May 2012
4 posts
Certain continuities
For Sherin
Everything’s contingent, you and I included, but that doesn’t mean that what matters at the moment doesn’t really, really matter, nor that you won’t continue to matter more and more to me.
Regn og tre små
Et fint øyeblikk i går: Jeg kom hjem på kvelden, kunne se og høre at en storm var på vei. Leiligheten var tom, men hodet fullt av spørsmål, så jeg satte meg på den lille balkongen vår med et glass vann og en bærbar høyttaler. Satte på det første jeg følte for, som viste seg å være verdens mest hjemlengsel/-elskelsesfremkallende Tre Små Kinesere. Regnstormen beveget seg sakte, så jeg rakk å høre et...
April 2012
1 post
Advice to self and him
Tell me nothing lasts forever, That there’s no guarantee, That this is still the closest thing To something somewhat real. Tell me this when I’m afraid. Tell me I forget We’re both afraid and on our own And think we know ourselves. So, I might be wrong right now But if you’d like to try, Next time, tell me I’m just scared, and tell me I told you why.
March 2012
2 posts
A note beneath the fridge
As if awaiting a flame, A paper scrap’s been curling up Underneath the droning fridge. I only found it yesterday. Who knows How long it’s been there.
I recognized the hand at once: Meticulously messy, his letters were Half-closed as always. Mistaking a’s for u’s, Or u’s for i’s, Although I married him I only half-knew what he meant Half the time. Once, I even bought A bar...
January 2012
1 post
Letter to a Building
I’ll try not to romanticize: You aged, and so did I. The world moved on, like life itself Wherein nothing really stops, Except in death, or when in love. Now filling brand new cardboard boxes With yellowed books and crumbled notes On how to not become nostalgic, Time, it seems, still made A brilliant hoarder out of me. And you, I hate to say, will long Be spoken of in exactly the same way: With...
December 2011
6 posts
Nettdebatter og barsamtaler
Nettdebatter er rare, og unike, sammenlignet med debatter i det offentlige rom. Ofte ligner de pubsamtaler: to eller flere parter er uenige om en sak, og sammen kaster de ulike partene argumenter frem og tilbake; debattene blir ofte høylytte (på nettet, “skriftlig” høylytte, det vil si, frekke), og ofte tyr en til personlige angrep. Men i motsetning til pubsamtaler trenger ikke...
“I think of the people I know (…) and wonder which of them knows how to...”
– Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy.
November 2011
4 posts
A strange year
Summer came, as usual, spreading hope across the town. It melted us each year, the sun - a stiff, self-conscious people as we were - we’d wait for it to come before we’d dare to undress our fears. Too nervous otherwise, we depended on a shot of that seasonal amnesia to forget the coming winter, the trailing tracks of light-less days and all-dark thoughts wherein life would soon be...
What's one of the most meaningful travelling...
Sitting on the bus today, not travelling anywhere special, I suddenly felt like asking everyone I knew the following question: “what’s the most meaningful travelling experience you’ve had?” Since I obviously couldn’t ask everyone one I knew, I emailed one of my best friends, who replied, then asked me to ask myself. This is what I wrote:
“Flying to Mumbai to...
October 2011
1 post
Blood love
Eroding ties, retracing lines Of argument and hurt, You turn your blood loves into water To prove what you are worth. But you look tiny to me now, Dwarfed by your own scheme. Like a child still scared of sin You revolt, yet stoop in guilt. Love takes years to build But seconds to break down. That is what you tell yourself To detonate the bomb. Losing you is not as bad As knowing that you’ve lost....
September 2011
4 posts
Open doors
Another goodbye is another story Though it hurts like it was life. Another love’s another feeling That you don’t need to fight. A question is a word of wisdom That begs to be rephrased. This end, a latent metaphor Waiting to be raised. Behind each closing door, There’s a story, sculpted in time. A Who, When, Where and How Too alive to need a Why. The road to love is paved With ambivalent...
March 2011
1 post
I guess what happened was the story of … many people’s lives, of how the theory falls apart when practice makes you test yourself and the boundaries you’ve set, pushing you to push yourself beyond your own ideas. Break them. Trespass them. And so – out of love, or loneliness, compassion, or a combination – you overstep your line. And it feels so much like self-betrayal, like what you’re stepping...
February 2011
4 posts
January 2011
3 posts
December 2010
6 posts
I love how indirectly you tell me that you like me, the subtlety with which you hold me with your understated thoughts, wrapping them around me, gently, as if it didn’t happen at all.
“As long as a human eye is looking, there is always something to see. To look at something which is ‘empty’ is still to be looking, still to be seeing something — if only the ghosts of one’s own expectations.”
— Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” in Styles of Radical Will.
In her essay, Sontag discusses what she calls “the aesthetics...
November 2010
19 posts
THE WORLD, A HORIZONTAL HAVEN, flickering with hope. Safety in the form of hands that touch, then stroke, then hold. I dare you, do you know what you’re doing? Cause I don’t, I just love, love, adore, I roll to your side of the bed and reach for you, and you melt me with your soft and patient hands. We climb as slow as we can to the precipe of dreams and gaze down at reality, at the...
“Interruption, incoherence, surprise are the ordinary conditions of our life....”
– Paul Valéry
OGSÅ HAR JEG TENKT PÅ DEG, sett deg igjen i romanene, diktene jeg har lest, sangene jeg har spilt på vei til forelesning, der jeg glemmer å ta notater og dagdrømmer, dagsovner og våkner opp i sengen din, hvor du ligger med kroppen din tett inntil min, og leker med tiden og overser meg, eller overser tiden og leker med meg, og later som om du ikke har ting du må rekke du heller, ting som må gjøres,...
ENN Å VÆRE FORELSKA I LIVET DA? Å kjenne kriblingen i kroppen fra det å kunne leie hender med øyeblikkene, å holde selve livet tett, tett inntil brystet mitt, der pulsen fortsatt slår for alle dagene og månedene og årene som kommer? Aldri vil det gå fra meg, lyve til meg, krangle, gi opp. Det er det bare jeg som gjør. Og likevel så er vi er, sammen, fortsatt. Tenk hvor heldige vi er.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
– Franz Kafka, Letters to Friends, Family, and Editors.
Dead-end
Still driving in reverse, denying that I can’t undo the white lies that you chalked out on the sidewalk when I asked you, “Are you sure? Be honest. You don’t have a girl?” You smiled and shook your head and said, “You don’t have to worry.” There were no warning signs. There were no warning signs this time. So I grabbed my fears by the horns, heard them shriek at me before I left them, turned to...