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

Kyiv-Simferopol-Sevastopol

I’m not quite ready to let go of the week spent in the Ukraine. Because for once. Over a period of endless eternity I was happy and (care)free. I held your hand and popped my beer at 11:55 am.

Holidays.
There’s something about holidays. There’s escape and an upward drift of a sort instead of drowning with no escape. Yes, but I want to escape with you!

Like we did escape in the dark churches of a thousand flickering candles, and of underground caves preserving mummies of sacred religious people, revolution and defiance of ordinary people. An old train to Crimea overnight.

You harbor tenderness and care. I’ve never been cared for like this in my life. Stepping from winter to spring and taking a step back in time, in all those Lada cars and Volgas and old trolley buses, we covered the distances of your native land. You told me of war and heroes and ships that were sunk. You told me of your roots and family. You showed me blood and history.

We had bitter cold, and the snow falling silently on Kyiv, its’ countless bars and live music, strangers that became friends. Your eyes and your passion and your breath and most of all – your smile. I’ll always remember your smile.

I think we stepped out of time.

take both pills

I’m a firm believer in the power of duct tape, but there are things in life that cannot be taped back together no matter how well one has mastered the tape thing .

London - the city of silver linings has the power of slapping its’ own colorful piece of tape on me. Each and every time. Covering up and pulling on all that needs holding together.


So I am. Together.

I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking so hard just lately that sometimes I find myself driving on a street I wasn’t even intending on driving on, or climbing the stairs to walk right past my apartment. Thinking.

time takes too much time

There is a tiny cornfield tucked away near some obscure village on the road to Riga that, every time I see it, takes my breath away.

I used to live in the middle of rolling hills and green cornfields that were dotted with Amish silos and white wooden churches with white picket fences around them.

We had boat houses, line dancing, Olive Garden and Confederate flags in driveways. We had York mall.

We had boys and girls. And we had me falling in love, and probably being the happiest I've ever been in my life in the middle of all them beautiful cornfields...

regeneration

I give you my skin...
and my bone
- which I leave laying around in mom's kitchen
and thus loose...
A shiny piece of my bone
ripped out from inside me.
I was hoping to keep
as a memento of fully functioning hands.

broken vol. 2

If pain as such is a way for a body to let its owner know of a severe malfunction and/or trauma, then I guess mine has made its point. Could we ease up with the excruciating pain already. Please.

I knew I was in trouble when out of inertia my bare shins, new skates, skin suit and watch ploughed the tarmac for a good meter.














And somehow the moment it got slammed on the floor I also knew that my sore thumb was much more than just a sore thumb. It was a broken thumb.

if god made you he's in love with me

What a horrible god damn week this has been.
The negativity that hangs in the air and that, amongst other places, seeps from my own self is just overwhelming.
Sometimes I wish I could.
Give up selfishness and desire and live on a higher level. Of some sort. Walk barefoot in the snow on a mountain in Tibet. Have my teeth fall out, my skin turn black.

As if.

And what a difference a smile makes. A view. Smell of the sea. Chit-chat with a cashier girl.

My excess bone and your ripped flesh, comparing notes. The skates that kill us.

You save me, and you have no idea.

not together

"No, we don't pray together."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, denying that he had prayed over the Iraq war with U.S. President George W. Bush.

you can sleep while i drive

I was driving and you were sitting next to me. Holding my hand, asleep, tortured and tired. You were dead beautiful and I was in a right state… wanting to crawl up underneath and inside your skin. To get closer. To feel closer.

I was looking at the sky and the traces of the sun reflecting an eerie pink light. My mind was as sharp as a knife and in my heart there was nothing but you. And right that moment - not a single other thing mattered.

We were going through the fog as I wanted to touch it - it seemed as solid as you - yet somehow elusive, just like you sitting next to me asleep and away... somewhere...
Dead beautiful.

I love you babes!

four weddings and a...

It’s hard being a person when you don’t know what is t that you really want and/or after you’ve finally gotten what you wanted, not knowing whether you truly really wanted it (or not?) in the first place…...

England pierced right through, tearing up everything that had settled and laid to rest. How many feelings can a human heart absorb before it can no more?

I did not bend my head in prayer under "the canopy of Fatherly love"; I refused to bend my head. My defiance of a sort. Because that canopy of love that sends you off all blessed is denying me everything - debating my whole existence.

We were told that the eternal quest in life is not about finding the right person; it is about being the right person... Right...

In the windy grayness of the city life rushed past silently. Nothing is new, everything has already been. It’s just that we were shiny and new back then.
Three years and I find the same sleepy little town, the same wind and rain, same Betty’s and same Queen Victoria shopping centre. But my heart made a leap at the sight of you.

Sometimes I find myself on the outside my own life looking in on something that will never be truly mine. Can a life ever be totally someone’s? Or are we just living out a template – doesn’t really matter what you wish for – someone’s got bigger plan. A better plan?

The past, just like the rain whipped in our faces as I said bye. I was being looked after. Well looked after, taken in under the canopy of sisterly love. You didn’t let go - thank you for not letting go.

The most amazingly beautiful thing about London that Monday morning, before my heart made a leap, was a black girl running down the street, coat flapping in the wind. I guessed she was late for work.

make no mistake, my god is great

I walked past twice and the family was stricking up poses of marital bliss - first of a dinner in front of the TV (dad w/ a beer), and active mentoring of the offspring later.

That brought along the (existential?) guestion of my own marital bliss and brand new appartment. Where the fuck are they?
Where is it that I belong? Will I ever know. Does anybody know? And if they do, how does it feel?

Latvia hit me in the head with Soviet style shops, rude sales staff, idiot drivers and traffic arrangements way beyond comprehension.

WTF?
WTF?
What The Fuck?

Riga, you got to do waaay better than that. I'm expecting for you to do much better. Than that.

sooopah trooopah

Life indeed is like a big f*****g box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.

Can I just say that, Kiku, you make my heart sing!
I truly worship the ground you ski on!

Thanks to my big sister, 20 new babies get a chance of being born.

I've got beaufiful friends I'm really grateful for.
And again, as I've come to realise how incredibly much I love my life and those around me, it's time to go.

Very soon.

How do you say thank you for that?
(photo by a.haas)