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