Monday 8 May 2000

Pic of the day: Hundreds of small white flowers bloom, and no one asks their names. The path passes, unheeding.

I did see some flags. We have not forgotten. The 8th of May 1945 was Norway's day of liberation from the German occupation. (Though the northern parts of the country had been liberated already by the Soviet forces, who thereafter left peacefully.)

Needless to say, I was not around at the time. Judging from the stories, it was a day of the wildest emotions. Happy people copulated more or less in public, contributing to the single most concentrated baby boom in our history well over 9 months later. Less happy people hunted down men who had joined the NS, our local nazi-like party, or women who had been the lovers of German soldiers. These were humiliated to the extent of human imagination, which had no doubt had a while to prepare. It was a time of insanity, for good and bad, or so they say. There are no such times anymore, and a good thing too. Now we all follow the rules. And those who don't, take drugs or die.

I was out walking the main street in my lunch break. There were many pretty sights to see, though no scenes of joy in the streets. But in a shop window selling watches and glasses I saw a small sign announcing "Optical eyesight test performed". (Actually it was in Norwegian, "optisk synstest", but since many of you don't understand Norwegian, I translate it as usual.)

I, being me, naturally wondered what other sight tests there were, which were not optical.

Tactile/kinetic sight test: "What do you see when I press here?"

Electric sight test: "What do you see when I ..." "Aaargh!"

Psychic sight test: "Your aura shows you to be shortsighted... the third eye is virtually blind. Oh, and the superelevation of your fifth chacra indicates that you are extremely gullible, too."

Genetic sight test: "Your night vision should be good, since this genetic marker indicates that your great-grandfather was actually a black and white shorthair."

I did not find any fast food. For lunch I ate an instant mashed potato plastic pot and appropriate amounts of flatbread. I got semi-sick later in the day, but it could be from wolfing down a whole packet of chocolate cookies before bedtime last night ...

This evening I have these strange microvibrations in my hands. Well, not all the time. But if I wash them, or otherwise touches anything much, the hands feel like they are touching something that vibrates extremely fast but extremely short distances back and forth. It's a strange feeling. Not entirely unfamiliar: It's quite a bit like the heating of your hands when you've handled snow with them in the winter and stop doing that. Or if you have washed your hands in ice cold water. Warm, and microvibrating. Heh. Realistically vibrating hands.

These last few days I've been playing and playing the CD that I played the summer after SuperWoman's brother died. He was my friend, too: Despite the age difference we had so much in common. Except that he died, and I lived. And now and then I remember that. And part of me thinks that I should make it count, that I still live. And part of me thinks this is the ultimate human hybris, that we want our individual lives to count. That we don't accept just being part of something greater. That we can't be satisfied with being a flower that grows, blooms and dies. And the path goes on. It will pass new flowers in a hundred years, when we are forgotten; we and our names and our thoughts.

Goodbye, my friend.