Wednesday 29 November 2000

Pic of the day: This innocent looking book made me cold from my bones out.

The cold within

I had written an entry for today, and it was late in the evening. I sat down to read a bit in the latest book by Margit Sandemo, the second in this new series. (The name of the book translates as Where no one goes, and the series as The black knights. I started to feel a little cold, so I put on a jacket and turned up the heat. Then sat down to read again. And grew colder. I started to wonder. The cold seemed to come from within.

***

Margit Sandemo is quite a prolific writer, and almost singlehandedly created a genre of magic romance, a blend of occultism, romance, drama and history. The books tend to be pretty heavy on romance and a bit on the erotic side, though not tasteless by secular standards. The church dislikes Sandemo, or at least some priests do, because she writes about magic and black angels and such. In particular, one of her most successful characters was the son of Lucifer, which was hardly the best way to win friends within the Christian milieu.

I've personally found her books to be pretty much harmless. It's more like fantasy - you know, Dungeons & Dragons and their kind, only written mainly for women. (I'm not a woman, but I still like the books. Most guys would be ashamed to admit it, I suspect, but I'm sure there are more of us reading.) Housewife magic.

But this time something strange is going on. The book is not all that different from the others, certainly not from the first book in the series. But somehow, it makes me shiver with cold. I laid the book aside and did some entirely different things, and the warmth returned. Then I started to read again, and the cold returned.

Now it should be mentioned that one of the main characters in the book is described as icy cold, actually radiating chill. (He's supposed to be somewhat supernatural.) Perhaps I'm just very open to suggestion when I read. Or perhaps there is something else ...

No more Sandemo tonight.

***

When I was younger, I had panic attacks fairly often. They are few and far between now - I think I have recorded them all during these two years - but back then they were more common. More often than not, they would start in the night, where I woke up. If I woke up from a dream, the dream was rarely a nightmare. I rarely have nightmares, at least unless I have a fever. The dream could be quite normal, or I could wake up from the deep sleep between dreams. But always there would be the cold that came from within. As if my bones were frozen inside me. I would not just shiver, but shake uncontrollably. Sometimes the cold came a noticable time before the actual fear.

Nor is that my only encounter with the cold within. I also had a cold that watched over me. It was part of a greater syndrome that I, for lack of a good name, called the Black Wall. If I was spreading rumors, or talking about things that were too advanced for me (particularly in the field of theology), I would start to feel cold. Usually I can stand cold better than most, at least for a while. But not the cold from within. There was nothing to do against it, except cease whatever I was doing. If not, the cold was followed by a feeling of constraint, as if metal bands were laid around my chest, making it hard to breathe fully.

Intriguingly, the Black Wall - cold and all - would also make sure I did not accidentally get involved with women my own age. I remember clearly two different times, years apart, when I was alone with a woman I felt deep sympathy for, and who was friendly to me. And the sudden deep freeze that made me shake, unable to even speak fluently. It was a cold like the depths of winter, but it came from within. Nor was this the only times it happened. (Oh, and the women were two different ones.) Those two occasions were only notable because of their intensity.

Who can say where theology ends and psychology begins? Perhaps they are, like body and soul, so intertwined that you cannot separate them without killing both.

But the years have taught me that the icy cold was not my enemy, but my protector. I don't know why it should be necessary to protect me from the women, though I have my suspicions. But I can see how it was helpful to keep me from going too far in my confidence, when I talked about things I did not fully know. And so I feel certain that for some reason, I had better not read that book tonight. I don't know why. But I trust the cold within.

Perhaps it's somewhat like a guardian angel (though I've never heard about ice cold angels) or perhaps like Socrates "daimon", which he mentioned to his friends as he was about to die. If it was something bad he was going to, his daimon would have warned him, he said. Sounds like a practical thing to have. Though I like to think that I'd prefer a nice guardian angel. Yeah, like I'd listen to one of those...

Anyway, I'm feeling better now.