decandance is far too underappreciated by those that surround me in this frozen place

Everyone left for Copenhagen last night. My Victorian Literature class started today so I couldn't join them. Which, is fine. But my class is a master's level course. And I have to read Middlemarch. Its supposed to be, George Eliot's greatest work; something or the other. All I know is I bought it and the impending doom I felt turned to doom. Because that sucker is thick, and Victorian. And neither fancy my tastes, as the young man away studying would say as he observed the lifeless eyes that gazed back at him in the mirror, "My lord, you have simply found yourself in the wrong place. And only time will move forward. Thus you shall too, in no chance, and in perhaps no way of your own. It will pass, read, and it will pass."

I have finished Jane Eyre. The more I read it, the more I found myself liking it. And it was long and wordy but I enjoyed it. Worth reading, think the style and storytelling comes into its own as progression occurred. Now I have to tackle Twelfth Night by Shakespeare tomorrow and re-read Great Expectations because I don't remember much of it from high school English.

I have been to class and met my Swedish professor Philip Grey. I thought the name was something out of a fantasy. He asked the class where he was from, because his language was English. They tried and I said Wales. And he said he was from Wales and I was like wow. Listening to the Super Furry Animals gave me an ear for that. Because I don't know anyone from Wales and don't really partake in anything Welsh except that.

Class is going to be involved, with all that reading. I guess now its real school. I had lunch that was mashed potatoes and some carrot and turkey mish-mash. I miss the way I ate at home. I am friends with one of the cafeteria workers now. He makes recommendations to me. I follow them. I haven't picked a meal out yet. I don't know his name though, but really, I don't know anyones. I feel more and more like the writer is writing my story and I am the writer and I know I don't give names to characters, or very rarely. And that is what the world is like when I involve it with these people.

I bought books. I rode the train to Central Station and renewed my metro pass for another month so I can get around without fear of being fined by the police. Who I have yet to see. Makes me think I should just forget paying the 435 Kroner and ride as free as the lark and the birds and half the people I look at wandering around in their smiley haze.

I bought some clothes to situate better. Some of my shit is stained, some of it has some holes. I bought a couple nice shirts. Its strange when I stand on a corner and I look to my right and there is an H & M. Then I look forward, and up a ways, is an H & M. They are worse then Starbucks here. I don't even understand why there are so many in a one mile radius.

Trying clothes on I looked at myself in the mirror. Earlier, maybe last week or so Alex said, "You have a tail growing in the back of your head. I think you should grow it into a rat tail."
"Eh," was my response. Afterwards in the night I tried cutting it off and removed a chunk of hair. I thought, maybe I got it.

Looking into the mirror, I realized, oh god, that looks terrible. The tail was there, and one side was missing a considerable chunk of hair. Added, I haven't cut it in forever, I looked like a deranged poet--as Stephanie once told me thats what I looked like in my giant coat wandering around UNLV in the wind and I enjoyed the idea that I added it to my sense--I was mad looking I thought.

After I paid for my clothes I strode around the city, its covered in snow and people are thick on a Friday afternoon. They are shopping, smoking, talking, eating, and waiting to drink. I said I'll walk into the first hair place I see. I entered a place next to a popular bar called Muddy Waters, and a cool venue Garage. I should have known. Where the hipsters dwell...I was given the stylist Gabriela. Told to put my coat up, follow her up a metal stair case and into the hippest most modern and stylish hair salon I have ever seen. Either a place that was out of a Murakami book or something akin to what the very trendy in Vegas go to. I was seated in a minimalistic, but completely convenient spot.

The floor was all wood. The place was littered with screen, Macs in filmstrip mode showing off makeup and hairstyles, the most fashionable in all of Oslo. My spot was a chair, a beautiful dark wood table, and a giant over-sized mirror just sitting on that table. There was nothing else. No sink, no combs, no drawers. We sat down, she spoke in smattered, broken English. I told her to just make it look presentable, whatever she liked. She was taller than me, from Sweden and prided Sweden much better than Oslo.

"Would you like some tea or coffee while I work?" I stared at her and shook my head. I would have accepted now, imagining myself sipping black coffee, staring at myself in the mirror grinning. But I was too completely confused and in observance of the room to say anything. She washed my hair for like ten minutes. The sinks for washing were situated next to a huge arch of a window that overlooked downtown Oslo. And I just watched people milling about and cars and buses. She cut. I talked. She told me I had Elvis sideburns. When finished I was presented with the mirror. And I tried to tip but both her and a partner of hers didn't understand and looked at me confused thinking I wasn't going to pay. I paid. And it was probably the most expensive haircut I've ever paid for. Strange. But not what looped me into insanity for minutes.

I waited for the train in the morning before class. Snow still falling and looked at the headlines for the newspaper stand that sits next to the automated ticket machine. Anna Nicole Smith had died. And apparently that was headline news here.

The days before, on Tuesday night I saw the Blood Brothers live with Alex at a really cool venue called John Dee. A bunch of other shows I have tickets for are there. The people were intense. Some girl threw her bra on stage. It was not an attractive bra though, and that was what I told Tori when she asked me later. People danced and pushed and crowd surfed in this tiny ass venue. I had Heineken. They have some law in Norway about how much a bartender can pour into a mixed drink. So they have these crazy machines they hook the bottle too that counts the pour out. Blood Brothers was good. First time I checked my coat at a show.

I wrote a short story. Sent it to Jake. He sent back critiques and advice. And I just wanted to relate how much I appreciate that. Because otherwise, sometimes, I sit with writing and it ends up becoming this huge impossible thing and I never know what to do with it except sit with it some more. Like Midas with his gold. This is my gold; it is treasure, the contents of a single folder on my hard drive.

But, as I was walking back home after having collected some laundry I did today--my clothes are never dry, I hate the dryers, they are all shit and there aren't enough so people dump your own stuff out so they can steal the dryer--I walked up my building as always, and walked into my hall and faced the kitchen door to enter. Where the door was slightly opened and not locked. Which our kitchen door never is. So strange, and I entered and everything was slightly off. The refrigerators were now on the opposite side where they had been and the table had a sunflower tablecloth on it. The lighting was all a bit more yellow, not the fluorescent glow of our place, and there was a sign in English that said please lock door and there were voices coming from one of the rooms.

I just stared looking at the hallway and saying to myself. Where am I? What happened to everything, who changed stuff? Did someone half rob us? And I just kept staring and thinking that I finally went crazy and that enough was enough. I turned around again and it finally clicked that I had entered the third floor instead of the fourth. But for those maybe 7 minutes I had been standing there I was still in my own flat and completely changed and lost and it was the most strange and disorienting feeling I have ever felt. Like I was picked up by God or a trickster, or the finally revealed truth behind the place I lived, or my roommates had changed things so drastically as to make them impossible people. It was, and I can't really relate it more than that other than say go read A Wild Sheep Chase or a Kafka short story and that same feeling will permeate through the words and that sudden strangeness is what it was like.

Other than that I watched the new office. I though the part where Toby said his name and enjoyed his good luck was one insanely funny moment and thought Carlo would be laughing hysterically. The intense warding and shunning of Tom as he is trying not to watch but still watch Michael's horribly awkward pronouncement of the two finally being wed.

I watched Requiem for a Dream. I have way too much change lying around on my desk. I forgot what time or day it was. My mom sent me an awesome short stories book. I bought more cokes. I need to grow wings or a tree in the middle of my room and enter it like something out of a fairy tale. I need to have a huge ring of keys attached to my belt and just open everything I see and be something else than a student; who is asked to personalize but also add to the view of society and all its movements what he thought about so and so literature and so and so author. And point a theme and make a grand bold move with a thesis. Because I don't want to and hate school more and more for it. Rather giving myself to the book and immersing into it and the words. And then immersing myself deeper and deeper into my own words to try and create and substance all dripping from my hands and metaphorically from my mouth. Because I can't talk a lick but I can move around the letters on a white space and see them and intuitively grasp and form with no idea; all losing myself in a place that is beautiful and sound and never hindered by the thoughts of what comes next.

And at least it stopped snowing and maybe tomorrow the sun will finally shine.


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go toby!