Thursday 10 June 1999
So it's midnight again and I'm on my old-old PC playing CDs while trying to sum up the day. It's been raining. And raining. And then raining some more. I feel like I'm back on the Wetland ... Westland. Woo hoo. This place is, like, the sunny spot of Norway. People would be swimming in the sea around midsummer, and/or disappearing into the bushes two at a time, if things were normal. And it would not be dark just because it was midnight. Not that it bothers me. I just mention it. So far, even the sunlit days have not managed to raise temperatures to legendary levels.
Me, I've been going through my April diaries, and fixed each and every one of them to fit into the Diary Farm, my updates archive. When I started with an online diary, I hardly knew that other such sites existed out there. Later I have picked up a few things, like that you ought to have an archive. As usual, I've experimented, resulting in lots of dead links. I hate dead links when others have them, so this is not a good thing. Therefore, I've been summarily changing the April entries so that they don't link to other parts of my site except the April calender. This should make it possible to move around the archives in the future if necessary. Not that I have any major complaints over crosswinds.net. They can be a bit sluggish at times, probably because more and more people are flocking to a webhost that gives unlimited space with no popup and no spam. It is almost too good to be true. But it is.
I don't regret the time I've spent making a web journal. Not just for the .net experience it's given me. Mostly because sharing yourself with the world does something to you, even when it's actually only a very small part of the world that bothers. It's sort of like confession, I guess. It changes your view of reality, subtly. The philosopher Kierkegaard had a line that has haunted me for years. It translates something like "the demonic is the closed". Or closed-in. Or locked-up. And I do have my dark sides, that I guard. And I do have my bright sides, that I guard perhaps as strictly. Even so, there's a lot to be open about. And since I appreciate openness in others ...
I guess that even though my opinions may often be controversial, my life (if any) is not. I try to find the right mix of the two. If I say nothing but the obvious, why should people bother to read? And if I come across as totally alien, how should people understand?
To take the life part, tomorrow is payday again, and the banker's
strike was avoided. So I've been queueing up bills, lots of them,
to pay tomorrow. Once that's done, there should be little enough
left, as usual. As the Norwegian Country singer Cato Sanden says
in his song "Going in circles":
When you need a holiday
you can't afford to go away
'cause you're still paying for the last time you went
now you have to pay the rent.
I'm not saying that the Devil has all the good music, but I feel pretty sure he has a majority stake in this one. The text is funny, the melody is catchy, and if I play it for a while I feel the darkness creeping into me. The hopelessness, the despair, the first vague thoughts about destroying something or someone, to strike back against fate. Much of the same feeling that I get from reading the typical tabloid newspapers. If that's not the Devil, then at least it's evil. Since when has despair done anyone anything good?
Long time readers, if any, might remember my commentary on James Flynn, discoverer of the Flynn Effect. Despite giving name to the observation that people seem to get brighter and brighter for each generation, he does not believe this can be the truth. Asks Flynn: "Why aren't we undergoing a renaissance unparalleled in human history?" To which I answered in my journal: We are. I'm pleased to see in the May issue of Scientific American that I'm not the only one to have noticed this. The reply there focuses on scientific breakthroughs and standard of living, but it is my opinion that we are also going through a cultural renaissance. There are works of music and architecture that should rank among the most valuable the world has seen, and philosophy has become a household item with books like "Sophie's World" staying on the bestseller lists for months if not years on end. I would certainly not swap for any other age of mankind so far.