The sun has now peaked and is up so high that only a sliver of light is running across my desk. I occupied myself by ripping apart pieces of cardboard from care packages that people have sent and pizza boxes that were piling up in the kitchen.
Potatoes with just butter, cooked for about an hour in the oven get old very fast. And so do pizzas. But thankfully, every ten kroner coke I get--in its glass bottle glory--is still delicious. So I buy two and kick back and write a bit enjoying the warmth and sunlight of the afternoon around noon.
While I was writing earlier, about all my miserableness, I would look up every so often and there in the sky the clouds would be lazily wandering by. And I thought about One Hundred Years of Solitude. Just moments when the characters would be residing in the dusty Colombian town. On porches weaving or playing piano. Gypsies wandering into town. There was a sense of relaxation permeating. I would think of vivid images of yellow colliding with a deep blue of the icy cold river. That sort of contrast of color with light. Mixed together forms a beautiful painting.
My thoughts keep racing around. For one, I have another assignment in front of me. Though, my current moods and thoughts--the stuff that relates to my desire to not occupy my time with society's current take on how to progress at my age--are not related to the assignment. It is only within the past hours have I begun to demonstrate my ability to continue onward. So now I am thinking about what I am going to write about in regards to Victorian Literature. My choices are largely compare and contrast. This story to that, this character to that, this poem to that. And most assuredly does the professor expect citations regarding proof of my thought, as to why the two things are similar. That the bishop's tomb is a manifestation of his selfish desire to be remembered, and how the ladies boat as she leaves her tower, is instead an upward thrust, a scream or yell of freedom. The bishop will die, is already dying, and it will be slow and gradual like dust collecting on a shelf. The lady has been dead for a long time. And spinning her web, she finally leaves Hades and rides the River Styx out only to find herself a corpse with the beautiful eyes of the knights looking down.
I recommend Browning's, 'The Bishop Orders His Tomb...,' and Tennyson's, 'The Lady of Shallot.' Though, if one isn't keen on poetry, and if one isn't keen on a Victorian ideas, then he / she might as well not even bother. And embark on a different sort of affair for what they should be reading.
Memory 1: Excerpt
I don't remember the ride there. Whether we took a boat or plane. Or a jeep. Wait! I remember partly, a green covered jeep and a winding dirt road. A small pitiful thing that snaked along Colombian mountains. Stopping by the side of the road for half an hour bartering for some fruit and goods. Maybe we bought some clay pots? The big kind to be put in a garden, with hanging jasmine flowers, with creepy crawly vines, with orchids and ferns drooping mightily as water tears from the tips and falls on visitor’s heads. I can't quite recall. And after that I only remember the beetles in the light as I looked out of the terrace and onto the square below.
A young child. Before the age of ten. Looking out of a metal terrace. With Spanish curves that wound up in a beautiful wrought iron work. How could I possibly think anything but fairy-tales at such an age? When I was youthful and not in any position to be bothered with the day-to-day affairs of living. As children, as the fruit that is best, I could stare at the glass gas lanterns and hold out my hand. So that dull vomit looking beetles, that disgusting yellow on their backs and black wings that had furrows in-between and would unfold out and towards, fluttering lightly on their backs. My hand simply still and I would peer in. As if I was looking deep into something. Through the eyes of a telescope. And if I was as that child now I would cry at half the things I see. With my mind able to recognize the beauty and sadness in everything. And with my feelings caught up, uncontrollable.
But I am merely a child remember? And as such, I am deeply curious and forever searching. Not questioning, no ability to question. Simply experiencing and therefore I kept holding my hand out for these beetles. As they would make noises and flutter some more and then fly off. I was surrounded by flowers I think. Though the scent eludes me. However brief the scent may have been, I can only give it the standard smell. Yes, flowers. Smell them with me and that is how they were. I looked out over this terrace covered in vine, in flower, in gaslight, and beetles into the dark of the night.
But the people here do not tarry in darkness. No, they string bright lights that make shallow U's from the top of the their buildings to the middle of the square. And this squares was filled with people, all on the outskirts. And deep inside the square was a dark forest. With trees that avoided the light of the men, and my eyes would wander towards them and I would be afraid. Not willing to enter the dark forest that no one sat near. Nor where the fountain of water that trickled clear was silent.
That forest was the evil part of the town. Where the bad men and women crawled from their beds to die. The monsters and terrible life eaters. The people who would pin me down on my bed and say, 'Now there child. You are about to become our dinner!'
I would say in a higher tone than I can say now, 'Why? Why do you come to eat me? And why can't I move and fight back?'
The monster, the leader who has long hands that are shadows and who has claws and looks me from head to toe. And smiles with the brightest white teeth I have ever seen. Oh, he says, 'My child. You are nothing but. And you are not like your sleeping parents over there. For they are strong and sturdy. And have bars and men guarding the insides of their minds.' He says. The great deep evil thing looks deeper into me and then points to the door, then my parent’s bed. And he looks quickly over to my sister. 'You cannot escape. You have no defenses. You are pure and will be delicious.'
And then all of a sudden there is a cat on the terrace and it meows and the monster frowns and then runs away. I cry out and leap into the bed of my father and mother. And the sounds of the night trickle away from my ears until I sleep.
Tromso---
call me an ambulance,
buy me a plane ticket home,
send me books in the mail,
'till i shed my skin, bleed all my blood, feel the desert sun,
and am back to being who i was.
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