something very strange

is going on around here. maybe it's the heat.

1. i spent the greater part of my night looking up russian, bulgarian and norwegian poetry online. there is distrubingly little out there, or else i'm just inept with a search engine - i could barely find any of my favorites, which were the whole reason for this undertaking. however;

2. i read pretty much everything that i did find, along with the (mostly horrible) english translations available. this means i quite literally read hundreds of poems in three or four different languages over the last few hours. attention span deficit certainly doesn't live here... i don't know if i should be impressed or scared.

3. but wait, it gets worse.
there is one particular poem that not a single individual in norway, no matter how little s/he cares for literature, has managed to avoid exposure to in the public education system. it's got the sort of reputation that makes teenagers groan just to hear the title, of course. even the kind of teenagers that actually read. even the kind that actually read shakespeare.
now, i have not remotely brushed with this tidbit of national lore since i graduated high school. nor did i really have a reason to seek it out tonight. but:

4. i found it and i read it, all forty-odd stanzas in the original edit. it was awfully melodramatic and sentimental; i mean, it's never really been my style of writing or anything. and around the part where he confronts the english lord and his family, i realized i was crying; not just tearing up, either, full-on waterworks and sobbing and what the hell is that all about?!?

4.1. i didn't think i liked the poem that much - if at all.
4.2. i don't remember the last time a movie, a story or even a real life event made me bawl quite like that.

bullshit. bullshit!! nostalgia? homesickness? WHAT? have i completely lost my mind??

well, not that this helps make sense of what i'm talking about, but i did manage to dig up an english translation of the poem, if you're so inclined:
terje viken by henrik ibsen
(the very bottom one)
do not expect anything typically ibsen-esque - it was an "early effort" and is largely unrecognized as part of his ingenious output by everyone except norwegians. the translation, though, is actually surprisingly adequate if a little loose in content.

it's gotta be the heat, or the lack of a job. my sensibilities are clearly coming undone... what's next? am i unwittingly about to join the ranks of the secret converts? will i wear hemp belts and listen to weepy girly music? no, seriously i'm a little freaked right now.

ok then. it's been pointed

out to me that some of my old writing still exists out there on the three-double-ewes, and while i suppose i did know this in theory, in my self-configured reality old websites wear out like newspaper - the further down the list of google search results, the more yellowed and wrinkly and illegible... no? that's not how it works? damn, all these years of internetting, and still so much to learn.

the thing is, i'm not particularly proud of the shit i was writing then. some of it was all right, but most of it was self-indulgent, awkwardly facetious, and choke-full of so much pop lingo. gag me with a spoon! yeah, like that.

anyway, i forced myself to re-encounter 23-year-old me, and i can (with some amount of relief) report back that she's not all garbage. so, vintage moment! here's a little tidbit of nostalgia that i actually still appreciate, dated july 12th, 2004.


There are days when it's so much easier being warm than being cold.
There are days when I feel like a character from a book, by which I mean rather more real and well-composed than an actual human being: every single tiny imperfection makes sense; every blemish on my skin is deliberate and meaningful. A unique composition of flesh and mind, gritty and paradoxal, continuously invented. This is tragedy at times, but god, what a beautiful tragedy.

If only I knew what those moments - minutes, hours? - were made of, how to replicate them, how to wrap them neatly and present them to loved ones when the world seems threateningly non-sensical. The real tragedy, of course, is that we are all completely unequipped to alter other people, and only barely ourselves.

There are different days. There are days when I am a blank, a non-person, a random incident in a plotless story. Everything I am is entirely futile in the face of everything I am not. I am only words and words are only excuses.

Those days are every bit as subjective as the other kind. Only quite a bit more selfish, and a whole lot more cruel. Why do we do this to ourselves?

There are many kinds of days, many kinds of nights, many kinds of love. There is only one kind of people: the kind who have the capacity to feel happiness and pain beyond any power of reason. We all know this. We all are this.

I wanted to say something else, but I don't know what that was anymore. Take care of yourself, and I will take care of me, and maybe somewhere in the middle we can share ourselves with each other without falling apart in the attempt.


i wish i could remember what prompted this - though it could very well have been nothing. i guess i never did grow out of the capacity to wax melancholy for no particular reason. though i like to think that when i quit capital letters, i also cut down on the pretentious.

still, i like it - so sue me. there's a sweetness there i didn't know i had, and a vulnerability that i'm sure is genuine. maybe i'm just more introspective these days. or just honest about the right things.