rites of passage

We’re the kind that come together on a graveyard. From different corners of the country like little magnets we get pulled - to congregate and stand by the grave-side of the ones that do the pulling. Those that had been and are now gone. Those that define, and those that went so long ago that there’s no-one left to remember. Someone in their time that had to leave in their time. On my family plot - I bring flowers and I bring candles and I walk across and on top and all over their graves and... do they even know..., much less about me?

We discuss funeral arrangements, and who wants to be and rest where and how we want to be disposed of. It’s morbid, so we joke to make it easier.

And then we take a drive back and we feel whole. We get take-out coffee that so appropriately comes in Xmas-red cups, and probably feel the closest we’ve felt in a long while. With my sister at the wheel and no longer my dad. Mom fussing with snacks and soft drinks. We rise questions and make family council decisions. A rites of passage for the best family in the world.

- I love you -

builders union

How do you construct a person. How to build character. Where would you start. Which layers would get laid first. What is the foundation. Is it a pyramid. Or is it a block of flats? Or a semi-detached? What abilities should tower?

What makes it solid. Is it a brick of belief, or brick of trust or the brick of endless love.

What if one day, after years of careful(?) labor you sit back and realize that nothing is the way it should be. That the foundation is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the wall. The floors are tilted. The electricity of hope and desire and joy gone haywire - power's out.

What do you do. Where do you start the reconstruction of putting things back together? How do you help. What goes first.
What to do with the fucking carpet that keeps sliding off the floor...?

suspended in-between a wurlitzer and a rhodes

I finally admit defeat. Allright. Allright. I emptied out my car and lifted out my skates. I'd so hoped that I'd still have another go.
Winter you bitch!

Items fished out my boot:

Empty plastic bags - 10
Plastic bags full of weird stuff/junk - 5
Bag full of CDs - 1
Empty windshield washer fluid containers 5L - 2
Full windshield washer fluid container 5L - 1
Sleeping bag - 1
Shoes - 4 pairs
Cycling shoes - 1 pair
Slippers - 1 pair
Rollerblades - 1 pair
Helmet - 1
Sports vest - 1
Sports gloves - 1 pair
Band-aid (duct)tape for taping feet for roller blading - 4 rolls (2 wide, 2 narrow)
Screwdriver - 1 normal, 2 for skates
Dirty sports socks - 2 pairs
Strap-on water bottle - 1
Big empty carton box - 1
Backpack - 1
Empty Coke and water bottles - 20
Old Newsweek/Time magazines - 10

... something else, I'm sure I forgot.

fishing in the rivers of light

I think new heights have been reached if one can write memos of meetings that one has not attended. Particular horizons were broadened at work today - collectively.

we were

See, I'm stuck. The kind of stuck that it really doesn't matter whether I turn left or I turn right, I'm stuck, was stuck and will be beyond stuck - no matter what. Forgive me.


"Мы разбегаемся по делам
Земля разбивается по полам
Сотри меня, смотри в меня
Останься
Прости меня за слабость
И за то, что я так странно
и отчаянно люблю..."
(z)

riga goodbye!

As my time neared the end, Riga presented itself in top form from every possible angle. She laid out a panorama bathed in hazy summer glow that I find hard to resist. And then she presented people sans the barriers. And I think that half way through, when I’d found my appreciation, she really truly liked me back.

I moved into a new office and I moved out of the apartment. I was constantly cleaning. I worked late nights to finish something that hadn’t really even started - to close another door.

And I didn’t really feel anything. Yet. After too many days and nights and months alone. And countless hours spent driving back and forth - 55.000 kilometers too much. Too many stops at lonely Statoil stations. Too many potholes and traffic jams, weird customs and concepts that would simply surprise.

CDs and shoes and books and clothes piling up in my car, 50 empty water bottles and 15 empty coffee cups seconded by something always displaced, missing or lost for good...
All of this will always remember me of her – my sweet and wonderful Riga.

a number of new highs for today

+32C outside and sunny
25 K of rollerblading
5 K of running
not a single drop of alcohol in about 2 weeks
number of car crashes seen - 4
number of food items bought and not eaten – 10

number of times thought and talked about sex in any of it's forms - 75
number of times talked about death - 15
number of times thought that I must be losing it – 100

there's something exciting about leaving everything behind

It was supposed to be a grand day, the grandest. Carefully planned for months ahead, from across the Atlantic. Yet we were fighting. As always.

It started when we got lost. We had printed out two sets of instructions. There was a heap of papers in your lap that kept taking us around and around.

With ample time supply we waited around a lot, just sitting, never really managing to get close again.

Everything seemed orange that day, even the sun, and the dust and the beer bottles that I bought in some little town.

I’ll always remember how there were flashes of light that were dancing around from one end of the sky to the other. Silently. Rolling, illuminating the skyline and the simmering mountain air.

The landscape changed from red rocky to flat to big boulder rocky. Secure in our borrowed car we climbed up and down the road, crossing ridges and mountain passes of sharp turns and flash flood warning signs.

The flashes were above and below. There was multitude of colours in the warm damp, pitch black summer night.

We climbed. I think you were asleep, I don’t really remember.

one of the wonders

You know, on the outside I might seem nice.
Say nice things and smile at you.
I could be civilized and look smart.

But on the inside – sometimes - there’s a monster.

Just a little unsteady, cynical and bitter.
Who looks past and through principles.
Who never reaches one’s personal best.
The one that says one thing and does the other…
I'm sorry!

they say I must be one of the wonders
of god's own creation
and as far as they see they can offer
no explanation
n.merchant