The happy place

Straddled at the mouth of the port of Rhodes, it’s said there once stood the Colossus, letting triremes pass between its legs.

Once I was in Greece with my parents. With my white sun bleached hair I might have resembled an albino with my blood red nipples as an extra pair of misplaced eyes.

Wearing my T-Shirt and a pair of swimming goggles, I was set to swim between the legs of a Greek man.

However, on seeing — when navigating the murky waters of the Mediterranean Sea — his penis hanging out through the open fly of his white boxers, I changed my mind.

It would’ve been infeasible for the Ancient Greeks to build the Colossus in such a way that he was actually straddling a body of water. He must’ve been standing on land.

And now it’s just dust…

And the man whose legs I didn’t swim through after all, who didn’t have the sense even to put a pair of proper bathing shorts on,

He was no Helios.

Much like yesterday, I’m not sleeping. My sinuses are congested, and I’ve got a fever. I’ll probably be tired tomorrow. (It’s technically tomorrow now)

I can pretend that I’m on a charter holiday, that the cars passing by outside are from a busy street maybe in Athens.

One time I visited a Greek lady, we visited her apartment. She made us pasta in the shape of tubes like straws, and with a red tomato sauce. This and french fries must be typical Greek food, I thought.

I was a child then, who collected colourful rocks which I bought in plastic boxes. I did find a bright turquoise rock in the Mediterranean Sea, but it turned out to be just some play doh or other type of clay, because when I tested it with my teeth, it broke.

There’s lots of garbage in the Mediterranean Sea, and sewage water from hundreds of thousands of toilets, no wonder that there’s also play doh

And my nipples sore and blood red, so mum made me wear T-Shirt even when swimming.

That was kind of her.

And I bought a bronze shield. Of course it was real bronze. And an Athena figurine.

Also made of bronze.

But no swords; they wouldn’t have been possible to fly home with

Did you know Athena competed with Poseidon about naming Athens?

But yet it is a paradise.

Greece with fried aquarium fish and pommes frites, and this straw shaped pasta.

It’s true, the aquarium fish, they fry them whole with head and everything.

there’s one more memory in the head, but I’m not sure whether to write it out. I’ll think about it and decide next week.

That which lie hidden in the snow is now visible. For example I’ve walked past this deck of discarded Pokémon cards on the side of the sidewalk leading to a school.

As I see them lying there in the sun, weather beaten and deformed, it fills me with sadness.

Picturing in my mind eye this child who lost his deck of cards, maybe. Possibly there was some act of malevolence behind this, how else would they end up there?

It’s a tragedy in miniature to find something bought for with children’s money discarded like that.

Life doesn’t care whether you’re grown up or a child when dishing out misery.

I dreamt that I was both a pig and a package of sliced ham.

There was another pig who had made me into the sliced ham package, but somehow I had managed to free myself to some extent from this curse, and now back into my original pig shape, I was the one hunting this antagonistic pig.

I had located this other pig’s package of ham, with the plastic packaging and everything.

And as I ragefully bit into it with my pig’s maw full of hatred, and as I did, the package turned into the black furred coat of this other pig, and I felt that with its rising panic, the realisation in him or her that I was the one doing it, not the other way around.

And to the sound of me taking a bite of this — the sound as if taking a big bit of a green apple — I awoke

slept like a baby, I dreamed that I dreamed that I was losing one front tooth; when I held it with pinch grip, it it came loose so I pressed it down again into the bloody gum for it to grow back there. I pushed it down deeply, even deeper than the other teeth. I thought I made it stick, but when I let go of it, it came loose again. I regretted not brushing my teeth better, because that would have prevented this.

Then I realised, to my relief, that I’d just dreamed that, however the same tooth came loose again, this time in my outer dream.

Having woken up from all of these dreams, having all teeth still, especially the one I was dreaming about, I felt a sense of thankfulness and decided to go out into this cold, cloudy, wet and dirty weather — which made me think of a soggy, sour dishcloth — and take myself out for a run. I saw branches of trees lining the roads laying in puddles and on the roadside, blown off by the winds yesterday. And my body felt slow and every movement with the legs felt uncomfortable like they’d been used too much lately.

It still felt good

I completed my running and have two complete lines of teeth

And so why shouldn’t I feel happy?

I Like the quote from Franz Kafka about him wearing his real face, because he didn’t know that life is a costume party,

I had a drama teacher once, who said that I was hiding behind a clown mask. She meant it kindly.

Unfortunately, that was my real face.

It’s slightly too warm, the pillow isn’t quite right, I’m tired but yet also not

I’m having trouble sleeping, I’m having these vivid dreams like the one about the shrimp, or last night:

I dreamt there were two baguettes on the kitchen counter

That’s pretty much all I remember

To bring them forth from the dreaming world, I bought two baguettes and placed them as I had seen it in my dream …

And then later I ate a bit of one and a bowl of spring mushroom soup: A look of miserably monochrome grayish beige, textureless — like depression made into soup,

Like the gruel which the crew in the Matrix eats, you know?

Having done as foretold by my dream self, I’m eagerly anticipating what will happen next!

I had something on my mind, I couldn’t sleep because I needed to get it out of my system, but I have forgotten what it was.

It has been like this all week; my mind has been wandering to useless places; when I try to focus, I forget on what and then when I remember, and say it’s something on the computer, so that requires 2FA, of course it does, so I pull out my mobile phone, but forget why so instead I watch this clip of ”The Last of the Mohicans” soundtrack, now played on an ancient Celtic instrument.

But it’s only Monday

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I dreamt we were having something like sushi for dinner, and there was a giant scampi there, size of a tennis ball, which was jumping around, screaming with this terribly loud shrimp voice, bouncing and hiding in the blue sofa: he wanted so desperately to live, but we had our minds fixed to eat him

It felt terrible, like the way cats sometimes play with ducklings sadistically (it appears) before they eat them

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Yes! I remember now, the forgotten thought which triggered a burst of inspiration:

there’s a children’s tooth brush in our bathroom, baby blue plastic with a soccer ball printed on it and the text ”You GOT this!”!

That’s what I was thinking about

In general such motivational texts I think fall flat as they can’t possibly know who they are targeting and to what they refer, but still

I GOT this!

Under a patch of undergrowth, once a fistful of perfect golden chanterelles lay hidden. I didn’t see them until I did, I was the first human who did I think, and I felt their weight and a special type primal hunther/gatherer satisfaction as I put them in this paper bag I brought

Or maybe it was plastic

But the memory of the hidden treasure is strong with the sun sending playful somewhat blinding rays on the surface of the water with was fringed by this greenery.

When I — by accident as I was browsing — found that Katherine Kerr had started writing a new series set in the same Deverry world, and bought the first one of these books, I felt just a similar type of joy.

I made the connexion because these occurrences were only days apart if it wasn’t on the same day in fact? It doesn’t matter

And it was a pleasure to visit this world again

When I started I took great pleasure in having a series of twelve (then later sixteen) books with this world but I read them all eventually and then of course to see it again was like they say like visiting an old friend, you know. It doesn’t take long until it’s just like it was before — just like it was supposed to be

You know?

Hello I have been talking to some friends It’s the modern miracle of science to see these faces through the screen

And anyway we were talking about separation of intent from outcome

And I thought of this line from Kamelot ”Soul Society” from ”The Black Halo” album, (which is my favourite even though my favourite song ”The Spell” is from ”Karma”)

How could I be condemned for the things that I've done  If my intentions were good?

and yes this is food for thought of course it is. Of course it is. Intenttions are all we have on the one hand: the outcome is never given, because we can only guess how it will pan out. The point is, that we should make these educated guesses and also ensure that intention and outcome walk hand in hand

But that is beside the point

The point is I once in listened to ”The Spell” (and ”Karma” ) on a burned CD which was in my friend’s black saab 9000 turbo with black leather upholstery, we were going to the gas station in the middle of the night to buy snacks for we were playing Heroes of Might and Magic: II, but were out of snacks, and so when I sat there on the passenger’s seat and my friend was speeding and this song came on and never in my life have I ever felt as cool as I did then.

Then years pass and this memory faded until I heard the ”the Black Halo” album many years later and I thought this is the bomb and so I listened to all of these Kamelot albums until I rediscovered Karma and The Spell and then I was a more complete human being with this aforementioned memory sitting like a black diamond on my metaphorical crown.

Did you know Roy Khan the singer (then) of Kamelot is from Norway?