Today

Peel off my skin and tell me jokes I don't understand. I promise I'll laugh anyway, my nerves will be explosed and you can tickle my funny bone with gusts of wind.

A half sloved riddle

Insomnia

Time is a funny thing

especially if you don't keep track of if

Daylight

Nightdark

all the same

Like that study I read about

a long time ago

I laughed at it
Like so many other things,

rythm of sleep changing
without clocks.

Yeah, that's what it said.
Now I know not to laugh -

time is not a thing

Time is the space that passes

between phonecalls

and texts

"Are you alright?"

"What are you doing?"

"Want to do something?"

I don't know

I try to explain to them,

that it feels like I'm being lied to

And they laugh, uncomfortably

like I did with that study

I wish I could find it again

I think it was conducted in

hm, a cave

My memory might fail me,

it's been such a long time.

At least ten thousand

phonecalls ago

Like a rebel, with a trustfund

I question society's rules

growling
Saw a documentary

about an artist, he said:

"Parades make me sad,

I'm such an outsider

and this expression

of belonging makes it
feel worse. Like

I'll never belong"

I didn't laugh this time

My cat asked for food

I'd never forget to feed

them,

They don't care about

time.

Still they remind me of it,

with their hunger

and excraments

I wonder if it'd be

even worse

Maybe without them

I'd know how to answer

"What are you doing?"

"How are you?"

"Want to do something?"

I'd always answer no

I'm not doing anything -

nothing I put my mind to

I'd really like to find that study.

It irks me that I can't.

It spoke to the history in me

of owning the hours.

Daydark

Nightlight

Like watching life is watching

shadows

"Going through the motions"

it's not the industrial era

not anymore

What makes me a better person

to be up at dawn?

I am however up with the sun

I'm up at any hour

It doesn't matter what time.

It's not jealousy

but a wish to be content

A sheer knowledge of

my time well spent.

Rebels keeping

up with their neighbours

I tried that too

the house

the car

the pets
the spouse

(not the child)

It wasn't all that bad

But time is a funny thing

Especially when you can't keep track

of morgages

of dinnertime

not even the slightest snack

Roses on wet

petal bow

Words I never said

Never went to Mallorca

or that tax free shopping boat

I like words instead

Not the perfect ones

that'd be so unlike me

but those

uneven ones

Rhyming at times

But usually I let them be
Watching like is like watching

shadows, was it Plato

that said so?

I want to see the purest

forms

Time is waiting for death

Best not keep track of it

but just be instead.

Kent - Alla mot alla

You're an argument in the car on the way to Berlin

Out of the disapointment, the shame

A sickening emotion becoming a slow feeling of power

They whisper: "you're timeless", but they mean out of date

malice becoming the ultimate compliment

The old world

"The big journey has begun. Everyone's hoping that they're on the way towards a heaven, but it's still too frightning to follow the thought to its end..."

For this I have to pick a perspective, which will prove to bigger task than it should be, so I'll start in the end where I came to think about it today, the books by Vilhelm Moberg. Emigrants, Settlers and Onto a good land, following a Swedish family, and some of their friends on their way from Sweden to their new home in the US, as part of the huge emigration wave in the 1800s. The family is in no way typical for the actual Swedes that left, yet the books have become somewhat of a representation of how it actually was. What Moberg was really trying to do was to capture the thought process which led to such a decision. But, it doesn't really matter what he was trying to do, as the book series took on a life of it's own a long time ago.

This is entertainingly similar to what the US has done to the old world. European history frozen in time to fit into the celebration of heritage. Coming across Americans and introducing myself as a Swede I often get the happy response of "I'm Swedish too!". Rarely is that the case however. As it turns out it's usually the greatgreatgrandfather. I'm sorry, but that doesn't make you a Swede. No offense, but it makes you an American with rather diluted Swedish heritage.

It confuses me a bit. Aren't Americans supposed to be proud over their country? Or is it the idea that their proud over, the fact that it had to be an active choice to move (yes, I know this is coming off as a bit racist as I'm talking about Americans as all being of European heritage. Go back and read what I said about having to chose perspective, again. Thank you for your cooperation.) Clinging to this history, celebrating the land of the forfathers. Lovely. But that has nothing to do with how Europe in general and Sweden in particular is, today. Look at this for instance http://www.lindstrom.mn.org/ It gives an unnerving feeling on being on the border of fact and fiction. Lindstrom is set where Moberg's emigrants went. They have a statue of Karl-Oskar and Kristina, and their bakery sells the original Swedish doughnut. Whatever that is, I couldn't tell you. But it is in fact typical, incoroprating something of the new land with something of the old. The Sweden that Lindstrom is trying to represent simply doesn't exist anymore. It's the Sweden of the late 1800s. The langugage has changed, the food has changed, the build up of society has changed.

And this is where I mean that (yes, I know only some) American get their "We're the most modern country in the world" attitude. As soon as we reduce the rest of the world to something it has been, rather than taking the time and effort and looking at what it has become and where it's heading as it asks of you to lift your eyes beyond your own back yard. In Sweden we have Hembygdsmuseum, emigrantmuseum, and so on and so forth, representing the times that fled, while Lindstrom has this as a sole representation of what has now become a modern nation.

The idea of relatives leaving their countries far, far away to come to a better place in Amerrikat isn't applicable anymore. It might have been for a short period of time. I'm not placing any values on which country is the best, but I surely prefer my own.

An anecdote; there's an emigration museum in Växjö corresponding to the immigration museum on the Swedish street in Chicago. I've been to both. I also visited the store, next to the museum, and never before had I been that happy to see Ballerina cookies and Kalles kaviar.

That is more true as to what Sweden is today, instead of pickled herring, aprons, clogs, milking cows and going to church. We go visit other countries, but we're generally quite happy to come back home. The vast majority of Swedes live in towns and cities, not on small barren farms. Now. Not then. I feel honored that the people of Lindstrom are so proud over their heritage, and I'm glad that I don't live in Sweden of 1871, but 2010. The US has changed too, it'd be naive to think that The Old World has remained the same.

Another Spongebob lesson

We do all kinds of things to be entertaining for our friends. But sometimes it's better to just accept that they'll either like us or they won't. Not saying you should act like a douche, just value yourself more than to be reduced to a gag joke and the constant clown. True friends will like you even if you're exploring the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Is it just me or ...

Are the shapes of ties and strapless dresses similar? What is it in that shape that spells dress up and celebration?