Sunday 14 May 2000

Pic of the day: Gold and green forest. I guess this may be a particular Norwegian expression: We say that someone promises gold and green forests when they raise expectations to unrealistic heights. Making promises that are impossible to keep. "He promised her gold and green forests if she would marry him." Random example, of course.

That's a really nice picture, don't you think? Really. It could be just me, of course. But it looks so full of hope and safety and peace. Land of hope and glory, and what not.

So I just deleted the second and somewhat less cynical entry for today. I just can't get myself to write about a disgusting thing like that when I have such a fine picture. Yes, sometimes people do things that are so stupid that it approaches (or even exceeds) moderate evil. But that's the human condition. We err in our judgement, and sometimes the innocent get hurt.

Yet we do ... some of us at least ... eventually learn. From our own errors, and others', and from the errors we intended to make but did not get along to. And so we take courage.

The day was largely wasted. I stayed indoors much of the day, alternately playing The Sims and fantasizing and heating my old body in the sun rays through the large triple-insulated windows. Only at the end of the day did I eventually venture out in the forest for a short while.

Suddenly my daydreams crashed and I remembered something from my past that I had tried to forget. I was utterly crushed. How could I possibly have done that and never really have judged myself properly? How could I have been so callous, so uncaring about the fate of the innocent, those weaker than myself? Once again I found that I was guilty of essentially the same thing that I had condemned others for, in the very journal entry that I've now deleted.

Spooky. But yet, as long as the light is growing brighter, there is always hope.

Yeah, I know that such abstract and unspecified claims don't really say anything. But the things I have thought over are so personal in nature that I dare not post them here. It is not like this diary is anonymous or anything. And the last I want to do right now is to implicate others.

Suffice it to say that right now I'm glad I don't have a family of my own. I don't deserve that and wouldn't be able to handle it, either. There's another path for me. And another kind of gold and green forest.

Enjoy the picture, at least.