Abandoned places, abandoned people

There's a certain allure in walking away and leaving things the way they were. Leaving people the way you remember them to hold on to the idea that you can one day return and pick it up, just the way that it was. A life you could possibly continue even though you would right now want something else. You're not quite ready to let go, but you're ready to move on to something different. It doesn't even have to be that you're ready, it's just that you need to. The age old thing of having the cake and eating it too (she said as she broke the head of a chocolate Easter bunny and immediately mourned for the death of the adorable shape of its well thought out and cute design).

It also holds an element of nostalgia. The older I get my perception of the past seems to change into something more positive. Not necessarily that I forget about negativity, but it's the devil I know. It's the devil you, know. It's the devil, you know, because no matter how much you'd love for the places and people you leave behind to hibernate, sit in wait, for you to return, they won't. Places change, people change, and the only way they will possibly change in a direction you can keep track of is to be with them. It's difficult to influence from afar.

Change is rarely dramatic, much more often subtle, and it takes some effort to see it. Just like spring takes its time (Visst gör det ont när knoppar brister / Varför skulle våren annars tveka) the nuances that make up people grind their way through to conciousness. A small change in the way they speak, an ever so slight alternation to their gait, are you there to witness them blossom or do you prefer to ignore their transformations because it's easier to keep them the way they've survived in your mind?

Time never comes to halt. We see this phenomena in popculture, you know the type of films where the nerd comes back for a revenge on its bullies. Rushing towards them with their success, ready to show off how much better they've become from moving away and making something of themselves. This only works if the bullies have remained static. Doesn't then the nerd do exactly the same thing they hated the bullies doing, limiting someone, putting them into a box of what someone else thinks a person should be? We all change, some for the better and some for the worse. I'm not going to deny the fact that some change more than others, but change is necessary, without it we can't live. Noone can be completely stagnant. Experiences can be humbling, both for bully and nerd.

I'd like to think that everyone's lives hold the same amount of grief and happiness, it just differs in which order we live through them, and naturally, what happens first is what'll affect us the most. Some simply need more time to reach the same point of maturity. That is why you should never consider yourself to be more than anyone else if you look at it from the bigger perspective. Upon the point of old age, or death, we should all be  somewhat equal. We will all have experienced love, loss of the same, hardship and success, dreams and their realisation.

So, when you come back, don't fear nature having reclaimed the streets of your childhood, don't fear the cracked paving, the new buildings, the new pulse of life, the unfamiliar scents mixed with the ones you used to know. Embrace the wonder of them, just like you should the people you left behind. Perhaps you can find something new in them, something you knew was there but you were busy disliking other aspects to see.

You and your Face-book

This will hold many elements of throwing rocks in stone houses, so perhaps I should explain so I can be misunderstood correctly. I use Facebook. Often. Daily. This will also be my perfect argument for being right, as I refuse to be one of those criticising a product without actually using it. I'm also fully aware that Facebook has been discussed enough for a hobbit's foothair to get bored of the subject.

It's the stupidity involving Facebook that I hold closest to heart. Articles such as this . There are thousands of them, I just picked one at random. People being fired because of what they've said about their employer on Facebook. Really. This is so easy to avoid. Either don't add your boss as a friend, or make sure your privacy settings don't allow people you aren't friends with can see your wall. Seriously, how difficult can that possibly be? It's not really Facebook's fault that you a) hate your job, b) are an idiot. The tools to avoid this scenario are there.

Then there's another matter, one that doesn't only apply to Facebook, but all Internet activity; the one about embarrassing pictures of you. You know the kind, you're drunk, you're seminaked, you're doing something illegal. They will haunt you forever they say. Sure, might be so. Two things, are you really that important to the human race that anyone cares about your behind or your nipples and what are you doing putting such images in a forum where they can be found by anyone? If you feel you must have your privates or drunkeness displayed online, why not do it under a fake name so that they can't be located by a simple visit to Google? It's not rocket science. Keep what you want to have private away from places where they'll no longer be private. Relating it to Facebook again, as that is what I said I would mainly dedicate this post to, check your privacy settings once more. I'm also aware of the complication of others posting images of you. You can't really control that as much, other that to try to behave yourself by cameras.

Continuing down the route of images. I'll try to keep it brief, the Internet has made our attentionspans oh so short, after all. Do we really need pictures of every second of our lives? Two things, are you really so important that people look at all those pictures of you, your clothes, your flower arrangement, your drive way, your dirty floors, your newly dyed hair, you puking in the bushes after that awesome party and how much of actually living did you miss while taking pictures and posing? All rhetorical questions, my answers are all implied. There's sharing, and there's sharing too much. We should be more selective when it comes to what we let others see. Whatever happened to showing pictures only to those who care about what they're of? You know, dog pictures to people who like dogs, prom pictures to those who went to the prom, or possibly your grandmother, and so on.

Most of us have hundreds of friends on Facebook (well, I don't have hundreds, but that's because I'm not cool), but how many of these are actually our friends? I can look at my wall and come to the conclusion that my actual friendships aren't very well represented there. One of my best friends doesn't even have an account. Jeez, she can't be a true friend then, she didn't comment on my latest status. Then I also have friends who I only communicate with on Facebook. I don't call them, I don't see them, I know nothing about them. Shallow acquaintances. That doesn't mean they don't occasionally make me laugh or make me grind my teeth. It'd be better if Facebook distinguished, or simply didn't call it friends, but something like "contacts" instead. Hopefully my real friends know I appreciate them even if I don't post on their walls on a daily basis.

Endless detailing in status updates. Again the question is if you're important enough for anyone to care. All I can think of is that you're making yourself vulnerable for stalkers if you are in fact that important. They'd know when you left your house to go to the store, which shelf you're currently standing at and when you'll be home alone. Another category of status updates that walk on my last nerve are the passive aggressive ones, you know the kind "Nobody likes me, nobody cares, I'm so bored, I hate you - you know who you are". Same with superperky or religious ones. Of course I'm aware of that thing we call freedom of speech, so you're free to post whatever you like. I'll exercise my own right to do as I please and I'll hide you from my feed and write a slightly passive aggressive blogpost about it. It's all rather ironic, and irony amuses me. Unlike the latest news about your offspring's cold, your own stomach flu, your going to church or latest purchase. What's with all the negativity, anyway? Oh, I know, I know, this post is rather negative, but like I said, irony amuses me.

With sites like Facebook we can all be rockstars. Display ourselves as we want to be, decide which side is the most flattering and only show that. We can be interesting, entertaining and social. We can share so much of ourselves that the search results after googling match those of a celebrity. Not really, but maybe if you compare the result to what it would have been in 1995. There's so much information, so many pictures that we're drowning in a stream of them. Once more I ask, are you really that important? Oh, I should probably add that Facebook has a setting you can adjust, whether or not to allow third parties, such as search engines to be able to access things you have posted, including your name.

As with everything else there are two ways of looking at it, you can either make your Facebook about you, or your friends. If you like having all that information about yourself out there, by all means share, if it's about your friends, take a moment to think about what they'd like to see before you share. They do go hand in hand, I'm aware of that. Maybe I'm being cynical again, but I honestly don't think pictures of myself or details about my every day life are that interesting, and those I'm important to already know anyway. No need to waste server space on that.

To put it in plain English, as plain as it can be from someone with Swedish as a first language, I have posted too many pictures of my cats, too many pictures  of my driveway - yes, one is one too many, I have made noninteresting status updates, but I have never posted anything with the intention to hurt anyone's feelings, to brag (I might not be cool, but I'm incredible), and I'd like to think I've never posted anything remotely related to self pity, even when I pity myself the most. So, how many of these things am I guilty of? A few, quite a few actually. How do you think I know it's all stupid?

I have many suggestions as to how to improve Facebook, ones who would make it more user friendly, and in that lessen the critique, so if a representative of Facebook would like to contact me and offer me oodles of money for my ideas, don't hesitate to do so.

Just words

If I was to go to the willowtree.

My not so secret secrets

When I was but a little girl the women of my family decided to pass on their heritage of things they felt makes it easier to deal with men. Some of these things have served me well over the years, some have well, not worked. I've always been proud of my generosity, so I'm spreading the words of the (slutty, charming, irresistable, manipulative and capitvating) women of my clan.

1) Never come between a man and food.
2) Never come between a man and sports.
3) Never come between a man and his friends.
4) Never come between a man and his mother. (I always included the whole family in this)
5) Never come between a man and sleep.
6) Never come between a man and TV.

That's basically it. I think the point of it was to not seem pushy and needy, but instead there have been times where it made me feel lonely and neglected, so the rules only work to an extent. For the next generation (if there'll be one) I'd like to alter the rules a bit to be the following. To see how they work I'll try them on myself.

1) Show respect, respecting without showing it is pointless.
2) Show understanding, understanding without showing it is pointless.
3) Show love, loving without showing it is pointless.
4) Apply 1-3 both to him and yourself.
5) Expect him to apply 1-3 to you as well.

Their advice is a bit more concrete, but I always felt they implied I should come last, step out of the way and not demand much for myself. Also, I look at the track record for the women who said these things and I can't help but to think that yes, maybe they were on to something, but if the advice was perfect, wouldn't their loves have been the greatest love stories of all times?

Second chances

A quick session with google teaches me that "Instant success" provides me with 8,240,000 results while as "Instant failure" gives me 6,370,000 results. That must by logic mean that instant success is more common that instant failure. Not really. It doesn't give away how many times something else has been tried without the wanted result. Simple example. Ads for any kind of weightloss related item such as drugs, diets or excerise. We're often fed the line of "I had tried every diet, from eating cardboard to drinking gasoline, but with this I have insant results". I wouldn't call it instant if you had tried something similar, but it's the idea of succeeding at something right away that holds a certain lure. The fact that there is an answer out there that will take the worry out, and sometimes even the hard work. But the question remains, can we have success without failing?

Yes, of course we can, but they're not failures until after the fact. Before you start the game you're still winning, it's not until it's over that you have lost. But then you can play again, and maybe that time you will win. For myself I can't say I've done anything that didn't take a few attempts. Sure, I've had success in details, but in the bigger picture I've always failed. I choose not to see them as failures, but only finding a way that didn't work. A trail and error kind of thing. It's how I generally get by. Like the one in a relationship is successful at it, but not counting the amount of exes, they just didn't work out. Simple.

There's really nothing in life that doesn't offer second chances. Only death. You can't change the way you die, because you are after all dead and then you don't have anything to do with life anyway. This also goes with making mistakes, obviously. They're never mistakes until after the fact, when you have to face the consequences (59,400,000 results), the fallout of what you've done. But they're fixable too, everything's fixable. When it comes to people that's only half true, you can't go back in time and start things over, same with job interviews, if you didn't get the job you just didn't get it. Does it mean it's a waste of time to try and risk failure, risk making a mistake? No. Everything you do builds on to who you are, it makes you even greater than you were before. So the bigger mistake would have been to not try at all.

At times it's as easy as deciding between fixing your make up because you smudge the eyeliner, or wash it all off and start over? Depends on the error. Some people you let go of, some jobs you let go of, some ideals you let go of but there'll always be something to fill the void, it can be hard to see, but not impossible. Sometimes you just say "I'm sorry" and mean it, sometimes you work a bit harder to get to where you want to be, sometimes you find that maybe something else suited you better, something else was more convincing and true. When you've been in those situations a couple of times you know what to do. Ha! Making the same so called mistakes over and over is good for you!

Habits change over time with the smallest quakes, it occasionally rumbles and storms when it all falls apart for you to build anew, either way you come out the other side. And if you don't, you're dead, and if you're dead you can't read this, so you know I'm right.

So, to sum it up, you'll always get a second chance in life, one way or the other. Everything will be just fine. I promise. And honestly, has anything ever turned out exactly the way you planned?

(You can only change what you do to yourself and others, you can't change what others have done to you, only make sure it doesn't happen again)

Lines

Occasionally lines flash through my head, ones that aren't very useful for much of anything. I do however collect them in my own bank of things I could say. I suppose it ties in with that I intend to one day have the perfect thing to say for everything I'm faced with or something to build something else on top of. I'll let you sample. Unless they've been honoured with quotationmarks it's a Molly original.

I don't need to quote you for you to know I hang by your every word.

If what you just said was a raspberry I'd eat it all up, even though it was kind of sour.

You're just a lifesupport system but what kind of life you're supporting I do not know.

You fill me better than air does a balloon animal.

Everybody's somebody's leftovers.

I'll just take this pink elephant for a walk.

"Stars should be shared, they are far too big for just one person."

Sometimes you eat the cookie, sometimes the cookie eats you.

The butterflies are laying on his chest like armour.

You know you live in the country when

- you know how many cars pass down your street a day.

- the church and it's affilliated buildings are the focalpoints.

- the priest calls you and asks why you never go to service and you feel it'd be awkward if you were honest and said you don't actually believe in God.

- the main forms of transportations are moped and tractor.

- you notice when the cashier in the store has new shoes.

- you shop at the dinky store because you don't feel like driving 12 mins to the supermarket.

- you feel bad for slamming your front door at 9 pm.

- your neighbour somehow feels he has the right to tell you need to shovel in straighter lines.

- your mailman asks you why you get so much mail from a particular company.

- the kiosk attendant automatically puts up what you usually buy on the counter.

- you check the window of the pizzeria owner's apartment through yours to see if they're open.

- everyone plays football because there's nothing better to do.

- the main weekend activity is car bingo.

- people ask you what kind of dogs you have when you take your cats for a leashed walk.

- your old classmates all live on the same street as you.

- a trip to Ibiza is considered to be educational as to what's going on in the world.

- the local paper's headline is "Graffiti on train" or "Man falls off bike".

- the library is only open twice a week, closed all summer.

- you can tell it's 5 pm because the streets are empty and you smell cooking.

- you see more sweatpants than dresses.

- you know which kid belongs in which house by the sound of their voices.

- people still shake their heads in wonder about the family with seven kids. The kids are now in their 50s.

- you're an outcast if you don't go to the Christmas fair.

- you wave at cars, not people.

- there are no buses on Sundays. Or holidays.

- you give directions such as "At the Holmgren farm, turn left towards the mill, at Svensson's flowery mailbox turn left again, then straight ahead past the Håkansson place".

- the cows wake you up every morning.

- most people wake up around the time you go to bed.

- you panic when you have to drive in a city.

- you can't crack jokes about anything that's happened in the past 20 years further away than 5 km from the store.

- people laugh at your clothes, then wear the same thing five years later.

- everyone knows who's sleeping with who.

- it's not called "sleeping with", it's called "you know".

- people avoid you like the plague when someone you know has died, but walk up and pat your shoulder at the cemetary.

- you can forget to lock your back door for a week and nothing happens.

- you've never been to the restaurant because it's only open from noon til 4 pm.

- if you have dark hair and eyes people often ask you where you're really from and look confused when you say "Stockholm" and then ask "Yes, but originally"

- you don't count unless your family goes back at least four generations in the same place.

- people mispronounce the word "originally".

- people say "det lade sardin på stämningen" instead of "det lade sorti på stämningen" and are utterly serious.

- you're considered exotic because you can tell the difference between a papaya and a coconut.

- you can ask any random person for your phonenumber in case you forgot it.

- there's no cellphone reception except for one provider.

- everything's done "for the community", may it be donating money to Haiti (yes, they just realised it happened) or going the speedlimit past the daycare.

- it's all really just a small collection of houses among trees and fields.

- you feel compelled to write a list like this.

That's really uncomfortable

Not only the draft from the door when you open it not wearing any pants, but to see it's not who you expected, and asking yourself why you got the idea to open the door barely dressed at all. The bending down to empty the washer, the wet clothes on your arms, the stupid door you have to open to get to the dryer, the button on the dryer. All those annoying things you were trying to avoid, putting off, but had you done them you wouldn't stand in the doorway trying to cover yourself.

July.

Originally posted on September 13 2003 (In a place where September was like July)

It smells like home. With no other air than the one that has touched me life smells like my skin, my shampoo, my deodorant and my detergent.

It smells like summer. Air heated up by the sun, almost as if it was once shy, resting over grass who wishes to sleep and trees not realizing how short the life of their leaves is.

It smells like memories. What has been floats by just as quickly as the toughts of the future. It always feels the same when summer ends, something new is expected. Brush strokes over my mind leave traces of me on everything I've touched.

Beauty and nationality

I just read the silliest article about which country is the most beautiful. If you wish to read it for yourself, do so here, you won't get any wiser. However, while Sweden slipped to a 6th place and the examples given for what Swedish beauty is I noticed something else. It's the idea of beauty that must have changed while the classic blond hair and blue eyes isn't valued as highly. Countries such as Spain, Italy and Brazil have better positions. (As far as I could tell Norway wasn't on the list at all) Other classically blond countries like Holland and Germany finished last and second to last.

Why is this? There must have been a shift in the concept between the blonde and the brunette. Does it have to do with that the natural blond comes from a recessive gene that'll die out, and is ment to do so due to what we're attracted to? Something else it makes me wonder about is how much nationality we can read into someone's apperance. Do I look like the typical Swede? I know I don't fit the stereotype of it. I'm not overly tall, my eyes aren't blue, I'm not blond and my bosom should be left out of this. Does this lessen my swedishness or does it instead enhance the new type of Swede? The one that will come about with new generations while our immigrants become just as Swedish as us due to having their children here and them growing up here. I have generally said that if your parents were born in Sweden and you were as well, you're just as Swedish as I am. Even though I have more generations born here it doesn't make this country any more mine than anyone else's.

Another aspect is the internationalization process. Sweden's always been on top of technology, for instance we're the country with the most computers per capita in Europe, we also have something like 11 million mobile phone users, but only a 9 million people population. There is a simple explation to that, can you figure it out? What I was getting at was that we're now exposed to so many different looks, it's not all what's around us. And with Sweden being so accepting of imported music, movies, tv-shows and gossip we've just as accustomed to the darker hair and complexion.

This is something that has happened in my lifetime, or even during the years I've been an adult. Maybe I do owe the emo kids with dyed black hair some credit. I don't really believe we're attracted to the exotic per se, sure, part new mixed with something familiar, or attraction becomes too animalistic. Something I'm personally fine with, but is the average levelheaded Swede ok with that, apart from when they go on holiday and hook up with some monkey looking man they can't communicate with. Yes, that's right, the study verymuchalmostcompletelyIhadtolookseveraltimestoseeamalenamefocused on the beauty of women. At least the world of beauty hasn't changed that much, it's still women who are judged on their apperance.

And, oh yeah, Greta Garbo wasn't blond, neither was Ingrid Bergman. Even Sweden has blond in a bottle.

Battle of the cynics, again on the topic of love.

It's summer and hot outside. I say I'm hot. It's true when I say it. It won't be true in the snowstorms that come in January. If I've just eaten I'm full. It's true when I say it, it won't be true the next day. I'm tired when I've been up for twenty four hours. It won't be true after I've slept. I loved someone, it was true when I said it. Time went by and it wasn't anymore. It didn't make the times when I said it lies.

Another aspect of oneself in relation to other people is that we're all selfish. There's no getting around it. We do what makes us feel good. We simply do not do things we get nothing out of, not even self punishment. Why does the anorexic starve herself? Because hungerpains are better than the anxiety of eating. Why does the runner run until he's sick? Because giving it all that you've got is a great feeling. It's fairly simple, really. As complicated as people are, we're not really as complex as we think, nor as special in the sense that we have new things to offer every person we come across. We love the same way which is why we say similar things. Again, it doesn't make me a liar if I tell more than one person how I enjoy that particular touch. I'm selfish. I want what makes me feel good.

Admitting to be selfish is a relief, as then you know what to expect from others as well. You make them feel good and they want you around. If you don't, well then rejection is on the horizon. Naturally there are more things to take into consideration, it can also be a nice feeling to think "I knew it" once that rejection comes. Being right feels good as well.

I suppose the cynical part of it is to remain level headed. There are very few people we can expect everything from. Noone's perfect and everyone will in some detail fail us, but as usual, if the positive bits outweigh that it shouldn't even be an issue. We have to look at everything realistically, we owe it to ourselves to do so, as after all we're the one that matters to ourselves the most.

Does this make me emotionally stunted? I don't think so. I think it makes me honest and easy to deal with. People are a bit like bank accounts, while they keep making deposits of positive they're good to have around, and if they have over time made a lot of positive deposits they can make bigger withdrawls at their lower points in life, it's up to you to decide how much they can though, as you're the director of that bank. But at the same time you have to make sure you are the type of bank others want to open accounts in. It goes hand in hand with trust, trust is earned, not bought. This is where the parts about other partners come in. No matter what kind of relationship you have there will always be potential others, for both of you. There's really nothing you can do about that apart from being and remaining the better option. If you're left behind it should be for someone greater than you. See it as inspiration to becoming even greater than you already are and know that your next partner should match that. If you're left behind for someone lesser than you, well then your partner didn't deserve you in the first place.

To put it plainly. Be the master of your own world.

Beating a dead horse.

We all know what Kodak is. Some also know who George Eastman is. There we have it the Eastman Kodak Company. He was a very successful man. He never married and he donated oodles of money to charity. Good for karma, tell me how you're enjoying Nirvana mr Eastman? The story of his death is also worth a mention. He was getting caught up, so he wrote a note saying "My work is done. Why wait?" and shot himself. Productive in life and in death. Very impressive if you ask me. Now, it does make me wonder.

No perfect way to end anything. Like that song I posted months and months ago holding the line of "I always cry at endings", most things look better in retrospect. But sometimes the fear of what we stand to lose is overshadowed by what we stand to gain. Yes! I know! I'm slowly but surely becoming an optimist like the happy customers in infomercials or the after picture in a poorly written article in Amelia. Does being an optimist even rhyme with being a cynic?

It doesn't make you shallow to want to be happy. It doesn't mean you don't try even if you were to fail. Sometimes what you want isn't what you're ment to have. At times it's simply not worth the fight just so that you can say "at least I didn't quit". We all quit, everything ends, it's how much you enjoy yourself during that counts. In 40 years your children won't remember that toy they never got, they'll remember how you picked them up and spun them until they were wheezing with laughter. Your lovers won't remember the diamonds, they'll remember how you smiled when you said good morning.

Think like a cat. If you're hungry, eat. If you're tired, sleep. If you're snuggly, curl up next to someone. When you love someone look them in the eyes. If we take more pictures, like I'm sure George Eastman intended us to do, take pictures of those things you want to remember instead of what you think others want to see. Those tiny moments that make up a life.

The pen is mighter than the sword - an example.

Hello. I am writing this, but not using a pen. Tip tap on keys and instant results in perfectly shaped letters in an order Gutenberg could only have hoped for. Zoom, zoom. Either way, I'll tell you about the first time I heard the expression of that the pen is mighter than the sword. I was just a child and totally misunderstood it. I looked at my pen and noting how small it must be compared to a sword. How could it be mighter than hard clinging steel? Needless to say someone kindly explained it to me to mean that words can be more powerful than violence. Thank you! This post will have several layers to it, I actually considered putting a label on it to be Watch out for subtext, but I figured that clearly signal for subtext would give the ironic result of there not really being any subtext. Sidenote. Always with the sidenotes.

Now, this expression is actually kind of, sort of in a way the perfect example of that we don't always say what we mean and that language isn't as logical as we'd like it to be (what on earth was that flying past my window I wonder if it'll rain today I really wish it'd rain and scare everyone inside but it'd be sad for those getting married today why's today supposed to be so romantic anyway funny how I pick the words I know how to spell like back in the day where I only used really short words because I was afraid of misspelling still kind of am I suppose yeah those bushes are really growing wild I need to do something about that it'll be later though I have to finish what I started here why am I not writing that guy on tv really needs a haircut not that longer hair is bad but that just looks uncomfortable I have to add conditioner to the shoppinglist by the way I forgot last time good God I hate this commercial) We don't actually mean that that little pen can beat a sword, what we mean is that worlds will live on and can argue better. Just as you say you're starving when you have skipped lunch.

Language is all about uncertainties, and we're reminded of it often. All those vague expressions we toss out there "I'll be there in a little bit", "that's beautiful", "it's late". They don't really mean anything do they, but at the same time they mean pretty much everything. If you have at one point put your heart in the hands of someone else you have also let yourself succumb to it. An often tossed around phase is "I love you", but we never really know what others mean by love. It's impossible to feel what others feel. So maybe it'd be more honest to say "I feel something for you that I personally identify as love." The more generic the phrase the more we're expected to take it at face value and expected to know what it means.

Over time I've also learned that not everyone has the same perception of words at all. Not all weigh them back and forth to at least attempt to find the perfect mix, the same tint to match the blue moods, the red and the green. What do you mean when you say "It's green"?

Another level of it is, just that, what I said in the beginning. We don't really use pens anymore to write something and when's the last time you saw someone walking around with a sword. Those expressions remain while the world changes. It must be impossible to learn it all, all those things we intend to say when we say everything else.

The historical disasters

History holds quite a few disasters. Wars, plauges, earthquakes, revolutions, tsunamies and social outcastness. Not forgetting something like the Titanic. To stick to that for an example for a bit. How long does the disasterness last? It's really sad all those people died, but by now they would all have been dead anyway. World war 2 is heading the same way, I suppose. Can it only remain a disaster while people are still around to carry on the legacy of it's horrors? In a way I think so. We can read about the black death wiping out a big part of the population, but without eyewitnesses it's kind of a dead story. A bit almost like a fairytale. Only to be remembered by words. Also the world was a very different place back then. That makes it even harder for us to relate to them. I have no direct relationship with any of these things. My life has been pretty safe when it comes to historical disasters, they haven't bothered me.

How does this relate to personal matters. Perhaps I let strange things bother me because I always get stuck in my own perspective. I haven't experianced wars. Not even any really nature disasters. Just a few storms with power black outs for a couple of weeks. Really no biggie if you compare. To me the personal disasters are the disasters. In a way I don't think it differs that much from the bigger picture. Even world war 2 was such a historical disaster because it consisted of a lot of personal ones. Every loved one taken away. That's something we can all relate to. It's only the way they went that differs really. The uncertainty of where life is heading might have been a bit overwhelming at times, but then again, there's safety in numbers right? Maybe it felt a bit better if you knew millions of other people were in the same shitsituation as you, you wouldn't feel so lonley.

It kind of reminds me of that book by Camus, The Plauge where one of the characters is concidering suicide before the town gets sick, and well, when they're all sick he finds some kind of peace of mind. Like they're all sharing his misery and that makes it easier to bear. I think that's why humanity keeps coming back and surviving these things. We do it together, we share the misery and we fight together to find a way forward how much we hurt individually.

In that context it's easier to understand the peaks of depression in a general population. When a society is doing well and things are good it's a double curse to be sad and empty. You don't have a place in that and you stick out even more. Karin Johannisson writes in her book Melakoliska rum that melancholy is a lack. Perhaps in a healthy society the lack that causes melancholy is a sense of belonging and being made abundant by the world you live in. Not saying that's the whole cause of it, and it also raises the question of what came first the melancholy or the sense of not belonging. I'm hardly qualified to answer that question! Though I think it's safe to say that there is a connection between mental unhealth and a lower position in society, shown for example as unemployment and/or lack of funds.

Will we look at the starvation in Africa the same way? A chance for the planet to get caught up and a new level to exist on. I doubt people 500 years from now will have a problem with that, no more than I have with villages being taken over by nature because all the inhabitants died in a disease I'll never risk contracting.

Perhaps it's a simple human need to have disasters. If they don't happen to us on a grander scale we create our own. Yeah, I really think so

Labeling with some help from Foucault

First off, I'd like to add a disclaimer - I might have misunderstood Michel Foucault completely to make it suit my own ideas better. Live with it. Secondly I'd like it noted that a blog isn't a paper, it's simply a rest from my academic life where I can freely associate my own mind with things I've read. Now. Let's get started (watch this post not being as long as I had intended it to be...)

Basically, things aren't anything until we label them and how we choose to label might have dire consequenses. Take mental illness as an example. What is a mental illness? Personally I'd like to say it's something that makes a person unable to participate in, and be satisfied with the society we live in. It's fairly general. We can all see the lalaing fool punching at imaginary elephants as being mentally ill. But what if we take a bigger perspective, if we were to take Sokrates out of his time and put him in modern day Göteborg for instance, would he be able to function? I doubt it. Does it prove that Sokrates was mentally ill? No it doesn't. Is a woman mentally ill for wanting to live a life without men? Is homosexuality a disease? It all seems to depend on context.

Mental unhealth is also a product of the time, place and ideas we live in and with. There are no bulletproof waters here. In my opinion it also has a lot to do with values. A sick person has just as much value as a healthy one simply for being human. Though we're limited, no matter how open and understanding we'd like to be we can't absorb everything and be accepting and happy with it. It seems to be a human need to seperate people into two groups - we and them.

Which group we see ourselves as belonging to differs from time to time and even from situation to sitauation. It's all in the comparison. With that I come to the conclusion that there is no truth. There is no independent yardstick which we can use to measure life with. People consist of life, without that we're just matter similar to a plant. In comparison I can be old, young, big, small, happy, miserable, tall, short, intelligent, stupid, charming or a downer. So, which adjectives are actually me? The labels I claim for myself and use in my mind when I picture a "me"? Still that'd take a fair amount of confidence. There's only one of me telling myself something while as the world is full of other people that might be telling me I'm something else. This raises a whole other series of ideas and questions.

But if we are to stick for the labeling for a while, let's assume that in the beginning of time where didn't have contact in the manner we do now and we lived in isolated villages or tribes or whatever the window of what's normal could have gone two different ways, either everything was normal or nothing was normal. In connection to the previous idea of comparison it seems to me that city people think that small villages are accepting because everyone knows each other while as villagers seem to think that they can be accepted in a city because of the bigger diversity. Perhaps there's no real getting around the aspect of comparison after all, even if I'd like to leave that to the side. So, what I'd like to know is if there was a way of feeling normal, did they set the standard for normal by who they cared for? Was the king's son normal because he was the next in line for the throne even though he was that lalaing fool?

Which authorites do we have in what a good person is? Religion perhaps. But what if one bishop had a different idea than the one in the area next to his? Would he have labeled all other people but his "bad" just because he could? It seems difficult to reclaim a sense of being an acceptable person if you fall into a category which traditionally is seen as bad.

Another thing, this whole tradition bit. It can't be the absolute truth, after all. Society consists of people and it must have come with someone. A charming loudmouth more than likely. Seems the louder and more convincingly someone speaks the more followers succumb to the teachings. They don't even have to be rational and satisfying, a loud voice seems to keep the voice of reason quiet in all of us.

Foucault does the same with sex. Our modern idea of sex is something than the act itself. I read something by his about it a while ago. I wish I could remember exactly how it went. But the way I remember it now when it's been scrambled about my head along with my own understandings for a while is that gender is a construction of history, not a given fact. Of course I agree with that. Just look at the formation of the middle class. Given tasks for everyone, a wife to be a mother and the caregiver for a household, not necessarily a person. She was there to please her husband and make people out of their offspring.

More information isn't always the answer to a bigger understanding. Sometimes the understanding alone should be enough. When you get that sting in your gut and you feel like you're about to say something stupid and stereotypical you should probably listen to it. There is no truth in genders either, just tradition, and like I said before it's made by us. We're really the only ones that can change it by not using expressions like "It's always been like that" or "It's supposed to be like that". What is, has been and will be is under constant reevaluation.

Let's use Christmas for an example. It might seem that we have a set way of doing it, but it really evolves, constantly. Although we eat particular christmasfood, preform certain rituals, such as giftgiving or seeing relatives it's never quite the same. We can't recreate a certain event at a different point in time. It's impossible! Christmas in Sweden in the 21st century is different from Christmas in Sweden in the 19th century even though not that many generations have passed Every little shift creates a different outcome, similar to a branch which grows in different directions.

With this being said, we should use utter care when we label something, even though we might need them to make sense of the world and to remember who our true friends and values are we can't be stale and unwilling to change our minds.

Time changes and time changes us

Potential space

2002 was the first time I heard of potential space. The definition was, well still is I suppose, a place where people don't know how to act and the social rules we obey on a daily basis don't exist yet. We know how to act in a store, at a party, at work, in traffic or at a trainstation. In a potential space we don't. We sort of wander aimlessly and try to figure it out, and usually have a pretty good time doing so. A bit like in a warzone when the people came back to find their home to be something completely different. Perhaps that's a bad example but it's the one I have at hand at the present.

What if we were to thow out the past. Completely. All of it. As if the whole population suffered memory loss. There's be no memories and we wouldn't know each other. The whole universe would be potential space. There'd be no history. I haven't decided on the exact details I would like, but I'm assuming we can't speak or read either. We'd be corrupted by that.

If the whole human race would have to reinvent itself, how would the world be, with that second chance to set everything straight. I'm pretty sure we'd grunt a lot, communication is a human need. Perhaps we'd all starve to death. At least here in the dark north we would. There'd be no food in the winter so we'd lack the nessecary skills to feed ourselves. In the long run perhaps that wouldn't be that much of a loss. All the knowledge would be gone.

Would we go through the same growing pains as humans already have? Would the same areas be the dominant ones? Would religion even exist?

Or! Something that would be easier to use for an example to get my point across. What if all the books disappeared, except the ones dealing with science. there'd be no Poe, no Shakespeare, no Almqvist, no Dostovkeskij, no Dante, no Marklund, no anything. And first and foremost, there'd be no Bible, no Koran, no Torah. All the imaginative stories would be gone and we'd have to start from scratch in that department. Yes, I think I like this example better, in the first one we'd all probably just die. How depressing.

So, if we had no concept of religion whatsoever, would we invent it or would we just carry on our merry way dropping different sized balls from a tower to see if they fell at the same speed? Perhaps we'd all just be really coldhearted if we only had science.

But what I really wonder about are the concepts of things like common sense and beauty. They seem to rest firmly on something we call tradition, something I've touched in a previous post. Tradition, and values are created by people but if we had to recreate those, out of nothing, how would they be. How would we decide what's polite and what's rude and well, would we ever agree on it? Would we even have them?

Actually the whole idea makes me a bit uneasy as I pride myself in being polite, friendly and nice. I don't always succeed, but I try. Sometimes I tie myself in a knot and develop a terrible migraine and throw up a couple of times because it feels like I have some kind of devilish creature stuck half digested in my midregion, but that's besides the point. I still try to obey by the rules, the unspoken rules of society.

I figure it'd go something like this, first off we'd all be really selfish and take what we need, as a law isn't sience. Then some brainiac would say "hey chum, this isn't working" and we'd have laws. Someone would take a stick or something and start beating people up who didn't agree and to avoid pain we'd obey. Most of us anyway.

Then there'd be riots, because we'd all get to talking you see, noticing not everyone agrees. That would in extention lead to nations. By then everyone would be rather comfortable and feeling a little bit easier, they would have found people that were similar to them and that they could grunt with, hm, or maybe the would have developed speeach. Wait, did we speak in this example. If I didn't say so we would by now.

Then it's the whole aspect of love and such activities. I'm sure that in the beginning, where we enjoyed anarchy we would have gone where our whim was taking us but that doesn't work in a longliving society does it? We have to be able to trust people, depend on others to help us out. So for the sake of that let's say we hook up all couple like, but without the tradition of who we're supposed to be with. We would at least get to keep that freedom, for a while, surely it'd change over time when some smartass gets the idea to decide who we can love, how much and why, and let's not forget, in which manner.

By then it'd pretty much be like now. Perhaps we simply need these rules to not have anarchy. We need to feel opressed and shameful for everyone to get a piece of the action. But at the same time I doubt that the areas we concider successful would be the one that did the best, nor the people who did the best. Remember, we had no memory of feminism, racism, colonialism or any other -ism, those are all inventions of the human mind.

Hopefully we'd start creating stories anyway, maybe Borges was on to something about rewriting Don Quixote. Ok, time for me to confess my colour, what I really want said is that I think that somewhere in our windling brains there's an absolute idea, and the world around us is just a result of the electric sparks over time, so with the potential of potential space worldwide, seems I'm cynical enough to think we'd end up pretty much where we are. Just with a lot of unemployed priests.

The boy that didn't want to grow up

When I was a child with only two TV channels there used to be a cartoon about a man who didn't want to grow up. I think it was called Mannen som inte ville vara stor (The man that didn't want to be an adult) I tried googling it but didn't find anything about it. Instead I ended up on a bunch of crap blogs written by men who don't want to grow up. Amusing in itself I suppose. But anyway, they kind of illustrate what I'm about to illuminate, or well, comment on at least.

At the time I watched that cartoon I didn't understand it at all. Why wouldn't anyone want to grow up? Being an adult seemed great! You'd always get your way and you could buy what you wanted, decide what you'd eat and watch and when to be home and all that good stuff. Needless to say now I know better.

It's a sign of the time, being stuck in the middle generation. I do believe it's hard for a geneneration to claim their adulthood when the parentgeneration still conciders themselves to be somewhat young. They're most definatly overlapping now. My favorite example, Amelia Adamo thinks that the 60s is the new 30s. How can someone in their late 20's have anything to say about that? You can't rebel against something when they're basically trying to be you.

We can all individually rebel against our parents but we can't rebel against a part of the population. Anyway, this argument isn't leading anywhere, really, it's just facts. There are not as many little old ladies anymore, they're still buying expensive jeans and tanning in their 50s, so maybe I should just focus on why and perhaps even find something to blame.

Though I feel I should add that I don't blame them, if I had a chance to turn back time and remain myself at my best moments even when my body tells me those times are gone I would. Though that option is now being taken away from me. More power to those who claim the space that isn't theirs!

So, basically it must have something to do with health and for how long we can remain independent and the top generation. Even though the age for retiremnt here is 65 people live 30 or so years after that. That is a long time. Retirement doesn't mean you're going to sit in your chair and wait for death anymore. We're having kids at 45! The whole spectra of age has shifted due to the longlivity of the people in the rich west. Good healthcare, lack of disasters and wars make us safe and healthy.

Also it adds pressure. It's not ok to look and act your age. This goes with the post about beauty, really. If you look "old" it's your own fault as there's help out there to purchase. I silently wonder how many would have the old-lady-hairstyle and be happy with it if they weren't constantly fed the fountain of youth myth. So instead of sighing when I see them I should pity them for not being allowed to age gracefully.

I have a personal relationship with it, I feel harsh at times, but what am I to do when it's so ridicilous. Women in their 60's aren't as strong as those in their 20's and I had to point that out to someone in her late 50's about a week ago. The other side of the phone got quiet when I said "Well think about how the age 61 seemed to you when you were 28, the body breaks down eventually". I felt mean and coldhearted. But at the same time it's something I can say when it hasn't happened to me yet. Let me keep my youth and don't feed me your decay as I try really hard to not rub my unwrinkled hands in your face. I will get old myself, unless I get hit by a bus before that, but give me the chance to enjoy (as if I've ever enjoyed anything) every age I'm at without the double standard of being loyal to your body not bouncing as it once did.

Honestly I feel judged, belittled and headpetted by my parentgeneration. You're old, accept it. (When you start calling your own age the new XX's you're just in denial) Bones are going to break, hair is going to change colour, you're going to be tired, angry, worn out. It's perfectly normal. Don't make the mistake of worrying about the wrong things, and don't plan funerals just yet. There has to be a middle way.

Remember, as long as you keep the younger adults children in your eyes you can't expect us to carry your burdens and clean up after your childish mistakes.

Anyway to go back to the 60's being the new 30's. You can't take one age out of the whole spectra. See if that was to be true I'd be a toddler. So be careful, you don't want to incapacitate everyone that happens to be born after you because of your own fear of death. Every generation makes its own mistakes. Just like mother cat walks away from her litter we need a bigger gap between generations. Only now it seems that the children need to walk away from their parents because we share too much space.

An example of that is how the younger are beginning to leave Facebook now when their parents are finding their way there. We need privacy, some things shouldn't be shared between parents and children while in some aspects we should share everything with those who love us the most.

I don't even want to find my brother online which is why I blog in English under a penname and remain quiet when he talks about the communites he's a member of when I realize we go the same places. Hopefully I'll never run into my mother online, even now when she's finally coming to the conclusion there are still things out there she needs to learn, and I know she'll get all excited and make the mistake of joining them all.

Either way, that cartoon was made by people from my parentgeneration. That should have been my first clue to that I'll be kept a child forever so that they can still feel young. I'm not making an apology, the king is dead long live the king!

Whose misery can we laugh at?

Sometimes the only option we have is to laugh at things no matter how tragic they are. But who can we safely laugh at? Perhaps the model of news can be useful. The more likely we are to read an article has to do with ho close the event is how close in time, how close phusically and how close to intrest. The relation should be opposite. We can laugh at things far away in time place and so on and so forth.

This isn't entiely true though, right after 9/11 there were jokes circling around the Internet, within days, perhaps even hours. Defensive sarcasm. The best humor is a bit evil. But do we say mean things in jokes just because we really think it's true? Stand up comedy is based on generalizations. We laugh even though we know it isn't exactly like that, but it's so great when someone's on a stage being judgemental and mean. It makes us feel better for laughing at "them".

Naturally "they" are so much less complex than "we" are. They're homogen, we're all different. The further away they are the larger these groups get. All the people from Huddinge are the same, all the people from Stockholm are the same, all the people from the coast are the same, all the people from Sweden are the same, all the people from Scandinavia are the same, all the people from Europe are the same. Again, it all depends on your perspective. I'm not denying that there are similarites, but at the same time I think we're more united in our differences than the things we have in common.

To get back to the original question, who is it ok to make jokes about. I tend to say "enough food to feed a small African village", and people laugh! Every time I do my stomach turns a little. I know it's wrong but I want those points of approval. You can't really have in depth conversations with someone when you don't know their values, can you? Is it ok to make jokes about Indians when you're in your safe house in Sweden? Is it ok to joke about judgemental Americans when you're really just being as judgemental yourself for joking about it?

Naturally, it's always ok to joke about the stupidity of Norwegians. They must deserve it, I can't think of any other reason why there'd be so many jokes to tell about them

The humanist

"Meaning is an inescapable notion because it is not something simple or simply determined. It is simultaneously an experience of a subject and a property of a text. It is both what we understand and what in the text we try to understand. Arguments about meaning are always possible, and in that sense meaning is undecided, always to be decided, subject to decisions which are never irrevocable. If we must adopt some overall principle or formula, we might say that meaning is determined by context, since context includes rules of language, the situation of the author and the reader, and anything else that might conceivably be relevant. But if we say that meaning is context-bound, then we must add that context is boundless: there is no determining in advance what might count as relevant, what enlarging of context might be able to shift what we regard as the meaning of a text. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless."

I think the previous quote is actually something to live by. We can apply it to all areas of life. Especially in conflict, and by conflict I don't mean arguments you have with your neighbour about your morning paper that always seems to vanish, I also mean the conflicts you have with yourself as in how to set your behaviour for a particular situation. Even though the quote comes from a literary theory textbook, I must widen what I believe that literature is. I won't go into detail as to what literature actually is, it it's not as straight forward as the general idea might have you thinking. So, if I in this context mean literature as something created by the human mind my interpretation might seem a bit more adequate.

What is the meaning of the things we say, do and think and how can we put that into perspective - how do we put ourselves into a context in which we can exist? Or, who are we, depending on the same?

Personally, I have a vauge idea of how I want to be perceived, even though at times it seems hard to mask those bits of me that don't fit into that picture. I'm hardly as mysterious as I seem to come off, I'm hardly mysterious at all! In the perfect context I'm in a surrounding with people matching my views and values, and in the presence of beauty, physically, a constant autumn with cats and deep windows. But there is no such perfect place. People will be who they are and I'm not taken into concideration, nor should I be. So why is it that I try to take others into concideration? The most loving way I can interpret that is that I am my very own Tintomara. I'm a statue that changes apperance depending on the angle from which you view her. The statue itself doesn't change, it's only so many different things depending on how you look at it.

This could possibly be the explaination as to why I feel exhausted after being around people, I read too much into everything, like a true humanist. A humanist is never quite satisfied, a humanist will always ask "Why is that?" and I will continue to do so, for the good of my own sanity. I'll always have more questions than answers, and I'm satisfied, to an extent, with that. There's no judgement of those with a different view of life even if I might as myself "Why do they have a different view of life?" and then I'll ponder that and come to absolutley no conclusion other than a list and five philosophical essays as to why it could possibly be so.

So, when I take a little too long to say Hello when greeted, don't get discouraged, I'm simply asking myself "Why is your head tilted in such a way?" like the true humanist I am.

Change your life

When it comes to make over shows, no matter if it has to do with your finances, your looks your home or any other bad habit you might have the key is to have a bad starting product or else it won't get any effect when it's changed.

Is this becoming an issue? Do people think that it's all good, I'll make over my life later. I don't know. But I'm beginning to think so. Where else would all these people on tv come from? I never even knew people could collect (literally!) 10 tons of garbage in their house and maybe not that much excess weight, but still. It scares me a bit.

Take this reasoning and apply it to the current world economy. Seems the same thinking is behind it. "We all know this is going down the crapper, but we'll fix it later". If this is called fixing it, I don't think so.

But the truth is that it's easier to blitz through your house for 6 hours every three months or so than it is to clean a little bit every day. The problem is to do those things every day, we crash diet instead of eating healthy every day. We chop all our hair off because we haven't used conditioner.

Perhaps it's becoming a need to see that utter change, we're not happy with the flow of every day life anymore. I know myself well enough to admit I do it too. I won't tell you which things I fail to do, and then try to cover up by looking for easy fixes.

Also it has to do with responsibility. Always looking for something or someone to blame for your problems. An easy way to get out of responsibility is to pay someone else to do it for you. But the truth is we're all responsible for ourselves and our own actions and what our life boils down to. Don't make yourself a victim, make yourself satisfied.