TINE BRUUN

Quotes I Dig

2011-10-25T10:47:00.001+03:30

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Quote: Anaïs Nin

One Last Note To Self

2011-10-18T10:40:00.002+03:30

I was once thinking about going to India to walk with a backpack and no goal. (I was also thinking about becoming religious. I was clearly losing my mind.)

It's cheap to go to India. I would do yoga and look at poor people and elephants all day long. Eat spicy food. Could it get any better? See some rainbows and dolphins and hippies dancing in the moonlight. Let my hair grow.

It made me wonder about the word family man. Why is there a word for family man? What about a family woman? Is that a pleonasm? Is it in the word 'woman' that she's a 'family person'? Whereas a man can be any kind of man, and then if he's into the family thing, he's that kind of a man. What kind of a woman walks around in India with no goal?

Note to self: Be any kind of woman you want.

Create Your Own Reality

2011-09-27T21:36:00.007+03:30

My stepson at five is trying to sleep. He turns to me and whispers with his eyes closed, "I just imagine that I'm R2-D2. Dad's Luke Skywalker and you're Princess Leia. You're both dropping me off at kindergarten. And all my friends there think I'm really cool."

Quotes I Dig

2011-09-23T09:45:00.002+03:30

An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.

Quote: Charles de Montesquieu

Good Reviews

2011-09-19T12:40:00.010+04:30

Someone reviewed my book. You can read it here. Isn't that amazing? I do believe, I owe this kind reader a kiss .. And I can honestly tell you, I know it's not my mother.

This blog is celebrating its five year anniversary this month. I started writing here in September 2006. I'm pretty happy with the fact, that it still exists. To start blogging is far from the same as still blogging five years later. And in spite of breaks and dryspells, I still do put things out here with joy and the same thrill as I did in the first years. I have much love for this blog and those reading it, though I know hardly any of you. I have clues of a very few of you. Some who over the years have revealed to me, that they read this blog. One is an English teacher on the East Coast with Italian background. Another is a cool lady writer living close to San Francisco. A third is a secretary in Santa Cruz and a fourth is a retired engeneer near Aarhus in Denmark.

The rest of you are mysterious. But I think of you like distant friends in a strange anonymous realm. We don't know each other. Will probably never meet. Wouldn't recognize each other if we did. But there's a communication here that we maintain. We give something in each our end.

It's all good.

Women On Top In Denmark

2011-09-16T15:21:00.010+04:30

Today it's certain. We get our first female prime minister in Denmark. Election day was yesterday.

Since we're a monarchy, we have a queen or a king and a prime minister.

Our queen is Her Royal Highness Margrethe II.

She's here:

And today it is certain that our next prime minister will be a woman. She's the first female prime minister in the history of the Danish democracy. She is Helle Thorning-Schmidt.

She's here:

I can't help being proud. Two women on top of this country. Could be no big deal. But it somehow is. Maybe just because it's the first time, but that's enough to make it. It's historic. Still so many firsts. First female priest, first female bus driver, first female marathon runner. And now prime minister.

Maybe if I were black, I'd think a black president was the biggest. That was big, is big, even here on the other side of the earth. But being a woman'n all, for me it's bigger to live under the first Danish female prime minister. A woman. For real. In top of aaaaaaall the guys. It's cool. Luckily she's not a mean heartless ice cold man in disguise bitch Margareth Thatcher type. She's just a cool woman. She's good. And she's the leader of the pack now.

An Amazon Available For You Now

2011-09-10T12:10:00.012+04:30

One of my early books is now available as e-book on Amazon. It's very cheap. It can be downloaded to all electronics, Macs, Kindle, Ipods and pads, pcs, whatever you have.

Here it is in the US. And here in Europe. The rest of the world must figure out where of these two places to go. If they want to read. My fantastic. Little. Book.

Most of my books live a very secret life, either in the libraries or still unpublished. This is one of the first moves I've made to make one of them available. I'm not into self-promoting, which is also why I don't spread any word about my published books and this blog and such. When I'm used as an expert, for instance in magazines with full page interviews and pictures of me, I only tell my mother about it.

I still live in the happy world of 'the writing is enough'. But I consider moving into 'someone reading it would also be nice' .. My children's books are published at a press where they also think, my books for now do best only in libraries. They sell very well .. to libraries .. which means, you can find four book titles - this month it will be five - by me in the libraries. But not a single one in the book stores.

But no more!! Now you can have this book 'I Will Tell You My Story But Only Once' on your own computer or device less than one minute from you order it! I'm so fortunate that readers of it kept asking me insistingly 'Why is this book not for sale?' Finally I figured, it could actually be rather easily if I just spend the time getting it out there as an e-book. I have all rights and it's only been published very small in California a few years ago. It's totally underground material emerging, this.

I set the price to the minimum demanded by Amazon, the rest is tax and fees. I'll get one dollar for every sold book. Please spread the word if you like the book.

And about moneys - things will actually change! I've been to a clairvoyant recently, who said I'll be big on e-books. I also spoke to a woman last week who told me very convincingly not to worry about a single thing, because I had big stuff ahead of me - also financially. I found a place on the net and made a long and thorough numerology prediction for myself yesterday, and it kept saying, that my destiny is prosperity, recognition and success. So I finally made those great foresights possible now by spending some days html-coding and preparing this book for you to find now on the internet. I if you purchase it yourself, you're also allowed to lend it for free to a friend (or enemy, of course. I guess that depends on how you find the book). So not only can you buy the book, it comes with a present you can send as a link to someone and say, Hey, here's a funny book for you. The free loan is for two weeks, I believe.

If you read it and even write a review comment or rate it, I will 1) Buy you a beer and a shot and hear what you thought of the book 2) kiss you tenderly 3) give you my autograph on your forehead. With a kiss. Your choice. I'll appreciate it. Hope you will too!

Quotes I Dig

2011-09-02T11:48:00.000+04:30

Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact.

Quote: Marlene Dietrich

Pippi – A Queer Snail. Pippi Meets Foucault. And Goes To Germany

2011-08-13T19:24:00.016+04:30

My thesis is very asked for these years. I made a book of it, which is pretty much sold out by now. The Danish libraries have mostly bought it and some book stores. There are by now very few copies left of the small edition.

Yesterday I received a phone call from the Danish book store, which buys internationally for different foreign clients. Last time they called me, it was because a client of theirs wanted to buy the book. I curiously asked who was their client. They wouldn't tell me. I insisted, but the nice lady on the phone acted like she was Kobayashi, covering for Keyser Söze himself. I didn't get it. In the end, after a nerve wrecking conversation, I somehow made her tell me, that it was a library in the Faroe Islands, who wanted to buy my book, and I agreed to sell her a copy.

Yesterday, we repeated the situation. She calls and wants to buy another copy. I ask for whom? She answers, For my client. I ask, Who's your client? She says, Someone, who'd like to buy a copy of your book. Now I smile and suddenly remember. Oh, this is Mrs. Mysteriously Mysterious, whom I spoke to about six months ago, when the Faroe Islands wanted the same. Why the mystery? I mean, was she really protecting the Faroe Islands because they were going to wash some dirty money clean in the international transaction of approximately $75 to my bank account for my book about Pippi Longstocking? Shit, I know the global crime economy works in mysterious ways, but that would be beyond me, though.

Yesterday I tell her, I have so few copies left, so I'm not selling to anyone. This kind of information black mail apparently had the completely wanted effect on her. She this time immediately says, My client is from Germany. Who is it? I ask. It's a German library, she says. Oh, where? I ask. In Germany, she says. Now I laugh out loud, because she's dead serious and I found it to be great humor from this dry sixty-year old woman to reveal to the curious me, that the German library was really, actually in Germany. I laugh very loudly right until I hear very clearly, that only I am laughing. Her end of the phone is seriously quiet. I compose myself and say with absolutely no more laughter in my voice, Well, I found that to be funny. Ahem, with the German library being situated .. in .. Germany. Well, all right, where in Germany are we talking about? She says, My client is a German university library. Goddamn. I have to give her: She's stone cold, especially for a an old lady book dealer. I've rarely met this kind of fuck you insisting no info dealer attitude. Not even when dealing with weapons, drugs, children.

I now return to the first strategy and kindly say, I have so few copies left, that I'm really not willing to sell to just anyone(!!!!!!!!). She suddenly breaks and whispers, It's .. in .. Kiel. I say, All right, I'll sell you a copy. We nod secretively in each end. And end the phone call with a quick glance over our shoulders. I'm sure we're both up in high pulse at this point in time. At least, I am. Book dealing across borders is a serious matter.

Anyway, since the thesis is so popular - here in Denmark, it was reserved in the libraries for a year into the future when it first came, and now Germany has also discovered its great qualities - I will publish a short abstract in English here for all of you dear people to see, what you're missing. Unless you speak Danish, then you can just call Mrs. Kobayashi and have her buy you a copy of 'Pippi - A Queer Snail'. If .. you .. dare .. get .. into .. this .. business ..

First, check out the book cover .. Foucault with Pippi's braids:

Ok, here it goes:

The main focus of the thesis is to examine the potential of queer theory. The main theory is that queer theory today has been narrowed down from the original potential which is contained in its theoretical roots. The central question is: ”Of what is queer theory capable?” This question is sought answered first by examining the theoretical fundament of queer theory and the basic aspects found there. The main theorists are Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, and also Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. The main aspects of Foucault’s and Butler’s theories upon which queer theory is based are: Power, subjection, gender, and drag. Sedgwick mainly contributes with her analysis of homosocial desire or simply homosociality. Secondly the question is sought answered by applying certain queer theoretical aspects to Astrid Lindgren’s works about Pippi Longstocking. In order to test queer theory’s boundaries and potential field of usage, non-queer theoretical aspects are tried out as well within the frame of a queer theoretical text analysis.

The thesis examines queer theory as a theory self-claimed to be critical towards heteronormativity. The basis for queer theory’s critical position is revealed particularly through an examination of Foucault’s and Butler’s critical relation to normativity as the theory’s critical theoretical platform. The thesis further looks at Danish queer theory today and its way of using queer theory in literary analysis.

In the analysis of Pippi Longstocking both the more traditional queer theoretical concepts of gender and identity are applied to the text. Then in an attempt to expand the usage of queer theoretical criticism, other not traditional queer theoretical aspects of Pippi Longstocking are treated in the analysis. The subjects are ways of living, authority, the education system, and the police. The aim is to test a possible expansion and a strengthening of queer theory from a narrow focus on heteronormativity to a broader focus on normativity.

The thesis takes the critical stand that queer theory itself has become normative and thereby has lost its position as an unsettled position; a potential point in the theory’s original stage where it held a strong possibility to criticize and compromise heteronormativity. Finally the thesis contains critical reflection over its own treatment of normativity and includes the Danish theoretic Frederik Stjernfeldt as an example of a theorist with a clearly normativity-positive stand.

University of Copenhagen
Department of Arts and Cultural Studies
Modern Culture and Cultural Communication

Was that a teaser or WHAT?

Wolf

2011-08-12T17:19:00.002+04:30

Quotes I Dig

2011-08-09T16:10:00.001+04:30

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Quote: Grouchu Marx

The Shattered Marble of Athens

2011-07-02T11:34:00.015+04:30

I came back from Athens yesterday. Once again I found myself in one of the hotspots of the world. In all of Europe, there's no place where things are taking off these days as they are in Athens right now. My boyfriend was there with me the last week, and we experienced the demonstrations and street fights, which were the worst Athens has seen so far this year. Since he's a journalist and the uproar over the past weeks moved closer and closer to our apartment until teargas was on our roof terrace and chasing police motor cycles were in the streets right underneath us, we had to go down there these last days and be close to it.

Some days we didn't go near the parliament square Syntagma until midnight when the fighting would be over. But then we'd find and walk through the scenery of a recently fought civil war. Burned out ticket kiosks and news paper stands, burned out TV coaches, burned out trash containers, trash, and worst of all; trashed street environment and marble pieces in different sizes shattered all over. The marble from fountains, stairways, stair stones, street plant pots, the pavement of the streets themselves - broken and used for throwing. In certain areas of the city, the streets were paved with these pieces of marble, the aesthetic treasures of the past, now broken into tiny bits up to the size of a fist, used to throw at the police.

In the daytime we sometimes walked the streets with the demonstrators and waved back and forth according to the teargas thrown by the police. Back and forth. Luckily, the wind often helped, so it was bearable. And we didn't move to the front row, after all, this was not our fight. But the crowd was not made of the few angry young men. We moved constantly amongst all kinds of people - except the very rich and the very old - and they were all prepared to be there. This was not a shock to them, the street confrontation with the police. They came to show their feelings and beliefs, and were prepared to take this with. Housewives, ladies in their fifties, sixties. They all came with masks and white zinc salve on their faces to try and withstand the gas from the police. They were prepared to be thrown teargas at. The women who would typically be pacifists and try to keep their sons home from war. Now they showed in the streets with white painted faces and masks over their mouth and nose. They were angry.

Hordes of Greeks and hordes of police troops. I walked one night a few weeks ago, I'd been in Denmark for a weekend midway through my stay, I came back from the airport, and walked past hundreds of police men. The airport bus wouldn't ride any closer to the center, so I was dropped off forty-five minutes from where I lived. I walked for so long past motor cycles parked by the side of the street all the way to Syntagma, where the demonstrators were. I asked an officer, What way would you recommend me to walk, how many are you, and where are you from? He told me, there were three hundred motor cycles right there, waiting.

That night, I walked another way home. I lived close to the Syntagma Square, and didn't want to get caught right between the police troops and the demonstrators. But it was like that. Walking home on a quiet boulevard at 1AM in a cool breeze. Only difference from any other night was the passing six hundred concentrated police men in the quiet night, all of them awaiting in black battle uniforms, helmets, and ballistic vests, they were two on each bike, armed, taken in from the entire region of Attica, probably to be enough but also so they wouldn't know the demonstrators personally and have a problem beating them up in case. Focused and excited. Intense tension and intention in the night air.

One of the days where the demonstrating and fighting was at its worst, we had no choice. We were in the middle of the revolution, we were not really a part of it. We wanted to show our sympathy, but this would never be our fight. We didn't want to risk ourselves to be in this. We didn't want to be war tourists getting a kick out of other people's misery and real problems. But we were there. Stuck in the middle of Athens - I was given this grant stay more than six months before going, and we'd both ordered tickets back then. What could we do? It was 91 degrees outside. It was the middle of an afternoon. The city all around us was in complete chaos and constant uproar. The streets full of fires and teargas and shouting and clapping masses with white faces and gas masks, dust masks, surgery masks. The air full of gas, sirens, battle cries, smoke, anger, tension, fear, colliding wills, and collective frustration.

We went to the kitchen of our apartment and made a tray with little bowls of fresh cherries and nuts. Put a bottle of champagne and glasses on it. Went to the bathroom and made ourselves a hot tub with drops of Jojoba oil in it. Brought the laptop out and found Martha Wainwright singing Edith Piaf. We lit a few candles. Turned out the light. Shut the door.

We laid in each end. And for those hours, we couldn't hear the police nor the ambulance sirens. We couldn't taste the gas. Couldn't feel the constant anger in the city's air. We drank champagne, massaged feet, fed each other cherries, smiled blissfully and laughed pleasurably while we listened to French cabaret evergreens in the quiet and romantically candle lit bathroom. And we spread a little love in the middle of all this.

I guess it's what bohemians do, when there's nothing else for us to do. We surrender to decadence. Fight our own little battle against the system and the rules. We drink champagne in the afternoon.

The fights were still on when we came out, teargas still lingering in the air on our roof terrace. Later that night we walked over the Syntagma Square. I picked up a piece of marble and walked with it in my hand for a while. Someone had thrown that piece at a police officer's shield earlier that day. After it being smashed of a fountain, which may easily have been in the square for centuries. We moved silently through the scene. All of these events, from the white painted mask wearing housewives to the bathroom bubble of love and laissez-faire. It's all equally real and unreal, two different worlds in the same world, existing side by side, or rather one inside the other, a capsule of soft and sweet love inside the Athens capsule of roaring and struggling masses and armed police forces, all inside a quiet summer Europe, all underneath the same wide, huge blue sky.

Two years ago I was in Helmand. I crossed the Helmand River by a rope because of the strong undercurrent, with water up to my chest, in helmet, ballistic vest, ballistic eye wear, carrying my own morphine and a tourniquet, while more than thirty soldiers were pointing their guns in all directions to protect the river crossing. I still haven't written anything here about that trip. I don't know if I ever will. The impressions of the war were strong. I guess I'm still digesting.

Athens is for now over for me. Today I'm back in Copenhagen. So is my love. It's 2PM. We're still eating breakfast.

Celebrating With a Fish Foot Food Feast

2011-06-16T13:05:00.004+04:30

I'm through another rewrite of my novel script. That's what I came to Athens to do, and now it's done. I have at least one more rewrite, so the script is not done yet. But major changes were made this time, and I believe to the better. The next will smooth out things even more .. one more may even finish it .. or the one after that might .. For now, I'm happy to have come this far. The script is definitely different from when I came to Athens a few weeks ago, and I feel good about its progress.

I thought I'd celebrate, so I went today and stuck my feet in a fish tank to have them nibble on my feet. The place is called a fish spa. The fish are about an inch long. You put the feet into a tank with about a hundred fish, and they tickle and caress you by sucking and licking your feet. It softens the feet and rids you of hard skin. I asked, is this actually the fish food they get, like do they only get foot food here? No, they told me, they also get food. This, for them, is just a foot snack. Not to confuse with a food snack, I suppose. At a point, I stuck my hand down there. Never have I as literally felt, that I handed someone a hand snack. It tickled in a very pleasant way. I figure they were having as much of a party as was I.

Tomorrow I'm flying back to Copenhagen for a long family weekend, lasting till Tuesday. I simply can't wait to see them and hug them and give them all the cheap crap presents I've bought for them down here. With good stuff in between. Oh, the love. Never forget to give it away.

Greek Wedding Underneath My Balony

2011-06-07T14:07:00.004+04:30

Last night, a wedding took place right beneath my balcony outside the little church on the square. They put an alter outside with big candles on each side. Cute, but man. I can't help it. I have a hard time taking religious ceremonies completely seriously.

The priest is dressed in a funny costume, here in the greek orthodox church it's a high black hat with a veil down his back. Over a black gown to his feet. He made the couple kiss the bible and stuff. They moved a lot around, now stand here, now there, now back again. A girl had to put rings with long, white strings on their heads, then switch them, then switch them back, and again, and she messed up, so the priest had to correct her way of moving those props around over the couple's heads. The priest was moving his arms into different designed positions. A lot of stuff like that, moving the rings for the fingers from one to another and back - I just find it all to be a bit of a circus. They're obviously trying to make something magic and sacred by all those ritualized actions.

I of course loved that she messed up with the rings, because it makes it the more obvious, that something quite absurd is going on. Is the holy ghost supposed to enter the scene because of some rings moving around over some heads? Will the ghost now be confused and not appear or will it come to the wedding, even though the ring movement was out of order? What does it then matter, in what order and with which hands over and under which, the rings are moved around, if the ghost appears anyway? Will it maybe appear and be a little pissed off, You KNOW I only come in a good mood, when you do this with your RIGHT hand OVER your LEFT, and FIRST the groom, THEN the bride, and THEN back, and this time, you took the GRRRRROM'S ring UNDER the bride's ring, and you KNOW, how I hate that!!!!! Oops, an angry holy ghost at your wedding, you don't want that .. better get those circus tricks right the first time.

Anyway, they got married. And probably felt more special and connected to something big because of all the performance with costumes, props, choreography, and gestures. Blessed are the believers. I guess.

Pics From My Balcony in Athens

2011-06-03T22:06:00.004+04:30

I believe these photos are very authentic, as they do include accidental moving around for photo session moments captured as well as posing with view behind me shots. I'm in all the pictures for you to believe, that I'm actually here. I have this lovely balcony, from where these shots are taken, and also a beautiful roof terrace upstairs. From there the view is gorgeous and there's plenty of space for barbecue parties and such. If only I had friends here. I've been working up there under a parasol these days. Tonight I'm on the balcony.

Work Mode In Athens

2011-05-31T13:48:00.011+04:30

I'm leaving for Athens tomorrow early morning. I have scholarship housing for one month, an apartment in the old part of Athens, right below Acropolis. I will once again be exiled, alone, bored, and hopefully extremely efficient. I bought new sandals today. I will go and get my suitcase in the basement soon. I have sunglasses. A book. My laptop. I will bring my vitamins. Lose, bright colored dresses.

And I will work. And work. And work.

And then be interrupted. I'm actually going home for five days in the middle of the stay. I have my very dear stepson here, and I couldn't leave him for a whole month. Besides, I knew I couldn't concentrate, if I didn't know I'd see him again soon, and two weeks is tops. So a small interruption there. Then my boyfriend will come for the last week and we'll take some vacation time together. I expect to work in the daytime while he's there though. He'll be on his own which I'm sure he'll enjoy. I really want to bring home some completed text, and I know pretty much exactly what I will consider a success.

Wish me work.

Summer

2011-05-05T23:03:00.007+04:30

Quotes I Dig

2011-02-27T19:23:00.006+03:30

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is, think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it, do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won't be a slave, we say that she don't love us
If she's real, we say she's trying to be a man
While putting her down, we pretend that she's above us

Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave of the slaves
Ah, yeah, better scream about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she's too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world, yes she is
If you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yeah, alright, hit it!

We insult her every day on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is, if you don't believe me, take a look at the one you're with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yes she is, if you believe me, you better scream about it

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

Quote: John Lennon

Cold Cuts

2011-02-22T18:05:00.008+03:30

I've exiled myself again. I'm staying in my mother's apartment while she's in China. Last night it was 3 degrees F outside here. I'm in the far North of Denmark, only half an hour's flight away from Copenhagen, but much more snowy and freezing up here. People have different hair up here, and more dogs. I'm driving my mother's car in the snow, it's like fun park with a risk. Trying to control the out of control, slightly sliding freely, like being in a Cohen movie, hoping it's only a transportation scene.

I'm going to work for one week here alone. Focus, not get disturbed by anyone or anything. It's always good to be isolated in order to concentrate. I want to get some serious editing done on my novel script. I'm going to knife it down. A lot. It'll get better and stronger. Compact. Concise. Cut to the bone of the story. Cold weather is good for creativity. Cools the brain, helps see clearly, crystallizes thoughts.

The roof tops outside are white. The cars drive slowly, even emergency vehicles move by loud and flashing in a ridiculous paradoxical slow motion. There's snow in the air. The sky is heavy with gray and silver golden light inside the clouds. Words. Thoughts. Solitude. Catching knives in mid air. Work.

Angry At God & New Valentines

2011-02-15T13:21:00.013+03:30

-Angry, I whisper through my gritted teeth. -Angry, angry at you, angry at you, God. Unwillingly am I clenching my fists against the sky. I'm alone with heathland to all sides. I feel it drawing in, it's a storm and it's coming this direction. Twenty minutes the most, it'll be here. I can't outrun it in any direction. I know the heathen well, my legs know every distance, my feet every bump and small bush. The sound now, thunder bursts are roaming towards me from over the southeastern horizon. I know I called for it. I wanted it. I was on my knees and elbows for hours, begging God, asking for answers, pleading him to tell me about this anger. Why there has to be so much in my world, in the people, all the sorrow that he leaves all over which turns into anger because we can't handle the sorrow, its' so much easier to be angry at someone, look at what they've DONE and stay angry at that, because the sorrow that might be right behind the anger, it may have been there first, it might be hiding inside the anger, but no, it's much harder to explicate to even one self that it may be breaking around in there in the inner, the anger is manageable and has a comfortable aim. Should it be overcome then comes the next hurdle, to explicate the sorrow to the all world, or at least maybe just to those who caused the sorrow, not to hurl angrily at the person what he or she has done to cause you sorrow, no, no. No, that's not it. In that moment, if you actually managed to get to the sorrow instead of just throwing more anger out into the already poluted atmosphere, if you have managed, stay with that sorrow. And then, stand by it.

The sorrow is the hardest part. Have you ever seen a person in deep sorrow yell angrily? It's a shield. Also frequently used as a weapon in a first attack because the best defense is an attack, especially in emotional warfare, so even an anger attack can be called self defense. Pure and justified anger is great. It's pure force full of power and will. Anger moves stuff around. Which is per definition good. Sorrow doesn't move stuff around. Sorrow is more a state to rest in as a part of a slow process. It's the staying in the sorrow, not the sorrow, which will move things, and it will so absolutely. But sorrow and anger mixed up don't work right. Too often the sorrow is massed up in some solid figures while the anger flows all over. And it confuses people, they can't bear to feel the sorrow so they walk around angry or they can't feel sorrow and think they're actually angry, or they're spoiled by Disney and the consumer culture and are actually angry that they have to experience sorrow in life.

The storm draws over me. The lightning is crashing around me. I lie flat out on my stomach. I cry down in the mud with grass under my palms and my knee bent around a blackberrybush. I ask, God, why don't you control the sorrow, why all this anger? I spit and raise myself on my elbows, Why, I cry and the rain pours over my face, the mud travels in small streams. I lift my hands and sit on my underlegs in the mud. I raise my arms toward the sky. I hear the thunder. God aims and sets a light right in my chest. I'm a burning bush. I call for Moses, but he hides his face in his hands.

That was actually an old text so far. Other people's wild running anger has always freaked me out. Been able to make me very small and very quiet. Particularly when they just throw it out in random directions. I believe I wrote this for an ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend who seriously thought she was angry at me. Come on, please. But it makes me sort of second time around angry to read this, see, I never got to be angry the first time. Now I actually feel like feeling and releasing a bit of that old anger, since anger is such a strange guest in my world of peace and love - so actually, now that we're here, and you're probably freaky (and angry) enough to still read this blog, let me tell you what I think: 1) You were angry with yourself! (For a good reason, you failed on crucial points.) 2) You were angry with your ex-boyfriend! (For a good reason, he really let you down.) 3) You have had no reason to be angry at me. (Though it would've been neat in your world. But eat your own bull shit and stop taking it out on strangers. Grow up.) 4) Conclusion: You were too much of a coward to blame yourself, your ex-boyfriend, and your bad relationship for your sorrow, so you blamed a stranger - me - for your personal sorrow! How pathetic. 5) If you have a problem with any of this - STOP the fuck reading my fucking blog!

My own thunder storms inside I'm much more used to. And have become quite good at very rarely taking out on others, since I've found that it's actually never really necessary for a civilized person living in the modern age to do so - and if it has to happen, I'm goddamn sure to take it out on only the one I'm angry at. I don't really get angry at God, since I don't believe that I believe in God (I do, but I deny it.). That makes it sort of an awkward fight, I guess. No, if I'm angry in the undefinable, I make myself a sandwich. Or bat my eyelashes strongly a few times. Or write a book about something very, very bad. Or something.

Those who followed this blog over some painful Valentine's Days will be happy to hear, that I yesterday had not only one - but the two - most lovely Valentines imaginable. Two handsome and gentle Prince Charmings, who completely treated me like their Princess ValenTine. I and one of them decorated the living room with red and soft pink heart shaped balloons and candles, while the other prepared us all a lovely dinner. He's just the better chef of the two, while the other is more the balloon type. After we all enjoyed the dinner together, we shared romantic presents and slow danced all together before one of them had to go to bed early. That was the one who gave me a red heart shaped bead plate and a drawing of two beautiful ferries with a heart between them. He'd made it all in kindergarten and was so happy to bring these love gifts. He and his father and I are so lucky and happy here in our little home. It's actually a love miracle.

Jaws Of Steel

2011-02-08T09:45:00.000+03:30

Certain things are extremely scary. Lacks of certain things are even scarier. People without a face for instance. People without a shadow. People without a conscience. People without self-reflection. People without the ability to love.

The last, I've wondered a lot about. What does it take for you to be able to love? What is it in you, that makes you not just like, but actually able to love something or even someone? Is it genetic to lack the ability to love? Is it socially inherited?

Is it even possible to be human without the ability to love? Would that not be the exact prime feature of a beast? Who knows, if someone is able to love or not? Does anyone but the person him or herself? Say, wouldn't Adolf have said, he loved Eva? Didn't he? Was he a beast, capable of loving? Would anyone else really say they know better than the man himself and come up with some explanation, that he didn't love her, he only got something out of it, and wouldn't that be from a certain interpretation of love; the whole altruistic idea, that if you love, you're not allowed to be in the love for yourself, you're actually not really allowed to get anything out of it at all. I believe Adolf loved Eva. As well as Winifred Wagner at a certain point. With his heart. I believe he was perfectly capable of loving. He had also just developed his darker sides quite competently. But I won't deny him also having had the ability to love.

So, Adolf might have been a great lover in the regard of women like Eva Braun and Winifred. What if a kind man claims not to be able to love? Who else than himself would know if this is true? Wouldn't he know better than anyone if his heart is actually made of stone? If nature treated him so unfortunately, that the ability to feel love for others just didn't fall into his body?

I don't think anyone could convince Adolf, that he wasn't capable of loving. And no one could convince a kind man, that he is actually capable of loving. I don't think any humans can't love, and here I won't say that autists are not human, they're just out of category here. But I think love is difficult.

Is love not difficult, and why do we assume that we're all able to love from nature's hand? Couldn't there be schools for loving? Courses? Maybe it would mean fewer divorces. I'm in Advanced Love Level 4 now, yes, took me three years to get there. Man, every Monday and Wednesday, and that's without the tests and practical rehearsal classes.

Maybe love is difficult until you find the ones, that make you feel, that they're easy to love. Some people will be to you. Those, who for some reason become your friends in life. The ones you want to be with. The one who just feels right. You may discover some day, that your own children are easy for you to love, but hard to like. What makes the heart capable of loving? Even able to love in spite of not like.

They always say stuff like, Everybody's able to kill if they have to. But are all able to love? Are all hearts really capable of loving? What would be more scary than someone not able to love? What would make you run faster than someone saying, I'm not able to love, as if they informed you, I have diabetes. What greater disability, what greater sadness, what inhumanity. What a beast. Would make Adolf look good, that is, of course, if he actually did love, not only the women, but just felt the love in his heart. Maybe it's more about practice. Maybe it's about clenching those jaws in determination. Or about losening them up. Or a miracle encounter. Or about learning to notice the tiny little smile inside the heart and understanding what it's about. Note to self: Love is a skill.

Momentum And Focus

2010-12-13T11:10:00.004+03:30

I'll be writing in Athens during the entire month of June 2011. I'll have an apartment in the old, cosy neighborhood Plaka, just below Acropolis. The Danish Institute in Athens has granted me this, and I expect to get a lot of work done. I'm working on a new novel. Developing characters, plot, storyline.

One of the basic themes of the novel is feelings between siblings. I find this very interesting. I have three siblings myself, and just the dynamics there are worth many books. Especially when you take into account that we don't all share the same parents and haven't grown up in the same home. But we're siblings, we love each other, and we're very, very different. That's an interesting basic fact of many family relations, I find. In this novel two very different sisters with a common father, this will make the anal reader object that they're only half-sisters, well if it makes you feel better, yes, they are, well those two sisters inherit a big house after their father. And they have to come together around that. They've never been close, hardly know each other. They are full of prejudices towards each other and loving each other as two grown up strangers isn't easy. But what if you really need a sister? And there is one, though she may be so very different from you? She's there. And she's your sister.

Just like I value friendship a great deal, a lot of us with tough family backgrounds do, I also value siblings very highly. There's something about those people your own age whom you've grown up with or at least parallel to having had intense feelings for the same parents, which is completely priceless. They know you differently from all others and can please or tease you like no others. They can feel like friends on a level above all friends, and they can feel completely strange to you one moment and like an arm of yours the next. Bad feelings between siblings are so common, estrangement, jealousy, disappointment. Often siblings are complete strangers forced to feel close. An arranged marriage between children of completely different tempers, values, and paces. Yet a sense of belonging will often make siblings know each other all life through, though none of them would've picked each other out voluntarily. There's often such strong love in spite of everything else. It's a magic relation in many ways, and I'm really looking forward to try to write about it.

What I focus on in my storyline now is momentum and focus. Here's what my notes tell me: Momentum is when one scene leads to the next scene and that scene leads to the next scene. One scene implies the development of the next scene. Or we might say that the seeds of a scene are contained in a previous scene. When scenes are connected in a cause-effect relationship, every scene advances the action, bringing us closer to the climax.

It's somehow the same in life, though I find it generally dangerous to think you're working your way towards a big climax. Like in sex, too much focus on the climax will flatten out everything else and usually also devalue - or downright thwart - the climax because of the pressure. Expectations and demanded reward quality, THIS is it, THIS is why we've been working this hard, THIS is - - - oh come on! Just be in it for the fun of it, not for the damn climax as an achievement or a medal or something. As in life.

To feel momentum and focus in life, as well as in sex, is a great satisfaction in itself. That one thing naturally leads to the next, that there's a sense of things going somewhere. It may not be a climax, maybe more a feeling of a good state. Focus on noticing, recognizing, and maintaining the good states of life. Of sex. Of the story. In good momentum you'll realize how the little climaxes've snuck in there anyway. No chasing the climax. Just stay focused - and enjoy the ride.

I expect my new novel to be finished in about two years.

The Lovely Kind Of Violence

2010-11-17T08:50:00.004+03:30

I spoke to a friend of mine. She just came out of a relationship. Both that one and her last relationship were very tough on her. I saw her cry her way through them both. As different as the two men were, something very significant was the same in the two relationships. She was not happy in them.

The men were nice and tolerant guys, open, friendly, fun, loving, attentive, and passionate about her. But in both cases, she'd been remarkably sad a lot of the time the relationship lasted. She complained and asked, What am I doing wrong, what kind of men do I seek, why do I feel that their love is somehow violent to me, so that I spend a lot of time crying over them instead of being happy with them? We started looking at the typical pattern of violent relationships and the mechanisms, that make a woman stay in a violent relationship.

There are three phases in a violent relationship. The tension phase. The violent phase. The reunion phase. They circle, so now it moves back or on to the tension phase, and on it goes.

In the tension phase, you're close, but you also feel things building up. You start fearing the next move. In the violent phase, the next move will occur, one of some kind of violence. It can be drinking, jealousy, anger, rejection, or physical violence. It can be break-up, it can be threats of suicide, extreme reluctance, breaking promises. Anything that will be hard on the partner and feel like taking a beating somehow. Physical or emotional. Then the third phase in which you reunion. You say and do all the necessary things to confirm, that this is really love, that the relationship is right, even though you just went through something painful and rough. From the reunion phase you circle right into the tension phase. The relationship is once again tense, you've just established it's love, but at least one part, the one who is the violated part, will fear the next move. The one, that'll feel violent. The new rejection, jealousy outburst, punch, anger attack, break-up, which will be hard and unbelievable. But then you reunite and confirm, that you only go through all this because it is love that holds you together.

My friend told me how she isolated herself more and more in these relationships. Mainly because her friends eventually all started blaming her. You know what's coming, they told her. Why do you keep going back to him? Why do you stay? She couldn't bare the shame because she knew they were right. She knew what was coming, all though in the reunion phase she chose every time to believe that he would improve, not do it again, that they just had the worst happening that were ever to happen between them, the experience where he could really see how much it hurt her and that now it would never happen again, from that he learned, from his assurances she could tell that now they were going to be together for good. But it wasn't true. She was tense. She knew, something easily could happen again. Something violent. Tension, violence, reunion. Tension, violence, reunion. It's a classic pattern.

When was it ever good with those two men? I asked her. She said, I guess when I was careful. I didn't think of it as careful, but I can tell now that I was. How? I asked. Well, if the problem was jealousy, it was when I didn't talk to anyone else or go anywhere. Like never expected to be able to dress nicely without Hell breaking lose, never laughed with other men or women without seeing the anger in his eyes, never talked about anything besides him with joy or excitement. If the problem was rejection, it was when I didn't ask for anything or any promises. If there were any promises, I was careful in the way, that I didn't expect them to be kept or didn't get disappointed when they weren't. When I never expected to be invited to join him anywhere. To be included in his plans for his homes and travels in the future. Then we were ok. Stuff like that.

So, things were ok if you compromised with your needs? Yes, she said. Looking back, it was always when I paid attention and didn't trigger the reaction that would hurt me, that the relationship was good.

So, I tried to explain, what you were actually doing was trying with all your abilities to stay in the tension phase. If only you didn't trigger the violent reaction, you two were great. But not on your terms? No, not really, she said. Not on my terms. I was holding my breath. I knew both times, he wasn't at ease in those periods of time, so neither was I. We were never truly calm with each other, we knew something would come again.

These men are in a category of men with commitment problems. Apparently she finds them, and they're not at all what you'd consider violent types. I know both these guys, and they'd never hit anyone. Never. They're sweet, and the violence absolutely doesn't occur out of meanness. It's out of intimacy problems. Which is also why they don't act violently to anyone else but the girlfriend. They probably couldn't think of anything worse than being called violent, since it's probably important to them to be nice and kind and loving.

As a matter of fact, men with commitment problems can be the very nicest of all and lots of women are attracted to them. You also have to expand your idea of violence from a fist in the face on purpose, in order to understand this. Violent behavior is also rejecting someone over and over and over again, when you see the damage it's causing, but you insist on repeating your pattern in continuously doing so.

Pulling someone in yet keeping them out repeatedly - is violent. Getting angry repeatedly out of jealousy - is violent. Threatening to leave repeatedly - is a violent action, when you're intimate and vulnerable in a love relationship. Expanding violence as a phenomenon in a relationship from hitting and kicking to involve also this kind of violence is a mean to understand the nature of the hurting love. And to recognize a pattern in getting involved with good men who somehow violate your limits so you actually don't feel good.

My friend said, I was so shocked after the first of these boyfriends. I thought it could never happen again. And then I found myself again in a very different relationship, but once again, I let myself be beat around emotionally all the time. Why do they come off like that? I'm sure they mean well. Well, I told her, you need to stop blaming yourself and stop excusing them. It's not your pattern. You just don't see the pattern for a very long time, and the guys don't know that their way around love is so painful for others, even though they do their best. And they can mean well, yet be violent encounters in love.

I've even heard of a man who broke up with his girlfriend saying, that he knew, he couldn't commit, and how disappointing that would always be for the girlfriend. Out of love and understanding, for her and his own lack of ability, he would sweep the girlfriend out. I love you so much that you should have someone who can love you better than this. Very noble. Sacrificing. Irresponsible - or very responsible if his intention was to actually learn to commit before being involved like that.

Roughly, these are the same kind of guys who get extremely close with girlfriends, symbiotic, over-attached, super attentive. And then, they break it off. Why? Because there just wasn't time for their own life anymore. No friends, no sport, no independence. They just needed to get out of the claustrophobia. But she wasn't the one who needed it that close. For her, he could've gone out much more with his friends. Made it work, both the separate lives and the common life. But for him, all or nothing.

Also the kind of guy who can get extremely insecure from the girlfriend prioritizing so that he's out of the picture sometimes. Who can draw away or make a scene, because he feels rejected and not important.

These kind of men often get a depression when they have a child. Because it's the biggest commitment, that they can't get out of at all, ever, never, again.

Men with commitment issues also often have affairs and make all kind of shit to fuck up in their relationships.

What's it about? Deep down it's about fear of losing. It has to be so close, to convince him how unlosable it is. How much she's really his. He has affairs so that he's not dumped, he asked for it, it was just a matter of her having had enough, it was a back door, one he opened himself.

So how does that relate to my sweet friend with the sweet boyfriends who most of all loved her and wanted to be good to her and instead ended up having her in one huge crisis after the other and feeling somewhat violated from love?

Because they suffer from the same. Fear of commitment. Fear of losing. And they can only deal with it in a subtle psychologically violent way. By making her play by their rules, or the violence will strike again.

The circle of violence will tear up a person. Waiting for the sky to fall is an unstable condition. But she tells me, that then they lie there on the bed again, looking at each other, oh, this is life and they're in love, and she can take it one more time. She thinks. But in the long run, she can't.

I asked her how they finally ended, these two relationships? She said, that she'd asked for dialogue. About how they could also meet her needs. And it exploded. She did it again. It exploded again. I tell her, You did good. That's what a sane person does. When she'd done it one too many times, stood by her own needs in spite of the predictable reaction, it eventually ended.

A neurotic person will do anything to stay in the tense phase, anything not to trigger the anger or the other violent reaction. Behave more and more neurotically to stay on good foot, thinking she's learned how to be in this love relation. But she's not. She just adapted a neurotic pattern in a violent relationship.

A sane relationship only goes between phase one and three, and then we can call it something else, because without the violent phase, the tension won't be there in that way. But there can be something tense, and you can solve it with dialogue. If you can't because the tension ignites a violent reaction, a rejection, a suicide threat, a rampage, a silent treatment, the violator who does this has a problem, and it's not a solution, that the violated part learns how to compromise with everything not to provoke it.

So, I tell her, she was sane to insist on not avoiding the second phase for as long as possible, because she could have done so forever. But she wouldn't have been happy. She would've been tense.

Even if it cost both relationships, it was the right thing to do. She wasn't happy in them anyway. But she asks, How will I know next time not to get involved with a sweet man with such commitment issues, how will I avoid once again getting hurt like this? I'm tired of love feeling this way.

I tell her, Men with commitment issues will drag you down and screw you over, and you can't change that. Find one who can commit. It's not like all men are like this. First time you feel tense about something, talk about it. If he then violates you, walk away. If he keeps having good excuses to violate you, and you're still there, walk away. You'll know that you should've walked the first time.

Need I say, that even though this friend is a woman and we usually think of men being the violent part of a violent relationship, this is not based on gender. I know just as many men who are violated in these ways by their girlfriends. I know just as many women who are the violent ones in their relationship. Just as many women with commitment problems. Men are not the bad guys. The bad guys are the scared ones, male or female. This way of looking at violence in a relationship in fact opens up much more to see, how women are just as often violent as men are in love, they just don't hit as much, but often get their boyfriends down with emotional violence.

Love and violence don't go together. Commitment is a beautiful thing. Only those controlled by their fear of losing will not understand this. They don't know love. In love there is no fear of losing. Love and fear don't go together either. They eat each other up. Find someone who knows and loves love.

Leaving Leaves

2010-10-22T14:34:00.014+03:30

It's still the most beautiful time of year here. Fall in full color range. I saw a leaf a few days ago which made me stop on the path and, I kid you not, it literally took my breath away. I stood and looked at it for very long in pure admiration and touched state. Finally before leaving it behind and continuing my walk I actually considered bringing it with me home.

The leaf was huge, but it was dirty and I was far from home, and I ended up thinking, that it belonged in the park and would possibly lose some of its leaf magic, coming with me home, leaving the afternoon fall sunlight falling through the trees, the surrounding fallen leaves on the path, the sandy path background tapestry that it had so beautifully fallen upon. I left the leaf, but I still remember it.

How amazing it is, that a leaf can make such an impression. It still lingers days after. It was like a painting, with greens, reds, yellows of a kind I've never seen a painter find. Stronger, softer, clearer, blending, caressing, crashing, celebrating, loving. Crazy colors and perfection in shapes and expression. All in a leaf. I almost miss the leaf, maybe I should go back and try to find it. Yes, I will do that. I'm sure I will recognize it in an instant. Or come home with a big bag full of leaves, new loves, more wonders of life, love, and the season. Or maybe I should learn to leave a leaf behind and let it live its own life, eventually leave its' present shape and form and return to soil.

My first illustrated children's book is coming out these days. I have seen the drawings but not the final book yet. The cover background color is green. Not leaf green, though. More kitchen cabinet green. It's good. I'm excited and happy.

I finished my novel script over the summer. The month in isolation in Finland was highly efficient. The past months I've been adjusting and completing small incomplete parts. It's there now. It's complete. A couple of years' work have turned into my debut novel: End of The Night.

I'm working a lot these days. I just finished another children's book about a mouse called Cheese, a goat called Fur, and a horse called Ella. It's a wonderful story where the three friends set out to find Cheese's parents. He was lost as a small mouse. The story is called: Ella, Fur, and Cheese Find The Secret Mouseland. Then I'm working my way into a new novel, a slow and long term process.

I will go for my walk soon. In the park, where there are elephants. And leaves. I love both, but will leave them there today. I will look, love, and admire, and promise not to bring any home. Leaves nor elephants. Sure the boyfriend will appreciate that.

When Fall Falls

2010-10-11T11:47:00.008+03:30

As I waded through yellow leaves on the broad boulevard in the Sunday afternoon's tightening darkness yesterday, I realized: Fall has once again fallen upon us. I hadn't thought about it, not even from the name of the new month, the most beautiful of them all; October, only in competition with the all time positive and optimistic May. It is October and I am in Denmark. I didn't go out and find the job I thought about finding this fall. I don't think I will anyway. I enjoy the writing, that is, I struggle with the writing, but it feels right to stay with that. As I wrote in the last post, I look enviously at my man leaving in the morning. To go to a real job. But I'm not envious of the job, more does it seem nice to me to have something out in the real world that feels as right to him as writing right here by my desk does to me.

I can dream of a work place to move myself to every day and feel, that I'm in the right place, surrounded by colleagues and all morning excited about the canteen's offer of the day. But right now, my right work day is to kiss goodbye and move straight for the home office. There are days where I'm lucky if I have any business out of the house at all. Which easily leads for a comfy somewhat lazy person like me to the natural conclusion; Why get dressed? So there are days when the man comes home and finds a troll with the same bird nest hair as he left in the morning, wearing the same t-shirt and sweats that I put on for breakfast, grunting because I forgot how to talk to real people, and with a wild look in my eyes until I recognize him and remember why the fuck he has a key to my cave. But hey. I'm getting my writing done. Sometimes.

At this time of year in the Northern hemisphere, melancholy seems to be the most persistent suitor to much a many people. The darkness wants to get its grip. The decay make its point. In Greenland the sentence for murder is reduced if the murder is committed during the darkest months of the year. Lack of light does something to people.

I suppose it's been fall for a long time now, I just didn't see it till yesterday. September is also a month of fall, Indian Summer, fall. Falling leaves, drifting by my window. Autumn leaves of red and gold, forests exploding on fire.

Job, Jobs And Rats

2010-07-05T14:05:00.001+04:30

I just discovered that the last two posts here are about spiders and cockroaches. What a strange coincidence. Mainly because I was just thinking about writing something about rats. Maybe there's something I should be looking into these days. Do I have an issue with small gross animals, since they're what's coming up when I go for the keys? I will now not write and share my thoughts and recent experiences on rats with you, as I don't want this to be a theme. Instead it will now be a cliff hanger. Now you know it's time to be excited. Something about rats may follow soon. Aha.

This summer is moving along beautifully for me. Weather is good, at least some of the time. I moved to a new part of town and am loving it. My sister is visiting town these days. I'm in love. My novel is really progressing and I look forward to write in Finland. I expect to start in a new and exciting job in the fall, which will be a nice change from working all alone to once again have colleagues and work projects together with them - and just with other people in general.

Writing is wonderful and to many people it would be the greatest luxury to wake up and only have to open the laptop and write every day. And it is great, writing is a job to appreciate, absolutely, but after a while, I've realized I look enviously at my love leaving in the morning and go, Wow, what a lucky man, he's going to hear people say funny things at meetings and have lunch with other people today. And I realize, that I already look forward to him coming home and sharing with me. Eh, I believe that calls for a house wife ALERT! I look forward to finishing the script at least at some level in Finland, and come home and enter the fun and challenging work market once again. Luckily, I've always loved to work, I just also wanted to get some books written, and I found I had too little time besides a job.

So besides a great summer so far, the rest also looks very attractive to me. Another week of preparation, I have some research meetings, some planned reading to get done, and some final outlining of the writing. Then three weeks of intense and isolated work in funky Finland, land of goth, knives, saunas, trees, intellectuals, Nokia, lakes, moose, great design, and completely gone wrong language. Oh, and did I tell you, I've got a huge villa to myself by the ocean, and it'll be midsummer for the weeks I'm there? Last ten days there will be of working together with my boyfriend and a bit of holiday in Helsinki. Then I'll soon be back to having a real life job again. It's wonderful to be in a situation where that's the next dream. Can't think of a better motivation for getting up in the morning. Yeah, I've got a fun job! I meet real people. Do real things. Get on with my carreer. Have lunch. With others.

Now just admit it. You're curious about the rats. Well, good for you. There's nothing to appreciate in life as one's curiosity. When curiosity's lost, everything's lost. What was it, I was going to tell about those rats ..? Oh, yes, I remember.

Writing Around Wild Life

2010-06-30T01:37:00.002+04:30

I'm working on my novel again. It's been resting at page 230 for a while. I haven't known what to write to continue. I've known where it should be going, but word by word not how to get there. Now, I'm writing again. It's great.

I'll be going to Finland soon to stay for three weeks. I'll stay in an artists retreat, a 5000 square foot villa designed by Alvar Alto, right by the sea. The villa has ocean view over the flat rocks that continue out into the sea. The first two weeks I'll be there alone. Then my love will join my villa life and we will stay there together for another week. No one has ever read the novel yet. Expectedly when he arrives around August 1st, I'll have a first draft of the novel ready for him to read. I imagine how I'll sit breathlessly and watch him read. For a week. Only interrupted by an occasional whisper; What, what? What did you read? What happened? Why did you smile? You did smile, didn't you? What page are you on? Do you want a glass of red wine? Do you like it?

Now this is quite something, and I'm exited about this prospect. This novel has been on its way since I developed its main characters and basic plot in a short story in 2006. My boyfriend has already read the prologue - and been very positive. Had he not been, I'm not sure he should be the first to read the whole thing, and probably, no definitely not, in complete isolation in Finland, the land of weird and crazy shit and dark moods and goth atmospheres and saunas and axes. It is, need I say, a matter of great trust whom you let be your first reader of your first novel.

I have three books out now and a children's book coming in November. But this is my first novel. I've always considered novels the greatest achievement. I don't think they're the hardest to write in comparison to short stories, essays, and poetry, but they've always for me been the most luxurious reading experience, and therefore also stand as the greatest writing challenge. I've published one book of poetry, one book with a mix of poetry, short stories, letters, and lists, and one theory book, originally my master's thesis on Foucault, Pippi Longstocking, and queer theory. My first children's book of a series will come in November, so before this novel will be published, I'll have at least four quite different books out already. Still, this will feel very much like a debut to me, I'm sure.

I had the pleasure of encountering a large number of spider kids in my living room today. I've just recently bought a big rose bush, it's beautiful and though it's an outdoor plant, it still lives fine in my living room. Today I watered it in the big tray, it stands in, and a piece of soil floated around in the water, I just poured in. I watered some other plants, and for some reason went back to check on the piece of soil. And what do you know, the soil had unfolded itself and now had eight legs. And what looked like a big, fat body, by a closer look was a bagpack full of, ahem, a LOT of small spiders. Eggs, I think it's called at that stage, but maybe it's the warmth of the Danish summer these days that instinctively gave me the feeling, that these eggs were more at the point of ready for pre-school or their first warning for being drunk and missing their Friday night curfue.

I got some paper and the roll of card board inside the kitchen towel roll, which was empty when I'd taken the last papers. I went to the tray with the bush standing in the middle. I figured, she might have drowned, but I didn't believe that. She was more floating unconcernedly, like at the beach underneath a carressing sun, looking like she was professionally blocking out the sound of screaming seagulls and excited children with air-filled animals and cuffs, than oh, I just drowned and my hundred babies with me, what a pity! No. She was too relaxed. I got her into a piece of paper with the cardboard, quickly out of the water, folded the paper, mashed her a little inside. Why only a little? you're thinking now, why on earth not with the big hammer straight away? Well, because I was curious and self-confident, so I opened the paper and yes, she was cramping and a zillion baby spiders were out of their mother's boring rucksack, I heard them yell, HEEYYY, look at this, I found the WWWOOOOOOORRRRRLLLLLLDDDD; guys, over here!!! They ran of the paper very fast, and I shut it again, now I mashed mother and everyone else inside of it, oh yes, I DO kill babies in the morning, then I mashed every spider baby on the floor, they were cute but I'd just seen their mother and knew, they all wanted to be like her some day, and she was long passed the state of cute, so there was no mercy, then I threw them in the garbage, took the tray with the bush, wiped it off for spiders, emptied it into the zink to drown the last ten or so, that were swimming desperately in the water, then followed them with some boiling water down the drain and zealed the garbage bag quite thoroughly.

Now, this story is the most fun if you realize, how much aracnhophobia I suffered from as a child. For some years, there were nightmares and neurotic behavior when it came to taking on shoes, taking showers, being in rooms with furniture you couldn't see under, etc. And this morning, I was doing all of this spider fun naked, because when I walk around my own house in the morning, watering my plants, alone, I of course take advantage and do it naked - so here I am, the living evidence of human development. Back then, I couldn't have done what I did today dressed in a space outfit. Now, I just checked that not too many had run up my leg or something.

I must admit though, hadn't I seen her float happily around in the water like that, I don't like to think of what had happened. Fine with me that she's been living in my rose bush. But. She would've made a hundred babies in my living room, and they would've started looking for other plants. I might have found spiders, growing in size, everywhere over the next weeks. That's a creepy thought. Even as a cured arachnophobic, I don't want to live in Spider Zoo or even worse, Spider Village, with such a large population, that they'd start building their City Hall next to the Rose Mall and carve out a subway underneath my floors. I do look around the living room a little more today, and when I see my rose bush, I do itch a little in spontaneous places.

Extracurricular Writing

2010-03-22T19:34:00.008+04:30

I've made a list to the right to some other stuff besides the tons of words on this blog. The books are sold out, so I put links to the few libraries who have them. Sometimes someone kindly asks for this or tells me how impossible it is to find, and it's true. Now I've made it easier for you. Oh, don't thank me. I thank anyone who'd ever care enough to read any of it.

Hearts. Heads. Hands

2010-03-18T13:59:00.011+03:30

I have a longing for anchoring myself these days. And strangely enough, while it's all about finding a job, an apartment, a direction, there is only one thing which truly feels like the right anchor to me. It is of course love. Where I live, how I get money, all these things are formalities. The only real thing which the rest are only settings around is to feel and stay with whom I love and what I love. My heart is my only reliable compass in my life. Love is my anchor. Passion is the chain. The world is my ocean. I am of course a mermaid with my long, blond, curly hair and bits of sea weed decoratively covering some private parts.

There's an amazing fact, that has only recently come to my attention: A cockroach can live for weeks without its head. And furthermore: The head can also live on for hours after the decapitation.

The basic reason is, that cockroaches don't have blood circulation like humans do. They have a so-called open circulatory system, which means that cutting of the head won't cause the kind of blood loss, that it would to humans, which would be the killing part. Along with the fact that we need mouth and nose to breathe. But the cockroach's neck would just seal off by clotting the blood. They don't breathe through a mouth in the head, but through spiracles which are tiny holes in the body segment. Then there are the facts that the cockroach's brain doesn't control the breathing, and it doesn't use the blood to carry oxygen to the body. Instead, the spiracles provide oxygen directly to the tissue through some small tubes, trachae. And they're coldblooded, poikilotherms, so they need very little food. That makes it possible for them to survive for weeks on a meal. There you go. Cut off the head. Still a body, that'll live on for weeks on the last meal and still be able to get the necessary oxygen and blood flow. Eventually, because it can't eat anymore, it'll die of starvation.

Because it has clumps of ganglia—nerve tissue agglomerations—distributed within each body segment, the cockroach will still be able to perform basic nervous functions without its brain. It can stand, react to touch, and move.

The head. The lonely head can also stay alive for hours after decapitation. If its refrigerated and given nutrients, it can even last longer. It can wave the antennae back and forth. Probably also think a last thought or two. Remember glory moments of great cockroaching. Cockroaches actually have great memories. That is, they remember really well.

There are hands, that can stay with you for a long time. I have hands, that I miss. I vividly remember my grandfather's hands. On their surface a beautiful net of thick, blue veins was spread out. I was allowed to sit and press them down, one by one, and I recall the soft and warm feeling of his hands and the veins giving in to my finger's pressure. He had such delicate skin, and such an elegant touch. I can see him bent over and moving around stamps, coins, letters, see him adjust his glasses, all so gently. I remember how my mother's hands were, when I was a child. They were alike my grandfather's, the same with the blood running so superficially under the skin, that you could follow every stretch in the pattern. I remember her touching my cheeks, calling me Peach Cheek. When I look at my own hands now, I often come to think of my grandfather and my mother, and I know, that I might some day have a child on my lap, who loves to sit and press down my veins on the back of my hands. I remember my grandmother's hands. She had arthritis, and her fingers folded in more and more over the years. She had a loom, and I can still see her hands move swiftly and focused over the warp threads, intersecting them with changing yarn all the time, different colors, confidently holding and moving the shuttle, in and out and over and back, with her small, curled hands creating the large, beautiful tapestries, that hung on the walls around the house. When I see my brother's hand held to his mouth, I see my father. When I read or think, I catch myself in the exact same move. I wonder if my brother sees me and ever thinks the same, that it is actually our father's way of holding the back of the outer finger joints lightly to the lips.

All these hands have stayed with me and I hold them close. I've seen strength, courage, and wisdom in these hands. I know how warm they are, how soft they are. I know the precise feeling of their surface against my skin. I know their age, their way of holding a pen. I know how tight they hold my hand, how relaxed they lie in a lap. I know how they tell a story, how they move in the air. I know how hard they grab my shoulder when a car is coming. Some of them I know how they feel in the moment life leaves them. I held my grandmother's hand when she died. I sat with both my grandfathers and my Aunt Grethe when they were dead. I held their hands, stroked their hands. They all once held me. Now in my heart, I hold their hands.

Love Missive

2010-03-07T17:47:00.018+03:30

I've always thought that true love cannot be lost, only missed. If it is true love, I don't know, my feeling is, that it'll never disappear. You may stop feeling it, and so it doesn't continue to live. But once it's been there, been here, been felt, lived, once it's found its way from the magical spheres into this mundane world, then it has entered and been manifested in the grand pool of love and can never be lost again for those who were in it, created it, generated it, were filled with it and let it flow out from themselves. As if it has a molecular presence, yet transcends time and is untouchable and etheric. It manifests yet is unmanifestable. It can't really go away, you can't really lose it. But you can miss it. It doesn't make sense. It's like insisting that a fire still is a fire long after the flames are out. Long after the heat is gone.

Maybe I'm just trying to comfort myself. Thinking past loves may be over but their magic will never die. But it will. Of course it will. Nostalgia eventually takes over. The long shadows of disappointment suffocates the light of passion. But inside me, something remains and is still beautiful. So I believe, that you never lose love. It can't disappear. You just miss it. Which is like saying it still exists, right? How can you miss something that's not real? That's like being afraid of ghosts if you don't believe in them. It only makes sense to be afraid of ghosts if you believe in them. Because then they're real to you. Love is so real to me. Sometimes I feel I can touch it, physically. I can't tell if it's inside me or if it's around me. But it's there. At the same time I have it and I miss it. Isn't that strange?

Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream?

Imagine Romeo ever turned to Juliet and said, My Juliet, I love you. I just love me more. For some reason, that doesn't work. You have to stay with the love. I want someone who'll go through fire and mud and financial crises to make me happy. For whom I'd do the same, of course. Why am I such a romantic soul? It's so anachronistic, and I tell you, really unpractical. I want a Romeo, I guess. Someone where there's no limit to how much he wants to be with me. Someone whose life and heart's fulfillment depends on me being in his life. Am I stupid? Does everyone get that? Or do they settle?

I'm not good at settling. I like to write. I'm bored going around alone all the time. I want a job. But there's no job I want. No business that attracts me. Then I figured maybe I should try to write for television. So these days I'm developing a tv-series. Which is really fun. And I didn't settle for some lame job. I'm still alone. But only until it moves further, then I'll be working with real people. I want fun in life. There's so much fun to do, why engage in boring stuff? That'll be my answer to why we are here. To have fun.

What about the soul? The soul is an amazing vehicle that we completely underestimate in our part of the world. We're like meditation, yeah, yeah, that's boring. Sit there and think about nothing, well, I think I'll leave that to the Indians and munks, I'm busy figuring stuff out. Important stuff!!

But I'd really like to be more familiar with my soul. Not necessarily through meditation, though that's one way of reaching in. The deep thinking and feeling of who we are. To have the guts to really spend time getting to know the inner world, find some of all the richness and adventurous spirit in there. Inside myself, how extreme is that to think, that inside my body somewhere, there are unknown spiritual worlds for me to discover. Or are they outside? Is there spiritual existence in the universe or is it all inside? Is spirit not something bigger than thoughts and brain activity? Is the grand spiritual meeting maybe when there's a sublime connection between my little spiritual world of inner consciousness and the big outer-worldly and all-worldly consciousness, the spiritual presence that some call God or the Holy Spirit, that others call Mother Nature or The Force, anyway, the imperceptible something that moves around the non-physical and the unseeable. Quite a challenge and a lifelong journey, I'd like to take out on some day. My spirituality has for years been my next challenge.

Why do we dream? Last night I was out with friends and a woman came to me in a bar's ladies room and while we were alone out there, out of nowhere she said, You're sexy. If I should have sex with a woman, I'd like it to be you. For the next hour or so, she was sneaking around in the bar like a tiger, looking at me heavily and importantly, she'd really challenged herself. She looked very heterosexual, normal(!!!), almost dull. The coincidence will be, I had a very wet dream about a girl last week, someone I used to live with years back. But my dream was more of a nightmare, because I'm not into girls, and we were in a shower and someone was watching in an unpleasant way. I don't know where I'm going. I think something about women often approaching me, and very often only to share their fantasies with me. Straight women much more than homosexual women. Women have tons of dreams. Of women. Whether realizing them or not, it'd be impossible not to have them, when they're all around us all the time. I guess dreams are meant as the next level above us, somewhere between earth and universe surrounding earth. It's a way to take off without going anywhere, yet going farther than you can on any scooter.

So we have dreams both when we sleep and are awake, and that's pretty wild. Just the fact that this woman sees me and it sets off images of sex in her little heterosexual head, dreams of dreams and ifs and ifs and if I ever were to, she wants to play with the dream level and even share with me what happens in her land of thoughts and ideas - and I dream of someone, where it's most involuntary and I wake up and feel it was a wrong dream. But still, I imagine it's a channel to something real, that is somehow brought to my attention through the reminiscences of the dream, that linger with me the next day. Maybe it's not the sex part, that's so real. Maybe it's about the power relation, about the feeling of being surveilled and measured or appraised by cold eyes while being in something as vulnerable as a sexual act, all these things. I don't take it so literally about the sexuality, I mean, I can't take it as a sign from my subconsciousness that I should take more showers with women or something. I mean, I didn't write my sleep a letter asking if I should become more of an active bisexual. If I had, I believe the answer I got would then be; Do you really need a shower scene to make a girl on girl dream wet? No, I don't believe we dream so literally, but I do believe we dream to learn about ourselves and to expand our field of experience. The woman in the ladies room was open to allow herself to dream. And neither her dream while awake or my dream while asleep were close to realization. They were just dreams. But, something in between reality and nothing suddenly existed, and in her fantasy she came a lot closer to sex with a woman, than she'd maybe ever been before. Good for her. Keep dreaming.

Maybe it's for the love that we dream. So you miss the true love and maybe it's only in your dream world that it lives on. But that's also a sacred place then, if you can both love someone long gone and have sex with strangers there.

There's always the need to find peace. Inside, outside. When you end a relationship, you need to catch your breath before you can let someone new take it away from you again. You need peace. Here's the painful dictionary definition of being involved too early. When you've not taken or had the time to find your peace and catch your breath again. The period in which the next person is crushed in all your old emotions and the new emotions actually seem to most of all be in the way. The hard fact to accept, if you've been the new one, who came with a much lighter baggage and an open heart and full of stupid dreams is, that you met someone who wasn't able to manage the feelings because it was a person on the rebound. Ok dictionary, go:

A rebound is an undefined period following the break up of a romantic relationship. Someone who is 'on the rebound', or recently out of a serious dating relationship, is popularly believed to be psychologically incapable of making reasonable decisions regarding suitable partners due to emotional neediness, lingering feelings towards the old partner, or unresolved problems from the previous relationship. Rebound relationships are believed to be short-lived due to one partner's emotional instability and desire to distract themselves from a painful break up, and those emerging from serious relationships are often advised to avoid serious dating until their tumultuous emotions have calmed.

I believe there are people, that you wait your entire life to meet. Strong, beautiful, good people. Once you run into one and click, you know it's different from so much else you experience with great people around you. There are just not that many in life who does that to you. Someone a bit out in my family had moved from the US to Denmark and lived here for thirty years. Then her old college boyfriend contacted her, and she packed and moved back to the US, just knew, they were going to be together again. After a marriage, two children, and a career in Denmark, with a full furnished home and a circle of friends. She lives with the old boyfriend from college in California now. On the tenth year. Her children thought she was crazy when she moved for someone she hadn't seen since they were twenty. But she knew. And he knew. They say she's very happy and that they're so in love for the past ten years. So maybe there are people that you somehow in the back of your heart wait to meet again. Because you know it's one of those people for you. Someone who got you. I believe they both had waited to get a new chance, when the very first contact after more than thirty years made them both sure that she should move to the other side of the planet so they could be together.

I spoke to someone recently who told me about his marriage. It's his third marriage, and it has now lasted for thirty-two years. It's one of those you can't imagine will ever stop, because they really are in love with each other still. How could that be threatened? I think they both truly feel that they're with the most wonderful person in the world. Don't wish for anything else. That seems very solid to me. Well, he told me, that what he thinks keeps them together is, that they first and foremost love each others company. We love to be together, he said. We can't think of anything better than being engaged in conversation with each other. Then, he said, we are still curious. We live very different lives, and we're both curious to what the other person experiences and thinks and feels. And then we have a wonderful and creative erotic life.

I belive we're often thrown out into huge messes, sort of like the universal emperor messes with us to see how we get through this. Reality and dreams are often very far apart, yet do we often expect that our reality should be more like the world is in our dreams. Maybe it's not supposed to be. Then we wouldn't need a dream world. What if you met one of those right persons for you when you were on the rebound? If you just weren't ready for all those new feelings of love and building new dreams? Oh, that'd be a mess. And the new person would have to accept the universal ruling that love may be there, but so is so much else, and in the real world, it's not love above all else, not all big romantics believe that love conquers everything, and though Romeo is luckily not so stupid as to kill himself and his beloved in the real world, neither is he above the need of a rebound period. Man, I hope Romeo would've taken his rebound period before dating again. Who wants to come after Juliet? But what a mess would it be, had he met the Juliet herself while actually being on the rebound from someone else? Maybe he did, and that's the back-story we never learned to interpret from between the lines. But it would explain the whole emotional panic quite well; Oh dear, this is just too much feeling, I have a solution, let's die!

Meeting someone who gets you. That's true love. Maybe that's what I mean when I say that you can't lose true love, you can only miss it. That once someone got you, you may lose them as present in your life. But you'll never lose the feeling that someone really got you. Maybe that's what make some sit and look lovingly at each other after thirty years and others find each other again after thirty years. The feeling, that this other person and you get each other in a way like no one else does. That you see each other. And can't help what your heart tells you. That this person is different to you than all the others. That this person sees in you what no one else sees. That no matter where life and time brings you, together or apart, there's something you can't lose again. You can miss it, even for thirty years, but never lose it. True love.

Bleeding Valentine - Delayed & Revisited

2010-03-04T14:10:00.010+03:30

I'm one of those who don't like dreams in movies and books. When it comes to the long misty dream sequence, I only wish they hadn't put it in there and can't wait to get back to the real story. In a book I'll read impatiently and fast through the dream. First of all, it's always badly made. Second, there's usually some subtle point of the character's subconsciousness, that couldn't be conveyed better or in any other way than through a dream with some lame symbolism in it - it's often a cop-out. Third of all, it's the same in real life, when people start entertaining you with their dreams, it's usually boring and long and tedious, and you end up saying, I guess you should've been there to really get the drama of it. And the light turns off in the other person's eyes, because they found it all extremely exciting with all the weird and very important details and turns and changes and then we were in a completely different place, oh, come on. A dream is just like a high; it's definitely most interesting to the person experiencing it.

So, today I will entertain you with some dreams I've had recently. I will make them shorter along the way, so imagine you're at the theatre, the second half is always shorter because then we just can't take that much anymore. We just had a break and were proud to sit all the way through act I, II, and III so please make IV and V short. I will.

Recently I awoke at the worst point of a nightmare. I was very close to dying, and the only one near me didn't get the graveness of the situation.

I had noticed a bleeding earlier on, a severe bleeding from my leg, and I had ignored it. At the point where I woke up, I had just seen it again, it was pumping out of my leg, and this time I knew, I shouldn't have ignored it the first time, because now, I was almost out of blood. I was wearing dark pants and you couldn't see, that they were soaked in blood. I suddenly remembered how I had spilled blood for hours, had been trailing blood after me, but not reacted to this fact. Now, I found myself in a public bathroom. Dizzy, fainting, bleeding, falling over, realizing instinctively, that I had very little blood left in me. That it was about to finish me. I got out of the bathroom, saw the man through the glass, his wife was there too a little behind him, he thought I was waving at them, I tried to move to them with my hands and body, that I was in a dying situation. Maybe he thought I was a clown. He smiled and gestured carefree back. Finally he got it. We were all three strangers in this place, travelling, exploring.

He came to me, and would leave me to go get help. I begged him not to leave me. We were close to stores and city life, but we were in a deserted hotel, and I knew, even though I could hear people, that it was a labyrinth, that if he and his wife went to find help, they wouldn't be able to find their way back to me. I also knew, I was out of time. I begged him to carry me with him. Just the few turns till we were in a familiar place. His wife was a passive force, trying to get him to go with her, leaving me there, she tried without words from a distance to make him convince me, that they'd tell someone on the other side, that I was in there. I knew, it wasn't truthfull. She wanted me to bleed out and die. Alone. And continue their journey.

There, in the labyrinth, hardy able to speak, disagreeing with a man, my only chance of savior, who had already wasted precious time not understanding my panic, now trying to convince me, that I could wait alone in the not-to-be-found-again-in-a-hundred-years-untill someone some day made a coincidental turn and found me, stiff and long gone, bled out, with a scared expression frozen on my dead face would say, Oh, here she was, stop the searching, the hundred years are over, we found her. Though not in time.

Weak, don't leave me. I'm bleeding out, save me fast. I've neglected my own leak for so long, didn't seek help while I still could myself. Didn't see my needs. That I am running out of the most life-necessary ressources. Just allowed the dark cloth of the pants to soak the blood and cover the seriousness of the loss. Let the blood flood in silent drips behind me as Hans and Grethe trying to mark their path. But I couldn't follow the path back. I ended up alone in a labyrinth, completely dependent on the man and his wife. Powerless. Alone with the necessary knowledge of time and place and danger and not able to convey it to them. Not met with love and understanding but with tourists and your troubles are in our way.

Then I had a classic dream, I lost my teeth. I was a waiter in a restaurant, serving other people. I had lost more than half my teeth, there were holes all around in my mouth. The left teeth were loose and rottening. I was full of shame and fear. The manager of the restaurant was furious because I looked so horrible and the guests didn't love their waiter's looks and scared behavior. For some reason, it was my last chance of a job. Probably because the situation was becoming worse so much faster, I was loosing teeth during the dream as well and the looseness of the left teeth made me believe, that it was only a matter of time before I had absolutely no teeth left. I was humble and humiliated and once again, dependent on the man to let me keep the job in spite of my obvious weakness.

Soon after that, I dreamed that I died. I was in a plane with two children, a strange plane - it was a dream - where I and the children were the only passengers and the room we were in was a square front room. The pilot was in the back. I looked out of one of the small front windows and saw right in front of us bushes and a hill that we were heading straight into. I had a few seconds and I knew: Now I'm dying. We're at full speed heading into something that will cause us to die. And then I did. I died. And awoke. There was nothing after death. I couldn't protect the children. We just died and I saw it coming, and I couldn't protect us.

A few days later I dreamed that there was a murderer in my bedroom. I woke up and knew, I had been dreaming. I went back to sleep. He was there again. I kept waking up, falling off, having spasms, finally I had to sit up and start talking, shaking off the idea, that when I fell asleep, I would be murdered. I slept a few hours more, uneasy and lightly.

I couldn't get rid of these dreams. I couldn't move beyond the point, where I didn't know if I would live or die. Someone kept telling me in real life that I was alive and I would live. That I was saved and would be saved again. But why didn't I save myself in time? Why was my strength gone, my teeth leaving me? Why couldn't I rescue the children and survive when I saw danger coming towards us? Why was I afraid to be murdered in my own bedroom where I should feel the safest?

The truth is, that I've been through a depression. Unfortunately, that was not a dream. There was no waking up. And the details and turns and changes were boring, long, and tedious. My dreams are so easy to interpret, doesn't take Freud to tell, that my life circumstances have been out of my control. That I've been very fragile and in a situation of no rights, no demands to make, no safety, no ease. Of course, it's about love. But it's also about me, I've been in charge of putting myself in a lovelife-situation where I bleed out, either from a broken heart or from a hurt leg, so I can't move. I've been stuck. And bleeding.

Why? Last year I wrote a blog post about love. It was on Valentine's Day.

Here's part of the Valentine's post:

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.

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 new to me to be 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 will be 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.

That was the end of the quote of last year's Valentine's Day blog post.

And here I am now, a year later. This year's big question is: What do you do if one of two lovers loses faith in love?

You're standing there underneath the heavens, and just as you hand out your heart and tell God that you believe, God leans forward and whispers in your ear; Well kid, I'm not so sure I really believe in you. That might make you realize, that faith goes both ways. Maybe people walk around and think, that they believe in God, and that's what matters. But I think their feeling that he believes in them is just as important a part of the whole belief deal.

When you make a move out of frustration or anger, it always ends in catastrophe. No poetry, no light. Which, together summons inspiration.

The spiritual side of life. Where we are more than the things we surround ourselves with, more than the stuff, more than things, stuff, occupations; where we exist in another, but always present, dimension. The existential side of life, where it's about the being. Not achieving, not gathering, not succeeding. Being.

There comes a time in every relationship, where you ask yourself and each other, what you are. What's the spirit, the being, the nature of the relationship.

Are you writing a poem together, brief, beautiful, with the power of the moment, the etheric touching upon the sphere of ideas, and magically composed as a consistence of lines and rhimes and rhythm, not too short, not too long, meant to last only for the time of a poem, thought, written, spoken, heard, then closed and put back on the shelf, maybe even memorized forever after, but short, and always meant to be short?

Are you writing a short story, is there a dramatic curve, a movement from here to there, a development in the characters forced by the parts involved and their interaction, ups and downs, belief turned into disbelief or a story of belonging but from the first word only belonging for so long?

Or are you writing the novel where the story seems to never end?

When you write, as I do, it is easy to fool loneliness, and forget that you miss the most important thing. Solitude is a fact of life. Some of us are better to live with it than others.

It's a constant attempt not to be in flight of the emotions. Whether it be love, hate, fear or joy. Stay with them.

Lovers can get away with anything. They can say stuff like, Let's go somewhere and bury something. We will return as old and find it in the ground. Lovers have to say stuff like that. They have to plant, to save, to dream, to built.

Now I know what they mean, when they say love hurts. When they say it's painful to love. I've lost enough for one lifetime, but I haven't loved enough yet. God don't refuse me. God let me forever believe in love. God give me faith.

The nightmares stopped a few weeks ago.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Note To Self z)

2010-03-02T09:03:00.005+03:30

Wow, it's time for the last note to self.

It all started because a friend of mine told me about this annoying person, who walks around and makes a gesture as if she slips a note into her chest pocket while she says in a chirpy voice 'Note to self!'. I found this good enough for a series of pocket philosophy notes to self here.

I am back on my feet again after a bit of a rough period of time. I've tolled the knell of sorrow, have been catching knives in midair. Now, I'm back. Which is really, really great. I've spent some time worrying, which is not like me. There was much to worry about, threats in the air, threats of loss, always of potential and unexpected punishments, of anger that would fall over heads and ruin everything, of undurable situations that would have to be endured forever, of being perpetually rejected when most vulnerable, of held back love, that would continue to be held back. So many worries. And now, I worry no more. It wasn't me anyway. Not my life. Not my way of living, not forming the base upon which to live a happy life, not confronting the anger to get it away from over my head, not giving the love in shape of living the love instead of holding it back. It wasn't me. My life is once again my own. My life is once again at peace. With all the chaos that's in life, of course, but I can deal with that, and I do deal with that. I don't even mind dealing with that. I just don't do it in the worrying way. That's such a relief. I'm no longer constantly worried how it'll all work out. I'm now part of making it all work out.

Some people have an ability to postpone their lives. When this is real, I'll start doing that. When this is achieved, I'll allow myself to do that. On that date, I'll start realizing my dreams. It can seem like a refined masochistic, aschetic technique to avoid living life right now, keeping shudders between you and your living experience, constantly promising yourself to start doing the real living right around the next corner. It reminds me of an old man who was aware that he was soon to die. He said; Never did I think, that life was all those days that came and went.

But life just is the here and now. Today is yesterday's tomorrow. But yesterday, there was another today. Today is only today. If you spent yesterday planning today, where were you in yesterday's today? Making notes to self is sort of the same syndrom. Taking notes for what? The big exam? The time to come, where you need to be smarter and better prepared? The performance to prove, that you learned enough from the moments passing by you right now?

I've seen some let go of the love of their life, out of hesitation towards life. Because love demands too much presence, too much life. Love needs real breath, needs real living, needs real nourishment. Love can only survive for so long on the postponing, can only for so long be a promise about realization somewhere in the future. Love will dry out if it is not lived, for love has a nature, that makes it feel not loved, when it is not lived. And you have to love love in order to get the first glimpse of it. If you don't live life and don't love love, the present will probably always scare the shit out of you, and you'll have to live on an idea about when to live your life instead of now, when your love will be possible - somewhere in the future, always a better time than the now.

There is no exam. No test time to come. No awaiting performance to prepare for. There is life. And it is here, it is now. It is only yourself living your life, and there's no reason for waiting to live it or take notes preparing for it. Just live and love the day. Today.

Note to self: No more notes to self.

Note To Self y)

2010-03-01T12:20:00.000+03:30

My friend had to get some stuff with her home from her new boyfriend's place. He found a bag and lent it to her. As they were filling the bag, a porn movie showed up in the bag's side pocket. The way he tried to save it was by saying, she could lend that too, and he put it back in the pocket. My friend and I had a good laugh over this, and found it a good save. We watched the movie with the promising title The Neighbour's Daughter the other night. Only thing; it was really bad. Note to self: When forgetting porn in bag and lending it to new girlfriend: Make sure it's good porn.

Note To Self x)

2010-02-28T17:52:00.002+03:30

Maybe we're not put on Earth to be happy. Maybe we are happy, but don't realize it till it's too late. Note to self: Remember to feel occasionally happy.

Note To Self w)

2010-02-24T10:03:00.004+03:30

My 17# Powerbook G4 is passing away. I love that computer dearly. He's called Uncle Travelling Mac. I've had him for seven years. Back then when laptops were expensive and this was the absolute best you could find, I paid almost $6000, yes, six thousand dollars for him. The last generation of titanium. I have appreciated his company, skills, endurance and extreme loyalty. I have run a company and gone through seven years of university and a thesis with him. I've written three books and a lot of more manuscripts on him, written articles, columns, translations, almost every word of this blog, poems, short stories, comments, diary pages, notes, letters, speaches, ideas, essays, and thoughts, all on him, all with the familiar sensation of his weight in my lap, his keys under my fingertips, my eyes on his screen. Suddenly there was a wrong dial tone and hard drive sighs. Black screen. Next day, nothing, no upstart. Then days, waiting, gently stroking, trying key combinations and patient upstart tricks, a little life, was it a nap, suddenly almost full life, then heavy sleep again. Days, awaiting. I went and looked at new Macs, I don't really appreciate the thought of a new. It will be smaller, faster, I'll become happy, but it doesn't really feel good right now. I've been prepared for this for a long time. Have back-up. Emotionally, I was prepared. Spent so many hours with Mac in my lap and my feet up, I can't tell you. I've spent far more time with Uncle Mac than I have with any human being in the past seven years. Been to more countries. Spent more nights. Escaped boredom more. Always, through it all, Mac and I, together. Then, it happened. No more life, no one could save him. I'm writing this on a new MacBook. Uncle travelling Mac is lying in my window sill in ten parts. It was necessary to take him all apart to save the hard drive. I carried him home in a plastic bag, keyboard, frame, battery, screws, chips, components, it was all there, but no longer the same. He's on lit de parade, I'm not ready to let go of his earthly parts just yet. Note to self: You're never really prepared for a beloved's breakdown, even though you think you are.

Note To Self v)

2010-02-23T10:11:00.001+03:30

Being afraid of death is one thing. I was there for some years, and it was bad. Caused anxiety, paralized the system at the same time as it kicked it out into another galaxy of feeling, felt as if a shocking green fluid had been injected into my system and I was witnessing and living the screaming consequences. Fear of death. Bad. Now I've seen the one other thing, which I imagine is even worse. Fear of living. A life lived in fear of is not a lived life. Note to self: Never be afraid.

Note To Self u)

2010-02-22T01:48:00.001+03:30

If you ever leave me, please take as much love with you, as you can. If you ever leave me, please remember, that I did not only love you, I tried to make you love yourself more. If you ever leave me, please know that you take part of me with you. If you ever leave me, please leave a little of yourself behind. Maybe not your heart, maybe not an eye, maybe not a hand. Maybe a memory, a heartbeat, a word. If you ever leave me, remember how we dreamed. How we thought of peace and gardens and happy days to come. Please don't think it wasn't true. It all was, when it was our dreams. Note to self: Love no less.

Note To Self t)

2010-02-21T16:32:00.003+03:30

A woman told me a story. A girl was in an internship in a vegetable shop, and she posed the question: How do you know the difference between a big tomato and a small tomato?

You have to love the girl for a question like that. The story behind is, that the girl is a refugee child and has had fairly bad odds for getting anywhere in life. The woman told me about these young people and how they try to help them, for instance by finding internships for them. And these refugee kids are more often in the dark than kids with Danish parents, because the most obvious isn't so obvious to them. Like the small and the big tomatoes. It's both a universal question and one to which each culture and language will have different connotations to each answer. How do you know for sure if you have a big tomato or a small tomato in your hand, and divide the box correctly into smalls and bigs, so that the boss is happy with you? It's a fine line.

Another fine line. There is a moment in between hesitation and refusal. It determines whether it is the one or the other. I suppose you can say it's the length of the moment, which determines the difference. It can be a moment within a second, and it can be a moment of years. From case to case it will be different, but with a good intuition, you'll know when hesitation turned into refusal. When the moment is denied and there are only other ways. Note to self: Only you know your fine line between a big tomato and a small tomato.

Note To Self s)

2010-02-20T01:34:00.004+03:30

I once met someone who made me feel small. Note to self: Those, who patronize to be big are usually the smallest of all.

Note To Self r)

2010-02-19T00:00:00.000+03:30

Doing good is not a state to enter which will then last forever after. Acting as if things are good can be an important part of making things good. What would I do if I were happy? Smile? Go for a run? Cook? Invite friends over? Give presents? Sing? Work enthusiastically? Paint my bedroom? Buy jewelry? Bathe in champagne? Sometimes the action brings the state of mind. Note to self: Fake it till you make it.

Note To Self q)

2010-02-18T00:44:00.003+03:30

Peace feels great or like a threatening illusion. The idea of total harmony is quite a challenge and some of us are good at disturbing things when tranquility and bliss is settling in. After making a storm of a detail, the question is often: Why was that so important when everything else was working so well? Note to self: The most interesting place in the mouth just is the sore tooth.

Note To Self p)

2010-02-17T15:41:00.002+03:30

No one says it's easy. On a daily basis we include or exclude. We either see and understand each other or deny to see anything but our immediate appearances. We offer ourselves or deny access. We are responsible. We choose. We offer. We give. We create our relations. We create each other. No one says it's easy. But it's our choice. Note to self: Choose each other.

Note To Self o)

2010-02-16T15:41:00.001+03:30

The punishment of anger is in its deep nature involuntary. It's impossible to choose to be angry, just as it is impossible to choose to love or to not care. But ironically enough, the anger mostly punishes the angry person. There's always something to be angry about. In every life, in every relation, every day. The world is full of idiots bugging us, even our loved ones are easy to find flaws in and get angry about. To travel through the world on an angry note is a heavy loaded journey. The angry person is the truly punished one, it's the one who has the hardest time fleeing the anger. There is a voluntary moment in between holding on to anger and letting go of anger. It's about saving yourself. Note to self: Choose love.

Note To Self n)

2010-02-15T09:32:00.001+03:30

I remember learning as a child about the muscles of the human body. The smooth muscles, skeletal muscles, cardiac muscles. Soon I had an anatomic atlas and could study the maps of our interior, something I still do with great curiosity, same atlas, same fascination. What I still recall as the first great anatomic wonder to discover was the nature of the smooth muscles. You can't choose not to breathe with your lungs. You can't choose to stop your heart. It still tricks me. It's as if once life has chosen you, you just follow, effortless. Or do you? Every day in this world is new. Note to self: Choose life.

Note To Self m)

2009-12-18T03:27:00.000+03:30

My ex-boyfriend was an actor. He was in some good movies, played with some of the big names, Clint, Arnold. But he himself was never a big name. He was, symbollically enough in this context, one of the six deputies, but not the preacher himself. He taught me one very important thing. When he started out acting in Hollywood, he thought he'd make it big, become a huge star or it would be a failure. Then he learned, it wasn't necessarily in one of those extremes he'd find his life and destiny. He made a fine living as an actor somewhere in between. Note to self: There's so much in between success and failure.

Note To Self l)

2009-12-17T05:10:00.001+03:30

I am sweet. I am nice. Note to self: I am ok.

Note To Self k)

2009-12-16T17:02:00.001+03:30

Soon I will travel to Africa and stay for a few months. I wish to get some writing done. I have a novel in progress and another one in my head. Then I don't know. I will return. Maybe. Read some books. Probably get a job. Maybe travel some more. Get an apartment. Live life. Write. Maybe. Expect things to fall into place. How exciting to see what will come. But first X-mas. Then Africa. Note to self: First things first.

Note To Self j)

2009-12-15T19:58:00.004+03:30

Sometimes it snows in April. Here it is now the very darkest days of the year. Sun up at 8.44 AM. Sun down at 3.34 PM. It's dark pretty much all the time. It snows occasionally, it did today. A lot of people are depressed. Inside there are lots of candles and sweets and warm wine and cosy times. Outside a bleak, cold, dark midwinter. And then you get a phone call. Sometimes the light breaks through in December. Note to self: Love is out of control.

Note To Self i)

2009-12-14T14:42:00.001+03:30

I was out for a long walk where I often walk or run. I looked at the big, romantic, beautiful trees along the path. I got really angry at them. I used to rest the back of my head against them and dream to one day walk there with him and stand like that and be kissed. Today I knew he never promised me those kisses. They did. Note to self: Never trust trees.

Note To Self h)

2009-12-13T02:27:00.001+03:30

We all fear something. So many are scared of loving, so they love insecurely like shy cripples or brutally like violent hoodlums. I'm afraid of the dark. And of writing. These are the most scary things in my world. I force myself to write, even though it's painful and insufficient what I come up with. I think soon I will try to look into the dark. Sometimes, you do the thing you're scared shitless of. Then you get the courage. Note to self: You don't get courage to do it. You get courage from doing it.

Note To Self g)

2009-12-12T09:57:00.001+03:30

Some day I will have my own family. I look forward to that day and think of it as a happy thing. I was a lonely child, and for many years, I didn't think I would be granted my own family. As if the world order was that a lonely child would also become a lonely adult. That the loneliness, that felt wrong as a child would also be the right wrong feeling for me as an adult. Now I'm sure, that I will one day have a family of my own. Note to self: Two wrongs don't make a right.

Note To Self f)

2009-12-11T01:47:00.002+03:30

You know how you struggle with your surroundings, how you feel they're in control and you're just trying to get a tiny grip of existence to survive in the big mess? How your life is a mess, everything is threatening, things may fall down, people may fall in your back, your world may fall apart? How you struggle and fight the world back and think that force and power is what you need? Note to self: Nothing is stronger than inner peace.

Note To Self e)

2009-12-10T21:58:00.001+03:30

The most lovely man was reading one of my books. Somewhere in the book is a list of lists. I love lists. One of the lists is called 'My walks.' The last point reads: 'I walk away. I always do.' He said; That's my story too. I said; I've written it, I can write it over. I suggested a rewriting of our common history: 'We walked away. We always did. And then we met each other.' He approved. Note to self: You write your own history.

Note To Self d)

2009-12-09T02:06:00.000+03:30

When I was seventeen, I moved to Florence, Italy. During my school days, I'd been one of the tall girls which was sort of too bad. The boys were tiny. In Italy, they constantly said stuff like, Alta, bella, alta, bionda, ma come sei alta e bella, bionda. Alta means tall in Italian. And I learned to think of being a tall girl as a great thing. I appreciate it daily now when I can see far and reach stuff, being up there with the men and the buildings. And when people's eyes say; Holy fuck, she's a tower. Why want to be small when you can love to be big? Note to self: It's a high to be tall.

Note To Self c)

2009-12-08T01:29:00.005+03:30

I love to live and to love and to take whatever comes, even though it's muddy on occasion. I usually remind myself when anxiety insistingly knocks on my door, that I'm going to die. Now, that might be the one last terrifying fact to add to tip me over into panic, but funny enough, it has the opposite effect. What am I striving to achieve? How bad can it go? What's at stake? How much damage can come from the situation? No matter how hard and serious it may seem right now, it's just a small life, and it's going in crazy directions and then it will end. Note to self: Never take life too seriously.

Note To Self b)

2009-12-07T14:04:00.005+03:30

When it hurts to tear a bandage off, it's good to rip it off fast to make it stop. Don't freeze in the pain and sit there and pull the bandage slowly, feeling the glue sticking hard to the skin. Rip, yell, relax. But looking around in your life, there's often a complexity which creates your problems. One can make the other hurt. If you're unhappy at work and you come home to your wife angry and sad every day, she might start behaving problematically. Soon you'll have two problems; a bad job and an unsatisfied wife. If you choose to get a divorce, it might be a solution to one of your problems, but the bandage you probably would've wanted to pull off would've been to quit your job. Your wife would once again have a satisfied husband. And you'd get a satisfied wife. Note to self: Remember to pull off the right bandage.

Note To Self a)

2009-12-06T11:02:00.003+03:30

When people crash from throwing themselves of a bridge, what do they think? Almost all survivors from Golde Gate Bridge have told that they regretted and saw solutions to their problems on their way down. Since the bridge was built in 1937 someone has thrown themselves out every second week. Imagine how many, these are way over a thousand suicides, probably during the long seconds of free fall going down have seen, that their problems weren't worth dying for. Note to self: There's always a solution.

Quotes I dig

2009-11-26T01:05:00.005+03:30

"Aimer quelqu'un c'est aussi aimer le bonheur de quelqu'un."

Françoise Sagan

("To love someone is also to love the happiness of that someone." My translation)

The Right Arms

2009-11-23T15:26:00.016+03:30

This morning I found myself dreaming of loving arms around me.

Lately, I've seen a lot of other arms. I went to Afghanistan, and as I travelled embedded by the Danish Army, believe me, I saw a whole lot of arms. I'd never imagined, how extreme war is when it comes to arming. So many machine guns, canons, rockets, so many armed vehicles, so much personal armour; fragvests, helmets, eye wear. Everyone and everything is armed to the bone, covered in the hardest materials possible to prevent anything hard and fast from intruding.

Where you normally imagine the one next to you is friend, you don't imagine the one sitting next to you on the bus being your enemy, here it was the other way around. You had to assume, that your next of kin is your enemy, that you will be attacked, shot at, harmed, killed. Of course the civilian Afghan populatation walk around unarmed, and have to believe in the best. But for me as a westener, it was quite an experience. Not to be able to go anywhere without all the equipment of personal armour and furthermore without what is called close protection; trained people with machine guns guarding my life as keenly as possible. It would've been insane to do so. Taleban would've killed me, had they had the chance.

Philosophically it's very interesting to observe, what a difference it creates. To be surrounded by friend or foe. To be aware, that around you are not only friendly people who can of course sit next to you on the bus or ask you the time or directions. But that the people close around you are someone with a mission to kill you if they get a chance and you're not armed well enough. The freedom of movement is of course inhibited by this fact. But it also questions the basic assumption of a person who grew up in a friendly neighbourhood in a peaceful country, the assumption that no one wants to harm you until you've done harm to them. But. Yes, in some places they do.

Here, I for being me, would've been so hated, symbolically such a great target, representative as a part of the enemy, the wrong person in the wrong place, that someone would've taken my life without ever exchanging a word with me. I would've deserved it, nothing personal, but just as a fact. That was a new experience to me to be somewhere, where that was the reality. I've walked through a favellah in Brazil (oh, it was an accident, a wrong turn, and yes, of course I got mugged and it was also a very clear case of wrong person in wrong place, tall and blonde and happily waving a hand bag, commenting on the lovely weather and all the crooks looking like lovely people while my friend walking next to me, who had completely gotten what kind of a place we were in, was silently repeatedly throwing up and swallowing her heart out of fear, but that's another story), well I've been to places and walked home at night where it's dangerous because you're a target for enrichment or the act of rape or something. But it's very different from being situated in an area where someone is after your life for no personal reasons or any other reasons - except you're better dead in their book.

It shakens the fundamental assumption, that we don't hurt each other just to hurt each other. That the world is a welcoming place where you're able and allowed to exist freely and with confidence to your surroundings. Where we don't kill to kill. Here, soldiers kill each other all the time for no personal reasons. Just because they're sent out by each government or organisation. Here, had I taken a walk alone, I could've looked around me and would've known: I have enemies here. People here would like to see me dead. They don't care who I am. But they care to kill me.

Another kind of arms, that I've seen lately, actually terrifies me much more than the hardened steel. Warfare is impressing, massive, and scary, and general surrounding hostility is a fundamentally different world setting to move in. But war is also a universal and understandable fact. We fight and develop the strongest arms possible to do so the best.

Over the past years, most of my friends have gotten children. Sweet little persons, looking like mixtures of my friends, saying funny things, being irrestistable and endearing, having an air of confidence and curiosity around them, that you can only pray they won't lose over the coming years. I love several of them. But oh so many of their parents have seperated and divorced. I usually know the one part better, and have stayed friends with that one. To see these parents fight is the hardest wars I've ever witnessed. These friends of mine in long drawn conflicts with their Xes are both men and women. I won't and can't say what gender is generally the better in these fights, because there is no better or worse gender there. I'll only say, many of them are in a kind of war, which is new and terrifying to me. And these people as fighters are equipped above all else in warfare. They are armed with children.

These fights are fought by the most dangerous of all. The hurt ones. The ones stabbed in the heart, refused by love, deserted by dreams, wounded by the world, and whipped by pain. Soldiers with guns, go home. Taleban, you're cute. Warriors and fighters of the world, look at these people, and you'll see danger, courage, endurance and all means taken into the battle to win. You'll see a weapon, which you have nothing to compare with. Now these hurt people are trying to at least protect their children and get what is rightfully theirs. From both sides, that is; they all of course want what's best for the children. Which funny enough, very often is themselves.

Of course I usually think my friends are the most reasonable parts, and their Xes are the ones who are now far out. But not always. I've been in situations, where the actions of my dear friends are estranging me, and I really wish they'd behaved differently. And these may be fights over years, many decisions, many stands to take, many lawyers and meetings and agreements and accusations. I won't say my friends change. But I'll say I'm very sure that I'll understand certain things better when I get my own children.

One thing is wanting the best for the child, another is hurting the X. And that seems to be one of the worst mix ups of all. Another thing is when the X has turned into such a person, whom it's better to keep from your child. Then something is wrong. Most of these people were married. They'd sworn each other eternal love a few years earlier, and I've known them as more or less sympathetic people, but none of them as someone who wouldn't be a good parent to their own children.

I have never seen any of my friends suffer from anything, as I've seen many of them suffer from these situations. There is no comparison. Missing their children, fighting the other parent of their child, having to share a child with someone no longer even tolerable to them, a child whom they the most want to offer a great world full of great people and of all people not that idiot, being in negotiations over minutes and citizenships and birthdays and Christmases and child support and forgotten wind breakers. Nothing is as heartbreaking to witness. No war is uglier. Nothing seems to hurt them more than the suffering of the children, and yet nothing makes them fight harder themselves than the longing for their children. So few are able to accept that they no longer love each other, but that they both still and forever love the children. And that cutting each other out is always, always, always hurting the children. Children need all the love they can get and all the parents they have.

I have friends who fear kidnapping, because they know that the X would actually rather want to bring up the child alone in a world without them. Others who haven't seen their children for months, some who lie awake at night over fights that won't end, and many who curse that they once loved, because life is now so hard and full of war and dragging each an arm of a child.

So far, arms to me is in reality still only one thing. They're the arms of a beloved. Lying in them, I have no doubt, that I'm in the right place. That there is only one right way for me to be armed. That is in the arms of my beloved.

Driving Through The Helmand Desert

2009-10-30T11:05:00.005+03:30

Afghanistan '09

2009-10-25T18:35:00.007+03:30

When You Take The Dreams From A Dreamer

2009-10-04T22:33:00.013+03:30

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

2009-10-03T04:49:00.001+03:30

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

Quote: Tine Bruun

Lines

2009-09-10T15:38:00.007+04:30

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

2009-09-05T17:47:00.003+04:30

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

2009-08-29T15:44:00.011+04:30

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

2009-08-21T12:48:00.015+04:30

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

2009-08-11T19:10:00.001+04:30

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

2009-08-01T20:16:00.000+04:30

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

2009-07-30T16:41:00.002+04:30

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

2009-07-27T20:35:00.000+04:30

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

2009-07-25T13:36:00.001+04:30

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

2009-07-16T10:46:00.007+04:30

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

2009-06-19T16:34:00.001+04:30

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

2009-05-23T22:40:00.001+04:30

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

2009-05-04T19:06:00.000+04:30

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

2009-04-30T21:30:00.000+04:30

Red Hair and Regrets

2009-04-25T12:25:00.000+04:30

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

2009-04-16T01:06:00.000+04:30

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

2009-03-30T14:28:00.001+04:30

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

2009-03-25T17:35:00.000+04:30

All photos: But Of Course The Steen Brogaard

The Jubilee Portrait Treat Continues

2009-03-24T14:27:00.000+04:30

Photo: The Steen Brogaard

Jubilee Coming Up

2009-03-23T13:34:00.000+04:30

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

2009-03-21T20:54:00.000+03:30

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

2009-03-19T00:57:00.000+03:30

Photo: Morten Siebuhr

Quotes I Dig

2009-03-13T23:13:00.000+03:30

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

Quote: Tine Bruun

Sources

2009-03-11T14:24:00.000+03:30

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

2009-03-01T00:44:00.000+03:30

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

2009-02-23T17:20:00.000+03:30

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

2009-02-18T03:06:00.001+03:30

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

2009-02-14T17:56:00.001+03:30

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 will be 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

2009-01-30T19:44:00.001+03:30

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

2009-01-27T18:42:00.000+03:30

Quotes I Dig

2009-01-25T13:50:00.001+03:30

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

2009-01-15T20:53:00.000+03:30

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

2009-01-10T23:10:00.000+03:30

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

2008-12-23T16:16:00.000+03:30

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.

Quotes I Dig

2008-07-04T00:04:00.001+04:30

"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

2008-06-26T21:52:00.000+04:30

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

2008-06-18T04:22:00.000+04:30

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