Summer Break

This Blog has been on summer break for a while, mostly because I spend so much time outside and because there's been so much work. To cover the gap here's a few chunks from my summer literature:

'Salem's Lot' (Stephen King)

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. 

Killing Floor, Jack Reacher No.1 (Lee Child)

In the end, a government’s primary duty is to defend the value of its currency. 

Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment (Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks)

We have all had so little training in how to take true responsibility for our lives that we tend to slip into projection when the slightest stress occurs.

The Stand (Stephen King)

He stopped wanting to communicate, and when that happened the thinking process itself began to rust and disintegrate.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (Robert Louis Stevenson)

But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel (Neil Gaiman)

In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. 

Tripwire, Jack Reacher No.3 (Lee Child)

The whole point of drifting was happy passive acceptance of no alternatives.

Pictures from Norway

Sunset after takeoff in Cologne

The sun rises again over the North Sea

The house in Hoff, Lena

Late summer everywhere: Apple blossoms in June

View south

Nevelfjell east of Lillehammer, 1089metres

Looking south during ascent

On top, toward Jotunheimen

On top, toward Sweden

Strange cloud formation

There's still snow here in the middle of June

From the kitchen - the sun at 18 o'clock

The sun at 21 o'clock

Green, midnight

Anniversary

I cut this sculpture in the winter of 1999/2000 from furtree. At that time I was a volunteer for Action Reconiliation Sign for Peace e.V. During the last 13 years it sometimes stood outside, sometimes inside. It was grown over by bushes. Sometimes it's taken inside for winter, sometimes not. Birds shit on its head, it grows darker and more lively every year. It's good to meet old friends.

A hundred years ago today Norway accepted women's suffrage - women's right to vote. Norway passed the law as second country in Europe after Finnland. Congratulations!

Going North

I took a plane north, catching the sun after it'd set west of Cologne. I'll be back in a week and post more pictures of this fine little journey.

My Arms

My arms bleed dry
someone's punched a hole into their skin
and drop after drop I'm leaking red
 
I don't remember when it happened
- I just realized one day 

that my arms were bleeding
bleeding slowly, a thin string of blood
dripping down to the floor
 
I didn't do anything about it
I didn't have time, I was busy
- and I liked the red
 
Then I got used to it, to the bleeding
got used to all the paper towels needed
to keep the office clean
 
Gee. What a mess.
 
It's been going on for weeks now
my arms becoming paperdry
I thought my bones where thin
but they are much thinner really
- there's nothing left but skin and bone 
 
There's an anorexic girl in my neighbourhood
her arms look as thin as mine
but with me it's just the arms
the rest of my body looks the same
my face hasn't turned all puffy
as they do with people who don't eat right

(she works in my favourite burger joint
frying burgers all day
but never eating)
 
Sometimes I think:
why don't I stop the bleeding?

it should be very easy
shouldn't it?
but I'm so used to my arms bleeding
 
so used to the thin, the dry feeling
 
and I'm curious so see what's going to happen
I'm curious if that someone comes around again

and I'm sleepy...

Dubai Timelapse

I became a bit philosophical when I watched this video - as simple as it is in its polished beauty. It made me think about the relation between movement in space and time. The ships in the harbor for example. Their movements are almost invisible to us in real time - I like this movement a lot. 

Then I think about a question which has been on my mind for a while now: Where does nature end, where does nature begin? Lately I like to look at manmade worlds (such as cities) as if they were as much nature, as much wilderness as the deepest wood in Norway. Being someone who longs to be in nature more that I actually am, this thought is somewhat liberating.

And I'd love to have one of those cameras...

Thom Yorke - More Than a Meeting

A very nice example of how dance, music and film can meet. No need to say much else. Thom York's e.g. Radiohead's and Atoms-for-peace's music has always been closely linked to dance. Probably because the soul is moving.

Anyway. When I see this, I want to go the studio right away and start working

True Facts About Baby Echidnas

Picture Of The Day #52

Yellow and Green.

Pine Tree Bed

A small sideboard is still missing, but here's a first bunch of pictures:

Contact me, if you are interested

Picture Of The Day #51

Reaching arms into the sky

Nothing is a mistake

click to enlarge picture

I like John Cage very much. There is a joyfull, egofree openness about him and his lifelong working companion Merce Cunningham - and their relation to work, which keeps inspiring me. (Please read his books.)

This note was typed by Cage and put to the door of Cunningham's studio. There's a lot of good advise in there. When I teach, which I do not very often, I ask the students to stop thinking in terms of 'right' and 'wrong', because it usually results in a severe reduction of mental power and freedom. 

One of my teachers once said: "What's interesting to me, is when you make mistakes and how you deal with them." I would go even further and stop thinking about mistakes at all.

Another quite interesting thought which is everything but en vogue at the moment is "follow the leader". Sometimes I think that since individualism has become a common rule we forget to accept role models. We forget heavy respect as a basical everyday principle. Could that be a mistake?