The happy place

Hello metal heads!!

Problems: it’s ok to let go of them for a while, to go on an adventurous journey. They’ll be there when I get back, that’s for certain.

Of course I’m open to aroma therapy, ethereal oils or whatever, it’s just I have no sense of smell most days.

That’s too bad, may I feel sorry for myself for having had no sense of smell, for example? — I think not.

I think not.

But why? Realistically, I ought to be able to complain about stuff, even if I’m not the elephant man!

It SUCKS to have no smell!

There.

That feels good to get out of my system! I wonder what I’ll complain about next?

Thing is I’ve been having this small devil in my shoulder, advising me.

I’ll start listening to this devil more, because I believe it’s in my own self interest.

See you in hell, then!

Thing is that it isn’t even a devil, but rather some awesome force to be reckoned with, beyond good or evil.

But if i listen to this voice more, people will like me less!

Good riddance!

hello again it’s me!

You know me! I am growing as a person right now, of course it hurts

But right now I am growing. Around the waist, and in my mind!

Did you know during fitness class I spotted my thighs again; they are muscular!

Not like in my prime: in my prime I had to buy larger trousers just for the legs

Because they were ridiculously strong

For some reason, I took great pleasure in having muscular thighs. It’s not exactly sexy, but I didn’t wear them to please others — they were just for me.

Functional, to be sure! I could roundhouse kick with mighty force.

Tomorrow I have a street dance class, let’s go!

I love dancing, it’s one of the many manifestations of Art: Dance !! and music !!

I believe it will connect us to a greater being!

I feel that I enter this trance

Where my mind will soar like previously described

I feel I am a swan, or even something floating in space — a comet with a blazing tail?

Sometimes I catch myself in the mirrors of the gym. I see my broad smile, and my muscular thighs.

Am I good at dancing? — that’s beside the point

The point is I love dancing!!

That’s the only thing which counts when it comes to Art!!!!

I really wanted to write about pineapple and pineapples.

For my thirtieth birthday, we took a cruise ship. I was wearing my yellow polo shirt and drank Piña Colada — my favourite drink — through a straw.

With me were some of my favourite people,

my family.

Some of them,

they hurt me.

I am not yet able to tell the tale plainly.

I don’t understand enough.

It’s not the type of thing that has a clear timeline. Rather, it’s exactly like they were the pineapple in my fruit salad and I was (in this analogy) allergic.

It might have developed suddenly or over time, as these things do. At some point, I kept eating — the same way I always had. It left me with (metaphorical) blisters on my tongue, without me knowing why they were there.

Some time during the following years, I concluded that my tongue was supposed to be swollen. Like that was just the way of things.

Until I stopped thinking there was anything wrong with it to begin with. Even as it kept growing, were someone to ask what was up with my tongue, I wouldn’t have even understood the question.

Finally, the pineapple was too much — the allergy so intense that it almost suffocated me. I stood there in front of the mirror, having reached some final threshold, and realised:

• It’s not supposed to hurt like this to speak.

• Breathing shouldn’t be this hard.

• Most people don’t have tongues this swollen, with blisters all over them.

When it dawned on me that it was all from the pineapple — which I love so much — something broke inside of me.

It hurts.

Even though I know there are other fruits you could put in there instead, like oranges — small representations of the sun — it’s never going to be the same.

And physalis.

I am not sure whether I will ever be able to eat pineapple again. Realistically, I could probably eat it once a year. But is it worth it?

(It’s not)

I felt happy today:

After lunch and numerous long meetings, I made a fresh cup of hot coffee, put some 2Pac on, and started refactoring some unit tests. It’s like sudoku, but I can have my mind wandering or else focus deeply — up to me.

And 2Pac sings about shooting some other gangsters while I drink my coffee and look out through the window at the dark evening sky, and the snow.

The clock isn’t even that much, it all feels absurd.

Why this short moment filled me so with joy, I cannot explain.

It’s not like I don’t have anything to worry about

Who doesn’t?

On display outside right now, a mighty battle rages between Mother Nature and man/machine.

From nowhere rises a greyish-purple cloud, the size of the entire sky: an endless reservoir of snow, blown onto streets, sidewalks, and roofs by a relentless wind.

Pitted against this force are humans with shovels, tractors with snow blades, plow trucks — all working day and night to sweep the streets clear, carving tracks through the snow and pushing it onto sidewalks like a giant cross-country ski trail. There, shovels and smaller trucks gather the masses into clusters of dirty white mounds.

Those mounds — nay, mountains — are soon made pristine again by falling snow, like glaciers blown south from Svalbard by the wind.

Some schools are closed.

Trains are cancelled.

Parked cars turn into igloos.

And it’s like something out of a fairy tale.

Inspiration can come from unexpected sources, the trick is to be observant.

I got this idea, for example, to recreate this sandwich with kalles type caviar, egg, red onion and dill, which my wife and I ate in a previous chapter of our lives; when we were young and the world seemed so promising; a couple free of overburdening responsibilities and mortgages. We even had this blue metallic Peugeot 107: a small type of trusty car with which we could make trips whenever we wanted to, to wherever we wanted. And we were so beautiful back then!

Anyway I smelt my own fart, and immediately this aforementioned thought struck me: the idea to recreate this sandwich, because the other things, alas, are lost forever.

However, I wouldn’t trade then for now, even though I’m not as happy, because I love my life still some days, and the wisdoms I have gathered throughout the years have been expensive.

I had a creepy nightmare

I was eaten by a sand worm (shai hulud) from dune, but in my dream it was a face hugger — I had the wrong name for it in my dream.

I was inside of the sand worm. In a tubular room with fluorescent walls coloured yellowish brown.

And there was a dying child with a knife stuck vertically embedded in his flesh, in the stomach with the ivory shaft Pointing upwards, near his chin.

Like he grew into the knife, the ways trees sometimes embed things stuck to them, rather than was stabbed with it.

The wound looked infected, because the red outlines were yellowed, but there was no blood running from it.

Unable to remove the knife, I wanted to kill us both to end his suffering, although he didn’t say a word or act like he was in pain, despite this knife.

(The knife is of steel — not stainless so a greyish matte colour — and sized of a normal cutlery, but very sharp. I have it in my kitchen drawer, a family heirloom —inherited to me by my late grandmother — but here it was in my dream. )

Next to the tormented child in the belly of the beast there was a laptop. By shutting it down I could somehow remove the suffering from him, and I wanted to do that first, before killing us, but instead I accidentally pushed him so he folded forward (he was sitting next to me), burrowing the knife further into him.

Then when I finally was able to shut the computer down, it started applying windows updates.

And then I awoke

There was a troll in the mirror today when I went to the bathroom, looking back at me with a sad smile.

It’s the type of medium size bathroom you might find on a ferry boat, in one of the better cabins. Still too small for a wash machine. Renovated maybe in the nineties.

I grew attached to it once when I was cleaning it throughoutly while listening to some Clive Barker novel which took place on a boat, coincidentally.

A horror novel, of course. Everybody dies. But still…

To go there cleaning on a fine autumn evening with a hot cup of black coffee in one hand, the toilet brush in the other: Isn’t that what it’s all about?; the autumn sun shining through the windows of the room outside…

And of course with the family nearby giving the bathroom a wide berth, as the floor is wet from the mop.

But today there was a troll in there. Handsome for a troll, but still…

Trolls are pretty resilient and often gather treasure. They regenerate, and even the small ones are strong like gorillas.

everything was closed and the relentless wind coloured my ears red, because I got a beanie which doesn’t cover them.

I was looking for something to cheer us up but it was all closed today

But even so somehow it worked; upon coming back home to the unfinished flat, we’re all having fun with the dogs!!

With rose coloured cheeks, red ears and somehow the pants still feel cold

I’ll even get some more coffee!

It’s almost -30

This weather is pretty deadly, honestly. Only a few hundred years ago, they’d get severe enough frostbite — that they’d have to amputate the foot, because it’s caused gangrene — from being outside for too long. That’s just how it was.

In the little hut, in its kitchen, they are all there, because there’s an open fire, but no coffee kettle on the stove, only a thin soup with a marrow bone inside which sends a warm fog into the cold room, there they all are, huddled together.

the frostbite was handled by these wilted, gnarly people whose breaths were visible to them, exactly like the fumes from the broth. Handled with a saw, and a bottle of strong alcohol, which isn’t clear but rather seems dirtied by something — Like a faint yellow tint.

Life used to be so hard.

That’s the type of weather outside.

The moon shines full, today almost— but not quite — like an egg yolk.

And the dogs don’t like this, keeping as few paws as possibly on the glimmering snow.

Even as they piss, it freezes the moment of touching ground.

But in my house it’s warm. No one has gangrene. And in my heart it’s warm also. And we are well fed.

If I am older than the average life span of this time I just described, it’s only because of the child mortality rates…

But even though I’m concentrating on the bright side of life, still I am not as successful as before. And even though my brain is termite riddled, full as it is of holes, (when I blow my nose, there is no blood, only sawdust on the napkin.)

The orange I ate just now felt sweet and resembled of course the sun, unattainable only a few hundred years ago for most people.

Do you believe we’ve got it better now,? It depends…

Thinking about these people with their hardships doesn’t lend a much needed perspective. Some people have it like this always. Even today aswell as in the future.

And what about factory farming that’s just perverse.