lördag 27 oktober 2007

Warbled

I woke up today dreaming old dreams. I dreamt of a formerly good friend who I fell out with shortly before I came here. I got into his car, and the old animosity just melted away. It wasn't like old times. It was like new times, as the new people we've become. He had gotten a new job installing floors. But he still wasn't very happy with his life. Then we almost crashed, but he bumped the stationary jeep sitting in the road out of the way. It rolled off the pavement, into the woods. Then the perspective flew backwards, upwards, and the scene warbled away.


I dreamt of kissing a girl that I hardly knew, and haven't thought of for years. She was around a lot while I was in university, but I never got to know her because I didn't think much of her. I was sitting on a cliff, looking down at the water hundreds of feet below, and she came up behind me and started kissing me. And I panicked because I was slipping off the edge, but I forced her away and the dream moved elsewhere.


It's unsettling when dreams explicitly reflect the things you've been thinking about. They get an eerie, heavy, ultra-vivid atmosphere that the reality generally doesn't merit. Making universes out of molehills. I prefer when dreams stick to the purely imaginative and nonsensical. I hate it when they turn mundane things into monsters. With their subtlety, their authoritarian control over atmosphere. Never liked dreams much.

When I bought my ticket home I was just relieved that I was finally going. Now, I've been remembering more and more what life was there. Remembering faces, situations, years. The first dream echoed how life was in the couple of years just before I came here. The second went further back. Made me remember some of what I was then. Made it something else of its own.

Gotta shake it. Gotta get out of this room now.

torsdag 25 oktober 2007

My desk has descended into madness...

The good news: working on a really cool project for a really cool client.

The bad news: Duck army has declared war on Dog army. And I suspect the ultra-sophisticated fez-wearing flag-waving Equipo A is behind the whole thing....

I will eat your soul, his bottomless black eyes seem to say

måndag 22 oktober 2007

Maine's forgotten son returns

After a tragi-comically long absence that has gone on for far, far longer than I ever imagined it ever would, on the 15th of December I am visiting the motherland.

Fuck. Yes.

And it will be for longer than expected, after I was told the office is pretty much shut down the first week of January. So no point in coming back until after. So finally, I get to go back to the States, remember why I left in the first place, get really annoyed with it, and feel much better about my living situation here. I've started Romanticizing America in my mind, when my feelings about it while living there were mixed at best, and flat out hostile at worst.

I hope it snows while I'm there. A lot. Feet (fuck the metric system) of the stuff.



God I love Maine. It's in my bones. Here I come...

tisdag 16 oktober 2007

For those in need of strength today.

And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

-Emerson

måndag 15 oktober 2007

A done deal & a new idea

It is official folks, Clyde is escaping his personal nightmare and landing in a very very nice place. I move on the 1st of November. I kept thinking I was due for a break without ever believing it would come. Not only did it show up, it came in an eerily perfect package. Lordie how strange things go sometimes, how random success and failure, happiness and misery are. I think I'll stop with all that for a while and just be pleased with how things have turned out.

On to things my readers are more interested in. I've thought up an idea for doing something creative with this here blog, and want to know if anyone cares to see it happen/even reads this at all. So shout as loud as you can if you care. Here is the idea as I wrote it out earlier:

As I was sitting in a very Möllan café having lunch with a friend and some new people, finding it difficult to concentrate due to being extraordinarily tired after working all those silly weekdays and a Friday all-nighter on top of it, and having a hard time following their Swedish, my mind floated around creating bizarre little stories of its own accord. And I thought, how interesting it is that there is this completely unrelated scene unfolding in my head as they look at me here, just seeing me, here. And I came up with the idea to write a series based on moments where I’m amongst people, or wherever, and living out a life in a different world. Making them tight little self-contained stories that build on each other. Showing you what is actually going on in my head and spilling out what I actually think of what is going on around me. It would be terrifyingly honest. This could be that creative project for the blog that I was looking for. It could start in the café as I float around and discover the idea, with the objective perhaps being that I don’t want to dream away life when I have great opportunities right in front of me, like the genuinely lovely new people sitting right beside me and the chance to really learn to speak this new language. And go on to times when the mental wanderings make very good things happen. And maybe in the end Mr. Narrator learns to open his mouth and talk about them, and then real life starts to become fantastically bizarre. And things lean more and more towards fiction. But it would have to be very energetic/funny/surreal to work, to be something people want to read. The explicit honesty required is also going to be difficult. I think I can manage. It would be touchingly warm and repulsively dark. But, this will take a lot out of me, and I’d really like to know if anyone cares.

Here is a nice quote from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Elliot to set the tone:

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown



torsdag 11 oktober 2007

And suddenly everything changed.

Maybe I should change my fake username to Nostradamus. The day after I finish a post with the words "Come Hell highwater or flaming tarnation, things have gotta change. Soon," things changed. Or seem very close to it. This very lovely person who has suddenly bounced into my life even more suddenly offered me a solution to my retardedly horrible living situation. Here follows an excerpt from that particular MSN conversation as I currently remember it and translated from Swedish and with certain flourishes a writer is duly allowed:

Clyde: ...so, in short, out of desperation I was forced to take the first place that I was offered, which happened to be in the worst part of town with an unemployed guy who stays home drinking and farting all day in this dank hole which smells like the 5th or 6th circle of Hell marinated in raw sewage. Oh, and his kids show up on the weekends and wake me up with their savage screaming a couple hours after I have fallen asleep after working at my soul-sliming weekend job. But I try not to complain..."
Lisa: My sister is renting her place out soon. There was a couple people interested, but just today they pulled out, out of nowhere. So if you say yes now, it's yours. Interested?
Clyde: I dunno, my whole situation is more than a little complicated right now. (Clyde takes a look around him) On second thought, fuck yeah. FUCK. YEAH.

But listen, dear readers, the coincidences only pile up. I had been thinking about moving outta this country for a long time, and only a few days earlier actually told my boss this in brief. The whole living situation thing was a giant part of the reason why I've come to be completely sick of life here. I was pretty much done writing an email to my boss, detailing and reiterating my intentions of leaving the country, when I put it aside for a second to chat with Lisa, and 2 minutes later I had no intention of sending said email. 2 minutes later I had (well, probably, not set in stone yet) a nice place of my own in a better part of town, not to mention this new person who I seem to be on the same wavelength with, which is another coincidence because I've been on the look-out for such people since I came here and it wasn't until nearly two years had gone by and I decided I want to fuck right off out of here that one bumps into me at the virtual check out line. Hmp. Just at that moment, right before I sent the mail, after all the things building up to it, after all the patience and persevering and giving it more and more time, at this fairly arbitrary breaking point the break comes that could put my life in this place back on track. And then I spent a really good night with afformentioned person and a genuinely stirring film. The name of the film? Tarnation. Another part of the closing line of that post come to pass. Anyway, it's actually quite bizarre after the shape my life has been in the past 10 months or so to have multiple good things roll in at once. Even little things.

And the coinky dinks continue into day two. I had my best day at work in ages. Bosses out of office so things are more relaxed. The ring toe on my right foot has hurt for almost a week now. For no apparent reason. Anyway, this led me to go most of the day without my shoes on, going about in my mismatched socks, feeling the cold floor against the sole of my left foot through the holes in my sock. That was nice. And I got tons done. Which always leaves a fella feelin good. Just very relaxed and extremely productive. Why can’t everyday be like that? Well, if all days were good, if there were no down to remind us what up even means, would we even feel that good moment tingling against our skin? I think I’m overdue for some tingling, at any rate. Tingles or no, I've come to realize I owe it to myself and everyone here who cares about me to not let temporary difficulties make me flee with my tail between my legs before I give this place, this life, a real shot. Out come the six-shooters. How do you think my aim is?

Crazy Indians made even crazier...

Shukhriya to my bhura bhaae Asif for showing me one of the funniest videos. Ever. Kolla.

tisdag 9 oktober 2007

Tarnation at large

I've spent a good chunk of time this night making a mix CD (as though I would disobey my new boss) and, apart from making the very most awesome compilation ever, rediscovered a song that I lost track of for a while. It's funny how a song you liked in a mild way years ago can suddenly blow you away with its new relevance when you realize it describes pretty accurately how your life has gone the past few years. This one is a song about wandering from place to place, never finding what you're looking for...

The days get shorter and the nights get cold
I like the autumn but this place is getting old
I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast
It might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most
The days get longer and the nights smell green
I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave

I like songs about drifters - books about the same
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane
Walked on off to another spot
I still haven't gotten anywhere that I want
Did I want love? Did I need to know?

I know that starting over is not what life's about
But my thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth
My thoughts were so loud I couldn't hear my mouth
My thoughts were so loud.
– Modest Mouse, 'World at Large'

...and getting that urge to head out the door again, to God knows where and to who knows what end. Maybe I'll find that something here that keeps me rooted in a place, but I won't let things drag out like they are much longer. Come Hell highwater or flaming tarnation, things have gotta change. Soon.

söndag 7 oktober 2007

Colors of home


The polls are closed and the tash is gone. For now.

It is a fine autumn day here in Sweden, but fine Autumn days always make me long for home. New England feels more like home to me in the Autumn than any other time. It makes me wonder why I don't pack up and go. This place just can't compete, in some ways.

This fine day also happens to be a dear freunds birthday. And in her honor, I wrote a poem (oh the humanity!) about being born in the Fall.

Born in Autumn
Born in the autumn while everything else dies.
Born in the imagination of specters gusting down windy roads
Thrown from the cliffs into the sea in tempest
Thrown into the eyes of howling monsters and humble heroes
Lost in sentience under a blanket of orange yellow brown and a little green
Lost in heart-drunk-wonder as the plump apples fall to the earth around you
Singing with the gnats and bees as they mourn for the end of the world
Singing for a bear to slumber through the coming winter with
Dreaming of the music of Spring and white sands in the South
Dreaming away the slow hours while the ripe chestnuts knock against your feet
Awake to the terrible imagination of this season
Awake to a sense of things changing and building to some conclusion
Fly into a tornado of music in swirling crisp leaves and small laughing voices
Fly into the terrible mirror of the sky and weep for what you find
Born in the surging oceanic mists rotating around the globe
Born in the autumn while everything else holds its breath.

And just to make sure due justice is done and homage paid to this most wonderful of seasons, I will let John Keats say it better than I ever could.


To Autumn

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, 5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 25
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.



lördag 6 oktober 2007

To 'tash or not to 'tash, that is the question

I have a humble query for my precious readership: should it stay, or should it go? Cast your vote below and determine the fate of one man's facial landscape.















Choose carefully, dear readers...

torsdag 4 oktober 2007

tisdag 2 oktober 2007

Why am I doing this again?

I’ve just realized that the reason writing is so important to me may be that it’s the only place where I’m strong. It’s the only place where I have the courage to assert myself and be what I want to be. And that’s pretty sad.

How time goes when the clock is running. I’ve spent a last night with a good friend before she leaves the country. Bittersweet, of course. Long conversation, which left me sad that she’s leaving, but also reawakened an old frustration with how people perceive me, and how different that is than I perceive myself. I often seem to strike people as safe and innocent. And I fucking hate that. Maybe I used to be. Maybe the shadow of it is still on me sometimes. But it isn’t real, and it’s not the life I’ve led. Somehow I seem to fail to get this across to people. Or some people. Or maybe I’m just annoyed and over generalizing.

As I sat here thinking over whether or not I had anything rolling around the old noggin worth writing down, it occurred to me that I was compelled to write something out just to get a solid, strong statement out there in a space where I couldn’t be contradicted, where I could set the tone and the beginning and the end myself, and to shout in my voice.

Is my voice this, right now, what you’re hearing in your head?

måndag 1 oktober 2007

Unexpectedly inspired and kicked in the gut

Filling the space between my ears, essentially filling the universe as I know it, Sufjan Stevens changed the course of my day. It’s amazing how much the small gesture of sharing music can effect someone, well, someone open to “gusty emotions on wet roads on autumn nights” to quote another Stevens, this time Wallace, in one of my absolute favorite poems “Sunday Morning.” To return the favor of sharing something moving, I share this: http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2017.html It’s one of the most thought provoking things I’ve ever read (the #1 in that category has to go to Paradise Lost, despite my love/hate relationship with it).

To come back to the story of this morning, I woke up with the sense that I had nothing to look forward to, just a hazy mass of time at my feet. That and my dentist appointment (which went fine). With my headphones drooping from my ears Sufjan breathed new life into me, fitting eerily well with a gusty autumn morning. It’s so easy to get into someone’s head, fill it with something new, change the course of a day, alter the whole story. But when I got to work the bad news came, reigniting my urge to get out of this place. In short, the bad news was that all the work we did the last few weeks was for nothing and it will still be a while before I get a real salary, and everything will be repulsively stuck in place. Or so it seems right now.

I’m getting more tired of the ‘land of lagom’ as the days pass, wondering if there isn’t a more fulfilling place for me if only I can break through the complacency. It seems more and more the only reason for me to stay here is because circumstances have dropped me here. I didn’t choose the place, I chose the girl. Now the girl is gone, and all I have is the place, which I’m not in love with. The place is ok. The job is ok. The friends I’ve made are better than ok, and are the only compelling argument to be made for staying. But that argument begins to wear thin. There are too many ok’s, and ok is not good enough. I do not have the Swedish mentality. I never believed I shared any part of the American consciousness, but I’ve come to realize that was only part of a youthful angst. I’m glad to have thrown that off, and be able to see now how much good there is in being American, and to understand so much better how this giant place I come from has affected who I am. Whatever this mess is that I am, wherever this mess of a life is leading. What is one more setback after all of this, anyway?

And so emerges yet another hill to climb. I wonder what I will see when I finally reach the top.