Sunday, March 26, 2006

where to?

I roamed maybe in a 500m by 500m quadrant of the world today; up from the house here to the edge of the road (to throw out the trash), and then back through the snowfilled fields adjacent, up to the powerline, through the patch of pines, and back to the house.

I might as well have been roaming on the 6th moon of Jupiter. Nothing specific about that moon, which tangentially is called Ganymede. and, not because I was witnessing some out-of-this-world scenery; it was your typical Swedish (or Minnesota) early spring scenery with white covered fields, a slightly biting breeze, and crunchy snow that you know has melted and frozen before, like the layer of crunchy snow that appears on freezer-burned ice cream.

I was in another plane though. The snow was crunching under my (well, henrik's loan) boots, and I was wondering what the hell I am doing in this part of the world. I thought about cougars who might be hungry and happen to find me here, and what sort of defense I might have against such an unfortunate encounter. Then I was wondering about how one would orienteer in this situation, and the wisdom of using 2 aligned points of reference instead of one. (Which I assume it is because if you pick a far enough point to walk towards, you can pretty much walk forever "towards" it, but in reality be walking a zigzag/spiral/figure-8 or whatever that never reaches it.

This thought led me to what the thought can represent:
First, that whatever point towards which you are going is arbitrarily picked,
Second, you may never reach it.

Then a Gödel third, or Zeroth: Towards what point am I traveling?

In the easy case, today in this field, it was the random Birch tree with the branches looking like crossed fingers for good luck.

In the hard case, this life, I am not at all certain. That there is some destination there is no doubt (or is there? how about that for a premise rebuttal, but I digress). Assuming there is one, WHAT THE HELL IS MINE?

The journey is the destination...OK fine, so a buddhist hallmark card shall quell all this internal angst. And it doesn't.

Two reasons why: 1. This answer doesn't help any more. If the purpose of life is the experiences, then what is the purpose of the experiences? Life? hahaha. Now that we are done with 6th grade circular arguments, can we please move on?

(You're not looking for reason #2 I hope, it was a 'creative' writing trick)

By this time, I had reached the dang burch tree, and my nose was dripping. I stopped there, wiped my nose on the luckily stuffed tissue inside the glove, then turned to my left, picked another destination (this time a less mystical one, namely a high-power electric tower) and kept on crunchety-crunching.

No more life/journey/destination crap on this leg of the promenade. Instead I concentrated on the yellowblack little finches who were shuffling from branch to branch on the naked bushes to my right. They seemed quite content with their frivolous game of chase. It is spring, and that must mean something to them.

I got to the powerline tower much faster and with much less internal angst.

more to prove my old friend (who doesn't realize it, and I haven't seen him in about 4 years), the Philosopher of simple-life, the Brithish Jonathan, who was the first with an epiphanic prognosis of my problem. One day not far from this 500m patch where I was walking, he and I were having lunch, and I was bending his ears about my problems with women, love, life, future, world, politics, job, peace, war, sportsmanship, trust, honor, justice, etc, then I said, so what do you think?
He looked at me with bushy eyebrows (Yes, yes, he looked with his greenish eyes, but the bushy eyebrows is what you always notice more), shrugged and said:
I don't.

Where to? pffft, wherever, but just stop the dang thinking.

I went back inside and tried some Yoga poses with Sylvia. Ouch.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Back to Sweden

The first day at Sylvia and Henrik's started with a lot of sleep. MORGONSÖV as it is called. I had the run of the secluded living room, in which I rooted about until the sun came up and then promptly fell asleep. The 2 of them probably woke up at 7 or something, and used sign language during my morning nap. I finally walked off at 11 to find S. feeding the birds, and H. out in the shed, working on their latest hobby, a 12+ meter boat (40ft). Gustav (the gentle teenage son of Henrik, who has grown to about his dad's height already at 15) cooked us 2 lazies breakfast, which comprised of slowcooked oatmeal, Lingonberry jam (made by Sylvia and sister), and whole milk.
The following hours were spent very leisurely (for me). S and I visited the boat-shed across the yard, finding a dusty H. showing off beautiful mahogany bits and pieces he worked on (All pictures proudly presented in Swedish at www.fuhrita.info.se). Then the non-mahoginzing 2 of us sat on the bench outside the house in the early spring sun, and had the kind of conversation one has with old friends; about love and future and thoughts and thinking too much, and of course about backache too.

When Henrik broke away from the shed with 4 clumps of wood to varnish, we all went in and created a delicious homemade lunch in their handmade kitchen. I did some salad, S. made Risoto, H. made some fish dish. The food turned out delicious, the making of it turned out soulful.
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