Cecilia is skiing downhill in Dalarna. Björn and I went to Gamlingen to listen to trad jazz. Otherwise I live in contrition and anxiety takes hold of me. Why did I send that last poem? Why did I hurt the one I loved? Because I was so selfish and in such a hurry. Drank three beers and a whiskey at Björn's place before we went out.
I'm hungover and fell in love again. It was a girl with black hair that I saw on the subway. I'm sitting in the Röda Rummet, checking out a lovely blonde. Drinking wine. A few hours ago, bachelorhood life scared me. I envisioned the loneliness, the need to go to clubs, ask girls to dance so that people don't think you are afraid. Acting, playing, lying.
March 10
I read Peter Nilsson's The Ark and continued with Giorgio Bassini's The Heron. The atmosphere was strongly reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger.
March 22, 00.30 Tuesday.
Sunday was the first day of spring. Cecilia and I took a walk at Djurgården. While walking, I was mulling over our relationship. I have decided over and over to really "break up," but I can't take the decisive step. Why? Sunday was such a beautiful day. I didn't want to ruin it for Cecilia.
I have a strong desire to be free, to be alone. The cry of the wild?
I want to be free to work, to read, to write and write poems, to once again seek the bittersweet fruit of falling in love. It is as if my entire nature beckons me to challenge fate. But I am afraid of making mistakes. One knows what one has, etc. Is it simply the lure of the adventure? I have become increasingly aware that I soon will be 30 years old. Time flies fast. If I take the plunge now, I might be a bachelor forever. Not very appealing. But still?!
They called from SvD and asked if I was still interested in the job. I went there at four o'clock for a job interview with the business desk. It was snowing outside. Five people attended the interview besides me. It looks like I can get a job as an business editor starting April 5. That's good, but I'd rather stay on unemployment until the end of April, so that I don't have to rush my paper. But, but...
March 23
Sitting here next the University Library reading The Serious Game by Hjalmar Söderberg. Observing all the students around me. Reflecting on my own mixture of emptiness, heat and intellectual ambition.
A thought echoes in my head.
At some point, you have to give up, but what then is life?
This incessant lust for beautiful girls. I'm convinced that it is perfectly normal, but it is also terribly anti-social. I’m thinking of Viktor Rydberg's tragic poem. My sex presses against my tight jeans. Why am I so impressionable? It's hard to concentrate when you're horny.
At the university. March 25, Friday
Tonight I'm going to break up. Am I?
Why am I always in a serious mood? A serious game?
March 29
On Sunday evening I said that we must break up.
On Monday we went to the Stockholm Housing Agency, where we put up a note about an apartment exchange and checked other people's notes.
It's snowing outside. It's eight thirty and I'm having roast beef at The Prince. Is this the beginning of my bachelorhood?
After a day at the university library, I went to SvD to find out more about my new job.
April 12, 01.25
On Sunday I went out for a walk along Norr Mälarstrand. It was the second day of spring. Down by a little bay where the ice had not yet melted away, I talked to a bird. It was small and dark. I mimicked its song and it responded with a love song. It was so obvious. I looked around to see if he was singing to a female, but it was just the bird and me.
For a long time I thought I was writing for someone, but I always knew I was writing because I couldn't help it. Now I know that I write for no one. There is no reason why I write, only the desire to write. Of course I am a romantic. I love and want to be taken up in the world. I want to be loved by the women I fall in love with. I want to catch the one I desire.
I want her to want me.
April 13
I was thinking of my awakening in 1968-69 and the development optimism. Before 1968, problems were far away. Politics was not interesting. After 1968, politics seemed to be everything. It gave me an obvious role, a task in life and helped me overcome my shyness.
But the role of politics shrank after 1978.
April 16, Saturday. Café Gråmunken.
If the truth did not matter so much, we would not lie so much.
The fiirst warm day. The sun is shining. Lots of tourists in the Old Town. In two hours I will start working again.
Cecilia and I have advertised twice this week. Two responses. It takes time to separate.
Read Sten Malmström analyzing Fröding, Karlfeldt, and Heidenstam.
April 18, 00.30
I'm reading a passage from Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. In the table of contents I had selected "The Uncertainty of Signs" to read, but by chance I found "Ideas of Suicide". How appropriate. On this particular evening when I realize that I have nothing to gain in the way of love from the person I have foolishly fallen in love with over a week ago.
Skipping "Uncertain signs", as they in my case are not uncertain anymore. I am cold.
"1. The lover’s constant thought: the other owes me what I need."
(Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, p 232, 1979)
But she doesn't owe me anything!
"The heart is the organ of desire (the heart swells, weakens, etc., like the sexual organs)..." (p 52).
The privatization of my life that I’ve gone through in recent years (especially the last year) is obviously a social phenomenon. When no values can awake the faith, integrate myself with the people as a collective, my only option is to fight for myself, my identity. Sometimes I wonder if I have come to far, that no girl exists that is capable of following my thoughts. Does that mean that I must live with a lover only and not a partner for life?
The idea of a novel keeps growing. Then I want to ditch economics and become a writer. I want my life to mean something.
I want to make a rune stating that I have lived.
And as far as the world is concerned, I don't think economics is the solution, nor politics. Everything points to morality, the basis of both.
"The great love."
The ego's hunt for a partner. (The child's and adult's search for friendship.)
I remember friends deceit, the child's jealousy when his best friend wanted to play with another boy rather than with me. I came second. He told me with childlike honesty that since the other friend couldn't come, I could go with his family to their country house for the weekend.
And then there is the youth's search for a role. The teenager. The place in the group. The school class. The first movement. The team, the political club. One is initiated into the secrets of the world. In love with the goal. The love of humanity is built up through the love of specific individual groups, Native Americans, Vietnamese, hippies, Chinese, etc.
Parental love.
Shattered love: She doesn't want you.
The Vietnamese change, or you are forced to change your perception of them.
The team or the group loses its spirit. Everyone goes about their business.
The child grows up and moves away, or gives up, or...
I am always so cautious. I don't show any 'male' brutality or superiority. Which is why women look for a male friend in me. I’m not perceived as challenging. Does this mean that I have to behave aggressively in order not to be desexualized in their eyes? I don’t know, but sometimes I think the socio-biologists are right.
I get turned on by certain types of girls. They almost never respond positively to my feelings, but they are friendly to me, which I misinterpret and all hell breaks loose.
The girls who love me are rarely the ones who turn me on, but the ones I want as friends.
Talk about paradoxes!
Today I gave up on what could have been another hopeless infatuation. I gave up hope. Now I'm partly lying, because you never give up on a love. It may be succeeded by another. The other one hasn't come. So I'm still in love. She is so beautiful and dresses so well that it hurts to see her. I melt when she looks at me. Yet I have actually given up on her, or decided not to do anything for my love, but to let it suffer its death in silence. Unlike last fall, there will be no poems, letters or phone calls. Nothing at all. Just to accept and not try to force anything. It hurts, but it is necessary. We differ too much intellectually. The usual problem.
Lonely in the world.
Why do I go on about this loneliness so much?
Because I am getting older?
Books I want to read:
Homer: The Odyssey and The Illiad.
The Bible
Maugham: Of Human Bondage.
Musil: The Man Without Qualities.
Proust: In Search of Lost Time.
Stendahl: Red and Black (I bought it in French, but will probably read it in Swedish in the first round).
April 19, 23.15. At work.
For the moment, I've stopped reading Roland Barthes. I’m thinking more politically again.
Loveless. I can't even attract glances in the city. Am I that old?
I never want to die. Yet I die every day.
When will I have time? To put my feet on the starting blocks?
It's as if life is just the airplane ride where you sit cramped, unsafe and hope to land — but life is the journey itself. The plane never lands. It crashes.
Am I doing the right thing by breaking a seven-year-old relationship? Will God punish me for my rebellion against fate?
I do not believe in God! But on the other hand, I don't know how the story will end.
Is this stream of consciousness? Is writing a conscious or unconscious process? Why can't writing — like music — be a process that mixes knowledge and technique with intuition and spontaneity? When will I have time to write something great? Because I want to write, and I want to write great stuff. This eternal hubris that makes me run blindly past every watering hole in search of water. There are times when I think really darkly about myself.
April 20, Wednesday
Kungsträdgården. I had a cappuccino at the 7 Sekel restaurant. Two cute girls saw me, and sat down at the next table. The difficulty of flirting is the difficulty of lying, and since I have a difficulty lying, I can't.... Now I'm lying!
I had dinner at my mom and dad's place before heading downtown. Overcame my cowardice and entered Café Opera, where I bought a glass of wine at the bar to scout. Eventually I moved along the bar towards the center of the room. A middle-aged American sat at a table, talking to two young and pretty girls. One seat was empty.
"Are you waiting for a fourth person?"
"No!"
"Do you mind if I join your company?"
They didn’t, so I took my glass of red and joined them.
Chuck, a car dealer from New York named Chuck, offered white wine when the red was gone, and eventually treated us with strawberries, ice cream, and whipped cream. And cappuccino!
I joined the conversation after the two Swedish girls discovered that I wasn’t American. I flirted with the one next to me, but she wasn't particularly interested. (Neither was I, beyond the erotic.)
April 26
To the first chapter of my paper:
I have sought to apply a narrow concept of economic reform, but this has not been possible due to the peculiarly ideological nature of the Chinese/Maoist model. Integration via ideology pulls the entire socio-political system into the economy. The post-Mao reforms are, in a sense, an attempt to establish what previously hardly existed — an economic system.
On the one hand, there were a number of studies with explanatory models based on the Soviet model of the 1950s. On the other hand, sociologically oriented studies of the China of the Cultural Revolution (Schurmann.) The reform process involves centralization and bureaucratization as well as decentralization and depoliticization.
April 29, 02.15
I called in sick. Caught a cold. Have a sore throat and sniffles. When I lie down, the snot runs down my chest, and end up having to get up so that I can cough it up. To make matters worse, I drank too much coffee in the evening. So I got up instead, and wrote down my ideas about China after Mao.
I plan to finish the paper during my next five days off (Saturday—Thursday). My sick leave has also given me two more days to review the literature and take notes. I need to pep myself up for the writing.
Cecilia told me the other day that her mother was mad at me for breaking up with her daughter. Understandable, irrational and indisputable. There are things you can't discuss. Hate and love.
April 30
Thinking about Cecilia's and my relationship with her, why it didn’t work out. One of the most important reasons was that we were so straightforward, and down to earth that all tension dissolved. We lived and fought for common goals, but did we really care about each other? (cf. Camus.)
Cecilia had told her mother that it was the 30-year crisis together with the seven-year crisis. Plus my political development.
May 5, 00.50
I called Fors and told him that the paper is just about finished. All that remains is footnotes (a couple of hundred), some polishing and a summary.
Cecilia is madly in love.
09.20
The coffee cup is steaming hot. I feel the sun warming my neck. I had planned to go to the university and return a book that had been requested. When I got to the Old Town station, I realized that I didn’t have enough time, since I had to be at work at ten. I took a morning walk through the Old Town, crossed the bridges, and continued along Strömmen over to Almarna. I sat down at the restaurant 7 Sekel.
Spring arrived during the seven days I was sick, and sat in front of my typewriter. It is getting warmer, and the grass is turning green, the trees are budding, and starting to bloom. I have a feeling that all the people are constantly walking around horny. Henry Miller?
May 8, Sunday evening
I went downtown after work. Lots of people out and long lines. At the Daily News Café, they didn't let me in at all when I was first there.
"We must keep the seats at the bar open for those who have eaten," said the bouncer.
I walked around for a while, then to Röda Rummet. Had a beer, sat for less than an hour. As I left, I saw a young and pretty girl looking at me and smiling. I smiled back, but left. Continued down to the Daily News where I had to wait on line a long time, not because it was long, but because a steady stream of jetsetters kept slipping past the line. At least I got in eventually. Had a strong beer and hung out at the bar. Reconnaissance.
A guy around 25 offered me bubbly. I think I drank four glasses. Got a little blistered, but not at all wobbly. Found a suitable pickup line, and began talking to two girls (what do you call two pretty good-looking girls who are quite tough in style?) I joked around a bit (mostly verbally). When the blonde girl was going to the bathroom, I had to hold her glass. (That is, I had first treated the other girl with Champagne, and also held her glass of white wine. Then I got the blonde friend's Jägermeister and a glass of water.)
I was fiddling with three glasses and, sure enough, I almost dropped one. I caught it quickly, but in turn a splash shot out to the left, and some of it ended up in the eyes of a girl in another party. It hurt, and she was sad and angry. I apologized for my clumsiness, but what did it matter — her evening was ruined. After a while I left the two girls — they were turned off.
May 9
Last Saturday I went with my parents to the Modern Museum to see an exhibition of Russian abstract and constructivist art. Nice stuff. Clear influences from Paris at the turn of the century. Recognized things based directly on Braque (I saw the big Braque exhibition at the Centre Pompidou this past summer).
May 12, Thursday
My newspaper had a party. We were picked up by boat below the Russian Embassy. The paper treated us with drinks during the trip to Lidingö Värdshus. We ate and drank. We were about 75 people, including the editorial leadership.
I danced a bit, but made no attempt to hit on anyone. Gorgeous Sanna initially used me as a protector, but she was soon swarmed over and allowed herself to be swarmed over by the old men in management. Perhaps she is trying to charm her way into a permanent position? But how much is she prepared to pay? These people, who are so correct by day, turn into satyrs and nymphs after a few drinks.
I asked a girl who is a cartoonist to dance. She danced very well, so well that I almost felt embarrassed. I was exhausted after a few long Elvis songs. She followed me out on the balcony, and I got the feeling that she was interested. I didn't respond because she seemed so serious. I'm in the mood for play — not seriousness, not responsibility.
After the party we stood outside in the cold for an hour waiting for a taxi. The first cabs were grabbed by the managers. The rest of us eventually got cars that took us to the Daily News Café. At quarter past three the place closed. A few of us walked through Kungsträdgården. I took bus 94 to Slussen. I had the keys to my parent's apartment (they were at the summer house) so I slept there.
May 15, Saturday
Having a beer at Bachi Wapen. The walls are covered with large Metro Goldwyn Meyer posters from the 1940s. Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Leslie Howard. You have to create models like these, who can facilitate the generalization, can free the writer from the torment of accuracy, from the sterile truth.
I went for a stroll, bought l'Express to read an article on Marx by Raymond Aron. Had a coffee under the elm trees. Went back home at half past three. Slept for an hour, took a shower and changed into my new black linen suit. I called Patrick, but he had already made his plans, so I went alone.
I walked from the Old Town to Östermalmstorg, and took the subway back to the Old Town. At three minutes to eight I entered Bachi Wapen. I had planned to use the free entrance before 20.00 and it went well, but in return I had to sit for two hours at the bar before a song program started. The disco in the basement only started at eleven. It was crowded down there, and the sound volume was disgustingly high. Probably 130 decibels.
I danced a lot, but didn't find anyone I wanted to hit on (i.e., buy a beer to talk to and whatnot). I said thank you after a few songs, and asked someone else. In doing so, I wasted my cards with the girls I had danced with. When I later asked a tall girl to join me at a slow dance on the upper level, she said no. When we had danced at the lower level she had seemed happy.
A pretty girl, who had a touch of family girl about her, lit up when I asked her to dance downstairs in the disco. She had just come down the stairs when I touched her arm and asked if she wanted to dance. She turned to look and said yes. We danced and later in the evening she gave me a enthusiastic look, which I returned only half-interested, but I did not follow up. Through my fiddling, I was left without a girl that night. Perhaps it was for the best. Better than feigning interest in someone you don't care for.
May 16, Monday
I called Björn on Friday evening and suggested that we get a group together and go to Röda Rummet. We called around and at half past eight Cecilia and I met Lelle at the entrance. We went in. (Cecilia was of course nervous — she is really in love!) There were still not a lot of people there, so we could choose a good table. Lelle had ice cream. The rest of us had beer. There were intense discussions about submarines, the Gandhi movie, new age etc., before we split.
Allan Nilsson literally gets on my nerves with his pompous bullying. He glides around looking for opportunities to criticize our work, but does not do much to help. He enjoys his power over us editors. Pia and I had eight pages to draw. She finished at a quarter past seven and I soon after. I had been working since ten in the morning with a half-hour lunch break and had no other breaks before I left.
May 20
Torsten had switched shifts with me, so I worked 10-19.30 instead of 14-24.00. I went home and watched the phone. We have an ad in the paper to exchange our apartment for two smaller.
May 22, Sunday morning 04.20
I took the night bus and have just arrived home. It’s light outside. Crows and sparrows dominate Vårholmen square.
Dad and I went to Café Opera. I had pheasant and Dad had beef tenderloin. We talked and watched people. At half past eleven we took a taxi back to Hornsgatan. Mom was on a 24 hour cruise to the Åland archipelago with her sisters.
I continued to Pia's housewarming party. There were mostly people from the newspaper, but also some others, including a psychologist who made her company jealous by talking a lot with me. She made a very sympathetic impression. Got what I said right away. She was interested in my China paper and asked me to send her a copy. She left with the guy — who was pissed — and said hello to everyone else in the room except me.
May 23
The author steps out of the world and thus becomes a representative of all of us when we feel like outsiders.
May 26
My first day of work after five days off. Had a bad cold with a runny nose, but I still went to work. Got the schedule for June and found that I was put down for work at the end of June even though I had requested to take a leave then. As a temp, you are not supposed to ask for time off.
I wrote about 150 footnotes for the paper. Started to type out a clean copy.
I am increasingly torn between fiction and economics. There is not enough time, and I am no longer young. Which I reveal every time I read about some 30-year-old being called youth!
I’ve been in the city a lot. Looking for girls, but sliding more and more towards loneliness, into the black hole residing inside me. Why this eternal desire to assert myself? This whip! A book is not for the group, but for the outsider.
May 27, 23.15
Life. One day you see the horizon of your life. Then you begin to understand that the distance is not only measurable, but fully comprehensible. You are approaching thirty, i.e., 1/3. Close to 30, I have not become a writer, a scientist, or a Casanova. At 30, I’m just a clever nobody. Six months to go.
Is it because of honesty that the poet is a lousy seducer?
I am on the north side of Djurgården, not far from the Radio House. It is almost six. A woman of 55 stands alone on one side of the road, cane in hand and a dark blue hat. Coat in the same color. Sturdy shoes. Smiling, she enjoys the view. Listening to Revolver.
"All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?"
In English, the language sounds. When I try to write a poem in Swedish, it sounds like nothing. I need to be more aware of how our language sounds.
May 28
Cecilia flew to Paris with her father today.
Sometimes I wonder...
The individual's romantic crush.
The group’s crush — the movement.
The dreams of a generation.
Mao's Cultural Revolution.
May 29
Just as the art of painting was revolutionized by photography and modern society, the novel was disrupted by the breakthrough of mass media. The quality of narrative now faces competition not only from the press, but also from radio and television.
Perhaps the main quality of the novel is that it appeals to people who take the time to read, to slowly follow a line of reasoning, a description over several days, even weeks. Is the novel simply the long conversation, the long story? The role of the form is simply to keep the reader going, to follow the story through?
May 31, 02.10
Worked like hell! Many changes to the city edition, A3. Didn't finish until around 1 am. Eleven hours of work. In seven days I will have worked 70 hours.
June 1, 02.55
Not a bad day/evening. However, I am tired after six shifts.
Went to the Newsroom journalist club after work. Had two whiskeys. Danced with a girl who was fit as a fiddle. Looked pretty ordinary, but her dancing was hot and erotic. Danced three dances. I asked if I could buy her a drink, but she said no.
Finished typing out the footnotes through chapter 4.
Read a long essay about Lord Byron in the New York Review of Books. Interesting, i.e. Byron as a phenomenon, as a model for man — the actor (cf. Hemingway). The Byron myth, i.e., writing as if you are the romantic hero. Who am I then?
June 2, 01.30
On the eighth day, I do not rest, but plan to work on my paper, and meet with Rudolf Fors later in the evening.
Sometime in the early 1970s I stopped listening to other music than revolutionary songs of struggle, and progressive musical theater and rock. Today I’m once again listening to music, and it’s not only thanks to the Walkman.
I wonder if the feeling of loneliness is our most fundamental experience, the one we are constantly running away from. Then death is a liberator.
June 3, 01:30
I visited Fors. As I feared, he had not read the paper properly, and had good reasons for it (mother-in-law with liver cancer.) We spent four hours discussing chapters 1 and 2. I wonder if he had read more than that?
*
There is no echo for modern man. Her signals stream out into space and not even Einstein's curved room offers any comfort. She will never hear her own voice, never get answers. You open the morning paper, hoping for proof of your existence. You find only emptiness. You hurtle through the universe in complete freedom, totally dependent on laws you don't know, and can't communicate with. You live and eat and work, constantly trying to extend your life, vain creature. You are constantly expanding your knowledge in the belief that space is becoming less empty, that one day you will perceive an echo of yourself, find a footprint in the ether that is your own. Restlessly, you flutter through the glittering nightlife of the big city, semaphoring into the darkness. In vanity, you sweat under the murderous soundtrack of the disco. Like a glowworm.
June 4, Sunday
Cecilia is back from Paris. She had had a good time and enjoyed a bit of romance.
*
Reading Jag är här (I am here) by Czesław Miłosz (Bromberg, 1980.) I have always imagined that one writes to explain the world, but Milosz turns this upside down. He writes to communicate his incomprehension. He is a kindred spirit.
"...the horror that belongs to the very essence of the twentieth century." (p 21)
Inter arma silent Musae (in war the Muses are silent).
Writing is essentially a confession.
On the subway. Two boys aged 13-15 and two girls of the same age enters. One guy has long hair, tosses his bangs and looks at his reflection in the window. He is tense and has jerky facial movements. All the time, he’s playing with a cigarette lighter. Puts the flame on his hand and fingers (to impress the girls). He has a cool jacket, jeans and white sneakers. At the Liljeholmen stastion, they change to line 14.
Milosz:
"...I find in my mind a deeply rooted conviction of loneliness, my own and man's, in the face of an infinite space, that moves but is still empty, because from there no voice is heard speaking a language that is mine, close to me and accessible." (1969)
June 6
I visited the university library and read a couple of chapters of Chen-yuan Cheng's book on China. I was supposed to meet Fors at eight, but he couldn't make it as he had a wisdom tooth extracted and his mother-in-law was dying. I understand him.
Had planned to take a walk at nine, but Cecilia got mad when I told her I was about to leave. My plan was to walk and try to come up with a poem or two, maybe write something down. I was inspired by Milosz poetry collection Möte.
I changed my mind and asked if she wanted to come along. She smiled, but when I mentioned that I had been to The Prince and talked to two girls, she didn’t want to go, which surprised me. Is she still hoping that I will change my mind? Does she still love me? I feel evil, like someone who causes pain. Yet, I see no other way out than to stick to the decision to break up.
Like in a nightmare, I swim, being sucked into solitude, the place where I can begin!
June 8, 00.25
"...but hides the hunchback’s grief in his heart." (Milosz, 1969)
June 9, 00.23
Already, almost a third of June has passed.
Already, almost a third of my life has passed.
I listened to Julie Felix at Gröna Lund and then the ferry to Slussen. Stockholm at night is so beautiful. Watching the steam ships and ferries riding smoothly on the water with Stadsgårdskajen (the dock) and Söderklippan (the rocky cliff on the northern side of Södermalm) in the background. There were many bachelorette parties going on in the city. I myself am sucked like by a maelstrom into the dark loneliness. Despite everyone and everything. I make contacts easily, and manage to attract interest from girls, but it's as if I can't respond. I reject. Since I don't trust anyone but myself, I only talk to myself. This interlocutor of mine, whom we call God, allows us to present our problems to someone who cannot harm us. How can I answer your cries when I don't know my own name?
June 10
"According to him /Blake/, it was Locke and Newton who lived in an illusory, unfortunately deadly world, because they provided evidence for 'the laws of society and nature', that is, for captivity." (Milosz, Jag är här, p. 124)
About Balzac:
"An example of such an erroneous, ethereal Swedenborgianism is Balzac's Séraphita, nota bene written when the emotional butterball experienced the greatest intensity in his love for Madame Hanska, hence the novel's two twin souls in the symbolic snow by the Norwegian fjord." (s 136)
I am sailing under dark clouds. Already grieving over an almost spent summer. I feel guilty about Cecilia. I abandoned her when she started longing for children. I waited so long to take a stand. My lukewarmness takes its toll. It steals precious time. Who suffers most? A woman with children who is abandoned, or one without children? The word sin sounds so different.
Suddenly, as I crossed the Västerbron bridge on my way to the subway stop at Hornstull, I shivered. I thought about my history with (without!) Angela. At some point we have to bump into each other so that she can give me absolution. Even after six months, I am still ashamed — not of my love, but of my immorality, my haste. Moreover, I am emotionally mute. I would like to open new relationships, but I shy away from seriousness. Is it the infinite power of love that scares me? The fear of falling, when I have not yet done anything that gives me a place in society? The place where I am (Milosz).
June 11, 07.00
Why do I only write about myself?
Because all other time is spent on the outside world, which consumes me. But once in a while I take time for myself. My diary therefore reflects only one side, but the one that is closest to me as a person.
June 13
Spent a few hours reading Milosz on Blake, Jeffers, Dostoevsky and Swedenborg. The humanist in me demands his space, but tomorrow I will read about China's economy!
June 14, 01.40
The Prince seems to be a place where girls meet to discuss their men or problems with men. I went there just after ten and found a table next to two girls in their twenties. I ordered half a bottle of René Barbier and began to read Sten Malmström's book about Swedish 20th century poetry.
But I also followed the conversation — I had to, whether I wanted to or not! One girl (they turned out to be siblings and she was the big sister) spoke with authority and was surprisingly wise. Vell travelled as well. And radical. She talked about her boyfriend who was some kind of an anarchist, but she thought was a coward. She said that she liked to take care of him and exercise her maternal instinct.
"The hidden structure of reality is sensible. To say this in a frightening century means a lot."
(Milosz, Jag är här, p 140)
It was an evening in mid-June, a balmy summer evening when Stockholm's glow is slowly fading into gray silhouettes. The hot summer day had worked up clouds, but not thunder. Perhaps because of the strong afternoon breeze.
High above the Bellmansgatan building with its spires and domes, an airplane comes in over the city, heading in the direction of the Marieberg newspaper scrapers and, somewhere beyond, Bromma Airport. A seagull flies high above the Riddarfjärden water in solitary majesty. It is almost nine and the sun descends slowly between Lady Hutton's sleek white hull and the austere tower of the City Hall.
From my vantage point at Slussen, near the heart of the city, I watch the subway trains approaching and disappearing under my feet. A flow of cars on Söderleden yellow, green, blue, big and small, old and new. What would the city be without the energy of the cars, I think, despite the exhaust fumes and noise.
Down by the quay, under the Söderleden bridge towards Tegelbacken, a man kisses a woman, a woman kisses a man. A jogger runs past them and I watch them with envy from my point of view.
I am standing still, having stopped to watch the sunset over my city. The city always responds to your love, you don't risk being rejected, its arms are always open to those who want to stop and contemplate its beauty. To see, you have to stop. Perhaps that is the role of the poet, to stand still when everything is flowing. To be alone in the crowd.
I continue down towards the Old Town and as I walk, the sun sinks some more, and for a moment sends its beams of light straight through the pointed iron tower of the Riddarholmen Church. Two Djurgården ferries meet on the other side of Slussen. My descent into the Old Town has hastened the sunset and on Järntorget it is already dusk.
June 15, Wednesday, 00.50.
I was supposed to meet Fors on yesterday, but that fell through again because of his mother-in-law's illness (liver cancer and now also pneumonia).
I had dinner at my parents place, then walked across town to the movie theater Spegeln to watch Sophie's Choice. A deeply moving movie. Meryl Streep is huge.
*
In the fifteen minutes it took to walk to the Old Town, I became depressed as I passed the entertainment venues and saw loving couples embracing each other. Felt the temptation hunt, but not on a Tuesday. Can't go out every night.
The whirlpools at Strömparterren symbolize death. Shiva's pleasure!
Writer or economist?
Should I take out my savings, and put them all into writing a book?
I want to stop time, I can't keep up. Panic creeps over my sweaty soul. That it should be so hard to live without a girl!!!
Poor Stingo (in the movie). Why must writers always be types that humiliate themselves in the struggle for a woman's favor? The writer. Is he just the failed male, singing about his grief? Always on the sidelines.
June 17, Friday, 00.00
"There will be a man wandering in the black forest."
(Karlfeldt, Samlade skrifter, /Collected Works/ p 117)
"There is a man wandering in the black city."
(Me, unpublished)
03.45
She is chasing me in my dreams, actually she is not chasing me at all but it’s me that is chasing her. Who is she? Is she merely my longing for the impossible? How difficult is it to maintain one's place in space?
Christopher Lasch would of course note that my feeling of emptiness was a typical example of narcissism in the modern Western society.
Of course you chase your reflection when you have lost your faith, when religion — Marxism — has lost its power over one’s soul.
Perhaps Narcissus was not so vain, but rather puzzled by his existence. Why do I call the simple-minded stupid? Why this exhibitionism? A cry into the darkness, waiting for an answer? Not only does love plow my chest with its sharp edge.
I’m torn between two paths. The future lies in economics and research. I’m fiercely interested in this, but also fiercely interested in poetry and literature. I want to do a PhD, and write novels at the same time. My unrealistic project. My road to defeat?
23.50
I met Fors at four. We discussed chapter two until six when he had to leave. He takes my paper seriously and pays a lot of attention to the theory chapter.
Afterwards I went out on the town. Eventually went to S:t Eriksplan. Called Björn and suggested that we would meet at Studio. They offered a 42 kronor menu with roast beef and potato salad. I was hungry. Nice restaurant, but the roast beef dish was clearly inferior to The Prince's. We moved on after a couple of hours, but Björn was broke and didn't want to go to a disco.
It was a relatively light day at work, but I was tired after all the late nights. I went to bed around half past nine. Slumbered for a while, but then began to reading Erik Axel Karlfeldt's Vildmarks och kärleksvisor (Wilderness and Love Songs.) It is midnight and I have soon read 100 pages. I like his poetry. A warm lonely heart beats for life and love.
"But I can no longer sing,
do not laugh heartily, only chuckle heavily.
I am not a child, I am a man,
My blood is longing and heavy."
(På älvbrinken, /On the riverbank/, p 107).
June 21, 00.50
I bought Dante's The Divine Comedy.
June 22, Norr Mälarstrand
A one-legged seagull stands on a green iron pipe not far from the table where I’m having coffee. He displays his defect and feigns discretion. Half a dozen house sparrows flock around my table. Windsurfers sail on the lake. There is a pleasant breeze and not a cloud in the sky. On the other side of Lake Mälaren’s slightly rippled surface, beyond the eastern part of the Långholmen island, the two towers of the Högalid Church shoot up like a pair of rockets.
Öland, June 23
It’s the day before Midsummer's Eve. After finishing the Stockholm edition, I walked across Västerbron. It was midnight on the brightest day of the year. From the Västerbro brigde, I see rows of yellow and white lights, like a string of pearls between heaven and sea.
I stayed at Mom and Dads’ place since we were going to drive to Öland — 360 km via Oskarshamn/Byxelkrok — early in the morning.
I just cam back from a walk into Löttorp, but it was dead. A few guys at the kiosk. The only girl in sight was grilling sausages. The pub and disco were closed. A lonely evening on Öland, but it doesn't matter as I need to rest.
Starting to read Dante. I listen to the 14th century!
June 25, Sunday
My Midsummer Night's Eve came to a disappointing end. I had planned to borrow the car and drive to Borgholm, but Mom suggested that we go together, which I of course could not object to.
The normally small city was now like a big amusement park. There were a lot of young people in different stages of drunkenness, and many pretty girls.
This is reconnaissance, I told myself.
We had coffee at Strand Hotel where Dad made two nice sketches with motifs from the bar. The marina and the pier had turned into one long bar counter full of people. I started to get a little excited by all the nice legs and such. But I was on the other hand happy that Mom and Dad could have an evening out and see how young people enjoy themselves these days.
We left Borgholm about ten. There was almost no traffic so I could keep between 110 and 150 km per hour. My plan was to drop Mom and Dad off and then rerturn to the town, but as I stepped out of the car I noticed smoke coming from the hood.
Is the car on fire? I wondered.
Mom ran around the house to turn on the water for the hose.
When I opened the hood, I saw that a lid was gone and that the smoke came from oil splatter.
And now it started to rain. My midsummer evening ended with a whiskey and ham sandwich in front of the TV, where the TV personality and connoisseur of classical music, Sten Broman, shared his memories.
Sunday evening
Mom came in and sat at the foot of my bed. We talked — mostly I — about my paper that she had started to read.
Why am I so conflicted about my mother sitting at my bedside? Oedipus? Perhaps this is the fundamental imbalance in my relationship with women? The women who love me I avoid. Those who avoid me I love. Will a poet be born out of that tragedy?
I hate poetry — this substitute.
*
I spent Saturday night in Borgholm. A lot of people and a lot of alcohol in circulation, except for me as I had to drive back later. Ate Swedish hash and had a small light beer at Strand's outdoor veranda down by the marina. Talked to a group of young people from Kalmar and the surrounding area. I even made a date with a girl from Igelösa, or something like that. She believes that the world lies at her feet and sprinkles her conversation with a dash of existentialism that she has picked up here and there. At Strand's disco, I was asked to dance by a girl who looked nice, but too ordinary to my taste. We danced two dances, then she said thank you. I guess she read my mind.
As I looked out over the dance floor, I got a glimpse through the veranda window of the sun disk descending into the Kalmar Strait. A little later, I asked a girl I had kept my eyes on to dance. Cute, black hair and of Greek descent. Maybe 20 years old. She was nice, but later withdrew to her friends.
Danced some more, but mostly stood around. Had a glass of red wine, a Coca Cola and a glass of juice at the bar. Didn't see any girls that interested me, just a few that made me a bit horny. However, I saw a girl in the harbor that I fell for a bit, but unfortunately she had company!
It was past one o’clock and time for me to drive back to the summer house when I to my horror realized that I had left the car lights on. Now I’m stuck, I thought.
Oddly enough, the car started, but on the way to the main road, I noticed that the low beams didn’t work. And then I met a police car that flashed me with its headlights. It made me nervous, so I pulled over by a golf course with a snack bar and café. I started to check the lights and was helped by a cute and drunk girl. She had a summer job at Kvarnen, a café south of Borgholm. Since I couldn’t fix the lights and didn’t want to drive without the low beams working, I decided to wait for the dawn. It was almost two and the girl kept me company until just before three when a man — hers? — showed up.
I started driving north just before dawn. Met a couple of police cars, but I drove with my high beams on. It was half past three and soon I was driving through thick fog banks that in some places made it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead of you. Besides, it was so cold and raw outside and I froze and shivered that it was hard to keep my foot on the gas pedal.
Monday, half past eleven.
A light summer rain outside. Pleasant.
Worked a bit on the paper today. Read Dante, went for a bike ride, rearranged one of the guest rooms into a writing room, played miniature golf in Löttorp, masturbated. (Why do I hesitate to write about this simple human fact?)
Saw an interesting TV program about Joyce. What poems he wrote — I didn't know! Jan Myrdal opened the Author series on the P1 radio channel. He talked a bit about himself, and played way too much music. As if he wanted to torment all the aesthetes with popular, but hardly pleasant music. It is certainly interesting to hear nursery rhymes from 1940s Manhattan — but not necessarily enjoyable. The content of the spoken part was a defense of puberty, anti-hierarchism, and so on, familiar old Myrdalian themes. It seems that his intellectual innovation slows down as his mass-media fame grows. He chews the cud all too often.
*
The last time I talked to Angela, she offered to return my letters.
I declined:
"No thanks, it doesn't matter."
What had happened had happened. The tracks had been irrevocably made, and even after six months I am still occasionally overcome by regret.
You can burn letters,
but what’s done is done
in the game of life.
Paradoxically, I am always struggling to leave traces on the shores of history, knowing that a wave will soon wash away all my efforts. The traces I want to leave have not yet been made. Almost 30, I begin to wonder if they will be made at all. Since everything is still transitory in the perspective of a star’s birth and death, and no God is there to save the equation, only one reason remains for this desire to leave traces: The need for appreciation, preferably in cash (i.e., in life) or credit (i.e., after death). But it seems that the traces you place are not the ones you intended.
I didn't want to hurt Angela, didn't want to hurt Cecilia, but I did. I set all my power in motion, and tore the future apart — to give myself a different future, to turn the game board upside down.
Puberty at 30, or as with Myrdal — at 56? Well, until I can proudly point to something and say "Look what I've done", I will continue to rage, and the call of the wild will not leave me any peace.
June 26
There was a mild and pleasant wind. Cows were grazing in the meadows and farmers were working to bring in the harvest. He hadn't seen any hay bales or rakes, and not many farmers either. Two were working with a machine that collects the hay, packs and loads it into a modern hay cart, which looked like a crib, but with bigger and on wheels.
June 28, Tuesday
Future plans?
Start researching?
Write a book?
Girl? etc.
Dante:
“For where the instrument of thinking mind
Is joined to strength and malice, a man’s defence
Cannot avail to met those powers combined.”
(Inferno, Canto XXXI, D.L. Sayers, p 266)
Jan Myrdal said on the radio that he made himself unbearable on purpose, so as not to let the cowardice at 30 rule his life. Oh, those upper-class kids! It's easy to make yourself unbearable and break china when you have a father in government!
Cecilia called. She had a cold and sounded depressed. She had spent a rainy midsummer with her parents in Gävle. I had a bad conscience. I feel like I've ruined her life. Maybe her mother blames her for not being able to keep me?
I visted the raukar (limestone stacks) at Byerum. The sky was magnificent before sunset. For a moment the sky was clear, bright and light blue. The next moment storm clouds gathered up high above the Blå Jungfrun island.
I was unable to find peace. Like the clouds, I was torn, anxious, and frustrated by suppressed horniness. The summer already feels like a failure: no girls, studies are lagging behind and the job is boring.
Soon I will be 30 and nothing. No novel or collection of poetry, no degree, no steady job, no woman, no goal in life, nothing but a stubborn desire for the impossible. My diary is my only escape, and even there I’m not honest, but omit and gloss over.
I began writing a few lines, something that could be an opening to a short story or a novel, but I don't have the energy to put a story together. Everything becomes fragmentary, unsorted, impulses, whims, pieces that are not added according to a plan, but just flow together. As usual, my self-criticism kills most of it. I can't make up a poor plot and then tell myself it's good. I demand philosophical depth and credibility in the narrative. I don't really want to be a journalist. I hate writing a lot of crap. I want to write about the world, not flitter around and think this or that. But isn't this just a substitute for the beautiful summer girl in a white dress that I never get?
June 30, Thursday
It rained today. I've been studying math for economic applications, dove into Purgatory, writing my paper, and an erotic short story.
July 1, Friday, 21.00
So it is July. Continue to read in Dante. Studying math. Have converted one of the guest rooms into a study. My first study. It feels really nice to have a place you can go to and work. Where it's easier to resist distractions of all kinds.
It has been raining for two days. Now it's starting to clear up a bit. I am sitting in the square between the old town hall and the municipal square. The merchants have closed their stalls and are packing up. The air is warm and there is a pleasant calm in the small town with its two-story houses. It's a quarter past six and things are still moving, but most businesses are closing for the day even if the urgency seems less than in Stockholm at closing time.
Soon I'll be heading down to Strand Hotel for a bite to eat. And get a second look at the cute waitress I saw on Wednesday. I liked her eyes and forward manner.
*
Political system:
Competition — low need for shared values
Monopoly — requires a high degree of shared values
Monopoly without a high degree of shared values—>
—> specific forms of interest articulation —>
—> factions, i.e., informal networks of small groups depending on each other.
July 2, Saturday morning, 01.50
Just got back after driving the 25 miles from Borgholm. Tomorrow I will have lunch with Ann-Charlotte, the charming creature I saw for the first time on Wednesday when I went to Strand's restaurant Skrytfisken with Mom and Dad. She is a waitress and occasionally gave me a friendly look.
She was bold and natural in her manner. A little double chin, but a beautiful face, lovely eyes, and an upright posture.
I returned to Strands on Friday evening, dressed in my black linen suit, melon green tie and gray shoes. She was there and we immediately seemed that we got on the same wavelength. There were no guests at Strand’s glassed-in veranda where one could see that the roof had leaked here and there, leaving the hemp carpet wet and dented.
She asked if I was going to have the Sunset menu.
"No, but I would consider the roast beef — if it is good!"
She took a few steps to the side to check a menu on a small table by the wall. I followed and suddenly found myself close to her, so close that with my left hand in my pocket I felt a slight pressure from her side. I asked if it was too cold to sit on the veranda and she said it depended on how warm you were when you arrived. The roast beef was actually part of the late night menu, but she said she would ask the chef if he could fix it anyway.
I took a seat at a table that wasn't wet from leaking water. Unfortunately it was not her table. Exactly as the weather service had predicted on the radio, the rain clouds began to break up, and the view of the Kalmar Strait grew more beautiful.
I ate and had a glass of red wine while poring over the culture page in Expressen and flirting with Ann-Charlotte when she showed up. Two guys had appeared and sat a bit away from me. She went on with her confident style and managed to persuade one of the boys to buy a "Fiskogram" for 99 kr. (When she had left he said that she was a “damn fine girl.”)
Eventually I moved inside as it was getting cold. On the veranda So doing I got a table that she was serving. We exchanged a few words and she looked at me every time she passed by my table.
I had heard (when she was talking to the boys) that she was going to the US in the fall, so I asked her what she was going to do there. She was a singer, and had received a one-year scholarship to the US. She recently sang in a performance of Faure's Requiem. I knew it, there was something special about her.
As she passed by again, I mustered the courage to ask if Strand ever let her out and suggested a date. She was working the evenings in question (I'm going to Stockholm on Tuesday,) so I suggested we meet before her work one day. It went well. She looked happy, but there was an almost imperceptible shadow on her mind. As always when you start falling in love with a girl, there's another guy involved — not in viewe, but still there. When I asked her where she was staying in Borgholm, it turned out that she was staying with her boyfriend.
"But that's not a problem," she said, referring to our date.
How could one interpret that?
*
It was now a quarter to nine and I left for Solkatten where I was to meet Kerstin from Igelösa. I had to take a detour to give my self time to cool down after the meeting with Ann-Charlotte. It did therefore not bother me in the least that the other girl was a no show. I strolled up and down Storgatan before settling down at the marina and enjoying the sunset. A family of swans with three cygnets swam slowly through the water. Right under the red sun disk, a sailboat came in broad reach towards Borgholm. The swallows sang as they sped quickly through the air. I ended the evening by having a Coca Cola in the bar at Hotel Borgholm. A drunkard spilled beer on my shirt. Very tired — but satisfied — I drove the 25 miles back to the summer cottage.
July 3
I met her at noon. Everything would have been perfect — had it not been for her boyfriend! Why did she agree to meet me on one of the few days when both she and her boyfriend were free? He was not happy about it, she said. It's like I'm cursed. When I fall in love again, the same thing happens. Dad wisely commented that this is what happens when you hunt at my age. The best girls have been taken.
One day left on my short vacation. It feels like being in a disco at midnight when they start playing music for slow dancing, and you still haven't found a girl. The race was over.
I have chased girls and neglected my studies. All I have left are a few scratches on my heart and a guilty conscience. On the other hand. I’ve had some fun. But the string of failures in love is getting harder and harder to bear. It was almost as if I longed for the time before I broke up with Cecilia when I called to check on her cold, and let her know that we were driving back on Tuesday.
Poetry is the lifeline of the soul for those who are constantly left out. Poetry is hope for revenge, of being heard and seen, but who reads poetry other than the weak and wounded?
The masters want to be praised in songs. They screw, and fuck the poetry. As someone who respects women as equals, it's hard for me to be cynical and lie about my feelings to get laid. I felt sick to my stomach when I sat at the bar at Hotel Borgholm and watched a local jet-setter devour a 17-year-old girl with his slippery falsehood. The bastards go free.
A man can be as false as he wants to be. A woman's only protection is therefore to drill deep into his heart. The poet's madness (Fröding's perhaps) is born out of his uncompromising refusal to accept defeat.
Sitting outside in the shade of a young brittle oak tree at Sjöstugan’s café near Borgholm. It is almost an hour since I parted from Ann-Charlotte. She was truly beautiful, and an outstanding girl in every way. There was only one flaw — she really did have a boyfriend.
We had a coffee in the park behind Ebba's pastry shop. An hour and three quarters, I think. Then she and her boyfriend had plans to visit the Borgholmen Castle ruins to advertise his “fiskogram” fish delivery service. For her, it was just nice to be asked out by a guy. For me, it was another one of those club punches that echoes in the soul throughout life. She was one of these women whom I spontaneously fall in love with, and who could tie me to the earth. If I believed in providence, I would take it as a sign that I am not yet ready to put down roots. My stone must roll on. It is painful. I’m sitting here, looking out over the beach and the bay, where life goes on. David Bowie in my headphones. Next to me Dante.
”A breath of wind – no more – is earthly fame,
And now this way it blows and that way now,
And as it changes quarter, changes name.
Ten centuries hence, what greater fame hast thou,
Stripping the flesh off late, than if thou’dst died
Ere thou wast done with gee-gee and bow-wow?
Ten centuries hence – and that’s a briefer tide,
Matched with eternity, than one eye-wink
To that wheeled course Heaven’s tardiest sphere must ride."
(Purgatory, Canto XI, Sayers, 1955, 1983, p 153)
He is undeniably right. And yet, no matter how futile our striving is, it’s all that we have — we creeps!
Three hours after the meeting, I’m having coffee in the garden of Snickarpelle’s Café, listening for the hundredth time to Schubert's Unfinished.
The wind is turning chilly. The sun's gracious moments are short in this country.
Why must women be so cruel? Every time I felt that now, here she is, and for her I am ready to sacrifice my freedom — she has already sacrificed hers. But why did she flirt with me? Thoughtlessly, of course. And she felt flattered, but the poet’s suffering is not flattering. It hurts. The sorrow in my heart thunders even though I have only seen her for three brief moments.
July 4, Monday
Dante on love.
“Sharpen thy sight now, Reader, to regard
The truth, for so transparent grows the veil,
To pass within will surely not be hard.”
(Purgatory, Canto XVIII, Sayers, 1955, 1983, p 126)
9:55 PM
After dinner and after helping to dig up the end of a sewer line (farmer Herbert was there to help,) I rode my bicycle to the beach, and brought Dante and my Walkman with me. There were a couple of windsurfers out in the bay, and the evening was sunny and beautiful.
I sat with Dante in my lap and listened to Schubert's Unfinished. Saw children splashing in the shallow water and seagulls strutting around in the sand. Three swans swam calmly along the Sten’s pier. It was indescribably, but at the same time a sad summation. I sat alone after ten days of hunting. I have met a very nice girl, but that was about it.
I read an article by Myrdal in Expressen. It was about European intellectuals and India. It was superficial and ill-conceived. He uses Marxism as a cudgel and prides himself on being popular.
John Berger wrote a fine article on the pessimistic Italian philosopher and poet Leopardi. His pessimism was liberating. It made me curious about Schopenhauer.
When will I start writing seriously? That question is burning in my chest.
I want (then JM can write what he wants) to write about my soul life! I believe in my life as a unique experience and I am looking for a way to make art out of this. I’m looking for a form that allows me to speak and others to enjoy listening — reading.
Yet, I am unproductive. Absorbing only.
I feel devastated by my failures in love. Add to that my bad conscience for Cecilia. Talked to her on the phone today. She still hopes that I will come to my senses and return. Sometimes the idea tempts me, but it's not possible. It would not be right. I don't want to make a commitment until I meet someone I'm passionate about. The friendship with Cecilia will never be love. And she needs love as much as I do. You should share feelings — not installments. But it's not easy to trade an apartment in Vårholmen for two smaller ones closer to the city. We're stuck.
Love without a Compass is the second part of draft novel with the working title Shifting Passions.
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