Here's looking at you kid - sing me those sad songs

Hold your breath until you turn blue in the face, complain until the world is just the way you want it, then change your mind. I changed my mind, I take it back. Let me start over. Like the soccerplayer kicking a ball around just because he can, a show off I'd like to tell you a story about May in 2003, or perhaps one about fall of 2001 instead. They're almost the same.

The rattling sound of a bikechain badly in need of oil and the rythm of cobblestones through my cells. Slower tones in my ears than the pedals give away and I float and soar just slightly over those sounds. Here's looking at you kid. Can you see your face in the puddles of water when you rush by?

It was getting really cold and the sun had vanished for a while. I didn't long for the warmth, I was warm instead. This is where May differs from fall. With May the swallows hold promises of a long summer that usually just rains away. So fall is a bit better anyway. You expect the rain and everything else is a bonus.

So let's decide it was fall. Yes, that sounds good. Where was I? Oh yes, rain and sun and such. My coat was black, black like the pavement, black as my soul. That last bit was a joke, come on, I know you were expecting it. But it wasn't. It really wasn't. And if it was it was because it was a black hole that had absorbed all the light surrounding it. Was my soul black or wasn't it? It doesn't really matter now anyway. It's a fond memory, if I hold my hands out where the handlebars should be placed I can still feel it, and if I peer my eyes I can still feel the watering from the wind beating at them.

It was usually windy you see, there by the sea. The wind would blow through bone and marrow. I didn't mind. I didn't mind that either. I didn't mind the dark afternoons, the cold and gushing winds, the shaking of my bike to make me shiver, I was just in a good place.

Sing me those sad songs, I miss those days when I didn't have time to listen but did anyway. Are you feeling the cobblestones in your May or November?

Take what you please.

The bottom of the barrel

There are plenty of things to worry about in the modern age, what clothes to wear, which shoes go with what, what should I do when I get a job, who should I marry, how fast does my Internet need to be, how many channels on TV, how big is my credit card debt, which celebrity is sleeping with who, what song is at the top of the charts, where should we spend the holidays, gas car or diesel, some of these questions are universal over time, some not so much, but the one we might take a bit too much for granted is how will I live, and where will I live.

Imagine not having a home. Imagine not having to worry about the curtains, the dishwasher, if that chair blocks the door, the heating or anything of such sort. Having a home does bring a lot of problems, but they should be a lovely chore. A home represents so much of who you are and what you've accomplished in life.

It's a place where you can keep your things so you don't have to carry them around, it's a place to rest and relax. It's a basic need. Housing now is different than it has been. Noone in the western world would like a place without indoor plumbing and a fire place as the only source of heat, but that is how it's been for more time than we've had dining rooms and second bathrooms. What we're used to today is just a blink of an eye of human time. It's more expensive than we'd like to have the things we refer to as being basic. Poverty shows in your lack of electronics and things. Why is it so hard to let go of the things to live a bigger life?

I find the most depressing shows on TV, and yes indeed, I saw one about being homeless, and just like with all my other fears I look straight at it. I wish I couldn't imagine being homeless, it's a curse of the vivid imagination that I can. Yes, I've lived in places too small to fit a goldfish, places where things don't work, places where I had to share space, but I have never been homeless, even if all my belongings have been packed in boxes.

Who do we loathe and avoid in the street? Those who don't seem like "us", those with greasy hair and stone washed jeans, What I learned from the documentary is that it might be even more important for the homeless interviewed to keep up the physical apperance, just to avoid those looks and the stereotypical view of those without homes.

Here I sit in a house with too many rooms. I'm still not satisfied, no, I have too much. My happiest times have always been times of nothings, it made the struggles worth while. From the outside I have a good life, but what do we know about the struggles of others?

I don't think that housing politics is the only explaination for homelessness, but it is more than likely part of it, and it's not the regional politics that's the issue, it's the national one. Also, it has to do with the reluctancy to move to other places here cheap places to live are available. That's how I manage to sit in a house with too many rooms.

A safe and adequate home should not depend on your financial status, it's a human right to feel at home, even if that home just happens to be one room to fit a life into. And no, people without homes don't "have themselves to blame", even though I'm not naive enough to think they themselves didn't have anything to do with it. Sometimes life just doesn't offer the second chances even after we've paid our dues. Hopefully my housing luck will continue even if it means I buy my clothes on sale, watch a TV I was given, have the heat set to low, eat falukorv and toast and only have basic cable.

Mhmm

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Children's songs

My favorite songs as a child was one about Smurfs drinking raspberry lemonade, a snail that should avoild getting caught, a sleeping bear, about a kid that got lost in the woods, and a cat in labour pains. I also enjoyed a ryhme about some monkeys that fell off a bed and went to see the doctor, well one died, but that was the best part.

On TV I watched shows like the one where a boy kepts losing his toy mole and it almost finding death, a grown man with a beard telling stories to dolls in his bed, about toys that were malfactured and broken, this was all spiced up with children dressed in red shirts singing the aforementioned songs.

I wouldn't be the nerd I am without mentioning the books I read, it was one about Alfons Åberg and his imaginary friend. It totally freaked me out, as I had a hard enough time seperating dreams from reality as it was. Then it was Ronja Rövardotter, about the daughter of a robber that lived in the woods. Hm, what else, there was one called Mio min Mio about a boy that died and went to different stages of lands of sagas, signifying different levels of death.

In a way, it's a wonder that my whole generation isn't insane.

Poems I wish I had written, part two

ATT LEVA
Karl Vennberg

Att leva är att välja
och hur hänförande stort är inte valet
mellan betongmuren
och de sönderfläkta naglarna

O ungdom som kastar dig ur sängen
för att få hjulet i rörelse
och vända på världen
medan dagarna kryper som ormar
kring min tomhet
och vänskapen stramar som rep
kring mitt guppande adamsäpple

Endast gubbklådan
håller mina händer i verksamhet
över slutrökta cigarretter
och sönderbombade stationer

Varför skulle jag inte minnas
eller ge upp hoppet
längta efter betongmuren eller hjulet
tomhetens ormar
eller vänskapens rep

Att leva är att välja
O saliga val
mellan det likgiltiga
och det omöjliga

(TO LIVE

To live is to choose
and the entry is not much choice
between the concrete wall
and the broken fan nails

O youth who throw you out of bed
to get the wheel in motion
and turn the world
while the days creep like snakes
around my emptiness
and friendship are tightening the rope
around my Adam's apple bobbing

Only the old man's itch
keep my hands in the business
over the final smoked cigarettes
and bombed stations

Why would I not remember
or give up hope
long for the concrete wall, or wheel
emptiness snakes
or friendship rope

To live is to choose
O blessed choice
between the indifferent
and the impossible)

The other tale of change

Sometimes even I forget that change and chance is only a letter apart. You already know the clichés, "God doesn't close a door without opening a window", that particular one I don't believe in myself for all the reasons you already know, and also, I don't see jumping out a window as a very good option, we all know what kind of people who end up leaving through windows. Burglars and lovers.

In a way those who have more in common than we think. They both break in where they aren't necessarily welcome and they take things with them that weren't intended for their eyes and hands, hiding from the world, sin and shame.

I've never seen a bird fly so high it didn't have to come down either, so the best in all things is to not lose one's head, no matter how tempting it seems. So in all sincerity what the world as a whole really needs is a big revolution to give us a kick to move forward, a mental revolution, if you will, to get us out of our own heads and open us up to a new beginning.

The swine flu failed my hopes of being that factor to overthrow all known reason and toss us into a new era, it's not the new black death, no new cholera, no new AIDS. No wars were started to get the vaccine. I'm disapointed.

So when God closed that door to my hopes I must get a chain saw and cut open a new hole so I can breathe, and fly, but not so high I forget what the ground feels like beneath my feet.