“You choose your friends, not your family.” This is crap. Both are things that just happen. At least to me, I’ve never heard of anyone say stuff like “I’m gonna be that persons friend.” Friendships grow from accidents, from chance or even carelessness about the self. That’s even more random than genes.

Family, if you don’t like them, is fairly easy to get away from. Stop talking to that third-cousin and they’ll leave you alone and never really dip into the same stratrosphere. Giving up friendship is harder, it requires a mutual intent or else it will mend itself as they won’t really let each other be. Of course, it can dwindle a bit when you move about and lose touch. But then, I’ve noticed that once you reach out it is easy to get things going again like nothing really happened.

I’ve not done as well to my firends as I should have, I think. I’ve let things go, at times never really made the effort I should have and this corrodes me. A chip here, a chip there, all while I’m locked in some introverted phase. I don’t want to. I don’t like it. But I know it’s me that’s faulty, and I’m slowly getting better I think.  The thing is this: I didn’t choose my firends so I can’t afford to let it just slide like a power-animal anymore. I’m going to think about this a bit more and then I have to do something about it.

It has shifted a bit. It’s harder to do stuff when in a negative flux, the last two days have been… Well, I’ve had worse. Of course I’ve had worse, quite a lot actually. I think it’s turning around now though, I awoke to the sound of massive rainfall outside the window. Seriously, thought it was going to flood parts of the area. It didn’t, but it was nice anyway.

(Hope the photo courses at the U in the autumn will keep the spirit up. Tired of feeling so… looked in and abandoned.)

There’s no other description to the feeling than loss. Not for anything important but more of a loss of direction. I’m done with the translation — just in time but still  feel a bit bad about how close it was — and I’ve eaten the icecream and wanted the pancakes (curse you, Anthony Bourdain!). There’s nothing much to do right now. Both pancakeless and penless. I want to go, the bus won’t leave until Wednesday so all I can do is to sit here. Doing nothing, both bored and too picky to do something.


Can’t wait to be there.

Phantom feet. A few years back, I used to have fuzzy slippers. Very fuzzy. I thing they had horns originally, but I cut thouse of because they looked a bit silly. Why horns since they didn’t have mouth or eyes or anything else? I loved them anyways, they made the feet warm in the winter. The weren’t made to last though. After a year they hade holes that made cold floors a bitch to walk on, the first hole came after a nail in the doorstep started to crawl out. It ripped it far too easy.

Today, it felt as if my body remembered them like a severed limb and descided that my feet should feel like they were inside those slippers. Now I miss them even more.

Neck burns due to the sun, head hurts because of lack of sleep and whisky/beer. Half-way through the week. Still alive. Lots of photos, some quite good I think. Except the one with me in rubber boots — that one is very unflattering, I think.

Have had tea, cookies and thai food, in reversed order. Quite content. More later.

Back home after a week elsewhere. Took about 39 minutes to make me feel like shit again. Thank you.

The photo/woodcut class seems damn fun though, and the coffee and nerd-talk at Rikards was awesome as usual.

Been doing woodcuts at a beginner’s level at the U, which means tha material is easy to work with but the downside is that it’s damn hard to do fine details. This however didn’t stop me from trying — I “paaah” at the keep details to a minimum. I got this idea that I’ll try to do on at least one of the other two blocks. Hopefully I’ll manage to do that better than the first one. (The first will not be show here.)

My dreams have been normal. Not normal as in “as they’ve always been” but really true to life. It’s frightening. I’ve dreamt conversations that I later assumed happened in real life. That has been… awkward. Especially since this is those that I remember now, and frequently there are friends present in these dreams. Awkward, awkward, awkward.

Tonight I dreamt that I bought a few the Mekons albums on vinyl. Exciting stuff really, not in the least because I wanted to listen to them today. (Oh fuck how I wish I had more the Mekons vinyls.)

Not sure what it says about me that I’m more nervous and ill at ease about these sort of dreams than the “normal” blood-gore-slime-and-creepy-crawlers I’ve had for years before.

After having been some kind of reclusive shut in for a while, this week was the opposite. Friends, people I barely know, and some complete strangers in one large sucker-punch has made me a bit burnt out. A few hours alone is most definitively needed. The brain is jammed potatoes. With the peel still left intact to give it that not perfect flavour.

Need to find some kind of balance though. Both too much and too few people affects med in a bad way. I should be able to write more about the weekend, really. A lot more. But I can’t for some reason.

For a brief moment I thought it was Thursday. That meant finishing the copperplate for printing and a spanking new Thursday List of Doom. But no. It’s just Wednesday. A crappy Wednesday.

My plan had been to lay in bed and listen to Judee Sill or watch lots and lots of tv. I didn’t manage to do that either. It’s like someone has used the Wu-Han Thumb of Death on my excitement glands. Anyway, it’s boring to be bored so I’m gonna build me some new ones. Got string, paper, some tinfoil, a fist full of batteries, and a collapsible umbrella.

Anyway, here’s the GPOYW.

The weekend has been pretty great even though I missed Roger and Rickard doing live music. Feet and head hurts - though the head is from lack of sleep, I think.

Anyways, CD and Gabi’s whisky cupboards were pretty well stocked (to say nothing about the food (equally excellent, if you must know)).

Photos tomorrow, this damn thing has neither editing software nor a memory card reader. “When life gives you lemons, it’s hard to make cocaine without an exceptional lab.” Or so I’m told. Sleep now.

What happened today: a list.

  1. Reclaimed lost naps. And boy, did I reclaim them. Several hours of nap time was found (and used).
  2. Asked my host - I like to think I’m a more… benevolent parasite or even a regular guest - to log into his laptop for use during the day. This was soon turned into a big failure thanks to point one. The battery had obviously decided to refuse to share its power while I slept. Fucking bastard.
  3. Had tea and sandwiches. Also: listened to Carbon/silicon.
  4. Right now I’ve declared the sunflower dead.

GPOYW. Except with no picture, if you want one of those I posted one earlier this week. When I was ten I used to cut school, worst year ever from those that I remember anyway - there’s a few that my brain refuses to acknowledge. But back to ten.

I sat in the living room, drank cocoa and watched cartoons. I can still remember how the room looked when illuminated with the yellow and red light from the TV. And how the sofa was placed. Those days, mostly with gym class, was pretty good. I was content with being there alone and not bother with the rules and being teased and bullied. I think that was the year when physical contact of any kind became troublesome. Not that I cared: I had my cartoons after all. In a way, this is still me.

After Mammút had finished their gig and I had bought their CD, I headed home. Outside it was a bit cold, still nice though. It didn’t rain which was even nice since I had parked the car about two blocks from the venue. An older man came waling, or stumbling a bit. When we where side by side he turned towards me and spoke.

— It fucking sucks!
— Huh?
— Do I seem drunk to you?

Since I didn’t know this man, I was stuck in boy scout mode. It’s a decease caused by shyness and the willingness to just avoid people. It doesn’t work but try to tell that to the brain. Some days, I swear its name is Pinky.

— Well… So-so…
— So-so? How the hell can you be so-so drunk?
— You don’t want to be sober I take it…
— Bah! They said I was too drunk! What the fuck do they know!
— So they didn’t let you in? Bummer.
— BUMMER?! What’s wrong with you? Too drunk… They’re idiots ya know.

This is where I started to suspect he wanted to cut me up and use my severed limbs to prove to the guards that he was, indeed, sober enough to kill and therefore should be granted access. So I started to walk, but he continued to talk.

— I will not accept this!
— And yet, here you are…
But I didn’t say that because even if he was drunk and about fifty I’m sure he could have bruised me up. And cut me into tiny pieces with a hidden machete — and that’s something I’m highly allergic to.

— Well, have fun trying to be sober;
I said, which I now realise was probably even more snarky than the “and yet, here you are” that my brain tried to get me to say out loud. The man obviously didn’t take it as a wish of good luck and became a bit more irritated. However, the moment of fear for being butchered in the middle of the street had passed and my back was turned against him, leaving him several steps behind.

As if not depression was enough, I think I have a sleep disorder. Overtly tired, it’s almost one of those constants that the physicists keep bringing up. Today, after a good nine-hour sleep I woke up and later I decided to read a book. That was a failure because the bed caused me to fall asleep once again. Granted, hugging a book is a nice thing as was waking up and smell the paper, but really, this sleep must be stopped! It isn’t easy and I’m obviously a heavy user, so cold turkey is probably the only way to go.