Friday 18 August 2000

Pic of the day: I should have guessed as soon as I came to my bedroom and found this girl's magazine along with some of SuperWoman's textbooks. You may as well try to divert an avalanche ...

(Tom) Cruise control

I woke up after 3 hours sleep from my stomach growling and felt slightly queasy, but not enough to get up and go pray at the porcelain altar. Eventually I drifted back to sleep, but soon my sleep was filled with long, incredibly detailed dreams. One was about an alien invasion, which was supposedly just a "scenario" article in Scientific American, or was it? Not according to the aliens... And as if that was not enough oddities, I dreamt that I found an insect in my cup of blueberry soup. I spilled it out on the pavement outside the bus station and the cup was half full of blueberries and live ants in about equal portions. And then the final dream, as vivid as real life or more so:

In my dream, Superwoman took me aside, outdoors. We talked just a little and then she gave me a bag. She listed what was inside, but for natural reasons I have forgotten everything except that there was a wallet which included several thousand kroner, or several hundred dollars. "I wanted to give you back as much as possible" she told me. And then, "Goodbye. Forever."

I just stared at her, as she looked down and started to walk away. Then I cried "No!" and ran after her. I threw my arms around her and held her as tightly as I dared without hurting any of us, and she held me too, very hard, for perhaps half a minute. Then she made herself free and walked away.

"[SuperWoman], no! You can't say that! Not forever!" "I must." She continued to walk away, slowly. I followed and grabbed her shoulder. "Why? Why?" "You don't understand" she replied simply. There was no anger in her voice, only resolution and a kind of sadness, which I presumed was from hurting my feelings. "But how can you do that to me?" I asked in desperation. I had not wanted to tell her this, but now I had to. "[SuperWoman], all the time that we are not together, I look forward each day to seeing you again. You are the hope of my life. You are the best thing that has happened to me on earth!"

She continued to walk. I put my right arm around her shoulder, and she did not resist, if anything she seemed amused, and we continued to walk like that. Strangely the road we walked was now the steep path down not far from the Chaos Node, and it was partially covered by ice, as if in winter. I did not reflect on that, only tried to keep my balance. I was afraid that if one of us fell, both would. I actually did slip once, and had to cling to her briefly, but she did not seem to care much whether we were falling or not. If anything she seemed to steer towards the more icy pathces, as if she wanted us both to slip and fall. As we had navigated the horrible path, we were again here in the station town outside Oslo, there were people around us.

"You really do not understand" she told me simply. "My mom was like 'but you cannot leave now! You have four more days left!' but I am bored of being here in Norway anyway. And I dare not see you ever again, for fear of what might happen." "What might happen? I don't understand..." "No you don't" she said, and started to disappear into the town. The possibility of what she might be saying dawned on me, but I stood frozen, as she slowly receded. Children started to call to me from everywhere around. "Tell her that you LOVE her!" they called to me. "Tell her! Tell her!" And for each passing moment, she got further away.

I woke up with a headache and tears in my eyes. Guess who has read too many romantic online comics ...

***

The reality was that we went shopping, eventually. We were delayed because my guts had to get rid of the train food. It was that bad. But a bit after noon, we drove to a mall: SuperWoman, her younger sister Cutie, and I. We hung out for around 6 hours and spent ca $500. Which is not a lot, given that SW is going to Tanzania and Cutie to New Jersey. I'm probably more worried than they are. Which means, not a whole lot. They are pretty tough.

So we bought practical things like mosquito net and khaki trousers for SW, and a big trunk for Cutie, and some clothes and stuff. Nothing fancy (except the sunglasses), but practical and nice things. We also found time to visit McDonalds. I was still a bit out of it after the morning, so had only a small meal.

In the evening, we went to see Mission Impossible 2. The girls wanted to see Tom Cruise. I wanted to see the girls. The female main character, or lead or whatever they call them in movies, was certainly not someone I would have noticed in a crowd. The movie was mainly a series of explosions, in my humble opinion, though there were snippets of nice hi-tech here and there. It certainly did not improve my budding headache. (The sound in the movie theater was also a bit louder than I had hoped for.) All in all, I consider the film a complete sacrifice in the name of love. My judgement is that it is worse than nothing and certainly worse than a nap of equal length.