I want to wish you a happy new year. I have just over four hours left of the old year and expecting my mom any minute now!

Tomorrow is a new beginning!!
Hope this year will bring answers and developments and clarification to us both! With lots of creative solution-making:)
Talk to you next year;)

There are many things that can be talked to death. Dreams can wither and die if they are pondered upon for too long at a time. When we sleep we dream, and those dreams are never still. There is always an action going on. We do something in them. That is what dreams are for. Dreams give us something to reach for, an idea about a change we want to make, something special we want to do.

When dreams die, we die. Not a physical death, though that is of course the most severe consequence of losing our dreams. We lose our way in life, and it becomes dark and unfriendly, and some of us cannot bear it and decide to end everything.

That is not how life is supposed to be. There are not enough talk about those things only a dreamer would allow themselves to think about. The bohemians talk about love. They dare to dream of the things that can rock our very core. Artists dare to dream the unthinkable. The creatives live to see the worlds that exists beyond this world. Life should be poetry in motion.

This is how a novel should start. With love. The clearest dream of them all is about love. The love for life and what it represents. We are so surrounded by death that most of us find it normal to watch lives being utterly spent without consideration for what that means. In the news we hear about 10 people dying in a bombing. We shrug our shoulders and the number ten just fades into the background. But all of those people had dreams. Dreams about a better life for themselves and their loved once, a life away from poverty or war. And yet it seems we all engage in wars at every level of the word. War is somehow become a way of life, and stories about a peaceful community like Atlantis or Avalon is just legends, myths, something of the imagination. But if we can imagine should stories, they must be true. When the first human being was killed by another, it must have started somewhere?

Now we live in a society that glorify violence and killing, only they are rebuked in order to protect our society, but not until it is too late. And if the murder is horrible enough, or if you are born of the wrong race and family, we can sentence death upon that person. But isn’t it already too late? The life has already been taken? Where is the talk about dreams before violence and desperation takes over? Because the reality is that most murders isn’t by cruel and evil human beings, but by people who have been torn away from their selves and tossed into a despair that turns love into numbness.

The first stages...

It speaks for itself:)

Kurt - Middle-earth Idol

I want to listen to Dance with me again and again;)

And I had to put Geir sing Elvis by memory;)

The walk

I put on a lot of clothes, two think sweaters, because it is minues 9 degrees outside. All that I can to protect me from the cold, and still be able to walk. I decided very quickly that this was not good for me, so I decided to do two things at once. Go to the store and walk:) I chose a store a little further away from me, so that I did have ten minutes walking one way and ten minutes the other way.

What did I think about? It is funny how when you start you think about the task, but it only take a minute or so before you forget and you mind wanders. I thought about how I am today. That I am feeling okay and not okay at the same time. That I almost feel the anticipation of what is going on inside physically in my body. It almost feels like a dark cloud is about to lift off of me. I walked past Kampen church and notice for the first time that the church has stain colour glass. And I thought it was a shame that the church wasn't always lit inside. I have probably seen it before, but not when it comes to its rightful place with the light inside of the church. I thought it was a shame that the churches in Norway these days have opening hours...

Kampen is a really nice place, old houses and buildings. Very cosy as most of my neighbourhood is. I reached the store without much other reaching my memory. On my way back I saw the moon, my precious guiding light. And I saw a woman standing naked just where I was only it was way back when there was no buildings there, and hills around the sea was covered with woods. She was standing with her arms to the sky, palms up to greet the moon, that will be full in a couple of days. And I thought how it isn't hard to understand that the moon holds such a sway over humans heart. I don't think it is a person alive that hasn't gazed at the moon and felt strangely moved by the sight.

That was about it. My cheeks are still cold, maybe also because they were frozen with tears. My eyes always water when it is cold. And that makes the cold even worse. I am not complaining. I feel good after the walk. Just stating the fact)))

Attention

She sits down at the computer. The screen with an empty page in front of her. She decides that this is it. Yes, it is late. She should be in bed now, but she decides to make an effort all the same, almost like it is now or never. All the excuses she could tell herself, that she needs to sleep, that she can do it tomorrow, that it doesn’t matter. They all disappear behind the thought that if she does it tomorrow it will be completely different than if she writes now. So she sits down in front of an empty page, determined not to let her doubts and excuses get in the way.

She is determined to not let fear get the best of her. If she had decided to go to a café the next day, it might never happen. So she trusts a try. She lets herself go just a little bit, because that is what she knows she has to do deep down inside, take the chance of writing horribly. Her head hurts for the self-inflicted insomnia. The night is to inviting to sleep away, she tells herself, but still all that she does it throw every chance of getting down to the real deal and she goes to bed tired and without being filled by the words that hide behind her eyes, that hide themselves in her mind and in her heart.

There is enough to write about, she thinks looking at the clock, seeing that only ten minutes have passed. And her first thought is to go to the sofa to smoke, to run away, thinking that she will not be able to just let the words flow out. The problem about computers, she thinks, is that the words can flow so much faster onto the screen than if she had done it longhand, and that means that it takes a shorter time to write about what she had already thought she could write. The plans she had made before sitting down, how she could write, and what would she do when all that is used up. She has no idea how to let go, to let the words come, because those she has no control over.

She wonders what it is about this control. What is it that she wants to control? She doesn’t even know that. She lets down her blonde hair, to perhaps lessen the pressure she feels in the top of her head. Her period is in the second day and the pain is less apparent, more like an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. She pulls her hair a bit, frustrated about what comes next. She thinks about a comment she got about why she always kept her hair up in a ponytail. She doesn’t know. It is just comfortable to not have her hair in her face. Sometimes though, she has her hair down, but that is often because she wants to hide a bit, and hair flowing around her face does that for her. Hides her… Besides, with her hair down it gets tangled in the back and gets hard to comb through.

The minutes tick by so slowly. She is getting restless now. Completely terrified about running out of things to write. Her crosses her legs, tapping the foot on the floor, not to any beat, only to the restlessness in her. She wants to scream. She wants to have something to write about, and she knows she has sources for books. People around her, parts of their stories would fit nicely into a story, but always the stories slip from her, existing only in her mind where they unfold beautifully. But the moment she tries to catch them with words, they laugh at her and run away, and she doesn’t have the strength to chase after them, wondering if they are worth it. What if she feels forced into a story that doesn’t suit her? She is so scared of losing her dreams. So the safest thing is to watch them run away and turn the other way.

Everything around her is chaos. She is chaos. But from chaos there is always some kind of order in store. Storms are chaotic, but the sea is always calm after a storm. The grey won’t last forever. There will be sunshine again, or moonlight. Outside she knows the moon is growing into a full moon. She loves the moon and always greets it with enormous joy when she ventures out after dark. Today she walked to the store and walked towards it, though she was distracted by it being so cold, and she thought she would have to take on the warm fussy black coat next time she was going out. At least now that it is so cold. She coughs as if to remind herself that the cold can make her sick.

Half an hour has past by and she is sure that she cannot go on writing for another thirty minutes, it will be impossible. But she is determined to stick with the plan. She has to force herself to stay on the page. She sighs. It is hard. And her thoughts run ahead of her. Like they are trying to dictate what she should write, what is appropriate, because she has plans on posting this on a website and she has to be careful what she writes. Everything has to be nicely put together. Nothing too revealing, thank you. But what is the point, she thinks, of resisting the urge to write. She does it now. She wants to write, but doesn’t know how to go past the wall that she has built between herself and her longing and the creative world she feels every single day.

She wants to be confident enough, but she is too scared to even try. She doesn’t even know how. All of her words circle around the same thing over and over again. It isn’t that she lacks the courage to break through the wall. There is nothing she wants more. She thinks her low energy level comes from her not living truthfully. She knows there is a connection between not being happy and her health that she has felt getting worse and worse over the past year. Blaming it on smoking and not exercising would be easy, but she knows that there is a deeper level to it. Her energy would come back again when she felt she had a grasp on what was going to come next. That was not getting a job. That would be the natural step when she had climbed out of this dumb she had gotten stuck in.

It had taken her many years to get to this place. Where she actually managed to sit in front of the computer for one hour straight and just let the words come. Trying not to judge what came out, just letting it be. She still had difficulty in giving details about the physical world. But her inner life was filled with details that she could easily find and describe. She mastered that in a great way, it came natural to her and she wondered if that had something to do with her participation in the world outside her four walls. Not many days ago, she saw a woman walking past outside in the streets. At first she had looked like a child, but when she past she saw that it was a woman about forty if she should guess. She wore a poncho that reached all the way down to the ground, sweeping dramatically around her feet. The woman had no idea that she was watching her. She had no idea why exactly that woman had made her way through the wall and impelled her to remember her, but she thought if she didn’t write about this woman she would be forgotten and she didn’t want that, so she sat down and wrote about her. Not much, just a couple of lines about what she had seen.

Afterwards she thought that it was a new experience that gave her a little ray of hope, that maybe, just maybe, something was changing, that she was slowly opening up to see her own creativity a little different. Not as something she would want to engage herself in, but something that she possessed and had possessed since she was a little child. No she might not have written the stories down on paper, giving clear sign that she was a writer (since writers write down their stories), but the stories she made in her head was always entertaining. She was in her stories, she felt what she thought up. She was in the stories in her head, like she was in a movie. It was like that the past years she had tried to persuade herself from writing, from gaining access to this world that she knew was absolutely wonderful and very much a part of her, like it had been when she was a child.

She thought that it was incredible that could come if you only let go a little. Before this hour she had not believed that she could actually manage to do this, but right now she doesn’t care if it is bad or good writing. She just enjoys listening to music and hearing the tapping on the keys like a far away sound. Even the music comes a little in the background, because the black words flowing onto the page is more important. She tries to concentrate on their appearance than on what comes down, shifting her mind from thinking about what to write next makes the thought of the minutes ticking by slowly go away.

Her black and white cat jumps up on the chair she has besides her computer, for putting books down on, books she takes notes from. Books that she might want to take with her to London or whatever place she wants to stay for a longer time in the future, books that she can then put on a cd to take with her. She starts to think that this is boring. No one would be interested in her telling about taking notes from books. She is patient that way. Doing that would seem like a waste of time for others, but she learns a lot from repeating the words of others. She thinks that there might be an inspiration for an idea in those books, something that triggers her imagination, that triggers an idea or something else. So she keeps busy that way. And she is glad. If she didn’t read a little every day her days would be so much more boring. Her books are her comfort. The stories that can bring her out of her mind for a little while, or teach her something about herself.

Like the book that showed her finally what she had tried to figure out for a long, long time. That she was creatively blocked. That was why she couldn’t sit down and write for more than a minute or so. That was why she threw away everything she ever wrote, because it felt forced, untruthfully, but it still kept her longing for words intact, so she would not forget that this was her dream. She always tried over and over again. Even though it never got her anywhere, it keep her on the path of fulfilling her dreams of being a fulltime creative. She was pleased. She had taken a major step today. She was glad she had listened to that voice inside of her that told her to do it now. To sit down and write. To give details maybe not about the physical world, but at least she had left a rather detailed account about her inner world. That is after all a start, she thinks. And an hour had really past. She had done it. She could now go to bed and sleep in the knowledge that she had accomplished something, good or bad. She didn’t care.

It is freezing outside (minus 8 degrees celcius). My feet are cold too. If it would snow now, it would come just in time for Christmas, and it would be just like in the song. Not that I am dreaming of a white Christmas, but it has been a long time since we had it here. You have rain today, don't you? Your favourite weather eh;)

I got my period today! Yeah, now I can go back to being a little more stable. A great relief. Why does PMS have to be so mood-swinging? Funny...

Thinking back on the past three days, I actually can't remember much. It feels like I have been inside a loop that will never really end, like walking in endless fields where nothing ever changes. Just the same high grass that keeps me from seeing any horizon, keeps me from seeing anything period. Anything but the sky, but that is a monotonous grey. It feels a little frustrating and at the same time, it ain't that bad. I have been through worse times. Maybe it is that waiting thing you talked about. It's not bad, but it isn't good either. It just is.

That of course leads me to thinking that if the waiting is self-made. If this monotonous landscape is of the mind, can't I colour it, make it into something else? Couldn't I make flowers grow in the endless fields, big, bright red flowers, like roses, that fills the air with a sweet smell? With one stroke over the sky, I could make the sun appear, white clouds rushing across the deep blue sky. I can make it into whatever I wanted, and yet I seem to be satisfied with grey skies and tall grassy fields that keeps me from seeing anything. Why is that? When I can really make anything happen. Put one word after another until they make sense. I could listen to the wind, instead of complaining about it. I don't have to walk against the wind. I could turn and it will blow me forward.

In my mind, I could travel anywhere I want. I can go anywhere I want, even to distant realms that no one knows about, only me. I could colour the world in the most fabulous colours. I could paint with the colours of the rainbow. And yet, I stay inside the little box of familiarities. I don't challenge myself. Maybe I don't, because I don't know how to do that. I have gotten so used to this life of grey that I don't know how to do it differently. I don't know how to shake things up. I don't know how to unblock me, to get unstuck, to move forward. So I stayed in the same place until I believe that it was all there ever was. That I was outside looking in, dreaming of what I could do if only... If only what? If only I was better, brighter, more beautiful, more clever? If only sneaks into your system like an invisible poison, slowly killing off the spirit, drowning that voice of beauty and colour, making everything into grey encounters that just fades into the background as soon as they have passed. And all you are left with is if only. If only I had this, or a little more of that... The poison is working its way through the whole system until your spirit is numbed into believing that this is all there is.

That sounds really depressing. I am not saying that because it is completely like that. For a while it was, yes. I believe it was, but even though the poison is there in the system, there is always a cure. Not all poisons kills you... Positivity is a cure, but it is a long and painful cure. To believe again is a difficult task. I can believe one moment, and the next I just can't travel to that place where I see myself succeed. It's like hitting an invisible wall. It is flexible and at first I can't see it, but when I do, it shoots me back like a sling shot... See? The wall is still there. But it's not solid anymore, and it is not misty either. It is like its made of jelly, sticky and wobbly...

I know I should go to bed now. It's almost 4:30 am. But I don't want to sleep even though I am tired. That means I am finishing a new day that feels pointless, wasted on nothing. Why is that? Why do I end up without doing anything? I get energy from feeling satisfied, like I am doing something. Why don't I do something? Because I don't know what I want to do? It really is a vicious circle! I feel like the clock is ticking now. For what, I don't know. I feel that is my sentence these days. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I will know tomorrow... Ah, it reminds me of this thing in The Artist's Way:

One way we listen is by writing our morning pages. At night, before we fall asleep, we can list areas in which we need guidance. In the morning, writing on these same topics, we find ourselves seeing previously unseen avenues of approach. Experiment with this two-step process: ask for answers in the evening; listen for answers in the morning. Be open to all help.

I will try that tonight I think. Get ready for bed, ask a couple of questions and try to get some sleep. Then see what happens. At least I have written something today, in this blog, that is at least something. I don't really think it's that bad, I just wanted to write and see where it led me...

If the best of all possible worlds were reality...

1. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would live in a great appartment down in the old city, Gamlebyen, with a rosett in the living room ceiling with a great chandeler hanging down from it.

2. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would travel the world, and see and experience new things.

3. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would be healthy and fit, doing exercises and walking every day.

4. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would have lots and lots of energy every single day, with great sleeping patterns and eating habits.

5. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would have writing and painting as my job.

6. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would be successful in everything I put my mind to.

7. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would have the time of my life.

8. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would be happy all the time.

9. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, the world would be a lot different, a place where people saw each other and no one needed to be lonely and suffering.

10. If the best of all possible worlds were reality, I would paint every day, making images that would empower me and the people who saw them in a gallery I own myself, maybe a couple of galleries:) In London and in Oslo... Art would not be a status symbol, but a way to express ideas and love...

I am not alone!!! How wonderful is it to see that someone else had the same thing as I have!!

I was going through some websites on Karen Blixen to find if she has any books set in Africa (Helene, Cath's daughter has as you know been in Africa and is kinda mesmerized by it). Karen Blixen it says wrote her novels in English then translated them into Danish!! How great is that!! Yeah))) I am of course sure you know who Karen Blixen is:) I say three words: Out of Africa;)

But the point is, I am not the only one!! I have thought about the exact same thing. Writing in English then eventually translating it into Norwegian:) Sort of gives me validation for it!! Yeah!! Happy smiles:)

Ah something to look forward to

Blah day

Blah!! Hellish day. Haven't done anything at all after doing my morning pages. And I had such great plans... All I've been doing is staring at the canvas I started yesterday. It is really frustrating. Okay, so I had a sneezing day most of the day, that does not help of course. I might have made it an excuse if it had been today, but I've been like this for the better part of the week. I don't know what it is. It's really not like me. A little voice tells me that maybe this is part of my so-called recovery. That I am slowly and painfully gaining something. That's why maybe the way I have spent my days before is changing. A part of me still holds on to what was, and another smaller part is moving in another direction. Maybe I am in the process of changing. But to be honest, I don't know. I don't think it's depression, though I am feeling a little depressed. Maybe I am PMSing:) I have forgotten when I had my period, but it might be why I am feeling bluish.

I really don't know what to do. Everything in me is yearning for something to occupy my mind, but I can't seem to sit down and do anything. So I play games online, smoke a lot and stare at the canvas unable to put more paint on it. And I am not able to sit down and write anything either. Except for my morning pages. Yes, I do those every day. I actually have been doing them for one month today!! That should be celebrated I guess. I am quite proud of that)) And I will be even prouder when I can say I have been doing them for two month:)

I even had to take a grip on myself to sit down and write a blog. But once I started I find that I have a lot to write. Vent some frustration. I should try to get some sleep and think that tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities, and stop being so hard on myself. I am after all in recovery, right))) I hope we get a chance to talk a little more often after your tests have been done. I could need some cheering up.

You know, it just hit me, that it almost feels like standing on the edge, one part of me want to jump and take a leap of faith, the other is scared shitless. And that makes me feel rather numb, and without any initiative whatsoever. I just curl up at the edge and hope it all will go away. I don't know what it is that I am waiting for. It took me forever to do those 25 things. It seems like there are parts of me that I have buried so deep inside that it is so difficult for me to find them. I guess I should look at this as an adventure as well, the hard parts of the journey, they are worth while too. The process demands small steps and sometimes you stand completely still. Like you're trapped in a small room that barely lets you move. The air gets so thin that it becomes difficult to breath.

Oh well, I guess I just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings really. If it is the same, I will survive that day too. I will just have to try my best to get through it. You'll see, it is probably PMS:) Me completely forgetting my own cycle again... I mean that it makes it seem more depressing than it really is. Sooner or later (sooner I hope) I will find out what is bugging me. It certainly helps to just let it out:) Hope your exam went well!! Take care and hope your essay got finished)))

The Nobel Peace Prize

I think today's blog will be very much influenced on what is going on in Norway today and the past days. The Nobel Peace Prize that this year was awarded to IPCC (Rajendra Pachauri) and Al Gore. Or to the fight against manmade climate change. I know there has been a lot of discussion about this year's winners, if the climate has anything to do with the concept of peace. I say shame on them!

What could be more important to peace than this earth? What would happen if we destroyed it bit by bit? Would that create peace? The fact is that the natural resources has much to do with many of the conflicts we see around the world. I am so thankful to the nobel committee for this bold move. It is so important to acknowledge the work that both IPCC and Al Gore is doing. Their voices has become much stronger.

I love the notion that this is something the whole world must solve together. That no one will not be touched by. It doesn't matter what colour your skin has, what you believe in, or who you are. It will effect us all if we do not come together and solve this. This is the time to save our future. I have thought about how much our belief in one life is doing to how we live our lives. Think about it, if we knew with certainty that we would be born into this world again after we die, would we think different? We talk about saving the earth for our children and our grandchildren, but we might as well be ourselves... I find it an interesting thought. Because I think we need a spiritual change. Without a closer relationship to nature and the soul, we will never make it. Our politicans are nothing but human beings. They think the way many of us do. We have to work for our countries and our countries rights to have good lives... What is the good life?

Oh I love this one. "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" is the philosophy that the universe and its family is one. That's exactly it. We are all one. That is what we do not understand with war, because often it is somewhere else than outside our doorsteps. With the environment being destroyed, the story will be something completely different. Ask the people of New Orleans, and they will tell us a horror story... Mother Earth will beat us to our knees.

Rajendra Pachauri just said these words: "The world has enough for everybody's need, not everybody's greed." Love that sentence!

Al Gore talked about how we should look at these times as joyful, because we have a chance to work together, to solve the problems of this world. Our souls doesn't need war, our greed does. It is really nice to be inspired. The work is not to forget when this night is over, but to find small steps to actually work towards the goal of uniting the world. We can make peace happen. We can bring the world together.

There should be more inspirational stories out there! Not just the shocking and despair news of hunger, sickness, war and death. We should celebrate our differences. And I personally think art of all kinds are a builder of bridges. Music, words and images. Maybe that is one of the reasons I love my creativity so much, because through it I can explore a world that is so rich and so alive with opportunity for peace and a deeper understanding. There is no time to lose really. I want to shame those people who tries to destroy our world and their "enemies"!! I want to shame them with love!!

Go to this address: http://nobelprize.virtual.museum/award_ceremonies/ceremony_oslo/video/2007/index.html to read the lectures by Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri from the IPCC. Very good

I am so sorry, but I am really not feeling like writing tonight. I guess it is a good sign that I am actually tired now at 2:00 am:) I am going to bed! I don't know what is happening. Had a couple of really "bad" days in the way that I don't seem to do anything at all...

I hope for a better day tomorrow. Hopefully with a blog entry:) I still owe you an account from my trip)))

This was really difficult. I don't know if it is about sophistication, but at least it is 25 things:)

1. That I can buy all the books I want
2. A studio
3. Breakfast every day
4. Longer nails, manicured
5. Champagne
6. Trips around the world
7. A small summer cottage in Åsgardstrand
8. A greater sense of what I am here for
9. An appartment with a lot of history and soul
10. A creative life
11. Enough money to go around
12. A circle of spiritual conscious people
13. Laughter
14. Living in London
15. Making the priorities for a better tomorrow
16. A canopy bed
17. Antiquities
18. Lots of notebooks to fill
19. Inner peace
20. Good health and a healthy lifestyle
21. Lots of flowers and plants around me everywhere
22. A hybrid car (or electrical)
23. Wine cellar
24. Lots of animal
25. A little cabin in the mountain which is driven by solar energy

Thought I'd at least say hi before I go)) The last entry until friday, if I not by some chance should be in front of the computer:)

Did my morning pages, before 3pm!! Which is an accomplishment in itself. I am almost ready to go now. Packing is a little of a hellish thing to do. You never feel you have taken with you everything you are suppose to take. Like I was out shopping yesterday, I had bought so little, and I was sure the girl behind the counter said to me, "Have you forgotten something?" "I don't know," I said before I realized she had asked if I wanted a plastic bag... The ever present me ah:)

Anyways. I am off to the great wide sea... Not the most impressive sea, but still out on "bølgande blå" as we might say:) Take care)))

I looked at the wrong site for that video I was talking about... Too bad that it is about a person getting hurt very badly, but it is too funny;))

I took the twenty minutes walk today. There are not any natural spots to walk in around where I live, but it is so lovely in my neighbourhood. Old small houses that has been here for many years. I think some of them are from around late 19th century, early 20th. Wooden houses, some of them bearing signs of the holiday coming. Then Christmas seems different, when you seem the signs in the windows of others, lights hung up on trees in their small gardens, or a star in a window. I walked past the church that lies nearby. It is on a hill and is not lighted by any spot lights. The church spire is almost invisible against the dark sky, and seems almost like a threatening shadow, like a giant. Along side the path that goes past the church there are old trees, their trunk moist from the rain we've been having. I almost didn't think I would say this, but I wish it would snow a little now. It would create such a magical feeling to the scenery.

Right now as I am writing this, Nicky is sitting on the chair I have beside my computer (for books and such), looking at me. Well, staring actually. Now he is looking somewhere else, probably philosophing about something that cats think about. I wonder what he is thinking when he stares at me the way he does sometimes))) Right now I think he's asking me for food:) His bowl is empty)))

And now for the synchronicity of week... I was delivering some books back to the library friday and I was handed a flyer by a woman with free meditation. Raja Yoga Meditation it's called. It's based on the principle that something that is useful for everyone should be free. It's a world wide organization (read about it at www.bkwsu.org). It's kind of what I have said all along, I want to learn how to meditate but that I am not capable of doing it alone... And I just know that it is not by accident that I found it now. But the problem is that it is today, and it has already had one class last monday. And since today would be a problem, I called and the same woman offered to give me the intro on sunday so I could begin next monday! I cannot say no to this at all. It is lovely really, and if it is a gift from the universe then I have nothing to lose in trying. I think it is another step in actually getting better and in my recovery. To learn to gather my thoughts and get past this problem I have of not being able to bring my thoughts into the world, into reality in a way. Manifesting my dreams, so to speak. I feel so scared of it though, which is another reason for doing it.

This is what it says about what it is on the website: "Raja Yoga Meditation is a method of relaxing, refreshing and clearing the mind and heart. It helps you look inside to rediscover and reconnect with your original, spiritual essence. Meditation enables an integration of your spiritual identity with the social and physical realities around you, restoring a functional and healthy balance between your inner and outer worlds." Sounds useful:)

I am thinking about what Julia Cameron said about being ready for these synchronicities. If I say no to this I will lose something that might be very important to me. What it is I don't know. It might be meeting someone who can help me take a new step towards becoming an artist. It might be just on a personal level of getting more calm or getting more concentrated (Nicky staring again..:))...

I am going to try to be more observant while in Copenhagen this time. So I can write more than, it was fine:) The problem is of course that I am not traveling alone. And that I have to be more attentive to my mom than to my wish to write. I am rather excited to see if I manage to do the morning pages, and how she will react to me doing them. Will I be able to get up and write two pages or not? Will it make any difference? It is something I am looking forward to finding out. I think I will have to do them and explain to her that I will put all the shit I feel behind in those two pages. I think it does make me more in harmony with myself...

Oh, I have taken out the biggest canvas I have ever attempted. I have had it around for years actually!! Just been waiting and yesterday I took it out of the plastic and I have been looking at it all day, wondering what the heck I will paint... I have no idea, but I am starting with ultra marine... It will be revealed in time I think... Or hope right now:) And I am getting more canvases in a day or two))) No small canvases this time, only larger ones))) So looking forward to it. Starting new paintings. And finishing some old ones. Just having fun with colours and shapes, and mixing them together. I think I have a little Michelangelo-ic way of approaching a canvas. The motif is already on the canvas and I just have to find it:) I don't like to plan ahead, do sketches and things like that. If I need to do it, of course, then I do it, but I find that when I let it find me, I enjoy it more. And now I am doing the biggest canvas ever!! Scary, but a good sign too:) I am recovery aren't I, slowly but steadily...

It is done!! The first stroke has been put on the white empty canvas. I am going to make the whole white space, blue, using a lot of therpentine first. It can dry when I am away and then I will see what needs to be done next:)

I hope I made up a little for yesterday:) And still the day is young. At least for me:) Ah my sleeping patterns)) If I have more to say I will post it:) Take care

The check-in yeah. Today is not a very good day. I actually manage to sleep until almost 5 pm!! Now that means I haven't seen the light of day since yesterday which is not good. I don't know how I managed it, but it has made this day a little crazy. And now I am going crazy as well:) I try to tell myself that tomorrow is a new day, and it sure is. I bet I will fell much better tomorrow. The best thing I can do today is to go to bed... Sounds crazy since I haven't been awake for more than 10, but I don't think staying up is the best solution now. I need to sleep some more and maybe wake up at 10am tomorrow instead... I guess I will be in a better mood then. I managed to do my morning pages though... Or "morning" pages today...lol. But nothing else came of this day... The biggest accomplishment today was making dinner... No long entry tonight in other words.

We can make peace happen.

New book

This made me think: You have to lose yourself first, to find yourself again.

I found it in a book I have not been able to forget. It is unfortunately in norwegian. Because the author is Norwegian. It's called "Underneath the Northern Cross - an apocalypso" (Under Nordkorset - en apokalypse). I love these kind of channeled novels. Like the Silent Stones by Diana Cooper. The kind of novels that shows me fantastic stories that sounds more like fantasy but that triggers a what if... That makes me think that we human beings only can only understand a fragment of the universe. It triggers something deep inside of me, that makes me believe that there are some sort of greater plan for our lives.

Something in me feels that this book might give me something. What exactly that is going to be, I don't know yet. It goes back to the time of Atlantis and says that there was a highly developed civilization in Norway, more correctly in the northern parts of Norway at that time. I don't know... But it is lovely to think that there are some deeper reason to why things are the way it is. Maybe this violent times we live in is something much deeper than what we can understand. Maybe looking at the world's governments are too easy... Just playing with thoughts really, but there is something deep inside of me that says maybe all this violence is what happens before a big change is due, the old fighting to stay alive... Isn't that what often happens to us when we fight change. We hold on to old beliefs and patterns even though we know they are not good for us and they only hurt us. I believe the Dalai Lama is right when he says that the only revolution left for us to do, is a spiritual on. I have also about us approaching a change. I know Diana Cooper have talked about 2012.

If you're interested and don't think it too much out there, I'll keep you posted on what my findings are:) It's about shamans, past lives and recovering parts of your soul;)

A much better day today. Not that I have done so much, but I did one thing. We talked about doing what fell into our mind, and I did it today. I thought about buy a rose as I passed a flowerstore, and turn back and did so. I had a conversation with the lady behind the counter and it ended with her asking what I did. And I said I was an artist. And it felt so true. It didn't feel like a lie. I could have said that I was unemployed and all. But I said I was an artist. That is a good thing. I did say it with a little hesitation, but I said it. It made all the difference this day really.

I did my morning pages too, began week three of them. Oh, and I am going to Copenhagen again. Staying over for a night. That is something I am definitely looking forward to. Hopefully it will give me a little breather in the otherwise monotonous life of me. In Tivoli there is going to be a Christmas market and it sounded that it was going to be other stuff going on to... Christmasy stuff. Maybe I will get in the Christmas spirit for the first time in a long time... I guess that I just think that it has become too commercial really. The shops begin Christmas over a month before... In two week, you grow sick of the whole thing...

Listening a lot to U2 and Linkin Park these days... At least on my MP3 player... I guess I am looking for lyrics with some meaning and that has a certain drive... What else has happened today... Oh yeah, one of the norwegian alpine skiers, Aksel Lund Svindal fell badly in Beaver Creek today, in downhill training... Not that it matters, but it made my heart stop for a second, because I do like some sport a little, and funnily enough it is everything that has to do with skiing. Last time I had skis on my feet was in 1994:) And then I practically walked, only with skis... No gliding at all:) Well, anyway, the point is that he's a nice guy and there has been fatal accidents in downhill... Just hope that he is okay:)

Ah, tomorrow is your decision time;) Good luck again))) You will make the right choice))) Don't worry so much. And if you can't decide, put them up on a wall and shot dartarrows and see where they land and take the course))) Probably a little happy go lucky:) But still a method... Take care...

I know I should try to write something. But it is rather difficult too. Goodness I talked to you until almost 10 am last night (morning for me;). But I got to write that email that I have thought about writing for almost two weeks. That was a good thing.

I haven't really done anything today. Been sleeping late, until 3pm and did my morning pages which was more like afternoon pages, really. I watched the second episode of Jane Eyre. And I have just finished watching Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason. Love those movies... So as you can see I haven't been up to anything much at all... Rather boring day. But I thought at least I should tell you how boring it is... Since it is now approaching 5 am (I don't know how I am ever going to get to bed before 4 am...), I should be off to bed. Going to read a couple of chapters in The Witch of Portobello and maybe have a couple of dreams))) Take care



Couldn't let an opportunity go by... If you don't have anything to say, post a picture)) Be sure to let me know how the decision-making went)))

Easier to run

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

Something has been taken
From deep inside of me
A secret I've kept locked away
No one can ever see
Wounds so deep they never show
They never go away
Like moving pictures in my head
For years and years they've played

If I could change I would
Take back the pain I would
Retrace every wrong move that I made I would
If I could
Stand up and take the blame I would
If I could take all the shame to the grave I would

Sometimes I remember
The darkness of my past
Bringing back these memories
I wish I didn't have
Sometimes I think of letting go
And never looking back
And never moving forward so
There would never be a past

Just washing it aside
All of the helplessness inside
Pretending I don't feel misplaced
Is so much simpler than change

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

Lyrics by Linkin Park

I was just sitting here and suddenly these words came to me among others, but I thought they might mean something to you...

Sometimes the silence is what must be. Because only through silence can you really learn how to listen.

The Lord of the Rings Marathon!!

You won't believe it!! They are putting on all three LOTR movies on Colosseum tomorrow night!! All of them!! In the cinema again!! Oh my)) And I am going!!! Alone of course))) But I am sooooo looking forward to it... I wish I could see them with you tomorrow, but that would be very expensive tickets;)

I AM GOING THERE AND BACK AGAIN TOMORROW!!!

I loved this passage in The Artist's Way:

Blocked artists are not lazy. They are blocked.

I think before I can move on with anything in my life, I need to get unblocked. I kinda do everything half-heartedly nowadays. And I think the reason I am so damn tired all the time is creativity unused. Sort of feels like everything I want to do is stuck inside of me and never gets recycled, and it is making me unhealthy and leaving me feeling depressed and totally out of connection with anything I am doing. I am always finding excuses for not doing anything. I don't know what I am afraid of either. Maybe the responsibility... Because it is responsibility in getting unstucked and unblocked. Well, anyway. I do think that blocked creativity can be dangerous.

Have you thought about that? I mean there must be some reward we are giving ourselves by not doing anything about our situation. I say ours because even though our situations are quite different, I do think there is a lot of similarities too.

I am leaving everything I do unfinished. I even have difficulty doing these 4 test to finish my computer course... Everything half-heartedly... I can barely get myself out of bed. I will of course do them, but I am using the tests as a delaying thing for not having to continue getting out into the world. I just love sitting at home doing my thing way too much, and I can't decide if it is because I am suppose to or if it is a kind of weird escape of some sort...

I actually thinking I am coming down with a flue or something... At least that should be an excuse that other people would understand:D

About time!!

It's almost one month since my last entry!!

I don't know why I haven't felt like writing or why I have felt like I have nothing to write. There has been so much other stuff to deal with I guess, so that I haven't been able to sit down and write anything at all. Today was the last day of the course. Only have the tests left (hopefully a piece of cake)... I have made a website in the project that is actually online!! Queck it out: www.elanton.no Nice to think that I have made this (of course together with my classmates;)). Actually something to show for)))

Other than that, I am doing okay. I am seriously considering saying no to that workplace, because most of it has to do with sitting on the phone, and I am not very fond of the phone. It gives me the creeps. While I can adjust to taking some phonecalls and receiving them as well, the thought of it just being on the phone freaks me out and I haven't been able to feel happy about anything at all. And I am also struggling with feeling physically tired all the time. And if I am being pushed into something that I know is going to be bad for me, then I will end up almost where I started 3 years ago... Not very tempting. But hopefully it will be accepted and I can find something I will like. This job would be the easy solution. You know the one that I don't have to do anything to get and it would not be the best one in the long run...

Hopefully I will get to talk to you soon!! It is not enough once a month!! I wish you could take the time to talk to me once in a while... I really miss our talks!!

Lunchbreak

I'm having my lunchbreak. Finished early today. It was too cold to sit outside so I just figured I would come up here and write a few words. Not that I have much to say though....

I hope you got your essay re-written before handing it in))) Probably not when you had the chance to do it again later on... And now I am thinking about what the heck I can write:) I am in that mood again now. Not knowing what to write at all... My good efforts during the last month of my summer holiday has gone down the drain...:) Not that I have completely stopped writing. I just don't do it everyday and not as much, but I am trying not to let myself forget...




Just found a picture I used when doing a PowerPoint presentation... In the lack of words....:) Remembering the dream of hopefully not so far into the future we will get to see Rome, drink some wine and have a good time there, being really cultural and all))) Would be lovely...

I think I need another cigarette before starting the last two hours of Access... Quite boring indeed, but on Monday I begin with the Web part of the course. That should be interesting))))

Tired

I have to force myself to write this blog. I am physically tired these days. And it is effecting everything in my life. I want to write, I want to paint, but I am too tired to do anything constructive.

Next Wednesday I am going to a yoga class. Well, it is a free try it out. But I am hoping it will be wonderful so I can continue doing it. I guess it is my search for energy and physical well-being. I have lived in my head for so long that I have overlooked the vehicle for all those thoughts for way too long, and I am beginning to see the downside of that way of living now. I mean how can I get a job when I am exhausted all the time. I don't like feeling this way. I have to be able to keep a job and work at my dreams at the same time, not having to sacrifice one for the other. Mentally I am doing great, but being tired all the time takes a toll on the psyche... And if one part of your life isn't good, that is the part that draws all your energy away.

Maybe it is my soul's way of telling me to get to work on that now. And if I don't listen to it, it will be harder and harder to do anything else. I have seen that very clearly the past weeks... I don't have any energy left to do much of anything when I get home. I barely manage to get up in the morning, and when I do it takes all my energy and I struggle all through the day.

Weather and Vincent and some salty water

My goodness how time flies. I can't believe that it is Semptember already! Where did this summer go? Unbelievably sad in a way, but autumn is good too. It's just that it has been raining all summer, and so with autumn here, it kinda feels like we have been cheated out of any warmth before going into winter again... The sun is important because the sunlight gives energy to us that we need... We have had maybe ten days of intense heat in June, when I started the expert course, almost dying in the classroom, and when my summer holiday the bad weather started... Rain rain rain... The only positive thing was that I could stay indoors with a good conscience:)

Oh well, all the talk of the weather just goes to prove that we humans would be completely lost if we didn't have the weather to talk about..........

I've just flushed my nose with salted water. It is a strange sensation I tell you. Somehow, I managed to see something on the instructions that was not there and I ended up getting the first flowing of the water through my mouth... Before I realized that it was rather stupid to cover both nostrils... Really stupid... It does help a little... But it gets blocked quite fast again, but I think if I stick to it, then it will get better and better. I am definitely going to give it a try for a few weeks. It takes a couple of minutes and I love to "breathe the free air again"; if only for a moment.

What a gripping life I do lead eh:)

I am still trying to adjust getting up in the morning. I am so tired!! I can sleep alright, but still I am tired. But I am proud of myself for not oversleeping at all since I started. A couple of times I have had to take a train later (15 minutes), but that only means I get there like a couple of minutes past 9, which is late, but not that late. Acceptably late if you ask me:)

I am wondering when the energy will come:) Seems like it is nowhere to be found. I think I must change my eating habits. I should definitely eat breakfast!! But if I wake up at a quarter to eight and I have to get out the door around 30 minutes later, how do you eat breakfast? I don't... I am starting to go to the school every day now. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, is course days. And Tuesday and Thursday are study days. I have decided to leave my books there and keep everything with computers and studying there, so that when I am home I can do everything that I like to do without feeling bad about not reading. I did it this weekend and it was great, because every time I thought about having to read, I said to myself that I would do it when the weekdays came. I could just relax and try to concentrate on the other things that I wanted to do.

I am still adjusting my life to being busy during the day, and I have not gotten into any kind of rhythm and my writing has suffered for it. But it is not like I have stopped altogether. I am just not writing that much anymore. I have to get everything together, and try to fit it into a somewhat more busy schedule that this summer. But I know it has not disappeared at all.

Still reading/writing about Vincent van Gogh. He too struggled with acceptance from his family (his father being a minister and wanting Vincent to be one as well). He had bad arguments with his father when he became an artist. Vincent actually only worked as a painter for ten years. He went around and didn't know what to do for a long time. He was an art dealer, a student of theology, I think he worked in a school, he worked in a bookstore for a short time, and was bewildered. I haven't read about the year he decided to be an artist yet. But his love of nature and of art was there all along. I think it was just a matter of finding his calling in a way. Just like we are doing still... You know, finding the strength to actually admitting for real that this is the only thing that will make us happy. I am also convinced that he had a manic depressive disorder. He was really depressed at times, then he had these productive periods when he could paint a picture a day! What amazes me the most is how completely different I view him after "getting to know" him a little bit better than just from what the popular "myths" about him says. Like the ear incidence. I have always heard that he cut the piece of his ear off because of a girl, but in fact it was because of Gauguin and his frustration over his stay not being what Vincent wanted it to be. He did send the piece to a girl though))) In a comical and bizarre way, kind of funny:))

I have still a lot to go through with the letters, trying to work as hard as I can with them. Not quite feeling that I have gotten to the bottom of why I was drawn to him yet, but I am getting there. He as a person has become a part of me now, and also him as an artist, maybe not always what he painted but how)) Looking forward to learning even more. Have to remember to re-rent the books before tuesday)))

Lyrics to Vincent

It is breaktime now. I am so tired, I can hardly concentrate about anything else than staring blindly at the screen.

Much later in the day. One hour left and I wanted to write the lyrics to Vincent (starry, starry night):

Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now

Starry starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Chorus:
For they could not love you, but still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night
You took your life as lovers often do,
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you

Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget.
Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me
How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will.

Hard to start

It was harder to start than I thought it would be. I was so tired all day. My legs were so heavy as were my eyelids... It felt like I had to drag myself up the stairs today. It adjustment is taking some time))) But I am learning new stuff about Word which is really useful in how to make writing easier!! Like when making contents of a paper or a book like in two seconds!! I like that))) It does contains many things I don't know))) But one thing I did know about was footnotes;)) Since I had had some experience using them when I wrote about Gothic art)))

I am going to bed now to sleep))) It sounds so good to lay my head on the pillow and just drift away into dreamland)))

Summary

It will be absolutely divine to go back to "ordinary" life again. You know, taking the course and feeling that I am moving forward again. The difference is of course that now I have taken writing with me. I am ready for everything to move forward. This summer has been both good and bad.

I had set three goals. But I only managed to do one of them. Writing. I wanted to write a hundred pages, and I have done so. So I guess I should be pleased. And I am. I truly am. Nothing is better than feeling unstuck on some part of your life. Right now I heard Bilbo's words in my head: "I think I'm quite ready for another adventure." And I guess I am. I feel that writing is about to take another turn, and I have no idea of where it will lead me. But I don't care. I am just waiting to see where it will go. Because I am ready for another adventure! Yeah!! *Clapping hands madly*

I bet many of my blogs will be filled with writing. Perhaps some of what I write, but alot of pondering about what I feel when I write. I will just write whatever comes to mind. I have different kinds of writing. This blog, my daily pages, and hopefully getting down to ideas about what I want to write. Oh, and I almost forgot...:) Letters... Maybe seriously think about writing more poems and shorter kinds of stuff. I am just looking forward to growing as a writer. I am just going to learn to go with the flow.

To think that it is only just after midnight and I am actually preparing for bed. I must say that I am a little nervous about if I am going to be able to get up tomorrow morning... I mean I slept for the entire course period today... Kind of strange to think that I will get home about an hour and a half after I got up this morning... lol. I will probably be sooo tired tomorrow morning. Or maybe I won't because I will be so excited to get back and to see the new faces that are joining the course... But I will be dead tired on Wednesday instead because the drive that anticipation gives you wear out pretty quickly... If there isn't this really cute boy in the course that will be absolutely worth coming for:) But I have my doubts about that. But there is still hope. Even though it will be crushed tomorrow))) I guess hope and crushed are a bit strong in this sense;) I won't die or anything.

I am beginning to feel like Bridget... The old mad spinster:) But I guess we have a lot to learn from dear Bridget... Talking about learning from someone... Still not quite sure what Vincent van Gogh has to tell me... The letters from the first chapter isn't really revealing anything, but I will continue. Should probably just a little forward in the book. That is what the gut feeling is telling me... So I probably should. After he decides to become an artist or something... In July of 1879... I should probably see about beginning there, but it seems so unfair to his earlier life as an art dealer and such:) I don't know... Kind of fun to see how his thoughts develop around art too, and what the man has to say. But one things for sure. I have developed a great compassion for the man Vincent:) And I am still so thrilled about finding out more about him. And I will probably continue to write about it in blogs...

Poem to the Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

Thought I write the poem I wrote last Friday here...

He lived with his torment
He sensed his dismay
He lived with his colours
He looked around
and saw the world with new eyes
Like he knew it wouldn't last
that his sanity would take hold
Bold strokes of colour
The night sky took the canvas
The town was asleep
as he escaped into his world
Down there he was a stranger
Out here he was alive
He could forget about his illness
as he gazed upon the stars
His life has passed with sadness
but the moment is still alive

Vincent van Gogh

This has been the week for "signs" about Van Gogh. It began last Sunday when I watched this BBC program called Power of Art that was about van Gogh. It of course made it so much better with Andy Serkis playing van Gogh. But there was nothing special about it. Only a good program about a good artist.

Then last Tuesday in Medium, Allison dreamed about van Gogh. Thought it was a little funny then. And I thought that she had it wrong, because she dreamt he put a gun to his head, and in the Power of Art program he said he shot himself in the chest... That was really all that went through my mind at that stage.

Then on Friday, of all the pages in Art through the Ages, you picked the pages where Starry Night was!! Now it felt a little strange. But I wrote a good poem.

Then on Saturday, I saw a painting by van Gogh in a movie. No idea what movie it was, but I was switching from channels to channels. Now I really thought it must be a sign of some sort. And I made up my mind yesterday when I heard the song Starry, starry night (this version sung by Josh Groban). I thought, now this I cannot deny anymore. It is too strange to be coincidence. Tomorrow I will go to the library and find some books about Vincent van Gogh and see what it has to show me.

And so today I did and how three books with me home, two biographies and one novel. And I went into a book store to see if they had any notebooks on sale. And don't you think I found a notebook with von Dutch on the cover!! It cannot get any clearer than that!! Now all I have to find out is what the heck is being said about this. How it is suppose to connect to my life. Am I suppose to write something about Vincent or is it something about his life that can be inspirational for my own life? That is something I have to find out I guess... One of the books is the letters of Vincent, mostly to his brother Theo I think. Just barely flipped through it...

The Day

It's so funny, because as you might see, the question about the guides I talked about is now resolved. They are personal guides:) Funny how my reasoning was kind of right... Well, I might have read it somewhere too. I can't remember.

Tomorrow is my death day. The day when we buried my grandfather and the day Hans Christian were murdered. I should probably say died though... Not so dramatic. It's already been 12 years!! Twelve years ago my life changed. Or rather my perception of it. The way I had to either accept that I was completely crazy or that there were more to this world than what we could sense with our senses. I guess that when I really became what Gary Zukav called a multi-sensory human being:)

So I guess it is both a death and a life day really))) Because it did give me a broader view of life. The strange thing is that we buried my grandfather on that day that meant so much too me from before... Coincidence or not? It is said that there are no coincidences in this world...

A Song of Power

I am a horse running freely across the open landscape.
I am a willow, standing strong against the storm.
I am a forest, deep and vast, filled with secret hiding places.
I am a heart, filled with sadness and longing.
I am a knife that cuts through and finds what is important.
I am a unicorn, innocent and mystical.
I am a river, floating through the deepest parts of me.
I am a painting, eternal and full of meaning.
I am a wolf, searching for company in the twilight.

What am I writing

What am I writing... Everything really. I just thought of something funny. Going back to that door of mine. I was thinking that it's like that door has been opened. That before when I sat in front of it, staring it remained closed, but at the moment I decided to turn away it opened up. I have just been writing and writing and writing. Not all day long. I try to write in the morning (to start my day well and with what's important to me) and in the evening. Last night I wrote 5 pages longhand, turning off the computer and everything. Just listening to music and write, not trying to avoid anything at all. It is not suppose to become anything but a forum for me to put down everything, just going with the flow. I am not trying to shape anything into something, just writing freely, maybe for the first time in my entire life. I have done this for a week now and I have already filled about 30 pages of writing:)

One of the most important things I have learned or realized is that I have a lot to say. I will never ever again say that I have nothing to say. Because it is a lie. But realizing that it is a lie is a big step, and so I just continue to write. I go back in my mind if I stop, because there are always something I think about. I am just writing about whatever it might be that I feel like writing. I write about how good it feels to write. And I address the voice that sometimes say that this won't last. I am determined not to let it become a monthly thing, so I prepare myself for the time when I will be having to get up in the morning to go to the course or to work when that time comes. I tell myself that I will always have time for three pages every day, at least. There are no excuses. And I don't make them. I have been tired, not feeling in the mood, but I write. I ask myself questions, and look at the mood I am in. Encouraging myself to continue moving the pen across the paper. And guess what:) I started the whole thing with: "I am here. Showing up at the page." (Or it might be: Here I am.) And it is a really brilliant way to start writing if things feel hard, because it reminds you that you are at the here and now and all that matters is what is happening at the moment, and if I am sad or whatever mood I might be in then I write from that mood. If I ever feel any kind of doubt, I confront it at once.

One of the things I have admitted is that I have had a major writer's block. Everything that has been going on in my life has blocked me up completely. Just let it be what it is (or has been;). I just realized that I had let people in my life take my power away from me. And that I was not in control. So I decided to take back the control. Just like that. It is amazing actually, in many ways I feel like a different person altogether. Of course the work has just begun. There are still many issues to be solved or resolved. But I have found my means to do it. Ha ha. The voice again. It always pops up. Going like Sméagol. "Not listening, not listening." Maybe it is like that. The other voice is my own little Gollum:) Funny:) Never thought of that until now. But I guess it is a little like that. It pops up and tries to tell me that it won't last, that I have never been able to see anything through and that this is no different. The only way to prove the voice wrong, is by continue. Get into routine. Let it become a part of me. And that's where I am now. I am not thinking about what it might become. That only stress me out. Everytime that thought comes into my mind, I tell it that what I am doing now is laying the foundation of every story I will ever write. I will figure out what it is that I want to write, and I use those pages for that. I look at everything I might think or dream during the day. And if I now drift into a daydream I will come back and try to record where I was, and what I was doing. Stuff like that. Because that is where story begins. I will not try to put them all together now. It is not the time for that. It will only stress me more. The most important thing for me at the moment is to write, write and write. Like I am doing now. Just letting the words flow, not try to make any sense of them at all. I will no longer be content with writing I am sad. I want to know why. Go deeper into that emotion. Try to find the roots. Or at least something more than sad. I ask why?

And the best thing is that it is my way. I believe that we must find our own way. In that way this has been a good summer and I am getting a body of work, or perhaps rather a body to work with:) I've already got about 30 pages in one week!! That is something to work with:) I am having fun with it, and look forward to sitting down to write. That is a good change.

Harry Potter obsessed;)

I haven't written a slug in a while now, but man have I been writing. I don't know what happened. It's like a door has started opening, and I am enjoying it for what it's worth. I am right now, so looking forward to writing at least three pages before going to bed. I am just writing longhand, and I am finding it more easy than ever before. I try not to censor myself at all, just letting everything I feel and think come down onto the page. It is wonderful. And I try to confront the not so nice voice that is telling me it won't last and so forth. For now I am doing well.

I am also in the middle of the last Harry Potter book. I can't put it down!! It's like being obsessed or something. Since Saturday I have read almost 350 pages of the 600... Getting closer and closer to the end, and I will probably be finished soon. All questions soon answered:)

How are you doing? I guess I already know the answer to that. I won't pretend that I understand it.

It's funny... I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about how I haven't seen John Noble (Denethor;) in anything but The Lord of the Rings. And by coincidence or not, now in the last couple of weeks I have seen him twice. In 24 and in this miniseries Superfire. That is funny. Like that time when I thought about wanting to see Titanic again and two weeks later it was aired on tv... Or last week, I saw The Man in the Iron Mask again. Just after you had written about Jeremy Irons and I mentioned the film... Or thinking about a song and turning on the radio and the song plays... It is strange... Really strange:)

Lightbulb moment delux

I don't know what happened yesterday, but it was something. Something kind of clicked inside of me. I read in the Right to Write, and I just kind of understood that I had so many restrickens when it came to writing. I didn't really write anything because I was always trying to avoid really writing. Julia Cameron wrote about routine and I suddenly realize that it was a key word. Getting some routine in my life. I suddenly wrote three pages last night, and I wrote three pages this morning. Just venting everything and anything. Ideas and all, just letting the pen flow over the paper. No I don't know what to write, because all of a sudden I knew that it was a lie, a bad way to start writing anything. I have a lot to say. And I am going to say it. And it feels wonderful:) Sort of like awakening after a long, long sleep.

It is so easy to fall down into the bottom of the pit. It is a lot of hard work to change the way I think. To start believing in myself again after all the doubt I have experienced. To start believing that I can really make my dreams come true. But it is still a long way to go. I am not stabilized yet.

I know it's not unusual to doubt yourself. Unfortunately, I think many people manifest it in trying to be better than other people, instead of looking within and seeing that you are good enough in what you are. I don't want to fall into that trap. I want to know that everything comes from me, that the foundation stands on solid ground, and that I build the foundation of a solid material that will last throughout my entire life. I have seen what it can do when you doubt yourself. How that person has no eyes going inwards, always outwards and pointing fingers and feeling so sorry for herself.

I don't know... Feels like nothing is making sense. Just emptiness in every word, or so it seems. Like I am repeating myself. Guess I should stop. Tired, headache, having the first day of my period, not getting good sleep, and spend the last six hours sneezing. And now complaining:)

Great masters

I am in awe of how the great masters painted and the pictures they created. Just saw a programme about Rembrandt. It's amazing how his brush strokes make up pictures. How seemingly smears become such beautiful paintings. It is inspiring, and it serves as a reminder of how important it is to study those who came before us. I am truly amazed!!

Sometimes I wish some of these great masters could be woken to life so they could teach me what they knew and tell me about how and why they painted. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Edvard Munch, Claude Monet, Dante Gabriel Rossi, John William Waterhouse, Turner, van Gogh among others. Would be lovely:) I would love to have a conversation with William Shakespeare too)) Wonder if there is any truth to those people who say that William Shakespeare "lend" his name to someone else... lol... Because they don't believe someone so "regular" could write such wonderful plays:) What is it with these critiques? They must be envious people...

Step onto the road...

Sometimes I feel so old and wornout. I have probably walked to deep into my own misery for the past weeks. Like I am burying myself deeper and deeper, and I can't get out of the shit. I can with hand on heart say that the past month has not been the best. I have felt more alone than I have in months. Not having money to do anything, always counting what I can and cannot buy, not speaking to my mother, not having anyone to talk to, not sleeping well at all, and it's been raining constantly, not much sun at all, cold and miserable. Though there has been a couple of showers worth remembering, like the other day when there was some sunshine and it poured down. That was beautiful...

But mostly everything has been grey. The weather, me and everything I do. Grey...

I think I am in my PMS period:) Everything seems horrible at that time of month. And it seems that it gets stronger when I am a little miserable before it. But hands up. It will pass, as it has before. "Keep the drama on the page," says a Julia Cameron in The Right to Write, and I thought I would try that. Only I am keeping it here. I can't let anything get me down now, even though it still does. *Sigh* It still does...

I will keep reminding myself about this: Life will get better. I will do that and write about it until it gets better. Until the way I write about my life gets different. Writing slugs is my testimony. Somehow it feels a lot easier than writing a journal right now. Nevermind that other people can write about my misery as well:) If they find these pages that is... *lol*

I can see that I do repeat a lot of the same things. But should I care about that? I don't know, it is the writing from my heart. Sometimes it is better than other times. For now what matters is that I write a little everyday, no matter how it feels or how good it is. One day I will look at everything I write, and I will see how it changes, and how much further along I have come...

All this is part of my pilgrimage...

I will make it even if it is against all odds. I have to start cheering for myself:) And I will...

Logic

I sat down just now, and wrote the sentence Human beings are remarkable. And then my mind wondered to the first thing we have on the university, philosophy and in it logic... I wrote:

Human beings are remarkable.
I am a human being
therefore I am remarkable.

It was a little lesson today. I cannot look at the human race without actually including myself:) If other people are remarkable because they are a part of humankind, I cannot forget that it includes me too... A good lesson in giving yourself some credit.

How do you create a world?

The sun will rise on a whole new world. It has been in the dark for so long, dead... A wasteland, only alive in what could be...

The creative flame is burning in a temple deep inside of this world. It is the only place where there is some light, just a tiny little ray of light.

This is the only sign of life. The rest is dead. It is a wasteland. Total wasteland. Darkness reigns.

Dark things hide in the shadows. There are discoveries waiting to be made here. Everything is up to me. I am the seeker. I am the creator. And it is up to me if it will remain a wasteland or if it will turn into a vibrant land, if it will come alive...

I've tried to start this journey so many times. Every time it just falls apart. It seems that I can't access it no matter how hard I try. It is withering away, and that makes me sad. Maybe being a writer is a lonely business, because no matter how you put it, you are alone. Alone with your thoughts and ideas, alone with your imagination. I am going on this journey alone, and it is hard to understand what that feels like. Maybe I haven't come to terms with that just yet. And I am struggling, really struggling with it. Writing is difficult in this time we live in because people are looking at what you have done. And calling yourself a writer means that you have to have something to show for it, and that means having something published. I am beginning to go crazy with this. There is still this invisible wall I hit every time I try to sit down to write.

If the universe is good, then this is just a testing time of some sort. Maybe to see if I want it bad enough. But the question is the same: How do you create a world?

Sometimes I think the world would suffer no loss if I never wrote a single word. But then again, maybe it would. I guess I will know what to write when the day comes... Maybe the waiting and the not knowing is there for a reason still not known to me. That I am just "practicing" my writing skill, making it better, and when the real story emerges I will have practice with my writing. Maybe I am just gathering knowledge, about writing, about story-building, about other stuff that I might use. Then suddenly one day, I will know what to write, and the words will just flow out. Writing this, reminds me of that scene in the mini-series about Ibsen as a young man, in the time before he started on the journey of becoming one of the greatest writer for the theatre. After struggling with different stuff in his life, we see him in a dark room, and the words of what is his first play, Catilina, comes to him. The look on his face at that moment, that's the look I want on my face one day when my first story comes to my mind... Nothing less. Yes, I do think I believe I will write books, but sometimes you have to go around a little bit, find the knowledge that you see and build a strong foundation for your creative work. I think I am building a foundation right now. I cannot believe anything else. Going through my fears and getting my life sorted out. We all have different ways to cope. I know I am not short on words, I just don't know how to build them into a story. Poems yes, novels no... Not yet...

"We become what we think about, all day long."

Love these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Sort of makes me think about how we are living. At least how I am living. I think about how I will never be able to write anything. And guess what. I am not writing anything, am I. But how to unlock the secret to living a life I will be proud of? How to I start when I have been living like this for so long? How do I do that?

It is sometimes so difficult to change the way I have been thinking. I fall easily into the old ways. And it doesn't help that people close to you won't let you forget where you came from and who you used to be and then act accordingly. A glimpse of light is easily put out by clouds. There are so many lovely words out there that inspires. And I do believe Emerson's words to bear truth in them. I am what I think all day long. A dreamer. Isn't that all I do? Dream. I never do anything to make those dreams come true at all. Everything I do is procrastinate, put everything in my life on hold, waiting, hoping that one day everything will change. "If only this; if only that..." It is getting tiresome to say the least.

So how do I change the way I think? I guess that is the big question to be left unanswered for now. Simply because I don't know...

Been struggling today with bad allergies. Grass I guess. Suppose to be very much in the air. Sometimes it just feels like it builds up and then burst out into a day of horror:) Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Understandably, I have to look back on an unproductive day. Kinda strange, because the last days I can't really say if it has been allergies or a cold... lol. No way of knowing now.

I wonder why you withdraw completely... Right now it seems like you are disappointed about Friday or something... I guess you're having one of your moods again. Too bad... Hope it doesn't last too long...

Take action

I open myself up to the journey I am taking. I always talk about it as something in the future, something that I am going to do. But the truth of the matter is that I have already started on that journey. The journey of making my dreams come true, the journey of my dreams. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, and no matter how slow it might seem to me that I am moving along, I am moving along. One day at a time, one hout at a time, one minute... But I am going there little by little.

There is a lot of talk here. But nothing comes from talking but sound. Sometimes even just noise, something that never makes any sense at all... Sometimes there has to be taken action. Like in the global warming and environment crisis. There is a lot of talk, even arguing, about what to do and if it is humans fault, but that will never save the planet. Action will do. I guess the same thing is for me. I can talk all I want about what I want to do, but the only thing that will get me there is if I do something with it. Talking about cleaning doesn't clean my apartment, my actions to actually pick up and sort things out does. The same with writing. I can talk about me wanting to write, but unless I sit down to write, nothing will come of it.

So I will take action. I will not talk, but do...

I will pull out the plugs from any electrical apparatus that I don't use. The mobile charger, the cd player and such... I am through the talk, now I will do it. Take action, save the planet. Answer the call:)

I will write a slug every day, like a diary thingy:)

I will write something that can become something more every day. At least for twenty minutes or more if I have the time.

I will paint and draw, maybe a little every day.

Soon one month has passed us by already. The only thing I am satisfied with is my cleaning. That is looking brighter and brighter. I have cleaned my way through my appartment. I have begun to paint again because of it. I love that I feel that everything is coming together. It is inspiring to see that some things I actually want to do, I do. It gives me hope...:D

The things I love

I love the feeling of a brand new notebook that is just waiting for me to fill it with my dreams and fantasies.

I love the smell of old books.

I love the nightsky, especially the full moon. Or being in a place where there is not any artifical light and watching the starry sky. There are like millions of them that is not visible when you are in an area with lots of streetlights...

I love JRR Tolkien's wonderful Middle-earth and everything therein.

I love to go swimming in the ocean.

I love thunder and lightning, the dark and gloomy clouds that usually follows.

I love rain showers on a hot day; the smell is like nothing else.

I love to do my hair and make it into different stylish hairdos, and getting new things I can decorate it with, like butterflies and other shiny things:)

I love listening to music and seeing the images it brings to my mind.

I love my ice coffee:)

I love books, and the joy of getting a new one...

I love traveling and the feeling of anticipation.

I love to paint, mixing colours and shaping them into images and pictures.

I love realizing something new. Like something about my own life, about something that deepens my beliefs and so on.

I love a lot of other things too. But for now this is my the things I love list. I found it in the last chapter from Writing for my Life that I just sent and I thought I'd do it. And maybe every so often, I will do it again.
What I have learnt from the list is that many of the things I love is attached with some kind of feeling. It is the feeling that they give me that I love... Interesting:)

An idea for London?

He he. Almost a double dose of Gerry today. They are sending The Phantom of the Opera on Swedish television tonight. Almost over. And at the same time I have started a chapter in Medieval Europe 400-1500 on Attila which we know Gerry play some years ago:) Hence the picture... (Funny how I have to watch it even though I own it myself. Like I think have to watch The Fellowship of the Ring on Saturday... I mean why? I can watch the extended version anytime I like... Strange:) Well, of course I grab every chance I have to see Gerry; *kiss*)

Makes me think about movies... We should really try to look at making a script... Or at least laying down plans for ideas that can be developed. What kind of movies would we like to make? It would be a way of planning for London, wouldn't it? We need to have something to "sell" there. And if we are going to work together in the future, we should find out how we can best work together. We cannot keep butting our heads together every time we try to do any kind of work together:) In a way it is good that we know we have the potential to do that, and I think we should use it now to learn how our creative relationship should work. The more we learn now the better it will be when it really count. In London that is. Maybe one branch of our body of work this summer should be a lot of ideas for potential scripts. What do you think? Is it a good idea to work on something like that as a way of planning for London? It would be foolish to not have something wouldn't it. It would kill our spirits faster than lightning if we don't have a clear picture of what we are to do in London. It wouldn't be enough to just be there.

I am looking forward to everything that lies ahead of us. No matter what it is. It is going to be great. We are going to create great and adventurous lives for ourselves. Our writings aren't going to be anything less. I am sure of it. But we can't afford to procrastinate anymore. It is making us go crazy, despairing and restless. What do you say? No more excuses?;)