Dignity

No matter how I turn over things, I find it so hard to see any beauty in lack of dignity. Only when facing the cynical it can eventually add a twist of humanity. For the rest, for those whom humanity is naturally implicit, it can only reduce.

Did we eat olives in the canapé?

Eyes a little tired, it's definitely too early. The cocks compete here and there down the hill, that's all. The man has fallen asleep again, the child sleeps. I get up softly. The dog is happy. It will have its breakfast soon. I open the doors, a lazy breeze fills the house for a moment. I take a look at the jumble. It's a wonderful jumble. Empty glasses, cups with yesterday's last and now greyish coffee, pieces of wrapping paper, clothes left where it was taken off, my bracelet and two olives between the cushions. Did we eat olives in the canapé? The ring on the table, we did blow out the candle but it's like we never really slept. I make coffee, take out a couple of glasses, wash them, I look at the ring, one day it will suit me, today we will pinch a moment more of youth. The coffee is as good as ever.

To turn love into love to be made

You reminded me of the cactus flower recently, blossomed that very night, still just a night, the moon still a moon for millions upon millions, the boat a boat out of so many, now the one where you took me and turned love into love to be made, so much beauty in such a little space, such a short time, a decision was made, we didn't even need the word decision, we asked nothing, we left the boat, the moon is the moon for millions, we smile and know it is ours, the moon, the boat, the rare blossom of a cactus.

My moons

I'm not a young girl and you're not a married, much older lover. We know how the meaning can slip away the minute we turn around and we've got nothing but the frogs, the cicadas, the awful music from bars for young girls and young boys. You point out Saturn. I'm closer to Jupiter because you once showed me her four moons. When we hold each other tight we hang on to the yes once given, to a meaning we need for the morning to come. We know too much. That we know as well. Yet your kiss is still one of my moons.

The married and much older lover

They would say, it's her youth. It's not. Her youth is disturbing, sometimes he avoids her immature breasts because they are immature and she will not let him avoid anything. He is ashamed. It's not her youth. It's her devotion, she is free, all the time free to leave him. She wants nothing in return but the moment. He realizes that's the only place he ever wanted to be, there, where man meets woman, in that very moment. She says it would not exist with a much younger, not-married man.

The young girl

Margurite Duras knew the young girl and let her walk through the crowd in Saigon full of purpose. I knew her and saw her tread hard on the pedals in her desire to see the lover. She is the one I'm interested in, the hummingbird, it leaves the empty flower and moves on to the next, with grace. Like it never expected to find any nectar. Yet it knows nectar is to be found because it has wings and wings will bring it to the flower full of nectar. It is this immense freedom I'm interested in.

Women

It exists in her now, the desire, the lust. He created it, the man in front of her, wineglasses and candles between them. She can let him talk, let him drink, let him forget and be careless, and have his revenges, she can keep her sadness for herself and share her happiness with the moon, bury her disappointmens, learn a language without his knowing. She can even complain and accuse and judge him. Yet he illuminated her sexuality, moulded it, made it visible for her. She thinks, it wouldn't exist without him. The dinner will end. She knows that.

She doesn't pay attention to the woman next to her. It's her birthday. The man has invited her here. She wouldn't say no, she couldn't either. It's part of the agreement. He has bought her a present. She wears it around her neck. She talks, he eats, he talks, she eats. There will always be an uncle, a niece, a neighbour's dog to share informations about. And the fact will always be there that sharing useless information feels safe in a fundamental way. Her sex belongs to another. The other accepts that she is not with him on her birthday.

A young girl passes the restaurant. She is on her way. No one reserved table for her and her much older and married lover. She doesn't even know she passes a restaurant where she and the lover could have dinner together, she only knows she passes a restaurant and she is not hungry. Thursday is theirs. She might eat again friday or later that night she'll open the door to her mother's fridge very silently and the bread and the cheese will taste so good. She smiles. I envy her that smile.

Men

I look at the man with a woman by his side. She keeps him company. It's settled. Her presence is about giving him access to his identity. On that terrasse, sat in the soft furniture, drinks on the table, she has none. She entertains him by giving him her full attention, not by sharing her thoughts. They both gave something up. They are bored, awaiting another erection.

I look at another man. He is by the side of a woman. He keeps her company. He serves somebody. He is a parasite. Parasites are not bored. The erection is free of faces. He produces it by himself.

The third man is newly married, he is younger. His wife has got something in her eye, he is in front of her, with two fingers he opens her eye, he looks into it, she shakes her head, and leaves. He doesn't know yet who is with whom. It's not decided, or what is decided is not fully accepted. Soon she'll be pregnant.

Revenge

Other centuries, forgotten novels, yellow pictures of great-grandparents, post-war conditions, psychological analyses of sadistic murderers, musketeers, mafia methods and some pretty bad films I've forgotten, that's what I associate with Revenge. Not only old-fashioned as notion but primitive, and I'm not primitive, neither are my beloved ones, so we're not vengeful. Judgements can have this wonderful opposite effect: it makes us "not-guilty". If we find it primitive to revenge ouselves and we know we are not primitive, then we can't be vengeful, can we?
It took me ages to understand revenge as part of a daily exchange. Not big, bloody ones, but more like a sentence, a tone of voice, a little hesitation in responding, a little well controlled indifference in the gesture, subtleties let off with exactness and punctuality.
I think it does actually cheer, relieve, alleviate, ease, solace, comfort us. And balance something that was about to tilt within us. It might keep us on our feet and it may give us back a little, lost worth. What we really want is to be relieved from the pain by the one who caused us pain. Fairly often revenge leads to the opposite but that's another story.

Revenge has other aspects. It is not necessarily something we take or get, it might as well be something we give. An expression, a remark we make, in order to get something back. A reaction, an apology, the kiss we long for. All love stories had a beginning. Scientists talk about the first three months. I find that dispiriting. At the other hand: how long does a conception take, and how long does it last, a second with lifelong consequenses, I get dizzy knowing I'll never rise to that occasion. Whatever is true, I can well imagine that for a long time and maybe forever any deviance from the initial melting together is so painful that it must require some kind of reaction. That could be revenge. On the assumption of course that we weren't so civilized that any such thing was unthinkable.
Then revenge would be meant and used as an instrument for returning to conditions where no revenge was ever an issue.

Flower Power

A sleeping beauty woke up and looked at me, just, surrounded by highlights and so many chances of postcard pictures I see her. It's not a she, I don't know why I write that, it's a truck, maybe a former van, now a wreck some would say. Someone built her, someone left her. Then the flowers, the climbers, the sun and the soil. She is part of all that now. Her fainted yellow fits the purple and green, I'm not sure I've ever noticed the colour of a truck. There are levels of being abandoned. My father on the bench with the jingling plastic bag next to him would never have seen himself as anything but in blossom. One day he left the bench, he moved on to a pub, later on he spend his days with Miles Davis, Davis didn't know, my father never needed him to know.

Bad Beat

A little while ago he exploded. 
He yelled and shouted and flung the banana he was eating. It slipped down the fridge door, the rest of it here and there on the floor. Once again he grabbed a couple of bags, firmly, and stomped out. Then the silence. Miles got up. He appeared in the doorway, very awake:
- Is he gone?
I nodded. I was calm, I carried out the rituals of a Friday morning, one by one. We talked about the Spanish teacher, the dog, his lunchbox, it's not watertight, yesterday he had water in his satchel, so ice cubes in a plastic bag to keep his lunch cool is not a good idea. I'll have to buy him a freezer pack. That I promised him. We also laughed a little, of it all, washed the fridge door and wiped off the banana from the floor. Then I took him to the school bus. Now I've made myself a cup of coffee. I sit by the window and try to make my body understand, that no one is going to die of it.

No calls, no killings

The day has moved on, for a couple of hours I'm on the forgotten side of the planet, I'm the lucky one, this is the moment soldiers in the trenches longed for, no calls, no killings, exhausted and dirty and embracing this little land of freedom between midnight and dawn.

Infatuation

Maybe you do have to leave yourself and get lost to carry out an infatuation. So that everytime you look for yourself you find what the other sees. And somehow it all seems perfectly natural, which it may be. Whatever is true I've never seen so many stars as tonight.

Beginnings

We fell in love.
I was in love with another and had just accepted the fact that it was not going to be.
This is what I would like to continue and turn into a novel tonight. Nothing wrong with that, only the night doesn't last.

One day when we sit in that car

I'm in a traffic jam, I don't know where, it could be Germany, it could be France, we are all locked away in our cars. Some are payed for, some are not, some are old, some are new, this morning nobody moves. We thought we were on our way, well, we are not. Suppose we all take a peep at each other to see if somebody really do eat the bogey. I see a couple, man and woman, so used to each other, to the traffic jam, to the wednesdays, the pyjamas, the children, the toothpicks, the football match on television, the nicotine chewing gum, the little scar by his lower lip, her once so green eyes. He changes radio channel, she looks out of the window. If it wasn't for the traffic jam they would be at work by now. Later they will go to the supermarket, pick up the children, prepare the dinner, tidy up, do the laundry, answer the phone, worry about a bill, at the end of the day a goodnight kiss on a forehead. This is their undisturbed moment together. I make a wish. She turns her head and sees the hand fumbling with the radio, his fingers, his wrist, and finally his lips as full and beautiful as yours, she gets a little shy, it's such a sudden desire.

The not knowing

I don't know the names of the trees here. I can watch them and be delighted, without knowing. It's a relieft. I get this fatigue of words. I can't see how we should be doing without. I can't see how we can understand anything with them. It's so hard for the birch to be anything but birch once it is named. The thousandfold of heartshapened leaves are not little bells in the breeze anymore. If they ever were. Or golden stars winking at you in October. Or glinting knives in the night. They become leaves of a birch, just another establishment, though a beautiful one.
I haven't seen any birches in Antigua. I don't know what I see. And what I see does not know my name yet.

Conception

It changes everything, I said. You said, Everything. We didn't know the meaning of everything. We shared our images, that's all. Now we break them, one by one, side by side, sometimes shattered, it takes a man, it takes a woman to discover the extend of a simple, everyday word as everything.

Hills of Antigua

Wrapped in green hills, at the end of my sight the blue of the bay, but I'm in the green, the colour of a mother's arms, the movements of the car rock me from side to side, I close my eyes, I can open them as well, I know I'm not asleep, I'm right next to you, absolutely certain that I'm sheltered.

Next morning

Next morning most of yesterday's sun and dust are gone. This day has its own sky, a breeze, a sudden glance. I turn the pages in my Moleskine and wonder where yesterday is gone now. I was almost certain it left me a letter somewhere.

My skin

I've got skin. It covers me, it calms me. To know I'm covered. It sucks up the tropical humidity immediately, in the morning the sun, later the darkness with hands soft as yours. That's what I know about the tropics and you: that I've got skin, that I'm an entire organ, breathing.

Still yes

It'll wake me up in the morning, my Yes, tickle my nose and stop just before the sneeze. But it won't let me sleep at night. It'll drag me outside in the cold, cold October darkness and make me sense a sky full of stars. Yes is not a good night word.

Repainting

So now I live with an elephant in my books and blog cottage. Quite curious about that. I like the yellow. Me, the yellow and an elephant.

Empty house

I sit on the staircase in the middle of the empty house. The light walks slowly around the corner, in a minute it will show up in the lounge, I know exactly when, the angle, the sudden appearance of bumps and spots on the wall, a child's blue crayon tempted by the big, white surface once. I still remember a crayon in my much smaller hand, the thrill. The fingers that are forced to let go, the angry voice of a mother. I made other mistakes, some of them I'll only know if my children show me. The house will tell no more. I suppose the new resident will repaint the walls.

Just yes, just now

The moon is half eaten by a cloud outside. You don't see the cloud, only the dense, dark sky and sometimes the bitten moon. I wouldn't hesitate to say yes, just now. A little moment of lucidity, only I'm not asked. So I hold my yes and wonder how many no's would have been a yes if I hadn't been asked. Or was no the answer I knew when yes was just a little absent-minded?

SMS

Woke up at dawn which is such a beautiful word. I see your lips, hear your voice as you mould this very new day.

Small pieces of biology

We walked to the end of a desert road where features and traits of two individuals appear only when caught by the lighthouse. Nothing but a mist to pass and our names are left behind, we're drifting into brightness of the simple fact that I'm a woman, you're a man, small pieces of biology. Now I have to write these few lines to retrieve my bits and pieces.

Almost Autumn

Butterflies fall, but are still alive, the wasps kill each other instead of me, I keep an eye on the sky and catch my minute in the sun, this years autumn seems so sure of itself, and the summer is not quite ready to give in, I find you outside in the beam between two glaringly white clouds.

Moving Boxes

I explain: it's not because I don't like the six wineglasses you gave me that Christmas, or because I don't appreciate a gift (sorry, I mean of course a gift from you), I appreciate every toast you proposed, all the good wine, we shared and poured into those glasses, it's just that I don't need glasses anymore. Please put them in your box and I'll put a little stone in mine.

Doors

I stand on tiptoe to kiss you, jacket is on, suitcase packed, your arm around my waist, you walk out of the door, it's just for a few days, I like few days, but I don't like doors. I don't even like to be precise about it.

Last Evenings

So many last evenings  I wanted to write, to find the words, cairns for wanderings to come, and nothing came. Loose ends not to be tied up. Like I knew I would be back in time to catch them. Only I never did. I carried it all with me and there was nothing left to come back for.

Mirrors

For days I've looked at you in your smile, the little quiver before I know it's a smile, the softness of your lips just after.
I've wandered along your scars and laugh lines, up and down the nose, that turns the opposite way of mine.
I pass a mirror, the one I stand before when I brush my teeth, and it all looks the same, yet I recognize a young girl who once couldn't imagine to be a woman at my age.

Desire

Woke up with this little worry, then a walk in the rain, it's much too cold for August and the mind is such a delicate mechanism. Millions of tiny little cogwheels working in and out of each other, moves me forward, pulls me back.
Saturday, Saturday, hold out your hand, assure me you won't fall out of this year's calendar.

The waiting, the knowing

I lie down, back meets ground, the sky behind your face, grass tickles an ankle. I don't want to miss any moments of this impatience.

Flash fiction: Bob

My mum and Bob took me to the doctor. They also took me to the public pool, the Zoo and the circus. Bob never had children of his own and my mum wanted us to be a family so my real age wasn't that important. Not until they agreed to make this appointment for me. They talked a lot about how it was to be sweet sixteen. I still don't know which of them actually called the doctor. Usually it would be my mum of course. But at that time she liked Bob to do things for her, not only things she had a hard time with, but all sort of things, he even signed letters that have to be proved by parents.
On the way to the doctor I chose the ears. The ears were as far as I could get from my vagina and I was definitely not pregnant. I'd told them but my mum and Bob didn't trust the test you can buy in the shops. The doctor put a thing into my ear and looked. He continued with the other ear. Both were blocked. I could have told him that. He used lukewarm water. It tickled. He asked me why I stuffed paper into my ears. I didn't know what to say. I forgot about it. There are so many sounds I don't like. Now it's not Bob anymore. It never was. It's Alvin. Who the fuck wants her mother to giggle with a Alvin?

This is not civilized

I don't think I could do it. I only know what I can imagine. I imagine that I watch the lions in a Zoo. They tear a man apart. I don't want his name in the middle of my words, so I call him ABB. He just killed 74 Norwegians. He faced most of them. Then he pulled the trigger.
I don't see his face, I don't hear his screaming, it's not that I want his suffering. I don't care whether he suffers or not. I just want him to disappear in a human way. Feeding lions is not evil. Eating is survival. I never imagined such things before.

It was on the twentysecond of July 2011

This is the moment where I would like to use my tools and form the words, link them into sentences that mean something, perhaps even relieve something and I'm all silence.

Muse

I saw a young woman the other day. I instantly wanted to create a necklace for her. She stands in front of me in the morning with this peculiar necklace. So these days I'm a goldsmith. She took the word and lifted it out of so many stories and gave it to me.

Wonder

I wonder what it is like to live near a Zoo. To lie in my bed and listen to the downtown tigers. And at the gaz station the other day I was in line with the driver of a slurry pump truck and I wondered what it is like to ware his red dungarees.
Maybe it's just the wondering itself that makes me wonder.

Grand Slam

I watch boxing. And I watch tennis. Right now it's Wimbledon. These people practice for years, thousands and thousands of hours on the training court, in the gym, in front of the net or the hitting partner or the punching bag. They are bored most of the time, they are alone in their search for meaning of their efforts. The lack of motivation is the real opponent. The ever threatening question has to be matched: why am I doing this?
And then they enter Center Court. Or the ring in Madison Square Garden. They show themselves, they kick ass, their own and others.
I miss that climax in my work.
There are no Grand Slams for authors.
You can go for the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer, even The Nobel Prize in literature. But if you get there, it will be for a piece of work you finished long ago. You will receive a phone call in the middle of the dishwashing. And that's it.
An author peaks on the way. In silence, in secret.

Boredom

I remember my childhood's boredom. Endless weekends, the whole world away on exciting outings, gone to exotic summerhouses, the rain, the sky without a cloud because it was one big cloud, my fingers would play with the dust on the windowsill, slowly drawing figures of eight. And without noticing I would merge into a dream where boredom didn't exist and no Monday would ever appear.

Malin's cows

I met Malin today, haven't seen her for a year or two. She is a farmer, her husband is a farmer, the children are farmers' children. She came with a sack full of stale bread for the cows.
They saw her from far, or rather heard her car, they looked up, not too eager like they agreed to see what she got before they welcomed her and moved forward. It's a small herd, eight or ten cows. Two of them are from Småland, Malin told me, the red ones. The smallest was born in March, she has a twin but she is in another herd with a new mother who lost her own calf. It all went well and not one bull calf this year, only girls.
Malin called for them.
One of them set off into a kind of gallop.
- That's Lillian, she said. She loves bread.
I love Malin's smile. Cows make her happy, that's all.
I see her cows from the windows in my little house in Sweden. I look at them a lot, trying to understand, why a cow makes me feel good. Like I'm not quite ready to accept very basic things in life. It's fat stock. They will be slaughtered after all. I know. They don't.

Woman at the bus stop

She wears a red dress. Her hair is curled, not much, the cheekbones with rouge. Youth has passed a little while ago, I think she knows. She longs for the bus to come, she is going somewhere, she is expected. She has all the rights to stand there and wait and to go there. She is not impatient. She wouldn't have worn the red dress if she was not expected.

Details

I keep seeing those bike helmets everywhere and I imagine my husbands and lovers through the years wearing one and I just know life would have turned out differently. Even my children would have been other children because they would have had other fathers, probably from other countries where man and woman know that you can't fall in love with someone wearing a bike helmet.

City Sadness

It's a sky. It's a light. It's the city looking at itself in a Copenhagen Harbour mirror.
What is this sadness about?
Sadness is always about love.
But do we know? Do we know our love?
I recognize the sky, the light, the harbour mirror. I recognize the sadness. Maybe gloom is a better word.

Authority of Time

I know a man. I wanted to stay on that boat with him. Not forever, just stay there, as forever didn't exist. That was yesterday. In a few hours I will enter tomorrow.

Boy on the Beach

The girl had made a fine figure in the sand while he was out snorkling.
- An octopus! Do you see that?
I nodded.
A huge octopus reached out for several meters.
- She has made two others down the beach. A turtle and a lizard. She is really good.
He liked that she was good at making figures in the sand.
He also liked that she was as good as a boy in the water and when she sprinted through the burning sand with the long hair like a dragon's tail behind her.
She threw herself into a wave, showed up like a little seal, indeed ready to be looked at.
He digged.
The hole was so big that he could sit comfortably and monitor all activities along the beach.
- I want to reach the groundwater, he said.
- Go ahead. You are going to dig for a long time.
- You don't think I can do it.
One shouldn't tear down a child's belief.
- It will take a while, that's all.
The girl got up from the water and knelt beside the octopus. Her hair was no longer a dragon's tail. It looked like she wore a cape now.
- I want it to be big enough for two.
I was careful with my smile, even with my breath. This fledgling moment was not to be disturbed by some mother. The boy I once met didn't dig. He covered himself with sand. Finally his mother realized that it looked like she was talking to herself about the nice little girl who surely wanted to know his name and everything and cut off the flow.
- Are you ready?
His eager little face popped ud from the hole.
- Am I ready?
He moved to the side.
- There is plenty of room down here.
I shook my head slowly.
- Isn't it better for two children?
- And what about you?
- Me? 
- Of course you are going down in the hole with me. We'll be safe here if the wind decides to blow radiation from Japan to our island. I just need to find something for the roof.
The girl looked up from her octopus. She had refined one of its arms. Her long hair was hair in the wind now. The sun had dried it.
I jumbed in the hole.
- Careful, he said.
- What about the girl?
I couldn't help it. She kept looking at him, so patient, so calm. Though I kept my voice down.
He didn't. He didn't shout either. He spoke naturally.
- She can dig for herself. Do you have any ideas for the roof?
- I'll think about it, I said.
He got up from the hole and ran off to the shore, made a perfect header into the waves.
The girl made a nice header too. She came up and he went down. He came up and she went down.
I sat in the hole and looked at them.
I was absolutely sure I've told him. Radiation would never go that far.

Pain

It hurts. The breathing, the heartbeat, the bones in his body. She cried of love, she cried of anger. Now she sleeps like a baby. He kind of laughs. It's all in his mind. The legend in front of him. The jaw, the fist, the crowd. The crowd never believed in him. Why should they? It was a fucking legend in front of him. Him, who? He who had a plan. He walked up in that ring, he could already taste his own blood, he had a plan, the plan came true. To touch that jaw in front of the crowd, to lose in front of a legend. It kills their pain. The rest is nothing but entrails and bones and muscles. He kind of laughs. He would have lost any fight. Now she can sleep like a baby.

To get out of a book

What bothers me right now is, that no book is ever so important when finished as it was while I wrote it. Not to me at least.
It almost seems a little bizarre that I could be so honestly involved, so completely engrossed for such a long time.
Probably part of the reason why getting through with a book definitely is the worst part of my life as auther. And with a child's memory I forget it from one book to the other. I always think it's going to be a wonderful relief when it's carried out. I keep it in mind all the way as some crazy carrot.

I'm not gonna write this story

A bus, yellow because buses are yellow where I come from. 
A yellow bus waiting at the bus station. It leaves two minutes past. It's two minutes to three in the afternoon. The passengers have found a seat. Nobody is late for this bus. The next will be in an hour. 
A young girl has chosen a seat in the driver's side. She has got music in her ears, she doesn't look out, she is busy with her iPod.
The other five sit in the opposite side, evenly spread. Two men and three women, or three men and two women. No one could tell if they were asked an hour later.
They might as well get off. There is nobody at the busstation, just a child looking around as searching for something. She is too young to take the bus alone.
The surroundings are pretty. You have lengthy fields, mostly wheat and grass that year. At the end of your gaze the beech wood, a marvel of green, from inside the bus of course you don't see it. The waiting, that's what you see. 
The child is waiting to come out of hiding. She found a perfect place. The wheel is big and shady, bigger than her when she sits like that, crumpled up in front of the wheel. Her heart beats rapidly, she is always so exited, when she has found a really good hiding place. She can see the boy's feet. If he bent, he would see her right away. She knows, he won't bend because it seems like there is no place to hide.
Purple Rain goes on and on. It's like a chapter in a book. You have time to forget a whole world or you can go to the end of it. The young girl smiles. Prince softens her mouth into that little smile, a little dream, a memory. The movement of the bus, the beech, she sees it now. She even says goodbye to the driver as she gets off.
I'm not gonna write this story.
It's possible the young girl would remember a jolt, like hitting the curb and she would think of it as nothing but a curb as the driver would. I don't wan't them to be aware of any such thing. It's too late.

man and woman

The rain for instance, it makes you change direction. Or a bird above your head, you look up from the book, and the bird has gone. What do you see? Or just the little difference between two o'clock and five minutes past. It seems like the coincidence makes such an amazing effort to set it up between a man and a woman that I almost feel guilty when it's all wrong.

Funny Twitter Dialogue

@MarinaCecilie:
"Just had a haircut. The scissors were accompanied by a military band. Don't know what it means."

@Longstocking14:
"Isn't it the second this month? Why do I think I know this info?"

@MarinaCecilie:
"Is it only a month? Well, they didn't play military march when I went from long to short."

@Longstocking14:
"Thank You now, new hair pix with Antigua in the background."

@MarinaCecilie:
"Too early for pix. First I have to recognize myself in the mirror."

@Longstocking14:
"The never ending journey! -) Enjoy your day."

@MarinaCecilie:
"Just recognized myself in the mirror. But one should be discreet as to such moments:-)"

Love Letter

I knew a horse called Bliss. It means blaze in Danish. When I met it in English I picked the word and put it aside. Thought I'd use it in a love letter one day. I wouldn't have guessed a mosquito net called for it.

My bliss

When I downsized my needs to twenty kilos two months ago, I didn't yet realise the mosquito net was to become best choice of them all.
I was more likely sullen about the whole idea of bringing it. One mosquito net could be exchanged for two books when I took a look at my suitcase. I think I decided to bring it along because it had been unreasonable expensive. Too much wasted money if I left it behind. And I'd already packed what looked like a library because I get nervous about books when I travel.
I didn't hang it up the first night in Antigua. Seemed as too much trouble, I needed a ladder to reach the ceiling. Four o'clock in the morning it was not a question of ladder or no ladder, I would climb the walls. By then I'd learnt what it is like to feed a handful of starving mosquitoes. My mosquitoes don't bite once or twice, they go crazy, they go into a frenzy.
To lie inside a mosquito net is the closest I get to bygone days in my mother's belly. It's a bliss. I'd forgotten what it is like to be so protected. I'll bring it with me all over the world and I'll hang it up no matter what. It's not only about mosquitoes of course. Tigers can't reach me either.

Wistful, part two

A friend said to me:
You're a lucky dog.
You have someone you long for.
I'm lucky.
I have someone I can send
a Hummingbird by Carver.

I love the sound of Monday morning

A hammer knocks a nail, rythmically, further off a radio, a saxophone perhaps, the truck from West Indies Oil climbs the hill in low gear, laughter behind a curtain, the rooster crows and then another.
"Nice yellow, a worker says."
That's right, I wear my yellow skirt.
I'm not looking for stories. I'm just the one who adds a little sound to this monday morning with my flipflop flipflop.

Ice Cream

Once I sold a ring.
So the only keepsake I got is a plastic bin, originally made for coconut ice cream, the one for strawberry was broken. He liked ice cream and wanted me to like it as well. I use the plastic bin everytime I've made too much pasta or rice or cut two many peppers. It happens all the time but only because I'm bad at measuring out.
I was certain I would never meet him again. 
I don't know if he looked for the ring, I kept my hands hidden. I suppose he tried to make me understand why he hurled the strawberry ice cream, it was of course not because he wanted to hit me.
He bought me a new icecream. I asked for banana flavour.
We found a shady place in the park.
He laughed a little and said he would never have guessed my preference for banana.
It was all about ice cream and I forgot about the ring and then suddenly he looked sad and said he supposed I'd never wear the ring.
And I said no.

The madman and the author

"I'm accepting of his melodramatics because I don't feel like he is getting off on them as a Lars von Trier."

I stopped at that sentence when I read  a "You think that's bad" review in which Jacob Schraer gives us - and Jim Shepard - a reflective treat. (http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/disaster-porn/Content?oid=3783411)

It always tilts when an author gets off on the story or on the characters or on an idea or whatever authors (and filmmakers) fall in love with and you drop even the most trustworthy on the floor. The good intentions sound almost as hollow as the calculating in literature when unbalanced. And even worse: the intoxicated author is as conscious as the psychotic certain that worms gonna kill the president if nothing is done.
Still, no interesting books would probably be written if the author wasn't passionated - and gave herself to that passion, wildly and uncontrolled. Just shouldn't last longer than an orgasm.
I'm looking forward to read Jim Shepard

The Waiting

I'm waiting for the grey to disappear.  It has lasted for three days. The birds still twitter, it's mild, no need for shelter, it's just the waiting.

In Denmark waiting lasts eight months, sometimes ten. That's how life is devided in the north. 

I've heard myself praise the seasons, the great and spectacular change from naked to fully dressed trees, fields, the ditch full of cornflower, the anemones in april, they don't have all that, those who live near the Equator, the splendour lasts forever and ever, they've got nothing to wait for.

That's what we believe in the north.

The summers happen so fast, I keep my eyes open and open, I'm so fully aware, don't want to miss one single lilac.

By the end of August I'm all exhausted. And I welcome the rain and the dark and the long waiting.

That's how we adjust in the north.

I've just discovered that waiting is not an implied condition of appreciation.

Wistful

A friend said to me:
You're a lucky dog.
You have someone you long for.
I'm lucky.
Bow wow.

Navigation

The moon lies on her back again. But I don't think she sleeps. 
Do you see her? If you turn to your right? Maybe to your left? It's difficult to imagine your direction. It doesn't matter where you are going.
I would never expect the moon to fall down.
A little while ago I lay on my back moon shaped by the hammock. And I would give birth to a child just to show somebody the moon for the very first time.

Anders and Helene

I've been asked quite a few times about my main characters' resemblance to me and to the loss of my husband. Is Helene me? Is Anders my husband?
Definitely not, yet I can't really say no. After all I made them up.
The other day I came up with a smart ass illustration:
I've never considered suicide, but I've sometimes thought of killing Helene. Regarding Anders it gets more subtle. I actually killed him already in N.I.M.B.Y., the first volume.
How I'm going to miss those two characters.

The Lover

Yesterday I was a lover.
It lasted for some hours. I sat in my chair, darkness around my shoulders, two candles to avoid mosquitos, the sun and the salt still pinched my cheek. I didn't answer the phone. It rang twice. I was in my chair. I was a lover and couldn't be disturbed.
Today I'm a dolphin between the sheets and your body.

How I would like to carry my carapace

I know turtles from books and TV and public aquaria.
Once I watched two big ones through a huge glass wall in Point-á-Pitre. I don't like to watch shut in beings. It gets sad, it gets embarrassing.
Being their guest in the ocean all of a sudden made me do my very best as a swimmer. They are oldsters, they are graceful dancers in the deep. I don't dream of being a turtle but I would like to carry my carapace with a turtle's elegance.

Sometimes I hate books

Sometimes I hate books.
Not only because so many of them are mediocrities, badly written, or without any musicality, or sense of the language. Nor because so many of them have no other purpose than to follow suit. It's not really a problem either that people have little to say in their books or little to explore or nothing to share.
I sometimes hate books because there are so many of them! Thousands and thousands and millions of them and as it happens I read one that lifetime marks me I know the potential of just one book.
I also know that I spoil it for myself if I finish a good book in the afternoon and begin to read a new one before I go to sleep. I can't digest that much. I become a mediocre reader, primitive actually, am I entertained or not, that's what I can manage to involve myself in. I don't participate at that point, I consume. And then it doesn't really matter anymore if the book is just a book because it has a book's cover.
A masterpiece of a short story can last for weeks, and longer. Nothing should be put on top of that. Not even the next story in the same collection. Still I am tempted, always, to take one more, as I did this week with Chinua Achebe's collection, Girls At War. It opens with Madman, and I should have stopped there instead of gorging myself. After Madman I was unable to read the other stories properly. They deserved a better reader.

Fly well

I reach out for a book and fall asleep, the book on top of my chest, such a tender sleep. I draw pelicans, the child I was, on the beach, where I am, the pelicans she points at, she sees them with wide open eyes, the dive, the floundering fish it swallows, she sings, she jumbs a dance, the fish is flying, the fish is dying now.

Donkeymen

They were two, a girl and a boy.
One of them caught my eyes just outside the grocery. They didn't wear school uniform or scout uniform. They were in their ordinary saturday afternoon clothes, shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, but much less tanned than everybody else.
I made no attempt to escape as I often do when I'm addressed by adults with a pile of leaflets in the hand. They usually want to make me a better person, a discipline I prefer to practice under different circumstances.
I stopped.
The girl explained their purpose, a matter of lottery tickets for the benefit of mental ill on the island.
I could barely hear her voice. Donkeyman, so we call him now, had one of his noisy moments. She had to repeat herself.
- Of course, I said and looked for the purse in my bag.
- Will you be on the island at April the 9th, the boy asked.
- The 9th? I think so. Why do you want to know that?
He showed me what I could win. It was like a brunch for four at Admiral's Inn and something called a Mystery Grab Bag.
- You won't be able to benefit from the lottery if you are not in Antigua the 9th.
I gave him the 10 EC$.
- Oh, it's kind of you to mention.
They said Thank You and went on.
We looked after them.
They stopped by the donkey. It was hitched at the other side of the road. I like it better when we meet it up the hill or by the dry canal. Some places the grass is almost green, though you have to look for it.
- What was that about, my son asked.
- Aid for mental ills, I replied.
He looked at the donkey. Sometimes he steals carrots from the fridge to have something to give it.
- If only we could win the donkey, he said. - But it's a good idea to have children sell the lottery tickets. If two mental ill came over and asked, none of the tickets would be sold.

Elizabeth Taylor

It's sad when they close down the cinema where you watched Bambi slipped on the ice. And when they tear down buildings where you slided down the banisters. The walls you fired the football at. My grandmother, my mother, myself and my daughter know of Elizabeth Taylor.

My grandmother saw all her movies and constantly measured beauty with hers.
My mother saw most of her movies and knows how many times she divorced and probably still thinks she and Burton were meant for each other.

I saw some of her movies and stand up for her part as Cleopatra. I've also read she went in and out of rehabs, grew fat and lost weight again. Now it's business as usual, like the number of divorces, but at the time I held it up against the lovely face my grandmother used to talk about and I was confused. I honestly believed that beauty was synonymous with happiness.

Still: a Diva. And to me a Diva like Elizabeth Taylor ranks above iconic models, popstars and botoxpumped siliconistas because she didn't start out like that.

My daughter only knows the bloodshot eyes with too blue and too much eye shadow and a body forced into a glamourous silverdress designed for the red carpet no other place than Hollywood.

All four of us are from Denmark, far away from America. Internet, Google and YouTube globalized the world. But first did Marshall Aid, music, and movies. I can't imagine Coca Cola as anything but a random soft drink - without the movies. That's where it speeded up, the extensive american culture-migration.

That's why we can read obituaries in newspapers probably from Finland to Spain, from Kenya to South Africa, from India to Australia these days dedicated to an actress of all nationalities.
Elizabeth Taylor was American but she is global cultural heritage and it's sad she is gone, with and without two much blue eye shadow, with and without Richard Burton, too many pounds, and an enchanting face.

I recommend

I don't know Gina Frangello, or didn't, now I do a little. She wrote one of the best meditations, I've read for a long time. It's on rape and the way we deal with it as individuals, as culture, as society, as man and woman. Please don't hesitate. I bumped into it on Twitter. Here is the link. You will probably have to copypaste, I can't make it work from my iPad, don't understand why.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gfrangello/2011/03/we-are-complicit-meditations-on-a-28-year-old-gang-rape-and-that-little-girl-from-texas/

No chart but confident

Chapter 15 and I just put out to sea. I know where we are going.

I forgot his face

I have a hat that makes me look like a scarecrow. I bought it in Guadeloupe the evening my son found his most precious shells, two ivory conches, inside they keep their rosa secret. I wore the hat. I felt free and beautiful. I didn't kiss the man but I knew I could. Would I recognize him if I wore the hat tonight.

Differences between glasses and shoes

My favourite lunch bistro, and the best and cheapest in town is called HotHotSpot. Might not sound particularly local nor charming but it is, the name is even very precise. Every decent place in English Harbour has got wifi, some of them even outlets for those who wear the most common suit, desktop under the arm, flip flops on the feet.
At HotHotSpot they play Air by J.S. Bach as well.
An elderly gentleman sat next to us with a newspaper and a soup, he just finished. He did wear shorts like everybody else, but only because of the heat, surely not because he liked shorts.
- Enjoy your lunch.
He was about to leave
- Thank you very much. Enjoy your afternoon, I said and hoped the chicken in my mouth was not too obvious.
A moment later he came back.
- Has anyone seen my shoes?
He bent down and looked under the tables.
- At home it's my glasses I look for. But you won't find any shoes on the table, won't you?
- Most of the time one doesn't need shoes here. I keep forgetting mine too, I said.
He smiled.
- I still prefer to look on your table, not under it.

Best sentence of today

"Birds believe I am a flower when I lie in the hammock".

I just wrote it on my Twitter. I want it here too. Silly attempt to paralyse the moment. But still.
I am thrilled and battle to play the birds' game, not unaware, never seen an unaware bird, the wings are wings and antennae, but careless, it's all about pretense. So I pretend that I'm deeply engrossed by my chapter 14. I'm good at it. They come so close.
Even a hummingbird accepts me as flower among birds.
I wouldn't dare to use it for my prose. Am I wrong? Doesn't it tempt the limit of sentimentality as paragraph on page 98 in a novel?

Young Japanese girl

I constantly think of the young Japanese girl who walked the streets in L.A. with my daughter this sunday. Monday she took the plane back to Tokyo. She needed to go home and see her parents. Today it's Wednesday , almost Thursday.

Bottom Line

This struck me today:
Most children would manage without their parents.

Far away from Japan

I remember the carrots I forgot to buy and how I kept those carrots in mind while I watched the plane on TV that went straight towards World Trade Center and never changed its direction. I remember it now from my little island in the great, great ocean with waves that children can ride on, with their inflatable dolphins and crocodiles. And I would think about it too if I was in the middle of a continent and the water only flowed from a river. I happen to be in the other end of the world. Japan, I write your pretty name on everything I remember these days.

The rat and the goat

Somebody had dragged the goat into the bushes, probably the one who had hit it with the car. We passed it on our way back from the beach. It lay on its side, it was a white goat, actually a kid. Two days later there was nothing but some of its fur left. Rats, ants, birds, mongooses had done a good job. We never noticed any stench though it was very warm.
The rat died in a trap. I put it up.
I sat at the terrace in the evening. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something with fur darted off. It was in the middle of a sentence, the direction was away from me, so I didn't do anything. I accepted the fact that either it was a rat or a tarantel.
A couple of days later it presented itself as a rat. It wanted to move in. It insisted. Five times that evening it ran towards me trying to reach the open door. I do not want to live with a rat. I'm afraid of rats. Like millions of other people I give in to an irrationel fear which is perhaps not a fear but more likely a deep detestation.
I put up the trap, it was caught the first night.
I woke up 3.30 am. It was raining heavily. The trap easily cuts off a childs toe so it was placed under a chair. Its eyes were open, its small feet relaxed. The whiskers were all intact. I sat in the rain for a while, kneeling beside the trap. I couldn't find my detestation and everything about it, me, the rat, the trap, the rain, the late hour, was awfully pathetic.

The first kiss

I'm about to open chapter 14 and have a certain hesitation, like waiting for the right moment.I don't know any right moments. But there is this little love for the moment just before the moment.

Buying a t-shirt

The dress rail was placed so that shoppers could look at the t-shirts from both sides. I was in the blue end, the woman at the other side was going through the white ones.
Most of them got prints. I don't want prints on my t-shirts.
- Are you Beverly?
The woman looked at me. She got beautiful eyes.
- Who?
- Beverly. Are you Beverly?
- No, I said.
She sized up two t-shirts, a red and a green.
- Do you know Raul?
- No, I don't think so. I'm not from here.
- She killed him. Beverly killed Raul, they say.
- Oh.
- I haven't seen her since I heard it. She used to come here.

Why Antigua?

I was asked why I of all places in the world have chosen a place the world takes no interest in.
That's why, I said. I just didn't know before you asked.

Driving with Edgar

I'm not sure I can manage to keep to the left as they do here in Antigua. So I've decided to drive with Edgar when the bus doesn't agree with where I'm going.
Edgar is a careful driver. It's very pleasant to sit at the backseat, sometimes in my own world, sometimes in his. In the frontwindow he has a little flag, green and yellow, for Dominca. What ever I see through the window, I see it together with the flag. I see mongooses, donkies, the bay, the hills, a child in a garden, perhaps its mother leaning against the balustrade.
- You won't regret it if you go there. Very lush. So green. Fruit trees everywhere. All kinds of fruit. Coconuts, bananas, mangos, lots of mangos.
We pass through the sunburned landscape, reach a village just outside English Harbour.
Cars are parked in both sides of the street, a crowd slowly enters the church, nicely dressed people, some have just arrived and kiss hello to the right and the left, others finish a cigarette just outside the entrance. The sun breaks through the cloudes.
- There will be a lot of drinking tonight, Edgar says.
- It's a wedding, right?
I lean to the side, hoping to get a glance of the bride. I once sneaked in at a wedding in Italy. It was one of the most touching weddings I've ever been to.
- No, it's a funeral. After the church they will meet somewhere and have a party. They will drink all night.

Not tonight

I've got a headache
I'm tired
I forgot to let in the dog
Or was it the cat
Or the bird I forgot
to let out
Not tonight, darling
You know how I swell up
Too much poetry
Too much too much
My head my feet my fingers
The empty bed
The disk, the words on the disk
Grasping my ankle my wrist
Tonight I will listen to the voice
Of a man whose voice I want
To grasp my ankle my wrist.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

The other day I saw Stalin's Cows by Sofi Oksanen described as a novel about bulimia. I'm reading the book at the moment, and I can't say it's a wrong description. But it reduces what the author just extended.
That's why I've always been uncomfortable when asked what my books are about. If I act like a normal person and answer the question, I betray my novel.
Next time I'm asked, I will act like a normal and call attention to Magritte that painted a pipe and told us that this is not at pipe. In many senses that's what literature is all about.

Ships and houses

Seen a lot of ugly houses.
The rich, ugly houses get easily vulgar, so eager to show how rich. Rich, ugly houses are somehow more ugly than poor, ugly houses. Different with ships. Even when excessively equipped a ship keeps her beauty. Being a skipper seems to be a more sensual way to be rich than parking a million dollar car in front of a castle.

The lady and the guide

We went for a walk, followed the shape of the island and ended at the old Fort Berkeley, once guarded the entrance to Nelson's Dockyard, now a good place to sense the wildness of a breeze from the Atlantic Ocean. It's a ten minutes walk from the harbour, no climbing, just a hill with a busy goat now and then. A lady with a singing man passed us on the way back. He wore a yellow t-shirt like guides sometimes do. He sang a little of Michael Jackson, answered a question, sang a little of Bob Marley.
- Funny place to bring a guide, I said to my son.
- Do you think she hired him?
- Well, I don't think he hired her, I said.
- Of course not.
He turned around and glanced at the couple, still a child, curiosity comes first.
- Maybe she didn't hire a guide. I think she hired a radio.

Overruled

Sometimes it's so nice to be overruled.
Even though I did the right and reasonable thing. Like I did when I packed my hand baggage and decided to put Homo Faber by Frisch in the bag because my copy is a paperback and weighs almost nothing. Plenty of space in the bag, very comfortable to carry, no marks in the shoulder. Untill I realized I had ten minutes to spend in Copenhagen Airport before boarding. I didn't run, I rather cruised. Took me seven minutes to load my bag with additional 900 pages from the airport bookstore.
In a funny way I felt more safe, heavy but safe.
After I had carried my extra weight and extra safety for many hours through transfer and endless corridors, I left the 900 pages on the plane and kept my Frisch novel. It's not easy to keep up with Homo Faber.
But still, sometimes it really is generous to be overruled.

Downsizing

I love my suitcase.
It's not particularly fancy, but recognizable, brown with turquoise zippers, soft shell, light. I love the whole idea of a suitcase: downsizing my needs to 20 kg. That's what I'm aloud to carry. No matter where I'm going and for how long.
I'm going for several months, to Caribbean, Antigua first. My needs? It has been a long day's discussion. Not easy to choose the books in danish. I won't be able to find any in that part of the world. So, I've decided to bring Johannes V. Jensen's Myter (Myths), awfully heavy, and Knausgaards Min kamp (My Struggle), pretty heavy, Max Frisch Homo Faber, suitable for hand baggage, I read it many years ago. And of course empty books for my own writings.

Hello moon

I don't remember the lull before the storm. Didn't expect a storm. It's gone now. Where to?
It's calm yet cold, very cold, the sky is full of stars and a fat, full moon. I don't remember the lull, I don't remember the storm, I don't have to remember the moon, I can see it. Don't have to touch it, it's all mine.

Facing the cash machine

Pin-code, password, enter, enter, enter. Come on, love, don't be sullen. I need access, to my life, it's not personal, it's my life, don't forget who decided the pin-code in the first place, you wouldn't know what to ask for, if I hadn't told you, December 06, I made certain accounts, and closed some, remember? It's a little embarrassing with the line behind me, a dog keeps sniffing at my legs, excited, proud? I might be a good catching, if you forgot about December 06, of course you haven't, no one ever will, there it is, your sigh! The little friendly sound I long for every time I need access to my life.

Permafrostlink

I run with the litter bag, I run back to the house from the dustbin, I give up the gas station, I hope the car will understand, I drive too fast, I slam the door shut, I almost cry when the firewood basket is empty again.

Weather report

Everybody talks about the wind and the cold, especially the wind. It tears the thoughts apart, I spend days calling them back. I've got this idea that my thoughts belong to me.

From my Moleskine

Birds in the old oak. Hundreds of them, twittering together, all at once, a frail sign of spring. How can I not look up from the frozen soil? I sing their song, calling for my wings.
Answer me! I hate to be shut out.

Doesn't matter. It's too cold outside anyway. Here in my cottage I've got my twitter.com...

Ten second prose

I came across a very young woman at Twitter, Katie Anderson, Atlanta, @kdidd. She has got a certain ability with words, that I don't meet very often.

During her mother's hospitalization:
"Lying on a couch, reading harry potter & eating a caramel apple lollipop. It's just like home, except for the elevators in the living room."

And another from today's twit:
"Babysitting today & the kids are playing doctor's office. They've had me sitting in the waiting room for 15 min."

Ten second essays

The poet James Richardson introduced, what he called Ten second essays in 2001. Now he is back with new ones. This is a nice cut:
"The reader lives faster than life, the writer lives slower."
It's from his "By the Numbers". I found it in Books of the Times. Thanks.
The concept is born for Twitter...so I'll copy this post right away. Maybe I should make it a #. And maybe I should hesitate a second. It's much harder than it looks to write a Ten second essay that makes the reader live faster than life.

Bookstore customer

I barely remember what it is like to enter a bookstore not being an author. It's only a vague feeling, almost too distant to catch. Every time I go to a bookstore I concentrate on it, trying to reveal this inside peal, I know of. I never took one of the books and slapped myself in the face with it. I took it in my hand, flicked through the pages, caught a sentence, dreamed of buying it.

From my Moleskine

Near Copenhagen feb 2011
Drove through the suburb, slowly passing from one red light to the next. I know all the streets and their names, pointed them out, silently of course, nothing to say about it, we were talking about other things, my eyes scanning the shops to find just one that I recognized. They had all changed since then. I expect them to change, still I had this little unspoken wish to find the ice-cream man, who at that time was a woman, and she received coins from children at all ages never smiling at any of us. Or the fishmonger in the tiny shop who sold salmon to those who had something to celebrate.
 - Look, I interrupted my friend eagerly. - There is BeeLee!
- Beewhat?
I pointed out a gloomy fashion shop where I've never been.

Once you go Twitter

...you will soon need a blog. I went Twitter about a week ago, I'm about to publish my first post, and it's really very public. Sending a novel or a column to your editor remains a secret between the two of you until a certain point. In a little while I get right to this point with no one to be secret with. That's the whole and generous idea, isn't it? 
I added Nicholas Kristof  to my Twitter Following list the other day and shortly after he wrote this tweet: "Count down to my 1 millionth Twitter follower." I looked at my 6 and I thought, well yes, when I published my first book, a collection of short stories twenty years ago, I was surrounded by people with great records and never since have I been in a more privileged position.
Welcome to my blog.