Saturday 5 August 2000

Pic of the day: It's that time of the year again. The August presence. When my thoughts turn towards the coming fall, and the inevitable end of the glorious Nordic summer.

Today I growled

I wasn't in a good mood today.

I went to bed less than an hour after midnight last night, because I was just too tired, even though it was Friday. I woke up at normal work time, and my bronchies were nearly full, so I got up and brushed my teeth and played The Sims. Then I went back to bed to catch up on sleep, but I was too hungry. I ate a yoghurt and went to the bathroom. After a shower I was no longer sleepy, so I went to shop groceries.

"Romance! I don't need no steenking romance! All I ask is to stay alive and in reasonable health. Is that so much to ask for?" As I walked to the grocery store, this was what I thought. Of course, it is too much to ask for. I'm growing old, and my body must fail me. This is decreed by my Creator - God, Nature, Evolution, whatever you like to call it. Barely have we started to know the world, before we are shunted out of it again. Like a guest who is not to stay the night. We're given a few years to grow, like insect larvae, unknowing of what we will become. Then a few more years, to procreate. Then, at best, the shop is gracefully closed down. Or we may kick and scream, but there is no one listening. The Lifeforce is not interested in our wishes; it only looks for procreation. To pass on the torch of metabolism to another generation, and become dung.

On the sandy path where I walked lay a green grasshopper, stiff and dead. Sun's high is past. The fall is coming to all living things.

***

As I walked past a farm, this skinny dog came out towards the road, barking. I had no intent to enter their yard or even look at their grain to desire it. But the stupid beast did not know friend from foe. It showed its teeth and barked at me, and as I walked past it presumed to follow me. The temerity! I have had enough. Turning to the critter, I felt the near forgotten but now horribly familiar song of rising blood pound in my ears. My hands hardened to cudgels of bone and sinew, and I felt my lips withdraw from my teeth as a snarl leaped to my throat. I longed for the mangy animal to make the final leap across the road, longed to feel my foot sink deep in its scrawny rib cage, to see the final realization in its eyes the moment before I broke its neck and tore it limb from limb. I waited, expectation a distant drumbeat in my head.

The animal stopped, whimpered, and backed away, faster and faster. Nor did I see it again when I passed on my way back.

I wasn't in a good mood today.

***

After my classic Saturday pasta dinner, I went to bed and slept for a while, probably an hour or so. At the end of my sleep, I had this strange and surreal dream. Near the end of the dream, my dream character warned the owner of the house that the second floor (where I lived) would disappear when I left the world. So the three-floor house would become a two-floor. Somehow this felt important, but I am not sure why.

I woke up feeling a lot better, though, which I guess is how it should be. Towards the evening, a pious friend called me and we went out eating at a Chinese restaurant. My friend commented on how I had become much leaner. He soon enough got to see why, as my gross over-eating managed to do away with about half of my portion of fried rice with egg and some beef. (Not very much fried, by the way, but quite tasty.) Meanwhile my friend ate a soup, a biggish chop suey (?) and a dessert of fried banana with ice cream. Then again, he has left the academic world to once again build houses, which has the benefit of burning lots of calories.

I'm not a complete couch potato, walking typically 1/2 - 1 hour each day, but the idea of sustained manual labor makes me wince. So I guess it is only good and proper that I can only eat as much in a day as a blue-collar worker does in one meal. The karma law strikes again!

***

Strange event of the day: I was playing Master of Magic, the olden golden strategy game. I had finished my turn and let the artificial intelligences at it. The picture of Rjak, the Chaos Wizard, filled the screen. "I have decided to rid the world of your presence" he says. Whereupon the portable reboots itself. I never got the game to proceed past this point, and eventually gave it up.