Modern version fakir?

This is my bed of nails. It's supposed to help relax my tense back, improve my blood circulation and my sleep. Never did I think achieving these things would require becoming a fakir.

10 minutes is all I was allowed to do today, and quite frankly my back looked fairly traumatised; red and warm and full of little dents and dimples (what else would you expect from a bed of nails?)

However bad this may sound I have only to admit that I felt a strange feeling of ease throughout the entire back. So I'm giving it a try for a few days. I'm hoping I can pack it down and bring it to London and that it will salvage me from stress, tenderness and pain. If so, ten minutes of warm stinging ache and discomfort will be an insignificant price to pay.

So here I am, sold on portable masochism (?)...on a small nail mattress, like a modern day fakir.

Lesson from Thai massage

If there is one thing getting a Thai massage can teach you, it is to never underestimate a woman... Small can still be equal to strong... even very strong.

Kvinnor kan! (Women can!)

New take on The Stockholm Syndrome?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Hello 2009

I decided not to say goodbye to 2008, goodbyes are sad and sometimes quite ambivalent events. It has discretely flowed into becoming a new year and I shall leave it at that. Instead I will warmly welcome 2009, full of hopes, but without expectations; a year open for new experiences with old friends and perhaps the reliving of old experiences with new acquaintances (?). It will be an active year, a year full of love, work and some, although not very much wanted, waiting; waiting for the loving visit, waiting for the results, waiting for responses, waiting for flights and for sunny free afternoons. It will also be a year of longing and one of looking; looking for the right apartment, looking for the right facts and that eternal thing, of looking for what is right; the right way to live, the right way to progress, the right way to write, simply the right path.

2008 meant a lot of change. It was the year when I left stress for shanty; big city for bursting beach. It was the year when I learnt the hard way that even if I want things done yesterday, tomorrow is more probable, and I would have to settle for today. It was a year of travelling and thrills, of silliness and sunshine. But most importantly it was the year when I searched for love, gave it all up, tried to define what I wanted, but in the end, finally, found what I needed (as most of us do in the end).

There are things to bring and things to leave behind. In the past year I want to leave confusion and unrealistic expectations, dwelling sadness and slow administration. I will discretely sneak away from that and shamelessly leave it behind. Into the new year I am bringing my love (without either doubt or confusion), my friendships, my motivation and joy, my discipline (cross your fingers), my efficiency (if I still have it) and my ability to not work myself up about things anymore (it’s just the problem of managing to maintain it).

So I welcome 2009, hope for greatness, dream of amazing and ambitiously work for unbelievably good.

A wall is really just a bridge on edge...

That is what he says; Emil Jensen, swedish singer, poet and stand-up comedian.
Quite a nice thought for a grey day like this. Obstacles are really just stepping-stones to greater things.

Then he goes on to speak about seeing people and lending a hand, deciding your own direction and not licking your wounds when you get them, and how these people, who own these qualities, are perhaps not the most beautiful people in the world, but the world is most beautiful in them. It continues...genuinely inspiring.

So I think that when beauty is in the eye of the beholder...a wall is nothing but a bridge on edge.

Requiem for life

Walking through the park I know it is soon to be the end of greenery. I know it because the wind bites my cheeks even though the sun is shining. I know it because, when you look closely, the edges of the leaves are turning orange.

Autumn is coming and still, in a short while, its summer for me. When you move to Spain (as I will do) you have the privilege of skipping a season, or three. No need to see the trees seemingly whither and die and the air turn grey and cold. No need for that endless wait for spring, where life comes again.

Spain is summer followed by summer, sun always, eternal life. But, even there spring makes a difference. What sets here and there apart is just the amount of death, or winter, needed before life comes again. Nature takes a rest really.

The Latin word for rest is requiés, but most of us will have seen it in another shape. Stemming from this word of peace is Requiem, a hymn of death. Verdi (amongst others) composed one… I heard it… and yes, it is a hymn alright:

Libera me, Dómine, de morte aetérna; Save me, Lord from the eternal death. They sing it out, 300 voices strong. We all wish for it, secretly, both those who sing and those of us who listen; to be immortal, to never see winter. And so, when hearing Verdi’s requiem, it is clear, that what he really did was to create life for himself.

I know Verdi is dead as of more than 100 years; still his name and his music have been current through the times. Although the end of greenery, the eternal death, probably frightened him, as it does most of us, he took things into his on hands, writing operas, symphonies and requiems with the width and breadth of his being.

A requiem, in the end, can really just inspire to accept winter, celebrate rest…and perhaps use it as a time of composition. To do like Verdi did; he created his own spring and rebirth, by composing his way to immortality. In the end what he really wrote; was a requiem for life.