The Wait - Trying to Be Normal (Excerpt 3)

May 2, Wednesday

We visited Dad's grave yesterday and planted roses, daffodils and pansies at the headstone which is finally in place. 

May 6, Sunday

Is man monogamous?

I check out girls every day and want to conquer them all to share a moment, although not a lifetime. That's the difference. I'm willing to sacrifice every possible moment if I can just get Penny. Do I really mean this? Yes, I must mean it. I love her (when she is kind and gentle with me. Here comes the first reservation!) and I have asked her to marry me. 

May 7, Monday

Mom turned 64. I celebrated her with a homemade cake, and a gift from Crete.

I went to R.E. Quant's lecture on "Rationing as an optimal policy." It was interesting, but I wonder if the secret of economics is not, after all, that it silences the rest of us. When I see them — these believing economists — I feel like a stranger. I refuse to bend even though they are better than me at math and statistics. 

May 9, Wednesday

I wander around the library, scanning the spines of the books. I find interesting titles all the time. I take out a book, read the cover, and skim the table of contents, but thinking of the dozen books I'm already reading makes me hold off for now. I take down the title, and head over to the magazine section where I get stuck for two hours. I browse, search, and read. 

May 10, Thursday

I got a letter from Cecilia today. She is still in love with me and does not want postcards mentioning that I have another. I had used her as a pastime, she wrote. 

May 11, Friday

Sitting under the elm trees listening to Leonard Cohen. It's sunny, but not very hot. I enjoy the here and now, watching the city and the people. That's how I want to live.

Last night I went to her place to make love, but the letter from Cecilia had put me in a bad mood. According to Penny, my gloom was due to the fact that we had not made love for a week and a half. We made love, and the gloom disappeared. Then we talked, about children and so. She said that she would like to see her children grow up close to her family.

She likes me, but perhaps even more her way of life.

Is it the difficulty of winning her that drives my passion? 

May 15, Tuesday

Worked the fourth night. Biked home listening to Leonard Cohen. Depressed. I see no future, but I’m considering taking a big trip in a year or two. Towards China. 

* 

She has not yet responded to me proposing to her, although she said I would not have to wait long. My proposal was obviously impractical and left her with the choice of taking a big risk or losing me. I’m forcing her to choose as time is moving so fast, at least for me. 

May 16, Wednesday

Cecilia's letter opened me up to her suffering. I see her lying alone in "our" bed, crying out of desperation. Until now, I have not seen it. I was blocked and sad after the loss of my father. She just disappeared from the picture. Still, I think I did the right thing by breaking up. It's not my place to apportion blame, but our political involvement meant that we made too few human demands on each other. When the political passion dried up, there wasn't much left. She blames me, but I think she is angry with herself too. 

May 17, Thursday 

"Man does not change his passions, only the object of them." 

(John Donne, quoted in Artes 1/82 p 3) 

“Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided." 

(Montaigne, quoted from Artes 1/82 p 7) 

May 20, Sunday

I had lunch out with Penny on Friday. It was warm and nice in the sun. Afterwards Björn and I met under Almarna. He had read my paper, and was predictably critical, but not too bad. We discussed politics and economics, planning and freedom.

And we looked at girls.

But I had to move on as I was going to meet Penny on the steps of the Dramatic Theater. We saw an English guest performance of Sheridan's The School for Scandal. and had dinner at The Prince before going to her place where we went to bed, but it was slow going and after half an hour she said she didn't want to continue.

"It's like you take it for granted, and I feel like I have to do it," she said.

I felt snubbed and unfairly treated, so I retreated to the far end of the bed, close to the cold wall and used as little of the blanket as possible. I felt like I was washed up on a deserted beach, but unlike Robinson Crusoe, I did not build a home. Instead, I withdrew into the past, to old memories and dreams.

I thought about getting up and going home but stayed in silence. My chest felt swollen and my heart weak. I stroked my tender soul as one explores a sore spot, but eventually fell asleep, only to wake up to her seducing me. It was half past three in the morning. 

May 22, Tuesday

Still no answer, but she treats me tenderly. I wonder what she's thinking. 

* 

Mom is having many lonely nights now. For us, it is natural not to take care of a parent. In other societies and at other times, the opposite was just as obvious. 

May 23, Wednesday

Yesterday she had dinner with Arne and now Klasse is calling. She sounded very happy and said that she had tried to call him last week. I was waiting for her to mention me.

"You understand that I have Johan with me. We can talk, but another time," she said, suggesting that they might meet next week.

Jealous? Well, a little bit. Not of Arne, but Klasse worries me. Not much, but still. 

May 26, Saturday 

"What! Am I to waste seven or eight years. I shall get to twenty-eight in such fainthearted way! That would bring me to my twenty-eighth birthday; by that time Bonaparte’s greatest achievements were behind him.” 

(Stendhal, The Red and the Black, 1970, p 83) 

“Like Hercules, he found himself caught, not between vice and virtue, but between mediocrity leading to guaranteed security and all the heroic dreams of his youth. ‘So there is no real firmness of purpose in me,’ he said to himself. This was the doubt that hurt him most.” (p 83-84) 

May 27, Sunday

Before going upstairs to my place, we went to a convenience store. On the way out, I recognized the handwriting on a small note on the bulletin board. It was Cecilia's. She wanted to exchange our (now her) apartment for a smaller one in the city. 

May 28

Penny wants to live in a house with a garden in England. To say yes to me is to kill, or at least shrink, that dream. Can I give her what she wants? It’s not at all certain, but I can compensate her in other areas. I would be deeply unhappy if she said no, but on the other hand, I cannot wait forever. 

Birds are singing outside the window. A diesel car drives by on Hornsgatan. Why don't I write anything? Why so silent? My ambivalence towards life deprives me of the pride I need to write. My intellectual hubris makes me too self-critical, so I suffer and remain silent.

Darkness. Shoes on wet asphalt. Incoherent chatter. Drunken laughter. Birds. Taxis. The clock strikes a quarter past two. Wet leaves. Humid air. 

May 29

I called her, but no one answered. I suspected she was seeing Klasse which worried me. What was I afraid of? That she would return to him, or fall back on him after me? If she wants to move back to England more than anything, there's a good chance we'll break up. Then it might be convenient to have someone she doesn't love, but who she can rely on for the time being.

On Wednesday we’re going to Öland. I hope. 

*

I feel like a guest of reality. I can't live like other people, can't be social and nice. Keeps me to myself. Reading, reading, reading. 

* 

The sun breaks through the clouds. I eat breakfast and feel warmth on my right arm which is closest to the window. Penny called and woke me up at ten o'clock. She started talking about the trip and was in a good mood but said nothing about yesterday.

"I called you, but you weren't home."

"No."

After a fraction of a moment's delay, the conversation continued about the trip. Why didn't she say anything about meeting Klasse last night?

"What did you do yesterday?"

"I visited Klasse."

"I knew it," I said.

"How did you know?"

"I just felt it."

"Yes, I told you I was going to see him."

She told me that Klasse had made grilled sandwiches but burnt them. As if that would make him less of a threat in my eyes, but he is muscular and quite good looking. And she admitted that he probably loves her. 

Öland. May 31, Thursday

We are in the summer house and the sun is setting. Penny is cooking dinner. It's beautiful but windy outside. This is the first time I've been here since Dad died. We met farmer Herbert when we went shopping in the middle of the day. He came cycling along and looked the same. Bent and crooked and with piercing eyes. He pushed back his hat and lamented Dad’s passing. Then he told me about someone else in the neighborhood who almost died. But he was eighty. 

June 1, Friday

Thunder rumbles and the house shakes, rattling the windows. I’m reading a long essay by Vaclav Havel about Europe and the intellectuals, about humans and power. He wrote that he defends anti-political politics, that he wants to draw on man's inherent sense of morality and nature. But why so long and complicated? They talk deeply and well about Western democracy but forget that democracy is also the result of popular struggle, of common people’s resistance against the strong state.

Perhaps the "dissidents" are enjoying their martyrdom?

I write in freedom and prosperity. 

* 

"He would never make a good priest, or a great administrator. A soul so moved is good at best for giving birth to an artist." 

(Stendhal, The Red and the Black, 1970, p 199) 

June 2, Saturday

My six months with Penny have been a happy part of my life.

We hitchhiked to Borgholm after lunch. The morning haze had been replaced by warmer weather, and eventually the sun came out. We had coffee and sat and read in the garden of Ebba's pastry shop. A little later we strolled around in the town and ate pizza down by the harbor.

It took four rides to hitchhike back to our summer house. At Södvik we had to wait a long time, but it was sunny and almost no wind. We listened to birds singing, and a cuckoo bird’s koo-kooo call in the northwest. A few kilometers before Högby town, we ran into a thick fog, but we were lucky to get a ride all the way to our exit. 

June 4, Monday

Back home in Stockholm after a nine-hour bus ride. I'm tired and my back hurts. I'm also a bit dissatisfied since we didn't make love last night or this morning. (Yes, I admit it, I have been spoiled.) We took a walk down to the marshes where we saw lapwings, terns, swans and a dozen birders with binoculars and tripods.

I finished the first part of The Red and the Black, and began reading Return to Ithaca, Eyvind Jonsson's reinterpretation of The Odyssey. Also reading Shifting Involvements, Albert O. Hirschman's analysis of the 1960s revolt.

June 5, Tuesday

She told me that she had received a letter from her mother who is worried that she will get committed in Sweden. I see a conflict with all the potential of becoming tragic. If she chooses me, her mother will be sad. If she chooses England, I will be unhappy. Worst of all, she won't find a husband or be able to move back. I think she should choose me. After all, the greatest happiness she can give her mother is to find a man who loves her and can be a good father. There is no guarantee that she will be happily married if she moves back home, but the years are going by, and she cannot — the biological clock is ticking — wait too long to start a family. Would she rather be childless than remain here? I get almost desperate when I think about it. Why should I have such bad luck in love? My life is degenerating, and my talent is being squandered. 

June 6, Wednesday

What ties me to Sweden? My mother, my brothers, and my friends. But it could be a useful experience to move to England for a few years. 

June 8, Friday

People consume and economists record it as an expense, a cost, but the sacrifice contains elements of pleasure which makes consumption productive. By abstaining, I gain value in the form of moral satisfaction. Hence, I can increase my marginal utility by doing nothing. 

* 

"-But what party do you belong to?

-None, and that has been my undoing. Here are my politics: I love music and painting; a good book is an event for me; I’m going on forty-four." 

(The Red and Black, 1970, p 235) 

* 

We talked on the phone. I said that maybe we shouldn't see each other because of my cold.

She makes me gloomy. A fog has settled over my inner fields.

"Will you find an equally good guy in England," I asked.

"Well, it might not be easy, but I'm sure it's possible," she said.

We had lunch at Strindbergs and then walked to the Tegnérlunden park where we sat down for a while.

Her gray skirt fluttered, and her red curls were lifted by the wind as she walked back to work with light steps without looking back once. You won't have to wait long, she said when I proposed. It was a long time ago, but I don't blame her. She doesn't answer because she can't. But for me the fog rolls in. I'm freezing. Where should I go?

According to Alberoni, love is born in a depression, and since I’m depressed, I am at risk.

There's not much I believe in these days. Not science, not politics, not love....

But death, lies and grief are irrefutable. 

* 

"You can't put me in a cage," she said on the phone.

"I don’t think I’m doing that," I replied.

"Not yet, but sometimes I feel tied up," she said. 

We have now come so far that one can divine the dividing line, even if it is not yet fully visible. My only asset is that I love her, but there are others who can do that. Will she leave me, or will I leave her? 

June 10, Sunday

Been with Penny. In my heart I have returned. When I recover my consciousness at the end of intercourse, I see my girl beneath me.

"You would see yourself. Your face contorts and the muscles in your body tense up like you're going to explode. It's almost like I'm afraid you're going to pass out," she says.

I walk home with light steps. What a difference from last night, when she complained that we were doing it "just because it's Saturday." Now, that's not how I felt at all, but because she said it, it became so. I went to sleep hurt, angry and disappointed.

The bed felt cramped and the room cold. 

June 11, Monday

Sitting on a bench in Rålambshov Park. I’ve got to decide. As methodically as I read, I must write.

Starting tomorrow, Tuesday, June 12, 1984, I will spend at least 30 minutes a day writing. It doesn't matter what I write. It’s daily, systematic practice I need. 

June 13, Wednesday

I sat down to write. Now the paper is no longer white. I’ve won, but not triumphed. My imagination is covered in old dusty cobwebs. If I lie down in the water and try to float, I sink. I don't float if I don't move. Arms. My hands. It doesn't take much. The main thing is to get going. To move. To decide to move and overcome, no, to push back death and stillness.

Who am I who writes? A person who wants to live by being, who refuses to bend, refuses to become false. Rather than draw the shortest straw in the game of self, I wait and build up my strength.

Not that I’m unable to adapt. My God, I was a revolutionary for almost 15 years. I gave everything to the cause. I even gave away more than I owned. I gave away time that wasn't only mine.

But the egg cracked, and I was born again.

Writing is a form of enjoyment. I enjoy life when I communicate with people I like. I am an exhibitionist who enjoys unfolding my soul, seeking confirmation of my most sensitive memories, of being recognized.

Writing can be a way of making a living — i.e., making money. The role of a writer seems to me to be the only fun and at the same time morally acceptable one. A great writer can both make good money and care for humanity.

The author is also not a slave to the division of labor. In other words, he is less dependent on adapting to his fellow human beings on a daily and hourly basis. He does not have to be considerate.

My analysis is becoming uncomfortable. Is it recklessness and selfishness that attracts me? Every person wants to be able to control their life situation. Is it so obvious? Do we not also dream of becoming children again, of not having to take responsibility for what we do? We want someone we can trust completely. In the throes of love, we have it, we think we have it. We trust the person we love, and we trust ourselves. Our project is crystal clear, and we don't ask for proof and definition. We know what we know in the wonderful sequence of heartbeats.

But then we wake up. We are out of paradise and start asking ourselves questions. Who can you trust? The answer is simple, myself, no one else.

From that moment on, we crave power. We carry our cross, our life in our hands. We make decisions and realize that we are not alone. More people make decisions. It is crowded. We argue. We fight. We learn to cooperate. No more absolute freedom. Now we are dependent. Now we must adapt, negotiate, agree. It's not fun anymore. We don't sail on clouds. We eat, drink, make babies, watch, and think. We get bored. We start longing for sensations. Dreaming backwards and forwards.

The Golden Age – whether in the past or the future. 

June 14, Thursday 

"Whoever with intent, by word or writing, blasphemes and defames God, his holy word and the Sacraments, shall lose his life." 

(Svea Rikes Lag, /Sweden’s Civil Code/ 1734.) 

A lot has happened since then. Not even in the Soviet Union is the punishment for dissent as severe. 

* 

Under Mao, Chinese people carried portraits of the leader. "Mao is like the sun," his admirers sang. Something similar happened in Egypt three thousand years before Mao. Pharaoh Amenhotep IV replaced Amon-Ra with the sun disk Aten. In the sixth year of his reign, Aten worship was elevated to a state religion. And Pharaoh Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten. His name was now one with the sun disk.

Like Mao, pharaoh Amenotep IV defeated the bureaucrats-priests with the power of religion, but today the military once again wears its decorations on their new uniforms as they march with goose steps during parades. 

* 

You are sitting inside yourself in a subway car looking out at the others in it. Old ladies with pocketbooks and shopping bags. Narcissistic kids and other kids. You have your freestyle on, listening to Grace Jones' carnally raw voice and harsh rhythms.

The train enters the station. You look out the window. The doors open and people rush on and off. You see a pretty woman. You see a drunkard. You see the Pressbyrå kiosk with all the newspapers. The doors close and the train jerks as it starts. The train car has closed around you again. Across from you sits a tall man. He doesn’t care about you. Your knees are engaged in a hidden battle for space. You are annoyed that he doesn't do anything to prevent your knees from bumping into each other. I won't budge, you think, and almost imperceptibly press your knees against his. He's reading his newspaper and doesn't care. You feel the discomfort of his disgusting knees.

"Take away your fucking knees," you don't say, but move backwards and straighten up. Your knees follow and the contact with your fellow passenger is broken. 

June 15, Friday

Read Ralf Dahrendorf's essay "Reflections on Social Theory and Political Practice" (in Social Theory & Political Practice.) Now I can step out of the circle of Weber and Popper and open my feelings to the world. My pathos has the right to burn again. Hallelujah! 

* 

The cold persists. Listening to Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. Reading, reading, reading. 

"Rational love is doubtless more intelligent than true love, but it knows only brief moments of enthusiasm; it is self-conscious; it judges itself continually; far from leading thought astray, it is built on thought alone." 

(The Red and Black, 1970, p. 358)

"...and when the coterie comes into its own, all the good things of society rain upon them. Woe to the intellectual who is not allied to a clique; even his smallest, most dubious success will attract nothing but blame, and lofty virtue will triumph in the act of robbing him. Well, sir, a novel is a mirror being carried down a highway." (p 359) 

"Fallen into this last abyss of wretchedness, a human being has no recourse but courage."  (p 360) 

"As for Julien, he had acted, he was less miserable;" (p 405) 

* 

She called me half an hour ago.

"Hi sweetie!!!"

She had been eating salad and drinking rosé wine.

"Come over!"

She no longer felt bad from her cold.

The temptation to go over was strong, but I was too sick, so I said no. 

* 

Her hair is straight and black. It hangs over to her narrow face, which is unadorned except for the mascara around her eyes. She is punkishly pale and wears a black round-necked T-shirt under an open 7/8-length coat in gray. The pants that end high on the ankle are tight and have a leopard print in black and yellow. She holds her left hand against the green park bench under one of the big green chestnuts in Maria Church’s Cemetery. She is a little shy. The rain has stopped, but clouds gather in the sky like giant mushrooms high above the chestnut trees, and the houses on Bellmansgatan.

He is standing close to her keeping his hands in his pockets. He has blond hair, but his forehead is bare. He is wearing a black leather jacket with a dark shirt that is open at the neck. His black pants are a bit baggy, and his wet white gym shoes look gray.

The trees stand still, and the clouds look frozen for a person strolling up Hornspuckeln. The flâneur sees a couple who are probably talking under the impressive chestnut tree whose lush greenery has been deepened by lingering raindrops.

She runs her hand through his hair. Corrects something. He shakes his head and doesn't answer.

Have they been to church, the observer wonders from behind his window.

No, they probably only met there because it is such a beautiful and discreet meeting place.

A few more people have appeared before the observer, like animals in a laboratory. They move behind the window’s glass, but no one controls this experiment. On both sides of the glass, life is uncontrolled.

I, who is the observer, choose to watch the couple under the chestnut tree. But I don't learn anything, except that it is beautiful.  

June 18, Monday

Having an evening coffee at Riddarholmen. Mälardrottningen — the floating hotel that was once Barbara Hutton's luxury yacht — is rubbing against the quay on my left. I'm not sitting in Paris or Menton, or in any other beautiful city where the evening light disappears like when you turn off the power. I'm in a city in the far north where the sunset is a slow-moving delight. The sky is clear and blue, even though the fiery red sun disk is already balancing on the roof of the City Hall. In front of me I can see the water shimmering of the sun, and further away the row of old retired barges and fishing boats permanently anchored at Söder Mälarstrand. A faintly sweet scent rises from the Riddarfjärd.

A seagull glides across the deck and returns over the bowsprit. The anchor and the slowly rocking chain cast a sharp shadow over the sunlit bow. A short distance away, tucked away on the Maria cliff, the Münich Brewery makes me think of the Cité island in Paris, an association that is immediately shot through by memories of the struggle to preserve the old brewery built with red brick. It’s a memory of a victory over a false rationality, like when we saved the elm trees in Kungsträdgården, which is why you can still have a cup of coffee in the shade of the majestic trees. The bay is calm and metallic blue all the way to Västerbron. Right in front of me is a gray and lonely sail. I have never appreciated the statue until today when I can reflect on it while having coffee. You should not walk past statues. They require time, time that they can give us if we make ourselves receptive.

Across the street, five middle-aged gentlemen with two umbrellas, and four ties gather around a map. They look up at the Wrangel Palace and probably know more about Riddarholmen than most of us Stockholmers, who only live here. 

June 19, Tuesday

Today I have not spent the half hour writing as I intended to. I got a fever in the middle of the day, but still went to meet Björn at Falén's antiquarian shop on Vasastan. We bought books and went to a Chinese restaurant, but I got worse and worse, and walked over to the Urgent Car Clinique where I got an appointment in an hour. I called Penny who wasn't feeling well either.

"I think you should come here too," I said, but she said they were so busy at work.

"You know how I am. I think I'll go home and have a cup of tea, and if I'm not better tomorrow I might go to a doctor."

The doctor listened to my heart and lungs and told me I had bronchitis. I had tests done to see how many white blood cells I have. That would determine the treatment, he explained. My blood count was very good, so penicillin and cough medicine were enough. He asked about sick leave, which I declined.

I bought the New York Review of Books and took the prescription to the pharmacy at Hamngatan. I tried to find a phone booth to call Penny, and then Mom to tell her that I would be late for dinner. Four phone booths were out of service, and in the basement of NK department store, the lines were long.

I barely got inside the door before Penny called. She wasn't feeling well and had made an appointment too. Now she was having a “Happy Hour” dinner at restaurant Hubertus. She wanted company, but I hesitated, since Mom had just started cooking and I thought I wouldn't be able to get there until it was time for her to go back to the Urgent Care clinique, but I heard from her voice that she would be sad if I didn't come, so I left and Mom understood.

Penny didn't look much to the world as she sat alone at a table for six. Wearing a yellow sweatshirt, she was just a tall, thin girl hiding from the world for the moment. Her doctor diagnosed a kidney infection, prescribed penicillin, and gave her Alvedon. We took the prescription to the emergency pharmacy on Torkel Knutsson’s Street and continued to my place where she laid down to rest while I picked up the medicine. 

June 21, Thursday

I didn't write anything yesterday either. I was so sick that I had to stay in bed and rest so that I could go to work. 

The day before yesterday I received a letter from Cecilia. It was longer than the previous ones, and between the lines she apologized for her previous letter. She still misses me, she wrote, but has started looking for a new guy. Along the way, she has found a guy who is in love with her, at the same time as she wants to break up with him! I was touched and a bit nostalgic. Still, I don't want to go back. 

June 26, Tuesday

I’m reading to prepare for the chapter I’m writing for the China Yearbook. By chance, I came across The State in Socialist Society, edited by Neil Harding (Oxford 1984.) His introductory essay is intriguing. He highlights Marx and Saint Simon's over-reliance on science. The latter wanted to build temples of science and enlightenment dedicated to Newton! (p 34)  

“The men of science in Saint Simon's credo ‘will establish laws of social hygiene for the social body, and in their hands politics will become the complement of the science of man.’ Their findings, based upon observation of indisputable facts, would be applied to all political, social and economic questions, all of which were resolvable through ‘scientific demonstrations, absolutely independent of human will.’” (p 10)  

Harding showed how the Bolsheviks realized their own version of the imperialist state apparatus, but this time with the goal of increased productivity. The new state under Stalin was able to increase the rate of accumulation far more than capitalism could. 

“Marxism in this guise became pre-eminently an ideology of modernization appealing to the intelligentsia of the underdeveloped world as a shortcut to industrialisation and national grandeur.” (p 41) 

* 

I have the day off and the rain is pouring down. A typical Swedish summer, I tell myself. It's cozy when it's raining and you can hear the clatter against the roof, I try. But I don't hear any clatter. Not from the roof, because it's two floors up, and not from the windows, because the rain is falling straight down. There is a noise and the cars in the street sounds differently, but that’s all.

It's boring when it's raining and you're not sitting in a countryside cottage playing cards or drinking tea.

My girl is a realist. She doesn't get anxious when it rains, but she was born in the promised land of rain.

"It will soon be fine again. Sure, it's boring, but just bring an umbrella if you want to go out," she would say as if there was nothing more to it.

But I'm not from England, and I think it sucks.

It is boring....

Lightning strikes nearby. The room lights up. There is a violent crash as the thunder rolls. I jump and look outside. The sky is uniformly gray, and the rooftops are wet and shiny. I hear the leaves rustling as the wind shakes the elm trees in front of Maria Church. The branches wave back and forth like sea anemones.

There! I saw it! A streak of silver that split the sky in two. The image is etched in my mind.

When will the bang come? I'm counting: one, two, three, four...

Now! It probably took longer this time. The lightning must have struck at Medborgarplatsen. The thunderstorm is moving south, I analyze.

The spectacle has made me forget. The moment I gave up the idea of doing anything, my anxiety disappeared, and I felt like a Buddha's disciple sitting under a Bodhi tree. I was free from desire.

And when nature didn't provide a spectacle, man began to make his own. They told stories around the campfire. They imitated nature in songs and dances. They made pictures and sculptures. From the myths grew power, the ability to make us forget ourselves, to embrace the myth. The Roman rulers offered the people bread and spectacle.

The superpowers are counting high their missiles loaded with superweapons. We must forget that we exist. That's the idea, even if no one has formulated it. 

June 29, Friday

I wake up from a dream where I was in the middle of a tantrum after a strange ride on a seven-person tandem bike. I had arrived at Dad’s studio only to find that everything in the room had been changed, not just my bookshelves and cabinets. Mom and Dad had rearranged the furniture with all good intentions, but I felt like my whole order had been torn up. The bookshelves were dismantled, and my books were in paper bags. I was furious and threw the office chair right into the book bags. The chair split in two, so I crouched down to try to put it back together. Dad was also in the room. He was sad, but somehow understanding. The story was set in Västerberg, but elements of later settings were also present. I stormed out, even though I knew it was dangerous for Dad's heart. The dream was probably a challenge, a distancing. Dad appeared weak and paralyzed. Mom was nowhere to be seen, but it was her idea. 

July 1, Sunday

Mom left for her first vacation of her own yesterday, a bus trip to the Riviera. Life goes on, but we all miss Dad. It's as if the world has taken on a bad taste since that cruelly beautiful morning. 

July 2, Monday

We went for a bike ride on Sunday. I asked about her feelings for me, but she dodged the question. I oscillate between dark moments when I think she is using my love as long as it is convenient, and light moments when I think she is just being cautious.

July 3, Tuesday

Seven months yesterday. I treated her to dinner at restaurant Norrås. She ordered Beef Wellington with a pâté. I had a venison fillet with stewed chanterelles.

July 4, Wednesday

Penny received an answer about a job she had applied for. Thanks for your interest, but... 

I’m reading about China, trying to crack the outline of my chapter for the yearbook. I read the second chapter — "Restructuring the Economy" — of Yu Guangyuan's 776-page anthology China's Socialist Modernization (Beijing 1984). Received my first issue of China Daily today. A six-month subscription by airmail costs me 800 kr. 

* 

Penny would like to be a housewife if she could see herself with me. I have more and more doubts. There is something wrong with me. I'm antisocial, a stranger in any environment. 

Bought Sutta Nipāta - Buddhist Ballads and Teaching Poems (1976.) Was reading it last night. I am not a Buddhist, but I recognize the consistency of its teachings. 

"He who has subdued the pleasures of the senses, a shackle difficult to avoid in the world, is free from sorrow and troubles, he is unbound and has cut off the flow of needs." (p 140) 

If I renounce life, I will have peace. Sure as hell! You will rest in the grave, as we Nordics often say. 

July 13, Friday

DN is advertising for a layout and text editor. It's tempting: 12,000 kr a month for a 34-hour work week. 

July 15, Sunday 

"Eventually, the evening ends with both of them escaping into rather aggressively charged sexuality, as neither has been able to break through and reach the other."

                                   (Thomas Böhm, Efter förälskelsen /After Falling In Love/ 1984, p 66) 

Was that the case last Thursday? No, hardly, but we no longer reach each other. I fear that my passion will freeze to ice while I wait for her answer. 

"The paradox is that they need to talk about how tired and bored they are with each other and the relationship, in order to have a chance of saving and restoring it." ( 66-67) 

What I would like to tell her? That I am afraid of her, afraid that she will reject me, afraid of her demands, that she will consider me useless. 

"If you hold on to your emergency exits, they will be used in due course." (p 85)

 I’m thinking of that day in January when she told me that she kept in touch with her former boys as a backup. What is it that worries me since I’m thinking like that a quarter to two in the morning on Sunday? That she is at her old disco, the Newsroom, with Anna. That I'm afraid she'll find someone else. Yes, I'm afraid of that. Not very afraid, but just the thought makes me want to cry. 

"For example, the woman is not sexually satisfied. It is difficult for her to be, because satisfaction requires reciprocity, and she seeks to anxiously control." (p 102) 

That's how it was in the beginning. She wanted to stroke herself. Now it's much better. When I massaged her on Saturday morning she was relaxed and comfortable. She moaned and whimpered when I made her come. 

We have come a long way. For my part, I know three things: 

1.        I don't mind saying "we."

2.        I want to have children with her, now or in the future.

3.       I want to grow old with her. I have never hesitated in the face of her fine wrinkles. 

I call her a second time, but no one answers. At first, I thought she was sleeping and pushed aside the idea that she was seeing someone else. Maybe she slept over at her friend's house and didn't call because she knew I was working nights and needed to sleep in. When I call again and no one answers, the fear grows.

The wait became unbearable. I lay paralyzed, dressed and with my heart beating against the bed. I couldn't get up to do anything. It was noon when I tried again.

"Penny," she replied happily, and I could hear music from her tape recorder in the background.

"Where have you been?"

"Home! I pulled out my phone jack because I didn't want my Johan to call and wake me up at nine or ten. But hurry over and I'll hug and kiss you!"

"I love you," I said.

She was in the shower when I arrived with five tulips I had bought from an old man on S:t Eriksgatan. She gave me a hug and we were so close. More importantly, she said that she almost felt she was ready to say yes to me, but still needed time to think about it. 

July 17, Tuesday

We live in the present. Yesterday I can only reconstruct. A fragment of memory emerges from the oblivion of the soul. I interpret and understand instinctively since memory is linked to a strong feeling. Memory is the recollection of a reaction to something. Sometimes I wonder if my difficulty in remembering clearly and in detail is because I was so happy. I lived in paradise and did not accumulate as many scars. I don't have to keep any doors open. There were no doors, no walls in my childish landscape.

Or is it that I live too much in the present, today, and therefore find it difficult to make time to look back?

Recalling a memory takes time. I rarely have it. The piles of unread books grow faster than I can read them.

I remember car trips. Both pleasant and unpleasant. I remember when we went to Öland and Dad told stories. I remember when we drove with the caravan in tow down to the French Riviera, and we were all so tired. Dad got so mad that he threatened to get out of the car and leave us. At least that's what he said.

Now my back hurts so much that I have to lie down in bed. 

* 

Crime does not pay.

I must have been four years old and had followed Dad to the Co-Op supermarket, which was close to the main square in Västerberg. The store was a big maze of shelves and freezers and cash registers. The adults pushed the shopping carts in front of them as if they were driving on small roads. They bumped into each other and queued up and got angry with each other. But I was four years old and didn't think about the adults. I looked at all the things on the shelves. I knew that you shouldn't touch anything unless you were going to buy it.

On a shelf I found something I liked. It was a small empty plastic bottle. It was so small that it was not much bigger than my hand. I stood looking at it for a long time. It was empty when it should have been full. I took it. I didn't steal it because I knew I wasn't allowed to. But the bottle was empty, and I thought it was useless, it was broken, and the adults would have thrown it away anyway. So, I didn't steal it when I took it.

When we got out on the street and were on our way home, my dad asked me what I had in my hand. Then I made up that I had found it in the street. Dad probably wouldn't have liked it if I had taken it from the store.

"Throw it away," Dad said. "Maybe some dog peed on it."

I knew that no dog could have peed on the bottle, but I couldn't say that. I had to stand by what I had said. Reluctantly, I threw away my plastic bottle. 

July 18, Wednesday

I'm drunk. Five of us from the paper took a taxi to restaurant KB after work. We're drinking beer and wine and talking — gossiping, you might say if we had been women. I've spotted a red-haired girl who I'm quite keen on, but I'm not here to flirt. I have my little angel, and I'm going to meet her later. Oh, how I love her. Why? I don't know, but she's great! Ridiculous? Okay, but why can't you be that? I'm drunk and I'm in love! 

July 19, Thursday

I am reading A.O. Hirschman's The Passions and the Interests, a fascinating book on the world of 17th and 18th century ideas. 

"Love is a restless and impatient passion, full of whims and variations. It rises in a moment from an attribute, from the air, from nothing, and suddenly goes out in the same way." 

(David Hume, quoted in A.O. Hirschman, p 54) 

"The triumph of capitalism, like that of many modern tyrants, is due in some ways to the fact that so many people refused to take it seriously or to believe it capable of great design or achievement..." (p 59) 

The market is a non-violent solution to the distribution problem. 

"...it is almost a general rule, that wherever there are mild customs, there is trade, and that wherever there is trade, there are mild customs..." 

(Montesquieu, quoted in A.O. Hirschman, p 60) 

Montesquieu on the relationship between economics and politics. 

"A nation that is constantly excited can more easily be governed by passions than by reason — the latter has never had any strong effects on the souls of men. The rulers of the nation could easily induce it to undertake projects contrary to its real interests." 

(Esprit des lois, cited in Hirschman, p 73) 

What is this if not a description of Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'?!

July 24, Tuesday

I am so peaceful. Hate to fight, don't want to pursue a career, don't want to be a cowboy, but rather the victim. So, my humanistic nature has a masochistic aspect to it.

Does my softness reflect feminine traits? Dad was both hard and soft, both strict and kind. Maybe this confusion is me, my fundamental maladjustment. Dad was not an oppressive father. He never wanted to impose his logic. He was an artist in heart and action. In me, what Fromm calls the "father principle" is weakly developed. 

Fromm suggests a hypothesis: 

"...inability to assert oneself and cope with life realistically, and depressions, result from mother-centeredness." 

(Fromm, The Art of Love, 1956) 

July 26, Thursday 02.10

I finished my shift at one, but it was so nice outside that I walked home. I had preferred to go out and get drunk, but I only had ten kronor in my wallet and there was no drinking buddy available who could have lent me a hundred kronor. Lake Mälaren was calm and shiny at Norr Mälarstrand and at Strandcaféet the tables and chairs were desolate. I felt like sitting down, but continued up towards Kungsholmstorg, crossed Hantverkargatan and walked along Scheelegatan past the small park in front of Piperska Muren. I saw that the Newsroom on Kungsholmsgatan was closed for the summer, turned up Kungsgatan, walked over the bridge Kungsbron, and past the Fashing jazz club. A lone girl danced drunkenly with herself on the other side of the street. I crossed Vasagatan where a group of men romped in front of the hot dog kiosk. There was a beautiful girl surrounded by men in front of restaurant Wallonen, but all I saw was her backside. Hötorget was deserted and not much traffic on Sveavägen, mostly taxis. Five immigrant boys dressed in Fame-style followed two young girls. "I want to sleep with you tonight," sang one of the excited boys. I crossed Sveavägen, passed the Sergel movie theater, and walked under Malmskillnadsgatan, behind which Kungstornen — the twin towers who were Stockholm’s and Europe’s first skyscrapers — rise up, and continued down to Stureplan where I turned south into Biblioteksgatan which was empty and deserted except for a two French couples in their mid-twenties.

Norrmalmstorg was livelier. A drunk guy had laid down in front of the Pressbyrå kiosk, causing his equally drunk friends to rush forward shouting, and throwing themselves on top of him. I hurried on towards Hamngatan, only to be met by seven young guys in full gallop outside McDonalds. One ran so close that he just about touched me, probably on purpose, maybe to test me...? and himself. Kungsträdgården was deserted, with the exception of the hot dog kiosk in the northeast corner, where hungover youths were waiting for grilled hot dogs with mashed potatoe.

It was quiet under Almarna and no line in front of Café Opera, but I wasn't in the mood, so I walked over the Strömbron bridge to the the street Skeppsbron, where one of the fountains at the foot of the Royal Palace was filled with a white foam, probably from a prank. There was a changing of the guard on the ramp facing the ship af Chapman on the other side of the bay. I cut through Slottsbacken and slipped into Österlånggatan, where I chatted with two drunken men my age. There was a fight going on outside Bachi Wapen between a drunkard who wanted to stay, and a bouncer who wanted to get rid of him. I watched from a distance, hoping that Penny, who had planned to go there with a friend, was not there. Now only Slussen and Hornsgatsbacken remained on my lonely night walk.

Maria Church struck two just as I put the key in the door lock. I was tired and a bit depressed. Thought about Penny, and what she said when we had lunch at Norrås.

"You cook so well."

"I'm trying to reverse the version of 'the way to a man's heart is through his stomach'."

"You try too hard sometimes," she replied.

Why does she have to say such things? Why does she have to bring me down all the time?

I fear that she will make me so depressed that I will eventually fall for another girl. I don't want it, but I think it will happen.

Then she, like Cecilia, will discover what she has lost. But by then it is too late.

There is one thing that girls tend to underestimate, and that is a man's pride. 

* 

First question.

Who am I talking to?

I speak because I want to be recognized. I want to be admired.

A poet as well as a writer.

The macho man has fragile eyes. His entire tough demeanor is at odds with those delicate, vulnerable eyes. The contrast between the body, clothing, and attitude on the one hand, and the eyes on the other creates hope in the hunter.

Hunters fear the eyes of the victim. They fear the disarming contact between two pairs of eyes.

The gaze stands for life.

First the body stops growing. Then the soul stops. At 20, your height is fixed. At 30, your future is usually decided. This decision drives the valuation. At 30, you can make a first forecast. It will disappoint you. 

* 

A young punk girl comes walking on Norrmalmstorg with her middle-class parents. The daughter resembles her mother in face shape, but the daughter has disfigured her appearance. What did the parents think? A child experiences its parents as its first perspective on the future. Youthful ambitions must lead to criticism and a desire to negate the parents. Otherwise, the child will not become independent. But, as A.O. Hirschman points out, our human imagination is limited. We cannot imagine what we are not, i.e., a mature individual. We do not know the future, but we must develop, we must break free from our parents, we must become independent. What to do? Simple. We do the opposite. We contradict what is. From this conflict, from this war between parents and children, a new person grows. It’s a simple dialectic.

After separation comes the experience of loneliness and sadness. Depression prepares us for falling in love, for the new circle, the new family. 

* 

All he wants is to sleep with her. But is that true? Isn't it simply that he wants to dazzle her, to feel the power of his charm? He wants the woman not to love, but to see himself in. But isn't that what we all want? No! I want to unite with the woman I love. I care for her. I’m ready to give myself up to form a new unity. I’m not a slave to narcissism.

 

My heart is shaking

My fingers trembling

All adjectives

irremediably pale

An empty vessel

Your last red rose

has turned black

All my love poems

my gifts, all my trying

turned into stones

It was a kind of death,

yet nothing had changed  

We were both there, you were

who you have always been,

but I had given up.

 

July 27, Friday

Home in my bed again. For the first time in a long time, I feel like a hunter again. I had a glass of red wine at the Palm House Cafe, but it started to rain, so I went home to watch Hjalmar Söderberg's The Serious Game on TV. Once the sky cleared up, I went out again, ending up in Kungsträdgården where I had a cup of coffee under Almarna.

Reading about machismo in the All About Books magazine, while listening to Chicago. And of course, I was looking around for beautiful women. Chicks with a touch of macho turn me on. When I got up to leave, my eyes met a pair of eyes who looked right into mine. She was beautiful, probably from the West Indies. I first noticed her when she arrived with a couple of other women. And now she was flirting with me. It excited my manhood, but I went home anyway.

There was a note saying that Penny had called, so I called back. No answer. I called several times. She must have gone out with Anna, I thought, and called Mikael, but he didn't answer either, so I went back out, alone. The sky was clear to the south, but in the north, I saw heavy dark-blue clouds coming my way. And I had gone out without an umbrella! Fortunately, I made it to the Berzeli Park before the rain started, and it was light, so I made it to The Prince without getting soaked and got a table after a short wait.

Suddenly someone tapped on my shoulder. It was my classmate Lena and her boyfriend sitting at my neighboring table. She recognized me first and was delightful and sweet as usual. We talked about work and studying. I wondered what she had heard about my infatuation with Angela. What if she knew everything? 

* 

"Mom doesn't want you to come with me when I go home in the fall. Everything is so difficult," she said, sounding sad.

My poor girl! Where will she find her safety?

I understand why her mother doesn’t want me there. She is afraid that I will take her daughter away from her. She has read between the lines of Penny's letter, and understood what she may not understand herself, that she loves me. 

July 29, Sunday

I’m an eagle that flies through time, observing people and animals everywhere. I’m forever condemned to unseen see. I love to dive through the glass that the earth's atmosphere is. Through it I see clearly, but I can never penetrate its invisible surface, and never change that which occurs.

I’m an eagle that flies in the night through the dreams of men but is driven away in the day by the faster pulse of consciousness in the human brain.

I’m an eagle who flies over the continents and through the rooms, who has the sharpest eye but can never see the whole picture.

As I dive closer to the world, each part becomes large and clear, but I can no longer see the whole. When I spot the snake swimming in the water, I can't see the river's winding path through the landscape. And when I fly high up into the sky, people and animals disappear. Not even my sharp eyes can then help.

I’m an eagle that never rests, never dies, and has never been an egg. I have a memory that no living creature has ever had. I remember everything I have seen and heard, but that is far from everything that has happened.

I’m the eagle of solitary majesty. I’m the narrator and my speech reach only those who live outside the world. Do not think I am indifferent – I am only outside. 

July 30, Monday

Everything started so well. It was warm and sunny, and we soon had a couple of liters of blueberries and lingonberries, even though there had been many berry pickers there before us. We also found mushrooms, but no chanterelles. At half past seven we were back in her apartment. She made a fish gratin and a crumb pie with the blueberries we picked. It was nine before we sat down to eat. After dinner, I suggested we wait to do the dishes, but she just shook her head. Perhaps there was some Freudian connection between dishwashing and mom that was haunting me. Why does she have to do it now? I have four nights of work ahead of me, so this is the only opportunity we have.

I dressed silently and intense. She came to the door and said goodbye. To her everything is so damned practical, so simple and logical, so impossible to reason against. Is there any room at all for something as troubled and impractical as passions in her world?

Tomorrow morning, she will call and ask if I'm upset and tell me she really needed to sleep and reward me with kisses on the phone and I will feel relieved and look forward to Friday when we will meet again, but by then she will be tired and suggest we wait until Saturday. If I’m lucky, she will be "persuaded" and I will be happy again.

Emptiness is the enduring intellectual feeling. Passion is my escape, but it always seems to end in the same way. Love has always had a dark shadow. Is it my nature to be romantic and inconsolable? How can such a person live with such a realistic lady?

When I go home, I check out other girls. I'm always on the lookout for sexy girls, and I'm easily turned on, but now that my heart feels like a crushed blueberry, I look in a more dangerous way. I want revenge. I want to make up for my wounded pride. The idea germinates. Another one. It feels sweet and pleasant, but I lead my bike home, and sit down with my diary. 

July 31, Tuesday

We spoke on the phone this morning. The conversation was short and neutral. I hadn't planned to call her in the evening because I was busy. Had to go out on a job with one of the paper’s cars. A woman — probably a prostitute — had been stabbed to death in the Klara Tunnel. I called Penny when I got back around nine. She was frustrated that she wasn't feeling well despite being on penicillin for a month. And I, the idiot that I am, demand that she is always ready. Always these reinterpretations.

I keep reading Hirschman. The medieval society suffers a catastrophe (the Black Death) which breaks the legitimacy of the system. Society disintegrates and new ideas emerge from the chaos, capturing new moods. The heresies lay the foundation for the Renaissance, and a secularized and more commercial mindset. Then comes Machiavelli, Bacon, and the Encyclopedists, not to mention Cervantes!

Capitalism grows under the protection of the new institutions created to hold society together. Crass exchange relations based on sober self-interest replace the despotism and unbridled passions of the previous era. 

August 4, Saturday

Mom flew to Miami this morning. She will stay with her sister Terese in Palm Beach. She doesn't know how long she will stay there, but it could be six months or more. In the meantime, I have the apartment to myself. 

August 8, Wednesday

I could have been dead by now but survived with a scratch on my right leg a few centimeters above it. I was on my way to work when a guy suddenly threw open his car door. I didn't have a chance to dodge, and hit the edge of the door, first with my handlebars and then with my leg. I was convinced I was going to flip and hurt myself, but I managed to keep my balance, if not my direction of travel, so I went straight across the street, stopping the bike first between two parked cars. Thank God there was no oncoming car on Kungsholmsgatan.

The driver looked surprised but managed to hide the guilt he might have felt. You should pay for the pain and suffering, I thought, but didn't say anything. I checked to see if my clothes or the Walkman had been damaged, but they were fine.

"Check your rear-view mirror next time," I said, and rode on. 

August 10, Friday

I dreamed of my childhood in Västerberg, of the square courtyard between the residential buildings as a forum for life and emotions, of the child's anxiety about a place where you had to be someone and where you met the first hierarchy outside the family.

August 20, Monday

My nose looks like a sausage and my lips are swollen and red. My chin feels stiff and sore and is angry red like a fillet of ox. It's hard to breathe through my nose and my lower back hurts. No, I have not been in a fight with skinheads, but simply got hit by a taxi. The whole thing went incredibly fast. I turned left onto Lilla Nygatan in front of a large truck that had stopped to let me pass. It seemed to be clear until a red Mercedes appeared out of nowhere on the right side of the truck. I collided with the front of the car and flew over the hood — I remember the beautiful red color — and landed on the pavement. I pushed my arms out to break the fall, and then the impact came when I my face hit the ground just half a meter from a traffic post. I remember worrying about my teeth and clothes, feeling the blood rushing out, but telling myself that I would be fine as soon as I got back on my feet. Meanwhile, the American passenger in the taxi had rushed into the Tyroler restaurant to call an ambulance, but I let the taxi driver take me to the emergency room at the Sabbatsberg hospital. 

August 21, Tuesday

I wake up with a sore back and a swollen face. The nose is big and red and two diagonal stripes run downwards from between the eyes. The surrounding flesh must have been pushed backwards and out to the sides when my face hit the sidewalk. 

* 

It is sixteen years since Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia.

* 

We ended the evening with hugs only. She still has her period. The last time we made love was Friday morning. Next time will be in two to three weeks. She's taking it in stride, but I'm losing my mind. Is it her illness that dampens her desire? Or is it just that she has me pinned down? It makes me want to cheat.

"Would you really want to live with me? You know what I'm like," she said.

"Don't you think we could adapt to each other?"

"No, not really. I like living alone. I want to decide how I live in my apartment and manage my kitchen. It would be hard to share the influence."

How do you build a future with a girl who doesn’t want to sacrifice her freedom? What she demands is for me to surrender, but I am not a man who surrenders. I believe in mutual concessions, but not submission. Maybe my dream of an equal relationship is an illusion? A "practical" solution would be to have both a wife and a mistress, but what kind of life is that? 

August 28, Tuesday

She flew to England today. I called her around nine in the evening to hear if the trip had gone well. She said everything was fine, but that her mother thought we were engaged. She had written that she had some news, but the news was my bicycle accident! I think her feelings for me are deepening. We are talking about moving in together. She has also been extra affectionate lately, especially after the accident. 

September 1, Saturday

I’ve not yet filed my insurance claim. I hate anonymous questionnaires that require us to squeeze reality into narrow and rigid patterns. It was an accident. I flew through the air and saw the bright red hood, and felt my face hit the street, and then the taste of blood in my mouth. How do you put that into a form? 

September 2, Sunday

She just called to remind me that it's been nine months since we met.

At work there is a wait-and-see attitude. I've applied for a permanent position, but I don't think I'll get it. The union doesn't like individualists, and the company is skeptical about people with academic education, but what says that a person with less education stays longer? I feel a Strindbergian defiance against society's web of lies. I want to stand up against power, mediocrity and conformity. Do I have to become a writer to survive? 

September 4, Tuesday

I saw Lars Norén's play Natten är dagens mor (tr. The Night Is the Mother of the Day) at the Dramatic Theater. The play is well written and dense. Every word carried and Ingvar Kjellson and Per Mattson worked as if possessed. The acting was brilliant. The family in the play is a grotesque caricature but raises questions about everyone. The father, the mother, the eldest son, and finally the other brother, David. The warm relationship — the dependence — with the cold and self-sacrificing mother. The compassion between the weak father and the dreamy younger brother. The opposing lifestyles of the brothers. David's inability; his analytical destruction of every lifestyle. 

September 6, Thursday 00.15

I’ve been to The Prince with Mikael. Of course, we mostly talked about Japan, ASEAN, and NIC. Over there he has his utopia, although he thinks he is a materialist and rationalist. 

Stockholm, it’s a moment when the shadow of a seagull passes in front of my feet, and a gentle September breeze strokes my hair on a sunny day where I sit on a green park bench looking out at the bay and the City Hall while the sun warms my left cheek, temple, and hand.

Stockholm, it's a skinhead leaning over the edge of the floating helicopter platform in the Old Town to vomit at one o'clock on a Thursday.

Even the tough guys sometimes need to relieve the pressure. 

The Chinese write goodness by combining the signs for mother and child. Goodness is thus an extension of self-love, but it is more than that. It’s also the love of something new, something we have created. Cf. the Christian god where goodness is expressed in the giving the world a son.

Yes, I like my mother, but I don't like the image she has created of herself.

In autumn, we revere the sun like we revere something we are losing. 

September 7, Friday morning 

"...I think my mom set the stage for my anxiety by crying whenever I didn't do what she said. It made me feel guilty. “ (Dagens Nyheter, September 6, 1984) 

The reading reminded me of my own childhood. We children had to learn to control our emotions since Dad had a heart condition. Now we were pretty wild anyway, but I think Dad's physical fragility made us more cautious or made us feel guilty when we weren't. 

Mats Gellerfelt takes Anthony Burgess to task: 

"Had Burgess bothered to study the — albeit enormous — Hemingway literature, he would have discovered that many scholars emphasize Hemingway's commitment and pathos." (Svenska Dagbladet, September 5, 1984) 

Thus, without actually saying so — he would be lying — he gives the reader the impression that he himself has read the 'vast' literature in question. In the second part of the sentence, he speaks more modestly about what "many scientists" think, but even this more limited basis for the conclusion may have come from a work or article about Hemingway. Bah, humbug! 

Is the novel a response to the secularization from the 16th century onwards? Totalitarian systems restore faith — ideology — and therefore kill the novel. Doubt can no longer be expressed openly. 

I had a wonderful afternoon out on Djurgården. Listened to Art Garfunkel while the ferry carried me across the water. The Old Town, Nybroviken and Kastellholmen slowly turned around my wide-angle perspective. What a feeling. It's like flying close to the surface of the water. The city and I are waltzing around counterclockwise, and the sun is unexpectedly warm on a September day. I settled down at Ektorpet on Valdemarsudde. Listened to Beethoven's 9th and read poems by John Keats. I like him. 

September 9, 01.40

Another night at DN. Tom S was the night editor. His facade is such an obvious facade, a polished surface. He doesn't let anyone in and he never laughs naturally.

I have started studying Chinese. Borrowed a Linguaphone course from the public library.

Bought two new books on the art of writing:

Lajor Egri: The Art of Creative Writing; and

Rene Wellek and Austin Warren: Theory of Literature. 

I have read half of Egri. He is sympathetic, but I can't help being skeptical of his simple models. It seems to me too schematic, like the models of economics. I am also skeptical of Egri's emphasis on physical disabilities. 

The man without characteristics is a product of the large scale of modern life. In a small circle we are safe, let lose, and nurture our uniqueness, but in the big city we are afraid, and try to be invisible. Our characteristics disappear. 

Yesterday I saw a duck walking on a rope. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was in the canal in front of the Rosenbad Palace. The duck was balancing on a green line that holds the warning floats. The line was full of algae and the duck climbed it and grazed on the algae. Again and again, it fell off, but climbed back up again. 

Theme: The straight line bends.

Young man meets life. Starts with the belief in the freedom to choose his life, an almost unlimited freedom. He is born into a different family, and this leaves him alone in the world from an early age. He cannot escape into the gang and seek safety there. He is heavily dependent on his family. When he encounters society, it is in revolt and his sympathy for the weak drives him to reject the existing world. 

September 11

Lajos Egri advocates simple models for building characters, similar to psychology's "introvert-extrovert". This is pedagogical, of course, but it is a pitfall, as it rewards superficiality. Multidimensional, complex characters are also needed, even inevitable. The criterion for a good or bad story is not on this level. It must be entertaining (which implies a basic moral!) 

September 12, Wednesday

Penny is back! I met her at Arlanda Airport. She had gotten a haircut, changed her hairstyle and bought a new jacket. We hugged and kissed. I got lipstick on my cheek which she immediately wiped off. She looked lively, happy and had painted her nails red. She looked a bit different. 

September 16, Sunday

We lay in bed and took a personality test while listening to John Denver. I’m stable and introverted, while she is stable and extroverted. My libido is normal, as is hers. I’m slightly more "psychotic" than she is, but we are both very much into affection and such. I have strong male traits, but even stronger female ones, i.e., I am androgynous. She and I have top scores when it comes to sexual satisfaction. Judging by the tests, we are a good match. 

September 17, Monday

I’ve been depressed and melancholic all day. How long can I wait for her without losing my self-respect? When will she start despising me? Do I have to cheat on her to restore my manhood? I thought I would pretend to be disinterested, to cool things off a bit, but how could I hide my feelings? I'm afraid that by showering her with love, I'm pushing her further and further away from me. In her eyes, I become gray and dull. The only way to revive her feelings is to stop loving her, to fall in love with someone else, but then I will gain her love by sacrificing my own. Maybe I could fall in love with a neutral project or prioritize my reading and writing. But would she bite? Maybe that's a risk I have to take. 

"Frustration and disappointment are more often than not incentives to achieve something great." 

(Lajos Egri, The Art of Dramatic Writing, p 112) 

Thank you! 

"His plan to make his wife jealous was so transparent that, instead of being angry, she encouraged his escapades, thinking that by doing so she might be able to get rid of him more quickly." (p 123) 

September 18, Tuesday

An exhausting and boring evening at work. I called her at nine. I held back and said it was okay if she wanted to go to the Newsroom with a girlfriend. Then I suggested that we wait until the weekend to meet.

"Have you changed tactics?" she asked.

"No, no," I said. 

* 

When I told her that I was going to Öland next weekend with Georg, Per and Mom, she happily said that she could then take the opportunity to go to the country with Arne and his friends. Just in case, she reminded me that Arne has never been anything but a friend. If I make demands on her, I drive her away. If I don't, I lose my pride. How far can I raise my stakes in this game? 

September 20, Thursday

I don't care if I don't get the job. Alone and drunk, I walk home in the rainy September night. I don't believe in anything. Absolutely nothing. 

* 

I’m waiting for her to call. I need her care and comfort, but I don't want to come to her like this — weak and humiliated. 

Thursday morning.

My article on the tax problems of small businesses in China was published in today's newspaper with a teaser on the front page. I needed that consolation.

I feel resigned, but at the same time a bit pissed off. I am provoked to do something. Maybe useful!

I'm sitting right now drinking coffee and waiting for her to call. I must refrain from seeing her, but can I do it? I need her for comfort, but come to her weak, which is not good for us in the long run.

Are we suitable for each other?

I wish I was more realistic. 

My darkness, my darkness, my philosophizing, my intellectual flaw...

.... can it be combined with a self-centered woman who has little interest in the world? 

My research has collapsed.

My future at the newspaper too.

My love life falls silent again. 

I had a nasty dream. Walking around on a big boat with a bunch of people I knew. Below deck. We were walking back and forth through a corridor. Time and time again we met daring women. Suddenly the boat tipped 90 degrees and I woke up. 

September 21, Friday

We made love for two hours, I think. Afterwards we lay in each other's warmth and talked. I went over to her place around six to setup the stereo I bought for her. I had planned to go home at 9:30, but that didn't happen. 

September 25, Tuesday

One moment I hope to win her with security, the next moment insecurity.  

September 26, Wednesday

My body is inevitably integrated into the collective production of what we call time, but my soul turns in the opposite direction. The body slowly rots while the soul matures. So eventually it too is extinguished, like the flame of a candle. 

September 27, Thursday

We had lunch at restaurant Bajkal and talked about morality. I said that love requires fidelity, but you have to be prepared to forgive. She said that she also believes in fidelity, but not as strongly. For her, it's only natural to cheat once in a while, maybe at a company party, or on a trip. Her perspective is human, pragmatic, and not very moral. She scares me. Here I am with my demands for security. Who is the immature one? 

With C. I had security without love.

With P. I have love without security. 

September 28, Friday

Thinking about going to Paris in October. 

Öland. September 29, 04.35

I haven't been able to sleep at all. Too much coffee on the way down. The smell of fresh paint in the cabin. Per snores. Besides, memories are coming to the surface, now that we are all here — except Dad.

The sadness of selling Öland. For me, this is our cottage, a place full of memories, childhood, and Dad. It’s the only place that feels like home to me. My childhood environment is still here. Everything else is gone. Maybe I can recreate Västerberg in my imagination? If we sell Öland, I'll be completely homeless.

Now I understand her.

I brood over her. Her feelings are never released. My chances of making her desire me are gone. I loved her too much. It's a lesson to be learned. What will happen on the Paris trip? I am so charged up with what Alberoni calls depressive overload that the slightest spark can light a new fire.

The autumn is apparently the time for my crushes. So it was in the fall of 1982. The relationship with Cecilia was running on empty. I started searching, without immediately thinking about separation. I just longed for something. Then the opportunity came, and the fire was a fact, which ignited Cecilia's love, but it was too late. I don't know what to do. I'm afraid of myself. Of the intensity of my feelings. Afraid of burning myself again. Fear of flying. Always afraid of flying. 

Around two, I looked out the window. I saw bright diffuse spots and realized that it was a starry night. I put on my glasses and opened the window. It's been years since I saw such a bright night sky, but my eyesight is worse, even with glasses. The Pleiades are just a misty haze. I saw Orion very clearly. After a while I went outside. Looked at the Big Dipper and the North Star. Saw the fog line of the Milky Way.

It feels spooky to stand alone in the night, looking at the stars. Alone before everything, before the infinite distances and eternity. Back to my youth. 

* 

Never for a moment had Georg thought his father's profession was for him. He was practical. The first time he thought differently was at the funeral coffee. He was impressed by all the people who had come to pay their respects to his father.

"Sometimes you wonder what you are doing," he said. 

October 3, Wednesday

Yellow leaves on the sidewalk. I look out the window and put on a Mozart record. On Radio Stockholm, a male voice warns of high exhaust levels on Hornsgatan. 

October 4, Thursday

My lecture on China went well. I was really nervous since I wasn't prepared enough, but it went well, and my students seemed happy. Then I went to the travel agency to buy my Paris ticket. One week in an unspecified double room. 

Paris. October 7, Sunday

The clock of the Palais Luxembourg chimes softly at ten. Parisians and tourists stroll along gravel paths or relax in the park's green wrought iron chairs. The occasional jogger runs past. The sky is open and optimistically blue. The trees have not yet started to turn yellow, but here and there you can see copper-red leaves. I'm sitting in front of the large pond where two grown men are launching radio-controlled submarines, meter-long technological marvels that glide along, and soon disappear under the surface, while listening to a Parisian rock station on my Walkman. 

* 

Sore feet! Hungry, tired, and sleepy. That's Paris. Plus the beautiful Parisian ladies. I’m especially thinking of the one who came jogging down rue Dauphine in a chic tracksuit and a black leather vest. 

October 9, Tuesday

Having a coffee at Les Deux Magots after seeing The Story of O, Part II at a cinema on the Champs-Élysées. I don't know how much I lost by not being able to follow the dialog in detail. It was a French movie, so we were of course treated to a lot of philosophical rhetoric. If I understood it correctly, it was about the fact that you have to be humiliated in order to live out your passions. Shame and innocence must be defeated by the sex drive.

Desire is truth, the only truth, according to the movie, but the French also have a penchant for hypocrisy. The sexual scenes may be ever so hot and intimate; but the men in the movie don't take off their clothes any more than Dragos does. The women are more casually exposed, but their vulvas are never exposed to the camera. And when the man has finished his sexual act with the subjugated virgin, he gets up fully dressed. He doesn't even have to retract his penis and close his fly. This takes nothing away from the erotic tension, quite the contrary. The silence in front of the flesh heightens it and exposes the theme of the movie: power and submission. There are a few sadistic parts, but even those emphasize the symbolism and not the flesh (no blood!).

I remember a comparative women's study that said that French girls are taught from an early age to flirt, but also to humiliate themselves. Little girls are made to lift their skirts and squat when they are out in the city and need to pee.

The film's sadism reflects man's ambivalence towards women. They are so beautiful, even the ugly ones can have a strong and personally sensual aura. Walking the sidewalks of Paris is a constant battle with passion. It is as if I disappear every time I give in to the feeling and let my eyes rest on a beautiful woman. Women have power here, and they use it to put us in our place, pushing us to the limit, but not giving a damn about us as individuals.

Alongside the naïve, the film features brutal macho types taking revenge on the female gender, men who fuck with no sense of the individual.

Men who love and give themselves completely. Men who are rejected and hate. Hate and love. Love and hate.

After the movie, I popped into a small bookshop on boulevard Montmartre where I bought an issue of 'Paris Match' from October 26, 1963. The issue was a tribute to the recently deceased Edith Piaf. Who was she? The little girl. An ugly duckling who grew up and devoured men in droves, who made love as self-effacingly, ruthlessly, and self-destructively as men.

After only a few days, I wanted to conquer one of these beautiful Parisian women. Every time they don’t give a shit about me, the desire for revenge grows. Imagine conquering one of these delightful sensualists. What a triumph! I swell with pride every time one of them gives me a look. Ha! Ha! I’m a man after all.

The cover of 'Paris Match' shows five elderly women, grieving together. These are not beautiful women. They are not pretty, just ordinary mothers, working women — what do I know? — but they all loved Piaf. She gave them value, made them proud.

A gray-haired woman is sleeping on a bench at Station Étienne Marcel. She is old and exhausted; her pale blue legs do not attract anyone. She has slippers on her feet. She too is a woman in Paris.

While photographing a guitarist at the Odéon station, a dark-skinned woman, about 25 years old, passes by. She takes my breath away. Within a fraction of a moment, I am in love. She sees my gaze but pretends not to. 

* 

Of course, the movie is also about the orgasm, primarily the female. Only when she gives up all reservations, all control, all inhibitions, only then can she enjoy it.

* 

I’m having lunch at La Crémerie-Restaurant Polidor, located near the Jardin du Luxembourg. I listen to a French father talking to his children. I don't understand everything, but I realize it's an intellectual conversation. I guess that's why I have problems with intellectual discipline. My Dad never had a chance to go to college or university. He had to acquire his education on his own. It was broad and very human, but unsystematic.

When people in French films elaborate at the drop of a hat, it reflects a reality. This is, after all, a nation that gave the world Descartes. Rationalism has penetrated deep into the people through centuries of popular education. 

* 

There are moments when I wish I had an intellectual woman. Seduced by Paris! 

* 

With Penny I’m at peace.

With a Frenchwoman, it would be a passionate war. 

* 

Pub St. Germain.

I feel a great desire to sin — to become a pig like everybody else. 

* 

The devil — the individual.

God — omnipotence (collective or by a despot). 

October 10, Wednesday

On a table some distance away sat a young girl with golden blond hair and smart clothes. Under her right eye she had a large mark, a red curved line, as if from a fist strike. 

* 

Back at the hotel. For three days I've been searching for a gift for Penny, but when I see it, I realize that I can't afford it. 

* 

I had a successful flirtation with a young American beauty. She was probably of West Indian descent, tall, big hair, beautiful face, flashing eyes, and terribly sexy. After a while — I was eating a hamburger — I noticed that she was boldly and openly looking at me under the cover of her friends. I met her gaze without being shy. I looked at her calmly, and after a while resumed writing in my diary. I trembled at the victory, and the sensual challenge, but ignored her as I left. 

* 

Followed rue St. Denis down to the Seine. Suddenly I was in the Red-Light district (I'm not a moralist, but it's wrong to call them pleasure quarters.) It feels almost unreal to be surrounded by prostitutes waiting at their doorways — real, live and mostly vulgar. 

* 

In Paris, you get lost. It seems to be a law of nature that you get lost wherever you go. 

* 

I wrote a short story in a Chinese restaurant, and then wandered around for a couple of hours. I revisited Notre Dame, which was lit up and seemed more humane than ever. As I looked at the row of church fathers I thought: In 1789 your symbolic power was so great that the revolutionaries beheaded you. In time you got your heads back, but not the power.

Jesus dragged his cross, and every evening I drag myself along two quadrants of the cross of St. Germain de Près, and boulevard St. Michel. There is a flood of people and in the middle of them a young man looking for eyes that responds. 

* 

My roommate is from Bangladesh. Most recently, he came from Israel where he was imprisoned for five months. His crime? He had worked as a doctor among Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. He now lives in Sweden and hopes to get a job as a doctor. For me, life is a game I play. Morally, he is above me because he is doing something for specific people. He has gone down to Paris to take part in a conference on the disappeared in Lebanon. My alibi is the writer's dream. 

October 12, Friday

Leo Ferré still echoes in my mind after his three-hour show. The audience was obsessed. Ferré is a moralist who preaches love against power.

"Your style is your heart," he said, letting his hands mimic a beating heart.

The passionate style against the rationality of power.

He switched from stating his opinions to joking around. There were tearful children's songs, love songs, and songs for Allende and Nicaragua. He heckled Thatcher, the US, and talked about the revolution. The stage arrangement consisted of a grand piano. The rest was controlled by a computer-controlled light organ, and smoke curtains. He relied on a lot of church music and choirs. It looked like the light came in through a church window only to land on his wispy white hair. The sacred atmosphere was enhanced by the religious pulse, the passionate nature of the performance. It was a wonderful emotional experience. It was like he broke the shell around my heart. I felt that I wanted to write poetry again. He won the audience's love through his naked, slightly childish self-disclosure. 

October 13, Saturday

I passed St. Sulpice on the way down to the Seine. A soft sunshine made the walk pleasant. It's funny that I haven't seen the church before, as it is so distinctive with its large dome and two tall towers. I listened to a rock station and increased the pace, excited by the music. I felt horny and aggressive until I turned off my Walkman and entered the "Diderot on the Art of David and Boucher" exhibition down at Quai Conti. The paintings were accompanied by small quotes with the master's critical opinions. In many places, small loudspeakers had been installed to play passages from Diderot's work. One painting that impressed me was "The Death of Leonardo da Vinci." Diderot liked it too. 

* 

"Apollon et Serpèdon" by Jean-Simon Berthélemy (1743-1811.) Note that a flap of the red cloak has fallen, as if by chance, over Apollo's penis. Just like in the movie about "O."   

* 

With their sophisticated elegance and refined eroticism, the women of Paris ignite my pitiful Stockholm heart, which sometimes swells like a red balloon, only to collapse like an old bag. 

Stockholm. October 14, Sunday

I look out the window while listening to Björn J:son Lind and Staffan Scheja's Europe. The big trees at the Maria Church look gloomy and fragile with their huge crowns, all naked. Yellow and red leaves cover the gravel paths and sidewalks at the Maria Square and along Hornsgatan. 

She called at half past eleven. She is warming up more and more, but Paris has increased my distance.

"Come here quickly," she said.

"Yes, but I have to wake up first," I said.

"You can keep waking up with me," she said.

"I have not sinned," she said.

"And neither have I," I said. 

* 

I spent the evening with Penny, and I loved her and took her without a hint of hesitation. She raised her trembling sex towards me while — according to what she said afterwards — thinking "Take me! Take me!" 

* 

She had been busy while I was in Paris, baking pies, mini scones, and cakes for her birthday party. She wrote half the invitations in Esperanto. She'd gone to the library after work to make sure it was perfect. I am impressed. If only she could get a job where she could make full use of her talent! 

October 15, Monday

I got the latest issue of Social Sciences in China today and I’m reading Xu Simin's article "Social Psychology: The Intermediary Between Social Existence and Social Ideology." His view of how a people's social psychology develops is consistent with my view of Christianity (and other religions) as cumulatively evolved normative systems that hold society together. He refers to Friedrich Engels' book Ludvig Feuerbach. My view may also come from Engels. I read the book sometime in 1969 or 1970, and Xu Simin is only a few years older than me. 

October 22, Monday

I talked to Penny about separating. Why would it ever "click" for her? The call came after I went to the Stockholm Housing Agency, and was told there was a chance I would be allocated a flat, but do we really want to move in together? She doesn't want to promise me eternal fidelity, hence she doesn't love me. Or does she just see things clearer than I?

"You are not the type to fall passionately in love. You want security. You don't want to unleash the passion, because then you lose control," I said.

We did not make love. She was tired and so was I.

I didn't feel like it either. 

* 

I chose Cecilia because I had given up on the big passion. I fell in love with Angela because I was bored with everyday life. What was I looking for in Penny? Instant gratification? 

I curse the passion, the morality, and the sex drive.

I curse reason, power, and the desire.

Once again, I tread water. 

* 

We had a big birthday party in Mom's apartment. Almost all the guests had dressed up in the international theme she had chosen. We ate a lot and had a good time. She wore the white silk blouse I bought for her in Paris. 

October 23, Tuesday

We saw Danton, a movie about the revolution eating its children. It's very good, but the Polish director Andrzej Wajda doesn't see where the revolution came from. For him, the focus is on another problem: the emergence of post-revolutionary despotism. Robespierre, small and intellectual, is forced to guillotine the large Danton. The ascetic Robespierre lives for History, while Danton enjoys life and savors every moment with a healthy appetite. 

October 24, Wednesday

I don't want to speak. It's a protest. I’m silent. Who taught me that? My mom? She used to be silent when she was angry. I remember that we hated it, but I'm not so sure that's where it comes from. I don't want to just let the words flow and get watered down. Why am I such a moralist? Always this moralism that makes life difficult to live. Others get ahead while you are left with your anger — an inward consuming fire. She doesn't love me. Soon we will have been together for eleven months. She feels guilty for not falling for me, for just liking me. 

* 

Her mother is her security, but also the one who holds her back. If she fell for me, her mother would lose her daughter. Do I love her, or do I just want to set her free? I don't want to be a Robespierre. I'd rather be Danton! 

October 28, Sunday

It was a weekend fifteen years ago. I was playing chess with Mikael. We played 32 games that weekend. I won two. If I had wanted to, I could have won more. He was good, but I wasn't that bad. The only thing was that I never wanted to win, that I have no competitive instinct. It's as if I would humiliate myself if I competed. Is that why I became a socialist? Where did I learn that competition is ugly? Where did all the other left-wing youths get this emotional antipathy to the idea of competition? I think Mikael enjoyed winning, or did he just want to explore me? I have always appreciated the game itself, the journey, the present, but never been interested in the statistics. Power has never attracted me. Never enjoyed giving orders. Afraid of criticism? Probably. That is why I am still unknown. Same with my studies. I hate scores and exams. Sure, I wanted excellence, but not for the sake of statistics. I'd like an oral exam, or the writing of a paper, but why should I sit with 50 others and answer the same question with superficial stereotypes. I don't. I'm antisocial. Why should I be social? My life revolves around my family. Not the group. Not the class. I am my parents' child. 

* 

I was thinking of going to Café Opera after work. I must begin to look around and be seen. Penny's love is not coming. She likes me, but that's all. Why should I wait, I asked her this week. If eleven months weren't enough, isn't the matter settled? I should detach myself from the fidelity requirement and be free. It's sad because I've really loved her. If it is her maternal attachment that blocks her love, should I not be more patient? But how long can I wait without her beginning to despise me? 

* 

Dad has been dead for over a year, and we all live on. How little a life means. 

October 29, Monday

I went to Café Opera after being with Penny. Woke up early on Sunday morning but went back to sleep and read when I couldn't sleep anymore. I wanted to drag out the time; shrink the time when she and I could see each other.

I called her after ten and was with her at eleven. We went out for a walk. The sky was clear and the air cool. We went down to Söder and ended up on Fjällgatan via Sista Styverns Trappa. The view was crystal clear. She was cuddly and clung to me, but I was distant and had no desire to embrace or kiss her. Perhaps what I had feared and warned her about had already happened. That was partly why I went to the Café. It's sad, but better than a relation based on crass calculation. 

* 

"Some of them also believed that under socialism, all people will move forward together. So they felt compassion for those who earned less."

(China Daily, October 3, 1984) 

Outdated thoughts I guess ... 

October 30, Tuesday

Last night I read chapter 13 of James Joyce's Ulysses. It was beautiful and sensual. I've pretty much decided to throw economics under the bus. I choose morality and the humanities. 

"You think you're escaping and run into yourself." 

(Joyce, Ulysses) 

* 

Infatuation is over when the time with your woman feels long. 

October 31, Wednesday

I see her so unpleasantly clearly. She is a girl I feel great sympathy for, but no longer someone I want to share my life with. In some perverse way, I take pleasure in the breakdown of my love. It feels like revenge for her failure to fall in love. That's how primitive I am.

If only I was a seaweed at the bottom of the stream, a straw willingly bending to the advancing water.

I read in SvD about depressive ideas that constantly "hang around." I often think that I'm not supposed to fall happily in love. You may very well call it an obsession, but in that case, it has also forced itself on me. 

November 1, Thursday 

Nature felt like a baby bird.

Fear is not something you seek

It’s possession’s eternal companion

 

Today was a day for Mozart

The sun hung low over the city

November already

 

After lunch the clouds cleared

 

Anxious not to miss

precious moments

I abandoned the books

and took the ferry to Djurgården

 

And Indira Gandhi

was shot dead yesterday

by her bodyguards

Today the Sikh’s temple is burning

 

A new page in my diary

A new link moved

on my inner rosary

A growing feeling

of impotence

of mistrust

Is mankind lost?

 

The sun went down of course

 

But I was able to

enjoy a moment

 

Now is gray and cold

The naked tree crowns

black against the November sky

 

Love died away

 

But I was able to

enjoy a moment

 

Mozart exists

when the strings reach

my scarred soul

and the piano tickles

my tender heart

 

Flutes that heal

 

I love wholly

without theory

the music he wrote

for me to enjoy

 

It was a day for Mozart

nature was deadly mild

filled with delicate light

And the still green trees

were like baby birds.

 

The darkness thickens

Should I go out again,

abandon the warmth

I’ve become used to?

 

Out there, freedom,

cold and hope

 

The dream

of a new opening

 

The thought

that Purgatory

is but a stage.

Trying to be Normal is the third part of  novel with the working title Shifting Passions.