and seeing all people on Earth as one, but as a step towards the recovery even those of us on the fringe of effect need, I decided to paint my nails for Norwegian solidarity.





I used China Glaze Midnight Mission, a stark white mini Color Club creme, American Apparel Downtown LA for the not very well executed heart, and topped the very same with Kleancolor Red Hot. It may not look like much, especially with the lack of skill in mind, but this is a rather thought-through manicure. I will not elaborate on this, as I'm sure you're all able to use your own imaginations, and the detailed meaning it has to me may not be valid to you.

I really don't trust myself using freehand painting on my nails, so I cut out a small heart in ordinary scotch tape, placing it over the white once it had fully dried, and even though I first applied a topcoat to avoid bleeding under the tape, it did so anyway. [Grr.] Because it largely got fecked up for various reasons, I did some... Erhmm... Correcting. This is painfully visible in closeup, with additional bubbles, topcoat bleeding and everything:

Oops. It's still rather cute from a distance though. And I kind of like that the heart shape is a bit irregular. And yes, I wanted to do the accent on my index, because I like to point at things!

I'll finish this post by asking you to please do what you're able to to take a stand against political violence. Killing others, or even trying to exterminate them, because of their views - especially when they are of the peaceful kind - is many steps away from democracy.

Swedish and Norwegian (bokmål) word of the day:
Norge -noun Norway
The heart is close.