Travelin' (Back In Time)

So. I'm on vacation. Spending a few days at mum's, trying not to think too much about the businesses which I eventually have to give proper attention to. Doing very little but relax and enjoy myself; this is done by seeing my family, eating & drinking, going to the movies and some shopping. (I found some real nice shoes yesterday, and it's good to see I haven't forgotten completely how to waste money on my appearence...)

I arrived in Sweden late Wednesday night, after a long days travel. From Bergen to Oslo I had company, as my dear friend Kari was going east to see her "boyfriend" there. Never has a trainride passed quicker, and although I rather enjoy riding the train in solitude, sharing that trip with a friend was very invigorating. Then I had a few hours to kill at the station, and I allowed myself a meal at the Chinese restaurant. A very simple place, but the food is nice, and the people too.

First day in Sweden I did almost nothing, just sitting down having breakfast with someone was a treat. A lazy, wonderful day it was, just what I needed! In the afternoon I went to see my father, and spent the night there. One of my brothers came over too and I beat them in our favorite card game "Chicago", a game played in three phases, where points are given according to poker ranking and then extra 5 points at the end of the game playing tricks. We played several rounds, and the reason I won all toghether was because I got that straight flush I "ordered". I've got a powerful mind, so be aware... he, he.

Yesterday was all spent in the City of Gothenburg. Lunch with my brothers, followed by some shopping, and then we reunited for coffe, movie and a couple of beers at "Bishop's Arms".

But let's go back to the previous night at my dad's. When the clock struck midnight I thought it would be wise to hit the pillow, but my curiousity got the better of me and I started to rumble through some cases in the living room. You see, only a couple of weeks ago my father had emptied the cellar due to some long awaited renovation, and a lot of that stuff was now sitting right in front of me, tempting me with all its secret content. Obviously I couldn't go to bed, you see that, right? There was on ald box marked with my grandma's name, rather superfluously to me, since it was securely tied together with some old nylon stockings. Her trademark, so to speak.

Inside that box were letters, telegrams and postcards, and real old ones too. I had absolutely no intention of reading them all, not that night and perhaps never, but I browsed a little and picked a few that got my attention. One letter posted to "Mama Bengtsson" from 1939 looked interesting, and knowing my father was 11 at that time I figured it must have been from him and not his 15 year old sister. I was right; there was my father writing home to his parents from where he was for summer vacation at his aunt's. He had just been out fishing with his cousins, and reported sizes and weights of their catches. The letter ended with a plea (his parents were about to join their children later in the summer): "Don't forget my Indian costume!"

Just as I read that, my father, now 79, joined me in the living room. "Listen here!" I said and read it all aloud. In an instant he was back in those days, and told me about that costume which he'd made at school, and for which he'd got the highest mark. I could easily picture him running around the woods playing Indians & Cowboys with Herbert and Ingmar... My father hugged me, he was quite moved. Actually all this was news to him, he'd just got the box when they emptied my grandma's place, and the box had never been opened before. So evidently he'd never seen that telgram sent to him from his aunt, except when he first got it on his third birthday in 1931. Nor had he seen the flowers his mother had picked on Midsummer Day in 1916, 1917 and 1918 and carefully wrapped in paper and stowed away. The rhymed inscriptions on the cards she recieved on her Christmas gift's as a teenager were also total mysteries to him. (And by the way, if you think they were all prim and prudish back then, well - think again. I found some real cute ones, which I might try to translate another time.)

There was correspondence from the time my grandfather sailed with the armoured cruiser "HMS Fylgia"; he'd drawn maps of the South America's and the ports they visited. I think, if I'd have nothing else to do in my entire life, I could fill the time with reading all that stuff. Filling in the gaps with my own imagination, and my father's stories. Hmm, sounds like a project doesn't it?

Judgmental As Always?

This morning I had closer look at the book I bought yesterday. Still reading the cover I found a web address at the bottom. Cool, I thought. Roland's got his own site. I quickly turned on the computer and visited his page. And what do I learn? He's a catholic. My old me would instantly have thrown the book in the bin. (Sad, but true. And that was a really old me too.) But I still do carry a certain scepticism towards religious people, I often believe they're far too hypocritical and judgmental. So to prove I'm not like that I better read the book! I even might have an epiphany.

Retreat

A woman with sore feet is no joke, and now I'm taking the train home to mom. These are the words I sent to my brother when I decided I was too tired to do anything with him later in the afternoon. Once again I had let vanity defeat practicality and wore high heals for my day in town. Stupid? You could say that.

Before I got tired I had lunch with my brother at the largest indoor market we have here in Gothenburg, and that was very nice and also very suitable for a students wallet. Not only because he was buying, even the poorest could afford a meal there. 30-40 SEK (4-5 USD) for a bowl of your favourite soup, including bread roll and refill! We then had a great dobbel lungo at one of the innumerous coffeeplaces around and after that my brother returned to work. Rejuvinated with caffeine I went on my own to Lerverk, a ceramics cooperative, and did a little promoting. That could turn out to be interesting.

And then I did all this walking. Up and down, from bookstore to bookstore, and the rain kept pouring. (I got one book though, Russels Turkey. It's not yet translated into English, but it might very well be, I have a feeling this is a good one. Poirier is a philosopher who here writes about science as a phenomenon constructed by humans, sometimes driven by single geniuses and at other times by broad researchprograms. As it says on the back of the cover "Russels Turkey becomes a intellectual toolbox, for use at keeping science, religion, culture and individual peoples ideas apart - as far as this is possible.")

In the end all I wanted was a hug, it's kind of miserable to be alone when I want to share this beautiful town with someone I care for. Oops, enough. So I took the the train home...

Concentration

"In the fourteenth century Pope Benedictus XII was selecting artists to work for the Vatican, requesting from each applicant a sample of his ability. Although the Florentines painter Giotto (1266-1337) was known as a master of design and composition, he submitted only a circle drawn freehand, the famous "0 of Giotto." Yet he was awarded the commission. Why? What's so impressive about a simple circle?"
[...]
"Our deepest awareness, the power that motivates all awareness, which we can call the "Power to Be Conscious," of which we are not ordinarily cognizant, recognizes its own transcendental nature in the geometry of the circle. For this reason the circle has been a universal symbol of an ideal perfection and divine state that always exists around and within us whether we acknowledge it or not. Religious art has traditionally turned to the circle to symbolize this state of divinity as "heaven," "paradise," "eternity," and"enlightenment."

Giotto's perfectly drawn circle communicated this universal ideal."

(Excerpt from chapter one in Michael S. Schneiders book A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe - The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science)


It's a more or less wellknown fact that it's very hard to draw a perfect circle freehand, but just the other day it occured to me that I really hadn't tried. Not really I mean. I think sometimes you just accept certain thing as prevailing facts, without trying to prove them otherwise.

It started with a line, that's quite hard too. Everytime I sit at a lecture I write a heading or some suitable description on top of the paper, and then I try to underline it. And everytime it strikes me how ridiculously imperfect it is, wobbly and unruly. Until the day I realized it could have something to do with the actual approach. I guess I previously only delegated the job to the hand, and if the hand couldn't do it, it meant I couldn't either. The new approach would be to keep thinking, keep concentrating, never disconnect the brain from the drawingprocess, and 'Voilà!' - there it was! An almost perfect line.

But why stop at lines? Why couldn't I try a circle now? I did, and that worked too. The circle was of course not as perfect as the great masters Da Vinci and Raphael could do, but at least I managed to get the ends to meet quite nicely. It didn't look like a cracked egg anymore, so to speak.

Is there a point or moral to this story as well? Maybe a few even. Investigate. Don't settle for others truths. You could do anything if you set your mind to it. If you're delegating jobs - make sure they have the brains for it. And most important, please concentrate!

Another Candystore

There's another candystore I really like, namely the bookstore. And today I'm going there to pick up a real treat I ordered a couple of weeks ago.

I like funny, and in my opinion Gary Larson is one of the funniest people on Earth. Too bad I don't really have time to dive in too deeply into his world right now. Maybe I can incorporate his works into my litterature-course somehow?



This pic is stolen from the internet without any permission what so ever, if any objections I'll remove it promptly.

The Gloomy Days Are Over

It looks promising, this new year has started out real nice. So if I’m in a good mood, what am I supposed to write about then? Have no idea, but since this isn’t a job and I don’t get paid for writing here, my postings might appear more sparsely. And besides, when I started to write this blog, a friend of mine asked: Why? and that is actually a very good question. Why do I put my thoughts and frustrations out here in the open? In the beginning I didn’t have any choice, since it was part of a course, but later on I simply regarded it as a safety valve, letting steam out when the tension built up.

And now I’ve found out that I love to write. I always have actually, I just didn’t do it for nearly twenty years. But doing it so publicly as in a blog, has recently made me feel a bit vulnerable. On an abstract level and realated to my field of study it’s kind of interesting, but as a private person I’m not so sure anymore. How do I know that I'm not misunderstood or misinterpreted? Who am I in the blogospere? Is it my real me or is it fiction? I believe the questions are innumerable. Also I have personally witnessed what people with bad intentions can do to someone that is trusting and open, so If I am going to continue this I have to be more careful with the content, I think.

Another thing is that over these past three years so much has happened to me and I have evolved as a person, hopefully and probably for the better. With that I have gained a new confidence, and I’m not so confused these days. In my case I think a lot of my postings have come to life in a state of utter distress or total bewilderment. (I hope it doesn’t sound like I mean the rest of the blogging-world consists of flaky and unsecure nuerotics! There are a lot of intelligent, sane bloggers around. None mentioned, none forgotten...) What I’m trying to say is that I’m not that desperate for affirmation any longer, I have developed a more true sense of my identity and value now. Thanks for that, my friends, you know who you are.

I’m pretty sure there still will be tears, that’s part of life, but I have made a few decisions now and that feels good. Being more at ease with the situation I think I can look forward to a much better year than the last one, and my new motto is: easy does it.

In the meantime: read a book!

Caught!

Writing this makes it obvious I'm not totally sticking to my plan of working on the essays days and nights. Not that I don't need to, but I also have to breath a little. Today I went downtown to meet Jill for supervision. As I entered her office I approached her desk and lay my head down:

-Bring the sword mylady, and put me out of my misery! I'm guilty of all charges.

She didn't, she was nice to me as always, blessed queen!

After that I went to the bookstore and ordered a copy of my own of Identity: a reader, a book I'm sure will be a nice companion in times to come. While I wait I can read the one I borrowed from the library.

It's Time Now

As my essays are far from finished (to be honest, some of them I haven't even started on yet) it's about time to get in the swing of it. These last days my thinking has at least been quite cooperative, and I have now almost too many topics to choose from. One of the assignments is about virtual communities, and I find that to be a very interesting phenomenon. Angela Thomas has written a very good text on that subject, and reading it made me think of the mechanisms that come in to function when you're exposing yourself on the net. I think it has a lot to do with identity, and how we want to present ourselves. And also (obviously, since I'm reading Freud this semester) the net is the perfect place to explore and express your hidden desires. Let's say you're a fairly stable person with not that extreme need nor ability for fantasies and imagination, what you leave behind on the internet will most likely be fairly recognizible as yours, but out there in cyberspace there are a lot of, and I mean innumerable, examples of people who uses various approaches in disguising themselves. For very different reasons I must add. Many, and possibly me in the scrutiny of self analyze, just takes the opportunity to adjust the reality a little simply by holding back the more undesirable traits, in an attempt to look, well, good. And others have far more sinister agendas. In pretending to be something else you can just as easily as in real life gain someones trust and then betray them in one way or the other - or even worse! Recommended reading: Rape In Cyberspace by Julian Dibbell

And here we go again

The new term has hit me with full force, just like a late summer storm. All I can do is to keep the ship floating and hope for the wind to settle, so I can catch my breath again. It could have been lot easier though if only I had got my apartment sooner, instead of having to do this move in the middle of lectures on Freud and reading A Brief History of the Future. Excellent book by the way, I've read novels that are less entertaining than this one. But I'm quite sure the rest of the syllabus not necessarily will be that easy...