High School Passions - My Future is with the People (Excerpt 2)

The Västerberg Gymnasium had 900 students, three times as many as the Mälarblick school. It was housed in a large four-story brick building with a bright and airy atrium at the center. The principal was known as liberal, and reform minded. Carl, Mikael, Nisse, and I had opted for social science rather than natural sciences and we ended up in the same class.

It didn’t take long before we began to organize Marxist study circles and took over the school’s student council. A week or so later we went to see the principal to introduce the new leadership for the council. He smiled and asked us to take a seat. It was me, Carl, and Mikael since we had elected three chairmen. To have one chairperson was in our view old-fashioned and authoritarian, so Mikael had proposed, and the student council decided to elect three.

At first the principal must have thought we were joking, but he soon realized that we were serious. He took off his glasses and placed them on his desk. Then he leaned back and said after a long pause that he could only negotiate with one chairman, so if we wanted to have any more meetings, we had to elect one.

We realized that we wouldn’t get further this time, so we said that we would discuss the issue with the student council at its next meeting, which we did. The thing with three chairpersons were not a matter of principle, and the Chinese did after all only have one Chairman. 

A new school means new teachers, new friends, and — especially for us 16-year-old boys — new girls. We had our eyes open, in the classroom, in the corridors, during the breaks and in the school cafeteria. There were a couple of pretty girls in my class, and I was probably not the only boy dreaming of them, but it was as if the closeness neutralized our hormones. 

When we guys met during the breaks we talked about music and films and what we thought of different teachers. Some of us were interested in photography and compared cameras and photos that we had brought with us to show. Pelle had a Pentax ME Super, Olle had a Leica M2, and I had my Nikon F Photomic Tn.

Now and then we went to a friend’s party when their parents were away. We drank mellanöl, which had a higher alcohol content than lättöl, but it still took four or five 45 cl cans to get going. Once Carl and I had bought a half bottle of Silver Rum which we mixed with Coca Cola to make Cuba Libre drinks. We tried half rum and half Coca Cola which didn’t taste especially good, but we were quite drunk when we left to take the subway to the city, where we hoped to find girls.

Every other Friday or Saturday we went to discotheques in the city. Muggen was one of our favorites. It was housed in an underground vault in the Old Town and the beer was cheap, 5 kronor for half a liter of starköl (which had the highest alcohol content). The place was dark, smoky, cramped and the sound volume so loud that you could hardly talk indoors. If you had danced several songs with the same girl, you would lean forward and suggest that you go outside for a bit to talk.

The dance, yes. This was in the autumn of 1969 and hence a long time before John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever. We did the “shake” which meant that we shook our bodies to the music. It was entirely spontaneous, even more so as we often drank too much. When the clubs closed, we hurried to the subway station so that we didn’t miss the last train home, which usually left the T-Centralen around two thirty.

When we were not going to parties or discotheques, we went to meetings or protest marches, mostly Vietnam protests, but now and then there was some other oppressed group in need of our attention. We marched on behalf of the Black Panthers in the U.S., anti-fascists in Spain and Greece, as well as liberation fronts in Northern Ireland and Palestine. 

Our local VUF group met every other week at the home of some of the older members. The meetings were informal affairs, but there were also practical things like reporting the money we had received for papers we had sold or money we had collected. One person would be assigned the task of taking meeting notes which were later used to write a meeting protocol with a typewriter and duplicated with carbon paper since we did not have access to copying machines. Another person would be tasked to write a meeting invite with an agenda for the next meeting. When the discussions became really intensive and people started to interrupt each other, we used lists of people wanting to comment and gave those who were mentioned in a comment the right to respond. In this way we learned the basics of how to run an organization, something that would be useful later in life.

A problem with the informal and spontaneous character of our VUF group was that attendance varied both at the meetings and when we were out selling newspapers. We had discussed the lack of discipline several times, but to no avail, so we decided to have a meeting about the "organization issue." Nisse and I were assigned the task of giving a presentation and come up with a proposal for how to solve the problem.

We did as one did at the time. We consulted the books, and Lenin was the ultimate authority when it came to the revolutionary movement’s organization. We had visited Café Marx and the vpk bookstore a couple of weeks earlier and bought Lenin’s Selected Works in four volumes for just 20 kronor so we dove into his famous 1902 book What Is to Be Done? And it was obvious that he had wrestled with the same problem, because in the book he complained about the “…subservience to spontaneously developing forms of organization, failure to realize the narrowness and primitiveness of our organizational work, of our 'handicraft' methods in this most important sphere, failure to realize this, I say, is a veritable ailment from which our movement suffers.”

And that was exactly as we saw it. People didn’t understand ”our primary and imperative practical task to establish an organization of revolutionaries capable of lending energy, stability, and continuity to the political struggle.” In other words, we needed to turn our loosely knit group of amateurs to “a committee of professional revolutionaries, and it is immaterial whether a student or a worker is capable of becoming a professional revolutionary.”

Our proposal was to reorganize our group of twelve members so that it had a kernel of “professional revolutionaries” who would lead the work. The rest would become sympathizers. Our proposal was adopted, but only eight people attended the next meeting. 

In November 1969, one thousand dock workers in Gothenburg went on strike after two workers had been fired for “ignoring a foreman.” It was a spontaneous strike, which came one month after the social democratic minister of finance, Gunnar Sträng, had praised the Swedish industrial peace at Arosmässan, a major business conference. 

”There is no direct conflict of interests between society and business, but a factual observer must state that most of the so-called conflicts are made up. The good atmosphere that exists between the parties in the labor market indicates that things are not as bad as some would like to claim.” 

On December 9, 250 workers at the Svappavaara mine went on strike protesting their work conditions. Two days later, nearly 5,000 miners in nearby mines had joined them, and it didn’t take long before TV and newspapers reported from the striking worker’s meetings and the working conditions at the mines. For us revolutionaries, it was as if the Marxist theory had been confirmed by reality. The working class had risen, and we mobilized to support the strikers, who did not have access to the union’s strike funds since it was a “wild” strike. For the first time we felt that the people were with us as we stood outside Systembolaget shaking our collection boxes.

Sweden was not the same country when the strike concluded after 57 days. For us it was clear that class collaboration had been replaced by class struggle. But the great strike in the mines did not lead to any revolution why the countries revolutionaries returned to their texts in search for answers and scapegoats. We read the Marxist classics, followed analyses and debates in our newspapers, theoretical journals, and internal publications. It didn’t take long before our disagreements grew to battles between different lines of argument and factions.

This is how the argument could go when the great strike was debated: 

”From the fact that the spontaneous labor movement can create a bourgeois policy does not follow that the spontaneous labor movement in itself is bourgeois, does not follow that the miners’ strike was bourgeois in its character. However, it does show that if leftist political parties use the strike to pursue a trade-unionist policy, this is a bourgeois policy. The miners’ strike was an example of the workers class struggle against capital (spontaneous, unconscious class struggle) and it does benefit socialism since it was a new stage in the class struggle in Sweden.”  

We often visited the offices of vpk on Kungsgatan 84 where VUF:s leadership resided. Once when Carl, Nisse and I were there to help out printing and sorting a new issue of the Internal Bulletin we heard laughter from the corridor outside the room with the mimeograph machines. When we peaked out, we saw three leading comrades rummaging through the bookshelves along the wall. One comrade who held half a dozen books in his arms said that we could as well take what we like since the revisionists didn’t care for the Marxist classics.

In the spring of 1970 vpk evicted its youth organization from the party’s headquarters and VUF adopted a Maoist program during its congress in June and changed its name to MLK. A minority around Anders Carlberg soon left to start their own group under the name FK, while those loyal to the party began to resurrect its old youth organization KU. Carl sympathized with Carlberg and FK, but he pulled back from politics. Nisse and I sided with the majority, but the difference between MLK and KFML was no so small that we asked ourselves why we needed two organizations. 

The 1970 general election was held in September and KFML hoped to get over the 4-percent threshold that aimed to prevent the new unicameral parliament from becoming paralyzed by too many small parties. It was of course a paradox that a revolutionary organization with its roots in the extra parliamentary struggle participated in the election, but the strategy was to use the parliament as a tribune from which they could preach the revolutionary message. We joined a KFML propaganda team, distributed flyers and attended campaign meetings where the speakers attacked the established parties as “quintuples” serving the capitalists. 

The election result was depressing, mildly stated. KFML received 0.4 percent of the votes while vpk received 4.8 percent. It should have been a lesson, but we had no intention of giving up. 

* 

In one of the containers in my basement I found a box marked “Diaries.” The tape that had held it together had yellowed and offered little resistance when I opened it. The remnants of a rubber band lay on top of a thick stack of lined A4-papers on which I had written with a typewriter. It was now over thirty years since I shipped my thing to the US. 

I had bought a used Halda typewriter in the autumn of 1970 and begun to write in evenings and nights. I wrote when I felt like it, but only in my room since the typewriter weighed close to 33 pounds. 

* 

It may be hard for a younger reader to understand what it meant to write with a machine where the paper sits in front of a long rubbery roller which moves one step to the left every time you press a key on the keyboard. And when you have reached the end of a row, the roller is moved back and rolled upwards with the help of a metal return arm so that the paper is positioned for the next line.

The typewriter didn’t have a delete-key, leaving you with three options if you wanted to correct a typing mistake.

1. Move back the roller so that you could type over the text with an x or some other key before continuing to type.
2. Cover the mistake with a white corrections fluid, which you could write on once dry.
3. Put a new paper in the machine and start over. 

When I flipped through the first stack of papers I found crossed-over words and sentences on every other page, but with time my typing skills must have improved since the errors became fewer and fewer. 

* 

Sometimes when my new friend Pelle came to visit, I let him read what I had written the night before. He was progressive but not engaged politically. The interests we shared were photography, art, and girls. My political friends would hardly have been interested in my writing, since it was personal and often revealing. It was as if I was trying to carve out a private sphere in a time that had little time for such feelings. If I had ventured to share something I had written at a political meeting, a leading comrade would surely have suggested that I focus on the class struggle instead of navel gazing. 

I was full of revolutionary fire and raging hormones, but my writings also revealed a confused young man. Marx and Mao and Myrdal didn’t have much to say about how to win the one you love. And neither was the message coming out of the new pop culture. All you need is love, well okay, but how do you catch this butterfly? And what do you do if you are successful? That was stuff I had to learn on my own.

It’s easy to laugh at the whole thing now that time has passed, but at that time, this was bloody serious business. I saw myself on the barricades, but I was also a young man having a hard time concentrating on anything else than the girl I for some mysterious reason had fallen in love with. 

* 

November 15

I’m thinking of L. In fact, the whole thing is rather silly and shouldn’t be a topic for my pen. But the relationship (with L) resides in my head and heart. It tears, grinds, and gnaws. Get to the point! When I lie in my bed in the evening or at night, my thoughts find their way to L. My pulse speeds up, and I feel it in my heart. I think and become melancholic. At night I am in love. I can’t avoid it. My feelings are mad, crazy, and illogical. I reflect: “Well, I do like her, but I like lots of girls and boys. I love many girls. Her, her, and her and her! But L causes my heart to rush, to speed up. She makes me intoxicated. I know! It is stupid, irrational, and silly! Logically seen. But my love is not logical, rational, and clever. It is stupid, but it is!

This is of course not the case with my love for the people, for all peoples (which is rational and good). If that was the case, this would be interesting. But this concerns my individual love of one or a couple of people. Which makes the whole thing uninteresting, except for me and those concerned (involved).

It makes me horny to think of her. She attracts me. When I see her. When I talk to her. She has a boyfriend, and it’s not me. There lies (part of) my problem. I wish her luck. Well, if she is in love and therefore happy, should I try to change that (in my favor)? Don’t think so.

At the same time, I don’t want to be in love with her. My rational mind doesn’t want to. I reason logically during the day and then I don’t love her (I tell myself).

So: Love at night, reason at noon. However, no (physical) love.

That is also a problem! A contradiction.

Seen logically (i.e., in daylight) there is no reason why I should prefer her to other girls (I try to make myself believe). However, she exudes something, not sure what. Maybe sentimentality, impudence (in a positive way), sweetness, braveness, naiveté, spontaneity, wildness. Maybe all, or neither. Maybe something, not sure what. But her radiation burns like the sun in July. You can try to hide in the shade, but that only works momentarily, and when you step out in the sun again, you feel it even more. At night, I am in love, unhappily in love (it is obvious that she doesn’t love me.) During the day, I am rational and optimistic. The development is brilliant, positive everywhere (almost). Socialism is advancing over the whole world, in Sweden, in my school. The future is bright. This is independent of me, and my craziness.

Isn’t it great to be 17? Let’s hang ourselves!

She has occupied my brain by way of my heart! I am thinking and thinking, trying to correct myself, explain, convince, and master. But it doesn’t work. I am paralyzed by this internal contradiction. I want to yell: Leave me alone! Vanish from my consciousness! My love! Disappear and stay right here! My love! Yes, and no. Night and Day! 

November 18

I just returned home from a meeting when dad attacked me. It was eleven o’clock and both George and Per were asleep.

“Mom and I are worried about your future. Politics takes all your time,” dad said.

“My future is with the people and the revolution,” I answered.

We locked horns and the words hardened. I closed the door without saying good night and walked through the living room to the bathroom. I looked in the mirror and realized that I had to wash my hair. Clothes hung drying on a line over the bathtub. We don’t have a washing machine, so mom often washed clothes in the bathtub. I pushed the clothes to the side and turned on the shower after having laid in the tub to dampen the noise. Then I heard dad call out and walked through the hallway to the living room.

“Take a look at what you have done. Look at mom! Are you satisfied now?”

In my imagination I saw mom lying with her artery cut off, but she instead lay with her right arm covering her eyes crying unconsolably. I looked at her and tried to focus my mind. I returned to the living room, but dad blocked the door to the hallway.

“Do you understand now what this is about? You must stop with politics!”

“What? I can’t do anything about this. She thinks she can break me. What can I do about her being hysterical? I have the right to decide over my life!”

“You should not hang around with those useless gangs. You are just a child. You know nothing about life. How can you be so hard?”

“I know more about life than you think. And it’s not a useless gang – they are good people who work for the people. I’m not going to become a conformist. You can’t break me. I decide exactly what I want to do!”

“Don’t you think that you can break us!”

“You will never break me. And I don’t want to break you! You decide over your lives and I over mine!”

“You are only a child. You must obey your parents.”

“I’m not going to become a conformist. Like you! I am not going to give up. I have a different opinion than yours. I’m not an ass licker.”

“I’m not a conformist. I know what I want.”

“I take a stand against Wallenberg and company. I work for socialism.”

“Yes, but your future?”

“My future is with the people and socialism. We will overthrow the Wallenbergs. We will force them to work.”

“How?”

“He will work if he gets a gun barrel in his back!”

“Aha. Is that what you guys are planning to do? Shoot people!”

“I didn’t say people. I said Wallenberg. We will have him and the other exploiters work. Should you allow those who murders people go on undisturbed? No, we will stop them! Would it have been wrong to kill Hitler? No, he should have had a gun barrel in his back. He should have been shot!”

“I see. You have no will of your own. You will become one of those who blindly follows the will of the Party. If the Party wants it, you will kill us, your parents! You are in the hands of traitors. I don’t want my son to be registered by the secret service.”

“We will crush the secret service. We are for the people, but against Wallenberg and company. You are betraying the people.”

“The people? Those… You must think of your future too.”

“I do, but first I think of the people.” 

December 4

Now I am okay. I don’t love L anymore. Not even at night. Loves nobody and everybody.

I read a lot. Thinks. Ponders and reflects. Feel smashed, empty, and blue. But simultaneously glad, happy, optimistic, energetic, and terrible. Up and down. 

January 3, 1971

Looking for somebody to love. Reads every day (and night). Strindberg, Lenin, Brecht, Steinbeck, Fadejev, Delblanc and others. Trying to learn how to play the guitar. Listens a lot to music. Would like to get going with painting. Don’t feel like doing it. Angry about my laziness. (Is that why?) Don’t go out. Staying in my couch, reading. Listening. Is a bit grumpy (sometimes). Pelle is coming over on Monday. A very sympathetic guy.

Worried. Lethargic. Self-critical. Would like to withdraw for a while with a couple of friends. (To have a chance to develop.) But I know that, well, what????

A new year this is. So, what’s new? Don’t know. No big expectations. Will be a year of consolidation. What if one (i.e., me) was a … what? No idea. Maybe a partisan fighter. Sometimes I fell satisfied with myself. Worried about that. Dangerous tendency. Must be more self-critical. When I debate, I get excited, vague, interferes, interrupts, talk too much, overexplain etc. etc. Must fight this. Resolutely!

Says I now. Let’s see what happens during the next social science lesson! School starts. I become ambivalent (split between two wants). On the one hand I want to see my pals. On the other side study and homework. To do something that bears against me, that I distrust (i.e., the bourgeois school form.)

What should I become???

Revolutionary. Painter, photographer, author, film photographer, director.

WHAT???? 

January 21

The old man with the poodle is dying. I know that. Not doing anything.

He knows it. Offered med his nautical charts a week ago. I said that I don’t need them. 

February 8

I am stepping in the snow which crunches as I walk. An evening in February I breathe in the wintry night’s cold air. I see black pine trees, white birch trees, and a couple of oaks. The moon is almost full, and the snow lies spookily cold and grayish white. The trees cast their shadows on the snow. The moon and I tumble through space while the tree crowns grasp for the stars, for Orion and Cassiopeia. Nothing is heard but the regular “crunch, crunch, crunch” from my boots. A two-cylinder car breaks the silence, accelerates and disappears. I travel around the sun, with the moon, and we all towards the Swan and the Libra. Everything flows, everything moves. 

February 17

The old man with the poodle will make it a while more.

What a day! Had a hard time waking up. Tired. Slept little. Psychology. Then an optional subject, which meant that we skipped class and went to the café where we talked about music and politics. Arrived late to French class. Had a note so I skipped gym class. Took the subway to the drama class. Chatted. Bantered. Relaxation and concentration exercises. Improvisation to music. Got into a trance. Intense feeling. Friendly banter with Nisse. Tried to jump over him. DAMN IT! He got my knee on his nose. He is okay. I lost my feeling. Sound improvisations with tambourines. Rattle, rattle, rattle. No voice. Got mad, stopped. The end.

Pelle followed med home to checkout an old radio. Once home I found out that it was chucked. We had coffee. Chatted about girls and life. Beethoven’s sixth and Chopin’s waltzes. Took Shahzad for a walk. Called Nisse and Danne about the study circles.

Meeting in with propaganda team. A superhot broad was there. She had a Norwegian accent. Discussions (see the agenda for more.) Checks out the Norwegian. Meeting over. Walks with the Norwegian, she to the subway – me home. Turn on the TV. Japanese feature film. Gripping. Taking a bath. Writes this until 12:30 am. Fall asleep. No guitar practice today. 

March 9

Nothing new about life. Bought forty-two volumes of Jack London. Total cost 120 crowns. The antiquarian wanted 160. I offered 100. 

March 14

The old man with the poodle used to walk around the entire Västerberg when he took it for a walk. Now he only walks around the building. But he does walk. Because if he doesn’t walk, he dies (I think).

On another note, I am mad as hell! I woke up at 6.00. Turned on the radio to listen to the news. But this being Sunday, no news. Same thing at 9 and 10. We had a large meeting in Stensta at one and I had been tasked to give a speech about the left deviants at 3:30. I was a bit nervous, but the speech went well and received a heavy applause after. That made me happy. Nisse and I walked both there and back. Five kilometers each way.

We were then supposed to have a meeting in my study circle. Pelle didn’t know if he could make it, but it looked like he would. I had typed out the invitation and agenda in 10 copies (2x5 copies with carbon paper) and spent a couple of evening preparing the meeting. Kicki said last Friday that she couldn’t make it. The Sunday before only Pelle and Olle showed up, so we never had a meeting. This time we were supposed to study the dialectical materialism. The meeting was set to seven, but half an hour later I was still waiting alone. Nobody! It made me mad and depressed.

Cursed be the petit bourgeois intellectual lack of discipline! To hell with the circle! I smash my clenched fist into the wall! BAM!

I do have patience. But everything has its limits! On top of that, I must pass out flyers tomorrow morning between 6:00 and 8:00. On Tuesday we are going to put up posters sometimes between one and two in the morning. And next Monday we have a meeting in the other study circle, and then there is the propaganda team meeting on Tuesday after that. And I have 50 pages to study for a test in history class on Friday. 

March 26

I’m not afraid of dying, but I love life. Hence, I want to live before I die. If I die tomorrow doesn’t really matter. I will not suffer. But if I get to live, I can ideally do something for the people, for the masses.

Is the above true? Can I prove it? How would I act if I was tortured or threatened with torture? Would I sacrifice myself? Is my class-stand truly firm? Never forget that practice is superior to theory. 

March 29

I read the Call of the Wild in two ours. Superb!

Took Shahzad for an hour long walk today. Wonderful weather.

I walked down to the field by the old oaktree. Took photos. Ran out of film. Pity. The best photos were never taken. Amazing nature. The trees by the waterfront grow almost horizontally and bends down under the ice. They come back up again a couple of yards further out, twists like if in pain and shoots of some branches into the sky. They then turn back towards the ice. You can walk on the trees if you want to. That’s how slanted they grow. Thousands of different motives for my camera. And I ran out of film. The sun is shining. The snow is melting. From the hill runs a babbling brook. Fresh and lively. I will return the next day we have sunshine. With my camera, film (color and black and white) and maybe a film camera. (Pelle and I could do great work there.) My hatred for the monopoly capital which destroys this nature requires me to depict it, that I take a stand against the destroyers, the vandals. Pelle and I worked on the film on Saturday and Sunday. We work well as a team, as if we inspire each other. I enjoy creating.

March 30

I sit down in front of the typewriter because I am mad. Just read twenty-something pages of “social science”. What garbage. Flim-flam right through. It was about the “economic policy.” Just listen: “So far (is the capital planning to do away with this as you write ‘so far’?) the parties of the labor market have energetically (looks like the workers are resisting!) defended their right to reach agreements without interference by the state.” And hear this: “it is important that the parties feel their responsibility (against whom? Should the workers feel responsibility towards the capitalists who exploit them?) and not act in a way that goes against the economic-political aspirations,” i.e., the workers should “not act in a way that contradicts” the monopoly capitalists aspirations to exploit and plunder them. I wouldn’t mind this textbook if it was openly and honestly bourgeois. But this is bullshit under the guise of objectivity, written by bourgeois writers who don’t dare to openly stand for their cause. They hide their anti-worker opinions behind “scientific” sounding empty phrases and childish pretense, which is a thousand times more dangerous and falser than openly right-wing stuff. 

Listen to another example: “Hence, the wage policy presents many problems that are hard to resolve. Important socio-economic goals must not be overlooked. (This sentence is really revealing. Who can have a problem with this statement? Everybody must agree with it, for the simple reason that it bypasses the real problem, which is whose class’s ‘important’ economic-political goals can’t be overlooked. As it now reads, and in conjunction with the spirit of the entire book, an 'openly’ bourgeois writer would formulate it this way: The economic-political goals of the monopoly capital must not be overlooked. At the same time, reasonable (again: ‘for whom?’, reasonable for which class?) demands from both laborers and employers should be satisfied.”

The words work like a fog for these chatterboxes.

Besides, it is my opinion that capitalism should be destroyed. 

April 1

Our science teacher S can be described as a neurotic bachelor (about 50 years old.) Correctly dressed (according to the prevailing standard!), anti-septic (i.e., he doesn’t smell like a human being, but of shaving cream and deodorant) and neatly combed (except for the growing bald spot) he bypasses life. His total oblivion of himself puts him in a constant terror and fear of his students. He therefore protects himself by adopting an impeccable exterior. Always afraid and insecure, he responds to every question from the difficult students (50%) with a “counterattack.” If you smirk at him, he will respond with a tricky question (that he is sure you can’t answer!) And when you fail to answer, he attacks with one or several similar questions, only to deliver the fatal blow by hinting at your grades. 

 April 2

Maybe I was a bit mean to teacher S. He does after all belong to the people. (Objectively.) 

April 7

The doorbell rang about eleven o’clock. I opened and saw a lady around 40 and a giant baby around 20-25. He was at least 185 cm and probably weighed 85-90 kilos. She attacked me with a fake smile, which made me feel disgust. Her eyes opened wide when her facial muscles produced the smile. I felt a mix of nausea and empathy. After a minute or so of a meaningless flow of words, I understood that they wanted to save my soul. At first, I was going to shut the door, but her aggressiveness stunned me to a degree that I allowed her to keep going. And she did. They were out to “save my neighborhood” and hoped that I wanted to learn more about “the Lord” who leads and helps us poor humans in these turbulent times. “The Lord himself has shown us the solution, and for our sake he sent his Son to the Earth.”

I began to tire at her babbling about God & company why I told her that they were not likely to get anywhere with me, since I am an atheist and “not particularly religious.” Well, that took. She answered with her well-practiced plasticky smile, which distracted me from the “principled discussion” I had started. She politely sent her giant baby at me since I had withstood her more friendly approach. 

He was well read (at least when it comes to facts and statistics etc.) and attacked more “brutally” from another flank. He claimed that “modern researchers had discarded Darwin’s theory of evolution as being superstitious (!!!) and that man is not at all originating from a type of apes since there still are apes (!!!) and that the principle of biogenesis, which all researchers support, has proved that life can only grow out of life, which proves that man is not a product of evolution but created by God.” And so on. “God created the first human beings, which were Adam and Eve" (!!!)

As I had never thought adults really believed in the story of Adam and Eve, or that God created the Earth in seven days, I was taken by surprise and focused on the psychologies, failing to logically counter their childish ideas. When I said that life emanates from dead matter and continuously turns into dead matter, and that life can and has been created artificially, he said that this was entirely wrong and threw out the terrible (he thought) accusation that I was “hallucinating” and “ignorant.” What nerve! A person who believes in Adam and Eve and every word in the Bible accuses me of being far out.

During our discussion I now and then glanced at the lady who the entire time responded by turning on her “smile” as if to show how proud she was to have such driven savior as the giant baby as God’s servant and how deeply she wanted to see me too saved. At the end of our discussion, her smile became less secure and steady. It seemed that her facial muscles would have preferred to express disregard and maybe disgust at this unrepentant sinner. After an hour I closed the door and returned to reading Strindberg’s Swedish Destinies and Adventures. 

April 8

The weather sucks! I want to go out and shoot film! Long live socialism! Curious about 16 mm filming. Would be fun to go to Tanzania to do photography and filming. Long live nature! Long Live NLF! I painted a painting. A priest from the 16th century with a lascivious face. Or maybe rather reflecting a lascivious life. I keep practicing on my guitar. 

April 18

Yesterday was the last day of the Vietnam Week. Large demonstration, about 4,000. It rained a bit. There were seven or eight provocateurs from the “Democratic Alliance” at Hötorget. They stood on the sidewalk and waved their Saigon junta flags as we passed them. As usual we walked five in each line, or more correctly, in each row. There were 800 such rows. Those from the Alliance looked laughable and ridiculous with their Quisling buttons and traitor flags. I took two photos of them. Ran out of film. Damn it!

By the subway entrance opposite of the Concert House a drunk guy around 30 made a couple of attempts to attack an NLF-supporter who stood there with his collection box. He then turned towards the marchers. A steady guy in a yellow sweater with rolled up sleaves took care of the troublemaker by locking his arms behind his back. A guy in a silver-gray suit pulled out a stiletto that flashed when the blade unfolded. I didn’t see more since they disappeared down into the subway.

Soon after, at the intersection where the protest march turned into Drottninggatan from Kungsgatan, a man about 40 stepped out facing the demonstrators and began to sing an angry song in some language I didn’t recognize. He sang loudly and then burst out in a contemptuous laughter, turned around quickly, and walked away. When we reached Sergels Torg, it was crowded! People everywhere, and lots of flags and posters. The Red Star orchestra played anti-imperialist music and protesters chanted for the people of Stockholm to hear.

It was a nice feeling!

A comrade from the Vietnam solidarity groups spoke. Unfortunately, he was not a great speaker. Then a resolution was read, which we adopted with a roaring YES! Finally, we heard the names of the organizations that supported the protest. I don’t think I heard so many names read before. It must have been 30-40 organizations behind the march.

When I and Mikael left the subway train at Västerberg we met Emma and another girl (I don’t remember her name) who had been in the same car. They had seen the demonstration and were impressed. Emma and I talked about the protest march, the “Alliance” etc. while we walked up towards Västerberg’s square where we split. What a girl! She is awesome, and smart too. A sweet beauty. Wow!

In the evening there was a meeting and a party at Kent's place. We panted placards for the May 1st demonstration. A guy from the Vietnam solidarity movement brought an American deserter who had arrived in Sweden three days before.

P.O. and the deserter discussed in English and soon we all sat around talking to him. He told of his experiences in Laos and Thailand. We told him about Sweden and how we viewed the Vietnam war.

He said that his name was Dan and that he had been called up in 1966 and sent to Laos as a computer operator. At that time, he didn’t know much about the war and thought the U.S. was fighting for justice and peace. But in Laos he talked to regular people, poor and oppressed people, who told him about what the U.S. was doing and what they thought of the U.S. involvement. He started to ask questions and came to doubt what he was doing. The resulted in him being seen as dangerous and harassed by the military leadership. He was court martialed six times. But his record was impeccable, and they didn’t dare to convict him, so he got off. Finally, he was “reassigned” to the infantry! From being a computer operator! Then he deserted. For a while he lived in Vientiane, but was followed by agents, one of them a Swede who asked him if he knew of a certain deserter, that is himself. The Swede didn’t recognize him. He then left for Thailand where laid low for some time before he returned.

The CIA had stopped searching for him since they believed that he had left Indo China. This was in 1967. He then lived for four years in Laos, often starving, until CIA started to look for him again, which forced him to get a fake passport and flee to Sweden.

During the time in Laos, he worked among other things as an English teacher in a school for wealthy children and later worked on a rice farm. It made him physically strong, and he weighed 85 kilos, but contracted malaria, which broke him physically. His weight dropped to 54 kilos. Today he still weighs only 62 kilos.

Dan also told us about the war crimes the U.S. imperialists commit. Before the U.S. bombs an area they drop lots of tinfoil strips to confuse any radar systems. But they found a way to make these strips doubly useful by preparing them with nerve agents. If such a strip touches a person, they die. And it will not be a painless death!

Another important method is to keep the population away from any schooling or education. This situation does of course not apply to the liberated areas. Dan said that the peasants in many villages are so ignorant that they don’t even know that there are other countries outside Laos in case they know that Laos is a nation. Their vocabulary lacks words for politics, socialism, capitalism etc. What they do know about governance and “politics” are notions like land, peasant, landowner, police, king etc. Since journalists are not allowed into the country (except for Vientiane and a few “suitable areas”) the U.S: imperialists use Laos in the same way as Hitler used Spain during the Civil War in 1936. They “test” new weapons. (Which reminds me of something I read in today’s newspaper. As a result of the U.S. dropping poison and gas, children have been born without a mouth and others without eyes. I read a couple of days ago in the same paper that U.S. pilots are flying around, sometimes high from narcotics, in planes loaded with atom bombs. That is, U.S. has planes over Vietnam with nukes that can be dropped at any moment! Push the button Uncle Sam!)

Dan said that an important reason the US is interested in Laos is that the center of the opium trade is there, and it is protected by troops from Taiwan (Formosa)! To fight this, China may also have troops in Laos. He had not himself seen any Chinese soldier in Laos, but he had talked to people who claimed to have seen them. He also told us that a friend of his had been tasked to search for any massacres that one could blame on the guerilla. He is still out searching. Without any result to report! The massacres are the work of the U.S. Army. 

June 4

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything. But I have been doing and thinking a lot. Everything that I have been writing so far tells something about myself fragmentary and incompletely. It’s also untrue since I avoid an important side of myself. What I have told paints the picture of the active Johan Fredrik Videmark, a man with strong self-confidence. The other side is wavering and doubt, especially of myself. Doubt and self-confidence are two sides in the contradiction that forms JFV. The self-confidence is the dominating side, but my feelings of insecurity and doubt are strong and always present. I don’t fully trust anybody other than myself, which I doubt. The insecurity undermines my self-confidence which makes my behavior nervous, high-strung, and stressful. 

June 8

Today we had the final lesson with teacher S. He IS worthy of what I wrote before. We don’t have science class in the next grade, so this was his last lesson with us. He was mighty mad at our dismal result on his final (and of course incomprehensible!) test, which resulted in an average that he said was shameful and therefore didn’t want to share with us. For those who had bad results on the test he had booked a classroom where they would get a “second chance” to demonstrate their ability to prepare and structure the dihybrid separation in first and second generation. On Monday morning at 8:00 AM he stood there waiting, but nobody came, not even his most loyal sheep.

“Where is the collaborative spirit that is supposed to exist in the new school?”

He elaborated on how rotten and lazy we are (of course using bureaucratic language!) He made long pauses and posed questions to the class. The class was quiet during his entire moral lecture. We didn’t answer his questions. We said nothing! Some smirked. He did one more extended pause waiting for us to explain why we were not interested in his teaching. At the end of this pause, I gave a long sigh. The answer came swiftly.

“Yes, I would also like to sigh at your answer. How come that you are sitting, eh, quiet, eh, that nobody answers? Could it be that it happens that all those who could answer, eh, are absent?”

Still silence.

Eventually he gave up and changed tactics. He continued to go through the test which he began the previous lesson. Now he attacked systematically all those who had failed a particular question or part of the test. I raised my hand a couple of times and thereby avoided being asked. After this he flexed his muscles and stared down into his desk.

“Class dismissed!” 

June 10

On Friday, Pelle and I went to an outdoor party at Kärsön. There were 20-30 persons there. Nice people. Relaxed. Pelle brought his guitar. Two other guys had done the same. Two guys played on their transverse flutes, and one played on congas. It was a great evening. Will write more another day. Emma and a friend showed up later in the evening. We chatted for a bit. 

Wow, wow, what a girl. Bright and beautiful! 

July 7, 01:15 AM, Wednesday

I was drunk last night. I and Pelle had a talk last night. (He was also drunk.) I am in love with, have a crush on Emma. From this day I will try to strangle my love for her. Friendship—not love. I fell apart yesterday. 

18:15

My stomach, chest, and heart have been aching from when I woke up until five pm when I last spoke to Pelle. After that the pain gradually subsided. At lunchtime, I sat absolutely still for long periods of time with every muscle in my body completely relaxed. Only my eyes moved sometimes, changing focus now and then. I felt physically and psychologically exhausted. My eyes were wet, but I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) cry. I tried to exterminate and forget about my love for Emma. It didn’t work. I’m sure this sounds confused. Time has not yet given me any perspective on the past 48 hours. I don’t think it’s possible to describe them now, but I still must untangle it all.

I finally managed to get in touch with Pelle on Monday night. I had tried to call him on Saturday right after we returned from Mallorca and on Monday morning. On Sunday morning I called Emma and we decided to meet at Mälarbadet. There were a lot of people there and I couldn’t find her or her friends why I laid down on a spot where I previously had met her friends Mona and Louise.

There I lay for a couple of hours hoping to spot them. Then I walked up to the cafeteria, secondly to buy an ice cream, and primarily to find Emma. It was Mona who sold ice cream! I joined the line. Suddenly somebody called out “Johan!” It was she.

After Mona cleverly had treated me and Emma to ice cream by having me pay and passing the money to Emma as change, I moved my stuff over to their spot, where Sten and two more people sat. Emma wore a white bikini and since she works daytime she was almost as white as the bikini. She is small but has a perfectly proportioned body. She, Sten, and I swam for a while. Later I joined Mona for another dip, she with her clothes on. She’s cool!

We split up at five and everybody went home. 

Later I met Carl, Nisse, and Pelle at the Västerberg subway station. We took the train to the city where we joined 2,300 others marching to the US Embassy. 

July 8, Thursday

I called Pelle on Monday and asked him over. Per and I was alone home since Georg had left for Gothenburg with his new girlfriend and our parents were at the country home. Per suggested that we have a party on Tuesday night. I said that I could try to get in touch with Emma and a couple of others.

Pelle called me Tuesday morning and we met in Stenstad before noon. He bought a pair of Manchester jeans and then we set off for Systembolaget to buy wine. He waited outside while I stepped in (quite nervous since I had failed three times before in that place.) There were not a lot of customers in the store. Lots of drink. Shelf after shelf. Three middle-aged ladies, each behind her cash register. I joined the line to the left behind a man who was shopping. The lady in the middle looked at me with a sour face. I was scared. Her register opened-up, so I walked over to hers, and ordered three Beaujolais and three Rioja Tinto. She took out three Beaujolais and asked to see my ID. I fumbled with my wallet, but no, I must have taken the wrong wallet since I was on the way to the beach (where the Hell did that idea come from???), so I didn’t have my ID with me. What a pity! I probably looked like I had peed in my pants or something like that. But she was clever.

“When are you born?”

“I’m 23,” I said.

“What’s your birth date?”

“November twenty-first.”

“What year?”

I became paralyzed and tried to figure out the correct year quickly, but my brain went on strike!

“50”, I said, but when I heard my voice, I realized that it was wrong.

“50???”, she said.

“51”, I tried again, my idiot. She looked triumphantly at me as I took one more chance.

“No, I meant 52,” I said.

She took the bottles with both hands and put them back while delivering the final blow.

“That didn’t work.”

Mad at myself I went to meet Pelle at the subway station, but we didn’t give up and took the train to Mälargård where I bought six bottles from a guy who looked like he was barely 20. It worked out even though I was nervous after my embarrassing failure fifteen minutes earlier.

I had called Emma in the morning, but nobody answered. I knew that she worked in a store on the way down to the beach, so Pelle and I stopped in, and there she was, sitting behind the cash register. We talked for a long time about a lot of things. She said that she unfortunately could not come to our party since she was going to see Elton John at Gröna Lund, but that she would love to come another day. Maybe tomorrow night?

“My parents are not coming back until Sunday, we are having an open house every night,” I said.

She said that she could come alone on Thursday. We kept talking until a quarter to two, when we remembered that we had told Nisse to meet us at the beach at one. We said bye and kept walking towards the beach.

As I was happy! Emma would come!

It was cold at the beach. We had coffee, threw rock-hard French breads at each other, and shared the rest with the ducks. We left after a couple of hours. Pelle had to go home to peel potatoes. He said that he would come over to my place about eight. He first tried to call Carl and Mikael, but nobody answered. I tried later, but with the same result.

Per expected four people at the most and I two at the most. Well, man. Big party tonight!

Finally, we were all there. Per, his girlfriend Eva-Karin, Nisse, Pelle, and me. Pelle had brought his guitar. We went up to Dad’s studio to play music. He tried to teach me a few blues chords. We toasted and felt happy.

Having jammed for an hour and getting rather excited (note how the form is lying!) we began to argue (I don’t remember how) whether we should take a trip to Gotland or Åland. My memory from the rest of the evening is however fragmentary. What happened was that I finished my bottle of wine and Pelle finished his plus another half. The argumentation about the trip turned into a discussion about our friendship. The wine loosened our tongues, and we became more and open towards each other. Pelle had the upper hand since he had had most to drink. 

A GIRL THAT IS

TO LOVE A GIRL

EMMA 

Where does she fit in this coming autumn?

Does she even WANT TO be part of it?

I have neither time nor energy to be in love! It only complicates things. She probably doesn’t (why don’t I write surely?) love me. But I still love her. Maybe there is a tiny chance that she loves me or will be able to love me. There’s my moon! Don’t I control my own feelings?

Why do I then love her?

STUPID QUESTION! Because she is she. The wonderful beauty.

I must come to my senses.

Look out for illusions!

 

July 24, Saturday

Nothing from England. Nothing. NOT even a line. Sad.

Sold newspapers today. It’s been five weeks since the last time. Not good. Counterrevolution in Jordan, Morocco, Turkey, etc., BUT revolution is the mainstream in today’s world. Marx holds up. Mao too.

And I am in love.

Note that I handled the global situation in a couple of lines, but how many lines have I not written about my individual cascades of emotions. I am but a tiny fraction of mankind, one in four billion. However, I do write more about one side of this fraction than about the world, because I am sure of the social laws of development, but insecure when it comes to feelings, (IT’S ABOUT EMMA.)

I am not glad to be in love. She doesn’t love me. Still, I love her. Once more, my mind is conquered, sieged, occupied. By way of the heart. Every day, every hour. Worry. Not knowing. Pessimism. I fall apart. Dissolved by the contradictions. I need to draw and paint, but I can’t concentrate long enough to do it. It’s Emma. I feel her physically, in my heart and my chest.

I am a pressure cooker. It’s about her who doesn’t love me who loves. (How do I know that she doesn’t?) Nothing from England. Did she get my card from Mallorca? Why didn’t she say so? Uneven odds.

I become ridiculous. It’s about Emma. 

Twenty past nine, a long and skinny guy around thirty-five came up to the newspaper kiosk where I work. He wanted to use the phone to call for a taxi. After having called another short phone call, he left the phone booth and bought a soda. He stood next to the window waiting for the taxi. After a couple of minutes, he looked at me and said:

“One is worth so little, right?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, as I could hardly hear what he said.

His faced twisted suddenly and he was just about to start crying when another customer approached. He barely managed to bring himself together.

“I’m going to go to the machine room in my building and hang myself,” he said before the other guy arrived to buy his cigarettes.

Before I had a chance to say anything, the taxi arrived, and he walked over to meet it.

“Bye! You’re a friend! Bye!” he called out to me as he opened the door to the taxi. 

July 27

Got home from work at two pm. Locked up. Off with the shoes. Up the stairs. Through the living room and Per’s room to the hallway. On the floor is a postcard in front of the mail slot. What if it is….

The card was from my French pen pal Alain who is now in the US.

I took out the old man’s dog between nine and nine forty. Had tea. Practiced on the guitar. Washed up and went up to the studio. I was just about to climb the ladder up to my loft bed when I heard a couple of guys talking in the street below.

“Berra and I were on the run for several years and stole cars.”

I turned off the lights and peaked out. It was three kids about 15 to 20 years old. They each had a bicycle and were on the way to Kohlbergsgatan. There seems to have been a problem with the bikes, as they stopped, and I heard sound of metal.

“Now, let’s go to get the crowbar,” one of them said.

From below, coming out from the entrance valve to the courtyard came a lady who lives there. She walked fast and quiet to catch up with the boys, but they spotted her and started moving.

“DAMN KIDS, LEAVE MY BIKE ALONE,” she yelled and started to run.

They got away. A VW beetle came in from the left. She hailed it and called out:

“They stole my bike. You must help me and follow them”

The people in the car didn’t immediately understand what was going on, so she had to explain again. Then she jumped into the back seat and the car sped off. It was quiet again. I was thinking. After five minutes, the car returned. The lady stepped out of the car and walked home, without her bike. 

July 28

SELF-PITY BE DAMNED!

It won’t do walking around feeling blue every minute of the day. What good does it do to write a lot of sentimental bullshit that is nothing but self-pity. Crazy and petit bourgeois! I love her. She doesn’t love me. Should I try to make her love me? Considering what I need to do, the question is: Do I have time to throw myself into a relatively steady relationship with a girl, even if she is so lovely? It wouldn’t be fair to her since I would only be able to pay her attention half-heartedly. Is that true?

What is love? What is it to love a girl?

What is the difference between to like and to love?

Why do I write this?

Pelle, Nisse, my brother Per and I had decided to take a trip to Gotland and bike around for a couple of days. On Wednesday before we left, Emma asked if it would be a party at my place that night. She looked into my eyes and my legs turned to spaghetti. As I then thought that Pelle also loved her, I said:

“Well, I’m not sure. It looks like it won’t happen. We’ll see.”

What if it then had been possible to ask her over. 

July 29

Besides, I do read a bit too (way too little!). Jack London: South Sea Tales, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, The Jacket, and I’m about to read The Road. Also, Strindberg’s Inferno, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Balzac’s Droll Stories, Mark Lane’s Conversations with Americans, and Marxist Forum. That was a nice brag, or what ??! To tell the truth, I only manage to read 20-30 pages in a day. 

July 30

Today it is twenty-three days since the last time I saw her. 23 days of not knowing at all. 23 of longing. 23 of worrying. The more I think of her, the more I doubt. And worse of all. I doubt my love. Is it true? (What is true love?) Was it true? (Don’t I love anymore?) I have almost forgotten what she looks like. Which of course could mean that I primarily love the person and not the sex, her breasts, her body etc. But don’t think for a moment that I defend bourgeois moralists and puritans. Hell no!!! I am horny. I am hot for her! She is enormously beautiful, pretty, nice, innocent (what the hell did I write now?!), attractive (not in any vulgar sense). I love. I want to love. I want to make love to Emma.

CALM DOWN, Johan!! You are getting out of hand! As I said. I am starting to forget. Forget it, man! I loved L. I forgot L. Why? I was probably more horny than in love with L.

Eventually I saw through her. What is there to see through when it comes to Emma? I can’t imagine anything. As I said. Forgetting. Maybe it would be for the best if I forgot. (But HOW??????)

It would be best for her. For me. For everything. Is that true?

Where is Emma? Is she okay? When will she return home? Why no card?

Would I run after her if I saw her on a street tomorrow?

WHO IS EMMA? I don’t know her, and she doesn’t know me. We’ve met. We’ve talked. We don’t dislike each other. Is she tough? Experienced? Self-confident? Do I harbor an illusion? A figment of my imagination? 

August 4

After dinner I went up to Mr. Larsson to take his dog Ludde for a walk. Note, that I initially wrote “the old man with the poodle.” Today he is no abstract “old man” to me. He is the human being, the old man, Mr. Larsson.

When I rang the doorbell, Ludde began to bark as usual. It took some time before Larsson came to the door. I heard how he leaned one of his walking sticks against the radiator to open the door with the freed-up hand.

“Hi, I was thinking of taking Ludde for a walk.”

“Yes, that would be nice,” he said and took the leach and put it around the neck of the dog.

I don’t remember how, but we came to talk about arctic dogs and then also about Jack London. He said that he had read a couple of books by him and several other tales, some of them from the arctic areas. He had a pair of friends who traveled to the US in 1917 and then continued north to look for gold. They traveled far north in the northern territories, but they were too late to succeed. They started to hunt large animals instead and this was very profitable, but the desolate north took its tribute. They turned inwards and never wrote to their friends or relatives. When a Swede met them a few years ago, all they said was:

“Say hello to the folks at home.”

We also talked about Maxim Gorky and the old Russia. Mr. Larsson (I write Mr. as I don’t know his first name) had Gorky’s Collected Works, some twenty volumes.

“You do understand that there was a need for a revolution the way things were,” he said.

Currently he was reading Churchill’s memoirs.

We stood there talking for half an hour before I took Ludde for a walk.

I took the usual route down to the park, past the daycare center, the soccer fields, under the bridge on the left side of the school, under Trastvägen and towards Västerberg’s hospital, turned left about a hundred yards before reaching its gates, and then followed the asphalt covered path that leads through the forest. To the right of the path, there was a slope rising. After several hundred yards, I followed the exposed primeval rock which led me down towards Lake Mälaren. The rock is exposed here and there by the sparse pine forest. I followed the path down towards the lake and continued along the waterfront until a place where the land forms a small peninsula. I continued out on a meadow bordered by an oak grove.

I had just passed Trastvägen on the way back when Ludde started to act up. After a while I bent down to check out what was going on, and it turned out that a twig had gotten stuck in his right front leg, and that it would not come off easily. When I tried to pull it out, he growled. I tried to calm him, but he kept growling angrily when I pulled at the twig. I watched his eyes, talked to him, and felt with my hand to see where it was stuck. It may have penetrated his skin. I tried to pull it out quickly, but no. The twig was entrenched and Ludde growled as a warning. Once I discovered that it was only wrapped into his fur, I managed to coax it lose. Ludde was clearly relieved. I could see it in his eyes and behavior that he now completely accepted me. And off we went. I thought of girls, one in particular, which I usually do when I walk alone (except for the dog.)

I unlocked the front door and walked Ludde up. Mr. Larsson’s door was slightly open. He had heard us coming.

“Are you doing anything at the moment?”

“No, nothing particular.”

“Then you may enter so that we can talk a bit.”

I entered the hallway. He walked ahead into his bedroom. I leaned towards the door frame with my left hand, took off my shoes and pulled back my big toe that stuck out through a large hole in the right sock. I stepped into the kitchen and through the door to the right into his bedroom.

“It’s warm inside,” he said once he had entered the room and I had said that it was nice outside.

He turned towards the door, leaned forward, and looked at a small thermometer sitting by the left door frame.

“It’s twenty-seven degrees.”

When I had entered, I saw to the left a shelf full of binders with stamps. Blueish grey, well-kept A4-binders. Asia, Russia, Sweden, America, Albania, Yugoslavia, etc.

“These are my stamps. Do you collect stamps?”

“No. I know some people who collects, but I have never done it.”

“Other ways I could have given you some of my doubles. I have seven binders with doubles. There was a girl here from Persgatan the other day and she got quite a few.”

I took out one binder with Yugoslav and Albanian stamps. Colorful and beautiful. The Albanian stamps featured Stalin and Dimitrov.

He showed me a shilling banco which he said was very valuable.

He asked me to sit down on a chair and took out a pipe from his pipe rack, lit it and slowly sat down on his bed. He had put aside his walking sticks. There he sat with his grey pants raised, his blueish grey shirt, and his broad, furrowed face, talking with a calm and clear bass voice. On top of his large straight nose with its broad, somewhat spongy tip rests his old glasses behind which one can see his vital and experienced eyes. His hair shifts from grey to white. On his arms I saw a hint of tattoos that witness of the sailor.

Then he started to talk about his childhood.

He began working as an iron works stoker when he was eight years old. It was outside Södertälje. He worked twelve-hour shifts every day with no break. They shoveled in their food during short breaks in the work process. He worked from 7 am to 7 pm, while his dad worked 7 pm to 7 am. Every day. He earned 9 öre per hour. His father 11.

The workers went on strike a couple of years later. One of the workers had been fired after hitting a foreman that harassed him. Now, everybody was fired and blacklisted. Larsson tried to get a new job, but his name was still on the list, so he became a seaman and sailed for 4,5 years, stopping only once in Sweden during that time. When he came back it was still impossible to get a job. He spent another 5,5 years on the sea, sailing with various civilian ships. He sailed around Africa to Asia. His boat lay in Singapore when World War I erupted. After eleven years at sea, he was on his way in to Södertälje when a small motorboat with a couple of military men approached the ship. He was conscripted to military service and came to spend another ten years at sea, this time with the navy.

He was a communist in 1908 and remembered Hinke Berggren and Kata Dahlström.

“I still vote with the communists,” he said.

“But the left party (communists) has gone soft,” I said.

“Yes, that is probably true. They have degenerated a lot. I am of course too old for that, but I am still interested. I have always been, but the political left is so divided today.” 

August 8, Sunday

I rode around on my moped feeling the joy of speed. Occasionally I closed my eyes for a few seconds as if to challenge my “destiny.” As usual, I picked a route that passed Emma’s house. It looked empty. If I only knew where she was and how she feels? Just to see her. But nothing.

Took Ludde for a walk just before noon. Felt the mild rain. The wind was cold and unpleasant. I walked down to the park, followed the walk path to the right between the light blue kindergarten and the artificial pond. Passed by the soccer fields, continued under the overpass to the left of another kindergarten (which had a small shed on which the children had been allowed to paint, peace signs, football clubs etc.) and past Västerberg’s school for grades one through six. Then up towards the Västerberg Square. Ludde peed at every bush, branch, or lamp post, all in all fifteen times in the fifteen minutes I walked him.

Not far from the school stands three high rises. From one of them I could hear a lady yelling in a high-pitched voice. I stop, continue slowly, listening, since I heard her scream at a man from the street about half a year ago. It was quite an experience (tragicomic).

“TAKE YOUR CLUMSY HANDS OFF ME! YOU PRETENTIOUS OLD COW!”    

It was quiet for a bit, then she came back:

“TAKE YOUR CLUMSY OLD HANDS OFF MY… BELONGINGS.”

“TAKE YOUR CLUMSY HANDS OFF ME OR I WILL SMACK YOU WITH THIS BROOM, YOU OLD PIG!”

“LEAVE ME ALONE! THAT IS AN ARBITRARY PROCEDURE! NOW I WILL SMACK YOU WITH THIS BROOM!”

I heard a sound which may have meant that she did hit him, but to no avail, since she soon started to scream again.

Peace on earth? For better or worse. 

I read in Aftonbladet that Västerberg is one of the two areas in Stockholm which socially is at the bottom. Here you find the largest percentage of people on welfare. The Västerberg subway station had the third most instances of trouble and police interventions in Stockholm. Only T-Centralen and Hötorget came before. Our local suburban paper reported the other week that people were selling liquor to underage youth outside Systembolaget. There is also a busy trade in illegal drugs. Stolen cameras, radios, and watches are also sold. We have a relatively large lumpenproletariat in Västerberg.

Last week Mom told me that there had been a fight at a family not far from us. A daughter had reportedly become furious, yelled, and broke things. A neighbor stood on his balcony complaining loudly. The daughter accused the father for having ignored her and having tried to strangle her when she was thirteen. After a while a police car arrived with two cops, and a civilian policeman. They took the father with them when they left. Yet another couple of weeks before, I met a guy who asked me something as I was about to park my moped. He was a little dizzy and at first, I didn’t understand what he was saying. He said that he had walked by and stopped when he heard cries and calls from the courtyard. It was according to him a man and a woman who fought bad. He wondered if I knew what was going on, which I didn’t and still don’t. 

August 10

Today it’s thirty-three days since I saw her. The big fire has subsided. But prairie still smolders and one gust of wind can set it ablaze. After thirty-three days I have started to “forget” I was about to write, but I haven’t forgotten anything. The fire was put out by lack of oxygen.

I made a pen-and-ink drawing last week. I depicted a man in front of a whitewashed wall. He was tortured and had his hands tied behind his back. Execution.

The wheels start turning. The machinery begins to move.

Time to get rid of unnecessary luggage??

It’s now twelve days until school starts. Twelve of work. 

August 18

I fetched Ludde and followed Pelle to the subway station. Then I continued along the usual route. When I dropped off Ludde, Mr. Larsson asked if I had read anything by Gorky.

“Yes, I’ve read a couple of his books,” I answered.

“I thought it was his books that I had lent to this guy in Stenstad, but it was Lenin’s collected works. I only have twelve volumes by Gorky, but I thought that you could have them if you would like to.”

I was stunned and didn’t know what to say, which I told him. He walked over to his bookcase in the living room and fetched the twelve bound volumes, plus a book by the Russian F. Panferov published by Arbetarkultur 1933 and printed in Leningrad. Brusski – a novel about the breakthrough of collectivization.

We talked for a bit and then I went home to sleep. This morning, when I when I visited him to take Ludde for a walk, I brought the latest issue of the Red Flag. While I was out walking with Ludde he had a chance to read a couple of articles.

“It seems to be a very good newspaper. It's honest and straightforward. I only read a few things, but it seems good.”

We continued to talk about the global situation, the Dollar crisis, Vietnam, and the international revolutionary movement.

“The age of capital is coming to its end,” I said. “People are rising up everywhere. The imperialists have taken quite a beating in Vietnam. That is one reason for the crisis. The US is on the ropes, and now Japan is becoming dangerous. The Chinese always warn us about the Japanese militarization. But people are rebelling and protesting. There is a strong anti-militarist movement in Japan.”

“Yes, the fault is in the leadership. People want peace. I don’t think it will happen under my time, but I believe, or rather, I know, for I am sure about that, people all over the world will rise and liberate themselves. That is clear. Revolution is happening all over the Earth,” he said. 

August 26

And then she reentered the image. But I will manage this time. Vi had school start on Tuesday. The principal spoke. We met our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Anna Andersson, picked up our writing material and then continued to Konditori Väster for coffee. Klas, Mikael and Ola at one table. Me, Olle, and Nisse around the table next to theirs. We were chatting about a lot of different things, but mostly about photography and cameras. I had been thinking of selling my Nikon to buy a Pentax with some new lenses. I was sitting and talking to Olle and didn’t see her coming in.

“Hello Johan,” she burst out.

“Hello,” I said in a muted voice.

“How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m okay,” I said as I put my left hand behind my neck and sloped down with my elbow on the table.

“You know, I didn’t send a card, because you see, I forgot to bring your address.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

It went so fast that I never had a chance to think through the situation. (What would I need to do that?)

In the next moment she sat down in the other end of the café and began talking to her friends. As for me, I felt a sting in my heart, but the fire was under control, and... Night and Day. To an extent. 

August 27

School has started. You meet your classmates, friends and hang out. But everybody is cold towards each other even if you are friends and like each other. You communicate with phrases, surfaces, and superficialities. Never a friendly embrace. People don’t touch each other in Sweden, because they compare each other, compete, stress, and are afraid. They are oppressed, their emotional life is compressed, deformed, hurt, suppressed, neuroticized (maybe even somewhat perverted?). One is cautious, measured, restricted, calculating and uniform when socializing. Most, maybe all, have feelings and would like to express them, but can’t. They are held back by school and society, and a culture that doesn't allow them to be open, natural, and warm. 

August 28

I’ve just been taking a 40-minute walk with Ludde. There was a slight drizzle outside. When I came back and passed through the valve under our apartment, the rain picked up quite a bit. I noticed the first drop when it landed on my cheekbone. It woke me up from my dreams, fantasies, and reflections. I came to think of why I so enjoy wandering in the forest after dark. Why I don’t like to meet people during my walks and why I almost never walk entirely alone, but always bring with me Shahzad, or as currently, Ludde.

I’m alone when I walk. I’m only enclosed by the ground, the trees, the heaven, and the stars. The human beings are far away, behind their blinds, curtains or the black holes that suggest a window. I can enjoy nature undisturbed. I can think, grimace, fantasize, dictate, be sad or happy. No one is watching me. My facial muscles can rest when I don’t use them to make faces. When I walk alone in the forest, it’s like the alienation and loneliness of capitalism is made concrete. Its inhumanity appears with sevenfold strength. Sometimes it is nice, maybe necessary, to have a chance to be left alone. I want to walk by myself and ponder on various things. To be only yourself. I bring the dog partially as an excuse (a cause, a motivation for going out), partially as a matter of safety. You feel safer when you are accompanied by a dog, even if one has nothing more to fear more than maybe a bat. At the same time, it’s practical, since the dogs needs to get out under all circumstances. 

September 1

As the family’s economic situation becomes harder and above all mor insecure, all contradictions within it are sharpened. The words become harder. The dissolution grows. The situation becomes impossible and unbearable. Everybody in the family is well-meaning. It’s not about personal characteristics, but it is fundamentally material things that creates all tensions. Every sharp discussion, every fight and yelling, are caused by economic insecurity and deterioration. The personal characteristics give the discussions and controversies their sharpness. For me it is becoming harder to bear. I withdraw to my room and only come out to eat or maybe watch TV. The books, the guitar, the typewriter, and my thoughts are my only real company.

At the drama class we talked about the need to become more relaxed and harmonic as individuals. That’s easy to say unless you are living under stress, in a tragic battlefield, where lives are at stake. Dad is 60 and has a weak heart. Mr. Larsson doesn’t have much time left. His life depends partially on me. I spent two weeks on Mallorca this summer. During the second week I was almost completely relaxed. What’s left of that?

It’s good to have a friend, a true friend, a reliable friend. Still, there is much to learn. Without a shared class stand, our friendship would have been impossible.

I have a terribly strong need for a girl. A girl’s sweet caresses, hot kisses, and warm hugs. A girl’s manner and way of thinking. It’s both a sexual and a psychological need.

“Need” – is that just another word for wish? 

September 3

And then there was another wind gust. Suddenly, during the second 20-minute break she was in the school yard. She was on the way to Mona and Lotta. She had a dark, burgundy “hippie”-looking blouse and dark pants. Other ways she was the same (by her looks that is.) Something happened to me when I spotted her. I turned soft and nervous, as if I was a shoplifter caught in the act. I avoided looking in her direction and tried to focus on something else. Nisse must have reconned what was happening because he looked at me and smirked. I don’t think she saw me. If I had met her and talked to her, I would have been lost again. I knew that and withdrew. When the bell rang, I hurried into the classroom.

Nobody called “FIRE.” But the spark had lit the fire. And I became somber. And I still am. Isn’t it so that a toy is never as fine as before you get it? Maybe my imagination has tricked me and build a castle in the sky. 

September 13

Got a cold. Fever on Friday and Saturday. Yuck!

I talked a bit with Mr. Larsson today. He is getting worse. He was recently at the hospital for his gallbladder and hip joints. He wanted to have hip surgery to make it easier to walk. He also wanted to do something about his angina pectoris. They looked at the X-rays and told him that he is too old!

Pelle is in love. That’s great. I smile. Frida is a fine and sharp girl. Wise and sweet. I realized in the spring that they were a good match.

“How are things with Frida?” I asked this morning.

“It’s done,” he said.

That’s the poetry of life!

As for me, I’m just fumbling. 

September 15

Went to Larsson around six-thirty. A couple of neighborhood girls had taken Ludde for his walk. We started to chat. A guy delivering ad flyers showed up.

“That you can throw right in the garbage chute,” Larsson said. “I always throw that kind of garbage away.”

“Okay,” said the guy, opened the lid and threw in two flyers.

We stood there reasoning for a bit. He said that it looks like something is going to happen in America now. People have been protesting the slaughter in that prison.

“It’s going to be exciting to see what happens. I hope that something will happen there now. That event must open the eyes of many people.”

“You never know. It can result in an uprising. I really hope so.”

After five or ten minutes his legs began to hurt, so we walked into the kitchen and sat down. He spoke about his life, about things that had happened over the past couple of years, about his current wife and about his childhood. And about politics, of course.

He told me about the first time he stole something. It was when he, a couple of boys and his sister stole apples. He was about thirteen then, that is 1907. He was born in 1894. Everything went well and they got many apples that they hid in a place. But then the little sister took out a couple of apples that she brought home. The father noticed that she had apples and asked where she got them from. She told him everything and who had been with her. That was it. Larsson was beaten so badly that he couldn’t sit for several weeks. The father was a big and strong man, good for 136 kilos. So, he could hit!

“Another time he hit me with a hammer, and that hurt.”

“And then there was another time. We had one of those, a large husky. Our neighbors had a couple of German Shepherds, one was just a year old. They used to come down to us and play. Once father decided to set him on the young shepherd when it was with us. Sic him, he said, and it attacked immediately. The puppy howled and cried because he got a couple of bad pinches.”

“I stood there, and I could not but react. Normally I would not dare to say anything, but now I had to. I always cared for animals you see. If I see somebody mistreating a dog in town I can’t avoid getting involved. Even if I shouldn’t. ‘You behaved like a damn fool. You shouldn’t have done that,’ I told father. ‘Shut up you rascal or I’ll beat you,’ he said.”

“Something happened to me. I froze and didn’t know what I did. I flew on him with all my strength and grabbed his throat. He was a giant and I was just a kid, seventeen years old, but he must have been totally surprised, because I felled him, and I didn’t let go. (Showing with his hands how he grabbed his father.) He turned blue in his face and I would have strangled him if my mom had not gotten me away from him.”

“I then stood up and said that I’m leaving now, and I will never ever set my foot in this house again. Then I walked out and didn’t return until after his funeral. I once more became a seaman. I was seventeen then. They had no idea where I had gone. After some time, they did find out through a girl I had gone with. We wrote each other and through her they learned that I had returned to the sea. My sisters wrote me and told me to come home, and that dad wasn’t angry anymore, but I had promised not to come home and I didn’t.”

“Father had worked laying tracks when he was young and that was probably why he was so hard. Mother was softer.” 

September 16

Besides, everything sucks.

Feeling like a chewed-up chewing gum.

like an old newspaper

like a guitar without strings

like a raincloud

like a wet safety match

like a worn-out book

as a greasy paper

as discarded

slipper.

 

September 19

Should one force oneself to be completely honest? How far should I go? Should I express every problem stirring in my brain? In any case, I don’t. I only write what I dare to write. I don’t write about many things that burdens and worries me. So too with many things that makes me glad. Are they too close? Am I afraid of myself? Or better: Am I afraid that others will see my person, myself?

 

I AM ME, BUT WHO AM I? YOU BUILD YOURSELF, BUT OUT OF WHAT? 

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” (Marx)

“Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men in their actual life process.” (Marx and Engels)

'It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.' (Marx and Engels)

“What we need is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind, and intense but orderly work.” (Mao)

“To be aware of one's own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself. This is an eleventh type.” (Mao)

“It is not hard for one to do a bit of good. What is hard is to do good all one's life and never do anything bad, to act consistently in the interests of the broad masses, the young people and the revolution, and to engage in arduous struggle for decades on end. That is the hardest thing of all!” (Mao)

And now myself: What is JFV quoting Marx, Engels, and Mao? 

September 20

We have 61 pages social science to study for Friday when we have a written test. And I need to do math homework tonight. Tomorrow evening, I and a few others in the study group will attend an informational meeting about the new grading system the national school board is planning. On Wednesday we had a meeting in the propaganda team. I will skip it, but Nisse will go. On Thursday evening there is a meeting at Jeppe’s place. Last Sunday I attended a conference with Red Youth from 10:30 AM to 5 PM. It is taxing!

I came home from the drama class at five thirty. Went up to the studio to start studying, but I got stuck working on my poems. Then dinner was ready. I ate and returned to the studio. Then coffee was ready, so I went down to the TV-room. Well, I had to watch the news of course. The program looked interesting tonight. And the News Hour after that. And then Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which cannot be missed! At eight there was a movie about US war crimes against the peoples of Indo China. The clock became eight-forty before I gave up TV. I took Ludde out until nine thirty, took a bath and washed my hair while Georg and Dad was arguing about the car. By holding the shower head over my head, I drowned out the yelling, but you can’t sit like that forever. I stood up, dried myself, combed my hair, brushed my teeth, and went back up to the studio. Now it was ten fifteen. Write this until a quarter of eleven. Plan to study social science in bed tonight (Optimist!) 

September 28

Damned be JFV! You are a coward. A disgusting, despicable, inconsequential, slimy, repellant creep. A cowardly echo. A fermentation. Twists and crawls, mucks, and digs and rummages for no god. Nothing persists. Everything flows! Everything sucks. I’m a little shit that means nothing. Everything is of no consequence, but for us. (DON’T laugh dear reader and friend! This is not funny!)

To write like this is cowardly! It hides the real feelings I had. Which in turn is uninteresting except for me. To hell with this writing! What I want to write about is something completely different!

I want to write that I am terrified at the risk of losing a friend. I want to write about the necessity of openness between friends. I want to write that I am disappointed in myself, that I am afraid of becoming like my parents. That I am searching for my own and unique identity. That I am thinking that I’d rather kill myself than leading a half-hearted life. That I hate half-measures like a pestilence. That I fear adaptation. That I want to conform to nature and my fellow human beings, but never to injustice and unjust systems. I want to write that I feel a strong need for connection. That I must love a girl. That I want to lean my tired head against a girl’s shoulder or chest. That I want to hug and be embraced. That I want to give and receive warmth. That I want to get away from all falsehood. That I am terrified at losing my sanity. That I want to cry against a girl’s womb. That I want to be a human being, that I seek harmony. That I think way too much about myself. That I want to stop writing about JFV. About me. About that I can’t. About that I write “that I can’t.” About my fear of becoming schizophrenic. (Maybe I am? No!! I AM JFV. I AM ME ONLY; BUT I am not fully shaped, fully formed. I am puberty.) I fight to become free. This will never result in anything if I not at the same time fight against our unfair society of exploration. AHA! There is my egoism!!!)

IS THAT SO? Am I egoistic? A petit bourgeois. An opportunist. 

October 2, Saturday

Hello! It has happened. I am free. I am in love. The old is overturned by the new. It began as a brook, but now seems like a flood. “Old man river,” twice from the backstage.

Hip, hip! Down with the king!

What’s happening? Easy, easy! We’ll soon find out. I’m an optimist. 

October 4

That was but another lie. My love for Emma was supposedly have been overtaken by a growing love for Agneta. It wasn’t necessary impossible if it had been the case. Emma was an impossibility for me, I thought. We were two comets whose path intersected, but then continued forever each in its direction. It was just a matter of accepting the facts, I thought. My heart did of course take an extra beat at every association with Emma, but to persist in my love would be to fight against the laws of nature. As I am a materialist, I tried instead to change the flow of the river. I did like Agneta (I still like her of course!) and I thought that even if I’m not in love with her, I could fall in love with her over time. Love doesn’t strike you as a lightning but grows gradually over time. Thus, we went out to have pizza and wine on September 25th. Pelle and Frida. Me and Agneta. We conversed and ha a pleasant time. (What is that? “Converse and have a pleasant time,” this is no damn protocol from a session in the parliament.) We had originally planned to see Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan at Stadsteatern, but it was sold out, so we settled for pizza. I do have to admit that I started to like her more and more. Maybe I even was about to fall in love with her. (Whatever love is?) At the same time, I asked myself: Is it right to seek to create love this way? Is it not dishonest towards her? And towards myself? Which it probably was. It was probably Pelle’s and Frida’s relationship that became the catalyst for me. It showed me at close distance how wonderful it is to love and be loved. My own loneliness became so obvious and painful when I saw what a good time Pelle and Frida had. Wasn’t she lovely? Of course! She was not together with any guy, so why not try? Practice is after all the way to knowledge. If you have an idea and want to know if it is true or false, try it out. Turn it into practice! Hence, I called Agneta on Friday night and asked if she wanted to follow me to a party on Saturday. The reaction was indeed positive. We talked for an hour before I started to copy pictures in my lab until three in the morning. At about two thirty on Saturday afternoon, she came over to see my new photos and pick up a 30x40 cm print that I gave her. Agneta stayed until about six, six thirty when she had to go home to change and then return. Before that my mother, who assumed that it was “my” new girlfriend invited her to dinner with us. She declined since she had to go home to change. (Anybody else who finds this depiction beyond boring?)

Well, well. We went to the party which was a fiasco. As we arrived, we were met with fighting, yelling and tears! A six-pack crashed against the door. Two guys that were shitfaced drunk half stumbled, half flew out through the door, closely followed by a girl and a boy exiting. She commented that “this is terrible. We can’t stay here. This is disgusting!”

In the hallway Sillen and another girl wept. I saved three of the beers in the sixpack, which Georg added to our minimal booze. Beer was other ways flowing in the hallway. Shoes, clothes, etcetera took the opportunity to swim in the lovely environment. Once we had entered the kitchen we met Carl, Mikael, Klasse and a couple of other people. One guy, who looked like he had had too much to drink welcomed Agneta like this: “Hello rascal! If you are coming, then I’m leaving.” Fifteen minutes later he slept on the couch like a withered tulip. He engaged in this until about a quarter to one, when he turned over and seemed to have a belly ache. Isn’t that strange? The rest of the details will be left for future investigations. We are looking forward to perusing the result. According to a preliminary report, liquor worth 200 crowns had disappeared from the family’s bar. The answer is in the wind, my friend. As for Agneta and me, we were like siblings. She was friendly but on her guard. She probably intended (and intends) to be only friendly with me. “I’m not anybody’s girl. I am not in love with anybody,” she said to the mad “clown” Zeppo who firmly and somewhat bluntly tried to seduce her while I worried about her on her other side. The situation didn’t get better when Carl hinting loudly at Agneta’s and my entrance into the kitchen with these words:

“Great job, Videmark! That’s cool.”

Per repeatedly encouraged me to “make a move” and Georg talked about “my” girl without being remotely in touch with the crass reality. Zeppo declared on Agneta’s other side, while hugging her and took the liberty to kiss her that we were engaged. I corrected him saying that we had been married for a decade. Agneta protested and made it clear that no marital bonds or any similar relationship existed.

Thus, I was in a somber mood when I fell asleep at three in the morning. 

And it happened again, but now defectively. A hurricane swept by and set the smoldering prairie ablaze. It was said that her name was Emma. She swept in through the glass door and whirled around hugging Mona who had rushed to meet her. “Emma!” Mona called out as if they had not seen each other for half a century. I don’t remember my immediate reaction, but the first thing I thought of was: She is so beautiful! She is awesome! Sun burned and healthy. Since she besides her own wonderful loveliness, was dressed in a cool grass green suede coat and nice tight pants, I was totally taken in.

“Johan, I was going to send a card, but I forgot to bring your address.”

Which is what she said when she returned from England too, but she looked like she spoke the truth. Naïve as you tend to be towards the one you love; I didn’t think she could lie. Not towards a friend!

I was soon on fire from top to toe. “There is my love,” I felt. Emma and Mona went over to an open table and started to talk. I realized during the rest of the lunch break that JFV is incurably in love with Emma.

The clock advanced its positions to the degree that we (Martin, Pelle, and I) found ourselves defeated and retreated to the Swedish class which was predestined to be boring. It was followed by “Tjalle Tvärvig,” our eminently excellent history teacher. My concentration was however under neither lecture preoccupied with the mundane schoolwork but pondered the lovely wind that had swept by. Next class was drama, but then I pulled the plug! My soul was not the least interested in drama, but exploded in an emotional eruption, with Emma as catalyst. Is it possible for the catalyst to turn into an active agent?

Nisse and I went to Konditori Väster for a coffee break, and there were Emma and Mona! We ordered tea and coffee and I noticed to my pleasure that Nisse had taken a seat at their table. We hung around and chatted for a couple of hours. Emma treated the gang with Danish pastries. She’s wonderful! Then she bought candy and treated us generously. Around three o’clock she, Mona and Louise went home to her. It wasn’t until well after four fifteen that I left for home, with my stomach hurting from the candy, my throat soar from all the talking and headache from being tired.

To put it concisely: What has JFV done?

He has messed up. And rather bad at that. Since Emma and Agneta seems to be close friends, the situation is utterly complicated and calls for a professional, which I AM NOT. What should JFV do then? He needs to be honest, stick to the truth and speak out about his feelings without fearing rejection. 

October 9, Saturday

I had planned to stop writing this “day and night” novel since it is becoming so terribly egocentric.

But the dam broke, the dam with which I had tried to catch and divert the river of love. Now I am more in love than ever, and I am probably less loved than ever. After twenty minutes internal struggle, I called her. We spoke for half an hour until six forty-five when she had to leave to meet a friend.

“I got to stop now, but it was nice of you to call. I guess we’ll meet in school.”

It was with mixed emotions that I went down to watch the news and have coffee.

Not a word about the demonstration. If they wanted to, they could have squeezed in a report. We were 6,000 who showed up for the finale of the Vietnam Week. I skipped the news hour. Walked upstairs and laid down in the burgundy couch to reflect. About what? What do you think? Eight thirty I took Shahzad for a walk. It was so nice to be outside! It was a clear sky except for a couple of clouds that still hung around. The atmosphere felt clear and crisp. I could hear parties and smaller events from behind a couple of windows. Other ways everything was calm.

I walked down to Smedsbadet, walked around the marshland, and then returned home. At nine thirty I went up to the studio. I took out Zola’s A Love Episode from the bookcase, browsed it and put it back. Then I took out Jack London’s novel The Kempton-Wace Letters where he quotes William Woolsworth:

 

"The Poet, gentle creature that he is,

Hath like the Lover, his unruly times;

His fits when he is neither sick nor well,

Though no distress be near him but his own

Unmanageable thoughts."

 

And he opens Love of Life with a poem by Hamlin Garland:

 

“This out of all will remain—

They have lived and have tossed:

So much of the game will be gain,

Though the gold of the dice has been lost.”

 

I too will get out in the world. I certainly will!

 

October, 16 

And the impossibility feels more impossible

And I feel ever more ridiculous

 

October 22

My love ended. It seems so. Despite everything it feels strange. In a way it is a liberation. To not love. Loving is over. Nothing has changed. Only that the wind suddenly stopped. But was it so suddenly?

The fight against the new grading system continues. The student council held a study day about goal-related grades, and we were allowed to use the school’s speaker system to organize the work. So far, we have collected more than 500 names on our petition for an extended review period and better information. Our strategy is to build a united front against the new system.

I have a fever and my throat is starting to hurt. At least, the bacilli love me! 

October 24

I’ve been reading Swedish history of literature for a couple of hours. From the speakers I hear the heavy base rhythms from a melancholy Neil Young. Before that Larry Coryell pounded which gave me a headache that seems to be here to stay.

The Swedish literature lies in waiting. I must plough through everything important with a critical mind so that I can take in the good and discard the bad. The same thing with the world literature and all accumulated human knowledge.

“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.”

That’s how Ivan Bohman ends his forward as translator of the first book of The Capital by quoting Karl Marx. He wrote in 1867 that it was “the most terrible missile that has yet been hurled at the heads of the bourgeoisie…” I bought the first volume of The Capital in April 1969, and I began to read it that summer, but I stopped at page 55. I don’t remember why. Maybe I wasn’t ready at the time. I was only fifteen. Today I am opening the book again. It’s a challenge, which I now accept. 

October 25

It sucks that they make such a big deal of me wanting to have Nisse and four girls over for a meeting to study the new grading system.

“We don’t want any political meetings here! We don’t want our home to be a propaganda center!”

Here we go.

“You must think about Dad’s and my vulnerable position. You are notorious in Västerberg. We are known as the communist family. You are scaring away Dad’s customers. Keep your politics outside the family. You are squeezing Dad out of his studio. He can never work without being interrupted.”

One by one they are dug up. Hypocritical, cowardly, and petit bourgeois arguments. While it is cowardly, it is also a result of their social existence. Petit bourgeoisie being impacted by the economic crisis. It is threatened and holds on in panic to what is. It wants to stick its head into the sand like the ostridge instead of taking a stand.

I must move out in a year or two at most. 

October 26

I woke up with a sour throat and runny nose. Listened to the news. Finally! China is regaining its seat in the UN and Taiwan is thrown out, al according to the winning resolution put forward by Albania. The People’s China in the UN!

 

Dad said later in the day that mom is having her period and that’s why she is difficult. I saw that he was having a guilty conscience, but I was not answering since I was still mad about yesterday.

“It must be possible to discuss your future in a sensible way at some point,” he said.

Aha! So that was the heart of the matter! We talked about future yesterday. Mom is pushing for me to go to university after high school. It seems that she has given up on the dream of having a doctor and now wants me to study political science instead.

“I don’t want to be led around like a dog,” I said. “And I’m not going to university. I will take a job so that I can get money for travelling for a couple of years.”

“There are no jobs to get. You will not get a job with your education,” triumphed mom.

“Then I’ll take a job in the industry!”

This was what they had discussed during the night, and I understood of what dad was saying that this what they feared the most. I fought back last night. Their attack was “low, dirty, hypocritical, obnoxious, terrible, racist” and so on. (“Racist” because mom had implied that I was “controlled” by my Finnish friend Timo, who besides has been in Finland for ten months to do his military service. Who would have “controlled” me in the meantime? She is certainly good at building boomerang arguments.)

Allow me to quote a piece from The Capital:

“A King is only King because his subjects loyally think and act like he is King. Yet, at the same time, the people will only believe he is King if they believe that this is a deeper Truth about which they can do nothing.”

Mom retreats. I get sick. The national school board extends the review period until June 1. We got 646 signatures at my school. 

November 1

The first boring, grey, empty, cold November of 1971. On the 21st I will turn eighteen. And my cursed love refuses to die. I thought you were crushed, but you are hanging there like a bloodsucking leech. When beaten in one area, you look around for a new “prey.” First Emma, then Agneta, Emma again, and now you think I’m going to let you lose on Mona. Oh, no! It’s against my will, and against it you can do nothing, unless (terrible thought) you become my will. I love so bad, but I don’t know what. You don’t have a chance, Amore! For you there is no hope. Die, will you!

The brooder in me have settled in and thrives. But he too must die! As soon as possible! 

November 2

Never has an autumn been this beautiful to me as this one. I have followed it consciously for the first time. Not only the autumn by the way. From the moment we started shooting films in this my seventeenth year, I have been much more aware of the nature. The spring, the magnificent Nordic spring with its large expectations. The summer, the mild one who nurtured them and the Autumn, who crushed them. The nature’s dialectic, life’s metamorphosis into death, everything is exposed with utmost beauty. The leaves on the trees grow pale, turning light yellow and yellow. Soon only their skeleton remains. But some oaks still have leaves left. Red, exhausted leaves. The ground catches them and begins the recreation of new life. From life death and from death life. Lake Mälaren turns cold blue, and the sun casts its blinding reflections into its polluted water earlier and earlier in the afternoon. Cans are glimmering in a ditch. Crows, magpies, a blackbird, a couple of seagulls and four lousy pigeons in in the middle of a dance of death with the industry’s leftovers. Expectations, yes. The winter will bury them.

Shit, I was supposed to have read in The Capital and doing some homework tonight. 

November 3

Sun, autumn, clear blue sky, sharp contrasts, and moldering leaves. Pelle, Frida, and I took out Shahzad and walked down to Ekbacken. Strong gusty winds, but the temperature was mild.

By the water. Pelle and Frida jokes around in a tree. It’s beautiful. Too beautiful. Like taken from a utopian dream. Everything was beautiful. (Except for milk cartridges among the leaves, bricks that lay floating, a car mat at the bottom of the water near the beach, a plastic bag bopping in the water next to a beer can.)

The development in the world goes well. The oppressed are revolting against their oppressors everywhere. Oppressed nations against oppressing, oppressed classes against exploiters and plunderers. China’s diplomatic offensive is delivering new and brilliant results. The US imperialism get to bite the dust ever more often why we probably should call it “paper mole” instead of “paper tiger”. Uprisings are becoming commonplace everywhere in the world.

The showdown will be a hard when the global crisis (this or the next which is expected to come in 1974) hits with full force. The birth pangs will be large. Over the entire Earth, the rotten, decayed, and evil social system will be crushed.

I have intellectual and political self-confidence. But my personal confidence is bad. Really bad at the moment!

I’m sick of JFV! 

November 5

Having a headache. Treated myself to Jan Myrdal’s latest book. 

November 6, Saturday

Cold as hell and whirling snow. Took out both Shahzad and Ludde. I froze. It was hard to see when the wet snow slush hit you in the face. Strong winds too.

Practiced guitar the whole day. What I should have done was to study for the driver's license knowledge test, but no, that was too boring. I fell asleep last night after having read Myrdal and returned to reading him the next morning. I simply opened the book after breakfast and got stuck as often happens when overtaken by JM. To read JM is to have a thorough cleansing, but spiritually. You feel clean and refreshed when you put away the book. Ready to fight for the class. JM writes essential articles. Important and necessary. He provides the people with sharp weapons. Year after year he continues to deliver the most terrible missiles against the monopoly capitalists and their epigones and defenders whatever color of their coats. In a certain sense, he is the leader of the class in Sweden. So far, nobody had managed to challenge him without being defeated. His answer arrives and it usually kills immediately.  

Why write about what you think? Why not do it?

Listened to About and By Brecht at the Stenstad city library today. But it wasn’t our Brecht. Not he who wrote In Praise of Communism, The Mother, The Paris Commune and In Praise of the Work of the Party. Not the revolutionary. It was the contradictory and deeply humane poet-of-human-love, whose heart was so big that he had to have several “lover friends” besides his householding wife. But his heart was large enough to appreciate her too and he did write several “small, short, and nice” poems to her where he “appreciated all she was doing for him.” 

I should be doing math today. I’m not doing it. I ought to study traffic theory today since I didn’t do it yesterday. I also ought to read a lot of other stuff. However, I have read Myrdal and The Capital today.

Tomorrow, we have a Swedish writing test. I hate it. Boring. The Swedish education is not setup to teach people express themselves in writing, but rather to hold back and divert whatever lust to write they have.

Then there was school... 

“Every village should keep a penalty room where the children are kept locked up for six years and everyday are kept half starving getting used to slavery through whipping with a stick, and by hearing year in and year out the doctrine of Hell and a new moral, which Lasse and Uffka had invented, so that they finally would accept the reverence and obedience they did not by nature owe their masters. The method was to a high degree unscrupulous, but it would have the same effect as castration.” (Strindberg, Swedish Destinies and Adventures, volume I) 

The circumstances and the expression have changed a lot since the beginning of the 1880s, but the core is the same. The basis, capitalism, is the same. It has been developed, changed, and turned into monopoly capitalism. And the school system has adapted to the change. Now it takes twice as long to “getting used to slavery.”

The “castration” is more precise and sophisticated. You hardly sense it. Instead of whipping with a stick, we have goal-related grades. The students are now so big and strong that it would be a physical impossibility to force them through direct violence. 

“When the work was done, it also turned out, that the purposed had been achieved. The children were locked up early in the morning, and the first they were taught was to be silent. That was the most important thing of all, because now the upper class, as it called itself since ‘God’ placed it over the underclass, did not need to fear criticism from the underclass. The second thing was to obey, that is to do what others want and not have any will of your own.” 

"Those who were best at lying and were the falsest, were called nice children and received ginger snaps and honey cookies, but those who spoke the truth and were honest received whippings and got no food. By this the foundation of education was laid.” 

 

November 13

Cold outside and cold inside. Tired and bored. Resignation. 

November 16

Mustered for military service.

Everything feels so heavy. My body feels as if it was made from lead, and my head would rather hang down against my chest. My soul is weary, my eyelids and cheeks are heavy. My ability to concentrate is zero. The empty space expands. All my body wants to do is to lie at rest. My eyes hurt from overwork. Feelings are blended. My spirit darkens. 

November 17

Walked around hoping for something that never happened.

The hope is gone and that is well, because it was weak. Nothing is as it should be and my political work is floundering, which is partially my fault. I don’t put in enough effort to take charge and lead the work.

18 on Sunday. 18 too many. No, not 18 to many, but 17 plus hubris.

The psychologist at the muster said that Videmark is “sensitive to the environment.” And I agreed. He was nice and we could talk with a certain confidence. But I didn’t let him know more than I found appropriate. To trust him would have been stupid and naïve. He was after all an employee of the capitalist military system.

All my candles, but one, have burnt down.

I cut my throat with a plastic ruler. Pretending, but it’s not a joke. 

November 21, 17:00

My final day as 17 and my first as 18 didn’t diverge from the line. Mixed feelings as usual, but now more concentrated and stronger than before. Everything turned out to be a disaster except for a couple of bright spots, which help me go on living.

Pelle and Frida came over around eight. I followed them out and took Shahzad with me. On the way home we discussed revolutionary work in relation to civic work. I was provocative and a bit aggressive. Talked in a sectarian way. Self-righteous. Despicable. 

November 23

Listening to the sensitive Elton. Thinking about last Saturday. On my friends. The present I received. Pelle, Frida, Madde and Klasse presented a large box that they had decorated with a montage from various papers and photos of me in different situations. “This you may need when you practice the revolution,” it said with cutout letters. It was a cowboy powder gun. Not much of a present, but I quickly caught up, stepped up on our living room table and gave a loud speech while firing the gun. It was followed by hugs and embraces. All my friendly friends.

And then the bad part. The sad part. The uninvited. Friends of friends. The party folks. One cut his hand and broke my wine carafe when he was about to sit down on the floor. Mom ran around in a state of shock. She cried and held on to me desperately. The look in her face when I hugged her to calm her down.

The first guests arrived at six thirty. Most arrived at seven. After an hour most were drunk, stumbling around, bumping into my mother slurring. Puking. In the toilet bowl, in the garbage chute, in a carafe and outside. The spilled wine.

The mass of people. Every room was full of people. In the hallway there were people who found no place to sit, and some people stood outside the door. All in all, there were probably 80 at home during the party. And in my parents’ bedroom I found two guys from school rummaging through a drawer looking for money!

I was desperate. I ran around trying to kick out as many as possible. I told people to “go to Hell,” to “get lost.” As for myself, I had drunk a bottle and a half of wine, why I only by concentrating hard could collect myself somewhat. Around elven I had driven out enough people to stabilize the situation. By then it was mostly my and Georg’s friends left. 

Frida, Agneta, Madde and Monika (if I remember it right) helped make tea and sandwiches. All honor to them. Without their help and support I might have collapsed. It was so nice, so comforting to know that the girls helped. They also calmed down mom just by being there. Once the worst part of the storm had passed things were okay. We sat around, chatting and had a good time until two thirty when most people left.

By the way, Lotta tried to catch me during the evening, but I withdrew. Not sure exactly why. There is nothing wrong with her, but she comes off as being so hungry when she looks at me.

And then there was something I heard from Agneta. Emma had a party at home last Saturday. 

November 24

I need to get my bearings. To be clear about myself. It’s hard to perceive yourself from the inside. You need the reflection. Physically in a mirror. To accept your body. To get grip on my soul – must I then distance myself to my being? To get my soul out of my brain and put it down on paper in the shape of neutral, sterile characters. Must try to see myself from a distance. More critical and from new assumptions. To see what is bad and what is good. To change what is bad and develop what is good. In short, to create from JFV Johan Fredrik Videmark. A socialist. And of course, to possibly share my experiences to help others. To describe your contemporary life through yourself. “…a corner of creation seen through a temperament,” as Zola wrote. 

November 25

A thing that I am ashamed over. The fact that I can’t kill a feeling that is irrational. To still walk around moping. To neither nor. To torture oneself. Kill the damn hope! I am not able to read anything. The last book I read is still Myrdal’s latest. 

November 29

Once again, she is hovering like a mirage. Fair, airy and intangible. In the distance dark clouds. In the middle of the gathering clouds flies a swallow as if carried by a sunbeam. I can’t stop thinking about her. Her way of talking, her breasts, her fine and worried hands. The eyes that turn my mind to an airy gas. The knowledge that these feelings must be crushed. The sooner the better. The despair at this insight. The math test on Wednesday. The traffic theory test on Thursday, The Swedish test next Tuesday. The history test next Wednesday. Plus, the revolutionary work.

Got the results of the last history test today. Did not go well. I got a four when I could have gotten a five if I hadn’t been sloppy.

I don’t read anything (except a couple of pages in Fogelström when I got home after three on Sunday morning.) I’m lying in my bed. It’s dark in the room. The record has reached the end and the pickup is jumping at the center. They are fighting and screaming downstairs. A door is slammed shut with a thunder. Per, Georg and mom. Everybody shouts. My stomach aches and I’m tired. Tried to find a tranquilizer after dinner. I was thinking to take a couple of pills to be able to study math, but I couldn’t find any. The radio is pumping out crappy music, but I need the radio to block out the fighting. The records make me sentimental. At least, the radio makes me mad. My eyes hurt, my back, the right shoulder, and my heart (not physically though!).

I took out Ludde. It was cold and windy. While walking I caught myself wishing that my belly ache would be an ulcer. To have a physical cause that would force me to slow down. To forget everything and just rest, read, listen to music, and feel good. Then I would be able to work tenfold compared to now (until the next crisis). I did do math for an hour. The Ludde and now I can’t go on. Doing the math made me feel insecure. I got stuck. 

November 30 

Her eyes

so cold

 

December 1

When we came back in after having taken Shahzad for a walk and was about to begin studying again, Pelle said:

“We don’t have to study today. We could skip school tomorrow.”

And with that thought, we skipped studying math and I put up tea water.

We met in Stenstad at nine, went to the Post Office where I took out 100 crowns. I bought twenty rolls of Tri-X for 98 crowns (the price was 119 crowns, but I bargained) and then we had coffee at the Tempo Bar. We left for Tensta (a new suburb), which we photographed. Then home to Pelle where we had coffee and listened to Carl’s blues albums, picked up the soundtrack for our movie and took the bus to Stenstad and then the subway to Västerberg. At my place we had tea, talked, and listened to the soundtrack in my Carlsson speakers. Pelle had to leave at five. I put the potatoes on the stove, leashed Shahzad and followed Pelle to the train. Tomorrow we are heading to the city to find out what a trip to Vladivostok with the Trans-Siberian Railroad costs. 

I re-read a couple of chapters from volume one of Strindberg’s Getting Married. Terrific! If I only could get my heart to understand what my brain has been forced to realize. But no! It storms ahead. I will bang my head against the wall until bloody.

How I love! There are many girls that attract me, Mona, Agneta, Malou and Nadja. But none as much as Emma.

Why?

Maybe because she soon will have been the object of my unrequited loved for six months.

Maybe because no one else can match her.

Maybe because she is impossible.

Called her in the afternoon. Asked for Mona’s phone number (which I could have looked up in the school calendar …) I talked to her about this and that for half an hour until we were interrupted by Georg who said that he had to call a guy immediately to find out if he would join him to his dance lesson. Emma and I was having an interesting conversation and had a lot left to talk about, but there was no way I could go on.

“It was my brother who said that he has to make an important phone call right now,” I said.

“Okay, well say hello to Georg and Per and everybody and then we’ll see each other in school… but wait a minute. I’m working next week and tomorrow too, but we’ll see each other at another time! Bye!“

“Okay, Bye!”

Later I called Mona to ask her to return some books that she had borrowed from me. We talked about school, writing tasks and tests, stress, and frustration, and I told her about our math test and that we had skipped it and about our idea for a great journey. She is lovely to talk to. Kind and good hearted all through. Sensitive and honest. She told me about her upcoming trip to Brazil, where she was going to meet her sister. Her dad works at SAS, so she can fly for 150 crowns. (One hundred and fifty, amazingly.)

“I promise to bring the books tomorrow. See you!”

Two wonderful calls to two charming girls. That soothes your heart. 

I’m dreaming like crazy nowadays by the way. About lots of things. Political, personal, and of course sensual too (don’t I dare to write erotic??!) dreams which I often remember as I wake up. Once I dreamed that I had begun to paint seriously in oil and that Dad stood next to me giving critical comments and advice. It was large paintings with lots of paint and the canvas was stretched horizontally over Dad’s working desk. We wore work coats. I also dreamt that I got a job as journalist during my military service. 

December 2

Thursday passed. Easy and nice. Pelle came over around ten. Then to the city. We stepped off the train at Fridhemsplan, took buss 41 along Fleminggatan and then by feet to the October bookstore. They had Dimitrov’s book about the united front against fascism in Swedish, finally! I also picked up a few Marxist-Leninist newspapers and the latest issue of Peking Review. Then we walked over to Hötorgscity where Pelle was hoping to find a pair of nice but inexpensive pants.

And then there was THE BIG THING! Getting out in the world!!! We visited Intourist (the Soviet tourist agency) to ask about the Trans-Siberian railroad. A one-way ticket from Moscow to Khabarovsk costs 450 crowns. To that you must add 25 crowns per day for three meals on the train. We are going to try to arrange a trip from Moscow to Irkutsk by Lake Baikal, and from there to Ulan Bator in the People’s Republic of Mongolia. The final leg would take us to Peking. We hope to save up 2,500 kr each until the summer of 1973. The idea is to write, take pictures, and maybe paint during the trip so that we later could make a book about it. By contacting some papers and promise to do a couple of feature stories we should be able to get some money for the journey.

Pelle is planning to apply to the Konstfack art college, and I may do that too unless I apply to the Journalism University (or maybe the documentary or photo school.)

I heard from Nisse that only nine out of twenty students attended the math test. The situation in school is reaching a boiling point. I and a few other will probably stay home tomorrow too so that our absence looks less suspicious. 

December 4

This is what I wrote on October 4. What should JFV then do? Answer: “He should be honest, follow the truth and speak out about his feelings without fearing rejection.” Two months later, I can only ascertain that I did just that while wasting a lot of paper on ridiculous nonsense. Yesterday I wrote “Do you per chance know the path to my beloved’s heart?” I was so utterly blinded by misty dreams and illusions that I started blabbering about a royal path “to my beloved’s heart” (silly like in a poem by Snoilsky or something like that!)

What to do? Of course, just what I wrote in October!

I didn’t fall asleep until three in the morning. Partially because of the conflict in my brain between activism and defeatism. Pelle gave me a kick in the right direction when we chatted today. We had an open and nice conversation. I hope our friendship lasts a long time. Very long!

Took out Shahzad for more than an hour. When I left Georg bought a bottle of wine from me before he and his girlfriend sat down in my couch. When I returned at eight thirty, they were making love loudly in his room.

I’ve decided to call her tomorrow and suggest that we do something together (not sure what yet). I’m also going to ask her to join me, Pelle, and Frida to Folkets Hus to hear Beethoven’s 5th symphony. 

December 5

Took out Shahzad from noon to two. It was warm, sunny and the sky was clear. There was a slight breeze, and everything was pleasant. I let Shahzad run free. I took pictures with my tele lens using a tripod. I took ten shots, nature compositions.

And at four I called Emma! We talked. About many things. However not so much about politics, but about more trivial things, like dogs At four forty she had to go, but before she hung up, I asked about Beethoven’s 5th.

It was a success, even if she wanted Agneta to join us too since “I’m sure that she would love to come and hear the philharmonic orchestra.” Okay, Pelle and I will get the tickets on Monday and then I’ll give you a call.

DARE TO FIGHT, DARE TO WIN!

LONG LIVE ACTIVISM! 

December 8, 11 pm

We met a quarter past six to take the subway to the city. We heard the concert and Beethoven’s fifth was wonderful.

Rejection. It was a rejection. Served softly as a matter of fact. All my dreams crushed. Crushed. My soul smashed. Heavy walk. As a deer shyly she kept her distance. 

December 9

I have as far as girls goes, always aimed to high and strung the bow to hard, and the string has always snapped.

On the way back from a walk with Ludde I ran into my old friend Ronny.

“Hello, how are you doing,” he said.

“Hi, it’s okay. I’m getting along,” I said. 

”What are you doing for the Lucia fest? Are you going to fuck or masturbate?”

”Well, I’ll see what comes my way.”

We kept doing small talk about booze, Lucia, and stories about drinking. After a couple of minutes Georg showed up with Shahzad and there we stood, chatting, and laughing for half an hour. 

December 13

Lucia. Had a party at home. Mom and Dad were in Gävle. We were 20-30 people at home, half of which watched the ice hockey match between Sweden and Czechoslovakia. I had two bottles of wine. My spirit was high. I romped around, hugged, and kissed, and tried somewhat bluntly seduce Madde. I danced, jumped around, and discussed a bit with a newly converted Trotskyist. I treated him with some logic, empirical facts, and a couple of Lenin quotes. 

December 14

Lying in the couch. It’s could and there is a draft as usual in the studio. I am wearing a thick sweater. The lamps are turned off and it’s dark outside. Only two candles are lit. It’s quiet in the room. I am tired, have a sour throat and feel mushy in my head. The bookcase stairs angrily at me as if it wants to tell me:

“Here you have been lying with your arms crossed for an hour and a half. Why don’t you do anything, Johan? Why are you moping? How can you learn if you never read? Is it the Hong Kong flue or the heart that is making trouble?”

Tonight, I must copy pictures. Dad needs photos for a catalog. And I owe Georg a series of shots of him sailing that I promised him. And then my own last four or five rolls. I’m so tired that my brain fails and my focus slips.

Tired of not doing anything, of sleeping, sitting around doing nothing during the breaks, tired of not reading, not studying, sick of not loving, not being loved, not working, not drawing, sick of living the life I am living. 

December 19, 10:45 pm

Don’t sleep well and dreams a lot these days.

Yesterday I dreamt that I was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp and was about to be executed. Everybody in the dream, including the guards, were young people or little kids. I knocked the gun out of the hands of a twelve-year-old kid who was about to shoot me. Then I ran out of the room while I was shooting at him. The gun turned out to be a plastic toy and the bullets were only fired sporadically. They didn’t hurt anybody, but they stopped my pursuers as I fled towards the gate. I confused the guard by running as if I was only going to run past the gate with no intention of running through it. Suddenly I changed course in a flash and managed to rush past the guard who started to pursue me together with others that came to his help and they pursued me while trying to shoot me. That’s all I remember. Maybe I woke up?

I have also dreamt several dreams that involved Emma. Mainly as a problem.

Last night I had a long and troubling dream. It was highly fragmentary and Emma was there somewhere. There were a lot of young school children. There were some girls who had taken my three envelopes with my writings and spread them out in the corridor of a school. My papers were lost! I became desperate, angry, and upset. I entered a classroom full of kids where a teenage teacher sat on a bench making fun of me.

“I don’t know anything,” he said.   

It made me furious, and I broke a bench with a karate chop. Only the steel frame kept the bench together though it was cracked right through. I then rushed into a “waiting room” or a mix of a corridor and a waiting room. There I saw the papers! They were in the hands of a bunch of eight-year-old kids. They sat there reading my poems, calling out “What strange poems!”

“Give me my papers,” I yelled and started to gather them.

A boy had hidden a stack under the kid’s drawings and papers. Eventually I had recovered all my papers, but then my memory of the dream ends.

I had another uncomfortable dream the same night.

It was at home, but at the same time somewhere else. I’m not sure where, but it was a dinner for diplomats celebrating something. There were representatives for several socialist countries present. There were also huge amounts of food, a real Swedish Christmas smorgasbord. When South Vietnam’s Provisional Revolutionary Government started to talk a terrible chatter began. Besides the diplomats there were musicians and some pals, plus a lot of party goers. I was initially seated to the left of PRG’s representant, but when he began to speak, I suddenly found myself at the end of the table. While he started to talk, I took out my camera which had the wide-angle lens on and was attached to a tripod. From then on, I remember the dream seen through the camera lens. I remember that I saw the table and the guests in bright colors during this phase. To capture all details, I climbed into a windowsill behind me and leaned backwards, but even though I leaned far back I could not get everybody into the picture. The disorder and chaos grew around the table and people began to move to other rooms. They took their food and drinks with them. In the dream the guests changed into regular people and almost all diplomats turned into school children. I didn’t get any picture taken and I was highly upset over the rudeness in disrespecting our foreign guests. Those who had left the table walked out of the room which now was a lot bigger and taller. I lost track of where we were, but part of the dream reminded me of a disco in the Old Town.

I wandered about for a while looking for something. After some time, I arrived in a giant hall. On the inside it looked like a huge barn, but it was soon situated not far from the Västerberg road. On the way there or maybe earlier, I don’t remember where, I met her. She was accompanied by a guy to the “party” (the barn was connected to a party hall). The barn itself was completely empty and it was dark inside, but not darker that you could sense its space. She came running because she had left her guy to buy cigarettes. I wasn’t in love with her, but I liked her and was hot for her. I can’t remember what we said when we talked.

In parallel to this, I do remember that she ran fast, taking large high leaps towards a door at the end of the other side of the barn. I ran after her and we ran together. We ran on a diagonal through the building and communicated as we ran. As we ran the barn shrunk and a yellow double bed suddenly appeared in one end of the room (which was a barn a minute ago). Our movement forward stopped, and we kept communicating somehow. I don’t remember if we spoke or spoke through facial expressions and our eyes. Neither can I remember the atmosphere. And not if she continued to the newspaper stand. I think I wanted to make love with her and told her that. For friendship’s sake!

It’s dangerous to retell dreams this many hours after. The dreams happen so fast and are so intensive that I probably rationalize quite a bit in hindsight. It’s impossible to remember them exactly,

One thing I do know for sure. I don’t sleep well when I have dreams like these. When I wake up, I don’t feel rested, rather the opposite. I usually wake up at two or three when the dream is as most intensive. Before I wake up, I also dream. Once awake, or rather half-awake, I can keep dreaming half consciously, but when I try to interfere with the action in the dream and steer it in the way I wante it to go, it disappears, and I wake up fully. 

January 6, 1972

I’m not writing anymore. What not? Because I believe that I have now concluded my collection of short and unsystematic self-reflections. Does that mean that I don’t reflect on myself? Of course I do, but the period of change and maturing that I have gone through is over. I’m starting to become clear about myself. I know myself and accept the person I am. What I wrote before, I wrote to “write away” the worry, displeasure and doubt I felt at that moment.

The troublesome love story with (well, without) Emma stirred up my entire person. For seven months, I loved, pined, dreamed, and masturbated. Big expectations and enormous dreams (castles in the sky!) made me lose my footing.

I fell of course, but like a falling ball, I bounced back up in the blue only to fall back to the ground. Up and down, up and down until I finally lay at the floor, the ground, the Earth or whatever you want to call the state.

What was it about Emma that intoxicated me? I had not noticed her before my friend pointed her out during a break. It didn’t take long before my entire being was on fire and suddenly I was a slave of passion.

Now it looks like it’s over. The storm has abated. The pieces of the wreckage that could float washed ashore. I have gathered them, and I am now once again a whole human being, albeit with two sides, like everything else. I no longer feel any need to jot down a couple of words today and maybe a poem in a week. I want to work on larger things, create complete works.

Not puzzle pieces, but a puzzle! 

January 7

Fridolf Larsson said that he once found a photo from the 1931 Ådalen massacre and recognized one of the soldiers who was riding a horse. The man was a member of Stallmästaren’s boat club. The next time he went there he challenged him.

“Hey there, bloody white-guardist. So, you were there in Ådalen, I told the guy who began to cry when he realized that I knew,” he said and continued.

“Maybe it was you that shot a lot of people to death there? You are a member of the Building Workers' Union too, and I probably should report you to the union, because I don’t assume that you have sought an apology.”

From that day he never said hello to or spoke to the man.

“Once the ex-soldier was drunk and wanted to talk to me, but I understood that he was looking for trouble and I answered that ‘I don’t talk to you.’ He was with his drinking buddies, but I said to myself that I’m not afraid of a damn white-guardist.”

“Come on, I said when his friends closed in. I’m not afraid of a white-guardist. He was there as a soldier in Ådalen. If you want proof, I can give it to you in black and white. They were surprised and retreated,” Fridolf said, adding that he at the time was an amateur boxer. 

January 10

Per said that mom looked pale and tired when she went to work. She had not made breakfast as she usually does. She didn’t even say bye-bye. When I woke up, I washed up and got dressed. Then to the kitchen where I browsed the newspaper while having tea and two sandwiches. I called out to Dad that I’m off to school. He slowly turned around in bed and asked when I get would get back. He looked sad and tired and fell back to sleep. I walked to school with a heavy soul and worried stomach.

The wound in my heart was yet again ripped open when I suddenly met her yesterday. She’s so pretty. We stood there talking for quite a while and she had still not started to read the book I lent here when I still was optimistic. Without knowing it she stirred the smoldering fire to life.

I thought of her when I walked the dogs in the evening. It was cold and I thought about love and troubles and my worry about everything. I didn’t fall asleep until two in the morning. I didn’t study math even though I had to. The emotions blocked my creative power. 

January 11

My poems often come when I walk Ludde between nine and ten at night. I chant silently to myself. The words flow from the heart. Usually, it is about love pain and loneliness, but also about politics and class struggle. I walk and talk, recite or sing to myself. The words well forth to some melody or rhythm that I came up with. Mostly it makes me melancholy and heavy in mind, but the act of creation, the expression of the feelings, lightens the pressure and provides some solace. Once inside I sometimes work on and type out the poem or whatever it is. I’m also aware of the fact that I have resumed writing. Still puzzle pieces or what??? My entire body is full of heartburn, all the way down to my feet! 

February 22

China plays the US against the Soviet imperialists. Other ways Mao would never have accepted to meet Nixon. The US cannot isolate China anymore. 

March 1

I’m longing for love, sweet caresses, but I’m afraid of ridicule and betrayal. 

March 8

I’m in a state of permanent crisis. Physically and psychologically. I’ve had a cold for a week, a sour throat, pain in my lower back and groins. I’m nervous, don’t sleep well and enough. Always tired. Depressed, pessimistic, and split. Worried, insecure, and sometimes aggressive. Sick of most things. Can’t see any light when looking six months ahead. 

March 23

Once again it grabs my throat, the infection, one of many. My neck gets stiff, my mind heavy. The depression. “The Swedish Army Enrollment Book.” 4.0 average grade. A bit over the average. Standing on edge of the trampoline, feeling dizzy. Thinking: What is my ability? On Tuesday my trip begins. Today I feel bad, sick. Tomorrow, I have another test. It’s sickening. Every week a new test, a new period of stress and worry. Every week a new period of fatigue, nervousness, and stress. The months go by, automatically, one after another, meaningless, everyone.

My Future is with the People is the first part of  novel with the working title Shifting Passions.