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.