Driving Through The Helmand Desert

Afghanistan '09

When You Take The Dreams From A Dreamer

There are things that appear similar and then they turn out not to be. Love is for instance not just love. There is love, and there is love. And then there are the thousands of other loves.

There are spaces that can be filled, some from within, some from outside. Some only from one or the other, some both from inside and outside. There are spaces that appear empty, but are actually not.

Love. You need love to fill up the love space inside, the heart. To fill up the heart, you need love. The heart is one of those spaces, that needs to be filled both from within and from the outside. From loving or from being loved the heart can be filled; but only when two hearts meet and it fills from both sides, it is truly fulfilled.

When you take the dreams away from a dreamer, you risk causing great damage. I myself am a dreamer. Take my dreams, you take my legs. You can do it, but you can't expect me to run afterwards. Neither dance, at least only in a most peculiar way.

Time. To fill up time, a dreamer needs dreams. Some will say that a dreamer is an escapist, someone who uses dreams to escape the moment. For me, that's untrue. I live very much in the moment, but an important part of that moment is the future. The future is not for me another place, another time, another dimension. Maybe my perception of time is too cyclic for that way of placing past, present, and future on a forward-moving line. The future is that particular pregnant part of the moment that carries the beautiful feeling of hope, optimism, desire for creation, believe in change, curiosity, and openness to new ways in it.

Without dreams, you only have what there already is. You don't see what there is with the possibillity of something else becoming. You see a bud, but you need your ability to dream to see it bloom. You see a canvas and need a dream to see a painting.

In a few weeks, I will be going to Afghanistan. I'm going with the Danish Army Operational Command to the Helmand province where the Danish Task Force is in battle. I'm going on a press tour, with three other journalists. I have no dreams for this trip. I feel strangely empty. I think, my perspective on a lot of things will change. I think it will be an inexplainable physical experience to be in a place, where the ones surrounding you actually want to kill you. I think I will meet soldiers who will teach me a lot.

A moment is not just a moment, as love is not just love. A moment can be with or without dreams.

I think the moment is a space. It is filled up by the situation you're in as well as by the dreams you have in that moment for the future, the possibillities and beliefs, that the moment holds for you within you.

Everybody needs the feeling of a future to have a fulfilled moment. Everybody needs love, both from outside and from within, to have a fulfilled heart. Everybody needs a dream. About love, about survival, about a life. As a dreamer, having met some of the dreamless, and soon going to one of the very least hopefull and least dreamy places on earth, I'll say: Some may even have to start with a dream about a dream.

Life & Us

It's not about being perfect. It's about having fun.

Quote: Tine Bruun

Lines

I remember I got a paper back and my teacher had written: You don't write on the lines. Because of that, I got a less good grade for order - we had two grades, one for content and one for 'order'; the handwriting, the look of the paper, the divisions of the text, in math; the placing of the numbers and math pieces, the neatness of it all. It would make less sense today, where so little is handwritten.

You don't write on the lines. It made my grandmother furious, I was at their house that day and took the paper out of my bag. I rarely saw her upset, but she thought it was so petty of my teacher and not true, I remember her looking and concluding again and again, that I had in fact written on the lines.

When I look at my handwriting today, I very often notice, that I don't write on the lines. I think of my grandmother. I can hear her defend me, even though I obviously have never been good at writing on the lines.

I learned it, and I can do it today. When I have to write something very nicely, I think of this, as if it's a special weakness of mine, and when it has to look right, I have to concentrate to fight my natural urge to let the letters flow more freely above the lines. They're still completely in line. There's just a milimeter between them and the line. A little space. A tiny liberation of the letters from being mashed down into the line. Who says the letters and the line like each other? I'm not going to force them upon each other. I want to give them closeness but not necessarily make them kiss and unite. I like the look of them being free and independent of each other.

Drawing inside the lines. Some people always draw inside the lines. You know those children's books where a drawing is outlined and you have to fill it with colours? Most people concentrate on only drawing inside the lines. They make it their life to only draw inside the lines. It all looks so perfect. Job, marriage, kids, interests, holidays, sexual preferences, food choices. They never make a quick detour with the crayon, they don't take the initiative to expand the drawing in their own way. Just hold on to that crayon and stay inside the lines.

I draw inside the lines. I'm a perfectionist. But in life, no. I don't draw only inside the lines. I'm more the type who drops the bucket of paint all over the outlined drawing and nobody knows if I'm the new Pollack or just made my own Rhorshach to demonstrate how mentally disturbed I really am.

I don't write on the lines. My writing is always a little uplifted and flies freely by nature. It's ok with me. Nobody gives me grades for good order anymore. I rather now try to fight order in many ways. Too much focus on order kills creativity and reflection. I aim to thrive in chaos. I believe it's a matter of training.

Voluntarily Voluptuary

voluptuary \vuh-LUHP-choo-er-ee\, noun:

1. A person devoted to luxury and the gratification of sensual appetites; a sensualist.

adjective:
1. Of, pertaining to, or characterized by preoccupation with luxury and sensual pleasure.

Voluptuary derives from Latin voluptarius, "devoted to pleasure," from voluptas, "pleasure."

New Ways and Zealands

I'm thinking about going to New Zealand. I need a change. I have this idea, that in New Zealand they can always use a gal to cut some sheep, you know, help produce some wool or brand the sheep cattle with a hot iron or red paint or something. Cook some stew. Pet the abandoned lambs. I imagine high land and big sky, clear air and, well basically me, a couple of farmers, and hordes and hordes of sheep. I have several friends from New Zealand here in Copenhagen, and they're all very hip city slickers. I try to forget about them when I dream of New Zealand. I like it to be an ancient place with only nature, sheep, and me. My New Zealand, the place I dream about going, doesn't foster those kind of people. My friends here don't wear enough wool. They talk too much. They're cosomopolites. And they all love to party. Everything is wrong with them being from New Zealand. I need a change, and in my mind, the beautiful, isolated, contemplating New Zealand is the perfect place to dream about changing my setting to be.

So, work with me. There's a New Zealand, where the water tastes like the sky and the sky looks like water. Where the soul awakens cleansed and pure every morning. Where the body enjoys the toil, where the sound is carried far, far over land and sea. Where the cliffs are steep and the heart knows right from wrong. Where dreams and life melt together over horizons in misty views of the sun; where dreams are born, touchable, and lived, born to be lived, lived as they are born, where dreams are of life and life is the dream. Where time and nature surrounds you and makes you feel at the chore, the source, the beginning of the world.

Things are breaking up around me. I'm the one breaking them up, I'm not a victim to anyone else's actions. I'm just where I am in my life. I quit my job last week. As I thought to myself, Hey, I'm an artist, am I not? I realized, that I may doubt my art, I may be lazy, and I may be mediocre and a dreamer, but an artist somehow, yes, I am. An artist of life, if nothing else. And then I remembered what you usually say to artists working to get through with their artistic aspirations, which I remembered as: Don't keep your day job!!

So, I hurried off to quit my job as assisting editor at a radio program, a very highbrow media talkshow at the Danish national radio channel, P1. I'm now, or in a few weeks, officially unemployed.

Now, from the back of my head, I'm beginning to wonder if they actually say, Don't quit your day job, which makes me quite the idiot, if that's true. Anyway, it's too late. And I like the idea better, that if you have an artistic urge, don't the fuck get trapped in a day job, than the don't quit the job and ever become really good at the art. So, now I ideally have a lot of time to write since I didn't keep the day job.

I'm also realizing these days, that I didn't keep the income either.

I wonder what they pay for a sheep cutter? That is, an amateur sheep cutter from Denmark.

So, no job is good. The world lies open ahead of me. I know good stuff will come. Now I've opened up my world to let it arrive. And I'll be writing. I gave in a manuscript for a children's book just this Monday. Let's see what will come from that. I realized after I gave them the script, that I have five children's books lying around in manuscript form. They'll probably become sweet little books eventually. They're very out of time, but I like them. Present day children's books are full of HIV and Co2 and divorce and sci-fi and cutting edge and funky crazy shit. Mine are full of ferrytale fun, nostalgia, nuclear families, love, companionship, and magic. And adorable children. I'm not sure the time is ready for that far out genre. But it will be.

I wonder if Barbara Streisand is allowed in New Zealand?

I made a new friend this summer, a writer. He writes pretty dark books. When he doesn't, he shuffles fish at the harbour and takes care of his three children, whose mother is an auto mechanic. And then he loves Barbara Streisand. So I went and bought a couple of records with her, after learning about his life-long adoration. And what do you know. I'm obsessed with her these days. She's almost completely new to me, I thought she was bad pop, but was I wrong? I think so. I thought her lyrics were empty and shallow, but take a look at this, which I hear about eight-ten times daily now to really get a hold of the layers of the text:

Here we are,
Just going through the motions one more time,
You looked in my eyes but you don't see me,
Here I am, feeling like a stranger in your arms,
I touch you, I hold you, but lately I don't know you...
Something is wrong but we go on from day-to-day,
And we just pretend it all away,
We act like nothing's changed,
But in our hearts we know it's not the same...

Cause we're not makin love anymore,
Baby we're not makin love like before,
We may hold each other tight,
Say that everything's all right,
But we're not makin love...

Remember when you couldn't wait to run into my arms,
When the love inside my heart was all you needed,
Remember when you made me wish the night would never end,
The fire, the thunder, we lived to love each other,
If ever two hearts were one, then it was yours and mine,
But that was another place in time,
Now all we have to show,
Are memories of a dream we used to know...

Cause we're not makin love anymore,
Baby we're not makin love like before,
We may hold each other tight,
Say that everything's all right,
But we're not makin love...

When did we lose our way, we had it all,
Don't know how it all just slipped away,
But oh, can we get it back again,
Is it too late, can we try,
Just one time, cause darling...

Cause we're not makin love anymore,
Baby we're not makin love like before,
We may hold each other tight,
Say that everything's all right,
But we're not makin love...

Well, I'd say anyone with a heart and the experience of putting love to the test of separation could very well get the horror chills from the overwhelmingly scary aspects of this song. Oh god, I need a change. Maybe I actually shouldn't bring Barbara to New Zealand. I guess that's not really the efficient way to change setting. Bringing your own heartbroken soundtrack to the big silence of the lambs.

With the quitting, I've opened up for a big change in my life. What now? Will I write, now that I'm without a day job? Will I have the discipline? Will I, with or without New Zealand, find a new way? My way?

I know one thing about my life. As painful as it is to write, and as good as I am at procrastinating. I will either write. Or I will live with the pain of not writing.

Dead Aunt and Days Ahead

The last post was a poem I wrote a couple of years ago about my aunt Grethe's fear of death. I posted it while she was dying. She died last week, ninety-seven years old.

She was afraid of dying. Really broke the lovely image of a dying old person, who's had enough, is ready to go, had a long life and eventually surrenders to death. She was scared shitless for the last years as well as in her last days and hours. Called for her mother, moaned, clawed on to the bed sheets and the shirt sleeve of whoever was near her bed.

I hated it when I heard others say 'Don't be afraid, we're here'. Who can tell someone about to die not to be afraid? What arrogance. And what does it matter that we're there, that's exactly what she's about to leave and is afraid of leaving. It's not 'Don't be afraid, we're coming with you'. That'd be a more acceptable assuration. But to say, that we're here while you're going, is not really my idea of calming, when her fear is about where she's going - alone.

She died an old maid at ninety-seven. She was engaged once, but he turned out to be gay. Over seventyfive years ago. There broke her dream. That is when her destiny was somehow determined; the broken engagement became her fate, her solitude in life. In the countryside, in the thirties, there wasn't just another fiancé for Grethe.

Some would turn to a lack of religion to explain. I turn to my belief. It is of course the lovely, the wonderful, the marvellous, the phantastic, the one great thing, the one and only; Love. The lack of love. Grethe went to bed and woke up every day for ninety-seven years. Alone.

I promise myself a life full of love. Daily love. Passionate love. True love. Days with joy, enthusiasm, adventure. Love. Care. Fun. Calm everyday living with habits and boredom and rutines. But always with love. Then I won't be that afraid to die. Won't call my mother's name in despair on my death bed. I will close my eyes and surrender to the fact, that I loved and felt loved. That my life was about love. Everything besides that is incomprehensible to me anyway, and will probably absolutely be at that time, on that day. Only love, only love, only love will be what remains, what calms, what still lives and vibrates in mine as well as in the universal consciousness as the ever truly lived life, it is what I in a speck of dust in a hidden cell in my body in all secrecy in an appointment between me and nature science and the laws of physics will take with me. A speck of eternal love. It's what I will have given, and nothing but. All I'll have from the journey of life. The rest, I will know, was only dance steps around the one thing, that mattered. Did I give my love? Did I love enough? Did I accept the love? Did I embrace the love? Live love?

Sometimes I have to remind myself, that there are no compromises in love. There's no in between. The heart is open or it is not. The love is there or it is not. No giving half and holding back half. No luke heart is a loving heart.

The heavyhearted dies heavily. Afraid to be taking the love with, away from the world. The one who opened the heart and let the love flow, let it fly, has lightened the heart and will die lighthearted and assured, that the love streamed freely from the heart out into the world, and that it'll be all right to let the little heart stop beating now. It's no longer full of heavy blood. Unused, ungiven, saved up, and now burdening, wasted love is not captured in there.

So. While there is still life to live, days to spend, others to love, I know what I have to do. Love. Give it away.

Aunt Grethe

My mother calls me on the phone. She says Aunt Grethe is sometimes afraid. She sits alone in her apartment, then she calls my mother and has her come over. When my mother comes, she finds Grethe trembling all over, sitting on a chair in her living room. My mother says, that she’s afraid of dying. Afraid of her death. I say, What can you do, she’s ninetyfour years old? My mother says, I hold her and say, I’m right here. Does it calm her down? I ask. No, my mother says. She hardly knows, I’m there.

Spendings

I burn my check books on my porch, one by one. Light a corner and let the flame catch untill the book is a small torch in my hand. What could’ve become now disappears into grey air. I think of my friend, who went manic. He bought a tuxedo and a Porsche on credit. He drove around for weeks, a well-dressed madman. From restaurant to restaurant, show to show. He drove from forest to forest and shouted, “I am an oak, I am an oak,” challenging the trees on solidity. When they brought him in, still in his tux, they said he sang the Marseillaise. Every time he has been manic, debt has come along. I only burn the fortunes I don’t have, and only because I’m changing banks.

Desert Road Long

I drive through the desert and dream of a kiss. The sand hangs low in the air. The blue mountains rise at the edges. My one hand searches over your face; I feel your eyebrow with my finger. I rest my palm around your cheekbone as your lips hold on to mine. A tumbleweed plays with the wind, and my hand traces your chest. The road is blurring in mirror pools of heat that take the sky blue down in the paving. I want to inhabit you. Next to the road is a sign, it says, Affordable living. I think, if that was you, I’d buy all fifty acres for sale.

Childhood Treasures

I pick up an autumn leaf and hand it to you. “Come on,” you say. It’s not really an argument, more a rapidly growing distance. You say, “Things are just not the way they were, we’ve all grown older.” You tell me life is different now, that we have responsibilities. I look at the leaf in your hand. You don’t see its wild colors and crazy wrinkles. I know you can feel me. We were children together. You’re married now. I forgot to return your calls for a long time. I moved abroad. Forgot to come by. But you can still feel me. Finally I say, “Can I have my leaf back?”

Fallen Hero

You tell me about the time your neighbours’ house was on fire. There was someone left inside, a child. Everyone shouted about him in the street. His parents were gone that night. You ran for the front door, drew your hand back from the doorknob once you felt the heat against your palm. You paused. I don’t want to die, you thought. Not a man, not a hero. Not now. You looked at the doorknob, and instantly knew you didn’t want to live either, forever a coward. You ran inside. Found the boy upstairs in his little bed. Jumped out the window with him on your back. You brush the top of the grey rubber wheels on your chair, and say, That was how I got into this. You say, The boy’s fine, he’s fine. He’s fourteen now. He still writes once in a while.

Solitude and Creation

I've decided to think of writing as cooking. There are so many books in the world, it can make me wonder why on Earth I choose to create even more. And then I think, there's so much food in the world. That shouldn't stop anyone from cooking - or eating. And when just one person can get a good reading experience out of my writing, well, I'll consider it as useful as had I just cooked that person a good meal. No great expectations. No need to write the book to end all books. No all or nothing. Just cooking a meal, writing a book.

I'm at a writers' retreat in an old manor in one of the most beautiful areas of Denmark. I'm here for four weeks. I'm writing my third book, my first novel. I get up at 5.25 AM and write. I brought my new Merida road bike which is amazing. Glacier streams met here, back in the latest ice age, right at the point where the manor is built, so to the one side it's all flatland and to the other it's curvey hills. All green and lush, oaks mainly. Behind the park there's a lake. I'll bike around it today, probaby before lunch.

Writing. Cooking. Biking.

Stoked

Last night I earned my blue belt in karate.

I'm proud. Maybe it's passing the point of queasyness, dizzyness, the point where I actually think I'm fainting, the extremely tired limbs, the near-death-brain-condition, and then after passing the point, to find myself able to keep moving, fighting, struggling, defending, yelling, hitting, kicking, attacking, training to kill.

And then the ceremony last night. To be awarded after some tough hours by people I admire. Hear them say, you're this good now, you can fight this well now. You've earned this degree now. You fill this belt now. Very humbling. Very strengthening feeling. No pity. No mercy. No pretend. Skills. Endurance. Will. Power.

Maybe what I like about karate is also the body constantly being a little beaten up. Black marks. Fluided fists. More or less broken toes. Sore limbs. I always feel like a just left battle field underneath my clothes, and nobody knows. It's a secret I have with my body. We were just in a friendly yet harsh fight recently. My bruises remind me of my body when I just walk around, working, shopping. When I undress privately I like to see that I'm bruised. It makes me feel used. My body is not only decor. It's also a machine. For fun and fight. And solid, it's hurt but not broken. Only slightly damaged. I'm writing my history in my flesh upon my bones. It's also a pleasure to see myself recover from old bruises as new appear. An organic, cyclic movement of new fights and new recoveries. I think it's the usage aspect I particularly like. I also like shoes better when they're no longer shining new.

Maybe it's the ideology not to fight, but to be so good, that no one will want to fight you.

Maybe it's the readiness in the body. The sharpened senses. The awareness of motion.

Some of the moves are small swift dances, moving from facing a threat to the position where the threat's eyes are poked out. Or has a heel stapled into it's temple. There are some people, you don't want to threat. I'd say karate people are some of them.

Wax on. Wax off.

News Reel

It was my birthday last week. I am now older.

I've been invited to become a member of PEN. Quite an honor.

I've been granted a four week stay at a writers retreat this summer. I will work on my third book, my first novel. Visits are not allowed. There's a room. A bed. A desk. I'm considering tonsure for the event.

I quit smoking.

I've been asked to write a weekly coloumn for the Danish newspaper Information for seven weeks this summer. I agreed and proposed the general subject be sex. I'm working on them now. It's very hard since it's a sensitive and personal subject. This is one of the most intellectual newspapers in Denmark so Carrie Bradshaw style 'I couldn't help but wonder ..' won't do. I've chosen the themes pornography, polygami, homosexuality, tolerance, pedophilia, gender differences and the sexuality of Pippi Longstocking.

It's Saturday night and I want to work. I'm home. I'm alone. It's boring.

Comment/Answer

Someone wrote a comment to my last post, which I'll quote here and respond to:

Anonymous said:
'Your attempt to justify that anybody can leave a pregnant wife/ girlfriend doesn’t really ring the right way… If you want to make a point about regretting / not regretting, why use this example? And why make up a fictional story?'

Maybe it's just me, but I sense a slightly hostile tone in that comment. Nevertheless, I'm happy that someone took the time to read and comment. I'll expand my first post with this answer, to honor the disagreement. Maybe I'm over-sensitive (I know I am), and maybe it's me confusing curiosity with hostility - maybe also due to the perfectly legal anonymity of the commenter. I find the level of hostility/provoked tone interesting because my instant thought is, Why does this provoke you so much? I suppose I have to take responsibility for the fact, that I do write both to please and provoke, and I managed to provoke you with this one. Let me try to explain some motivation of mine behind the text's layers of provoking content:

Dear Commenter.

Last thing first: Why make up a fictional story, you ask. Well, first answer is; I do make up fictional stories. It's what I do. I write fiction. Second answer is; this is a blog, not a diary. I sense the idea behind your question, that it would be better if I used an example from my own life to reflect about regrets over. This is a very personal blog, but I always try to write it in a not too private way, so that I can live my life and meet people reading my blog without them knowing emabarrasingly and uncomfortably too much about me. I could easily've used an example from real life, mine or someone close to me, but who came to my mind was Jacob from the story. Had I been more personal than quoting a piece of my fiction, my life would be different today. I would probably feel a little more naked in this world, having shared too much in this forum - and I just might regret that.

Why use this as an example about regretting? There are many other more innocent things, that I could've written about. But I find it interesting when there's also a moral aspect to the personal regretting/not regretting, and I guess I wanted to include that in the story. I'll get personal now, and give you a couple of examples. I know two women, who both left their husbands after the husbands had suffered one a stroke, the other a brain bleeding. Are you allowed to do that? I know several couples, who broke up during pregnancies. I know a man, who left his girlfriend after four years, only a few weeks after her mother died. I know someone who left her husband while he had cancer. I know a lot, a lot, a lot of people, who abandonned their small children by divorcing their spouse. In other words, I know a lot of good people, who've done bad things.

So, of course I basically wish to compromise your idea of good and bad deeds. Would Jacob have been a bad person, had he left? Is he now a good person? A better person? Is your first or your final responsibility to yourself and creating the life you wish to live? Is it responsible to hold on to a promise or an intention no matter what? Even if the cost is your own longterm happiness? Will that sacrifice ever truly make someone else happy?

I know a lot of situations, where people have had extremely hard times justifying their own choices. Like the abovementioned. These people were crying, suffering, telling themselves over and over, that they couldn't stay out of pity. That they couldn't live their lives for another person. That confronted with the development of life - someones falls ill, you fall in love in the most inappropriate direction, someone dies, you change desires in life profoundly, you fall out of love - what do you do? Is there maybe both a common and an individual right thing to do? Which one do you chose? And who does that make you?

'Your attempt to justify that anybody can leave a pregnant wife/ girlfriend ..', you wrote. I sense, that you don't find it ever justifiable to leave a pregnant wife/girlfriend? And that I find very interesting. I chose Jacob to have been in that dilemma because it's a ground sin to abandon a pregnant woman. Not too long ago, any decent man with integrity married the woman he'd impregnated. No question. Anything else was escaping responsibility. But this is the modern world. New rules. People leave each other all the time. We're just stuck in the idea, that a woman is a man's responsibility. Would it have provoked you as much, had it been a female character leaving her husband?

This of course leads to the gender aspect. It's not a coincidence that the story is about a man, thinking about leaving his wife rather than the other way around. I did that because it's so much worse in our common idea of right and wrong. It pushes the buttons about women being poor and vulnerable and men being strong and selfish. Is it still so in this modern world? Somehow, I don't think it is, but I think our idea still is that it is. Of course, a pregnant woman is in a vulnerable situation. But a man being left by his pregnant wife, isn't he in a vulnerable situation? Still, I don't think he'd get the sympathy as instantly as a woman would. We'd assume, he probably somehow made her leave him, made it necessary and maybe even wise for her to leave him. His will or behaviour is determining, not hers. He's not as poor, oh, the woman (with child) is leaving him. As she is poor when it's him leaving her (with child). The mother-child-responsibility symbiosis is manifested, and the independent-self-man as well. Only - the modern world also offers selfish women and child-loving men. How annoying is that to our basic good-bad assumptions.

All these people leaving or abandoning other people; people they love or have loved, people in need, people more or less literally lying down. I think these are some of the hardest choices, I've witnesses more or less closely. You don't leave someone in a situation like that because you're evil. You do it because you feel you have to. Because you (finally) take responsibility for yourself. Even if it's at the cost of someone else, someone vulnerable, ill, pregnant, your own children. That's what I want to ask you, did Jacob take responsibility for his own life?

I know a lot who've done it, deserted, fled, escaped, left. Through pain and personal crisises and the hardest doubts about their right to do such a thing. Always with big costs. The gain? They knew they were doing the right thing, their right thing, a right thing.

None of them have ever regretted leaving.

Pooh On Flu

Red Hair and Regrets

As regular readers of this blog will know, I just love to quote myself. Today I'll post a longer quote from one of my old short stories first. It's from the story On The Wall. A group of friends are drinking 99 bottles of beer while sharing their secrets. At this point in the story, it's Jacob's turn to reveal the secret of his life:

After the eleventh round we cheered and said “Fifffftyfive down.” It was Jacob’s turn. He took a long swallow of his Guinness. He had been free to choose his next beer because he was up for secret. He put the bottle down hard, burped, and said,
“I’ve never been in love with Mariann.”
“Shit,” Nik said.
“Shit,” I said.
“No shit,” Jacob said.
“But why--, why did you marry her then?” Harry asked.
“Well, I love her,” Jacob said, “She’s totally great. She, like, couldn’t be better. There’s no doubt I love her.”
“Dude, what the fuck are you saying then?”
“Just that,--. I was totally in love with this girl Beth, in high school. And then a year ago I fell in love again. With this girl at work. And I’m not gonna tell you who it is, and it doesn’t matter any way, she’s not there anymore. And I never did anything.”
“Nothing happened?” Harry asked.
“Nothing happened. But it made me remember that way of being completely in fucking love. Like from high school. I just kind of thought it was because I was so young then. That it wasn’t the way it had to be with Mariann for it to be right. And last year, I realized, I’ve really never felt like that with Mariann. She never made me crazy in love. Like it was a fucking rush when this girl at work, when she came into my office, I was like, I don’t know, man. Crazy. High. And I was thinking about her all the fucking time. Like obsessed happy just thinking about her, how she looked, something she’d said.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?” I asked. Jacob looked at me and said,
“Think about Jason. How old is he?”
“Shit. Mariann was pregnant.”
“Exactly. You don’t leave your beautiful wife that you love, when she’s pregnant with your first son. Just because some red haired girl drives you crazy and makes you all fuzzy stupid and dream about eternity. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. And red hair went. Got a better job in San José.” Jacob drank his Guinness.
“Smart boy,” Nik said. We all nodded and drank.
“I guess,” Jacob said.

End of quote.

The key phrase in this quote is of course Jacob's final- I guess. Jacob's doubt in the end, a year after being in love with the girl at work, he still isn't convinced, that he shouldn't have left his pregnant wife to be with red-head.

There are things, we regret, and things we don't regret. There are things we know, we'll regret, and things we don't know, if we'll regret. There are things we regret having done, and there are things, we regret not having done. I believe the last ones are the truly dangerous ones.

I'm personally one, who doesn't regret a thing. I just can't. I've been through a lot of weird shit, and a lot of the pain and hard times I have behind me have been self-inflicted. I could've chosen differently. Could've spared myself a lot. But regretting? I don't. Honestly and deep down where I ask and can't fake the answers, there's not a single thing I'd want to be different. Not a single move I wouldn't have made. Not a single choice, I would've made differently.

I believe it's because my parameter isn't about what I might regret doing. It's somehow reversed, so I always aim to sense what I later on might regret not having done. I choose to abandon fear of what might go wrong and instead imagine what can go right. I have an option. I always have a strong sense of wonders and catastrophees lying ahead, and that my choices always carry the chance as well as the risk of what will come.

I can look back and say, I did it, and some of it went to Hell. And I went with in certain cases. Well, but I would've regretted not trying. So, I can't regret even the worst things that I've been through, because I know I did it not to regret not doing it, trying it, living it, later on. That way of holding the compass is how I justify my entire existence, and God and I know that it's not because it's been perfect and shiny, that there's nothing to regret.

Whatever makes your heart beat. Whatever makes your winds blow. Whatever makes you dream about eternity.

Who makes you feel fuzzy and warm and happy inside? Who sees you and makes you feel seen? Who makes life feel like life to you? With whom will you never later say, I guess? With whom will you only whisper, I knew?

Feel safe and strong. Feel wild and daring. Trust you inner voice. Imagine the best, always. Don't choose out of fear. Choose with your heart and whatever gender variation of balls you possess, and you will always know, that you chose right, no matter how things fell out.

Don't ask if you'll regret doing this. Ask if you'll regret not doing this. That's where the answer lies. That's what Jacob forgot to ask himself. He chose out of fear of regretting. Maybe he should've stayed like he did. But would he then doubt it a year later? Wouldn't he have known, that he did the right thing? His doubt is his burden, and he will never be able to rid himself of it. He asked himself, Will I regret leaving my wife? And he feared that he would and he stayed. If he'd asked himself, Will I regret not following my heart and red hair? He might have gotten another answer. If the answer had been no, he would've stayed. But he wouldn't have had the doubt a year later. The other fear, the sneaking after-fear. That's the one, that troubles him now. The fear of there being another life he could've led. A life he would have loved.

My Father Would Say

My father would say, you need a memory lesson, and he'd beat us, first me, then my brother. And I do remember, the little scratches on the banister in the upstairs room, the copper lamps and the flame-shaped bulbs, dark knots on the varnished wall; bamboo curtains creaking as the wind pushed through, the taste of salt, and my brother, shaking as he waited his turn. I took my comfort there; I knew where I was, and what was coming. My father once broke his belt against the back of my legs, and when he saw the welts and the drizzle of blood, he began to cry. I was so frightened to see him change like that, not shouting anymore, but on his knees, sobbing, look what I've done.

From Braver Deeds by Gary Young

Did It

I completed my thesis yesterday. Now someone extremely smart has offered to proof-read it this week. I also have to write an abstract in English. A couple of steps left, the proof-reader is also to good not to listen to, so if he suggests changes, I'll most likely re-write the concerned parts.

Early mornings before work and late nights, write half a page here, two pages there. 73 pages. 82 footnotes. 59 books on the literature list.

Two libraries have already asked me for it. I don't really know why, they must think someone will read it. Who reads thesises? Actually, I do. But only my friends' to know what they're working on.

For now: I've actually written my thesis.

Jubilee Fun Ends Here

All photos: But Of Course The Steen Brogaard

The Jubilee Portrait Treat Continues

Photo: The Steen Brogaard

Jubilee Coming Up

I have a very excited feeling every time I log in here now, because the counter is approaching 10.000 hits on this little blog of mine - and I'm so proud and excited and I know nothing will happen when it happens except the fact that a tiny digit will change but the world will not really. That much. The weird thing is, I'm really curious about who it will be. I have this feeling, that someone should get flowers and a hug, and I should be overwhelmingly congratulating the person, and the unknowing stranger who just happened to visit here accidently would feel like customer no. 1 billion at the supermarket who gets a free car, and just a few minutes ago was worried about whether or not to be able to afford the groceries.

I know so little about the people reading this blog. Maybe there are only four fanatics, who click all the time because they've judged me suicidal and want to save me by making me think there are readers here. Maybe it's my mother. All 10.000 times.

Anyway, you kind and lovely people, who read this blog. As a generous gesture because of the 10.000 unknown hitters, I've decided to come up with a real treat. You know, I have nothing to give to you but myself. So as an exciting variation from the many words, I will spam you with a series of portraits of myself. Yeop. You're welcome.

Here are the first ones. Let me warn you. This will go on for days.






Photos: The Steen Brogaard

An Article About David Foster Wallace

I rarely cry over journalism.

Maybe it's because I find David Foster Wallace an unavoidable treasure, and was/am in the middle of reading his 1100 page long novel Infinite Jest, when he committed suicide last year, that I was really moved by his suicide and then now about reading this article.

This article in Rolling Stone took several hours of my time. Reading, pondering, crying. I never before put a link here to something else to read, because I find it wrong. In this time of extreme news feed, it's not ok to go to a blog, and then find the post linking to an article with a recommendation to read it. It's not ok. But today, I do it.

If you don't care about David Foster Wallace, well, I believe you won't click on the link here, and I'm sorry to have wasted your time with this.

If you do, here's a link to a great article, that'll help you understand what on earth happened. We must've been many in the dark. Why would this amazing author take his own life at age 46?

I ended up with my head in my hands, sobbing. The Hours about Virginia Woolf does the same to me, I've watched it many times. Writers who struggle beyond comparison seem to touch me. And what really gets to me with both Virginia and David is, that they both had great love in their lives at the time of their suicide. They had both found and lived with their one. They were loved. They loved too. But it didn't do it. Love couldn't save them. The darkness gets to me. It's an obstacle where the love coming from the outside doesn't do the difference. It must be so thick and hazy, that the love doesn't enter, doesn't take up space, cannot breathe. The dense darkness inside which makes even grand love unacceptable. That is so empty. So poor. So heartbreaking. Someone stands there and offers a heart. A life. An embrace. Offers to carry the other person. But the person cannot be touched in the dark. Cannot be saved. Chooses instead to walk out into a lake. Hang himself in the living room. The powerlessness of the one left behind is the open face of the powerlessness of love in that situation. And that is what I just cannot take. That love can lose like that. That love doesn't overcome all. Loved people killing themselves is too much. Love must lighten up in the dark. Just a little. Just a flame. Just a tiny spark. Just enough to stay alive for.

The Lost Years And Last Days Of David Foster Wallace

Moi

Photo: Morten Siebuhr

Quotes I Dig

Don't mess with someone bigger than you if it makes you feel small.

Quote: Tine Bruun

Sources

Yesterday I bought spring lillies.

Today I walked outside without a jacket.

Tomorrow frost will have turned into dew and only be a soft thought over my forehead when dawn comes and blows her gentle breeze through my bedroom.

Yesterday, a Californian anthology wrote me, that they've chosen to admit two of my submissions into the edition of 2009.

Today I handed in my two books to the Main Library of Copenhagen. They will put them on their shelves.

Tomorrow I don't know what will happen. I dare hope to wake up and also go to bed at night. I dare hope to see the light. I dare hope to write. I dare hope to live without fright. I dare hope to feel all right. Not loose sight.

Is it obvious, that I have nothing to say? I write about nothing. I wish I was sitting in a forest by a small stream of water.

I write around the writing. I'm scared of the writing. I walk around it, dream about it, wrestle it a little but always loose and am tossed off and end up again just watching it, admiring it, desiring it, circling it, shouting at it, sending it love letters, begging it to take me in, howling angrily at it at night, squinting humbly at it at morning, pouring my heart into the hunting, desperate, scared writing around the writing. But I never dare do the writing.

Plants, that grow from onions don't need water.

I am a coward.

The city tires me. Then leave.

I tire me. Then change.

My apathy tires me. Then do.

My fear tires me. Then write.

Drowned. Don't water an onion plant.

Dumb. Don't expect the flow.

Analphabet. Don't doubt the flow.

Mute. Listen to the flow.

Flow. Flaw.

Mundane. Pedestrian. Flat.

Horse.

I promise myself:

I will never doubt the story

Big Tine And Little Tine

This is the amazing Tine Bryld, Danish writer and very influential social worker through decades. The pictures are taken by photographer Steen Brogaard, while I interviewed her last week. I've admired her all my life, read her books from an early age, and of course always felt a strange connection because of the proximity of our names. No matter how long you search, I don't think you can find a person with anything bad to say about her. She's one of those.

Snow Before Spring

I love to be close. I know nothing better in this world than closeness and tenderness. Yes, maybe work.

I love to work. I find out these days how extremely blessed I am, not all people love to work. They care more for lying on a couch or on a beach, and then they have to drag themselves to work every day. That must be horrible. I love to work, to do stuff, to get things done, to be active and engaged in my life. I love the things I do, I have fun, and the more I do, the better I thrive.

I love the snow, which covers Copenhagen these days. It's all white and sometimes when I leave a building, I bend my neck backwards and look to the sky. And small white pieces of heaven drop slowly around my head, and it doesn't even hurt to get some in the eye. It's soft and mute. Snow slows the world down. Snow can't be rushed and can't be stopped. It just falls in it's own pace, silencing the world a little, covering it to make all edges a little softer.

I love closeness, did I mention that? Closeness is wonderful. And to be tender, to share life's sweetness, to give one's carresses and be soothing and gentle. That is wonderful. To lie close and experience breathing together. Share a certain breath.

I love friendship more than anything.

I love to play. I used to play more than I do now. I was a pool player for years. Went to clubs where I had my pool stick, just went in and played with myself for a while. Just shot the balls around, rehearsed shots and angles, turns and rolls. Also played with others of course. But mainly myself, training my focus, orientation, concentration. My ability to play.

I love when the birds of sorrow take off.

I love the seasons. This year, love will blossom when spring comes. When the trees unfold small green newborn leaves and around their feet the flowers grow, when the sun stays longer every day and the ground is warming up, when the farmers start working in the fields again and the girls let their hair be lifted by the wind, when the birds twitter and music is heard through open windows, love will blossom. Please Lord, you mighty wonderful woman with the strange name, please grant me patience. My childish heart is awaiting. Don't make me force myself to grow up my eagerness. It's so sincere and joyful.

I love my life. I have fun. I have art in my eyes. Poetry in my veins. I know great people.

I love people.

I love love. I feel the days of happiness to come. The years feel endless ahead of me.

I love the years ahead of me.

I love death. Without it somewhere in the edge of all this beauty, I couldn't do it. Life. Death is a necessary outskirt.

I love the outskirts. The edges. The drops.

Quotes I Dig

It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it.

Quote: Anne of Green Gables

ValenTine. Just Call Me Tine

I want to write about love. Today is Valentine's Day. I can't be with my Valentine. It's ok though. I'll post this, which I wrote a while ago, on a day where I was uncomfortable with his absence and having a hard time with love. Hard times are over. Even though he's still out on the same trip, I'm doing great these days. In the name of love, here's a Valentine's Day Ramble About Love from a hard day I had a while back.

I never knew what anybody meant, when they said love hurts. When they said it's painful to be in love. Something you don't do voluntarily. I realize that until now, I've only been surfing on love. Living a Bahamas Love Life, which has obviosuly just been another fun stop in between Aruba and Jamaica. Now, I'm diving in, and sometimes I think it's in the Arctic Sea itself. With no warning, so me? I'm wearing my usual surfer bikini, a great tan, shades and a big fucking happy smile on my lips.

And then these days I realize, that this Love Thing is not all about riding the waves. These days, I'm waking up to a reality under the surface. Apparently, Love Tours also take you down. And it's cold down there. Me? I'm scared shitless. The happy surfer smile is freezing. I'm concentratedly trying to keep it together. Wondering if I accidently and luckily happened to take a deep breath before going in?

The initial level of surprises in this Love Enterprise has stunned me already. I still can't see the bottom, and I don't really expect to anymore. If only I'd been standing on the beach, looking over and checking out, getting the swell, feeling the wind's fetch. Said to myself, Man, it looks gnarly today. Then gone out, stoked, been sucked down, met a couple of sharks. Ok, that would've also been a surprise on the Love Trippin' Morning at Sea. But still. That's the kind of obstacles you expect when you love the surf, gnarly waves and an occasional shark in the water. But the cold? That, I wasn't prepared for. So the bottom? I expect to hit it hard on, if I'm going to. Right now, I'm only trying to prepare for continously being as unprepared as I am.

It reminds me of a very dear former professor of mine. She'd hand out extreme curriculums and say; Ok, let's get this semester started. We'd look down at the paper, and notice that we were supposed to have read three heavy books for the next class two days later. She'd smile and dryly say; Yes. We'll hit the ground running.

I'm in love. He's out on a journey. He has to be. Nothing can change that. I wouldn't want to change that. Call him home to me. No. He has to be where he is, and his journey has to take the time, it has to take. His heart and mine have met. So I'm with him all the time. And he's with me all the time. We're together and apart. It just has to be that way, and I'm struggling to learn to live patiently with the fact, that it is that way, and for yet a while has to remain that way. I'm struggling - not to understand, because deep down I peacefully and completely understand - but to emotionally accept what I understand, and even know I understand. That the soul in me is smarter than the child in me is not always the same as those two not having hard times finding common ground. But they struggle friendly, or wrestle lovingly like siblings, until they've found a common understanding that satisfies both of their needs and leaves room for them playing and nutching each other loyally again.

Before leaving, he said something, which really impressed me. And continues to impress me even more, as I think about it often. We talked about regretting involving oneself in love, like in our case where it's not easy, especially since he has to be far away for a long period of time right away. We talked about feeling vulnerable from our love. He said, that when even the vulnerability feels like a gain, no regrets are possible.

I admire that greatly. It's such a strong way of dealing with one's own emotions. To consider love. I know I'm such a chicken, I deal so badly with vulnerability. My reactions to feeling vulnerable would probably be:

1 Get drunk
2 Escape
3 Kill
4 Call mom
5 Write a really courageous blog post about it

And what I usually do is probably a strong and lovely combi of all of the afore-mentioned. No, see, the truth is: I DON'T FEEL VULNERABLE. THAT'S MY TRICK. I AVOID IT.

And now I'm in a situation, where I actually just really seriously no way around it - am vulnerable. And I want to learn from him, I work on it these days, wrapping myself around it and finding the understanding of the vulnerability as a gain.

I get the logic. When his eyes meet mine, I come home and go on adventures at the same time. When he's near me, I am blessed. He could stop that, the world could stop that, destiny could stop that. He could stop being near me, looking at me, revealing his beauty to me. That thought alone leaves me vulnerable. So the logic, I guess, is to appreciate that he is all that, because otherwise, I would have nothing to be vulnerable about. No love, no vulnerability. And I want the love, his and mine. The vulnerability is unavoidable. The vulnerability is the proof that it matters. I suppose I have to embrace it and consider it a testament of love.

This pain, the cold, has nothing to do with bad things between us. There are no bad things between us. The pain is in my vulnerability. That is new. It's a first for me to be devoted, surrendered like this, weaponless and unguarded. Where things before have been muddy and that was the pain, this is so clear, and that brings out another pain. It's a deep universal pain, I think. I expect it to go away. But it's there now.

Maybe it's the pain of lovers of all times and all places. It is the pain of doubting if I have faith enough for this. If I'm strong enough for this. If I can handle this much love. If I have courage enough. If I dare lie flat out on the floor with only the hope to be loved back. I know the answer. I feel it in my heart. You don't let fear decide. You grab your heart. You embrace your vulnerability. You treasure life and every moment of it. You wait for him to come back from his journey. You choose love as it has chosen you. You rise from the cold water to stand naked underneath the heavens, you hold out your hand, and your heart is in it, you lift your chin slightly, you let the wind blow through your heart and over your face and through your hair. You let the wind carry your words as you whisper: I have faith.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Quotes I Dig

I'm thirty years old, but I read at the thirty-four-year-old level.

Quote: Dana Carvey, 1955 -

The Old Mill at Kastellet Where I Run

Quotes I Dig

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.

Quote: Dr. Seuss, 1904 - 1991

Loves and Losses

I've had true love and new love. Bold love and old love. Used and maybe even abused love. I have love, find love, meet love, see love, fall in love every day. Someone special, a most unusually lovely person, and I recently talked about the capability of loving. This person has made me remember, how I once before loved. My first love. I was twentytwo.

I had to leave him after nine months of incredible love, but we remained best friends. In the truest sense of the words. We were soulmates, as it's called. We still had all the possible love in the world for each other. We spent a month together after the break-up, cried almost every day, in between other fun and friendly activities, it wasn't all tears, but it was hard for both of us to come to terms with the fact, that we should no longer be a couple. But we knew, we shouldn't. Four weeks of living together, just slowly accepting, and enjoying our new friendship and closeness. After that, he had to go home, and we wrote each other long letters, always long letters. He lived in Los Angeles, I in Copenhagen. We visited each other, but much of our contact was per letter. This was before the internet. Telephone was simply too expensive, back then it was like two dollars per minute at that distance, and we just didn't even try to call up, probably afraid, we couldn't hang up again. I remember one phone call just before he came to visit the last time. Apart from that, when we were apart, letters.

I had him very close in my life for another couple of years. I treasured him. He had never become less my person in this world, just because we went from lovers to friends. On the contrary. We had both found that one, that got us. When I was twentyfive, he died. I lost my best friend.

I wrote a poem about it. If you wonder why there are two friends in it, well, what are the odds, but it happened to me once before. When I was nineteen. Here's the poem:

Best Friends

My world changes when my best friend dies. The one who saw me and loved me the best way. When he is gone, no one in my world loves me that way. No one laughs when I do that thing with my mouth. Calls me on the right day to say nothing in particular. Gives me advice only when I ask. I sneak ashes out from the service and carry it in a little jar in a chain around my neck. I grab it sometimes. I learn that I need a new best friend. And then he sees the waterfalls I tell about and knows the colors I describe. I see my new friend’s beauty. Feel an embrace again. Another person in this world accepts me. Finds me good. When that friend dies too, my life changes again. I keep the pair of socks I never returned in a sacred place among passports and inherited wrist watches. I stop making friends. Stick more to myself. Don’t built too many habits that depend on other people to work. I do the dishes and I cry. I think it’s all the water that does it. Small surprised longings for my own death drop with my tears.

But actually, that was not, what I wanted to write. I wanted to quote my ex-boyfriend from one of his letters. At this point, he had just survived a very serious heartattack. He wrote on page 15;

'I have never been much for giving advise. In the absence of the comfort I'd rather be providing, it seems to be all I can offer. And here's my advise. Love. Yeah, that's it. Love someone, love something, love yourself. Whatever or however, find a way to experience love. Great love, or small love. The love of a flower or the love of a country, it doesn't matter. Be in love with life and all that it comprises. Love every minute of the day and then love them again for being gone. I offer this remedy to all woes as someone who had plenty of time to ponder the worth of his existence from a hospital bed. What came to my mind as worthwhile pieces of my existence? Great highs I've had? No. Great moments of acting on stage or in the movies? No. Great feats of physical prowess or endurance? No. Great luck in gambling? No. Moments of great love? Yes, yes, yes! This is what dwells at the center of our existence. It's what we all want and what everything else is a mere substitute for. Love. It awaits. All it takes is the flowering of our hearts; an opening, a giving. This, I think is what we had between us. Two total strangers with very different backgrounds and very dissimilar and separate lives coming together in a moment where we felt safe and right to give our hearts to one another completely.'

Oh yes. He was in my life, which made it forever after a better life. I remembered him and this letter now, because I talked to this someone recently about the capability of loving. Someone, who had lost too, and felt it damaged the capability of loving. If there's one thing in this life that I know deep down I'm capable of, then it's loving. I love love. I have so much love in me. And maybe I can handle more love than most people. Even if I sometimes could protect myself better, like I write in the poem about sticking to myself, I don't. I don't protect myself. I don't stick to myself. I don't want to. I want life and I want love, and the risks that come with those are nothing compared to the risk of missing out on those because of fear.

Should I stop loving because I lost him? Never. We taught each other a lot. I was the love of his life. He was the first love of my life. But hey, it's ten years ago, and somebody else will come along. Where our hearts can't help connecting like they do when souls mate and hearts fill with love. We all know how it is with these things, even if time and place are completely wrong, you don't doubt at all, that something in the core is precisely right. Certain things just feel right. Love feels right. I'm sure my heart will in this life, once again, connect with somebody elses, as it did when I was a kid at twentytwo.

Now I've quoted myself and my dead friend. But we're talking love here, so won't I have to quote the master? I think I do. Because I could not agree more with Don Juan Demarco, when he says;

There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.

Pastoral Thinking: Governmentality

I'm editing and proof-reading a theological thesis these days, 250 pages. My job is basically to say if the theory is well-used. The title is; 'The British State's Government of the Relation Between Respectively State and Anglicism and Islam'.

It's a really exciting job. I'm being paid very well to read very interesting stuff, and of course reflect and critique it, but still, it's very nice work. The thesis opens with the historic background for the British relation between state and religion between 1534 and 1689. It then moves on to discuss regulation as government (this is why I've been given this job, I'm supposed to be the one on governmentality, cameralism, regulation theory), about state and multi-culturalism, the regulation of Church of England, and the regulation of Islam in Britain.

Then I'm working on my thesis again. I'm writing half a page or so in the morning before work, during the twenty minutes while I eat breakfast. These days I'm trying to pull of a theory, that the fact that Tommy and Annika, Pippi's neighbours, are being put to bed at seven o'clock every night by their parents, is symbolic for what Foucault calls 'disciplin: the political anatomy of the human body', and that the tugging in is directly symbolic of the subjectivity processing, that will drag them into the big power hegemonic heteronormative (yak) structural society machine.

I tried to review a book over Christmas. I was even headhuntet by the literature-site to start reviewing for them. But then yesterday - they said no to my first test review. They gave me a second chance, said they'd let me try again, maybe with another book. Which is unusual, and which I really appreciate. But I feel I flunked, it's weird. They gave me a long and thorough critique, or the editor in chief did, based on the opinion of three editors who'd all read my review. I'm a little confused. Luckily I talked to two reviewers yesterday, who both said I could've run it by them. I'll do that next time.

I work at a newspaper now and also as pa, personal assistant, for the boss of a communication company. Which basically means writing articles for him/the company. Next week I'll be writing the people column in the paper. And I have a meeeting with the boss, where I'll be given themes for six articles I have to write for him over the next weeks.

In between I dance with my eyes closed. And dream of love.

Dental Joys and Dellusions

Is it wrong, that I enjoy going to the dentist? I do, I went today. It was great.

I have this feeling though, that it's not fair. Like some people don't worry about money, some are not afraid to have their heart broken, and when someone obsessed with a secure income or very careful with their emotions meet someone like that, they can't help but have the feeling, that it's not fair they cannot be as light-hearted about these matters.

I see it in people's eyes, if we talk about dentists, and I honestly share, that I enjoy it; I actually go to see one as often as possible as a pure luxury. I've been told by dentists to stay away, because it wasn't good for my teeth to come that often. So now, I wait six to twelve months between each visit. Today it was actually only four months ago that I went last, but this was another dentist. Now I'm in my home-town for Christmas, and I didn't want to miss seeing this one when I'm here. He's really good. And he told me I already have to come back within eight months. He wants to fix something, that'll otherwise go bad. How wonderful is that? I told him I might be able to make it already before March.

He told me to floss more. Words of wisdom. Funny thing is, in my thoughts, I floss all the time. I'm a flossing type. Isn't that strange? But of course, in my mind, I'm also a tall blonde babe type with a potential of skills for practically everything, including berry farming, dunkey riding, pole sitting, mud swimming, finger painting, herring fishing, and sex. Apparently I live in my dreams.

Sweet Bloggedyblog

What happened?

I guess I took a nap. For five months. That's never happened before. I used to blog every single day, then a couple of times a week, then still at least weekly, and then bham, a five month break. After a couple of years of blogging, it's been quite strange. I've missed it.

I've been writing other stuff, but not as fun as here. I've translated onehundredandseventythree Gary Young poems into Danish. Written a few short stories. I've written some children's literature. I've written a few things for a newspaper and articles for a communication company. Occasionnally I write a little on my thesis. I've been hired to write a series of articles for a foundation. This week, I'll have one of my old pieces from here published, from the series BoMB, Best of My Blasphemy. It's the one about Mother Mary Going Down On The Lord. In a newspaper, wow, I didn't think that could happen. I've taken out the harshest parts, about the priests and altar boys and mother Mary going down, but the parts about God having a hard on are still in there. Oh, I love Denmark. We called it a Christmas Fairy Tale: What's Under the Gown? And then it was all right. With a picture of the Pope in his kinky red shoes right next to it.

What's funny is, that I've written that small tv-thing on the last page of the paper. Just a recommendation for the readers about what to watch on tv today. And those small pieces are the best writing I've done in a long time. Those who comment on them, are my favorite readers. I love the response to those, because so many people don't even consider reading that last little blop in the paper. But some do, and what's magic is, that they see it. They see and appreciate, that I sit there and write my heart into those fifteen lines. They get, that I consider it an ever so tiny, but loving gesture to them. It's like a secret bond where I get to message to special chosen ones, the ones, who read the paper in a special way. Who write me emails, saying your page 3 is really good, but the tv-spot - oh, I laughed and etc. etc. Or, I loved it when you jumped off the cliff in a bikini, I'm definitely going to see the mountainclimbing program tonight. They're my absolute favorites.

Honestly, because it's my best writing through a long time, and there's something wonderful about putting that in such a humble spot, which most people don't even see. Their idea about what's in that spot makes them turn the page before seeing it. A glance, and they think they know what they're missing. And they'll never know, that I might have put something in there to amuse them, to touch them, to provoke them. They could've been amused, touched, provoked. But they're not. Only the chosen ones are. And those are the ones I write the tv-spot for. One day, when I become a big and famous and wonderful, wonderful writer, I will thank those people. I will say; You are my friends. You were my readers through all times, you always got me. On you, I count.

It's touching upon the core of art for me. Nothing is better because it's big. Nothing is quality because it's celebrated, noticed, awarded. It's not better because it's placed within the cultural frames of importance. If something is good, it's good. If I can make something happen within those fifteen lines, then it happened. If someone sees it, fine, but if noone sees it, the piece is still the same piece. I'm not talking about the autonomy of art and miscrediting the reader as any part of it. But no value is added from a glorious placement. If there's a pearl lying in the dust, only those with the eyes to consider it's possible brilliance will bend down to see, that there is a pearl. The rest will look at the placement, and go; Why should I look in the dust? It's the difference between those readers, who can't imagine, that the most important part of the paper isn't on the front page, and those who know, that they create their own paper by the way they pay attention to it. And what's important to them is maybe in the cracks, in the blops, in the unexpected places. And that opens the space of art. That way of searching and living and paying attention, of reading the tv-spot, only because someone might have done their best to perfect it.

I'd love to start blogging again. I don't know. My English is fading. My time is evaporating. My mind is empty. But my hands are hungry and my heart misses my blog.

Quotes I Dig

"There is no such thing as women literature for me, that does not exist. In literature, I do not separate women and men. One is a writer, or one is not. This is a mental space where sex is not determining. One has to have some space for freedom. Language allows this. This is about building an idea of the neutral which could escape sexuality."

Quote: Monique Wittig

A Ticklish Subject

I came here to write a post and my thought was, that I have a weird feeling. Then I see, that I wrote a post five days ago, ironically enough about appreciating my body, and called it a weird feeling.

Ironic, because I learned today that I have Borrelia. In an early stage, so it shouldn't get serious. But it's so strange, if it wasn't for a dog with a tick yesterday, it could've become. Seriously. Serious.

The disease is transmitted to humans through ticks. I had a tick bite about seven weeks ago. Here's a description of the disease:

During early stages of the disease the bacteria is localized in the skin and manifests itself as a characteristic bulls-eye rash, called Erythema Migrans (not in all cases, some people develop no rash). If the disease is caught in this stage and treated, further complications can be avoided. If the disease is not treated, symptoms can include arthritis, cranial neuropathy (specifically facial palsy), and meningitis (abnormal cerebrospinal fluid). Over years, an untreated Borrelia infection can cause chronical skin infection, brain infection or hepatitis to develop.

Yesterday, I was at a reception with some colleagues. One colleague's dog is there, he has a tick, and they remove it. I say, I had a tick recently, which was really weird because I was in central Copenhagen, and I don't get how a tick lives there. A colleague asks if I've developed a ring where it bit me. I didnt even think about where it was, but just said no. I mean, I know that ticks carry these horrible infections, but I was just certain that there was nothing. I probably figured, that I would've felt bad or something. So he seriously asked me to pay attention. I laughed a little and asked if it was like a Devil's burned ring I should look out for. I don't know why I found it a little far out, but Borrelia seemed too serious to be relevant.

Then today, I'm scratching my thigh, on the back side, probably the place where I look the rarest at myself. I realize, I've been scratching there some times lately. I remove my pants, I happen to be very bendy, so I just put my leg up and my head down, and there is a red spot. In the spot, there's a ring. The skin is just edged in a small ring. Of course it dawns upon me, as I look at this itching ring. This is where the tick bit me.

I remember getting out of bed one night, because I reached my hand down to scratch my leg. And felt something strange, attached, or blurted up. Went to turn on light and look on my back thigh with a food on the zink, and a second later stood with a tick in my hand. Kinda strange, it had just been eating of me. I remember not knowing what to feel, as if I was in my right to shout something ugly and hateful at it, like, you little bloodsucker, you're gross, who allowed you to dig your jaws into my body? I didn't, didn't figure he/she'd get the bigger message anyway. And I was also a little fascinated, like a child that finds an animal in its hand rather interesting. I don't run into ticks often. And they do have quite a way to make their living, that makes them pretty wild. Imagine a diet of blood only. Wow.

I read about it on the net, I definitely have the Erythema Migrans. I figure I better see a doctor, and I call. My doctor asks a lot about the recent stiffness I've had in my neck and shoulders. I had an appointment for a massage tomorrow, because lately my neck and shoulders have been stiff and hurt like hell. That's a symptom, and can be a sign of meningitis. We agree, that it's not necessarily related, the stiffness has come since the tick, but I say it doesn't feel like anything as acute as meningitis pains. We agree that I'll come see her tomorrow. If anything should feel bad tonight, I'll find a doctor. But most likely, I'm in such an early stage, and it won't develop from this between today and tomorrow.

But the weird feeling is, that the ring that tells that I have Borrelia is so tiny, the size of a quarter, it's just a little flaked skin, and it's in a place where I might have never seen it. Besides, had I seen it, and not yesterday because of that tick on that dog and the colleague telling me about Borrelia symptom ring thing, I would have never paid attention to the ring as dangerous, but just thought my skin had dried out a little right there and expected it to pass. I would've never asked anyone or suspected anything serious from a little redness and a tiny dry ring on the back of my thigh. And the next stages of this infection are so not funny. If not caught and treated, facial paralysis, dementia, all of that. Brain infection, come on?? And sneaky things, developing over years. I don't know. It's just too weird to know, that this very dangerous bacteria is in my body. And that it's such strange luck that I'm getting treatment for it now.

So. I feel a little fragile. Like something dangerous was just close. Maybe it wasn't at all. It could have not spread and developed further. But I have a weird feeling.

I Was Afraid My Father Would Fall

I was afraid my father would fall asleep again, so I rode with him in the front seat and watched. That morning there were shooting stars over the desert. The mountains changed from pink, to red, then chalky white as the sun appeared. We crested a hill, and saw the wreckage of a car. A man sat weeping into his hands, and another man pulled a body, small, limp, and twisted, through the shattered windshield. Don't look, my father said, but I had to. I was already looking. I'd been looking all along.

From Braver Deeds by Gary Young

Still Dumber Than My Frontdoor - And Sexier Than Ever

As promised yesterday, here’s the republishing of an old blog post. The new addition and justification for this re-posting is yesterday's realization, that this easily can be read and interpreted as genuine porn fiction. With focus on the pornographic level of stupidity unfolding here, I believe that it's actually quite an arousing small piece of literature. The blog post "Dumber Than My Frontdoor" was first published July 25th, 2007:

Dumber Than My Frontdoor

This day has two ends. Right now, at 11.26am, I'm still too absorbed in the morning one of the two. I went on my morning run, and went by my bank, Washington Mutual. I am a person with much love, and a belief in living with love instead of focusing on the well, not-love things, that life is also full of. But. This bank, Washington Mutual, I by now passionately hate. I have done so for months, since they have been brutally feefucking me over and over again in the most sneaky ways, and with big dumb ass smiles always blames it on somebody higher in the system than themselves, and lets me pay and pay and pay for fucking stupid nothing errors.

I am leaving the country soon, and have therefore not kept many funds in my checking account. I am told daily by email how my balance is, and it's been fine. Untill yesterday, where a check tried to pass, $25,20. It was so long ago I had issued the check, that I had not remembered it, and got an email that there were insufficient funds. There was only $23 in the account. I came to the bank this morning with cash to fill into the account. They had charged me $27 for bouncing the check. Now, there are -$4. The check is still not paid. And they now charge me an overdraft fee for the -$4, another $27. For me missing $2,20 (two dollars and twenty cents), they charge me $54. This is for one day (1 day).

I look at Armycut Idiot behind counter. I say, Do you think this is cool?
He says, Npemifhlkeruhqfgie urfghiwue, hcidfjhj fhawebafglch fhjlag, eflyjyageclfgyalsdlfbn scdlsaueygfryuwegrflc snsfdbza, shdfbalwhfc vfgrbhebyssbjkdsjbgksadjhfguerghdnv jz, in other words, can I call my manager, because I'm too stupid to think for myself?
I don't answer, I just look at him and wait for him to take a stand.

When manager comes, 22-year-old Dumb Stupid Fuck Girl In Blue Shirt With Ugly Logo, Hey, I'm Really Important 'Cause I Read Two And A Half Books And The Entire Index Of My Micro Econ Reader And Passed Two Classes In Three Months In Cabrillo State Junior College To Get To This Position, she comes up and looks at me with a look, that says, "I'm in uniform. You're in running clothes. I have a fresh perm in my hair. You have a ponytail. I'm wearing tons of eye make-up to look older than I am. You're running and look younger, than you are. What seems to be the problem (apart from these horrible inbalances, of course)." I look back, with as much love as I can administer. (Not too much, ok. I am not Ghandi, nor Dalai, I'm pathetically pissed and afraid that if I respond honestly to the situation right now, Mr. Security That's Me overthere by the door will come running because I'll be hanging by my teeth in someone's throat, and if Armycut Idiot and 22-year-old Dumb Stupid Fuck Girl In Blue Shirt With Ugly Logo, Hey, I'm Really Important 'Cause I Read Two And A Half Books And The Entire Index Of My Micro Econ Reader And Passed Two Classes In Three Months In Cabrillo State Junior College To Get To This Position look stupid, let's not go to the level of intelligence, that radiates from Mr. Security That's Me. I like to imagine his brain is just meditating, and is really, really Indian professionally good at it. Like, gone to next level where the rest of us can't follow.

I say, I missed two dollars for one day. My check is not paid, right?
No, the check is returned, she says.
I say, So, I pay $27 for having it rejected?
Yes, she says.
And that takes me into -$2,20 overdraft, for which I pay another $27?
Yes, she says.
Is that fair, do you think? I ask.
I can see we've already returned over $130 in fees to you, I'm afraid we can't return anymore, she says.
I say, these fees were out of a bunch of fees, and they were charged for a delayed transfer, which caused small overdrafts for short periods of time.
There was more than $300 in fees, she says.
I look at her. These fees were charged, and they returned less than half, in spite of the fact, that it was a matter of less than $20 for less than two days, and there were fees of more than $300. This reminds me of going to Kinko's, where my last bill looked like this:

Co-worker breathing fee: $11
Paper jammed in machine fee: $17
Greasy hair fee: $4
We could be playing Dungeons and Dragons at home fee: $26
We're ugly fee: $14
We can see you're a dumb blonde so we're totally going to fuck you over fee: $230
Extra fee for being a foreigner fee: $6
You're smarter than us fee: $18
Turning on the machine fee: $10
First second machine running fee: $8
Self-service fee: $24
5 sheets faxed: $0.50

Total: $368.50

I am not going to ask her, if she thinks there might be a better reason for the $130 returned fees, than for the $300 fees charged in the first place. I look at Idiot Armycut. I realize, my frontdoor is smarter than him. He looks dumber than wood. And my frontdoor, which is also wooden, at least has a window in it, revealing that there's anything behind the wood. It also has a doorknob, which indicates there is an access, to what is behind the wood. Idiot Armycut only signals one thing. Wood. Dumb as wood. I'm scared now, these two together are dumb enough to threaten Kinko's in taking bottom place of Dumb Staff and Happy FeeFucking Customer Service.

It is clear to me, that they have been hired here in Washington Mutual because they were to stupid to check out movies in Blockbuster, let alone the challenging task of laying sliced pickles in hamburgers at McDonalds (I know that, because McDonalds are very particualar about only hiring people, who can stay with one pickled cucumber slice per hamburger, and none of these two have that kind of math/precision/consistence skills tracable anywhere in their four eyes).

I ask her, Does it matter to you, that I have a ton of money on my other account with you guys, you know, the normal bank deal where you would've just taken the $2 missing in the checking account from that savings account, sort of let me spot myself from one account to the other - you know, the normal bank way?
She says, No, then we couldn't really charge you $54 if we'd let you cover yourself, now could we?
I ask, Do you think it's a reasonable way to treat and punish a customer, who has thousands of dollars in and out of accounts, to charge $54 for lending me $2 for one day?
She says, That's how we do.
I swallow, find some big smile and say with a shaky voice, How fast can I get out of here if I just pay the $54?
Perm looks at Wood and says, I think you can take it from here. Wood closes his mouth. He's drooling. I think, Oh my God, he has a condition. Something is wrong. These people are in charge of my money.

I RUN for the exit.

I could hardly even run home for anger and fear filling my body. Now, it's time to change focus. That was this morning. Tonight is tonight. We have a Wednesday night event at this house. We're going to elect an official mascot for the upstairs of our house. The election is between Friend, my fish, who is now in foster care by the friends of mine living here, and a dear friend of the house, she goes by the name Strap-on Spice. I will be spokes person for my fish Friend, and represent him in the disciplines, where he might get in trouble himself, like the ball gown contest. The swimsuit contest, I believe he'll win over Strap-on any day, even though she's hot.

It's going to be a ton of fun. I'll tell you tomorrow who won and will in the future be the mascot of our house. I hereby let go of bad feelings from this morning. And start being excited about tonight.

Have a great day.

Readers, Masturbators, Workers!

I sometimes wonder who reads this blog. Not much, because to me, it's like pondering the end of the universe, or, what's going to happen after death, or, why did I choose these fucked up parents and not someone loaded, loving, and a little more Larry Davidish? (Sorry, Memsahib President aka My Holy Mother, I didn't really mean that. And you actually are pretty much like Larry David. When you get to know you.) Anyway, who reads this blog is most of the time a huge mystery to me, and I don't try to drive myself insane by figuring out the impossible. I imagine a very good deal of the hits are some fucked up idiots with a hard on in their hand, who get so disappointed when they type "fuck" or "asshole" or "bukkake", or "Mother Mary goes down on the Lord", and then they end up in here - fucking eh; Am I going to masturbate to this wordshit, where are the pictures, lady, and what's it about sexy cows being bullies and all this WORDSHIT??? - this is not what I was looking for, fucking fucking fucking Google fucking HateGoogleFuck!!!! I imagine all these poor souls getting directed in here because of my dirty language, and all the disappointment and all the shrinking dicks it has caused. I'm sorry. I mean, I could be sorry.

Actually, I don't think I ever wrote bukkake before. Now I did, even twice, and expect it to get the hit counter to go beserk. WELCOME BUKKAKE SEEKERS!! But guess what? This is not a bukkake blog! Hahahahahaha, you wasted your precious horny time reading this, oooh, aahahahaha....oh, ahaaa, yep, I'm a small person, who enjoys not satisfying horny people. Coined.

Then once in a while, it happens, that I meet someone, who tells me that they occasionally read my blog. It's usually combined with the phrase, When I'm really bored at work. Or, When I should be studying. Or, When I'm breastfeeding (love that one, that's like supersubtle petting on some sophisticated level, much better than masturbation as an activity in front of a blog, I mean. Like, I would be really ANGRY if I found out, that you were naked right now, reading this. It would just piss me off. Do NOT read this blog naked. Just DON'T! For fuck's sake. Is that too much to ask? But, ok, you can breastfeed. I like that.)

This week I ran into an old friend who said that she reads my blog. She did the other usual follow ups to the phrase; told me it's a huge blog, almost excusing that she's not reading all of it, secretely checked my paleness-level to see if I ever do anything else in life than sit indoors and write this huge blog (at least she did not, as I've tried before, at all get accusing and hostile about this volume fact - som people react as if I'm trying to force them to read a phone book or something extremely massive and horrible. That is the point where I usually very humbly try to point out, that they typed the address in the little funny window and stayed there, and I really appreciate it, and I try to stop myself before I hear myself make excuses for all this blogging I force onto them), then she not so secretely looked at my teeth to see if I actually do floss as I say I so wish to do, said she really enjoyed the blasphemy and the posting about the bank - actually, that was a really funny one, the one about the tremendously stupid blonde and the doorman, I think I'll repost that one tomorrow as a celebration of a time I was really funny, I think I've been blogging long enough to do that, I mean, how many repeated editions are there not of Bob Dylan songs, not to mention Leonard Cohen, and how many times in how many collections have the same old tedious Hemingway short story about a man and a man, and a man, and maybe another - oh, here it comes - man, not been published over, and over, and fucking over again, can I not republish a single blog posting to manifest its greatness, I think I can and will tomorrow, and by the way, it'll probably be the closest I can get to satisfy those horny bastards confusing their way in here anyway, I mean, stupidity does after all seem to be the most solid turn-on factor and basic ingredient in all porn, the one thing they never let down or leave out of the movies is the amazingly mindblowing stupidity they display in every facial expression, every dramatic curve, every set-up, and every grunt in every fucking porn movie ever made. In the right mood, at the right level, with the right attitude and intention, I believe tomorrow could be a good posting for a good jerk-off. Just focus on the sexy aspects of being completely emptyheaded - and working in a bank, administering other people's money!! I'm almost turned on myself now, better stop and save my energy for tomorrow. Mmmm.

So, I know now, that she sometimes stops by here. I'm happy and proud to know that. Whether or not it's because she's bored at work, I'm just happy to know she enjoys to read. And whether or not she masturbates while doing so, that doesn't really make the difference either. And then again. What would actually thrill me would be to know, that the core reader of this blog generally was the bored, masturbating person reading at work. What an interesting segment of the population to have a hold of. Anyway. Thanks for reading, whoever you are, whatever you're up to.

Quotes I Dig

Alcoholics build defenses like the Dutch build dikes. I spent the first twelve years or so of my married life assuring myself that I "just liked to drink." I also employed the world-famous Hemingway Defense. Although never clearly articulated (it would not be manly to do so), the Hemingway Defense goes something like this: as a writer, I am a very sensitive fellow, but I am also a man, and real men don't give in to their sensitivities. Only sissy-men do that. Therefore I drink. How else can I face the existential horror of it all and continue to work? Besides, come on, I can handle it. A real man always can.
Then, in the early eighties, Maine's legislature enacted a returnable-bottle and -can law. Instead of going into the trash, my sixteen-ounce cans of Miller Lite started going into a plastic container in the garage. One Thursday night I went out there to toss in a few dead soldiers and saw that this container, which had been empty on Monday night, was now almost full. And since I was the only one in the house who drank Miller Lite--
Holy shit, I'm an alcoholic, I thought, and there was no dissenting opinion from inside my head - I was, after all, the guy who had written The Shining without even realizing (at least until that night) that I was writing about myself. My reaction to this idea wasn't denial or disagreement; it was what I'd call frightened determination. You have to be careful, then, I clearly remember thinking. Because if you fuck up--
If I fucked up, rolled my car over on a back road some night or blew an interview on live TV, someone would tell me I ought to get control of my drinking, and telling an alcoholic to control his drinking is like telling a guy suffering the world's most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control his shitting. A friend of mine who has been through this tells an amusing story about his first tentative effort to get a grip on his increasingly slippery life. He went to a counsellor and said his wife was worried that he was drinking too much.
"How much do you drink?" the counsellor asked.
My friend looked at the counsellor with disbelief. "All of it," he said, as if that whould have been self-evident.
I know how he felt. It's been almost twelve years since I took a drink, and I'm still struck by disbelief when I see someone in a restaurant with a half-finished glass of wine near at hand. I want to get up, go over, and yell "Finish that! Why don't you finish that?" into his or her face. I found the idea of social drinking ludicrous- if you didn't want to get drunk, why not just have a Coke?

Stephen King, "On Writing"

Gendered Language

Can a cow be a bully, and a bull be a coward?

Back and Forth

Almost done with the translation of No Other Life, a poetry collection by Gary Young. 162 poems, now existing in Danish as well. So far I've had two people read and edit my translation. I have one final guy about to edit them, he's a linguistics guy, a Danish friend from University of Copenhagen and UC Berkeley. With a great interest in poetry. I'll be completely confident when he's done. My mother reminded me yesterday: Translations are like women. Either they are ugly and faithful or they're beautiful and unfaithful.

I could write long and tediously about the challenges of translation. Like, punctuation. I love commas, but often they won't work in Danish. The English comma often has to be replaced with a : or a ; or a " or a . - not to confuse. It can hurt, like really hurt. Visually, breath-wise, timing, flux, oh, it's so different. Commas are like dear little pets, like, you know, fleas or ticks I suppose, but then really sweet and well-educated ones, the kind you want to keep and can't help adoring and feel gratitude towards. But the replacement can be necessaary, you don't want to activate the many layers of thought in the reader, going, Oh, ok, this was in English where it made sense, now in Danish you mean, yeah, ok, I get it, I'll just read these lines again, now that I know what to get from them. I neither want to perform violence upon the Danish grammar to insist on some originality, some word, some wonderful, magnificent comma, which otherwise would be lost. I will loose it. Something will always be lost in translation. I definitely avoid being overly creative in Danish in order to keep everything as close to the original as possible, because I sense the constant risk of some weird and constructed Danish taking focus. I abstain from really using my own originality in replacing irreplacable meanings and experessions, simply because it feels too unfaithful and immediately would - for me - involve a thought about the translator, aha, smart translation, mhm, something like that. I don't want anyone to think of me while reading Gary Young. No, I want you to read smoothly and pleased. Not think it's a good translation, not be confused, but just enjoy the language and get the content, the athmospere, and the poetry, without ever thinking about it coming from another language in the first place. Actually it was Gary who once said to me, your readers don't read the story. They read the writing.

I've done this translation for fun and passion, I still don't know if anyone wants to publish it. They should, I think it's great. I'd want the Danish people to read this. But poetry is hard, people don't really read it. Maybe there's not enough crime and thriller in poetry. Maybe it can be too good, too sensitive, too into your heart to bear. If a Danish poetry collection sells more than twohundred copies, it's a huge success. Anyway, I did it for my own pleasure of working with the wonderful poetry of Gary's, and the challenge of re-creating it in Danish.

A poem from the book- in English and Danish:

I discovered a Journal

I discovered a journal in the children's ward, and read, I'm a mother, my little boy has cancer. Further on, a girl has written, this is my nineteenth operation. She says, sometimes it's easier to write than to talk, and I'm so afraid. She's left me a page in the book. My son is sleeping in the room next door. This afternoon, I held my whole weight to his body while a doctor drove needles deep into his leg. My son screamed, Daddy, they're hurting me, don't let them hurt me, make them stop. I want to write, how brave you are, but I need a little courage of my own, so I write, forgive me, I know I let them hurt you, please don't worry. If I have to, I can do it again.

Jeg opdagede en dagbog

Jeg opdagede en dagbog fra børneafdelingen og læste: Jeg er en mor, min lille dreng har kræft. Længere fremme havde en pige skrevet: Dette er min nittende operation. Hun siger: Sommetider er det lettere at skrive end at tale, og jeg er så bange. Hun har efterladt en side i bogen til mig. Min søn sover i værelset ved siden af. I eftermiddag pressede jeg hele min vægt ned over hans krop, mens en læge førte nåle dybt ind i hans ben. Min søn skreg: Far, de gør mig ondt, lad dem ikke gøre mig ondt, få dem til at holde op. Jeg ønsker at skrive, hvor modig du er, men jeg behøver lidt mod selv, så jeg skriver: Tilgiv mig, jeg ved, jeg lod dem gøre dig ondt, du skal ikke være urolig. Hvis jeg bliver nødt til det, kan jeg gøre det igen.

Gary Young, No Other Life/Intet andet liv

Guidance

She said to me: In spiritual practice, you have a choice. Your choice will lead you down one of two paths. There are no other ways for you than one of these two. Either, you write the books you want to write. You use your gift. Or, you choose not to write the books. And to live with the pain of not writing the books you want to write. It's your choice.

Behind and a Little Ahead

Sometimes I don't know (truth correction: I never know) if I'm escaping something behind me or chasing something ahead of me. I know I'm on the move. I know it's possible to keep something from my consciousness by moving, but it's not possible to keep from my consciousness that there's something, I'm trying to keep away by the constant moving. I have a sense of lack of peace. Restlessness. Disturbance in the stomach and the back of the head, right where the skull meets the neck.

It's the luggage of having had a hard life, of carrying that along somewhere in the heart, of it weighing just that enough to maybe not dominate, but neither to ever be forgotten. It wipes life melancholic and, even with its wonders and daily joys, sings a note of blue that can't be taken out of those days. I see, hear, smile, enjoy, read, eat, love, but I hear it all the time. The shame, the guilt, the burden of never having done well enough. Of probably having forgotten something important. That's the basic backwards.

Ahead is the dread of letting down time, possibilities, opportunities, life. Trying to make promises, trying to believe to be able to keep them. Trying to catch the dust in the air, not just forgetting and not paying attention to what is, what is right here, right now, around me, with me. Ahead, trying to be present. Ahead, seing fulfillment of ambitions. Dreams come true. I fear deep down in the pit of my stomach, more than anything, even more than death, to not use my own potential. I fear to let myself down. I fear to want and not do, to go but not get, to be able and then be too arrogant to use that ability. I fear death mostly in the perspective of dying without having done shit.

This week I turned thirty-two years old. My siblings gave me books about Karen Blixen, whom Americans will know as Isak Dinesen, and about Herman Bang, Danish author. Then I got a present, which I'll probably soon have to write something about here. It made me discover, that I have not sofar been a complete woman. Because I haven't had my own one until I got one yesterday. I finally got my own fishing pole.

Can I be having a crisis of some kind? Here, I must say, that these thoughts are in no way particularly new or more present now than they normally are. But I imagine calling it a crisis, a late thirties-crisis, maybe an early forties-crisis, or, maybe I won't get older than sixty-four, and then I can actually be having a mid-life crisis, well I just imagine that a crisis would be convenient, and maybe even end up explaining something. Maybe what I'm running from. Or chasing ahead.

Braveheart

I often talk to friend about smoking, he smokes. I hear this me talk, fussy, worried. Danger, lung cancer. Now spring has come. My friend has worked in the garden and been out sailing. He's got a great tan now, dark and outdoorsy, a great tan. I talk about skin protection, sun screen, UV rays. Yesterday he asked me, Are you afraid I'm going to die from you? I said, Yes. And to my own surprise, because I was just talking about sun screen when he asked, I started to cry.

Girl Talk

"Whether or not she is more or less prepared, she senses a destiny in these changes, that removes her from herself. With them, she is thrown into a cycle, which reaches beyond her momentary existence, and she senses a dependency, which ties her to the man, the child, and the grave. In themselves, the breasts seem to be useless and obtrusive growths of flesh. Hitherto, her arms, legs, skin, muscles, and even the rounded buttocks, used for sitting, have had a very specific purpose. Only the sex, which she regarded as a urinal organ, has all the while been a little suspicious, but it was though something secret, which couldn't be seen by others. Now, the breasts make the sweater and the blouse tighten, and this body, which she thought was herself, she experiences as flesh, as an object, which others can see and look at. "For two years, I wore a cape to hide my breast, so embarrassed over it was I," a woman has told me. Another tells, "I still remember the strange confusion I felt, when one of my peers, an earlier 'developed' girl, one day bent down to pick up a ball, and I thereby saw two already heavy breasts behind her front cut. This body, which was so close to my own, and an image of how my own body was to become, made me blush over myself." A third: "A man laughingly made a remark about my heavy calves, when I as a thirteen-year-old walked bare-legged in short skirts. The next day my mother let down my skirt and gave me stockings to wear. But I will never forget the shock, from suddenly experiencing that I was looked at." The girl gets the feeling that her body is slipping away from her, that it is no longer an expression of her individuality, but something alien. And simultaneously it occurs, that others start to perceive her as an object. She is noticed in the street and remarks are made about her body. She only wishes she could become invisible, is scared of becoming flesh, and scared to reveal her flesh.
In many young girls this disgust shows as a wish to slim down. They refuse to eat, and are they forced to do so, they throw up. They constantly monitor their weight. Others are struck by pathological shyness and feel it as torture to have to enter a room, or even walk the streets."

from "Le deuxieme sexe II", Simone de Beauvoir, 1949 (my translation)

A Poem

A human being has four needs.
Fire, bread, embrace, and quiet conversation.

Katzanzakis (freely from my memory since I can't find the original poem)

The Letter I Never Wrote

Today is a day of sorrow. My friend is dead. Today is also a day of guilt, for me, bad, stupid, empty guilt. I need to write. I just sit alone and cry, I cried last night, I cry all day today. My friend wrote me eight emails in the past couple of weeks. I only replied to one of them. The first one, in which he asked why we hadn't seen each other for so long. I smiled, when I read it. It was somehow funny and typical, we'd usually see each other several times a week, and now a surprised email, why hadn't he seen me for six months? Could we meet the next day, catch up? I replied that I was back in Denmark. I sent him love, wrote and asked him to write me again and tell about life in Santa Cruz.

I've lost my deaf friend. I've written an earlier blogposting about him and our friendship. He wrote back after my email, in fact he wrote me seven more emails back. Some short, just saying he missed me, some longer, and more and more questioning why I didn't answer, asking me to please get in touch with him asap. I was lame. I didn't answer. I received but didn't reply. I didn't write the letter, he asked me for, I didn't include the picture, he asked me for, not to forget how my face looks, I didn't write about my life here in Denmark, I read the one mail after the other, and figured I'd answer eventually. I neglected my friend's reaching out, his words about missing me and wanting to catch up and stay in touch. And then late last night, a common friend sent me an email with links to the news reports. My friend was crushed under a truck two days ago. Today is a day of sorrow and guilt. Here is the letter, you asked me for, that I never wrote.

My friend.
You were so funny. Of course you'd also be funny like this. How do you think I feel now? I feel horrible. Couldn't you have stayed out from underneath that truck just untill I had got my ass up and had written you back? I've been sobbing all day today. Because of you. Because you're gone. Because you were such a piece of life. Because I miss you.

You were my only deaf friend. Now I have no deaf friends. I imagine you and I will meet in Nangijala again. And then, you will hear. Skorpan's legs were straight when he looked down, and I'm sure you will stand in a meadow and wait for me, when I come. And you will open your arms, and shout to me, The birds, Tine, hear the birds. And you will smile your big lovely smile, and I will laugh and run towards you. There, I will hug you and say I've missed you, and you will say, I always wondered what your laughter sounded like. Your voice is much deeper, than I thought. And I will hum very deep, and you will laugh. And I will laugh with you, and say, How amazing, you and I are talking. And you will say, It's like that, here in Nangijala. Look at you, you've lost ten pounds. And I will look down, and say, Oh dear, do we all just perfect out when we get here? And you will bend down and pick a small white flower, and give it to me, and we will walk over the meadow together. My friend, I will say. My friend, you will say. Good to see you again, yes, you too, good to see you again, we will say.

Today, I listen to the soundtrack from The Big Blue. To Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel. To Gavin Bryar's The Sinking of the Titanic. I try to feel your deafness. It's impossible. I imagine your silence. I try, but I can't. But, my friend, I do love silence. When I think of you today, I think of the silence you lived in. When I think of you today, I think of silence.

The biggest sensory experience I've had lately, was in the Sinai Desert. I was in Egypt over New Year, it was a great trip. I went on a tour out in the desert to hang out with some Beduins. We walked, rode on camels, ate food with them, they danced, and we smoked shish, water-pipes. And then, half an hour before we were leaving the camp site in the desert, we left the camp, walked out into the desert. I walked into silence. It was the most amazing feeling. It was wonderful. It was more silent than any silence I've ever experienced. It was peaceful. It was a silence stretching far. It was complete. The Earth did not make a sound miles, and miles, and miles, and miles away from where we stood. There were no people, or animals, or winds, or vehicles making sounds. There was sand. Rocks. Sky. Moonlight. Silence.

The silence of the desert rushed through my body. It was freeing. Intoxicating. Massive. It was a gorgeous impression of the world, an unquestionable and enormous and unison sound of no sound. I'm disabled as a hearing person, I can only hear that grandiose silence as a sound of no sound. And I felt a thrill in my entire body, I had a magic and happy response to the moment. I felt consumed by the world in the seconds and minutes it lasted.

As a musician, I appreciate the pauses undescribably. The silence in the music is hard to explain, but it's for me where the magic can happen. The best I know is the beauty in between two lines I'm singing, two lines that both work, which are performed exactly the way I wish to perform them, the phrasing, the volume, the pronounciation, the tonality, the improvisation, it all works. But in between those two lines, in the breath, in the awaiting, in the opening lies the world of possibilities. Lies the listener's own attending contribution. Lies the uncomposed, the unexpected, the universes we don't know, but try to approach in the sung lines. Lies the respect, the understanding between performer and listener, lies the love for what was, and what's to come, and the unspeakable understanding of the fragile room in between those two moments in time and space.

I remember biking with you. I couldn't even imagine the muted world you biked in. You and I biked together through heavy traffic. You were a good biker, you were always on that bike of yours. He got you, this truck man. With a load of cement sand. He didn't even know he had drawn you in under his truck, the police stopped him out in the intersection of Highways 1 and 9, and told him he had just clipped you and killed you at Mission and Bay. Poor guy, especially if people have told him what kind of a person you were. Man, he must feel bad.

I sometimes feared that you had a shine of happy cripple, that I didn't see through. But I always ended up thinking that that wasn't it. You were just a good energy person. Who happened to be deaf. You survived a brain bleed fourteen years ago. But you were alive. And healthy. And glad. Such a cheer me up person. You taught me sign language. We spent hours of our time together with that. Now I don't care, I learned those many signs to be able to communicate with you. Thank you for the many lessons. And thanks for the many funny signs. And the sweet ones. And the obvious ones that were easy and easy to impress you with the next time we met. You and I shared an imtimacy. I could hand spell, so usually when you entered a room and went around and said hi to people, it was with me you sat down and had a conversation and hung out. I loved being your friend, that you could talk to. It made me feel able to normalize you. Meet you. Hear you.

Do you know the feeling when you meet someone, and they have a bad conscience for some reason, forgot to call you or whatever they've felt they should have? And the first thing they do is to make you understand, how many bad feelings you have caused them lately. Well, I don't want our friendship to turn into me feeling bad over not writing you back in time. That's not fair. You've always only made me feel good, and I'm sure you don't want me to remember you and feel bad. I want to be fair and not ruin all the memories of us by letting them end up in a final guilt. So, please forgive me. I will try to forgive myself.

Maybe, when we meet again, it will not be, that we both hear. Maybe we meet in silence. Maybe I am to enter your world of peace. Maybe in Nangijala, perfect is not hearing, but rather that I'm finally fluent in sign language. I don't know. Dude, we'll meet again. Don't know where, don't know when. But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day. I can't begin to tell you, how sorry I am. I'm devestated. You're really dead. It's true, I have to learn that it's true, you, my friend, your life ended under the wheels of a truck, coming from Pilarcitos Quarry with a load of 7,800 pounds of sand, to Los Animas Concrete in Santa Cruz. That was you. Finish. Over. Done. Stop.

You asked me to please stay in touch. The silence, my friend. In the silence of this world, I will be in touch with you. In the beautiful, peaceful, amazing silence, I will feel you, touch you, remember you. I will think of you, and stay in touch. You are forever with me. I treasure what we had together. I'm sorry I didn't write you, when you were still alive. Please, say you guys in the Heavens read blogs. Say hi to my other friends, who have already passed. I cry a lot today. Wait for me. I will see you there, and hug you and laugh with you again. Untill then, I will miss you.

Goodbye, t

Golden Orange Valleys

All right, all right. I know. I'm on a bad path. I'm blogging about the most ridiculous banalities of my life with the highest self-importance I can muster. I spent several words yesterday telling you about my breakfast. I honestly believe that you have to be Anthony Hopkins to have the right to entertain other people with the exciting subject of what you had for breakfast. But I'm weak. When it comes to judging, I can be very weak in my self-estimation. And actually believe, that someone will find it thrilling to know, whether or not I eat fruit for breakfast these days. I guess in my head, I make a, well, me and Anthony kind of judgement, saying, we are interesting people, Hell, I'll let them know what at least one of us had for breakfast today.

What did I do last night? I forced myself, along with one of my books, on the literary critic that I probably respect the most these days. Why, but how, what are you saying?

He's a sharp man, very aggressive pen, high standards, and I recognize a character trait or two in him; he's completely megalomanic and believes the world would be better off did he only critique every written word ever written in it, he's very humoristic and has a problem with everything having to be so very deep to have literary value. Stuff like that, I like him, and I like to know that there's so much he doesn't like. Makes me feel safe. A critical person has to be able to get seriously pissed off, especially over bad quality and idiots and bad writing.

He's writing for the best newspaper in Denmark when it comes to cultural stuff. He has a performance he gives, in which he tells what not to read. He brings a plastic bag of the last years' worst popular books (now two bags, because bestsellers have become generally huge) and lets someone in the audience draw a book. He then kills it with critique, and so it goes, next book, next. Very entertaining, because there's so much shit out there, and why not laugh at it and know, that we know better and are smarter than that.

He started last summer to publish some of these critiques from his show in the paper. I read some of them, I like the guy, I'll usually go straight to his writings in the paper. On his list of writers behind the hated books, he calls them his favorite aversions, is one day in the fall 2007 the writer: Mette Tine Bruun.

I have tried to google myself, and there I have encountered this helplessly horrible pathetic looser poet woman - WITH MY NAME. Alas. Thank God I'm not vane, then this might bother me. Thank God Denmark is among the biggest countries in the world, no one in the milieu will ever think, writer, Tine Bruun, Tine Bruun Writer - that Tine Bruun? (Notice how Tine Bruun Writer metrically feels very similar to Paperback Writer. Am I a blurred Beatles song? Is this a future prediction and will everything I write come in paperbacks? How did McCartney know this? In 1966?) Why would anyone ever say to me, oh yes, Hi Tine Bruun, I read your poem about that flower in the middle of the dark field, man, you must have had a bad day that day, what an image, I'm sorry, man. And I'd have to say, that's not me, hey, you've got the wrong Tine Bruun here, MAN! No fucking flower in no fucking field, OK?

Anyway, I'm a good person. I read, that this critic suffers from the same feeling as me when it comes to her - she sucks. So, when I read that, in the paper, in the fall, my instant thought was to soothe him. Comfort. Show him compassion. And who would be better to do so than the other Tine Bruun Writer in this world? Who else could balance out her evilness with some other writing, of another quality, of another world than hers? Like, of mine, yes.

Of course I imagine that I would be Pollock and he would be my Greenberg. And we'd live happily ever after, I'd produce, he'd promote. Sort of.. team working, I guess. I throw and drip and pour some words around, he claps and shouts, Brilliant!! Da Capo!! No coincidences here!! Worth millions!! He could do the holding hands before his eyes tricks, open them in front of my newest book, open it, flap through, and as a message directly from God spontaneously shout out his judgement and excitement. Well, and even if he would hate what I write, I wouldn't mind hearing why. I've had a lot of useless critique, but his, I'd actually like to hear. Example of useless critique in my past, coming from one of the most talented writers I know, let's call him Doobie:

Doobie: You can't write this, it's too good.
Me: ?
Doobie: You can't, it's just.. too good.
Me: Shut up, what are you saying?
Doobie: It's like you stole it from Hemmingway.
Me: Stop comparing me to Hemmingway!
Doobie: It's not you, it's him, like it's not original. It's great, but it's too much.
Me: Don't you farcking compare me to Hitler!
Doobie: Just cut it out, ok Rita?
Me: (through teeth) Hrmnm.

I didn't cut it out. Why not? I actually have to say, Doobie is an amazing critic. I've sat in three creative writing classes with him, and apart from this one critique of me (where he's probably right too) I've only heard him give out critique as very few can do. He's one of those who can really read as well as he can write. Must become editor somewhere. But why am I not that into critiques and why did I not listen to Doobie that day?

The line he wanted out was an ending line in a short story I'd written. The story is a couple in their fourties. They go to a cabin. She turns out to be dying. She shrinks to a skeleton. She dies. The man goes to sit by the lake behind the house. Here are the last lines of the story:

"Robert sat on the bench all morning that day. Birds would fly up and circle the sky. There was ice on the lake and snow on the trees, and snow on the ice of the lake."

And it was the very last sentence, that Doobie wanted out. "There was ice on the lake and snow on the trees, and snow on the ice of the lake." It's a mirrored metric rhyme. Metrically, the rhythm is like this:

xx- xx- -- xx- -- xx- xx-
(anapest, anapest, spondee, anapest, spondee, anapest, anapest)

So the middle anapest (on the trees) is the mirror which the sentence folds around in equilibrium. Why keep it? Because I like it!!!!!!!! Termina! That's it. That's enough, that's why. I like it. I like to write like that. It's pretty, but it's not stupid pretty. It's symmetrical, which is peaceful and neat, and not at all mean and cutting edge and avantgardistically annoying and in your face. It rests. It strokes your cheek. And that's the kind of writer I like to be. I just slapped you by killing the heroine of the story, Robert's wife Chloe. Now, let me please stroke your tear-stained cheek. I put the story, along with Chloe, to rest. The symmetry is not there to over-pretty-do a pretty ending. It's not there to compensate for a lack of aesthetic quality. It's there because I like it to be there. I also say with it, that I rest my case. I let the story return to nature. To the lake and the weather and the changes, that are above me, and above the characters of the story. To the order. And the metric order is, for me, allowed to give a physical feeling of a reading (it inescapably will anyway). I don't end by throwing a rock or opening a storm. I end up with a dead beloved. And a covered lake. There is a moment there, a beat. The sentence folds itself out, opens up from inside and out, unfolds its two wings to land like a light and delicate butterfly, which can only and always be balanced in perfect equilibrium. Don't ask me to downpretty that.

I don't like that people compare me to anyone. Especially not old mysogynistic men with big ass guns in their drunken mouths. I like to feel my own writing. And feel that I write it. I don't imagine that I own shit anyway. It's not mine in that way, like I invented it, or I claim right to use it in particular. But it's mine if I like it. With that sentence, I honestly felt that it was mine. So I couldn't cut in an attempt to try not to be me, because being me might remind a reader too much of me trying to be someone else. I know when I copy and when I don't. I copy all the fucking time. But I know when I like it and when I don't. I like my lake and snow etc. Hemmingway didn't fucking patent nature. Did he?

Why else don't I care about critique? Because I haven't found the right way to work with it. So far, listening to critique has only made me make my writing worse. I've ruined stories because I've listened to people. But I'm aware of that being my weakness, not the phenomenon of critique. I'm sure there'll come a day when I have the right people and treasure them. There is an exception, Gary Young. Everything I've ever had him look at was improved. But till now, except from Gary, the best changes I've made have usually been to change things back from what critical voices made me change in the first place.

So, last night. I've written about Regensen before, the old dormatory where I live. Because of the history of this place, we can attract some really fine people here, ministers, writers, musicians, royalties, philosophers, scientists. Four hundred years count, I guess. And of course the snobby self-feeling we have in here, along with the fact that we're very clever and the bloom of the Danish youth. So, the critic came in here in our tiny library last night and gave his speech and performance for an exclusive crowd, I suppose we were forty people or so. It was fine. Afterwards, I went to him and told him that I had wanted to comfort him since the fall. That I had thought about sending him one of my books. And now that he was in my home, I asked if he wanted one? He did, and I gave him one. I tried to tell him that it was a handbound book from an edition of only fifty books, and that if he actually didn't care for it, then I'd appreciate to get it back somehow. That little piece of information disappeared, I guess also because I wasn't crazy about making the returning possible by forcing my phone number or address at him, that would be more like making a pass at him than actually making sure that he would be so rude as to call me one day only to tell me, that he did NOT want my book in his house for another second, if I would please come now and retrieve it. I tried to make him sit down next to me, to tell him this long emotional story about the other writer, and my name, and my giving him my book, not for him to review it, but for me to make him hopefull about this lovely name getting another opening in the future with my wonderful writings, but he then sat down on the armrest of the sofa, instead of in the sofa, so I became very small and stupid next to him, then someone brought him wine and thanked for the evening, then I stood up, not to sit there as if I waited for him to ask me to dance, and then we stood in the library, and I tried again, and asked if I should go and get him a book, and we had a friendly and almost relaxed moment, and then an extremely drunk strange man came and started talking to him/us, and we sort of pretended that the man wasn't completely shitfaced, which he absolutely was, and we listened politely to his weird shouting-mumbling about literature, and the critic looked at me, asking if this was my friend and I looked at him saying, can we please pretend this is normal, which we then almost did. I got the book. I gave him the book. It was ackward. It had to be. I generally love ackward, it's so human. This was over the edge, though, mainly because it involved me giving one of my books to someone, who hadn't asked for it. I met a critic in San Diego last year. Actually, we spent Christmas Eve together in a book store. She's reviewing for the San Francisco Chronicle and Chigago something, Tribune or what it's called. She asked me to please send her whatever I wrote. I haven't, because, I just haven't. It's not published big anyway, so I don't need reviews. But I like it to be that way around, giving critics something if they are so kind to ask for it. I don't like to force me on them. Last night I felt like I was a kid, asking his opinion of my drawing. But hey, the man came to my house. His choice. And there's a good chance I'll never hear his opinion anyway.

Today, for breakfast. I had an orange. I believe Tony had two pieces of toast done on one side, and a cup of tea. Please have a great day.

Rules update

A couple of weeks back, I wrote the posting, My Good Life Rules. It included some rules for my good life, and was also meant as a statement, that my life is good, it rules. So, does it? How am I doing? Well, I'm not blogging enough. I miss being around English speaking people in order to keep up the feeling of the language. I look at my blog, and feel a miss, and an apathy, and a sense of neglect.

The life, the rules. I eat fruit for many of my breakfasts. I don't drink milk anymore. I get my oils. I finish with a cold shower every morning, that was an easy one because I have been doing so for more than sixteen years. I do yoga, but not as planned, more not for a long while and then for a couple of days in a row. I don't write my thesis yet, but have read six books by now for preparation. Queer theory, which I look forward to apply to Pippi Longstocking.

My friend said the other day, that I'm a Pippi myself. Talk about a compliment. I'm really flattered. He said he'd thought about it often since I chose her as the subject of my thesis. Then earlier today I was thinking, That's such a great compliment, but ok, I don't carry a horse around. And then I remembered last year's Halloween party in Santa Cruz. A friend of my friend, an over 200 pound guy had gone out of my friend's house and in his drunken state laid down for a nap in the street. I went to talk to him and try to wake him up, but there was no contact. And then, well, I picked up the unconscious guy and carried him to the house. I heard that story many times since, and also heard it told many times since. Everyone who had been outside the house saw it, and found it much crazier than I did. But when I remember their version of the story and think about it today, I get it. He was a huge guy, and the story was simple; You picked him up!! My friend doesn't even know that story. But he thinks I'm a Pippi. I smile, and remember that guy, and not to brag, but it makes me think, You know what? If I had a horse, I might damn well carry it around. Just because I could.

Gentlemen and Ladies

Men are like this: Big, strong, tough, raw, men have no feelings, they're made of stone or wood, men don't cry, men are funny and wild and brave, men make it big, men earn lots of money, men are good at technique and mechanics and machines and gadgets and things, men decide, men throw the ladies around when they're too much, men drink like pigs, men are pigs, men just want to use women and get as much as possible, men can't be trusted, particularly not those under forty.

Women are like this: Women have no humor, there are no funny women. Women have breasts, and that's probably the best thing about them. Women are not too smart, why they do best with simple tasks. Women are weak, they're afraid of everything, they're hysteric, they menstruate all the time and are impossible to be around, women back talk, women giggle, women are mean to each other and cruel in their hearts, women love children and animals and everything that's fluffy with little feathers and laces, women must be punished and kept down, women are vain and close to dying if they have a pimple on their ass or their favorite pants are in the laundry, women always think they're too fat, women never think what they do is quite good enough. Women think everything tiny is cute, even a miniature toilet is cute, and such a small horse and see that little flower, women always want more, you let them drive a car and the next thing they want to vote and have their own income.

My Good Life Rules

Finish with cold shower every morning.

Fresh fruit for breakfast.

No milk.

Alcohol max. every third day or only in the weekend.

Get vitamins and essential oils every day.

Write thesis Monday-Friday from 9 AM to 4 PM.

In bed before midnight.

Do yoga to CD twice a week, Tuesday and Friday.

Be kind.

Orphancy Redux

Anxiety attacks at the age of ten. At night, lying in bed, under the window, looking up underneath the curtain. Dark sky, stars. Street lamps. Silent night. Fear. Fear out of this world, thoughts, and an overwhelming flood of feelings out of my little body. One massive feeling, a million feelings. One little girl. A lost battle. Mommy, please stay with me untill I sleep. Please touch my face. Please give me something to make me go to sleep. Can I scream? Mommy, I don't know if I can survive this. Mommy, don't die now, please. Do you have to die? Ever? Will grandma and grandpa die? Soon? Why do they say all the time, that the holes in the ozon layer are threatening us? How long does Earth have left? Thirty years, Mommy? Thirtyfive? Will there ever be people again? How is this dark going to go on without the life of people, without life? Do we know for sure, there is no other life than us? Why are we going to die? Can it happen tonight? What's their education, those who say thirty years? How do they know for sure? Could it happen tonight, Mommy?

Take my hand, little girl, if you dare. Walk with me into that room. You're lying on your back, you're stiff and terrified. You're really afraid of one thing: That no one likes you. That you're not loveable. That no one can love a creature as tiny and unimportant and ridiculous as you. That you're too tiny to be saved. Here's your self-hate: In the void. The key is the void. Fighting the fear is filling, the desperate filling and avoiding the void. The filling is the run. The constant escape attempt. The need to feel something else than less than nothing. The void is key.

Fill me up with stroboscope light, with ice bergs floating in the night, fill me up with an erection, with endless bowls of popcorn, with features about the Costa Rican government and nutrition and the National Tulip Day, fill me up with Bhutan gas, fill me up with chicken feathers. Fill me.

The void is in between words. The void is in the lungs, when there's no breath. The void is in between two people's skin, when they try to get underneath each other's skin, but there is no under your skin, there is only against and against and in between. Void is between the stars. I am a speck of dust, I am ten years old, and I know, that I am but a speck of dust, and when I die, and it will be soon, I will not even live a hundred years, then too as now, I will just be that speck of dust, and either turn to star, to chicken feather, to baby boy, to a bit of a shit that someone just made and was ashamed of. I am but a tiny piece of the big void, a returning dust dot with no adressee nor intentional sender. I know it, I hate it, I hate that that's me, and I'm scared shitless of feeling this suction in my body. Can the universe suck me home, Mommy? ´

Thank God I'm not ten years old anymore.

Speaking of.. God came to be the night before this again. It happens sometimes. I wake up, and I know God came to me in my sleep. It's a very different feeling, trust me, from oh, I dreamed of God last night. To anyone who hasn't tried, I can reveal, that's not how it feels, when the Creator pops by. It humbles me, but it also kinda annoys me. I signed out of church some years ago, five or so. Not because I didn't believe anymore, I just felt perfectly capable of doing so without the church formalities. I felt my faith was, so to speak, larger than the one defined by the church. That my God was beyond the God-thing. And so, trying my best to be a heathen, I'm churchless. I'm defining my own belief, not my own religion since no one else can join, but Tinestrotianisme, which means Tine's Faith, pretty much, like I'm a Tinesfaithian. And then, God starts coming to me. It only happened twice, but hey, I find that quite a high success rate for a life-time, especailly for a declared heathen. The weird thing is, that I haven't rejected being a believing person, but more the idea of a God. And then I wake up with the certainty, that I was spoken to, there was even a sort of dialogue this time. The clear message from the visit is: You can't deny me. You know I'm here. This message is given to me with a Godly smile, not at all the annoying missionary one, not the I know Jesus, Lucky me-annoying Newborn Christian shit kind of smile, no. This is the kind of smile that isn't necessarily even on the face at all. Don't ask me about the face of God, please. That would be like I told you I'm buddies with Michael Jackson, and you ask me, So, IS his nose really falling off???? And I'd be like, Puhlease, Michael J and I don't give out that kind of information about each other, ok? No, this kindness, or smile, is the kind where I wake up, and I know I just had an encounter with God, that God came to me, and that it's an honest matter between him (yes, I really did say that) and me. It's not an emotional begging, Please come back to me Tine, my lost child. It's just a way of letting me know, that he IS, no matter how much I try to deny him. That I'm held in some huge hand. It has annoyed me both times. A little insulted, I'm like, I never said you weren't, and why on Earth do you come to me, I'm fine without you, hence the signing out of church, and someone to whom Circus Religion is really important would appreciate this visit so much more. Ok, I'm also a little flattered, and it's a little big every time.

I lie in bed. I get scared from remembering the fear of age ten. But only a little. I feel very lucky. Thank God I'm no longer ten years old.

The Future Is Coming Up

I went to talk to someone today at the university, and decided that she will be my advisor, and what subject I will write my thesis about. Probably, this may change and change again, but this is the first subject, which thrills me to think about spending six months with. So I hope I'll stick with it. It is something like: A queer theoretically based reading of gender in Astrid Lindgrens children books. It will probably be narrowed down to a few of the books, Pippi Longstocking and a couple of others. I love that girl, carrying her horse around and being afraid of, eh, pretty much nothing. I left university woman with some titles of books, which I went to the book store to order straight away. When I told the dude in the book store what my thesis plan was, he asked me three times to please get it published once I've written it. I took that as a good sign.

I only have my thesis left. Then I've completed my master's degree. The thesis has to be 80 pages long. And pretty much the smartest thing I've ever said about anything. I don't expect it to be though. But I'll try to have fun with it and consider it a great opportunity to get into something as thoroughly as is expected. Six months is the expected time frame, people usually end up using a year or more. I will start next week, probably. The Man is taking over a new house these days, and I'm helping out painting and stuff. But I will definitely start reading within a few weeks. Queer theory. The phrase was first time used in the very university where I studied last year, University of California Santa Cruz. During a conference in 1990, on theorizing gay and lesbian sexualities. Santa Cruz was also a wonderfully queer place.

I've read most of what Foucault has written, just because I adore him. All the queer theorists stand on his shoulders, so I look forward to start reading their stuff. Hard work and learning new things lie ahead. Reading, writing, reading, writing. Pippi, andiamo!

No More Drama

What a relief. Today I quit smoking.

I Can Do It

Nineteen cigarettes.

Status

Eight cigarettes.

Night of Mayhem

Inside me. A deserted battle field. Quiet, silent winds blow over my barren meadows. A few straws of grass move slowly close to the black ground. Large areas have been burned. The silence is heavy and holding its breath, still remembering chaos. Everyone once there left in a hurry, or were killed in pain. Blood stains here and there, almost sunken into the ground, patterns of dark in dark, telling the story of a night of mayhem. Dead, flat fear, unexcused violence. The storm has worn off. But the fear is still here. It's 5.28 am. I'm alone. Outside me. Peace. In an attempt to balance the internal and external states of my life, I've taken up smoking again. I needed to work some mad havoc upon my life, myself, deliberately create some destruction, to devastate, ruin by choice. I plan to quit again Monday. It's too hard. It's harder work than I remembered. I haven't smoked since September or October 2006, and it's killing me. That's a bit too much, I just want to hurt me. Not really die. So one more day, then it's over. I can't believe I could do this for so many years. It's really painful and horribly disgusting. I've smoked twenty Wednesday, three Thursday, twenty yesterday, and today and tomorrow I'll se how many I can do. Then it's got to stop. I need truce. Cease-fire. Armistice. I must be safe again. The sun will shine. Songbirds will sing.

Feelings And a Little Fear

Feelings. I had to turn thirty years old to be able to be in the same room as my own feelings. And, I still often have to fight with myself to do it, to manage, to be able, still. They are so fucking overwhelming. Intimidating. Almost too much. I FEEL so much. I can't help it. It's in me. I'm better and better at staying with it, also of thinking, I AM not my feelings, I HAVE my feelings. But man, how I understand those, Pollock, Hemingway, who never learn, but have to selfmedicate with alcohol every day, to soothe, to calm, to numb, to pacify, just to be able to co-exist with all those emotions.

Silence. A dimension I've never been too good friends with. Actually, silence is a shit scary condition for me. In the desert, the ultimate silence I've experienced, it's great. It's there. Not sucking in, not deleting. Just there. But inside of me, silence can scare me so much. It's like giving too much room for the emotions. Opening up for too much feely-feely existence. Too little thinking and too much feeling. No good. Turn up the volume, please. Disturb me. Take me away from this emo-crap, it's too much, too fucking much. Is it me? Am I on the run? I can long for the fear of my early childhood. The wolves. Back when fear had names. When I felt mostly afraid of stuff outside myself. This, I'm afraid of. That one, she or he might hurt me. Not the blur of something will catch up on me. I will fail. I'll get caught. I will fall. I will I will I will

Sleep. Sleep scares the shit out of me. I've been sleepless since the age of ten. Still am. It's like a small death. It's like total surrender. It's giving in. It's becoming a stranger and an alien and a dead person. It's fucking scary. Bye-bye, I'm leaving now. Where are you going? Oh, I'm going to sleep. Ok. Well, you pay attention when you're there, right? Nah, can't really, I'm gonna be sleeping when I'm there. What does that mean? That means, I'm going to be like a fucking zombie. Like a living dead, right? You know, sleeping? No, but that sounds horrible. Why do you do it? Well, you see, I try to avoid it. I put it off for as long as possible. I really, really try not to go there. It's called insomnia. I think I'm the most sane person to not want to go to a creepy, surreal, disturbed, revealing stuff you don't wanna know-place, but the rest of the world has a name for it, insomnia, and consider it a disease. What do you know? They also elect the dumbest ones to rule, and make everything that's great either illegal or fattening. Welcome to this world.

Pants On Fire

In Palermo, the sanded olive trees are bare. On Svalbard, the frost rings in the air. I'm in Copenhagen. A man kneels down on the sidewalk and helps his wife get her zipper started at the bottom of her long coat. A girl runs in big boots and a white knitted hat with her dog on a leash, she wants to make the green light. It's a typical weird Copenhagen phenomenon. It's like spring has come for a few days in the middle of January. It's mild and lovely. Grey bright blue light. Fresh, fine air. Warmth, isn't this spring? We look a little confused at each other in the streets, disbelieving smiles, but eyes saying, well, let's just enjoy it while it lasts. In a few days, we'll ask each other if it happened. Or in April, when it sometimes snows, we'll say, remember those days in January, that was so strange. In the Faroe Islands they have a joke: I missed the summer this year, I went to the bathroom. I cross the courtyard of the queen's palace and send her a kind thought. A lot is demanded of her. She's a queen. Her children are initiating a new way of being royal. They party. Divorce. Stuff like that. Times and crowns they are a-changing. The palace isn't. It looks the same. It calms me. It's built by Eigtved, the great royal architect of the 1750's Copenhagen. In the middle of the courtyard is a statue of Frederik the Fifth on his horse. I drive around him. I continue down to my old neighbourhood behind the palace. I lived there for three years. Now that I spend so much time in the countryside, it's great to be back in Copenhagen. Thirteen years I lived here. I've loved Copenhagen all along. Always. I still live here. Have to remember. I want to get back in here more often in the future. Get a little away from it all. Take a little time off from the peaceful idyllic countryside. Get a little smog. Noise. Lots of passing faces. Don't forget, I have two small rooms in the heart of Copenhagen. I go to shop skin care products. I spend a fortune. I am so vane. Incredibly vane. Money is worth nothing in themselves when their value can be replaced with skin preservation. So the more money I can exchange for skin care products, the more value I get out of the world and my own economy. Complete harmony. Last week I took a cab. The ride costed over $700. It was in Sweden. I'd been to the hospital with one of the students. Sweden is a big country. The hospital was far away. I looked from the snow on the trees outside to the meter. At the snow. At the meter. At the snow. At the meter. 4672 Swedish kroner. The Danish state pays. Free health care. Free cab rides abroad when necessary. My brother and my sister in law have a baby now. She was ten weeks yesterday. I went and visited last night. She's beautiful. Strange that it's not strange to see my brother with his child. I look at him and think, that's my brother. With his child on his arm. I hold his little girl. And think, you're my brother's. You will be in our lives forever from now on. No matter what, she's already a person for us, one of our loved ones. My brother holds her, she's a lump in cotton clothes on his arm. He says, isn't it amazing, she's probably the most useless thing in the house, but if the house was on fire, I'd rescue her and nothing else would matter. He mentions some values, includes the car. None of it is even comparable in value to her, he says. He kisses her temple, he's walked around with her for a couple of hours. He says, she's smart, she can feel it when I sit down, then she starts crying. He's proud of her. I'm proud of him.

Princess

I gently stroke her cheek. She is four years old. About to go to sleep. I lie next to her, our faces are a few inches apart. We just read Little Red Riding Hood. Talked about the wolf. About the pictures. About red hoods and a little girl in a big forest. After a while's silence, I tell her, maybe you are the most beautiful girl in the world. And she says, them all can be. I say, all who? Everybody? And she says, yes, that I would like. They all can be. I ask, you want everybody in the world to be the most beautiful? And she smiles and nodds. Yes, she whispers happily, all of them too.

Scratching Knees

In the dew on the hedges, in the ice-topped mountains, in the bubbles of the stream, beneath the wings of eagles, over tall waving treetops, in children's hearts, in lion's manes, in the breath of sea turtles, on the baking stone in Mawathna's fire, in the touch of lovers' hands, in the eye of sad clown Bhoto, in the wind, in the blue of the flames of candle lights. In the days to come, he will find what he has lost. (We think.) But will he find it, where he'll be looking?

It is not hidden, saved in the wind, nor in the manes and hearts of ferry tales, it is not the woman's, nor the clown's to hold, nor is it kept by the lovers or in their flames.

Is it in his Ipod? Was it ever his? Was there ever anything beyond, above, behind? What are dreams made of? Is there a transcendence from now, a passage to then? I deny romance. Does art exist? What is spirit? What's the longing about?

I never lost anything. Definitely not an innocence. I have no past in harmony. I have no forefather happily abiding in the field. If I had a forefather, he was hungry. Poor. Dirty. Lonely. Cold. Longing for an Mp3, not knowing when it would come. Dreaming of a Wheel of Fortune, not knowing it's thrilling spin. Maybe, maybe not longing for his wife's cleanly tripple blade shaved legs, not knowing anything but her furry, fuzzy warmth. Would he? Really? Why would the boy with the Ipod long for pre-age simplicity? Why would the field man long for an Ipod?

Grandparents losing everything, wishing for nothing but before the accident. Not their youth, just before.

The child. The godliness of deliverance from the unknown. In features, too fine and clean not to represent the Better, the Behind, the Before, the Beyond.

Is God a Child?

Politics

For breakfast a banana. An orange too, but first the banana. Before the banana, an apple.

Apple. Banana. Orange. Red Yellow Orange. Green Yellow Orange. Orange Yellow Green. Red Yellow Orange. Fire. Forest. Flag. Disturbed stop light. Warhol. Cake. Pear.

An apple is not a meal. An apple produces too much stomach acid to be satisfactory in itself; an apple makes more hungry than full to eat alone. An apple is not a meal. An apple is an apple, an apetizer, a crisp and inviting starter, an idea of eating, an invitation to want to eat. An apple makes the sound of delight, the first bite of an apple is like treading into brown curly leaves. An apple is diving into a cooled lake in soft moonlight, right where the streak of light strokes the lake's shore. An apple is a glass of water after long time's thirst. An apple is a first kiss with nature. An apple is innocent. An apple is the sweet cheek of the face of an angel. A young apple is a virgin, an old apple is slowly gathered wisdom in a friendly, wrinkled face. An apple is not a meal.

A banana is fat and full of proteines, it's a core, a substance, it's a Ben or a Joe, a banana is a meal.

An orange is a cosy fruit, it takes time to peel and time to eat. The orange is the dessert. It's a juicy fruit, and not appropriate until after all the enzymes have been produced, in the mouth, for the digestion of the meal. The orange is the grandpa, it's the Sicilian with the pocket knife. The Greek in the shade. The lover in the grass.

What is my shelf life? Will I expire? Am I best before? Before when? Is a fruit necessarily fruity? Can a strange fruit be not so strange? Am I a happy fruit?

In the flow of the flow of the deedaah, deedaah, daddadeeh, doobdeewoop, can't help it, ripple, ripple. I am a feeling. I am ANGER. No, not true. I am LOVE. Hell, no. No. No, no, no, noooohooo-NO! I am GOD. I mean, JESUS. I am am angry, loving JESUS-GOD! Pissing Jesus-God, that is me. I am the cloud, upon which I sit, I am my own son, in my beard, I am mayonnaise in my beard, I am the mustard, I am the shame in my Son over the mustard and mayonnaise in his father's beard, I am the Father, the Mustard, the Shameful Son of Mayo-Nose, I'm an Inca and an Old Shiva's stained shirt, I am a sheep with no heird, I am a lost soul in an inner fish bowl. I am year after year. I am my friend's enemy. I am a cold pony in a meadow. That is me, I'm a planet in my regular system, a deviation from my own plan, I am the pale normality disturbing this blingbling bloodblood bangbang boogiewoogie 76-67 freak show. God, I bore me.

I've always wanted to be a nurse, she said. Why, I cried, I couldn't stop sobbing. I want to help someone, she said with conviction in her voice. You hipocrite, I said, help me. Huh, why don't you help me, I'm right here, at your feet, why not, why not me? She looked away. I knew I made her feel uncomfortable. I wasn't helping her feeling helpful at all. And, she added, I like the uniforms a lot. Humanity is greatful, I said, and she looked me in the eye with self-content compassion and pity. Go fuck a frog, Princess, I said.

Pear?

How I've Travelled

Ski
Car
Bus
Tractor
Horseback
Rickshaw
Camelback
Canoe
Rubberboat
Tram
Water Scooter
Bike
Horse Carriage
Airplane
Helicopter
Truck
Paragliding
Scubadiving
Cliffdiving
Rollerblades
Ferry
Sculler
Sailboat
Ambulance
Gondol
Ice Skates
Scooter
Moped
Motorcycle
Off Roader
18-Wheeler
Stylts
Train

Dear Tony Diary

Dear Tony D.

Things are well here with me. Leaving tonight, I'm going skiing in Sweden. It's the entire boarding school; all students and teachers. I've only skiied once before, a week in France a couple of years ago. It'll be a nice break from cold, grey Denmark, to cold, white Sweden. I won't write again untill several days from now. I miss you already, Tony D.

I'll spend the coming week in the alpine world pondering how to get around writing about private stuff here. I'll be honest with you when I return. One week. Till then, Tone-D - take care.

Tine

Danish Light And Delight. Life Here Today

Sun up: 8:40 am
Sun down: 15:50 pm

Moon up: 6:46 am
Moon down: 12:27 pm

Moon: Waning

Day's length: 7h and 10m
Day's increase: 14m

Sand And High Waters

Egypt. The taxi drivers drive like an extreme sport. This is a matter of relieved survival feeling every night after every ended day, for being there, still.

Sharm el-Sheikh. I came back last night after a week there. Tourist resort, divers' city on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It's on the coastal strip between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, south of Dahab and Nuweiba. Lot, lot, lot of tourism and diving.

Karim, one taxi driver, opened his door and stuck his head out the open door while driving on the highway, full speed. Just to entertain. Funny guy. Turned his head to us in the backseat, said, Goodbye! Goodbye! Turned back. Opened his door, head out, downwards, looked to the street while driving. To make us think he was jumping out, you know. Pulled head back inside. Closed door. Looked back over the seat at us, big laugh. Funny? No fucking respect for death. They must expect a ton of virgins and water shish pipes up there in the sweet hereafter to behave like that. But it was actually really funny. The guy stuck his head out the door and kept driving 60 mph while he looked down in the asphalt. Is that not funny? What is funny? Not Karim? Not taxi fun?

I dived a couple of times. Beautiful fish. Huge reefs. Chorals. Down there I keep having eye contact with fish amazingly rich on colors and shapes. So blue. So red. So green. So yellow. All together, with a crazy fin and flappyflappy dotted laced curtains all around its body, I know this is a wild fish to look at, and we have eye contact, and there are meters and meters of clear blue ocean water above us, and then, I'm sorry. I get bored, because.....it's a fish.

Went out in the Desert of Sinai. Now, that was something, the thing for me on this trip. I love deserts, I don't know what it's about. I just do. My body turns all happy, my stomach does that flip thing, I want to stay there and I compulsively start thinking about the amounts of water and gas I could have in the back of a jeep, and for how long I then could stay out there. It was the same in the Mojave Desert. Also in the salt deserts of Utah. Through Nevada, New Mexico, Utah. Egypt. Deserts. We visited some Bedouins, travelled a bit tourist style on camels, ate some food with the Bedouins, and then, finally: Alone, under the stars, at night: Desert Silence. Can't be explained or imagined. Must be felt.

During this week I saw one (1) woman, who was not clearly a tourist. In Sharm el-Sheikh, the women do not work or move around in the streets. Egyptian women stay in the home, shut doors, shut windows. Ninety-eight percent of all Egyptian women are circumcised.

Tones

Stack brought in a car last night:

Ultimate Nina Simone
Tom Waits, Small Change
Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine
Tom Waits, Blue Valentine
Cassandra Wilson, Thunderbird
The Essential Leonard Cohen
Norah Jones, Feels Like Home
Rebecka Törnqvist, A Night Like This
Rebecka Törnqvist, The Stockholm Kaza Session
Rebecka Törnqvist, Tremble My Heart
Dixie Chicks, Wide Open Spaces
Dixie Chicks, Home

Quotes I Dig

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Quote: Friedrich Nietzsche

Light in The Heart of Darkness

I am in Denmark. It is early December. In three weeks, the darkness will be its heaviest, then it will turn around. We say, from that point, the days become brighter. In the next three weeks, the light will disappear more and more. Then it will turn one day and return stronger and stronger until June, when it once again will turn and start to disappear. Six weeks from now, it will be the same as it is now; the light comes at eight in the morning and is gone by four in the afternoon. Six weeks from now, it will be the same. For the next three weeks, darker, darker. The short winter days are getting shorter still.

I think about forgiveness. Sometimes I find, that forgiving is the hardest part of any development. The sorrow, the anger, the hurt love. These are feelings, filling the chest, the eyes, the lungs, filling the air with screams, cries, words, sobs, and hands. Filling space. Creating moments, identity, landscapes. Framing rooms in which to live, grounds, on which to discover one self, and understand others. Forming artefacts of substantiality; this is how I feel, this substance of emotion is mine right now, this feeling is what I move around, I am moved by this feeling, I search into myself and find, I reach into my chest and find, I search for my presence and my truth and find - feelings. Sometimes, I can almost touch them.

Letting go is necessary in order to ever forgive anything. To truly forgive is to not care anymore. Anyone who thinks they've forgiven because they're so large that they can live on with whatever crap they were exposed to from their surroundings, have not gotten the basic idea of forgiveness. It's not a 1-0 score; I forgive you now, so you owe me one on the 'who's big to whom'. No. When I forgive, I stop to care. It happened, yes. But now, I have forgiven it. So it doesn't matter anymore. It is no longer important between us, whether it happened or not. Because I have forgiven you.

I am in the countryside. The light out here is feeble in another way than it is in the city. It is greyer, but not grey by smog, by passing materials hanging in the air above, not from tire of working its way down between houses, not exhausted grey from mingling with streetlights and falling far from the sky onto black stoned paving, giving off particled grains of water, dirt, dust, and oil.

Out here, the light is in itself. It's fragile, it's all over the air, and the air out here is large; it stretches from horizon to horizon, it reaches the edges of everything here; the frozen ground, the green leaves left on the winter bushes, the gnarly bare branches on the tall brown trees, the cars parked with white windows, the hunters in large coats with riffles over their shoulders, the hunters' slender hunting dogs, running trained, silent, and alert; the air out here reaches the edges of it all, of prey, of past, of the tips of noses, of the present, of the left swing in the tree, of the days to come. Of the cloudless open high above.

But the grey light is not in the air. The light is behind the air, inside the air, around the air. It's the Nordic light. It's not the air, and it's not grey because the light is grey itself. It's grey because it is nothing else. It's in the dewy tones between white and grey and grey and white, right where the spectrum flips a bitch and must slow down a little at the turning end of the U. Those extra nuances, created by the slowed move of grey turning white and white turning grey, where they meet and expand each other, dissolve in each other, penetrate to evaporate each other's density; that's the lucidity of the light scheme of lacking colors. There is nothing yellow or blue about this light. Not a tone of red. In the morning, it is particularly clear. The light is shy. It is naked. It is pale, holding its breath. It gives nothing, it claims nothing. It saves itself for the next three weeks. It anticipates a turning point. Soon, it will have diminished to its own minimum, and it will once again begin to broaden. Open its breath and revive the earth. Let the days grow longer. The evenings brighter. The air warmer. The realms lighter.

To forgive, it can be necessary to enter the heart of darkness. Catch the hiding pain. Hold it to know, what there is to let go. Sometimes, the journey lies painfully clear ahead. To forgive, I must feel. Accept it. Let it go. The countryside is good for me. This strangely lucid light makes me feel, that I see through the porose layers of emotional wrapping. I feel through the layers. The courage it takes out here with this light reminds me of the courage it takes to forgive. To live the darkest day. Landmark the turning point. To be where there is nothing. No anger, no fear, no sorrow. Allowing the next step. Forgiveness. Peace. I feel the journey. I know I want to forgive something. There is someone from my past, I have to forgive. Not to union in a sweet embrace. I need to forgive to say goodbye.

In the dream I am

In the dream I am surrounded by women. They are beautiful, young, and they do not care that each has loved me. No one speaks, and their sadness makes them lovelier. What is it, I ask. Am I dying?

Poem by Gary Young, from "No Other Life"

When your children ask

When your children ask, will you always love me, say you will love them forever, and then tell them what forever means. You can explain the heavens if they ask, and tell them, your bodies are made from the dust of shattered stars. But when they ask you, will I ever die, then lie to them. They're still young, and it might frighten them if you said, no.

Poem by Gary Young, from "No Other Life"

To keep him still

To keep him still, they bandaged his eyes while his small life collapsed within him. But we knew, the bandage was meant to hold what light was left inside.

Poem by Gary Young, from "No Other Life"

Quotes I Dig

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.

Quote: Oprah Winfrey

A Grown Man's Crime. Part IV/IV

He’s kicking the gate, trying to break it down. He gets in, it was a metal gate that swung out, but he’s kicking and breaks the gate down. At this point, I’m yelling at him through the intercom, “If you come in, I’ll fucking shoot you dead.”
He keeps running and running and running at me, I’m on the 4th floor, he’s got his hand in his sweatshirt pocket, I don’t know what he’s reaching for. He’s getting closer, trying to get something out of his pocket. I try to shoot at him one time, but I miss. He stops, he looks up, I’m in the window. He starts running at me again, I discharge the bullet, he’s still running towards me, I’m following him towards the house, now I follow him with the scope, and right when he gets into sight of the crosshairs, I shoot him again, and this time I hit him in the head. Right in the face.
He hit his knees and his hands flew to his face, like a nerve thing, he fell to his knees. When he was shot, he was still running, he grabbed his face, fell to his knees and fell backwards.
He’s on his back, he’s dead. I stand there, in the window, suddenly I hear my own breathing. I went and called my dad up.
I said, “I did what you said, I shot someone and killed him.” My dad thought I was joking. I said, “No, dad, this is real.”
“Hang up the phone,” my dad said. “Go check and make sure he’s dead or if you shot him in the arm or something.”
So I hang up the phone. It takes like ten minutes to walk down there, I’m shaking so much, I still have the gun with me, because I’m so shocked. I look at him, there’s a hole the size of the tip of your pinky right in his forehead, so I know he's dead.
The cops come, I don’t know how, but I found out later that my dad called them and said, “My son’s scared, he shot a trespasser, he was in the right.”
I’m standing there with the gun when five or ten cops draw their guns at me, telling me to drop the gun. I’m too scared to drop the gun, and they repeat, “Drop the gun.”
I’m hanging on to it, for some reason, I can’t drop the gun. They’re yelling at me, and so at a point, I drop the gun. I get tackled by two cops, handcuffed, and suddenly I’m sitting in the cop car with the door open and my legs out the car. I tell them, “My dad told me to do this. The guy had a gun in his pocket.” The cops check it, and see that he did.
Then the ambulance comes, they pick him up. That’s a really gory sight. I see that the little hole in his forehead is the size of a fist in the back of his head.
They take me to Huntsville. That’s a state prison for serial killers, a level 4 prison. I’m sixteen, and I’m going to a level 4 maximum-security prison. They said, that they wouldn’t put me in general population prison, because I was too young. They said, that I committed a grown man’s crime, but I was still a kid, they didn’t want to see me raped or killed in population prison.
My dad came after some hours. He wasn’t crying, he just kept a straight face. He knew I was going to be ok, so he just said, “Don’t worry son. You’ll be out of here. They’ll just do forensics. Studies. Tests and such.”

The Trial

I was in Huntsville for six weeks. I was alone in a cell made out of something like plexiglass. They said that I was on suicide watch. I sat in that glass cell for six weeks, so they could see that I didn’t kill myself. Inside the cell there was a bed and a chair, that was it.
I went to court for arraignment after two weeks. They said the trial would be in thirty days. They also said, if you’re found guilty, you’ll be in prison for life.
In Texas, if you’re sixteen or over, you’re tried as an adult. So, what I had done is not murder or premeditated murder, it’s not homicide; it’s defiable homicide, like killing for a reason. That doesn’t get you the death penalty, but it can get you eighty years in prison in Texas. The judge at the arraignment said thirty days until trial.
I waited in prison in the plexiglass cell. I was only being held. It wasn’t that I was in jail for the danger, I was in prison, though I technically never have been to prison.
The thirty days came up, I had my orange jump suit on, I had chains on my arms and feet. The chains were attached, so I was walking little baby steps.
In the courtroom, they started talking all the bullshit. I pleaded no contest for justifiable homicide.
One person stood up and said, “We find the defendant, Clay Thorton, not guilty of premeditated murder.”
I said, “Ok,” and signed a bunch of papers. I can’t own a gun until I’m twenty-five. But I don’t think I’ll even be twenty-one. Then I was free to go.
All these people were really worried about me. They said that this would fuck up my head so badly, and I should see a shrink. My dad’s from the war of Vietnam. He said, “The first one doesn’t really get to you, but when you’ve killed over fifty. One doesn’t really matter, but when you hit the fifty mark.”
I still don’t know the guy’s name. I don’t want to know. I figure it’ll freak me out later in life. I know he was thirty-seven years old. I don’t wanna know anymore.
When I left the courtroom, his brothers were staring at me as I walked out. They said, “Keep one eye over your shoulder. Watch your fucking back.”
I didn’t tell anyone, they said that until a month later. Then I told my dad. He said, “We’re going to San Diego.”
That day we started packing everything up, and we left within a month.
My dad said, “If I died, wouldn’t you want them dead? We’re not staying here. It’s not safe, son. We’ve got to leave Texas.”
That’s when we went to California. That was four years ago. I’m still only twenty years old, and now I’m out here in Maui.

A Grown Man's Crime. Part III/IV

I just don’t want to be a bum. Don’t want to be just me and my clothes, and a rented car. So I called my dad. I just sat here in Maui, my brothers were dead, my parents were fucked up, I was out here all alone, and I didn’t know what I was actually here for. So I called him up. And my dad said, “Keep struggling. It’s fucked up when your back’s against the wall, shit’ll come your way, but keep struggling.”
So I just kept existing. A while later he called me up. The day he did, I hadn’t showered in two days, hadn’t eaten in two days, and I had like five bucks left. My dad called me up, I was parked by the beach, and I was crying really badly. I missed my brother and shit like that. My dad said. “How about I just give you a helping hand to get on your feet?” “Sure,” I said.
“How about I wire you three thousand dollars, a thousand at a time?” he said.
“If you do that, I don’t have words to tell you, what you’re doing. You’re saving your son’s life,” I said.
Next day I called him and said, “You don’t know what you did, dad. I was living in the car.”
So I got a job at a cargo place, unloading cargo for TransAir. It’s the first real job I’ve had, where I don’t work for myself. Now I’ve got money in the bank, a place to live, a car and a phone, a steady job with a paycheck. That’s my life right now here in Maui. From living in a car to being fucking filthy rich, for like five years I had bigshot places, I’d go to Oceanir, really snazzy place, I’d drop two-, -three thousand dollars with a couple of friends just for our meal. I always went crazy with my friends. I didn’t care about money back then, I often walked around with three thousand dollars in my pocket, I didn’t care about money. Then all right, suddenly I’m broke, and back to living in a car.

The Love

I fall in love easily, with everyone. I fall in love with girls all the time. But I know it’s never going to happen.

The Shooting

When my parents got all that money, they bought the huge, extravagant four stories house with four bedrooms on each floor of the house, or, my dad did. Two sides of the whole house was all glass and it was right on the riverbank. My dad always told me, “If someone comes on our property, don’t pull out your gun unless you’re gonna shoot it, and don’t shoot your gun unless your gonna shoot someone. You can’t shoot your gun for looks. You have to kill someone. It’s better to be judged by twelve than to be carried by six.”
So, we had a bunch of intercoms in the house. You just pushed the intercom to talk to your brother or mom or dad. Also at the gate, if a visitor or FedEx or the mail or someone from a company came up, they’d push the button and you could hear it all through the house. You’d push the button and they’d come in.
This day, I was sixteen, my parents were gone. They were with my aunt and uncle five hours away in Houston and I didn’t wanna go. So I was alone in th house, going through their shit. Just snooping around. I found dirty magazines in the closet and bookshelves full of shit. They also had a camera case full of pot. I threw it right back in the drawer, I had never smoked.
My dad had a World War II Mauser, big bullets, it’s a sniper rifle with a scope specifically for World War II snipers. I had a big fascination for guns, and I loved this Mauser. It was an 8 mm with bolt-action. Its range is a couple of hundred feet, and when it’s fitted with the scope, it’s got over a three-hundred foot range. My dad had told me where he kept the guns. I’d take the guns apart and clean them and shit. This day, I went to look at them, when the intercom went off.
I’m looking at the gun, and some guy asks for permission to come in. I say, “No, you can’t fucking come in, I’m armed, and if you trespass you’ll be shot and killed on sight.” I’m sixteen, and home alone, right? He starts yelling at me, so I pick up the Mauser and put bullets in it.

A Grown Man's Crime. Part II/IV

Instead of my mom and dad’s bad habits, I got OCD, it’s over obsessive compulsiveness. I had five cars. Any interesting thing I did, I ended up overdoing. So for a while, for example, I got into tools. Then I’d just buy a whole bunch of tools. I also cleaned the house two or three times a day. Just obsessive cleaning.
I sort of realized I had a gambling problem and the OCD. At this point, I had five cars and a condo at Imperial Beach, the most southern point of San Diego. I just wanted to gamble, and I knew it was a problem. I’d make bets with everyone. I moved back in with my mom, because I was running out of money.
My dad opened a recycling centre, and wanted me to run it. I started running that as I was gambling. After work I’d just go and gamble for the day’s pay. I made a lot of money. Then my dad opened a new recycling center, and gave me the first one. Just gave it to me. I sold it after a year to two Arabs for two million dollars. My father wanted me to put all the money in an account, he said, “Put in the same account as the money already waiting for you.”
I did, so now I have five million dollars waiting for me. Only thing is, I’m sure I’ll die at twenty-one. Wes was twenty-five, Chris was twenty-three. I’ll go at twenty-one, I’m sure. Anyway, I put it there, in the same account, so then I didn’t have any money, and won’t really until I’m twenty-five. I had no money, all I had was three Mercedes'es, a guitar and a TV. So I said, “It’s time to get out of here, out of San Diego, I have no money, and I’ve eaten baloney for a week.”
My mother couldn’t keep a job, my dad had all the money. He paid the bills so she didn’t lose the house, but she had no money. I went to Hooters in San Diego, I know all the staff there. And this one night, I went out for a cigarette with this guy. It turned out he’s from here, from Maui. “No way, what’s it like there?” I asked him.
He started talking, and I decided to get out here. So I sold the guitar, the tv, and two of the Mercedes’es. That was the two show-cars, a Mercedes 300e ’89 with dub-floaters, airbags to make the car lift and tilt and all. The other one was a Mercedes S500 ‘03, it had a competition stereo system, subwoofer, tv’s in the head rests, 22inch rims, everything. It was such a clean car, not a scratch or a smudge, it was perfectly polished, had everything. I sold it all to get out here. I didn’t have money for insurance or gas anyway.
I had a plasma TV. The pawnshop only gave me a thousand dollars for the tv and the stereo from the car. I gave fifteen thousand. But I did it anyway, pawned it all and bought the ticket for Maui. I kissed my mom goodbye, and hugged my dad. I came out here and had 400 dollars after the ticket. Rented a car for a hundred and fifty bucks a month, got a payphone for three hundred, then I had an old bill I had to pay, and suddenly I had fifty bucks left. I took a night at the Banana Hostel, and suddenly I had twenty-three dollars left.
I had no job, no food, and only a quarter tank full of gas. I lived for three days in the car. I totally felt I was back to being eight years old. I panicked. I was living in a car again. I got really depressed. Suicidal.

A Grown Man's Crime. Part I/IV

Clay Thorton is a young man I met in Maui earlier this year. We became friends and he told me his story:

My name is Clay. I’m twenty now, I’m staying in Maui. I was born in Texas, in Brownwood. My mom and dad and I moved to San Diego a couple of years ago, because I got into some problems with the law. I was sixteen years old, and I shot a guy. My parents wanted to leave the state of Texas, because they were afraid of me, afraid people would come to kill me. We had some family in southern California, so we went and lived with them for a while. But it all started years back, before this all happened.

The Ups and Downs

My parents were poor. Really poor. We lived for more than six months in a ‘82 Toyota pickup. We lived of baloney and rice, eating it off the hands, the rice wrapped in the baloney. Both my mom and dad were unemployed, they didn’t have any money at all, and they were too stubborn to ask anyone for help. I was seven or eight when we lived in that truck. My grandpa saved up one million dollars, and he and my grandma knew, that they only had ten or fifteen years left to live in, so they bought a stock called Qualcom. They bought it when each share was 2 cent. They put a million on that, so many stocks. Before my grandma died, the stocks had turned into 20 dollars a share, so all that she and my grandpa had bought had turned into 31 million dollars. When she died, my mom and dad split with my Uncle Randy, fifty/fifty. That’s when my dad bought the house in Brownwood.
From living in a truck for close to a year, we moved to live in a sixteen-bedroom mansion on Brazes, the river that goes through Brownwood. My dad bought the house, and then from his fifteen million, he gave me and my brothers, Chris and Wes, three million each. They put them in bank accounts, so we couldn’t touch them till we were twenty-five. That’s the way he is, my dad. I still can’t touch them for another five years.
Wes, my oldest brother, died in Iraq in Fallujah before he turned twenty-five. He still had three years left in the marines, but he was KIA, killed in action, so he didn’t get any money. The three million he should’ve had is still my dad’s.
My other brother Chris died at twenty-three. He was gay. My dad called me one day as I was pumping gas, he said, “Get home now.”
I thought he was kidding. This was in San Diego, just two years ago. I hurried home anyway. He was standing on the porch, crying, my dad, he said, “Chris is dead.”
I went to the hospital, to the ICU, the intensive care unit. Chris was all connected to tubes. A drunk driver had hit him. He was not functional, he was not there. But I went there, to the hospital, I saw him.
Ever since then, my parents were really weird. My mother started drinking a lot, really bad, two of her kids were dead. My dad kept to himself, he just got really quiet. I started thinking I was some kind of outcast. Everything was just unreal, both my brothers just died. My mom and dad then divorced after twenty-seven years. I went to live with my mom, my dad went to live in central California.
I wanted to take care of her, my mom, because she was drinking a lot. I didn’t pick up a drinking habit or a drug problem, but I got a gambling habit, a really serious one. I went to casinos, and I made so much money. I gambled seriously for over four years. The most I made in one year was seventy thousand dollars. Then I bought my first car, a Mercedes ‘89.

Roses On a Wednesday

Today I bought forty long stemmed roses for myself. They are the most delicate pink I can imagine, closer to white than red, the color I would expect rose water to have. The color of a child's skin, the color of soft, of lightly fragrant, almost see-through, with dew fresh blood somewhere underneath to give a hint of warmth and rush and blush. The color of porcelain cups for Chinese tea. The color of care and the courage to smile after sorrow. The color of the belly of a cloud in a late summer's night, when the sun whispers, I was here and I will be back. They are the color of an ivory breast close to the nipple. The color of the moon of a finger nail on a cold October day with no gloves but someone else's hand to hold. The color of a thought that almost surfaced. The heads are big and heavy. The edges of the leaves are curling away from the middle, as if to give space for the heart of each of them to reach higher, up and out of the exploding middle. The frail color and sweet scent frame the curious reaching, their stretching necks, bursting with beauty, their aim in all directions in the world. They take up an entire table.

Quotes I Dig

"The problem with tea is, it's not coffee."

Tine Bruun

(This posting is dedicated to Sandra Kay, with whom I share a passion for self-quoting. Sandra visits my blog, writes a comment, goes back to her own blog and quotes - her own comments. Sandra writes here.)

Where Jesus Belongs And Not II

Thursday morning. My friend and I are going for our yoga class. While she goes into the shala or dojo or what the big room is called and chills on a mattress, I catch Bhawana in the hallway outside. Last impulse; I could tell him that I owe Jesus fifty bucks, forgot to bring them today, so could we please avoid him in that meadow? No, I think. Lying is so stupid. Bhawana might be understanding about it, leave Jesus out today, but suggest me to bring the dough on Friday, and what do you know, I could end up going on this dream trip and come back fifty bucks poorer from an imaginary encounter with the higher forces. Not worth it, I conclude. Better be dead honest.

Me: Hi Bhawana.
Bhawana: Hi. (Big smile. Veeeeery peaceful. Warm voice with lots of air.)
Me: Bhawana, yesterday you included Jesus in the dream voyage, right?
Bhawana: Yes, I did.
Me: (Big smile.) I was a bit offended by that.
Bhawana: Offended?
Me: Yes. See, I didn't know there was anything religious about this place.
Bhawana: There's not.
Me: Oh?
Bhawana: Yes, nono, there's nothing religious about it.
Me: Oh. About Jesus?
Bhawana: Yes, no, Jesus is just a symbol. (Very big smile. Happy to clear up this misunderstanding for me.)
Me: But, eh.. he’s, it's, eh.. he’s sort of a religious symbol, no?
Bhawana: No, don't think too much about it. Just take it as a symbol.
Me: But, -
Bhawana: Like a candle!
Me: A candle?
Bhawana: Yes, a candle is a symbol too.
Me: But what is Jesus the symbol of?
Bhawana: Are you a Christian?
Me: No. And I think that's also why I was so surprised, when I met Jesus yesterday.
Bhawana: But he's just a symbol. Like Buddha, that's why Buddha was there too. It's common in Yoga Nidra to use these symbols.
Me: So Jesus is a traditional part of the non-religious Yoga Nidra? (Very loud to make sure the secretary by her desk in the office right next to where we stand hears this. I have a hard time believing it, and hope for her intervention.)
Bhawana: Don't put so much into it. He's just a symbol. It’s like the two triangles on top of each other. I used them for years in the dream travelling, and I never saw them as anything but a yoga symbol. Untill someone said to me one day, that's also the Star of David.
Me: Yes. But can we agree, that Jesus is a Christian symbol?
Bhawana: He's a symbol of whatever you think, love, peace.
Me: But not one without certain connotations?
Bhawana: No.
Me: Not really a ’pure’ symbol? Like, you couldn’t just take the Swastika either, and claim it only as an old Chinese symbol, could you?
Bhawana: It’s not only Chinese!
Me: Ok, all right. Eastern. Asian. Different cultures have used it. Different, ahem, people, ideologies too. It’s not a unanimous peace symbol, right?
Bhawana: Well, like I said with the Star of David. To me it’s just a yoga symbol.
Me: What about Mohammed? Is he a part of the traditional Nidra symbolism as well?
Bhawana: No.
Me: Would you mind leaving Jesus out today?
Bhawana: Yes, I would mind. I'm not going to do that.
Me: Jesus has to be part of the Nidra, even though this is not a religious place?
Bhawana: Yes, I’m not leaving him out.
Me: (Nodding.)
Bhawana: (Smiling. In complete over super harmonic absolute DENIAL of the fact, that we’re not cool. I’m sure he’s a vegetarian too. And very happy and peaceful inside.)

I thought about leaving. I thought about doing the yoga part, even though my body was not at all at peace and in the mood for yoga, and then leave before the dream part. But we had two and a half hours ahead of of us and all of next week too, and it would be very demonstrative if I got up and left. I didn’t want to ruin it for myself by being too annoyed, leave now and have a hard time returning tomorrow.

I gave it a second thought. This might be one of the best days of my life, maybe the best. Should Bhawarna really spoil that, should a symbolic Jesus in a meadow? This was a beautiful Thursday morning, and I had a very fine day awaiting. Couldn’t I just relax, enjoy the yoga, and in case I should run into Jesus again today during the voyage, do something nice with him under that blossoming tree? Like walk up and French kiss him, like Jesus has never been kissed before? Tackle him, just to see his surprise? Ask him, if God really is that big, beautiful, black woman and if she and his dad are laughing about the big joke, that everybody's praying to the wrong parent? Poke my fingers through his hand holes and scream, Arrrhh, Jesus, that feels so GROSS!!!!

I stayed. Bhawarna made the same trip as yesterday. Only - without Jesus. And my day turned out beautiful all the way through.

Quotes I Dig

All of this happened, more or less.

Quote: Kurt Vonnegut

Where Jesus Belongs And Not

Jesus belongs in very few places for me personally. Jesus sometimes touches me. Sometimes I like Jesus. But hey, it's not overwhelming, and most of the time he downright scares the shit out of me. That's because he's introduced as somebody's personal friend, like their favorite buddy, and they sing some happy song about him, or say they've met him. Then they talk to me about him as someone I'm really missing out on all the time, now that I deny to hang out with him in my heart, or where it is they believe, I could run into him and chill and high five and hug and live forever together or something. But see, I don't really dig no Jesus. I don't need no Jesus in my life. I actually didn't order no Jesus, right?

Sometimes I must give Jesus a little space. The most touching Jesus I've ever met was definitely in Auschwitz. Yes, back to Auschwitz, and if I've written this before, excuse me, it can take the repetition. It's said, that those, who don't remember their own history, are forever doomed to repeat it. Well, just to play it safe, I'd rather repeat something about this chapter once too many, than once too few. In Auschwitz, in one of the death cells, I saw a Jesus.

Walking through Auschwitz is still in my legs. My third camp to visit, but so unprepared, I was. So long, the day was. So heavy, my heart was. So dark, the world was. Underneath the ground was a basement. Cells; small, cold, naked rooms with bars towards the hallway. A ninety degree turn in the hallway. New kind of "cells". These were not rooms with bars towards the hallway, we were walking in, as the cells we'd just passed. These were brick boxes, side by side, built along the side of the corridor. With a lid on top, through which the prisoner was stuffed down into the brick box. On top of each box was also a hole the size of a coin. Through which the prisoner could breathe. For the couple of hours, or days, it lasted, till he or she died. The inside measures of the solid brick box was less than four feet in both height and width. Around the insides of the breathing holes, in the wall, big soft holes were shaped, polished, like the feet of statues, kissed by thousands and thousands of tourists. These holes were dug slowly by the mouths and cheeks of the many prisoners, who thought that there was a way out of the cell, if only they stayed alive in there, keeping their mouth to the breathing hole, not sinking down in the box to where there was not enough oxygen, but hold the mouth close to the hole, keep breathing, wait for liberation. Not many, if any ever, were liberated from these boxes by anything but finally sinking down, away from the hole, into death.

The way out of that hallway was to turn around and once again pass by the "open cells" with bars towards the corridor. I'm exhausted from seeing what I'm seeing, understanding, feeling, fearing. In the corner cell, the one in which the prisoners have had the 'open' cells to their right and the box cells in front of them, the cell in which all mourns and cries have been heard, where most carried corpses have passed by, inside that cell, I see a carving on the wall. It's well preserved, a glass plate is protecting it, maybe there's even a spotlight on it. I don't remember that now. It's a carved Jesus figure. A hand size large carving. It's a man with a long face. He has a beard and long hair. His head is slightly tilted. He has a halo around his head, a circle drawn from ear to ear. He's wearing a gown. There's a heart in his chest. The man this icon portrays, is undoubtedly Jesus Christ.

There could be up to dozens of prisoners in these small cells at a time. It was the execution of the hardest punishment or death penalty to be there. I feel exhausted being there, but try to imagine, what exhausted can also mean. How differently exhaustion can be dealt with. And felt. Sitting in there, waiting to die from cold and starvation. And finding the tool and energy and courage and love to carve a Jesus figure in the wall. Just to shout something like, I have Jesus. I can't be exhausted. You can kill me, but you can't kill the heart in Jesus. You can't kill Jesus in my heart. You're my guard, but Jesus is my buddy. You have no heart, but we do. Jesus and me. Heart. We have. Heart.

I bought a picture of that carving in the gift shop. What? You didn't think there'd be a gift shop in Auschwitz? I think there'll be one in Heaven for that matter, selling clouds and fat angels who can say God Bless when you press their stomach.. well, only thing I bought was that photo, but I wanted that. A black and white photo of a carved Jesus with a heart in his chest. I will find a place for it in my house some day. That carving itself is, rather than Jesus, what matters to me. I somehow feel, I know the one, who carved it. Someone sat there, and made that right before dying. That act still amazes me, and I'd like to remember it, with that photo in an appropriate place some day in the future. It might be the only Jesus to ever make it to my walls, but this one will be welcome in my house, reminding me of a beautiful act of faith. Not a suffering skinny Jesus on a crucifix, no, a Jesus with a heart, made by someone about to leave the most heartless place I've ever seen.

Another Jesus that surprises me by not annoying me is in George Michael's Jesus To a Child. From the album Older. Not many songs can include the word Jesus and not be a song, I don't particularly like, even less buy and play regularly. I don't know how he got away with it. That Jesus gets to live through my loudspeakers. Another Jesus in my house. All right.

But now. Bad Jesus. Today.

I'm taking a couple of weeks' yoga class, every morning these weeks. My teacher is Danish, a forty-something year old man with long grey hair, called Bhawarna. Those of you who're not too familiar with Danish names, thinking from the Westerns and Hemingway clichées, that we're all called Niels, well, it's not too far from the truth. A lot of Danes are called Niels. Few are called Bhawarna. In other words, Bhawarna is not a typical Danish name. This teacher talks very Danish, looks very Danish, but let me guess, he was called Niels and went to an ashram once in the mid-seventies, and the big guy wearing the most colored sheets and incense sticks in his turban pointed at Niels and said, Bhawarna. Niels figured, that sounds so much cooler than Niels, I'll stick with it. What Niels never got, when the guru pointed at him and said that, was, that Bhawarna means "Damn Hippie" in Indian. Anyway, he's the teacher of the class. Now (or maybe always) - called Bhawarna.

At the end of the class, Bhawarma takes us on a dream voyage. This morning too. For ten minutes, he guided us through landscapes. Through forests, over hills, through valleys, we saw flowers, smelled the ocean, saw the swans on the lake, etc. He was actually really good at it, those things usually annoy me because the person talking takes too much of my attention with the language or voice or so, so I can't give in, and follow the actual voyage. But Bhawarna was smooth without being sticky. He got me in. And THEN - after almost ten minutes, I think, THEN- fucking, fucking, fucking - FUCK! He suddenly says, You walk over the meadow towards the tree, and under the blossoming tree you see Jesus. His arms are wide open and he is awaiting you. Next to him sits Buddha. Blahblah...I don't remember the next, I opened my eyes in terror and turned my head immediately to see if my friend was as shocked as me. She was asleep. I thought about getting up and leave. I stayed. But completely changed, now in a state of great frustration. What the fuck was that about? He just made me surrender to this thing, only to introduce me to Jesus??? This is a yoga and meditation school, not at all affiliated with anything religious. It didn't make it better, that he threw in Buddha next to Jesus, whatever the Hell cultural religious stew that was about anyway. I don't want any of them in my dreams. Even less when I dream, while I'm awake. I'm angry about this. Feel attacked. I was too vulnerable. Bad Jesus.

I might talk to Bhawarna tomorrow before class, just ask him if he would mind keeping J-buddy out of the dream sequence. Maybe I can make up an allergy. Tell him, I get a bad rash when I'm Jesus inflicted without a warning, particularly on the verge of my subconsciousness. Or tell him, I have a very bad Jesus experience behind me, that I'd appreciate, if were not to be relived during the dream thing, and I can't help it, if Jesus suddenly stands in front of me in a meadow, with his arms open. Or just say, that Jesus is waiting for a phonecall from me, and I'm kinda avoiding him these days, because I have no good reason why I'm not calling, so if Bhawarna would just spare me the embarrassment of running into him there in the meadow...I'll work out something. God help me.

Cave Woman Gives Another Chance To Johannes Brahms

Last night it became clear once again that I'm still not ready for the contemplative thrill of classical music. I don't know why I feel this as some skill I haven't acquired yet, an immaturity in me, which must be worked on. I expect the joy of classical music to be added to my life later on, when I grow up more. Like, when I grow up for real.

I don't think classical music is finer than rhythmical. I think it's more boring. It's too neat, even when it's Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov or some of the other crazy kids. It's the instruments, the symphonic form, the orchestration, the perfectly rehearsed performance, the predictable dressing and appearance of both musicians and audience. It's the dry air. Oh, the sacred mute atmosphere in the audience, the dead bodies in the rows but who - apparently according to their enthusiasm when talking about the concerts - are in a state of ecstatic wild turbulence inside during the concerts, but who, on the outside, appear as comfortably sleeping or I'd say seriously sedated, at the most showing a slight nod, a mouth end wrinkle, or an index finger tapping or waving half an inch to show that this is a favorite part, this is where the violins go beserk, oh yes, my favorite crescendo is building up, I can't control my index finger, it must follow the gentle down stroke of the bows drawn, as my closed eyes reveal my lostness in the sweetness of the mourning violin, and the lazy ever so slight roll with my neck describes how I'm surrendering to the cello's subtle giro from C minor to A, but see my foot, oh, I can't oppress its flexing, it's anticipating the bratch's sorrowfull song adressing the cellos, and don't we all know, that this more than anything, this passage's continued modulation, the never released but sophisticatedly held back yet constantly felt and dramatically staged in the changes back and forth but constantly rising and reaching further, transporting us forward, the drawing, the pulling, the symmetric usage of tonality and harmony, the schism between the passionate pain underneath and the light, pearly raindrops falling on top is what can be traced as testimony of Brahms' life-long love to Shumann's wife, a relation that never became more than a friendship, but here in particular undoubtly revealed as Brahms' heart full of love expressed through delicately composed emotions or emotional compositions evolving around her, sounding to and of her, calling for and adoring her, the love of his life.

Yes, I was at a concert last night. It was Brahms' strings sextets from the 1860's, when Clara Schumann beautifully did inspire the young Johannes. The concert was good, and the musicians were really good. And they were even young and cool, one of them is hot too, so it was like watching a music video at MtvClassic or something. (And the one of them who's hot, is the one who invited me, and the one who might read this. If you do; Dude, nothing is personal, you know that. I only showed up in the first place to show you my appreciation of the invitation, and to optimistically challenge the maturity thing, thinking I might have become old enough for this kind of fun.) I don't know, the genre just pushes some wrong buttons in me. I said before that I find it boring, and it's true. But I truly can't help but feeling, that it's me, who doesn't know better, who hasn't grown to fully understand and appreciate the grandiosity of a change from sotto voce to forte fortissimo. Am I so thick that I need death metal double floor drums and distorted growling to get a grand effect from music?

I lasted till the middle of the second half, then I left the party discretely. But I enjoyed the 3/4 that I lasted, and I felt very grown up and mature for the first hour, and particularly when I chose to stay after the break and all. Then, I needed to go home and listen to some very loud and dark Nick Cave, close my eyes, and sink deep into the music. Sweet.

Grammar Battle: Lie vs. Lay vs. Laid

In the strictest grammatical sense, 'lie' is an intransitive verb, whereas 'lay' is transitive. Conceptually, 'lie' is something you do to yourself, and 'lay' is something you do to something/someone else.

Word	Example
lie	You look tired. Lie down and rest.
lay	Lay down the keyboard and step away from the computer!

The past tense, however, gives many people fits. The past tense of 'lie' is 'lay', and the past tense of 'lay' is 'laid'.

Word	Example
lay	She lay in the shade, remembering her youth.
laid	He laid the infant in the crib.

Yellow Evening Light

I could be a bird. I would come to rest on the feeding stand outside your window. I'd beat my wings closely around me, and whirl up dust and grain shells against the sunlight before your eyes. I'd sit on the piece of wood, on which you had strayed out the grain for me. The sun would be setting far behind me, over the flat lands in the blurred horizon. I would raise my one wing high over my head, and hold the other spread out as my muleta in front of me. I would bend my head down towards my chest in a shy move, and dance around myself. I'd be my own bull and toreador. The sun would be behind me. The light would be hardest at the edge of my raised wing's silhouette. The dust would whirl in the light around me. Your eyes would be fixed on me. I would fly off. The dust and empty grain shells would hang in the air, over and around the piece of wood. The sun would hurt your eyes.

Things We Need Not Know: How Does Alec Baldwin Taste

Today is a recipe from my Danish friend, whom I have the honor of sometimes being cooked for by. Oh, my love affair with prepositions, I could almost have got a 'to' crammed in there too; 'whom I have the honor of sometimes being cooked for to by'. Is it more correct to say, 'by whom I sometimes have the honor of being cooked for'? Or just the plane 'who sometimes cooks for me'? But what then about the prepositions? They're the best, I don't want to do without them?

Well, here's her recipe for some great slow food: Lentil Stew Spanish Style. Anyway, she's a great chef, she calls this dish Sunday food, and I figured November 1st was a fine day to share the recipe. And today's Thursday, so if you'd want to make it for the weekend, well, now you're prepared. Here's her how to and what to expect:

Some of the finest food for cold autumn/winter Sundays. It looks quite sad but it tastes great and fills you up to the extent that you don't feel impatient, wanting, or awake enough to be critical of television. Don't expect sex after this meal.

Fry chopped bacon, garlic and onions in olive oil in large stewpan (make sure to add all the ingredients in the stewpan before you turn on the heat, then the garlic won't turn black or bitter) untill they are golden. Put aside in bowl, leaving as much of the oil as possible in the stewpan.

Fry fresh chorizo sausages in the stewpan, let them release their paprika grease and put them aside in the bowl.

Now boil water with salt; add lentils that you have washed in a sieve (you can mix black, green, du Puy, red; enjoy their colours while you can and don't miss the chance to touch them while you wash them, it's sensual) and let them cook for ten minutes while you fry chopped green peppers, a bit of chili, coriander seeds, chopped potatos (and a carrot in coins, but not too many, they'll make the stew sweet) in the stewpan, adding more olive oil if necessary. Strain the water off the lentils.

Mix all the ingredients in the stewpan, add red wine (don't be stingy) and water/bouillon and simmer under lid for ½-1 hr depending on your patience. (If you're not afraid of a little air in your bowels, you can also fry the uncooked, washed lentils with the rest of the ingredients and add water and red wine and let it cook altogether). Add more garlic or chili or paprika if you want.

The longer you let it cook at low temperature, the more mushy it gets: that's what you want. It doesn't look very attractive, but neither does Alec Baldwin, and he might taste good.

Serve with bread and red wine. The stew tastes even better the next day.

Romance

Romantic dreaming is my favorite anachronistic occupation. I sink into my heart, into my own century. Dark clouds are gathered. I see right through them. It's rough and steep ahead of me. I pass that and out into fields of gold. I see the forest ahead of me, and go to kiss every leaf. I sense a leap of my heart, my hopes and dreams unite in a faithful sigh, my eyes turn to the clouds adrift, my feet are anxious to walk through the autumn leaves and wear them in sweet kicks, handful by handful, briefly as precious dresses, yellow, green, laced with red and gold, orange, burning, dense, brown and drowned, colors of time, of seasons embracing and wrestling, humidity and dry heat splitting a leaf in equal powers and desires. Always leaves, they embrace me, the falling, twirling, dancing leaf in the wind, adieuing its branch, whooing to the ground, performing the travel of a lifetime while doing so, merrily falling to its own decay and dissolving. Whispering to me, I was here for this beauty, for this moment of you watching me fall. I fall for you. I take you with me, where are you now? And I answer the leaf, I'm yours, only yours. I'm always yours. There's no one else. Dance for me. Let the wind lift you. Turn, draw away, rise again, pirouette, enjoy, little leaf, enjoy and fly, as long as you do, we are lovers, and only here for each other. The forest is burning around us. The sun will shine for us alone, for when we are here, everything is allright. When the leaf has found rest, I am alone. The forest has set me on fire. I must try not to burn up. I give off sparks, send out flames in swords, I am lightning, I am the heat of the sun in my heart. I burn, I burn, I begin to melt from my fingertips. I leave the forest and seek the ocean. I run to the ocean. I become the ocean. I roll in thunder towards you, I try to reach your shores. I meet your coasts, I roll on to you. I will swim your beaches and flood your strands. I will be there for you to dive into. I will be cool. But I am a romantic. I can't help it.

Happy Birthday To My President!

Today is the President's birthday. Congratulations, Dear Mor, Maman, Ma'am, My Dear President. I send you lots of love and many thoughts today. The photo below is one I took during our roadtrip last year. It's from Oregon, I'm sure you remember. We had just crossed the bridge in the picture, and patient as you were, when I wanted to photograph all the wonderful bridges in that area, we pulled over and went down to the water. It is one of these moments, I remember clearly. I think you do to. This photo, and the hymn below, is for you on your birthday today.



Hymn To My Mother

There's no one in my world, whom I love, the way I love you. Also, there are few in my world, whom I have fought, the way I've fought you. Now, we fight so little, that I rarely think about the reasons, why we ever would. But when I think of you, the tenderness and sensitivity is always present still. Maybe it is the gift that we gave ourselves through the many conflicts we had. A frailty, an appreciation. An understanding of the preciousness we share. The knowledge, that we can lose and miss.

I thank you for so many things, I don't even think you know. You've given me many gifts from birth. Many loves. Much to love. A passion for the world, an eye for others. An ear for languages, a love for beauty. You've pointed around and made me see, which is still the best I do. I register, I pay attention, I appreciate. I listen, and I use my eyes, I try to truly see. When you and I are together, I am reminded; It was you, who gave these gifts to me.

I'm proud and happy that you are, who you are. You taught me early in life, that no one likes those who always complain about their health. And so you don't, and thank you for that. I care about you, and that you're well. But what a blessing, that you tell me interesting stuff, send text messages from all over the world, inspire with stories from your work, and find new things to laugh about, every time we talk. I want to be like that too. Now, and later.

You know my temper is to be adventurous. I've often disappeared and stayed out of touch. I sometimes need long periods of time in between family, also in between you and me. But when we talk, I hope you know, that I feel you very close. Nobody gets to talk to me like you, nobody knows me and listens like you do. Nobody is quite as appreciated as you, and makes that difference, that you do. Of course I don't tell you everything. I try to protect you. Sometimes I yell and get mad, when you're not inside my head. Because you're the one, I want to understand me. But even when you don't, you always support me. You're the one, who gets me the best.

I think most psychologists would agree, that few relations are as complicated as mother-daughter ones. I think we're doing pretty well. We've been given our past to deal with. And we do. I give you so much credit for your willingness to deal, to be in dialogue, in therapy together, to cry, to fight, to hug and make up. To move on. Together. I'm not sure I would take that much from a daughter, about her and me and us. But you do, you have done. I respect that, and see how far we've come. How well we're doing, how good we are together now. I look forward to the rest of our journey together. I love you.

Happy birthday, My President.

My Kid. Yandrea

I bought a child. A girl. She's ten years old, Brazilian. She lives in Fortaleza, on the north coast of Brazil. I got her for only $40 a month. A bargain, no? I figured I could use her for some sex services and maybe some child labor.

No, truth is, if anyone has read this blog lately, they'll know one thing for sure: I'm as pennyless as I can get. And for some reason, I manage to survive anyhow. And that on a fine level, indeed. I lead a great life in most ways. How can I do that? How can I have debt up to my ears, get spanked by the public system financially as well, not have an income, and yet live on an address, that few even dream of (I can make any real estate agent horny by saying my address), eat nutritious food every day, dress in a reasonable manner, use exTREMEly expensive products for my skin and hair, go out as much as I want to, and just generally dance while I sing all of that jazz? I'm a spender, and that, mm, big time. I love spending money, so - I do. As if there's no tomorrow. I don't give a shit. Money will come. They always do.

It's in my nature. I've always been like that. It's not a choice, it's not about trying to be more extravagant than I am, or become more of a luxurious being. Usually I dress very dressed down, and I'm not at all the trying-to-look-posh type, or one, who must always wear make-up and jewelry or something. I often wear the same clothes ninety percent of the time. Like, I'll find a boring but comfortably neutral and nice t-shirt, buy four of them, and wear one more or less every day for months. Don't get me wrong. But.

I can't buy bad quality without feeling I let down some instinct in me, and actually fuck up my own investment. I'm good at finding good offers, not that I spend time looking for them, they just always appear when I need them, and, I'm good at knowing what I actually need and want. So, I love gadgets. I own a ton of them, but I don't go out and pay a fortune for a gadget that can perform a series of stuff I will never use. But the one that does what I want the best, and looks the best, and feels the best, I'll buy, even if it costs three times what the one next to it does. Also if I hadn't planned on buying anything in the first place.

What do I get out of that? Well, first of all, I love my things. I own stuff, that is exactly the stuff I love to own. See, that's very important to me. Why would I surround myself with things that make me feel, that I have the second best, and would keep me in longing for the right thing? It would meake me feel poor, and I love to feel the richness of life. I want what fulfills me. Second, I get good quality. Which means I don't soon after having bought the not-so-good have to go out and replace it with the really good, when it's broken or worn out. I get stuff that lasts - design, size, usage, capability and handyness that doesnt' tire me after a few months or years.

My best gadgets, laptops, microphone, mixer, phones, cameras, DV-cam, hard-drives, USB-key, mini-disc, stuff like that, it's so worth it, having what really feels good, and keeps up with my personal demand for years and years, instead of leaving me soon longing for something newer or better. I love to spend the money it takes, and then feel satisfied.

Clothes. I buy expensive, if it makes sense. Sometimes it just does. Doesn't lose the shape. Feels better. Timeless design. Lasts season after season, brings lot of joy. I think I spend less, buying lasting cothes, than those who buy a ton of shit all the time.

I eat well. It's a matter of prioriety. A late learned skill in life, but the more valuable for me. Taking good care of myself is also very much about feeding me well.

So, this all adds up to immense consumption. Since my return from California, I've even been very modest because of the entire system fisting me with a laugh, that has sort of taken the top off the slide-the-credit card joy. I just feel slightly out of money these days. I'm indebted. Thousands, oh me-oh my, thousands and thousands, ten-thousands and ten-thousands, if you prefer. But, I know logic. I believe in money coming around, and they will. Hear me laugh very soon, it'll happen. It always does, it's called balance. Within long, my financial situation will be turned around. But I have been pretty modest, yet aware that when I'm still just surviving with my level of living, I'm spending a ton of money. (Honesty in a parenthesis: 'Modest' here boils down to: I decided not to go to Zanzibar in October. I did buy a new DV-cam. A custom-made designer bicycle. Stuff.)

So. My logic was: What's the last thing that seems right to do, when you're spending money without any income, and you're stuck in the system, so even crumbs are not thrown at you these days? Well, adopt a child, I'd say. About that, I'll be honest: I did not call up my man in the bank and asked; So, do you think this is the right time for me to start taking financial responsibility for a small school girl in a third world country?

I haven't adopted. I've just chosen to become Yandrea's sponsor for the next decade or so. I figured, if I can make my own life's ends meet when the situation is this fucked up on paper, but working out in reality, then I can make her ends meet as well. I chose 'Girl' and 'Brazil'. I found an organization, where I actually believe a good part of the money will reach her. They found me - Yandrea. I got her picture and stuff a few days ago.

What's it about with the money always coming? I let it flow, I spend, and then I call for money, and they come from all sides. Not always in the form of cash, but often in the shapes and functions that I wish for. But I usually get everything I want and need and wish for. The universe always works with me. I figured, why not let that order benefit Yandrea as well? I can support myself no matter how bad things are and how impecunious I am. If I calculate her into the universal budget, then I'm not only surviving, I'm also getting her through school. I mean, I'll sit in a restaurant and choose the cheapest on the menu, because I've had to for years being a student and all. The big spender-me, that I've resumed here, doesn't at all mean that I'm not aware of money or prizes or such. Just means, even when I live low key, I spend a lot. It's Denmark, it's impossible not to. Yandrea, I believe, doesn't even sit much in restaurants.

So, will I, in that life, find the $40 a month for Yandrea, now that I'm already at the challenge of finding money for my own life? I think so. Her life and mine will in some way work out. I love money. I love life. Let's spend it all. It's life, real life! Money is just money to get us through.

The Castell Mill. Copenhagen 2007

Lust. Rowing. Leaves

I've written three short stories in Danish for a contest with a deadline tomorrow. The second largest newspaper in Denmark has arranged the contest, and I figured I'd submit. 12.000 characters limit and the subject is "Lyst". Lyst translates broader than straight to Lust. "Lyst" also implies, without the sexual undertones; desire, appetite, wish, inclination, joyful attention towards, vigor, to feel like something. We use it as an affix to a lot of things as well, to indicate that they involve leisure or are done voluntarily. Lust-sailing, adventure-lust, shopping-lust, lust-murder, fight-lust, lust-fishing, marry-lust, a lust-house, etc. So, I've written three stories that I'll submit.

Yesterday, Saturday, I rowed my first race. It was very cosy and fun. And the speed demanded was downright shocking to me. The day was the final day of the season, so my rowing club, Københavns Roklub, Copenhagen Rowing Club, had a race, a tiny regatta, in the afternoon, and a party in the evening. Everyone was welcome to sign up for the race. The boats were then filled by drawing, and the heats were organized. We were all in in-riggers, which means this: two rowers in a boat, one oar each. One coxswain. These are beautiful long wooden boats. I was drawn to be in a boat with one of the very best girls, if she's not the best one, and we got ourselves a very fine small coxswain. All heats were only two boats against each other.

Well, we didn't make it further than the first round, but we were side by side with the boat, we lost to. And for me, it was the first time of trying to really give something in a sport. It was a sprint of 1000 feet. And I'd never tried to row like that before. I explained to the others, that I had only been on the water five times, and they were very understanding and thought it was cool, that I had signed up anyway.

My rowing so far; first time was in the single sculler, which is documented here on the blog, the next two times were in a double sculler with Goldie. In a double sculler both rowers have two oars. Then twice I had tried this kind of boat, an in-rigger. These two times in in-rigger have both taken place in the past week with Goldie Hawn and our new friend, who's just as new as me in an in-rigger, but used to rowing, and quite a talent from nature. He's from the Faroe Islands, works as a doctor at a Danish hospital now, tall and handsome, late-twenties, and has rowed in some big traditional Faroe Islands boats before. In the Danish medical system, when you've finished your studies and enter the hospital world, you have to do three years of changing units, your intern years. He just switched from OB/GYN to pediatrics. I think Goldie Hawn's and my new friend can only be: Dr. Doug Ross.

The three of us have had two great trips out in an in-rigger in the past week. We rowed through the harbour, to an island far out between Denmark and Sweden, through the city canals of Copenhagen, back and forth between the bridges in the Copenhagen Harbour, and have just enjoyed ourselves, the rowing, and these clear October days immensely. When we row together, we take turns of rowing starboard, port, and sitting in the stern being the coxswain. Goldie Hawn, Dr. Doug Ross, and I practice to elegantly get around when crawling from one position to the next, in the middle of everything, usually every tenth minute or so. Fun.

Now, I've been rowing with these two big guys. Goldie Hawn of course, is an Olympic Champion and double world champion. Dr. Ross is just good and strong. I thought I had tried rowing somehow. Even though we find a lot of time to chat and laugh and occasionally take advantage of Dr. Ross' exceptional knowledge, such as repeat all latin names for the female genitalia, labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, vulva, prepuce, ovaria, etc., we do actually also row, quite seriously and fast, man, fast. I thought.

But - yesterday. No changes, no crawling around. Just a 1000 feet sprint. I was given starboard. We had to row out to the starting point. As we did so, I asked the stroker (the good rower in front of me, who'd been given me to sit behind her, alas), -Can we just try to do, what we're going to do when we race, just so I get an idea of what's going to happen? -Sure, she said, and in some codes she agreed with the coxswain to do 'Ten Strong'. The coxswain counted down four strokes, something like; Four-go, three-go, two-go, THIS TIME, and suddenly the stroker, rowing right in front of me, went crazy. She just went from what I would call good, high speed, to just about three times that.

I admit my naitivity, but I hadn't even imagined, that this kind of boat, and oars of that size could move that fast. Even less, accelerate like that, she sort of changed character and rhythm in a split second, from sweet and one-two-one-two - into mean and seven-eight-seven-eight, I'd almost say simultaneously a change of discipline and element as well, from rowing and water - to flying and air, holy shit, I almost started laughing going is this a joke to scare the shit out of me and like you know, when you pretend something and only sketch it instead of doing it, yadi-yadi and then we pretended we did it right, right? Only, I could see, that she did do it right. She got the strokes through the water every time, she didn't lose it, she just seriously speeded up. So, I didn't laugh. I maybe said a sound. Maybe a studdering double-sound. A sound, that tried to take itself back. A sound that tried not to make a sound. And then I started to immediately eliminate my brain, slide like a machine with an oar moving in front of me with the super fast sliding movement, push off with my feet, draw that oar, kick off, kick, draw, kick, draw, not too deep, hit the chest with the oar, slide forth, draw, hit the chest, slide, kick, slide, slide, slide, draw that oar, or rather, draw the boat between the oars, feel the resistence of the water and the drift of the boat.

Then we were at the starting point, I asked something like, So, are we going to go like that for the whole time? (I think I meant that as a joke) and they said in choir, YES! Give it all you've got.

We actually started out in the lead, but came in a little bit later than the other boat, side by side, but we were last. I was dizzy for half an hour after. I've never tried to perform like that before physically, and then in a state of shock over what was taking place. It was great. Next time, I want to be prepared. And I want to be better. Too bad this was the last day of the season. Next time will be in spring 2008. Beware. I'll be there. Now knowing, rowing, can be fast.

Today, I went for a walk in an autumn withering beech forest in the outskirts of Copenhagen. Tonight, colors are edged in my memory. Twelve thousand leaves or more, of sunned yellows and fragile greens. Not many reds. Oranges. Crisp air, saturated with gray light, falling gently through the colored, papery leaves. Promising not to penetrate their thin and brief momentum. Though it could.

Quotes I Dig

Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up, I am alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all of my energies to develop myself. To expand my heart out to others: to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have only kind thoughts towards others. I am not going to get angry, or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.

Quote: Dalai Lama

Tara The Beautiful. Part I: The First Feeling

I have a wonderful friend called Tara. I will over time tell parts of Tara' story. Part one will be today.

Tara used to be called Craig, but now, she's Tara. The change from Craig to Tara only happened recently, but was of course connected with the entire past life of Tara, or Craig. The change, or Tara's decision to change herself, or rather realize herself, started with one moment. I've asked Tara to remember that moment in time, where something happened. What happened was, that Tara had her first feeling.

Tara, who at this time was Craig, had been brought up as a boy, lived her life as a man, and was at this time a man of thirty. Tara, or Craig, dated our common friend for most of a year, a gorgeous red-haired librarian, let's call her Helena. Those two pepole, whom I've often see together because they now are close friends, are, especially together, one of the most beautiful couple of people I know. They shine and vibrate the most sensitive beauty and presence, to the world, and towards each other.

I know that Craig was a man without an emotional life. I asked Tara to tell about her first memory of ever having an emotion, a feeling. The moment in time, which turned in to be crucial to the decision to turn from Craig to Tara.

Tara tells;

There is a very fuzzy memory of a feeling from when I was a very young girl, before I was forced to become a boy. That pretty much comes to a big feeling of hurt. This early feeling is one, that I've only recently re-discovered was there. It was forgotten for many years, I had no memories of feelings in my life. It's one of me being yelled at, at a very early age, for calling my 'underwear' panties. Because growing up in my house, only girls had panties. Boys had 'underwear'. Directly after this, my older brother beat me up.

My very next feeling happened when I was thirty years old, on May 7th about 4pm with Helena, who I was dating at the time. This was last year, 2006. Helena was sitting next to me at a concert of her friend, pianist Liza Parkins. There were two other people on stage playing a bass and a cello. They were playing Clara Schumman's piano trio in G minor Opus 17, when I found myself in this huge, defining moment for me.

I closed my eyes, trying to just listen and be open about the music. Then it hit me, and throughout the entire piece I was so scared, literally scared at all this STUFF going on inside of me. I had no clue what was going on! My body was doing all sorts of stuff I'd never felt before, and I still to this day have no idea what feelings I actually had, other than fear of WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING?

But it seemed GOOD whatever it was. I wanted to stay there and feel for a while, but I also wanted to retreat and figure out what in the world was happening. There was a battle going on in my head about staying in the feeling or opening my eyes, and try to rationally understand all this stuff happening. In the end, both kind of won. I stayed like that for a while, but eventually my conscious brain took over, and I was happily trying to figure out what happened.

But that's not all. While my eyes were closed, I SAW stuff in my head, colors and everything. That didn't last long at all, but they were there. It started as a kind of white light amongst dark, because, when my eyes are closed, all I normally see is dark. But it changed into greens and blues and purples and stuff. Still darker colors, but actual colors. They seemed to go along with the music. Later I've learned, that this is called synesthesia.

It was exciting, and I wanted to tell Helena, but I couldn't, because we were in the music recital hall. It was weird. I also really wanted to feel again. I tried in the next few pieces, but I couldn't. By then my conscious brain had taken over again.

Quotes I Dig

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

Quote: Anaïs Nin

Kafka Smiles To Me And I Have My Health

My life is completely crazy these days. I could tell you details that would make anyone shiver. Everybody who hears just the headlines of what's going on these days, are SHOCKED. It's really crazy. Yesterday I received six letters. Inside one of them were old letters from the university, returned to them and then stamped "Received May 15" and other old dates. Someone has collected them when they were returned because I was living in California, and not untill five months later, now, have these envelopes been put into a bigger envelope and sent to me. The other letters were from the tax office, the financial state support for students' office, and the administration of the economic fund which has lent me money every month for the past many years of studying. It was in other words the entire bureaucrazy in one big choir, singing WE WILL, WE WILL FUCK YOU, bills of up to many thousands of dollars, more or less rightfully sent to me, another telling me that because of my inactivity of studying (eh, I believe I've been studying in the wild land called 'abroad' more than full time for the past year), well, because of that lazyness from my side, I'm no longer entitled to shit.

All the letters were full of lunatic kind of information, such as it's pretty crazy, if I forgot to mention that. The system not informing each other and just signing me out all together at once. And of course, most of it is not supposed to be like that, I'll just have to file complaints now according to §§11-48, document everything from exams and syllabi, income, tax refunds, address changes, bank account balances and funding purposes to my mother's underwear size and the full pedigree of my future dog. This, they promise me, will for sure make them change these notions of me and my situation. As all of it is highly interdependent, they regulate last year's tax according to my study activity over these past years, and regulate this year's tax according to the income of last year, and state support and loans are regulated according to all of it, and every time Uncle Tax sends a letter with a new up-date, the state support system sends me a new bill for the money they now think they paid me too much last year. Every office has a couple of weeks' time for treatment of this. It all starts with the tax system making three serious mistakes. This has been going on for half a year, but is culminating this week, not least with the five month old letters arriving in an envelope with these blue stamps on them, saying 'Received in May', come on, could they have re-sent them to me a little earlier??

Well, I spoke to Lady Tax last week, and had to ask her, if we could agree, that this would have been much easier and more fun and flexible in Russia? She wouldn't agree. I asked if she agreed, that all my papers now with all these counter-counted, back and forth, wrong, corrected, un-understandable numbers now looked like Shit In Curry or some other bad gullash dish? She partly agreed. I eventually resumed for her the mistakes, and made her admit that one by one they were THEIR mistakes. Not difficult, since I also with a couple of weeks in between receive letters that say 'Full Agreement' and then they draw back everything and say straight up that I was right, they had calculated wrong and unnecessarily required this and that, and now it's all ok. She agreed, they had fucked up every time. I asked her, Where can I call and get an apology? She said, Yo-k ld-ah, what? I repeated, You've fucked up my tax papers for 2006, 2007, and 2008, even though I've done everything right, sent you everything you've asked for every time, you're telling me now, that it's your mistake, your mistake, your mistake, I've spent hours and hours and hours on this, I'm waiting on phones listening to miserable versions of Chopin, faxing you, scanning documents, complaints, letters, documentation, requiring attestations from the foundations that pay me, from my banks, I send you everything on time, and then you neglect the deadlines and fuck up for the year to come as well, you involve the company I once had that I closed three years ago only later to say that was unnecessary and a mistake from your side, you send me wrong forms and wrong bills and let this effect all other official institutions I'm in touch with and dependent on, I haven't received state support since July because of you guys - WHERE DO I CALL AND GET AN APOLOGY? She said something stupid again. I repeated again, calm, saying all of this has happened and is still happening, ok, I just want to know, Where do I call and get an apology? We talked like this, untill I heard her say the words, We do not give apologies. Thank you, I said, and hung up.

I leaned back and looked to the sky, and Kafka sent me a big smile. I smiled back. For the past week I'm surviving thinking this: Thank fucking God, that this is not a hospital system, that I'm being fucked over in, with, and by like this. This is only money. It's only a few years of my life, that it's been this complicated. Yes, they've roasted me for the company I had, too. I sold art for three years. I haven't paid much tax lately, as in, for some years, and they like to discuss that matter with me. Anyway, was this my health and not just my money, there is no doubt. I would have had the wrong leg removed, they would have cut off my testicles, my laser operation for blurred vision would have resulted in a third eye in the middle of my forehead, my donation of a kidney to my sister would have accidentally caused all of my intestines to be relocated in my thighs and the hip lipo-suction would, whoops, the fat, of which a bit should have been implanted in my lips, have turned into an amputated left foot combi with a spontaneous implementation of silicone tripple-D tits on my back and a nose-job to get the Muhammed Ali look out in my profile.

In that situation, I'm not even sure an apology would make much of a difference. Here, it somehow made me feel better, to hear the State Apparatus say to me, with Franz listening, We do not give apologies. No. Of course you don't! The world is in order. You're The System. This is just the trivial Girl Meets System And Gets Fucked Brutally In The Ass. Say please! Alas. Thank God it's only money.

I Sleep Lightly

In the darkness of my sleep, there is light. I let myself fall backwards into sleep, I surrender and try to give in. I fall into a darkness. But it is not solid, there is light inside. My sleep is a grid. Inside the dark, there is light. I wonder if the sleep is suppose to be dark, and the light is disturbing me. Or if the sleep is reaching the light. Maybe sleep is resting in the light. Maybe my sleep is not complete because I resist and stay out in the dark. The dark is woven of black threads. But they are not woven close enough, for the light enters. Too much light is in the dark. My sleep is not dense. I never know if I have slept or only travelled through half-lit landscapes of shadows and figures. If I have touched shapes and sensed pits underneath and around my feet. If I have seen anything. If I breathed. If I had my eyes open or closed. If I were alone or not. I come from there. I make it to awakening.

Streets of Salvador

The Complete Recovery From Drunk Weekend

When I do stuff like drinking as I have this weekend, I need my friends. It usually takes me a day, then I'm all ok. I don't think I've ever regretted anything for more than a day, and in the long run, I have no regrets, not a single one. I need the friends to laugh at me, and to tell me their stories, that are worse than my own newly experienced ones. I had a habit for some years of calling certain friends and family members on Sunday mornings, I knew exactly who they were, the ones, who'd always done something far worse than me. I did it just to comfort myself, when I was having a hard time getting over my weekend.

What do I do today? I go on a diet of Dean Martin's Everybody Loves Somebody Sometimes, Wu Tang, and Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, and balance it with a string of memories of friends' stories.

My friend who is a palaenthologist ph.d. student at Yale told me this one: A professor at Oxford, I don't remember if my friend knows him and has the story from his mouth, or if my friend was on the professor's mailing list, either way, it's straight from the man himself. This professor had majorly drunk written an email to everyone in his mail contacts, that he had found the solution to the enigma of the universe! Next morning he found to his horror, that he had written and sent this email, yes, to everybody he knew, basically. He had to write a follow-up mail and say that it wasn't true. No solution. No big answer. Just alcohol.

My friend who's an actor, once stood in Krasnapolsky, a Copenhagen bar that was a hot in-place during the 80s-90s, he stood in the bar and made a pass at a girl. He was severely drunk. At a point she turned away, and he didn't get why. Untill he looked down. He had pissed his pants. In the bar.

My very tall friend was on his way home when he fell on his bike in one of the busiest places in Copenhagen, around Nørreport Station. It was ten in the morning, the morning traffic was rolling. In Denmark, there are bars open 24-7, so you'll have nights out that don't end untill the next day. He was lying on the bike path, unable to get up and get his bike tangled out of his very long legs. Like a beetle on its back, for minutes. With a lot of sober people trying to help him. The same friend once called his girlfriend while he was very drunk, and while he was talking to her on the phone, he biked into one of the lakes of Copenhagen. She just heard the blurp--blurp...blurp..and an hour later, he came home. Dripping wet and without his phone.

Anyway, now I'm over it. Forget it, I think, and it's forgotten. We all do funny things when we drink, I boil water in pans and write emails in their own language. Besides, this rowing has reduced my alcohol intake quite a lot already. I so don't like sayings like, Your own fortune is good, but others' misfortune isn't bad either. I can't stand it. But others' drunken stories can be good sometimes. Just to feel, that I'm not alone over here in the funny corner. Eh.. hek Nafe?

Travel Through My Brain

Today I am cruising through my own head. It's uncomfortable and messy and ugly. I can't even afford the ride, I'm the blind passenger, it's through the ghost house in Tivoli where scary puppets appear all the time in front of the trolley, the trolley is thrown from side to side and sound effects of small girls screaming and big men roaring is exploding at every corner I turn, the trolley is too small and my knees are crammed against the rail bar in front of me, this is Indiana Jones on bad crack, the spider webs hanging in big, white bulks are not scary, just annoying in their clichéed Halloween spooky attempt, the suburbs I travel through are scary, and remind me of childhood, the thermometers on the porches just outside the front doors, the plants in pots and flowers in beds, the apples on trees and the water in fountains, the children on small bikes and the women with children inside their stomachs and children with dolls in their arms, the men with hoses and the cars on parade, birds eating dirt and dogs piling shit, the smiles, the joy, the fucking stupid happiness and white teeth self-content of economic overflow and shallow nothingness and let's get a social hobby and run for excercise in bright colored sweat wear with shiny zippers everywhere, let's have grandparents visiting because they love the kids and make us feel younger, let's plant a tree because it's pretty, let's be ecological because it's more expensive, let's live and die here, nothing scares me like the suburbs.

I'm hungover, haven't been as drunk as I was yesterday since the day before. It's horrible, I can't say anything else. It's funny and horrible. I do things that make absolutely no sense. I lose myself and find me again in places and states, I never knew existed. Thursday night, my friend and I drank so much red wine, that sixhundredandtwo doves could have drowned in it simultaneously, then we went out to drink beers in the bars, what the Hell were we thinking, she walked me home and I decided after she left me, to boil some water in a pan, what the Hell was that about, one of my friends from my kitchen came out and found me in the kitchen, a sauter pan half full of water and me sleeping in a chair, she said, Hey Tine, you're sleeping and your water is boiling, what are you making, why are you boiling water in a pan? I told her a long stretched lie about me drinking with the guys I'm rowing with, I'm not rowing with any guys and have never been drinking with them. Last night another great party, it has become fashion here to do Russian theme parties, and someone did too last night, that of course means loads of vodka, and that means me shitfaced again, I was dancing with all the beautiful ladies, two at a time, which was great fun, and then I found the brilliant idea to go and email someone, whom I've met once and then emailed a little with, the email looked like this;

hek Nafe

det er jo en koatsastordfffw
skriv venlisgst til mig. jeg behø vere at h-re fra dig

aan

Let me translate;

hy Nafe,

it is a coatsaatorfffw
pleasde write to me. i ne ede to h-ar from you

aan

Ok, the guy's name is not at all Nafe, not even close, as is mine not really aan. How the fuck this came into my head as good communication, I don't know. I think the word coatsaatorfffw is supposed to mean catastrophe. Why I decided to drop the proof reading phase, I don't know. That I sent this mail at 2:41 am I do know. What the urgency was about, and why I needed to hear from him, I don't know. That I haven't heard from him, I do know. Honestly, I know I'm probably supposed to be ready to kill myself out of shame over stuff like that. But I think it's too funny. I mean, it looks mostly like poetry to me, and that of a more sincere quality, than anything I could produce when I'm sober. Nafe? I showed it to some friends this morning, and the best compliment I got was from one who counted and said, Well, you actually got six words right. Like, they're real words. And then they called me aan a whole lot and shouted hek Nafe a lot.

I never want a girlfriend. Women talk so fucking much. I never want a boyfriend. I't just won't work. Men don't like feelings, and I'm all about feelings. Feelings are bullshit, only thing worse than people with a lot of feelings is people who can't deal with their feelings. Men who have an emotion, and expect the world to do the wave. A man! With a real emotion!! I want my family to go away. I would like to have Denmark to myself. I think I'll work out a plan for how to make the other Danes leave. Just move to Sweden or something. Germany. Both places have huge forests with lots of space.

I sit on the very edge of the bench and rest my elbows on my knees. I slowly spit on the asphalt between my feet. The old lady next to me holds her bag a little tighter. I snort like a stupid teenage boy. It's a bright sunny afternoon, I am moon-sick and gloomy. Being a young girl keeps me free of so much suspicion, I see the Arab guy standing over there in Addidas, he's definitely assumed more of a dark figure than me. Suspicions, that avoid me because I'm a young woman who smiles a lot, also to strangers: That I dig child porn. That I'm an alcoholic with a small coke habit on the side. That I have mean intentions and aim to hurt people and make them go home and cry over what I just said. That I'm selfish. That I'm in huge, constant, existential pain. That I'd like to spend years sitting on a bench as my single purpose in life. It's fucking unfair. They all assume that I want to make people happy. Fuck that. That I want to have small, sweet children, that I can be good to. Fuck that. Truths about me: I want to kill and rape and destroy. I am a dark and evil monster. I have tar in my veins and gnarly branches growing out of my ears and mouth. I break them off every morning, so I can get around easier. I spew fire and shit coal. I have a breath that make birds drop from the sky, and I sometimes eat raw infants and living rabbits for breakfast. I shower by rubbing myself in rotten eggs and think of them as decaying featuses nourishing my dark soul.

I went to see the national championship of rowing today. It was all right. It was on the beautiful lake, Bagsværd Sø, and they were all very good and it was all very pretty. Purtyh. Next year I'll be in it. Probably in a four boat, me and three other ladies. Yes. Now, I just have to get immensely strong. So strong that no one can ignore me, when I make the step into the rowing world and courtesy and say, Hi, My name is Tine Bruun, please row with me. I need to be so strong. So strong. I will be one big muscle. They will look at me and say, are there any bones inside that muscle? Because to me, it looks like one big muscle. No, it's just a muscle. I think that's what they will say. They will call me The Muscle. The feminine name, The Muscle. I will make Hulk Hogan feel petite. And we all know, Hulk Hogan is all about feelings. Fucking unbearable. Get over it, Hulk. That's how Muscle I will be.

Nobody writes me, nobody ever writes me. I get no text messages, I get no letters. I get no comments, no emails, I get no love. I write so much, I love so much, will somebody love me back? I want somebody to share, share the rest of my life, share my innermost thoughts, know my intimate feelings. Why do I find myself as an open my diary and happen to forget it on the corner of the table and here's my life on a blog, instead of a normal life involved with normal people, give me normality, give me love, give me the fucking suburbs, just give me someone who loves me. I take off my shoe and hold the heel cap to the ground, I let the toe point to the sky, how high is that? That's one foot tall, somebody that small will do, just a tiny little somebody will do, but not no one. That's too little, it's just too few. Not enough. Write me, somebody. Want me. Love me. It's an order. Oh, I'm love-sick because I'm hungover. Makes me feel I'm drying out. Overdressed and underused. Love is so sweet. I love love.

Someone once swam out in the middle of a fjord because he was going crazy from love to me. He told me later that that was why he had done it. I just thought he was weird when he did it, it was a seriously big fjord. We were together for one hundred days. I've never before or after counted days in a relationship, but I did with him. It ended on the exact day one hundred. He was a drug dealer and weighed over twohundred pounds. My life is such a mess. I think I've never learned how to live like other people. I've never learned how to be grown-up or how to have a relationship. I've never learned what's right and wrong and up and down. What other people do, that seem normal to them seem completely screwed up to me. What I think is fun is crazy to them. I think if I ever try to move to a suburb, I might get thrown out. They'll make a town meeting, collect signatures, and decide to get me out. Maybe they won't like to have me around their children. Is there actually a manual for life? The one all the normal people have been keeping from me always. Maybe they like to have me to show them, what a messy life really looks like. The example to point at and say, Look kids, that's the kind of mess, I'm talking about. Now do your fucking homework and eat your boiled carrots. Or else, yes, look at the lady, look at her!

I think I'll wait for a man to come and rescue me. Or maybe Jesus. I think I will stay me, the way I am, and try to imagine that it's super cute to be a mess. Oh, Tine was such a mess untill I met her. You know, the arty type, always involved in something funny; music, writing, painting, rowing, blogging, alas, the girl was all over the place, a real cannonball. And then he will rescue me from my mess, and who knows if happiness lies in those damn suburbs for me too? He'll build a little home, just meant for two, from which I'll never roam, who would, would you? It'll say Tine & Jesus Bruun on the door. How I can picture it.

I came home today from the national championship and so much had happened here at Regensen. There was work day, it was my idea, I proposed it recently and people thought it was a good idea. So, I set the date and planned a lot of work to be done with our practical people in here. Made a box for suggestions, and we planned around people's own wishes for projects. Then I found out the championship was today, so I couldn't be here. I had to go and meet some people up there, see what competitive rowing is about. I cooked Chili Con Carne for forty people last night, so there was free lunch for everybody today. I already put a lot of hours into organizing this day, so I felt ok leaving. The addics and basements have been cleaned out, two big containers of old furniture were cleaned out, bathrooms have been washed down so they're ready to get painted, all the brass handles have been polished. It's neat.

I want to move through purple, through orange, I can't have green today, particularly not lime green and the light acidy greens, I need deep pink towards grey, I could work with black, burgundy will make me throw up, I hate blue and marines, all aquas are horror to my gut today, yellow is false and betrayal, I'm afraid to find out what starsigns people are because they might match the descriptions given in the magazines and then I wouldn't know what not to believe in, I need astrology to be all phantasy, even though I'm a bull, I couldn't be anything else, I'm a fire dragon, couldn't be anything else, there's sixty years, sixty years, in between that we are born, all Zodiacs get me better than I get myself, but the rest must be makebelieve, only I am the right one to fit the types we are, us bulls and dragons, when we are born with those sixty years in between, we live and burn, we crash in the end with long licking flames after our selves, we drive cars into concrete walls as we shout CARPORT and then we park on the other side, we run over fields, we wear see-through scanties and long black boots, we fuck only wearing cowboyhats, suspenders and natural triangles of curly hair, we don't crash and burn, we burn untill we crash. We don't say goodbye. We throw a fist in the air and stomp a paw in the ground, we roar through our teeth, through gridded jaws and woven moustaches, sound emerging from the Hell of the Pit of our Stomach and flowing out into Our Space. When we die, the world is cancelled. The ride is over.

Random Things About Me

I often make a cup of coffee, place it on the table next to me, get up, put on make-up, perfume, shoes, a coat, pick up my keys and a credit card, and then I stand there, in the middle of the room, and look at the cup of coffee, untouched, ready to drink, I haven't had coffee yet today and actually truly need it. I look at the coffee as if it's a parallel life of mine manifesting in front of my eyes. One, in which I'm just about to have a cup of coffee, and sit there and relax with today's work. And I don't get it. I just made the coffee? I just decided to leave the house? Sometimes, I think my life is one long string of left cups of coffee and returns to cold, left cups of coffee.

Certain keys are evidently scared shitless of me, they avoid me and hide at every occasion. Especially if they're important and able to get me into important places, where I rarely go. In my everyday life, I'm a smart key person. I have my keys in very specific places, so I can find them every time. But well, say the keys to my mother, The President's apartment. They're permanently gone, and it's always been that way, no matter what apartment she lives in, or how often I visit. This morning skyping, we talked about me maybe staying in her apartment soon, while she's in Rome.
She says, I'll leave you the car key. Oh, but remember to bring your own house key. Shit, I say before I can stop it. And we both laugh, and know exactly what's going on.
Eh, ah, ahemn, sure, you know what, I'm not quite sure..How does it look? I ask.
The President is a dry person, which is also why I adore her and am getting to terms with the fact that as different as we definitely are, I'm becoming more and more like her. She stops laughing and says, It's flat. It shines.

I believe a great lesbian woman is lost/sleeping in me. Don Johnson, my good friend, says that all his close female friends, five or so, who've met me - all, ALL of them have said independently, that if they were ever to have sex with a woman, it should be with me. I've never kissed a woman who hasn't afterwards brought me either flowers, chocolates, a picture of herself, a poem, a love letter, or all of that. But. For every woman I find sexually attractive, there are a hundred men. And in between the times I meet one of the hundred men, there are weeks and weeks, or rather months and years. So, much, much farther between the women. But they exist, I only wish there were more of them. I like to hold them.

I love to have cash lying around. I often have hundreds of dollars in cash lying around on shelfs, in drawers, on the bottom of empty bags. When I walk around, I sometimes carry hundreds of dollars in a bunch in my pocket, just because I like to. I am indebted in the bank, but I love to have plenty of cash around me.