The divine question and the diabolic answer...

As the tip of my tongue carefully placed the fresh bag of snus at the right spot under my lip, I felt ready to go…

Can I actually start a new post in such a disgusting way? I can and I will. I'm pretty much ok with me using snus ever since Shannon Hoon mentioned it in a sort of romantic way in the Blind Melon song Vernie.

I'm not going to talk about tobacco, and I won't. I'm going to talk about taboos, at least until I feel that I've reached the edge of dire straits; just before the point of no return.

Here I go…

I find homosexuality very, very interesting, as a phenomenon. It is a phenomenon (in swedish: företeelse), at least according to the criteria established by the Swedish National Encyclopedia.

… I really fell as if I’m in dire straits already…

It’s a phenomenon which I’m pleased to say is quite accepted here in Sweden, or at least in Stockholm, I can’t speak for the rest of the nation (I can’t speak for Stockholm either, but that’s something I have to do in order to proceed).

No! I can’t proceed. I don’t have the guts to do so. It’s like trying to cross a big meadow at night, just after the cows has been brought in. I just know I can’t reach the other side without stepping in dung, in pure shit. The shit in this case is the uncertainty of how people will look upon me. Will I accidentally portray myself as a… well I don’t know… something awful?

I have always thought it was something divine about thinking and asking. Divine to ask; What makes the world tick? But attempting to answer isn’t always, apparently as divine.

This is a divine question: Why do homosexuals feel a sexual attraction to their own sex?

Try answering it, and feel divine! You can’t, you can only feel like shit!

I'm off hiding...

Reading people...

When I enter an apartment I've never been to before I often, quickly, find my self looking at the books, if they have any, in their bookshelves, god forbid if they don't have any. It's pretty obvious that you can tell pretty much what a person is interested in by merely reading the back of their books. However, you can also read a lot from how long it take a visitor to start reading the back of the books in your own shelves.

Once more, I will start a scene where someone is either exiting or entering the stage.

I welcomed him, and offered him entrance. He stepped inside and took a quick nervous glance around the room

The guy was normally built, but taller than most and in his late 20:s or early 30:s. Below his, partially by long hair and big designer made sunglasses, covered head he wore a light blue jeans jacket over a trendy thin striped t-shirt. His jeans were old and worn, not pre worn from the stores, but traditionally worn.

Refering to his black sneakers, I said:

"Keep them on if you want"

"Oh, well... Ok", he said cautiously.

His carefully planted steps, you know the ones you take when you are not comfortable with wearing shoes while walking on parquet, took him around the apartment for the primary tour. I guess his first objective was to get an understanding of the condition and standards of the apartment. On his second tour, he start to complement the basic decorations of the apartment, such as the colours of the paint on the walls, the clinkers in the hallway and kitchen and the parquet in the living room and the bedroom.

It’s not until during his third tour he stops and starts to examine what was in the shelves. It didn’t take long until he, with some effort, extracted an old videotape containing Alice in Chains MTV unplugged session. With this, we had found a shared interest, and we talked about the tragic death of Layne Staley and the strange and perhaps pathetic reappearance of the band during the summer festivals around Europe.

After he had left I remembered that during his first glimpse of his surroundings his eyes fell on my two guitars that stood leaned towards one of the corners in the room. He looked at them for just a couple of seconds, registering the types, brands and the pamphlet that stuck out from the side pocket of the case that contains my electric guitar. It reads: Beginners Tablature for the Guitar Case

Who is he? What does he do for a living?

Priority...

I had promised myself not to talk about the weather... but, well, hey what the heck.

I will try to write this on the whim so to speak. I'm off to the beer in the sun which always should precede a football game on a day like this. We've had some 20 degrees Celsius for over a week now in Stockholm and a wheather streak like that is hard to come by even at the peak of the summer. Just enjoy and make as much of it as you possibly can. I can't however, except for the, hopefully cold, beer later today. I can't because I'm too damn busy.

Writing on my essay: top priority
Studying for my essay: top priority
Writing up some job applications: top priority
Meticulously cleaning the apartments for the people who are to come and look at them: top priority
Finishing the damn model my girlfriend bought me this Christmas: high priority
blogging: low priority

What am I doing right now? And what do you think I did last night?

I'm making progress though; I am.

Now I'm off to the one thing that isn't even on my to do list... go figure.

Being someone else...

I opened the front door and stepped outside, I looked around. I looked around to see if anyone looked at me, in envy. I couldn't see any envy in the eyes of those that strolled past the charming old alley way. They were all tourists, I imagined, and they had no reason to envy me, since they probably were not even Swedish. Nevertheless I felt pleased, pleased to be part of the tourist attraction.

I had this ridiculous feeling the other day when me and my girlfriend went to look at an apartment in the Old Town of Stockholm. To live in the Old Town is every Stockholmers dream. On such a wonderful little Island, containing not only the royal castle but also a labyrinthial amount of winding narrow streets and alleys (some as narrow as 90 cm or 35 inches), you get overwhelmed by history. And, I love when that happens.

Another time I had a similar ridiculous feeling was at Huddinge University Hospital. I was there as a trainee through the military. Any time I went for lunch after a surgery I had participated in; I would put on my white coat over my green surgery clothes. At one time, I even borrowed a stethoscope and hung it over my neck. I loved the looks I got from everyone, especially the women who I imagined thought something like this: "Wow, what a young and handsome doctor!”

I'm not sure if I would ever take a situation like that to my advantage, I probably wouldn't.

But then again...

Learn and learn...

I took a dive yesterday, into a deep daydream. Like with all daydreams it was a dream where you were in control and you never, in any circumstance, let it turn ugly. It's was an exploration into the subconscious and I had both feet on the pedals.

Break or speed ahead.

I speeded through some wind torn clouds stocked at the top of a mountain range, down the valley, I followed the river to the sea. I used the break pedal over the masts of an 18th century frigate and I lingered in this, among many other things, time of exploration and adolescent science.

For an inquisitive man or woman (well not perhaps for a woman, they're better off today) it must have been a wonderful age to live in. The knowledge of the ancients have just been or are in the process of being unraveled, and with that firm ocean floor as an anchorage point the ship could safely plot a coarse on the seas never sailed.

Enough with the poetic drivel... What I want to say is that today our knowledge of the natural universe are immense, though barely a drop in the sea probably... there I go again...

Nowadays with every Jim and Tim being highly educated or at least literate and enlightened, it is much harder to hold a conversation concerning the little and big things that puzzles you about the world. You are too afraid to sound unintelligent, uninformed or ill schooled. All we really have to talk about is gossip in all its forms and variations. We gossip about football, the famous people or the stupid people on TV (who are the same as the famous people). We gossip about the people close to friends, our co-workers and us. We gossip about politics and the stupid people that conduct it. What we don’t do, what we never have is philosophical discussions. We never discuss religion; we never discuss moral or the deeper aspects of human behavior. We are too afraid to do so; we are not allowed to do so because we don't have the sufficient tools to win those discussions. So we shut up, and talk about the stupid King and Queen. And, we stay stupid.

We shouldn't be so afraid to let our guard down, our pride. Pride is only useful when you've done something good, and then only in moderate proportions.

Don't be timid because of lack of knowledge... ask, think and analyze. When you stand corrected, you have learned something new. Be proud of that…