La_Macchina

2003-12-07T05:03:00.000-08:00

hi everyone -
not much news - besides i broke up with my girlfriend - found a new place to stay - went to a party with david lynch - got offered a continuing job at the stockholm filmfestival - got a cold and fever - felt better about myself - all in the short month of november.

2003-11-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

ciao tutti...
i need volunteers... i need inernet at home... i need a better fucking computer lounge...
in need money... i needetc...
i need more time... i feel the day should be extended to 36 hours... then you coul stay up for 24 and sleep the rest... thats what i think.
i need to write... i need to make telephone calls... long distance and others...
i need the future... i need yesterday... i need music... i need bad poetry... it reminds me of good poetry... i need to eat... i need memories from childhood so i know who i am...
-arrividerzi, tutti.

2003-10-29T08:14:00.000-08:00

ciao...
its so dark... I cant believe my eyes... the darkness is thick - it wraps you in and covers your soul... adding strange dimensions when reading about ts. eliot's declining health. nobody was healthy then, it seems. either that, or people were acutely aware of their bodily functions - and when you are aware of how your body functions - it usually means you are ill - or a yoga.
dark dark dark...
in the darkness i feel as if i am waisting my time. i cant quite explain it - neither for myself or others - but i have a distinct sense, a voice in my (head), saying I am waisting my time. maybe that is what proust was trying to achive by lying in bed, writing, trying not to waste time. why get out of bed since you are going to get into it again? why not spend the whole day in bed - and try to operate from there - adjusting life to your bed.
when i get from here - ie. the lavish computer room - i will not go home and straight to bed. ive things to do. and i don't want to go to bed, yet.
Ta ta, take it easy, A.

2003-10-26T04:47:00.000-08:00

blog this mofo...
some thoughts about advertising language. we are all slowly but surely being sucked into the catch phrases and images of advertising slogans and images. we have created a platonic world that exists only in magazines and commercial breaks... its the world of modern gods. the ass on the libresse clip package, young people drinking coca cola, flashing white teeth... etc.

2003-10-21T06:23:00.000-07:00

halekem shalemm... or something of the sort.
today I have no idea of what is expected of me. maybe nothing is expected of me. i think that if you get your foot in someplace - at some job or the opther - it is impossible to fuck it up. the thing to do is SHUT UP when you are not sure of something - do not ever open your mouth to speculate...! no poetry please, just facts. There is an exercise description in my notes for the writing course - take your journal four different places and describe what you see or hear or taste or smell etc. I will now demonstrate this exercise - four different descripitions all in one place - the computer room.
1) on my way here in the underground there was a young man that came in on T-centralen. He was wearing a black parka jacket and a black shoulderbag and he didn't sit down. Shortly after he had gotten on the train he pulled out a notebook and jotted something down in it. First one sentence, then he looked up, then another. He had glasses, short hair, beginning to fall off at the top. He looked around for a moment, then he wrote down something more and got off at the next station. I wondered wether or not I had witnessed the birth of a poem, right there on the underground.

2) I bought coffee at 7/11 and it tasted bad. It had the flavour only cooked coffe gets - I poured some milk into it 'cause I knew it would taste bad, but it the bad taste still came through. The milk was warm and when it mixed with the coffee, it tasted nothing at all like coffee. And the strange thing is, now my hand smell of bad tasting coffe, eventhough nothing was spilled.

3) Operating on 20 cups of coffee, Bernstein noted down on every scrap of paper what mrs. Sloan had to say. His paper ran out, and he was soon writing on napkins. He wrote on napkins untill they ran out, than he wrote on his shirt and in the end took off his shirt too write on his body. Mrs. Sloan didn't mind at all, she knew that what she had to say was important and could help in bringing down the bastard in the White House. After she finished talking, Bernstein thanked her for the coffee, put his shirt carefully back on, and left the apartment. He went straight to see Woodward - not hurrying too much so he wouldn't sweat the notes off. Woodward couldn't believe his eyes - was this true? Was the writing on Bernstein's body really going to get Nixon out of presidency...?

4) hell... I liked number 3. I took it and revised it a little and maybe I will use it one day...
Ciao tutti. Ai.

2003-10-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

a beautiful morning... walking to the computer room I hear from the loud speakers in 7/11 "...the more you igonre me the closer I get..." Morrissey lifts my spirits on this monday morning - a day preceded by a strange night filled with weird dreams and my relationship with stockholm soon will end. I can feel it - I cant stand the place - I love it, yet I hate it. It is boring, its like death, its there and there is nothing you can do about it - it won't go away, unless you go away. The people is nice, however, and thats the only reason I have stayed so long.
The computer room - filled with people who have spent the bigger part of the morning putting maskara on their faces and dressing their hair to look undressed - me too, but I can feel I spend less and less time on what to wear or how I look. I take myself out, I take myself places, I take myself and I make me eat, I sleep - in my sleep dreams take me away... etc. Its the ciiiiirclee of liiiife... those innocent days of Lion Kings and when princess Di was still alive. They will never come back. Never!
I am wearing jeans, and a sweater, my hair is undressed, it needs cutting, my face is tired, my stomach is a bit upset from too much coffee... I am not stressed although I should be... I do not bite my nails... I havent bathed this morning.

2003-10-16T06:42:00.001-07:00

been BUSY... therefore I haven't been able to write 'cause I don't have the internet at home.
a lot of things are on my mind. one is how should I approach this diary business...?
should I write what I see or should I describe how it affects me and cut the interlink between...?
that means that if I see a seagull - I write about flying monsters laughing in the sky... something of the sort.
i am empty... a little tired even... a little locked inside m y s e l f
sort of...
today is great... i feel whole with my body... maybe this is not what I should put into my diary... but where should I put it then. I'd like a banana... should I write a similar diary as Tolstoy - and then a secret one where I put down what I really think...? that seems like nonsense to me. I think you should be able to stand by what you put down in your diary... take pictures etc... and so fort.
as I said, I feel great. i am at ease - harmonious, whatever... and I know what I want. that is very important, to know what one wants. usually I do not have a clue and chase fleetingly after things that will not prevail... so now I know... or at least today I know, what I want with today. I do not know what I want with tomorrow... but thats ok.
i read when I get the chance... the waste land by ts. eliot is fucking great... its more than great... its fantasterrific... gotta check him more out. its strange but i have a hard time appriciating rhymed poetry... hexameters etc. i grow suspiscious of poetry written by formula... its not poetry, its something else. alchemy maybe...?
words came easily to me the last time I wrote... and that is very very very positive... Ive been having extreme problems with words lately, they have not shown up but I hope and think I am cracking that...
the sun is shining... and now im gonna getmyself to the library and try and see if they have any allen ginsberg over there...

2003-10-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

2003-10-03T07:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.kallanz.blogspot.com/
for you icelandic readers - check out this link. it is pretty good and food for thought.
for everybody i am d fine. busy as hell but that is nice. it has gotten to the point where i don't know what to do with myself when i am not supposed to be somewhere. last night i came home and it was about nine o'clock, and i suddenly had nothing to do! i just felt so empty inside and useless...
so if yesterday was all empy - (last night that is) than today is filled. i went working with the film festival and later today i have a spin class. looks like life is taking on a form here - a structure or whatever. i haven't had structure in my life for about four years now - or ever since i quit playing handball.
i have brief periods of structure but other than that my life has been spineless - and that is fine. hopefully my daily routine will get spineless again and i have time to drink cafe au lait in the morning, listening to tom waits records and read the newspaper. right now i am a coffe to go, reading hurridly on the underground type of person. i think ferris bueller is right where he says: life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop once in a while to look around. you might miss it.

2003-10-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

ciao tutti...
been awhile - been BUSY...
yeah yeah everybody goes. ari trying to fool us into beliveing he is doing anything else than sipping cafe lattes and staring into space with a blank look on his face.
"with a blank look on my fac
....
i was staring into space"
not bad - not bad at all!
i have gotten into the spinning instruction routine - it suits me fine. i am not born to do it or anyhintg. its just nice to be sitting there on the bicycle looking at all the others and helping them to sweat - knowing I get paid for it. it gives me a sense of power or something. dunno.
project sri lanka is getting exciting. i have to vaccinate meself soon - for malaria etc.
the film festival is fun - i am doing research on thai film. so if you know anything - drop me a line. or send me money.
i am busy at school - i have to get going with the swedihs essay bastard thing.
the courses are busy - english writing - russina lit. and film music - which by the way is a bit boring...
ciao for now, A.

2003-09-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

some qoutes from master tom:
"I'm the Icecream man."
"I ain't king of anything"
"I ain't no extra, baby. I'm a leadin' man."
"I may be drunk but at least I'm not insane."
"I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink."
"I've lost my equilibrium, my car keys and my pride."
"Anyway's the only way..."
"My bass player should be chained up somewhere."
"New York is like this big ship; and the water's on fire."
"So I told my mom the name of the album...Bone Machine. And she said Tom...why d'you always have to degrade?"
"We're headed for social anarchy when people start pissing on bookstores!" (in Fisher King)
"Fishin' for a good time starts with throwin' in your line."
"They all come from nice families, but somewhere along the line they picked up ways that just aren't RIGHT."
"And then you deal with the ballistics of radio, where you're constantly reminded that the bullet must fit the chamber. They're striving for an American Rifle Association that creates this whole blue-metal network of sameness. Like a parts store."
"There's a world going on underground"
"Broken umbrellas like dead birds; steam comes out of the grill like the whole God-damn town is ready to blow."

some more will follow later.

2003-09-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

it seems the moments of sitting down and writing something filled with inspiration decline the more time you actually spend writing. the more i sit down and write - sometimes i force myself (rarely in fact) and sometimes i take out the notebook and jot down things for the sheer plesure of writing. the physical plesure of sensing the pen stroking gently the white, innocent pages... the virgin pages, or the wirgin pages.
whatever. but i guess this is what it means to be a professional writer. you have to write - rain or shine, the writing must be done. thats why it is important to bring some fun into the writing - keep the process alive - alive alive he says... its alive... the monster, the creation, that little thing thats in your head and its existance in the world outside your head where other people can look at it and talk about it and say, thats no good, or this is fantastic. from me to you - thats the idea, the message... that process of communicating with others... if i keep it to myself i will probably go insane... or at least i will feel bad since i feel i am not satisfying my potential / possibilites / talents / etc.
philosophy - everyman for himself... or is it?

whatever. i recommend gogol. read gogol people. read his stories from st:petersburg it is fabulous stuff. read his notes of a demon - about a man that writes a diary and goes insane - 15. october 1834, the ships are sailing gently down the nevski... etc. 25 of december 1834 olga would not let me have sex with her today, must be the season. 43 of april 20014 i am not feeling well today...
i mean it doesn't get any better than this. all combined with detailed descriptions of life in st:petersburg. check it out. other stuff to read is everything. read everything you can get your hands on. everything is useful and all things have a surreal quality to them if you search for it. how are things connected...? explore the connections - make wild associations - make the dead come alive, dreams come true etc. turn everything inside out. wouldn't that be great...? taking a look into kafkas own head...? the universe where i am king and creator...?

a strange blog indeed. it is divided into two. first half / second half. just like a football match.
write about phenomena, like david beckham. who is the man under the shirt of real madrid... of manchester united... is he hamlet... is he dracula... is he othello... is he rasputin... is he hercule poroit - sent here to show us mortals the beauty of the gods...? is zeus his father or is he the craetion of all homers throughout the ages...? is he hercules... has he a brother... what will happen to his children (probably they will become lounge singers in las vegas - not rising up to their parents fame and never really fathoming what the fuck hit them). they are faced with the same problem as the children of zeus had - will beckham eat his children - will he stop time? will he grow old...? is he destined for more greatness than he has already achived?
yes yes... fame and the gods.

2003-09-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

today was the first time I was working at the stockholm filmfestival. it was nice - a little confusing though, since i went to meetings and didn't know what peoplo were talking about. didn't know the names they were referring to etc. but fortunately my boss - or i don't know if she is my boss, sara, was there too, and took care of business. tomorrow i shall have a morning meeting and i will brief other people about how things are going in the face2face department. i think will need the week to be broken in.
on other fronts evrything is aight... i watched a lot of films this weekend which is also something i have to do in relation to the festival. i watched a horrible film about an american woman serial killer - it was a documentary and the film was really about people and how everything can go wrong... i don't really want to think about this. but i wrote down some phrases from it. somthing about a father wearing a clean white shirt and being proper and correct and not taking his shirt of when mowing the lawn, god fearing etc...
all the things that scare me. i walked around söder with henrik scouting for locations for a documentary film we want to make about söder - we talked to rene at the hornstulls kvarter biograf, and he does defenitely not want to be filmed or be in the documentary, which is sad, because he and the type of business he is into is slowly but surly vanishing...
don't know what more to say - other than i was feeling a little tired and blue this weekend, especially sunday - saturday was all right, but sunday was blue. i have been writing bits and ideas come constantly to me. i need to find the time to develope some of these a little further - so i can find out wether or not they will hold. but the way things are going it looks as if i am in for sleepless two months, with the filmsfestival and school and work and things. somehow i need to squeeze in some writing there in between.

the theater group met on sunday evenging and we were working with our characters - mine is a collector, maybe a collector collector, or an art-work collector. dunno, im just doin a little brainstormin, thats all.
it was nice to be at the theater, and it seems as if there are good vibes streamin from alias teater - alias... aka... so on on on on on... with the show.
fun fun fun, its a beautiful sunday...
yes, im feelin better allready.
i was in a manic upswing last week, and maybe this weekend i had to come down a little - you know, back to earth, etc.
so, what ever, gotta go.
gotta go spinning, yeah, helps you stop smoking people.

2003-09-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

strange things are happening...
there was a bomb threat in my street yesterday. I came home from school and they had closed the street my apartment faces. The situation had a surreal qualitiy to it. When I arrived the danger was apparently over since the police and firemen were taking down the barricades and putting their jackets into the trucks. I asked one what had happened and he answered 'A bomb threat', I just went 'huh', and went into the building. When I stood in front of the elevator I decided that maybe they were wrong and the bomb was still there and I would hate to be blown to smithreens by a bomb. It would be so totally useless and... I don' know, so I decided to go for a walk.
Ive gott go now, write more soon, A.

2003-09-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

read me read me - ive noticed not a lot of people are reading my web log. probably because not a lot of people know about my web log but soon... soon i shall send out the adress to more people...

2003-09-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

hmmm... quick note to self. the room should echo with laughter, not the other way around.
"my laughter echo's the room..." what the f*** does that mean?

2003-09-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

shit... its been awhile... and i who was going to try to write something here everyday... silly me. time flies and days go by when i dont go on the internet... i am busy lizzy - buzzy working reading writing things in my little notebook etc. time is fun when you are having flies... as the saying goes. i had a meeting today about stockholm filmfestival - where i will be working with the face2face department. no, it is not a new hydrogenic daycreme for middle aged ladies, but what will probably turn out to be an interesting and a stressful period of my life for the next two months... it flies it flies...
ive gotta go now - i have to finish up the character outline for the girl with the glasses.
'the girl with the glasses on woke one day to find she had lost the ability to focus. no matter at what she looked, everything was blurry and it didnt matter wether or not she had her glasses on'.
somehting of the sort i will write... maybe ill put a little jazz into it... some coffee... beer... politically correct statements about the world situation... lassies colors... miles davis trumpet... (jazz again)... a little bit of yoga and yogi bear and barney and fred & holmes & watson & tarzan & jane & sigfried & roy & las & vegas & don quijote & sancho panza & rosinante & dulcinea & barcelona & madrid & ducados etc...
yes yes the list goes on. the beat goes on.

2003-09-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

yes I know... its been a few days. problem is i do not have internet at home so i have to go to the university to get on line. here are two revisions i have written for my creative writing course. on e is called Three little pigs, the other Season's in the sun. i think i will go for Three little pigs...

Three little pigs

'Begin again. Tell us about the hand'.
Bright light shining into my eyes; water dripping down the naked walls. There is a table and few chairs. They offer me a cigarette.
'This is a nice place', I tell them. 'Is gay boy there the interior decorator?'
'Tell us about the hand'. I can hear they are getting impatient.
'Fuck off', I say putting the cigarette to my lips, 'there is nothing to tell'. Breathing out the words with the smoke.
I can't see how many they are, since the light is being shone directly in my eyes.
Here comes the punch; first the guts, then the face. They're as predictable as sunrise.
'Tell us, Louis. Tell us about the hand'.
'There is nothing... to tell'. Catching my breath. 'Look, all I know is waking up from a bender and there it was on the floor. That's when you lot broke in to my apartment'.
'Who is Snow-white, Louis. You better tell us, or we'll work you over'.
'Snow-white...?', I crack up laughing. What assholes, they've got their stories mixed.
I bite the insides of me cheeks trying to keep me from chuckling.
'You should be asking questions about Lily Rouge and her grandmother, fuckers'. I can't resist.
First comes one in the guts, then the face.
'Working me over...?'. My laughter's echo; the room; their confused faces.

Season's in the sun

Wiping the blood of the knife before putting it back into the basket, Little Red Ridinghood giggled to herself, looked down on the corpse humming; 'another one bites the dust'.
She had been on her way through the woods to her grandmother with a basket of food for the old lady when a man in a werewolf suit had jumped from behind a tree shouting; 'Hand me your wallet!' Little did he know about Little Red Ridinghood?s previous dealings with wolves and monsters on her excursions through the forest.
She was pretty quick with the knife. She could stab a man to death and gut him in thirty seconds flat. Knowing that, her parents sent her at any hour to take food to her grandmother, who lived on the other side of the woods.
Grandmother was something else. She had been an actress when films were silent, and she had been the biggest star and most beautiful of them all. Her eyes were big and round, her lips full and her body voluptuous. So, when she got old and wrinkled she cut herself off from the world and moved into the woods, seeing no one but Little Red Riding Hood.
The girl and the grandmother played this game: The old lady sang; 'Somewhere, over the rainbow', and the girl sang back, 'How many roads must'a man walk down, before you can call him a man?' Afterwards they rolled their eyes and giggled till their bellies ached.
Visits to grandma's cottage were something the little girl always looked forward too.

There you have them both... read them and tell me what you think.

2003-09-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

i tried writing a poem last night before i went to bed - and i cant remember what it was like today. it said something about yesterday wasted... a bit pessimistic. i read the story of daedalaus (?) and icarus before going to bed and its such a good story... the story is about so many things. its about balance - the son and the father - listening to advice etc. why did icarus go to near the sun? because he loved to fly and got lost in the spur of the moment - which meant he lost his wings and fell down to the sea. a lesson could be learned here.
ive bought some folders and post-its and now i can organize my notes and various pieces of writing which is scattered all over at home. this is important in creating my writing space - in my writing space i need to know where i have filed various things. these things i will need when i need material to my stories. i have been thinking about wether or not characters create the narrative or the narrative creates the characters. it is probably both ways. if a narrative in an airplane is on my mind i will probably create characters that are likely to be "airplane" characters, stewardess, pilot, a drunk icelander etc. if the main focus is the narrative - and in this instance maybe the airplane, than the narrative / airplane is the main character. if, however, i have characters in my head that i need to get out and liberate in a piece of writing - the characters will construct the story. like in the story of icarus, there is probably some kind of balance and harmony that will decide this for me.
haruki murakami - the fantastic japanese writer was giving a lecture at the university in iceland yesterday - and since i am here in stockholm i missed it. damn. murakami is a writer i like and i want to write like him. the stories he has written are stories that i would like to have written myself. i cannot deny it, it is a fact. he is the writer i want to be. i can't wait for his next book. another writer whom i admire is paul auster. he is the master of story telling. you cannot but go on reading when you begin with his books - you have characters in his books that tell stories. every character has a story to tell and he follows up on these stories, creating a world based on the love of story telling. nothing like that shit film, story-telling by pseudo wannabe todd solondz, who also made happiness. don't get me wrong - i have nothing against provoking and shocking, but i feel that the basic element a story teller (director, writer, grandfather) has to have is respect and love for his characters. sounds naive maybe, but this is my conviction - and i think you can smell it if the writer doesn't like his characters... i don't mean the writer has to agree with his characters, tolkien did not necessarily share saurons view on things, but there is an element that is hard to explain that needs to be there. the characters in the film story telling are fake - they are utterly uninteresting and i get the idea of playing on storytelling in that way - by creating characters that are inherently made-up, you are pointing at the fact that all fictious characters are inventions of the author - but then again the question arises, why do it - why waste your time on creating characters you have no respect for? to me, creating such characters is the same as spending time with people i have no respect for. i mean, you decide what you invest your time in. it is very simple - i have such and such an amount of time to do such and such things. well... i don't know... it is all based on the sense of smell / feeling anyway. so there is no logical explenation why i dislike the films of solondz so much. for instance with happiness - why waste your time doing precisely that? artists always have the defence of "there exist people like that" and i am not arguing about that, these people probably exist, but why spend time with them? what do you want to say with your film / writing?

here is a poem:

sittin' in the mornin' sun
i'll be sitting 'till the evenin' comes
watching the ships roll in
'till i watch them roll away again
i'm just sittin' at the dock of the bay
wastin' time

2003-09-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

evening. tired. we had calss today in creative writing - and the thought struck me: how can you teach creative writing? well, it is probably impossible to teach what one should actually write... it is more or less about techniques. writing techniques... jotting down things... cutting interesting articles and images out of newspapers magazines books etc. and putting them in your journal. documenting - gathering the material - it is a bit like cooking. you go to konsum and you put in the basket what the ingredients you need for tonights dinner. then you go home and mix it together. which reminds me - i am hungry and i haven't eaten anything but junkfood lately. which means i will now conclude this session...

2003-09-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

i was extremely busy yesterday and didn't have the time to write on the internet. however, i wrote in my notebook - i jotted down a few ideas. one idea has to do with aerodynamics - an airplane crosses the sky at 32.000 feet. on the ground a group of people is taking an aerobics clall. the connection? yes, both activities rely upon aerodynamics. i have to figur out how to elaborate this into a short story - it is not a disaster story about a plane that crashes into the building where the aerobics class is taking place... i want to write something more "uplifting" - something more light, something like bach's air... or an airballon gliding across the sky on a sunday afternoon, followed by another air balloon, and then another... the story should be about balance - the body in the air (aerobics) the machine in the air (airplane) - and the machine is man made. balance... zen... basho... a banana tree... waterfalls... the south pacific - happy happy happy talk. i long for those times. those days when people were not afraid. or maybe it is me who is afraid. whatever... this is the state of mind i find myself these days - so this is what i want to write.
on other fronts things are the same. i will probably not finish the icelandic essay this semester. most likely that is a good thing - for the quality of the essay. i am old and experienced enough to know that writing 30 pages in 5 days is not good... so, i shall send the professor an email explaining the situation.
on the swedish essay - i heard from the professor and he suggested we meet tomorrow and go over the thing. it is probably a hard essay to read - it looks like a book keepers account of his spendings over the course of two years, but the material i wrote about is fascinating. it was very inspirational to watch newsreels from 1914 - 1916 and read old newspapers from the same time, trying to recunstruct the landscape of days gone by. if i ever am in dire need of writing material - to the archives i shall go.
i am still ill - and now i will go home to lie down and drink tea and take ipren.

2003-09-07T04:35:00.000-07:00

i had a cold and slight fever yesterday and went shopping with halla. we went to drottninggatan and than we went to norrmalmstorg - and there was so much people. everybody and his uncle out there, doing the saturday shopping. my fever rose during the day and after we had visited a new store, zara, which actually has nice clothes for low prices - the people in there were in a shopping frenzy like the sharks you see on discovery channel in a feeding frenzy, and that made us feel ill.
so, we went back to söder and i swore never to set my foot on norrmalmstorg and drottningatan again. afterwards, when we had gotten home, we went out again and this time we went to something that was supposed to be a market - it was a market, yes, but a DESIGNER market. it was not one of those charming markets were you can buy worn leather jackets, stained pyjamas and warm sweaters but the "facconable" type - with intrinsically cool people, looking bored in their full lipped faces. there was of course a cue and an entry fee to be paid - you could choose between two prices - 50 skr you are allowed at the bar as well as the market, 20 skr, just the market.
Than there was a band - loud, having troubles with the technology and playing music that was totally wrong for the occasion. we sat down, met some friends, sipped our beers, and then we got home. i could go on raving about the market as a metaphore for sweden and the swedish "way of life", but i wont do it - i am tired and i have a cold and a slight fever - so i wont do it. i refuse to do it. you can read between the lines here and fill in the picture of what i am trying to say by writing this story about the swedish market. after i got home i layed down on the sofa and watched tati's mon uncle, while halla made dinner. than i watched tv late into the night and i watched a documentary on ozzy osbourne. the man is totally insane. he one time tried to strangle his wife. she told this story on the documentary. "one time ozzy got so drunk that he stopped being drunk and became insane. he looked at me and said 'we have decided you have to go', and then he strangled me. i became terrified and pressed the security button and the police came and put him to jail." an interesting glimps into the ozzy household. he has also dressed up as a werewolf to frighten his wife while she was taking a bath...
enough for now. gotta start fixing the essay i came here to fix.

2003-09-05T00:33:00.000-07:00

good moaning... it is a beautiful day in stockholm - sort of like the one in the car commercial i talked about yesterday. yes, maybe i am getting there. not much to tell - stayed up late reading basho's narrow road to a far province, and this caught my eye: "i thought of those swords tempered in china's lungechuan (dragon springs) and of kanchiang and his wife muych who forged five blades together. i realized then that to excel in anything requires much more than ordinary effort."
much more than ordinary effort... that's what it is all about. to excel requires much more in ordinary effort. this reminds me of the character in haruki murakami's book on the tokyo gas attack in 1995. i don't remember the mans name, but he says in the interview with murakami, that he gets up every night at three and cleans his apartment. when murakami asks, why? the man answers that he has always wanted to excel in something, and he had tried to be the best at various things in his life but with no success. until he found out that he was good at cleaning, and so every night, this man in tokyo gets out of bed at three, he is married, and cleans the apartment until five o'clock. than he showers, shaves, has breakfast, and is out the door around 6:15, to catch the train to work in tokyo. (he lives in a suburb).
this man knows he is good at cleaning and his apartment probably ranks high in the hierarchy of clean apartments. this man has that little extra, this 99% sweat beethoven talks about and 1% inspiration.
here is an attempt at a haiku i thought of on my way to campus:

autumn air
cool but getting warmer
in the morning sun

2003-09-04T12:39:00.000-07:00

cameron diaz gotta broken nose... britney is shy about a kiss (probably the madonna kiss) and the love thermometer is in total contradiction with today's horoscope...
whats going on in the world...? who are these people who sit around all day - taking iq tests, reading horoscopes (chinese, zodiac etc.) is it me, is it you...?
"hello, i just gotta let you know..." sings lionel richie. am still working on the damn d-essay... when will it be finished (it's not up to you, sings björk in one of her songs), well is it? is it up to me? if not then who? i would really like to meet the person its upto. probably the same person that... nah... better skip it. no need to tie everything nicely in ribbons of babylon. "where we sat down, oh, oh oh oh, do you remember saigon". what the hell are boney m trying to say in that one?
i am tired. show me the way to go home. i am tired and i want to go to bed. i want my life to be like in a spanish car commercial i saw once, when i lived in spain.
it was such a nice commercial. a good looking man lies in bed next to a good looking woman. their hair is black, in sharp contrast with the white sheets. the woman is asleep and the man, lying down, opens his eyes. he looks at his beautiful wife / girlfriend and gets out of bed. walks to the bedroom window and looks out. and, voilà, there is a car parked in the drive way and the man and the car exchange meaningful glances. THAT is what life is about and this is what i want.
methinks it is high time i take myself home - home to my tom waits records and my beautiful girlfriend. home to my apartment who (!) is becoming a part of me, of who i am, of my identity.
here's a list of my five best readings ever:
1) huinter s. thompson's letters from 1968 - 74 (?) (the idea for the list is actually from there)
2) lord of the rings - unforgettable two weeks in mordor and shire and where ever
3) catcher in the rye - rhymed uncanningly with my own life at the time
4) human, all too human - made my wake up at night, get out of bed and write strange haiku poetry the world has yet to see
5) notes from the underground - a scary piece of literature
5b) the repetition - kierkegaard
5c) einstein's dream's - lightman, the icelandic translation
the list is not nearly complete and if it weren't for today it would look totally different.
my main thought for today is: when is a writer writing? is he / she writing when thinking about writing - when is the definite moment for writing, is it when i sit down and actually write what's on my mind, or is it somewhere else, say, over the rainbow? i think it is like this: i am a filter, i am a filter for everything i see, hear, feel, etc. and when i sit down to write, my experiences are filtered out into what i am writing. yes, me likes this explenation... another thing. it is very important for a writer to take care of his / her filter, i.e. him / herself. i have to think about where i live - what i do, how does that affect my writing?

2003-09-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

the damn program deleted my journal. i had just written about my lectrue in russian lit. history - which was interesting, particularly the bit about the chronicles. they wrote these chronicles for towns / districts / cities etc. and one chronicle from 1122 states nothing for a whole year but three dragon's were seen in the sky. fascinating - nothing happened the whole year but three dragon's that flew over the sky.
this lead me to think about my russian handball trainer ( i used to play) and his name is of course boris. one time after i was making up excuses for why i didn't show up on yesterday's practice he said to me "ari my friend, if i come i there". and how could i argue with that? it is so simple - i come where i am, i am where i come. another thing about boris was his believe in vodka. i sprained my ankle one time and he told me to go home, soak a towel in vodka and wrap it tightly around my ankle, and tomorrow i should be as good as new.
i hunted around the library looking for books for the russian course and it is some heavy reading. anna karenina and crime & punishment (of which i am a little afraid since the last time i read it it made me feel guilty about all the small crimes i have committed and not committed through out my life). anna karenina should be good. filled with russian wisdom and exotic recepies. culinary experiences in russian lit. is usually quite strange to me. a lunch can be two hard boiled eggs, some cabbage, herring, some bread, all washed down with five glasses of vodka.

2003-09-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcom to my journal!
Woke up early this morning - got out of bed. Went to the drugstore Because Halla (my girlfriend) is sick, and got some medicine.
Bought a nice autumn jacket / sweater, took myself to the university, stood in the cue for the cash point and the bloody thing wouldn´t accept my card. Gotta ask the bank for a new one... went to the computer lounge and will go to class (russian lit. history) at 14. I am a little worried about the essay's I have been writing this summer - the professor hasn't made himself heard here in Sweden wether he liked it or not, and time is running out for the icelandic essay... so, if you have any suggestions on Italian neorealism in post II war cinema, please drop me a line.
The subject of money is reaccurrent - how can I do the things I want to do (sleep late, write poetry and stories, make films, travel, eat at restaurants... ) if I don't have the money? Money is a delicate subject where ever you go. For example, the machine at the store where I bought the sweater / jacket I like so much this morning, refused to accept my icelandic bank card. It was a bit embarrassing, standing there with sleepy eyes and a four day stub - trying to behave as if I am a filthy rich eccentric living in Söder. The business was concluded with me giving cash to the lady at the store, who smiled sympathetically at my attempts to explain that sometimes there is NO CONNECTION to Iceland. This made me think about money, again. Money money money - I need it, they have it, so give it. Or should I drop everything and find work?
Yes, well... hmmm... I have to think about that one.