I wish it was morning and that I was lying awake. Staring at a ceiling fan turn slowly somewhere South. And it is hot. So hot that beads of sweat cover my whole body. My forehead, I wipe it. And I just keep watching the fan. I want to escape. I want to leave. I didn't want to escape anywhere when I left, but I had to get out. And now that I'm out all I want is back in.

I defrosted the freezer today. Tom suggested unplugging it, which seemed like a good idea. I unplugged it while I worked with a cheese cutter scraping ice off the sides. Then, took a break and let some of it melt while I ate a pizza. After my break I went back to work. After I was satisfied I threw all the food back in and collapsed on the cheap plastic chair on the balcony. I started The Remains of the Day.

I laid in bed most of the afternoon before. Going in and out of sleep. A bee came into my room and left. The buzzing kept waking me up. Eventually I closed the window and dropped back down into bed. 'It is always something,' I thought myself. 'It is always something. I want to slice it all up. I want to burn it.'

I played with my lighter from Amsterdam. I read and sat in the sun. There wasn't anything. I have more days off than I can count. What should I do with all my days off? I keep reading these books. Stacking them up neatly on my shelf. Next to some video games and torn up magazines. When I leave I am going to throw out my curtains. My flat-mates are back from Germany? I think it was Germany. The supermarket was re-stocking today. Forklifts inside the store, young kids shelving cans and frozen goods. I almost went to the lake. What about the lake? It isn't anything. I almost dove in didn't I. But then I stopped because something made me. And who was that looking across the water? Must have been my imagination. Because I didn't think I knew anyone here. But they waved so we must have been friends. They dove in and I walked away. They must have drowned I thought. Because I don't know anyone here and they never knocked on my door for supper. Which I didn't eat. It never went in the oven. Just sat in the freezer with chunks of half melted ice that formed half clear / half white surface.

My lighter feels light. I won't be able to play with it much longer. Don't know what happened to smiling. Must have went out with my last batch of garbage. Haven't eaten a banana for four hours now. Just sitting there stinking up the room. Wish I was laying on my bed, watching a ceiling fan spin round in slow circles. Everything in the room is yellow. The chairs, the desk, my books, the plants, the flaking wallpaper coming off the walls. With the smell of cigarettes. The last person who stayed here, before they got lost in the rainforest, they smoked. They must have left a pack somewhere? Beads of sweat form up and down my body. I can't look for those hidden cigarettes. It is too hot. I can barely raise my hand to wipe my face. I shift just a little and feel the heat pour out from underneath me. I get afraid that I'll start a fire. It is that hot. The heat pecks at my skin. I feel it burn. I almost throw up. My glass of water has been empty since I woke up. There isn't anyone to fill it. I want to go back in. But its still forever until I'm out of here.

---
e uh u e

apple

MacOsaiX takes an image and cuts the whole damn thing up making a mosaic for whatever you wish. It is a pretty awesome program, mostly because it will search through Flickr and pull up images from their tags and throw all those random images together to make the mosaic.

Make sure to download the 2.0a7 release. The stable release is old and slow, and doesn't have the Flickr option.




My example. I think I plugged in guitar, orchid, coral reef in flickr to make it.

just like damn disappointment ruin a potential day

What happens to my mood? Shifting from desire to smoke cigarettes and read in the afternoon sun to then blatantly proposing to myself that everything I do is boring and unremarkable and that I should simply stop with it all and take up everything that isn't. I think that the mere fact that I know not what would be remarkable and interesting is what stops me. And there is a certain amount of knowledge that I do love what there is. But I get terribly bored and terribly bored as time moves and the sun sets. I don't know what to do.

I read a little more than half of Dorian Gray yesterday; the book, near its middle, and its longest chapter I believe, has a point that goes into describing the various aspects of Dorian's sin and character. It is the change, the full change from the Dorian we knew to who is to be in later action. That chapter is the thing that stopped me yesterday. I couldn't move from that spot, and in all its reference knew that I picked up so little that I wanted to merely stop. I did. Its wonderful. But it killed me.

So today I picked up mid chapter where I had stopped and finished the second half. I think, that, it was good to read it like that. Reading the first portion where Dorian transforms himself. Which, is only half of the truth. Because Lord Henry and even Basil are key to facilitating the change. But poor murdered Basil, he just wants to be a brilliant artist. And halfway through transformation, I pick up again and realize the rest as the rotting Victorian he has become. Either way, the book was far less beautiful--not in the case that 'it' is, it just was for a second time--and Lord Henry would have told me to stop if I had known the case. Sadly I already 'knew' Dorian. Oh well. It is still one of my favorites. Though only Wide Sargasso Sea has made me hold it tightly and read each page, consuming them like fire, burning the pages in orange energy, and bleeding eyes until all the words faded and I was done.

Today was horrible. My flatmate, a woman named Lee from China discovered our dear letter from our masters and she was able to request my aid in cleaning our disgusting kitchen so that we should not be fined. I obliged because she needed my help and there was no one else to do so. She cares, and I don't want her to take up my opinion of the whole affair. Which would have most likely ended up being in a bill around 500 kroner and I would have paid without any other thought on the matter. So for that 3 hours time scrubbing inside of a fucking oven, washing windows, hauling dead furniture down from the fourth story, and scrubbing floors, I have saved money which would have gone towards nothing in particular, and helped my roommate towards her own self-peace. I wish that sometimes we could be cruel. I'd take a knife to my roommate and make him hurt for every minute I cleaned and he bobbed his dumb head up and down and watched television. Then made a mess everywhere. I don't like him. But what to do. We aren't so cruel as to make others bleed and spill themselves on the floor.

Now I suppose I will sleep. For there is nothing else to do but sleep. I finished the book. I watched Ichi the Killer, which was awesome at some points and disappointing at others. Why the Japanese seem to get a hard-on for describing a character's actions through having been hypnotized is beyond me. It always weakens the whole damn story. Just stick with the event without the hypnosis and we are fine.

Its so early. But all I want is lots of days to pass at once. I was telling Perry now would be a good time for an opium addiction. I haven't cared to write about anything except what goes in here. Minus the minor fragments of what goes into a large folder on my computer. Nothing seems to pass except that I run out of food and eat cauliflower in disgust. It isn't much of a meal. Nothing is much of a meal. In fact I've given up hope that food can be interesting here. I'm tired of salmon. I'm tired of taking tap water with every meal. I don't like staring at the contents of my fridge: Eggs, butter, cauliflower, red peppers, broccoli, milk, peas, ketchup, and mustard.

None of that even sounds like anything listing it out. How am I still alive? From nourishment like that. I'm going to have to write a letter to Kellogg telling them thanks for Corn Flakes. 'You saved my life.'

Norwegian Cheerios are not the same as Cheerios from home. They aren't made of whole grain. They taste like paper, and are even more shit in milk.

There wasn't anything in the first place to this; no, nevermind. I went and had a word with that guy who makes me want to be cruel. His room stank. For some reason it looked like he had a bit of rouge and lipstick on and he had the face of a dandy. I was searching amongst his unbuttoned collared shirt and chest hair to see if he had a gold laced handkerchief about him. He did not. I was disappointed. That's the way these things go.

---
oh god you are beautiful!
now go kill her. she isn't as beautiful as you.

Tonight I played Brian Eno's Discreet Music. I think it is one of the most beautiful things I have listened to in a long time. It is so simple, but it means everything. I can lie here all night in the darkness just listening.

will ferrell

Jake talked about this in his blog a couple of posts ago. Then sent me the link yesterday? So funny.

Penny Arcade sold me on Odin Sphere before the game is even out. I've got a copy waiting for me when I get home for some nice summer-time relaxation with a couple of cold beers.

I finished Wide Sargasso Sea yesterday and am completely enchanted with that book. However, having read Jane Eyre this semester as well, and figuring I wouldn't like it and actually did, Wide Sargasso Sea killed a lot of good feelings I had for Mr. Rochester. Not that I don't sympathize with his situation, but I really want to write something about it. Seriously though, the images in Jean Rhys's book are amazing. Makes me want to lie around in a hammock watching fireflies at night. I want to see the burning ocean, the burning sky.

I am thinking about staying in Colombia next Spring. I think it would be good.

Today it hit around 70. Turning around from the previous days of fog and cold. I don't have to rest my feet on the radiator anymore, and I can sleep with the window open without getting out of my down comforter and sneezing. My roommate is blabbing away in his scary voice. I don't think he is aware of our impending doom from our master overlords on the first floor. Seriously, our hallway is littered with McDonalds that he just tosses anywhere from his job.

The flat is no longer empty. Quite a shame. There isn't much to say. I laid in bed with Dorian Gray resting on my face and the afternoon sun. I love lying around in the afternoon. I think it would be a perfect time to smoke cigarettes and sip cold drinks. Reading and going in and out of sleep. I think tomorrow I am going to lay on the hand made docks over by the lake and bask in the sunlight until all the sore parts of my body disappear.

I'm back to having fresh bananas each morning. Soon I'll be coming home. I wasn't sure how 'home' felt. I was closing my eyes and thinking really hard about it. About my bed and all the people. It seems distant. It isn't even that distant. I'm looking forward to Portugal, beaches, sunlight that seems more brilliant than a normal place. Why does it feel as if--no, it doesn't feel like anything. I wish I had an idea to lay down that I could put out as a bunch of different ideas that tie together. Like a web of words, and then comes all back. And then slice it back up. I feel everything is too linear right now. Need to break it all up.

I lost all my trains of thought. Nevermind.

Pictures instead. They aren't much. Courtesy of Tori while we were in Amsterdam. Part of the park, the crane, a canal.






---
smell you

da da da. sigh sigh sigh. don't you cry.

In the afternoon the warmth starts to disappear. Not like the morning when the humidity is starting to rise slightly. I thought about walking over to the lake after school but I had bought groceries and was tired and wanted to rest. I imagined that it looked like a picture I had seen a while back. When Tom was telling me about a story he wanted to write. About a family that lived near this lake that would turn to steam near a house. I imagined the house he talked about to be all white with a brown roof. The roof slanting like a triangle and there was a deck on the second story, there were French doors and there was a long patio that wrapped around the entire house. The family that lived there was a mother, her daughter, her son, and a father who could no longer walk but was confined to a bed because both his legs had been shot by hunters.

The two children were twins and they would crouch on their knees by their father's bed and he would touch their heads and smile, while the mother sat on a chair outside in the rain and steam and trappings of the world and stared out at the lake. This is her story, not his or their's. They are for her, and the lake is what keeps her. It is a trap, and the steam rising each morning and wrapping itself around everything, so they cannot leave, is not a curse, but it is beautiful. It pains me to think of their solitude, but they don't seem to age, and in fact after one hundred days pass, and then one hundred years there is only a wrinkle above her brow from frowning while she stares at the lake.

In the mist there are white cranes that move with graceful precision. The rain is always a fine drizzle, and they keep horses near a forest on the southern side to ride and play gaily about on the days when the steam is not so bad. The sun is ever present. Its yellow face. The girl child has a sing song voice and she twitters and flutters, occasionally fighting with the boy who is silent and warm. He is lost one day and falls asleep in the forest at night. When they find him in the morning stumbling out of the forest they find that his hair has turned golden from black and they wonder if he has been swapped by the outside world.

Thats all I feel like writing about that. But I thought that the lake would go something like that. I just felt like I had already been out and had no such desire to go out again. Now the afternoon has settled in, my feet are resting on the radiator against the wall, under my desk. I am going through things as usual. My feet start to burn, so I curl my toes, and retreat. Then, when they get cold in the linoleum, I stretch out. They rest and burn slowly on the radiator again.

The walk this morning heated up nicely. I made long strides and kicked no dirt because everything was wet and pushed down by the fog. As I walked it formed a tunnel ahead of me. And everywhere the houses were almost hidden, the trees touched a sky I couldn't see. The people were slow, I was fast. I was quicker than them. I listened to loud music and was in my black chucks and walking faster and eating all the sights around me. God this is beautiful. Tom says, 'The green stands out in the fog like that!'

'The green and the buds of the trees. They are my favorite. And so are the white blossoms on the peach trees. And I like seeing the men building houses when I walk back to my flat because it makes me feel like at least someone is doing something that means something. I only wish that I felt productive. But it only feels like glimpses or flashes or whatever a person who watched me would want to say.'

They bitched and moaned in a jesting way about Emile's goat cheese this late morning. In Tori's kitchen Thomas and Tori went on about cheese and sausages. The French, they claim, have the best of both. I watched him butter his bread and I tried to finish reading something on the couch. I watched a pigeon sit on the balcony outside and I thought it was stupid and I didn't wish anyone's face to resemble that.

Everyone here is still such a stranger to me. Not mysterious. They don't evoke anything of a past or a present. I just don't know them. Faceless blonds with blue eyes and I walked by a small army of children holding hands. In the deep fog by the side of the road, they said some things to me in Norwegian and I smiled and kept walking. What could they have said to me? Those children, that army, with headbands, sticks, and bright coats. They could grow up and say nasty things to me. They could grow up and save. I don't know them. I threw a ball back to some small children. The one in yellow ran after the ball but stopped as it went into the street. Obviously aware he was not allowed movement beyond his field and fence. So I scooped it up and threw it back, muddying my hand and I received an awe; 'He must be a god to walk so freely through the cars and on the pavement.' They said 'Takk' and we left each other.

The afternoon persists to night. The night will be cold. The green evaporates in darkness and I hope tomorrow is sunny. Sunny afternoons in Oslo are comfortable.

---
oh la la.
oh terrible,
la la and dance.
terrible movement,
la la kiss,
oh la,
oh dance and kiss.
you are so terrible,
la la,
oh la,
you play piano so beautifully,
la la,
oh play for me,
and i will kiss you again.
oh la la.

avoid sleep

the world is beautiful and all there are is glimpses.

endless summer was one of the most beautiful albums i ever listened to

It is such a dreary day. I realized a couple of things: routine helps keep lies alive, but is not a cause or to be blamed. It simply makes it easier to live a lie by living in a routine. And I want to say a lot of things. Or I assume that I want to say a lot. But that, I don't think, is true. In reality, I would wish there was a lot to say, to make things interesting. But most everything is boring. Well, lots of things, but then I get thinking and lots of things are great. So I don't know what to do with that. Just reading this play, 'The Birthday Party,' made me feel that routine really does make living all sorts of lies possible. It never is easy I guess. Makes me sigh, nothing is easy. What shit.

Other than that, I've been reading, wrote. I ate a salmon fillet with my last half rotten potato. It was one of the most meager meals I have ever eaten. I don't even know what is wrong with me. Why don't I just walk down to the supermarket and buy some more vegetables and cook a proper meal. I just don't care I think. The hunger is something, its not boring. It passes time.

There is a slip of paper in our kitchen. It remarks that our kitchen isn't cleaned as well as it should be. There is a checklist in Norwegian with lots of marks, and there seem to be threatening words. I am not entirely sure. We have residents that run each tower apparently, and we are all supposed to have met them. But I never did, and don't want to. I threw away their invitation. I smiled when I did. Now they are going to come back in the future and judge our kitchen for a second time. If we fail, they are apt to do something. That is the gist of what I can pick up with my small knowledge of things.

I've read Pinter's 'The Birthday Party'. I like it more as I think about it. Less so while I read it. But because as I read it I wanted all the connections and themes, and plot lines all at once. Like eating a meal in one bite. I didn't want to wait. So when I finished, I was able to examine the entire text as one thing knowing it from beginning to end. And then I enjoyed it a lot more. The same happened with 'Mrs. Dalloway'. Which, I actually really enjoyed all the parts with Septimus. I thought he was a great character. The end, right before he kills himself, he exclaims how remarkably hot the day is today as he sits on the window ledge. I was reading that and felt the sun across my body and thought about the great amount of warmth. Blinding light, throbbing, the heat wracking my body and then simply dying and being what I really am, nothing. What everyone is, nothing. I thought it was such a pleasant way to die, in such brilliant sunshine, warm all over on a summer's day.

---
future days of summer

au revoir

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flash voyager

Last night I tried to go to bed early, around 10:30, but just lied there forever staring at my bookshelf thinking about how I am probably going to get robbed in Amsterdam. My hostel is on the border of the Red Light District--that being the only one with vacancy back in early April when it was booked. I have my eyes set on the Van Gogh museum. I need to buy a pizza and eat something before I leave.

My orchid has started it sad demise. One of the flowers is wilting. It will only be a matter of time before the rest follow en-suite. I have taken to watching it and imagining how the rest will follow. I dream about home a lot. And I dream about people a lot too. When I wake up I still am disoriented. I have finally gotten good at cooking salmon fillets with vegetables in a sauce pan in the oven. It turns out delicious everytime. The only sad part is it is never filling.

There isn't much else. Wake up, cereal, walk, read, write. This all sounds really mundane. Its not even fractured. There just isn't anything.

After I finish Mrs. Dalloway, I have The Birthday Party and Wide Sargasso Sea to read. Dorian Gray is also on the list but I've already read that one. Maybe I'll go through it again. It is a pretty awesome book.

I'm bored with this entry. And bored with every word.

---
somethin' is gonna happen

i can tell the daydreamers

This morning the fog came in and made the tree in front of my window look like it was weeping. The ground outside is covered in wire mesh liquor protectors from the duty free store and cigarette butts. I went and walked around in a t-shirt and enjoyed the wind blowing across me. I also slept in later and left the world to its own devices. Completely disregarding everything. It felt like relaxing. I finished Middlemarch and feel a little liberated. Now I only have four books left to tackle for my classes. I am going to Amsterdam on Wednesday and will be there for five days. My room smells a little like bananas and pizza. I am trying to air out the smell.

Other than those above details things have stayed as tranquil as possible. The chirps and squawks of birds makes me think of Colombia. This morning it felt like an empty world, with the fog blanketing all the living. I don't know where to place my feet on the ground, and I have grown to hate my bathroom and room. These walls are flaked and are an ugly brown / yellow. I can hear them dancing and singing at night. I sleep with the window open. The moon curves as if it were being tugged by someone with a fishing pole across a lake. The ground is black at night and the train sparks until midnight until the conductor is tired and needs to go to bed as well.

I found a new episode of Perfect Hair Forever. I forgot about that show. I am pretty bummed I have wait until I get back home to see the Aqua Teen Movie.

Back to Mrs. Dalloway.

---
a journey?

sunset / sunrise

Today was a beautiful day nearing seventy degrees. Tori and I went for a walk in search of a flea market run by one of the schools but we never found such a place. Instead I pointed out an old Norwegian couple sunbathing on their terrace; their wrinkly and red bodies standing out amongst the white paint and the scattered patio furniture. We walked and I mentioned that they sold ice cream near the lake so Tori was excited and bought a multi-colored device and we walked along the now completely unfrozen lake.

We lied on the dock and enjoyed the warmth and the bobbing of the dock until later in the afternoon when things became restless and we parted ways. I cooked a pasta meal I wasn't too fond of, having burnt much of the sausage. The flavors mixed poorly. At the lake we watched people jump into the water and then swear because it was just above freezing.

Some Frenchmen were keen on making bets with one of their friends on whether he would jump in naked. What amount of money would get him to do this.

Everywhere I go I see old people moving about at a good pace, sunning themselves and enjoying the freedom that Oslo seems to offer them. I think of grandma LaBounty back home in Las Vegas and think they she would fit perfect amongst the crowd here. Strolling around the lake and drinking coffee downtown, a sense of freedom because of the people and the small size of the city she does not get in her current home. That is the perception I get, and put forth eagerly while I walk around and view the population with both curiosity and fear.

Norway is a depressing place. Enveloped in a dense darkness for the Winter, and bathed in a brilliant and breath-taking light in the Summer. These extremes create a polarized mood, where there is no balance. And indeed, seeing people here, they are always on the brink of something. Throughout their lives they learn to deal with the situation and become rather placid and subservient to this 'world'. I have no such luck in accommodating with this place. And instead am in either strange rapture with my surroundings, or constant depression and mental sinking. I cannot fathom the bottoms of my thoughts. They are there, and they always peek and strike. And I parry back with illusions and monsters of my own outside creation. Based upon the world that I have consumed other than myself. I find that this works rather strangely, and I become plagued with the worst of fits and the worst of tears and laughter.

I want desperately to claw my way out. And at the same time I have no further view towards where 'else' I would be. I imagine places that exist outside of such extremes. I don't know how much I can take in terms of falling within myself. Indeed, it is becoming rather worse for the wear. And in time I will emerge and look out at the trees, and the birds that walk rather than fly, and the great sky and sigh and kick up dust and think that I am nothing like that; and wish so much to instead be comfortable but I am instead always restless.

I have a fear that I will return and be once as I was. And everything here will become a stuffed in a box persona. 'He' will not live, and 'he' will be thrown away as being not useful towards the present. It is a sad fear. I am quite attached and sad and worn for all of it. But it is at least something. I don't want to be detached to anything anymore. I don't. I don't know how to approach any other way.

I want to be honest but can only assume I am so clever that honesty in all its forms is simply the best of my own manipulation. I feel as if I have crafted such a defensive system that there is no escaping it, even if I am the master and want to leave. Indeed, it is as if I signed a contract long ago with myself, and it said, 'You are not to breach the walls, the walls you have indeed made to keep you from crumbling. You know full well the terror and pain of the outside world. You have experienced them first hand as a sensitive and unknown child. And due to this you were forced to fortress your being as to protect it from everything. In doing so you understand fully that you will forever be pitched away from all those that you love. And by being pitched away you will be further protected. Those that hug you will only feel a slight chill and a detached emotion that makes them feel sad and uncomfortable all at once. It is simply the way that this must be.'

And I signed knowing that this indeed was the success of my own feeling's enslavement to protect me from feeling any sort of pain worth those of the people that will come and go into my life.

I am completely lost. And I know full well that there is nothing to be lost about. Why, there is simply this. And I see that. I know that the desert where I wander is abstract, and that thought merely makes it worse. But thought is so important, the key to freeing myself from my own bonds. Where I wrote the loophole, I will find it.

As for the knot, to tie the shoe to the foot, I am struggling. And I don't know what to do with anything except move like the sun. Up and down in understanding that I will burn away but must keep rising and setting.

---
fear of sleep

Watching Apocalypse Now tonight has been horrifying. And I feel like someone ripped my stomach out from my body. My roommate has become all the more terrifying with his loud phone conversations, and grunts and noise as he shuffles from the bathroom to his room. He is seriously creepy, and I live in fear of his experience.

Celebrate

Sitting on top of a mountain smoking and watching the sunset--as the sky fades away from its brilliant display of colors--is sad. And I feel as if the bottoms of my mind are empty. Once I looked at them like pools of water. With sudden sparks ignited by the people around me. I am trying to understand what it is like with nothing. In terms of no more ignitions for my mind. Those puddles just sitting there still in the dark. And I am walking by each of them with my fingers stretching out.

I want something besides this endless task. The endless task of writing and reading. Back and forth, we are partners, but it makes me feel like withering into holes. I need release. I lost the things that made this worthwhile, and in the end it only became a discovery of inner turmoil that persisted the words along. Strung in a chain of daisies. Wonderful flowers along a clothes line in a New York skyline.

I ran out of water.
And it feels like I ran out of food and out of any nourishment. I am simply consumed by an urgency towards a future that is seemingly more of 'these days.' What sort of future is that? Where the best things are only related from the past. Even when they happen now, only then are they projected back and enjoyed in the past.

I ran out of feeling.
And gave up instead for meanness and solitude. Crawling under my blanket at night and looking at my books in fondness. What sort of future is that? Where the things that are with me are dusty and solitary. Just like me. I am slowly morphing. It feels like the spirit that makes me light is faded, and now only in moments of exuberance with distant magic, talking across the sea will I spark again. And then, in the dim sunset, sitting on the mountain smoking a cigarette, it fades from brilliant color.

I took up meanness.
And it gave me this. Small red spots on the pure white skin of my body. Tingling in pain, the hate can literally not survive in my good body. So it tries to struggle free from the prison of good. But I won't let it. I need 'you' I tell my hate and anger. I need you so that I keep on breathing. Because otherwise, there is nothing and no one. And so they stay and in pain and agony I lie in my bed hurting all over. I don't want this I tell myself. But what else is there.

I took up the colors of the world one day.
I tried them on and they gave me the impression that I am an outcast. Like those characters of books when writers wrote three words a line. And the impression made me feel all the more jealous. I took up to writing the worst things that any writer should write. Freeing myself from the chains of self-control and discipline. And instead penning the rape of women, the torture of men, the dying of children, and the pains of ten. All in instants, people would be spilling blood from their mouths, sleeping with their friends lovers, and shouting in rage as other men shoot other men and everyone is crying.

When we take up up the colors of the world, we get the impression that is everyone else.
And I hated the impression. So I went back to solitude. And this time it became worse. With every little thing that was mine becoming hated. Even my friends, those books that I would stare at in the night, were my enemy. And everything became colorless because it lacked feature and depth. I became like those dead roses sprayed to stay stiff next to my father's picture. That last memorial before they were thrown out as well. I just can't bear the boredom, the nothing, the escalating thing that I am just becoming those roses.

I can't.

---
i'm going to beat your face with a hammer!

From: Skulls

I was lying in bed with the afternoon warmth creeping up my spine. I read for a while trying to get through this blasted book. And then ended up deciding that I wanted to sleep. So I went for a nap and Blake called me about the Thunder Birds Are Now! show. We ended up going and Tori came along. It was down at Cafe Mono. A cool bar, with a tiny stage and a large hallway patio deal where there were red lights and people smoking. I got up right in front and hung out with all the crazy people dancing. They are really cool live, and the guitar player ran down into the front of the crowd and played with a circle of people around him. And I was standing right there next to him and it reminded me of this Lightning Bolt clip Jake showed me with everyone standing around the band. I always think that's awesome at a show, just being right next to the band.

I keep wishing I had magical coke and burger king powers. Where, if i think really hard, there, in my hand, will appear a whopper with cheese and a coke. I think it would be really handy, instead of all this cooking business that I am not very good at. I ate a bunch of potatoes yesterday. When I say I ate a bunch I mean I ate 4-5 potatoes because they were starting to get soft and go bad. My stomach didn't know how to handle that. And the rest of the night I was feeling horrible stomach churning action processing all those potatoes.

I am at a loss with how their school system works. I've given up trying to comprehend what a grade actually means, how much work my fellow stundets are doing, how much 'caring' is going on. Sometimes it feels like no one actually cares, and they've all agreed upon this fact. I wish I knew, as coming from somewhere else, I don't honestly know.

Today it is once again in the sixties. But I'm not much in the mood for talking about weather or school.

Well, I've sat here for a couple minutes trying to deduce what else. There is nothing else. Back to the pavement.

---
but tomorrow,
we should comit the perfect crime.

my people

Last night was Akron Family and school has started again. So I am back at school. Last night, the band invited everyone on stage and gave them tamborines and a wide array of shakers, recorders, and hand instruments to make lots of noise while they sang and jumped up and down. It was a lot of fun, but it has recently come to my attention that I am indeed going crazy. That I have fallen quite deep and didn't know it. Which means, I considered before that it was the normal variety that plagues me from time to time and then decides to fade in a foggy act. However, this, is something different, and disturbing. And I think part of it is self-inflicted. As if I was deciding to take crazy pills. Looking at my hand filled with multicolored swirling beauties of madness--reds shifting to yellow through orange to a deep green, blue, black, white, back to red, and purple. So obviously, that presents a problem, however, I don't know exactly what to do but continue on, and hope that at some point I will have another realization that I Am Back To Being Fine.

Crazy because I don't have much of a different word for it. I know its a bit vague, but we can assume it involves an ability lacking normal contact with people, and in that, well, I don't know anything beyond that. But Akron Family was really good. And I read that Kurt Vonnegut died. I don't really know what to do with that. I like him. But I never really considered that he was going to write any more books. Which seems kind of depressing that I look at his death in that light. Whether he was going to write anything else. But I suppose I didn't know him personally, nor on any level besides his literature, so thats the only thing I have.

Today marks the first day that the weather breaks past sixty degrees. Sixty-two to be exact. And that means things are looking up. Right? Right.

If I spent a million years in the same spot that spot would end up being just empty space, and all that would be left would be a fading light that was a million years ago.

I had a beer at the bar before the show started and was sitting around when I realized I was talking to the drummer for Akron Family. Who was very nice, and very concerned about understanding Norwegian currency. He was also excited for his bands next destination, Copenhagan. He seemed to light up about the women. Yes, women.

Otherwise, I have been reading as usual, writing. I encountered a version of myself that is far more vivid. All that means is that when I put him on the page, he makes me feel something. I suppose that is something. I also wrote about four or five stories that never went anywhere. I'm not so sure what to do with them. Except throw them in the same folder with the rest of those incompletes.

The sky is all blue, all the clouds have left, and now, now its a hovering split. Looking at the horizon is disorienting. It seems to actually curve. That may just be a psychological issue, rather than anything involving my location.

---
yeah.
yeah!

the first five times

Tomorrow is Akron Family. I have gone beyond the halfway point in Middlemarch and have slowly begun considering stopping as a sign of protest and rebellion. I also ate a tiny bowl of cereal and said, 'I really like cereal.' It snowed for two days. Today was the day it stopped. Everything is back to being cold and gray. There are mysterious dishes in our sink, slowly piling up. I have a feeling they are my roommates. But I have no definite proof. It will take all of my investigative skills to discover the culprit.

Apparently the supermarket has re-opened after this break has ended. I will be making a pilgrimage. To see if the holy Kiwi will give me bananas and sanity. I think my Orchid is blessed with divine right. It rules over me while I sleep, and when I wake, there it is. Still looming in its purple glory. I have quite a collection of coke bottles. It is getting really hard for me not to go up to my teachers and say, 'You are making things really difficult for me to want my health insurance.'

Whenever I shower I think of Colombia. Sometimes I'm living in a world ruled by triggers. I don't want to keep my eyes open. I want to dissolve. I want to see things as almost nothing. Before they end up just becoming black. There is a last point, maybe when entropy is almost through with its job, and thats what i want to see. And then just end. It seems like that is what everything is working to right before everything ends for infinity anyway. So if we are just constantly working forward with no idea of the present, then that's where I want to be because that's the final point of anything.

I was going to go find a stand up mirror at a garage sale and then smash it with a hammer and then glue the pieces back layering them on top of each other. And then breaking pieces of stained glass and layering stuff over that. Rebuilding the mirror as a cut up, not with words but pieces of glass, so when the viewer looks into it they see their fractured self. But I stopped when I realized I didn't want to risk breaking a mirror and getting 7 years of bad luck.

Smile into your face, when you are staring at that mirror,
And don't touch your lips or eyes
cause they aren't even there

just the same thing that is always looking back. i was sitting and thinking that it must be different for all the other people who look, but i just want to shove everything off my desk. and throw everything out my window. and just stare at everything ruined.

tomorrow is the day that today was aiming for.
and tomorrow isn't ever here.
what happened to today?
it got swallowed by tomorrow.

---
driving outside with the desert wind.
oho

This has no concern to anyone except to my cousin. And thank you Jaime for pointing it out because I would have never noticed. But I am doing a little jig around my room in his slip-up with the usage of 'you're.'

My roommate threw up early in the morning. Around 4 I think. I woke up to his cries of gut-wrenching vomit spewing into the toilet. The bathroom smells very strange. I am glad mom sent those air fresheners. They have now been opened to their max.

Wonder what he ate or drank to throw up so much. It was quite a sound.

---
boxer

highball / live large / the found

Yesterday I sat around a kitchen talking to Emile, Vivi, and Tori. Tori has already made an entrance as a friend from Western Australia, Emile is French from the suburbs of Paris, and Vivi is Norwegian from Oslo itself. Part of what we talked about involved the three of them agreeing they should be allowed to vote for the United States President since he has such a large affect on the rest of the world. Tori burst out laughing and I just looked at them all and grinned thinking that it would be quite an uproar overall if something like that ever did happen. I like Emile because in typical French fashion nothing is ever extreme, ‘yes these people died, and yes, this is good and why are Norwegians so greedy about sharing alcohol, and why does American beer taste like nothing,’ imagine that all in a French accent. It’s really funny. He goes on and on about stuff. Vivi works at the Munch museum and tells a funny story about how they never respond to the alarms when they go off, thinking, it’s just something that happens, and then, that’s why The Scream is always being stolen. ‘That’s Norwegians for you,’ she says. Very trusting.

As for the evening, it was good. I collected a bag of pastries which are now almost gone. The past few days I have revisited that 'lake'. It represents less now than it did before. More because it feels all used up. I don't really like walking around it anymore. Not even as a metaphor. It feels drained. And most of the ice has melted off the top. There are too many people jogging, with too many weird faces of strain and silliness. I can't look at them so usually I keep my head down listening to something and thinking stuff over. What sort of stuff? I wonder. Sometimes it involves assassins and ninjas. Other times it is about writing. And most of all the time involves thinking about people. But I don't know how to get into any of that. Especially when you try and convey the fact that real, actual, ninjas are so secretive and hidden that it’s pointless to go actually searching for one.

Yesterday out from my window I was just sitting and taking a moment when for thirty seconds it snowed and then it vanished as quick as it had come. I thought someone on the roof must be cleaning their carpets; banging them against the side of the concrete to let loose all the dust. But in this case, snow. Now the days are gray and somber and the trees are all still with the time in-between devoted solely to shuffling cards in my hand and listening to songs. I haven't written much in the past four days. I think that is bad. I don't know if it’s bad. It may be bad, it may be good. Its good to sit away and let it all sink in deep. Makes me think about all those lovely Vurt feathers I read about, 'When Beatle shoves it deep, far as it can go and you enter the Vurt.' I re-read it about a month ago and now I have a feather sitting on my desk. Makes me realize how much I like that book. How cool it is. The amount of 'dancing' that the book has.

I've eagerly sought out a machine like a coin star but have so far found nothing. So each day whenever I go to the supermarket I will buy one or two things and pay all of it in 1 kroner coins. I have so many stacked up and lying around. It creates a large fuss behind me, as everyone has to wait for me to put each coin into the machine that takes our change to pay for our goods.

I might have already related this tale in a previous entry. I am lost in a sea of endless meaningless stories about the most mundane affairs of living this life. So if I have please forgive me.

One night, I think the same evening I ate broccoli for dinner, I woke up with the most intense pangs of hunger. It felt like my stomach was full of razor blades. From then on I decided that enough was enough and that I would cook something as an actual meal before going to sleep. Yesterday was hot dogs. The day before was salmon, red-pepper, and broccoli cooked in the oven for twelve minutes in a sauce pan with some butter. I am amazed at the level of intricacy food can get. I however, am still living in the basic stages where I throw many things together that I like, and hope they all cook evenly, as if they all had the same properties as the other ingredients.

Sundays involve watching the new diggnation podcast over at revision3.

I feel like a dirty crazy person, rather than a clean crazy person. The difference being I haven't vacuumed my floor in a while and over this time period I have brought many a pebble and piece of gravel into the room from my shoes while out walking. This has created a sandbox in my room and I will wince every time my foot steps on a small rock and it crushes against my skin.

I am running out of...well I thought I may be running out of something. It turns out I'm not. Unless you count toilet paper running out of something. So yes, I am running out of toilet paper. But I was leaning more towards a mental thing. Like I am running out of drive, or running out of 'ideas'. Though, that doesn't seem to be the case. I did run out of 'caring' but that seems to always return when it involves writing. It just seems fruitless, and then it doesn't matter because there just isn't much else to do. Unless I count reading Middlemarch something to do. I don't, because it’s an obligation, and obligations make me feel terrible.

School will start back up this coming week. And then end in a strange mixture of dates on the 29th of May. Though, there are more times in the coming months when I won't go to classes for 3 weeks straight. They have this system in place, where a student will go to normal classes until maybe the 1st of May. Then, its done, all the teaching is over with. However, a student must return at the end of May, middle of June, to take an exam about the things taught. It seems crazy, all that break time in the middle. I just think, if it wasn't an exam that was worth the student's entire grade, no one would indeed come back after that break. Thinking that school was already out the day teaching stopped.

That last bit seemed overly complicated. Honestly, I got nothing. I bitch about my roommate who I never actually even see. I peruse through an assortment of odds and ends, read literature that seems fractured and lost for the current time period we live in, and write stories. And even the last part, about stories, I don't even do that enough. Spending more time contemplating that I should in fact write, than actually writing. It sounds like a shitty neurotic character from a Woody Allen movie.

However, Emile says that the French don't take their police officers seriously, going into a bit how one can laugh and point and the police will do nothing because they have no real power. The garbage collectors pull more respect than the police. And he also likes to make fun of Norwegian cheese. But he is French, and anything in regards to food or drink will always, and forever be smacked down. This is because they can. They have a talent with the stuff.

Wish it wasn't so gray.

I like walking back from Tori's at night. It’s really cold, below freezing, but I've been listening to The National on the walk back and I feel as if I am getting sucked into the night. It’s got great big hands full of wrinkles that wrap around my legs and pull me deep inside its body. All the trees are so tall, the stars are always out, and there are always kids roaming around smoking cigarettes and making noise. Then, the last stretch home is always quiet with dirt paths snaking up into some hills and the lights of Kringsja off in the distance.

At night sometimes my lamp makes me think that there is someone standing there next to my bed. I have begun sleeping facing the door rather than the window, and in the morning I twist around with the sunlight all over my face and look out to see where I am. Each morning I seem to forget about my surroundings, and usually it’s the smell of pastry or whatever I cooked yesterday that makes me realize where I am.

This, well, sometimes 'this' is a warm-up. Sometimes I want to throw it all up. And stare at it on the page. And it feels like sometimes I have to wear sunglasses to read it over. I take them gently and place them on my face. But after a few lines I sigh and remove them. I can only draw conclusions based on all the stuff before and an idea of what the conclusion means and how it creates the rest that follows. Today it feels like a shattered mirror, and I did a lazy job of gluing all the pieces of the mirror together, so it feels like a minefield of superstitious trouble and fractured moments / images / feelings. Put it back together how 'you' wish. I leave it up to better hands on this Sunday.

---
like a little bird

view entry

The above was dinner. I hope, as you look at this picture, you laugh with me. Because, honestly, I was looking down with more broccoli in my mouth and I laughed. This is my dinner? Tomorrow will be a salmon pasta attempt with glass of water and a smirk on my face if it comes out well. If it turns out to be a buttery hell like my last salmon-cooking attempt, then I'm going to 'feel like a lobster' like Perry says, and end my career with salmon.

Last night I was walking home from Tori's after the show and it was around 1 in the morning. Dark out with the wind blowing. I had my jacket zipped up and I was moving slowly just thinking. I don't know whether I was thinking about anything in specific but I passed a Norwegian house party and saw a bunch of kids smoking on a porch and smiled. The trees are the scariest things at night. Tall and reaching high into the sky full of stars and no one around, with no street lights. Sometimes my mind feels like those dirt paths striking off in the distance. I look up at the mountains and don't see anything.

The show before down at Garage was good. Sitting at a table and we took turns dipping a coin into the candle wax and Tori had a beer while I looked around every so often watching the place fill up. There was an endless stream of kids going in and out of the place. Norwegians with suits and ties, and hoodies, black shoes brown shoes. The bar downstairs only serves beer in plastic cups. Apparently a safeguard against the rampaging 18 year olds of Oslo. The first singer told us a story about a man who lost his wife and put her in a cooler and took her to an evangelical revival in Pensacola, Florida. Where he asked them if they could bring her back to life.

It was eerie. The Mountain Goats were more than good. The singer bursting into monologue about his parent’s divorce and his drug habit in Portland were things I had never experienced at a live show. Usually they play their songs and say a joke in-between. But at the end the whole crowd was singing along. And the second encore was with just the bass player, and the singer shaking about madly, dashing across the stage to crowd while everyone snapped their fingers in the strangest show spectacle I've ever known. He sang without a mic and belted the song out so loud, then quieted for the last bit and kissed the crowd goodbye, leaving the stage in a flurry like an actor from a long time ago. With the bass player playing the last bass lines on stage, smiling with the biggest grin. Tori dancing along slowly and I was hovering just watching everything in awe until he quieted the bass, told the crowd how amazing they were and he left too. Leaving everyone with the feeling that no one had actually been there, up on stage playing. That 'what' they had seen was, in fact, 'religion.' And that this was a pivotal moment in all their lives. When the lights came back on and the music switched back to the stereo cd changer everyone’s face went back to normal, and the world was as it was before. But I think maybe they all carried something tucked in their pockets or purses. Cradling it back at home as the dearest thing to them to come across this day. Then putting it away somewhere, deep, inside, where there is a single light and lots of drawers, chests, scraps of paper and shirts scattered about. The drawers filled with feathers and the like. All sorts of colors in brilliant dancing revelry. The sort of memories that are dreams and the sorts of important things that sit with dying eyes in a lonely bed in the last moments of the final breathe. That’s the sort of thing that makes me think about clocks, ticking clocks. And jewels and gemstones brilliant and shining. With battered gods bleeding, torn, passing away in shuffling steps as they cross a green hill to a castle that overlooks a sea.



Now I have spent much of the day shopping for food, as the above picture suggests, drinking water out of this delightful coffee mug.

I also met a fascinating woman named Vivi who is an Art History major in Oslo and works over in the museum. But I don’t really know. I tend to forget about anything quickly, and I don’t want to be bored with anything. But everything, my books, my drawings, my bottles, this computer. It all just gets boring. I get so horribly indifferent and get so cold as if I was freezing and then froze and everything slowly sunk deep into a pool of water. People, are always, the most awesomely intricate things ever. And there seems to be an abundance of them. There is a strange sense of dis-clarity. Confusing, would be the proper term. I keep hearing Pynchon brought up in conversation whenever I start talking to someone about books. 'Oh, I'm reading Pynchon.'

'Oh,' I reply back. Incredibly intimidated that all these people pick him up so casually. Like a Harry Potter novel or something; not that I’m ‘dissing’ Harry Potter. 'Oh,' I reply and shrink back into my corner. ‘Well, uh, that is very post-modern,’ I say after and feel completely retarded about the response. In total, I should read some of him so I have more to say. And can only ever retreat further to, ‘yeah, my friend Tom really likes him. Gravity's Rainbow someday.’ And decidedly someone will burst forth with a new topic and we will all run away from the sun.

My sheets are clean. Wednesdays are the best days for laundry. In the beginning of the afternoon. When the world is still nursing hangovers. And the sun has just started to move past and away from everyone's window. Instead beating down at an odd angle. The strangest thing is how extreme everything moves, instead of up its all shifting to the side. I don't ever know where the fucking moon is going to be. Just up in the clouds while I am walking around in the night looking out amongst the trees and shadows.

Shadows are the best friends of the lonely. And the lonely is everyone. They just don't know it. And deep down inside there are beasts lurking, waiting to eat everything up. Smiling in the dark with bright white teeth and grins that can kill. I look down and look back up. And think, that should be terrifying. It really is. It’s the scariest thing, thinking that everything can fall apart in a snap. Crack! And it all disappears or shatters and falls. The worst is imagining the best unfold to the worst. And then becoming so motionless and sick it never unfolds at all.

Sometimes the world is a bleak place.
'Sometimes you paint the bleakest pictures,' and I nod and sigh. I suppose so. And I go back to the page and keep painting.

---
gravity what?

go to it

The picture above is of my magazine curtain contraption. Its quite effective now as one can see it hovers past the window for the longer one, preventing sun from pouring all over my laptop. However, there is still about an hour in the morning when in-between that crack it is on my bed and I wake up with my face blinded unable to see anything. I've discovered that sleeping with a pillow on top of my face works for that hour.

Cousin, I would like a copy of your new album. I am listening to the new songs over Myspace and I really want a copy of the album to listen to in full without having to go and click on links in Myspace over and over again. I'm sure you understand. Haha.

Otherwise, Tori came in this morning in panic and fear over many a dilemma which I am unable to help with. I thought the Nazi's were for some reason coming because she kept buzzing my buzzer that lets people in the building. Before that I was having a dream where I was watching red jewels fall from the sky and I would blow them up with some sort of magical gun and gain points towards my high score. I don't know why I was in a warped version of bejeweled / tetris, but I was. And I think it was fun, but I can't quite remember. Otherwise I have been writing. I don't think this particular story is going anywhere. I think though that as long as I'm moving, its okay. I would like it to move me somewhere due to my lack of patience. But I also realize that is not going to happen in such a quick amount of time, and instead will continue with the dance.

I wish there was another Gormenghast type book to read. I feel like that would be really awesome to plunge into where I am right now. With all these forests and mountains just screaming to be explored with book in hand. Middlemarch is progressing quicker than I expected because I have taken it as a personal crusade to get through the book.

Perry told me about a movie called Brick.

I thought to myself. This is the kind of movie that you watch and feel completely cool afterwards. With no explanation, since you haven't actually taken role in any of the elements of the movie, you just, feel, cool. He was right about me liking it, ah, how cute Perry, you know me so well. I laugh and chuckle. And now I wish I had those Raymond Chandler books I have had on my Amazon wishlist forever.

My roommate has taken to hibernation because of Easter Break. I think he sleeps more than anyone I have ever known. And my flat mates have all become rather engrossed in throwing gatherings based around food. Which are very exciting to observe. They have so many pots and pans, things boiling and bubbling away. They even have a rice cooker and make wontons and spring rolls. The smells that sink into my room as I am writing or reading are unbelievable. I think I am beginning to understand why Asian cuisine is so good. Its more than just food to them, it becomes this great social institution. Anytime people mix gathering and collective enjoyment with the process of cooking creates a delicious assemblage of meals. Take for example whenever there are cooking nights back home. Always a thing not to be missed, for there will be good food there.

And also, the past two days have been windy. And I lie in bed listening to wind howl and realize I never noticed the wind howling to such an extreme. It sounds like wolves are crossing Kringsja and going back into the mountains, occupying new spring territory. The trees and plants are all budding and slowly the weather is beginning to warm. Though 55 degrees is still cold, it is strange to think that this is warm after months of snow and below freezing weather.

Things are calmer; either I have lapsed and sunken so deep that the stirred demons and tireless urge has fallen into slumber, or I have been defeated so soundly that they rest with spears and swords lying scattered about, with wounds deep and horrifying that pierce the eyes and make those around want to shut their eyes forever. I simply 'am' at the moment. And I suppose that is relaxing enough. Where I don't know much about relaxing in the first place, I think its a good thing, I just wish I was better at it.

---
i want a copy of shut down shop damnit.

The PA guys linked this video.

Hey cousin, since your not online right now, figured I'd tell you through here. I saw this over at imdb. Focus Features is coming out with a Blindness movie.

I'm pretty excited.

woman's sunglasses

Another day of surprising blankness. I can't think of much to write about. In regards of fiction or reality. I've managed to extend my magazine curtain contraption so it touches the bottom of the window as it hangs from the top. However, this leads to two problems. One, if I am to leave my window open--which I do--then I must extend part of the contraption out into the open and it leaves a much larger gap open. My orchid is a very attractive prospect to any bees that wish to fly this high to take a peek of it. Before, they would fly around the window in circles unable to come in. Now I fear they will discover there is enough clearance and zoom in taking residence in my plant.

The thought seems frightening, but if I knew for sure that they wouldn't sting me, I wouldn't have a problem sharing my room with some bees. Though, I think if I brought anyone over here, they would mind.

As for the other problem, extending my magazine blinds decreases the amount of sunlight that pours into the room. Which, was the reason in the first place to extend it. As I stood on top of my desk balancing with sunglasses on and in shorts and a white t-shirt, I realized that the problem wasn't the sun coming from the top of the window but not covering the bottom portion. It was bad. Because it splashed all over my computer, and I had a paranoia that the computer would start to fade and the lcd would get corrupted. And I also came out of the bathroom after showering and the fan was going full speed inside the machine, which I have never heard it do. So that prompted me into swift action.

It's sad not to have things so bright, but it does remove the necessity to wear sunglasses indoors for most of the day while trying to get any work done. Though I think I half do that cause I think I'm more bad ass. How would say I'm more bad ass with no one else to actually witness the bad assness. Iono, would be my reply.

Its Easter Break. That means most everyone is gone on some sort of holiday. I am going to see The Mountain Goats tomorrow, and that should provide relief to my insanity.

Middlemarch is a nightmare which there seems to be no end. I am already knee deep in gossip about why Dorothea would be marrying such a an old and withered man. And add to that that the town Middlemarch is expecting elections soon, well, hoho, there is some excitement brewing. I am going to wash my hands of Victorian Literature after this class.

I have laundry plans. I hope I keep them. I have one banana left. After that this seclusion is going to go downhill. With noting but a few bags of Teddy Grahams. However, listening to The Fiery Furnaces makes me feel way cooler than I really am. Like I am preparing for an awesome journey.

With a man who does nothing but smoke and wear goggles.

A lady who wears red dresses, puts red lipstick on in the car, and occasionally makes a dirty joke laughing hysterically with a whole crew of pirates that live in an attached trailer, with only one window that the lookout peers from calling land ho' whenever we pass a dirty little town.

A series of mutes who speak through pictures and scribbles. Our backseat is now littered with drawings of people screaming, people having sex, my face being stabbed, robots, apples and various other foods.

A robot that was built by a mad scientist. Both are in tow sitting on a the second story of the car, where he is constantly musing and swearing while the robot tries in futility to help him with his experiments.

We also picked up a hitchhiker who wished he had gotten on board a different car, and a ninja.

The ninja is really quiet, and really only says something when were in danger, 'Ahem, I believe we are being followed,' and then he just disappears and turns up later with a bunch of bloody shurikens and a scowl on his face. 'We should be more careful, we have enemies everywhere.'

Honest to god, that’s why I like the Fiery Furnaces, something about the way the music moves. These people just start appearing.

I feel defeated in regards to doing anything. Maybe that’s the point though. I think I’m just going to try and read more Middlemarch, but fall asleep and take a nap. I want to walk. But every time I go for a walk it ends up becoming an epic quest. Walking miles and miles just in one direction, then going right back in the other direction. And near the end I'm swearing, sweaty, and contemplating why I went for such a long walk. I just want to tire myself out to the point where I sleep for two days straight. I want to wake up after a long amount of time has passed and see whats changed. I want to see a huge change all at once, instead of gradual change slowly, like the polar ice caps melting. That is going to take forever. I think this speaks of how little patience I have.

The last time I went walking I did stumble into a strange art gallery. The artist’s studio was attached to the side. And it consisted of wooden blocks with strange mazes on the outside parts. A photograph that was a series of other photographs of a bridge. The series showed this bridge that was slowly being swallowed by ice and water. There was a painting of a half man half dog done in watercolors, and there was a bookshelf, with books on the top shelf and black wires hanging from the books. I failed to understand the book shelf installation. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough.

An excerpt from my hand written journal:

‘I was lying on the bed over there and staring at my blue hoodie and father’s coat. I thought I saw the arm move. Oh god! And before I knew it I saw a taller version of me in the coat hunched over looking at me. We stared at each other.’

---
take me for a ride on your blueberry boat

flying

I just bought my tickets to Spain and Portugal.

My plan:

I leave Oslo June 1, arrive Madrid at 6:30 pm.

Then I leave Madrid and fly to Lisbon on June 4, arrive Lisbon at 7:30 am.

I leave Lisbon, fly back to Madrid on Thursday the 7th, back to Madrid at 11:30 am.

And then I leave Madrid the 11th of June, fly back to Oslo.

I fly back home on the 13th of June.

And that ends the journey.

Oh, I don't know if anyone knows anyone who lives in Madrid or Portugal where I could crash for those days, otherwise I need to start searching for a cheap hostel or hotel.

Thanks.

---
crane wife

i hate april fools because i can't ever read the news

Sometimes I get really excited to write and put something down. And then I start writing and none of it feels as luminescent as it should be. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and started to think about being on a ship at night on the open sea forever. Trying to construct a metaphor for how I feel at night. I don't particularly feel like drinking. And I've read so much. Just plowing through Middlemarch is defeating in its own right. I walked downtown yesterday, joking with Tom that it was good practice for my future as a hobo. I saw a woman with two of the same dog, each with their own leash, and they were walking on opposite sides of her. I started to imagine that maybe she was a super secret spy for the Norwegian government. I mean, what kind of fucking person has the same exact dog twice?! Must have been a gift from the top Norwegian scientist because they are lovers.

I am on that the ship, and mostly it is me lighting lanterns with a flickering candle because there are no stars in the sky. And I just sit on the ocean forever just staring out. It sounds pretty bleak and poetic.

I had this awesome plan for the fall which involved me not going to school and seeing how I liked that. But then I realized on my 3 hour walk that I would lose my health insurance, which, doesn't sound like a keen prospect to me. So now I'm back where I started, registered for English 102 and Beginning Spanish since those are reqs and I never got around to taking them. I think I might just stab my eyes out before then to avoid the insane bullshit, boredom, horror of having to go to those classes.

We all get real good at dealing with shit, huh.

I had a pretty story in the works. Regarding 7 kids who play around in a dusty lot. The leader wears a tin pasta strainer on his head stolen from his Existential writer father, who writes in the morning, drinks in the afternoon, and practices his philosophy at night. They each bring the other kids into an adventure, based upon their own imagination. So for instance, young Fitzgerald takes all his comrades on a Wild West Adventure complete with cowboys and indians.

I just keep dreaming about French Toast and the possibilities of the day until I wake up and look out the window and realize that there is no French Toast. I think its a terrible problem, something happened in my development as a child and now I'm fucked. Which brings to light a plethora of other things to muse about. All of which are completely fucked in their own right. Like I'm tanning myself in the sun and saying, 'Julian, you are going to burn, just get the fuck out of the sun,' And I respond back, 'Fuck that.' Knowing I'm going to burn but don't give enough of a shit and just toast away. Until later I'm shuffling around like an old man in the dark of my room saying, 'This fucking hurts. Why didn't I listen?'

Exactly.

Which brings me to how awesome my window looks compared to everyone else's window out here in the ghetto. Mine is now covered in torn out sheets of a creative design magazine I bought in Tromso. Fuck curtains. I ducktape sheets of magazine together to make my own homemade hobo curtains. My room has become an awesome art piece. I'm going to start holding tours.

Here is the bed in the middle of the room.

'Why is the bed in the middle like that,' asks one of the mothers on the tour?

'Oh, because the artist finds that by placing the bed in the middle he finds himself day dreaming about being out in the open sea. As well as it allows him to lay at arms length from anything he desires, his computer, his books, pad and pencils, etc.'

'Oh, I see', she mutters. Staring out in disbelief.

Another person raises their hand and the tour guide smiles and waves away. 'Yes?'

'How come he has so many coke bottles lined up neatly, one against the other?'

'Excellent question. You'll find that the artist, in his all consuming boredom, starts living more and more in his own mind'--and the tour guide taps his index finger on his temple--'and that the coke bottles remind him of his time spent in Colombia. So he will sit in that chair'--which somehow sits on top of his bookshelf--'and he just looks out at the glistening red and white corporate logo until he feels better.'

The crowd gasps and they all take pictures.

'Please, no flash photography', says the tour guide.

'Now', he smiles with a large toothy grin. 'Let us explore the bathroom!'

And we hear 'oo's' and 'ahh's' from the tour group.


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I've a piece of Salmon defrosting in the refrigerator. Its been there since yesterday afternoon. I hope that it hasn't gone bad. Its my lunch. I plan on putting it in a non-stick pan, with some butter underneath to melt with the fish while it broils in the oven. And then on the sides I plan on putting spinach and sweet red pepper to cook along with the fish. I think fifteen minutes and then I'll remove. Sprinkle some salt, get some bread and serve.

For dinner we have peanut butter that was flown from Las Vegas to Oslo, courtesy of care package awesomeness, and on white bread with a glass of tap water.

For breakfast we had cornflakes with sugar and 1.5 percent milk.

Somewhere between all of this, a banana is in the works, but I haven't yet to decide when, if ever, I will eat the banana.

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i was meant for the stage