buewhale

 After picking up Marley, my grandson, at the kindergarten we go to the public playground. He's a bit tired and not in his usual sparkling mood and can't really decide what he wants to do. We kick a little ball, he rides two different bicycles but not for very long. He settles for a swing meant for very small children. I have to move the swing. Which I gladly do. “Where's my mummy?” “She's at work” “Why?” “She has to earn money” “Why?” “So she can buy food for you and clothes and toys” “Why?” “So you won't be hungry or go naked” If only he'd say: “I want to be naked”, but “Why?” “So you can grow up a happy child” “Where's my daddy?” “He's at work too. He's probably selling some people some gadgets” “Why?” “So he can buy food for you and your sister and pay the rent” “Why?” “He wants aaaaaaaaaaaaall the best for you” “Why?” I go to the other side of the swing. I need to rest my arm. abandoned night Who is really hiding the...

homecoming swifts you see! air-tunnels do exist There's a first time for everything, I guess the saying goes for “things” in a human life. (And “things” can mean any number or shape of … things). On a grander scale … I couldn't say. But for the first time in my life stretching for over half a century under the influence of American culture I buy a cheese-burger. I buy a cheese-burger and eat it. Some things happens just once in a lifetime. Like me buying and eating a cheese-burger. still to the South a star I can't name Ideally I'm a vegetarian but I get too air-headed if I don't once in a while devour some (supposed) muscles of an animal. Given the nature of modern food industry, I can't really be sure whether the meat hidden between the two halves of assumed bread really is bovine. All winter and spring a gigantic scam has rolled across Europe exposing horse meat in what was sold as cow. Well, if you buy cheap, you get mostly imitations of the real thing...

  Was just about to go out for a walk in the sunshine when a guy came through the wall (the one facing the inn) and yelled: ” Don't go!” ” Why not?”, I heard myself ask in calm voice. Apparently I wasn't surprised. ” You simply have to stay in. He's out there, you know!” ” Who?” ” HIM!” He reached into his pocket for smokes though his lungs sounded like a pair of sick bagpipes. “ Who's HIM?” “ Him or her, what do I know? I won't go into a lengthy discussion about sexes in language. It's easier calling it him. The Bore Monster!” “ The Bore Monster? What's that? Some sort of pig demon with tusks?” “ Ah man, get real! That one is in Singapore these days. No, the “I'll bore-you-to-death” monster. That there thing that jumps you when you go round the village where nothing happens and everything is so small and bland and dull and predictable and you don't meet any people and ...” “ Sorry to interrupt, but did you have coffee yet?” ...

Maybe it's the almost full moon. Maybe it's that dream where my daughter runs a cheap hotel and we're all working there, even the infants and some of the deceased family members. But I can't get to the hotel. I should have been at there hours ago, but I'm driving my paternal grandfather's old Velo Solex and it won't stop. Contrary to its reputation it's actually fast and powerful. It goes through the night like an eager horse that has spotted open fields beyond the city and is going there no matter what. I drive through walls, rock concerts, demonstrations, pedestrian streets where a carnival is being held and I avoid being stopped by the police a hundred times or so. Or the moped does. I have very little influence on the situation. While driving I'm also at the hotel making coffee and beds, washing floors and windows. That's a nice thing about dreams; they work by quantum mechanics. dandelions my repeated “scram”s don't work … file da...

Cake I lift up my grandson to say hello. He's been busy all day playing with his visiting cousins and enjoying the speed of his push bike. He looks at me as if I'm a stranger and points to the birthday cake. I haven't got a chance. sultry heat a wave rises and falls on the spot -*- Kage Jeg løfter min dattersøn op for at sige hej. Han har haft travlt hele dagen med at lege med sine kusiner og fætre, der er på besøg, og med at nyde hurtigheden af sin sparkecykel. Han kigger på mig, som var jeg en fremmed og peger på lagkagen. Jeg har ikke en chance. lummerhede en bølge går op og ned på stedet … file date: May 21, 2103

 Now the homeless woman have bought a guitar. She has stayed in the same spot for more or less for a year. When “her” bench was removed because of “beautification”, she gathered a mixture of chairs and now her place looks like a camp. A one woman camp. There she sits practising her guitar with traffic all around her. She has a collection of songs printed on paper, some of them gathered in a binder. It's dark blue. dung-beetle this is the cradle of philosophy She wears a crash-helmet all day even when playing. … file date: May 18, 2013

  25C I admit I'm a Pavlovian creature. When I heard the weatherman reporting that we have had more than 25 degrees (Celsius) I go the freezer for ice-cream. “I screama, you screama, we all screama for ice-creama”, like Tom Waits, John Lurie and Roberto Benigni yelled while banging on the prison bars in “Down by Law”. There's only some green soda-pops from last summer left. That'll do. Then I give myself a hair-cut. summer carnival how white can white people be? -*- 25C Jeg indrømmer, at jeg er et Pavlovsk væsen. Da jeg hørte vejrmanden sige, at vi havde haft over 25°, går jeg ud til fryseren efter is. “I screama, you screama, we all screama for ice-creama”, som Tom Waits, John Lurie og Roberto Benigni råbte, mens de bankede på fængselstremmerne I “Down by Law”. Der er kun nogle grønne sodavandsis fra sidste sommer tilbage. Det får du. Så klipper jeg mig selv.   sommerkarneval hvor hvide kan hvide mennesker være? … file date: May 17, 2013

  Attenborough I'm woken by loud buzz and reconfirm (like another Attenborough) the fact, that evolution hasn't yet taught bumblebees how not to be tricked by windows. high humidity I wait for the rock to start the conversation ==*== Attenborough Jeg bliver vækket af højlydt summen og får genbekræftet (som en anden Attenborough) det fakta, at evolutionen endnu ikke har lært humlebier, hvordan de undgår at blive snydt af vinduer. høj fugtighed jeg venter på at stenen starter samtalen … file date: May 9, 2013

  Milk Sitting in front of one my old paintings I get faint flashes of the person who painted it. I recall the smell of the damp apartment I had back then. Then I try to get a conversation going, but I'm not listening to me. I can't say whether I'm happy or sad about how things turned out and drink a glass of milk to settle my stomach. Outside in the night (as if it wasn't inside the flat) a couple of drunks are shouting. They seem happy. falling and rising I'll make a friend of the floor yet – Mælk Jeg sidder foran et af mine gamle malerier og får svage glimt af personen, der malede det. Jeg husker lugten af den fugtige lejlighed, jeg havde dengang. Så prøver jeg at få en samtale i gang, men jeg lytter ikke til mig. Jeg kan ikke sige om jeg er glad for eller ked af, hvordan tingene endte med at blive, men jeg drikker et glas mælk for at få maven til at falde til ro. Udenfor i natten (som om den ikke var indenfor i lejligheden) er ...

Pope An eager blackbird - that's one way of perceiving it, depending on my state of mind - does its best to mark his territory with song. On other occasions I'd say it's noisy, annoying or wonderful. We talked about the relatively new pope and I mentioned the odd and big interest a Lutheran country showed in everything Catholic. “Oooh, it's so exotic!” “Why not try attending some masses and get a closer look”. “Can I?” “Of course, but you can't take part in the communion if you're not Catholic”. “They're so judgmental!” “It's just Church law” and I try a 2 minute version of Church History. “Let's listen to some of the old records”.     Sitting on a park bench … and Martin Barre's rough and hard guitar riffs. In the end everything is sound and mind. first warmth the blinding whiteness of white people – Pave En ivrig solsort - afhængigt af min sindstilstand er det er én måde, at opfatte det på - gør...

Chains. We apparently need chains. Today is Liberation Day when we celebrate the end of the German occupation of Denmark in 1945. Usually it is - or was - marked by putting candles in the windows as they did back then to mark the end of forced blackout. Now very few folks are still alive to remember and we take our freedom from armed tyranny for granted. Windows are mostly lit by the blue light from TVs these days. Our chains are different: debt, fashion, consumerism and nurturing a feeble self-image and we’d allowed our youngsters to become shackled to imaginary friends and vampires pretending to be their friend. dinner time my grandson becomes a tiger again … file date May 4, 2013

today the sun sets in the West as it always does and as it should do and I decide to try using an eyeglass cord thinking it would be easier to change between glasses for different uses which in turn makes me consider one of those fancy laser surgeries that actually helped my father and made his eyes quite a lot bluer but I can't afford it and the very thought of having someone messing with my eyes while I can actually see seems like the therapy scenes from A Clockwork Orange and makes my stomach curl and besides my eyes are brown homecoming snails mate on my staircase slowly … file date: May 15, 2013

 "Easy now, it's just the hook holding the window that creaks and squeaks. It's not tiny demon rodents trying to get into the bedroom under cover of the night. No, they won't swarm in like the 114th plague tearing you apart with their yellow teeth". "Yellow like yours?" "Ah, well, mine are not really yellow, they're old and worn and tainted by coffee. They're not yellow like their teeth. Theirs are yellow because demons can't have anything white in them. They are all about hate, anger and darkness. That's what makes them yellow". Our Father ... the wires that hold the moon snap "Mh, I don't know ... you sure?" "Yes, it's just the wind making the window move. I will try and fix it tomorrow so the sound will stop. O.k.?" "O.k." "Night, then". "Nighty night". As I leave the room I hear the first tapping of small claws across the floor. thine is the kingdom .. pl...

  Legion " So, there's all these people getting off on nature. Dreaming romantics, I'd say." "What's wrong with that? It's fairly normal and nature is wonderful. To some." "It's boring. Hellish boring!" "You're nature, I'm nature. When it comes down to it everything you can think of is nature in some way or another." "Yeah, and my shit is nature." "Man, you're a cynic, you are." night train I'm a blind eye in a glowworm There's no point in taking this further. We never reach an agreement, Gerald O'Mudd and I. We live in the same house (with some other guys coming and going) and have settled for this unsettled friendship. He is me as I am him as is Giovanni Monte, Janez Gora and Karl Kornmutter. We're each others alter-egos, you could say; with me paying the rent. flapping its wings a bluebottle asks me to open the window   Later: humming fridge just enough...

  Spanish Melons Fumbling my radio on a new moon night I accidentally delete all the preset stations. "All" is a big word; I live in Denmark and we ain't got that many to choose from. Besides, I get more and more picky with music as I age. At least with the stuff the radio stations play. If it's not stupid, flat, mass-produced pop crap, it's stupid unmusical and monotonous rap or a narrow-minded choice of classical ... At least the jazz station gives me some joy once in a while. Spanish melons a girl I've forgotten dressed for spring I finally get my faves punched in again and go for a piss. On the way back to bed I decide to watch 8 1/2 instead. Fellini might give me better dreams. after the Ascension I play my worn humdrum -*- Spanske meloner På en nymånenat fumler jeg med min radio og kommer til at slette alle de stationer, jeg har lagt ind som faste. ”Alle” er et stort ord; jeg bor i Danmark og vi har ikke det store udvalg, og derud...

Getting ready to go to go to go to the city I pack my stuff randomly. You know, find some t-shirts and drink some coffee, roll up some socks and check the news, tie up the garbage bag and look out the windows to check the progress of the budding trees. Then I gather the various pills and remedies I think I need (gotta reevaluate that when I get back) and nasal spray, eye drops, tablets and the homeopathic stuff for keeping my body from going berserk over pollen and ultimately calm a confused immune system. It's Armstrong's fault! My allergies began the same day he stepped out on the moon. Back then I collected plastic soldiers. We were in Germany that summer and the family we visited had a wall clock from the 16th Century. in the beginning was the electric guitar        ( with wah-wah pedals too ) the rest is flash-backs ... file date: May 3, 2013

It's not like it matters, that there moonshine. Though it sorta fits in cinematically with my insomnia, it's still a stage requisite, a stage prop . I forget it as easily as rain or past constipations rolling another cigarette. What is more immanent is the fact that I'm nearly out of my fave rolling paper and I have to go away for a few days. I usually order a special kind of paper from a web-shop. It's a non-bleached and very thin paper, but if I order it before I leave, the package will arrive while I'm away and go back to the shop. Better to wait till I get back. I have half a box of some medium paper I bought by mistake. It's a bit thicker and chlorinated and the smokes taste less of the good tobacco and more of paper (hand-rollers will know what I mean) when I use that. Two things one shouldn't play with: the tobacco you're used to and the paper and the coffee brand ... three things. On the telly some aliens are hired to pick out hopeful youngste...

my ears get full … and my eyes. a sensation that's obviously a mere image of a filled mind; that there compartment that deals with input. like when you're at a dinner and everyone is talking and blabbering and yak-yaking on and on and you find you cannot take any of it in because you're full already. the attention weakens and goes into protective hibernation and you sit looking at details. how a hand moves and the question arises: can a hand tell something about its “wearer”? of course you can tell whether he or she does manual work. it's not that, it's kinda phrenology but for hands instead of heads 'n' faces. can’t you? i'm pretty sure I can tell something about how much presence in their own being people have by seeing how they use their hands when they're not thinking. some people seem to not fill out their fingers to the tips, so to speak. some fingers seem to suggest a slender agile person but i often see a face filled with childish sulking (th...

October For the third night (and day) the homeless person sits on the same bench by the ball cage. It's impossible to say whether it's a man or a woman. Heshe is covered in so many layers of clothes. Heshe eats, drinks, smokes, read books as I do in the 3rd story flat from where I watch himher on and off. I stand (sleepless) in the early hours of the morning in my undies smoking a cigarette, heshe sits among hisher countless bags sometimes erecting a sky blue parasol as cover for … the world, I guess. At one point a drunk man sat beside himher smoking. I couldn't see if they talked at all. The field in the ball cage is red. Not like grass at all. at times the upside down tree in the pond is enough (tick-tock) December I'm back in the city where I really belong but can't afford to live. The homeless German woman who has settled on a public bench with a table at one end of a footie cage is back too, covered by several layers of plastic and blankets. She...

  February Am i being sloppy? The glass sticks to the table and I don't care. 15 drops of a homeopathic remedy which essentially is made from next to nothing and some water should balance my circadian rhythm. It doesn't. Four times a day I hope. Very unlike me to be so patient. Patience is one of my theoretical traits. It’s February and the days are over before they begin. insignificance paradigm? could my mother knit one? ==*== Februar Er jeg et sjuskehovede? Glasset klæber til bordet og jeg er ligeglad. 15 dråber af en homøopatisk middel, som i bund og grund af lavet af ingenting og noget vand skulle balancere min døgnrytme. Det gør det ikke. 4 gange om dagen håber jeg. Det ligner mig ikke at være så tålmodig. Tålmodighed er ét af mine teoretiske personlighedstræk. Det er februar, og dagene er forbi, før de er begyndt. ubetydeligheds-paradigme? kunne min mor ikke strikke eet? … file date: February 3, 2012

 I wear red socks and it doesn't seem to be true that you get wiser with age. It's rather that the world gets more stupid. And with the permanent unwillingness and incapability to learn from older generations, people at large repeat the same mistakes. Like the Earth repeats its revolutions round the sun, like I keep eating ginger and get stomach problems. pissing ssri somewhere in Skagerak a fish a little less depressed … file date: February 4, 2012

 You probably know it: you see a stranger with a walk, a body language, a way of moving his body around that instantly echoes within you. You've known someone with exactly that gait. I had an encounter like that. I remembered an organist student called John whom I loosely knew some 30 years ago. Maybe "knew" is a misleading word. I knew o f him. He hung around - or sort of stalked - my the girlfriend's friend and he was always walking the streets. Like I did. I only talked to him a few times but he was the one that first mentioned the name Buxtehude to me and how Johann Sebastian Bach had walked a very long way to hear him play the organ. He was considered a master of that instrument. Still is. John was a short, weird and intelligent when it came to knowledge of strange things but deaf dumb and blind when it came to people. Not that he was in anyway autistic, just lacking in empathy and feeling for social interactions. I guess we who were not John were some kind of o...

  Note Cold. I put on two pair of socks rather than turn on the heat. Too expensive. The electric heaters eat a lot power and the firewood hasn't arrived yet. I pick up on the distant sirens of an ambulance. Well, I guess it's an ambulance as I can't see the road from here … or any road for that matter. Assume it's for the mixed nursing home some two hundred meters from here, and a hundred from the church. I crush a couple of pain killers with a spoon and pour the powder in a glass which I fill with aqua frizzante. Somehow I prefer that. Could buy effervescent tablets but I'm too lazy these days to go the pharmacy (another town). And leaf by leaf my view to the church is restored to its winter-edition. back and forth between nothings in a state of flesh with a name - Notat Koldt. Jeg tager to par sokker på i stedet for at tænde for varmen. For dyrt. De elektriske radiatorer æder for meget strøm og brændet er kommet endnu. Jeg opfanger sirenen fra en f...

 I seek shelter from the rain in the waiting booth at the station. It has a roof but the sides are partly penetrable and the rain is freezing cold. 12 minutes till the train comes and leaves again. It's the end of a very long and winding track. Two young girls occupies the bench and giggle. They talk about their boyfriends and what to give them for Christmas. I stop myself before I suggest: hedgehogs. They wouldn't get it anyway. They decide on articles that were not very boyish in my time, skin-cleaning stuff and perfume. Maybe they hope their boyfriends would smell better and have less acne. What do I know. An elderly man looking feeble but cocky drags a can of strong beer from his plastic bag. He may have been a gentleman or a womanizer in his days, but now … He glances secretly and repeatedly at the young girls and I have no trouble imagining what he is thinking. As we walk to the train he makes some sort of a pirouette to get a good look at two other girls' asses alm...

At the station I take shelter from the rain in the thrashed shed. Two boys around the age of 14 sit there laughing. They're dressed for winter in a way that suggests that they're not quite grown-ups in their mothers' eyes and maybe not fully aware of – or weighed down by – the dictates of fashion. As they're passing jokes and puns about killer-whales I can't help myself, but join in; or interrupt, actually. We agree that it might be better to freeze to death in the cold water rather than being chewed up. I'm not sure how, but we end up with wondering about what hedgehogs in microwave ovens would be like. Some cruel form of a spike-bomb? It's really boys' imaginations let loose and I don't feel out of place though 40 years older than them. I just enjoy laughing and fooling around after 4 weeks of being locked up with a mean virus. after coughing a sudden hole in the December clouds A girl and with an older boy – a young man, rather – join the tw...

Sun up at 7:44 and down again 16:36. Moon down up at 14:22 and down again close to 1 in the morning. Just around when the street lamp outside my bedroom window is turned off. On top of that it's the 5 th day of mist. This darkness doesn't please me, and whenever November starts to really devour daylight, I think of my great-great and many times great grandfather. He was a Spanish mercenary with Napoleon's army and got stationed in this land of mud and darkness. He remained here after the war and must have met a girl. There's no other way to procreate, that I know of. Not one that extends the blood-line anyway. And I think: “Why on Earth would he choose this country and this climate when he could have stayed in Spain?” I obviously don't get an answer, but images of hunger, prisoner of war camps, abandonment and persecution, poverty and the impossibility of getting all the way back to Spain from Denmark some 200 years ago flash by just above the surface of lukewarm ...

  Cosmos is Pale Green As a child I had speculations about how Cosmos really was constructed. I pictured myself and the World as living on a very big person, who in turn lived on an even bigger person along with his family and his whole world and this contruction went on and on. It didn't have an end. Curiously enough all these enormous persons were pale green, and we lived on his left big toe. winter rain a fly squashed by Ulysses ~~*~~ Kosmos er lysegrønt Da jeg var barn røg jeg ud i overvejelser om, hvordan Kosmos virkelig var indrettet. Jeg så mig selv og verden befinde sig på et meget stort menneske, som igen befandt sig på en endnu større person sam m en med sin familie og hele sin verden, og den konstruktion blev ved og ved. Der var ingen ende på det . Underligt nok var alle disse enorme mennesker lysegrønne, og vi levede på hans venstre storetå. vinterregn en flue mast af Ulysses     ... file date: December 13, 2011

  Morning visitor Morning visitor: the mother cat from down-stairs jumps in through my window. She must have been out all night. I really don't mind. She's a tidy but very shy and nervous cat with a double mind – tied to the house and out and about a lot; as it is with cats. Her folks took her in 2 or 3 years ago when she had had kittens in an a car wreck – their own car wreck. Now she and two kittens from that bunch live there. This spring she had 3 new kittens, 2 survived and one has found a new home. The male cat from the first litter is very attention-seeking, very cuddly and cool as cucumber around the other cats. He's the center of the world, daring and curls up in my lap falling a sleep - after having put his claws in my thigh - the moment he gets inside. Whenever he's outside and hears me open the door, he comes running from where ever he is. Luckily without mice or birds in his mouth. If the weather allows I let my front door stay open for those of the cat...

  a cheroot's ashes drop gravity is a matter of time The tic-toc of the cheap wall clock … I really should throw that one out. Its loud sound makes time goes slower. Or so it seems. There's a certain grandmother-feel about it but in a sad way. It doesn't evoke strawberry flavoured memories, but those of loneliness, loss and having nothing more to hope for than days without illness. I often visited my maternal grandmother after grandfather died. She was a tiny woman with very bad eyesight – practically blind. And her loneliness, of which she never spoke, of course, filled her rooms with something I only gradually came to recognize. You can't take sorrow, loneliness and longing for the past away from people if that is all they have left; and you can't compensate for what they've lost. Remembering her face I can see how slow time passed for her those last years. ripples on the coffee a passing train at 2 o'clock ... file date: September 9,...