Curse Of The Meridian

50 metern
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

"Where shall the weary rest? When shall the lonely of heart come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? And which of us shall find his father, know his face, and in what place, and in what time, and in what land? Where? Where the weary of heart can abide for ever, where the weary of wandering can find peace, where the tumult, the fever, and the fret shall be for ever stilled.
Who owns the earth? Did we want the earth that we should wander on it? Did we need the earth that we were never still upon it? Whoever needs the earth shall have the earth: he shall be still upon it, he shall rest within a little place, he shall dwell in one small room for ever. Did he feel the need of a thousand tongues that he sought thus through the moil and horror of a thousand furious streets? He shall need a tongue no longer, he shall need no tongue for silence and the earth: he shall speak no word through the rooted lips, the snake's cold eye will peer for him through sockets of the brain, there will be no cry out of the heart where wells the wine …The dead tongue withers and the dead heart rots, blind mouths crawl tunnels through the buried flesh, but the earth will endure for ever; hair grows like April on the buried breast and from the sockets of the brain the death flowers grow and will not perish, O flower of love whose strong lips drink downward into death, in all things far and fleeting, enchantress of our twenty thousand days, the brain will madden and the heart be twisted, broken by her kiss, but glory, glory, glory, she remains: Immortal love, alone and aching in the wilderness, we cried to you: You were not absent from our loneliness."

Thomas Wolfe, Of Time And The River

SoHotRightNow (May):


Charlotte Gainsbourg / The Operation
Star You Star Me / Sweet Thing
The Shins / One By One All Day
Bloc Party / Like Eating Glass
Christel Alsos / Still
The Whitest Boy Alive / Burning
Van She / Kelly
Cornelius / Omstart
Jori Hulkkonen feat. Jerry Valuri / Lo-Fiction
Peter, Björn & John / Young Folks
Teddybears STHLM / Little Stereo
The Hives / Main Offender
The Strokes / 12:51
I Want You So Hard (Boys Bad News) / Eagles of Death Metal

READ:
Richard Dawkins / The God Delusion
Umberto Eco / The Island Of The Day Before
Tom Wolfe / The Bonfire Of The Vanities
Aldous Huxley / Brave New World
Edgar Allan Poe / Selected Writings
Thomas Wolfe / Of Time And The River

---Curse Of The Meridian---

It seems ceaseless sometimes, this Australian escapade. Comparable to an exhaling breath in slow motion, all I have to report is that we are still here, still up-rooted, still fixed upon this subcontinent as the hemispheres revolve and the seasons turn to favour northern shores once more. How fitting then, as we here in Melbourne have enjoyed a frivolous and vivacious summer, now watch it flutter across the seas eastward over the meridian and then north, how fitting to imagine that it now tiptoes into glacier-moulded inlets, whisks across thawing fields, warrens through bourgeoning valleys until it finally vapors under your doors, still with dew on its eyelashes, carried transversely from where its was waved goodbye priorly, suppressing a giggle as it slowly slinks into your beds as you lay dormant on the verge of a new day and lies impatiently next to your ears, lingering to announce that spring, finally, is coming.

These words are carefully chosen, almost forced; willed keystrokes that have been suppressed by hazy days now are being penned, because, as I will testify to you my friends, it is not laziness that has provoked a sustained drought in my correspondence, au contraire! It is much more so the other way around. Summer entices above all the visual senses, and as zenith approaches circa mid-day, this desire to express one's self through prose, through recorded thought upon paper (or indeed in digitized form), is constricted. Try if you will, on the commencing of a bluebird giorno, as the breeze beckons you to seek relief among the waves, the sand, the bottled water bottle lying in wait in the freezer, to sit down and articulate, to fix and fasten your thoughts in structured outline when the very fleeting and ephemeral nature of the season, the very splendour of the day in conjunction with your other senses, manipulates your attentiveness towards a more hedonistic and effervescent use of the remaining hours that by now is whizzing past your temples. Couldn't I, you may ask, have written this sooner? Well, in a way I did.

My phrasing, as a matter of fact, is the result of a recent purchase. Melbourne and its' surrounds is blessed by a number of establishments that deal in secondary goods, one of which is literature. And so, our modest household is now home to a number of new inhabitants that, although corporeally deceased, are alive through the legacy of their written word. And now, as my esteemed company stares back at me from the bookshelf, I should hasten to disclose that my wording, although antiquated of styling, is far from lacking in its' motifs. "Being modern is just being old-fashioned, but quicker." Oscar Wilde had a way of saying things. But I digress.

Had you all, as I have far from moderately insinuated (through a link to my digitised photo-album in every electronic update that tickles your in-box now and again), followed the pictures that I have been steadfastly and devotedly been uploading, you would have followed the events as they have unfolded on this remote continent. Hundreds and hundreds of frames, frozen moments that singularly or accumulatively tell our story, of my darling and I, stylised through the careful and intricate, sometimes impulsive, harmony of aperture and shutter-speed, and expressing beyond any mediocre prose I can conjure up in electronic correspondence (and more economically and more poetically) the Zeitgeist, the very essence of our existence as the days accrue down under.

It is only now, when the pangs of summer are but a reminiscence, that the words - dormant under the sheets of the conscience - spring to life. As a consequence, I have saved you from the vile and crude jabber of my premature rambling. As one wouldn't dream to open a bottle of vintage wine before its prime, nor shall my words be ejaculated upon the screen before the words are ready, so that no notes are left sour and the contrasts are there to be nuanced upon the palates of your thoughts.

There have been events, mind you. My girth and beard are not growing because I am a human tree. But, for now I will rest my correspondence with the notion that we are in sound mind and spirit, overstretched at times and nostalgic at times, but harmonious.

Piacere
Jon-Eric

Flux

Signal
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

September:

SoundtrackOfMyLife
Bo Kaspers Orkester / Cigarett / Vi kommer aldrig att dö
Ralph Myerz & The Jack Herren Band / Think Twice / L.i.p.s.t.i.c.k
Jose Gonzales / Crosses
Zero 7 feat. J.Gonzales / Futures
Sofian / 45 Degrees
Kings of Convenience / Gold for the price of silver (erot rmx)
Modaji / The One and The Same (Jazztronik rmx)
Lupe Fiasco / Kick, Push
Mos Def feat. DJ Honda / Travellin' Man
Blackstarr / Definition
Talib Kweli / Never been in love
Thomas Dybdahl / Stay Home

PicturesOfMyL ife: www.flickr.com/photos/jonmelsa
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises?
If a man can not keep in pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music that he hears however measured and far away."
(Henry David Thoreau)

Flux
It is with a certain sense of deja vu that I now find myself sitting in front of a computer screen in an Australian university-library writing to friends that are far away. As far as I can tell, by the accents I hear and by the disconcerted atmosphere of acedemic doom that looms over studying faces that form this multicultural network of young people hurrying about their business, I'm in Melbourne, more accurately, Monash university.

How do we go about it all, constructing ourselves over and over, in different contexts, in different modes, and still end up feeling like the same person? As an old friend of mine puts it, "it sometimes feels like I've lived two lives... Maybe I was unhappy and insightful before. Maybe I'm happy and oblivious now. Most likely, I'm somewhere inbetween."

I went away again. Can't really explian why, I don't have any overarching justifications. I just did. Maybe it was cowardice. Maybe it was reaching for something always beyond my reach. Most likely, you so eloquently observe, Mort - it's somewhere inbetween. In any case, coming home in November '04 was inherently like coming to a halt. The seasons came and went, but my mind was lingering in another place, so impossible to define, so easy to draw simpleminded conclusions about. So I left again - almost on a whim.

A weekend trip to a cabin in the woods for a couple of days, and suddenly I had made a decision that was completely out of left field.
A smart career move? Definetely not. Widening of network? Not really. The next step in life? Nooooo. As the misty hills and raindrenched fields of the southern coast of Norway folded itself open like a wet newspaper, I was sitting in a train coupe thinking stupidstupidstupid.

Wikipedia defines Stupidity as "the quality or condition of being stupid, or lacking intelligence , as opposed to being merely ignorant or uneducated."

The parallell tracks of Sorlandsbanen end abrupltly at Kristiansand's doorstep, and that's why I never liked trains - they never diverge. It's always with stern purpose that they churn away towards their destination, and once they reach it, they turn around and go back, always bound by the constraints of their twin iron lines that carry their load of people, all with a purpose, a single goal. But I diverge... As the case turned out, I was suddenly trawling the streets of Kristiansand, looking for a restaurant that hadn't been built, with a boss that I didn't know, and people I had never met. As far as the definition of stupidity goes, I was a textbook case.

But come July and suddenly words like coulis, consomme, aigre-doux, gremolata, petit-pois and souffle were part of my everyday vocubulary. I could with tantalising quickness and in savoury detail explain the difference between a Verdicchio and a Sancerre. I could make a perfect cortado, mix a breathtaking martini, know the differences in temperature in which a Semillon-de-bordeaux or an Amarone della Valpolicella should be served. In short, I was a waiter. If I served you, chances were you would at the end of your meal be reduced to a blobbering, moaning, blissful heap of gastronomic delight. At the same time, I was lucky enough to trick Kristiansand Gymnastics to hire me as one of their head coaches, so there I was, theatrically performing gastronomy and oenology in the evenings while disciplining little boys and girls with ADHD tendencies, by making them do limbstretching and pushups until they dropped. A young, educated bright man suddenly constructing myself in a totally new setting. As autumn came and went, the cold winds from Skagerak suddenly draped the cosy old buildings of the old city in a harsh veil of snow and ice. It's true what they say about southern norwegians, that when winter comes, misery creeps in.

As luck would have it, it was the perfect time to fall in love. Come November again, and winter didn't seem to matter. And as spring approached, everything crystalised, and as the bitumen stretch leading back home rolled away beneath summerwarm tyres in the end of June, I caught a glimpse of Kristiansand one last time and kept driving until the air was thick with the smell of strawberries and appleblossoms. The summer however shortlived, was the first norwegian summer in a long time, it leapt up in your face, begging to be enjoyed. As luck would have it, Benedicte's grandparents live only 10 minutes away from Tranby, before we could start to take in what lay ahead, we were on a plane headed for Melbourne.

We try to go to the market every tuesday, we eat pancakes almost every weekend, we squeeze our own fresh juice, we have a lake right around the corner in a park that we never seem to get to jog around, we play BubbleBobble, we both have almost an hour to commute to uni but we don't really mind, we visit our local OP-shop every week, we will never get over and revel on the fact that almost all menus are in italian, we make pastasauce from scratch, we always watch South Park, we're going to Cairns in October and we're taking it day by day.

I got a golfset for under 20 bucks the other day, and when Bene said I should go play when the weather gets better I was absolutely certain that I've fallen in love with a mad person.

Reach

Reach
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

I'm reaching again.

For what I may never know. Maybe we're supposed to live in a certain state of ignorance, maybe happiness is never truly knowing.

17th June, 2005 (last year) - having moved into a tiny room in a idyllic old house sitting on top of a hill in Kristiansand, I was contemplating the rather impulsive decision of moving to Kristiansand. I'd agreed to work in a completely new restaurant in a town I had only been a few times. Meeting the owner a few weeks earlier on, he had painted a pretty picture: a new, soave concept-restaurant, with rich, sophisticated flair and a touch of fusion based in the textures of the mediterranian and the exotic falvours of Marocco. Still in my mind, was the question of why. A need to get my thoughts straight, was the usual reply, but I'm still not any closer to any real answer. Just that it felt right. It's been a year of no money, not knowing from day to day whether or not I'm going to work, late nights, unbelievable stress and no weekends. On top of that I startet working with gymnastics again, coaching kids 3 times a week. But it has also been a fantastic journey. Extensive knowledge about wine, gourmet cuisine, being around children, having fun with gymnastics, even insight into how to run a business, it's all a matter of how you see it.

Now, exactly one year later, fate is leading me back to where I came from - Australia.

I leave Kristiansand the 28-29th of June. I leave for Australia the 9th of July.

Wish me luck. My thoughts go out to all of you.

Jon

Will write soon

greek texture 5
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Too busy working.
Too busy loving.

Bored, broke and blue

Almost work time
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Found this entry from last march. Quite interesting:

Es tan corto el amor, y tan largo el olvido.
-Pablo Neruda

The great wheels of a disjointed life with no direction are slowly
winding down and adapting to an arctic tempo. Like an overture, I'm dancing on the tip of a feathered pen, Vivaldi's violin sings to me
from the dotted ink, it is winter, but the snow is missing.

I exist in the heavenly arrangement of light, I linger between piano
and mezzoforte, it's so different here, so different. So...quiet (so
lonely). Every morning greets me with every shade of the palette,
albeit sometimes only grey. This great feeling, as if another prescence guides me through the day, it follows me wherever I go, as if every tree, every rock and birch notices my uneasy breaths, the wind whispers comfort in my hair as I walk.

I run. Every day I run. Through clouds. Perched on top of the valley I
grew up in, as cold temperature forces them down into the basin, I run
through them and feel the smiles of unborn drops of rain tingle my
cheeks. Too much winter numbs your limbs, but too much summer numbs
your senses, I realise.

My mind has forgotten to return.

It still lingers in the hills of Brisbane, it still bathes in the glow
of a jealous afternoon sun, every heartbeat beats in places and faces
that are no more than memories. It's so bizarre, suddenly all the people I know, I knew - only exist as small electric impulses flashing between synapses in my brain. It's as if I'm writing this in a shed on
a distant planet. Where did everybody go?

It's like watching a bus leave with someone you care about on it. As
your eyes meet and lock for what may be the last time (lightning might
strike you any second, you know), you realise: this moment, this
bittersweet instant will only be a poor quality polaroid carefully
etched onto your retina. And so, as the squeaking twin doors close, a
part of you leaves you, in a daring leap it jumps out of your heart
and takes a quick glance back at you, mid stride. It gives you a
fearless shrug and a boyish smile and slips between the doors of the
speeding coach in the nick of time and disappears around the corner.

We all have a dream that left on a bus. It's comforting to know that
on the shoulder of every person leaving, there sits a tiny whiff of
hope from the person left behind, like a small daffodil perched up
against the neck and tickling the ear, a forget-me-not. We all have
our flowerbeds of burden to wear on our shoulders, we all feel a
whispering tickle now and again, from a hope and a dream standing a
tip-toe blowing in your ear, making sure you never forget the little
instants that make up a life.

As I write, my hectic mind continues to fill the office wall at the
back of my eyes with ever fading polaroids, whispering through
clenched teeth: I must not forget.
I understand that it is only my eyes forgetting. Every tip of my
fingers, every laugh and smile I've felt is locked securely away in a
vaulted heart.

Tap-tap, goes Leopold's white stick. As I look up, I realise the overture does not stop, I'm up soon, gotta stay focused, the violin's playing now, and I smile. Life goes on, it strikes me. Like a kiss that's still on your lips, years later, life goes on but never leaves you.

It's just intermission, that's all.


Bored, broke and blue

Solitaria

BBB
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Sick.

of it all?

Most of it, but there is light, waay
down the corridor.

Just have to open all these doors first,
see where they lead.

Come april, and things will happen...

some thoughts from a year ago

Oh my soul. Hear me now!

Apathy is a blinding noise. This wall of noise, of blindinglukewarmness, of newness, it holds me down, stops me in my tracks;this sponge of everyday life drains me of my dreams. I float on words,they barely hold me up in this sea of disjointed existence. I'm home,but only in corporeal fancy. When will life begin? I'm still in thewaiting room waiting for my appointment, tapping my fingers on thetable of time. Ten more minutes, she says - Ms Fate pops her headthrough the door and smiles that smile that makes me believe her.

This air is my blood, so a part of me, the snow that is supposed to behere, it fills me totally yet I long for something, a gust of windperhaps, a tornado of hope? "Save me!" I ask my pen. Where did mylight go? Is this it? Is this really it? Save me from this stasis.Le mie parole care, sogno non posso. Risparmi me da apatia.The world waits for no one, the wind holds me, locks my feet down infrozen grass. We all hope for stolen glances from a phantom skulking in a dark corner, with admiring eyes transfixed on dancing hands.

Where did the slow days go, wtih sleepy sunshine and the comfortinghug of a flat white resting on your temple? Where is your braziliancup, Spock? Your big brekkie, Fat Boy? I left your vibrating circus toperform in real life. Nobody's laughing, not any more.Give me life, give me everything, for I know nothing, I see nothing, Iam nothing.Who would have thought torpidity was so deafening, so blinding, sodistracting, so full of sonorous life and sound.

Every breath I take I exhale in well-known bitumen streets, which lumpy surface carried myhopes and led me to smiling faces I now miss terribly and only see inflashes of faded 0s and 1s. Do you remember me still? How we laughed,how we drank and toasted and rejoiced in happy oblivion! Please do notforget, for if you do, I will die in your minds.

I do not want to die, yet now time passes me by like a thundering herdof pandemonium, and leaves me out of the loop. Ten more minutes, shetells me.Ten more minutes. Tap-tap-tap go my fretful fingers.Li manco, i miei amici - nonlo dimentichi.Molti desideri e molto amore

HAPPY new year

Sweet & Bubbly
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Anything can happen.

LAVMÆLT -

Morning dew
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

Ord
bare små
små ord
og lavmælt
nesten uten pust
for oss

som brukne strå
ord uten lys
og nesten uten form
ord som hos trær
små halv-ord
som i søvn
for oss.

Mellem alt det store
små, små ord
å gjemme bort
på baksiden av en hånd
og ved din øreflipp
små ord
helt uten lys
som dyr
og gress.

--ROLF JACOBSEN

Bulb and plastic

A star is born
Originally uploaded by mortsan.

HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN
HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Going for it

Jon goforit
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Strange how inconsequential it all becomes when your heart is consumed. The irony of it all; everything is suddenly unimportant, and everything is important. Every little detail filled with meaning, a macro-microscopic world view fuelled by the delusion of love.

But all it boils down to, is the fact that you have to nosedive into it, headfirst.

I'm plunging right now, and for some reason, I'm enjoying it. it feels right.

Other than that, it's business as usual, Mr. Melsa. Wine, Food, Tract, in that order.

Jumping Jon

Jump #2
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

I have every reason to jump.
Just for jumping's sake.
Just for another perspective.
Just for Joy.
Just for Love.

Just for Love.
Jump.
Jump.

Leaves

Leaves
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Leaves are doing their last slow dance before they fall dramatically into their bitumen- or grassgraves.

It doesn't really bother me.

I'm in love. This might be it.

I'm invincible.

Winter

Winter
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Left Kristiansand in a dreary drizzle. Outside the window of my parents' house, the snow is turning into blocks of ice. It's like I'm skipping ahead of time, meeting the storm further up the road before it hits.

By the time it will, I'll be back again.

But this time, I might be in love.

Outside is winter, but spring is in my heart.
Life is weird.

solstolen

solstolen
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

That wooshing sound of summer wizzes past my ears. As I look into my garden, it's hard to envision it draped in snow. But it won't be long.

Oddemarka Kirke Høst

Oddemarka Kirke Høst
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

sleep. eat. work.

Not necessarily in that order.

Here we go again

relaxing after work
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

Life right now reminds me of an animated movie I once saw:

Person: Uh-Oh.
Llama: Let me guess. Huge waterfall. Sharp rocks at the bottom?
Person: Yup.
Llama: (sighs) - Bring it on.

Spaltet

Spaltet
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr.

days turn to nights turn to days turn to fragments.

No routine, something's missing.
I'm a traceur, vaulting my way through the parkour of life. Time to get focus.

Tasted and smelled my way through Italy, Spain and France today, from Navarra to Piemonte to Rhône to South East Australia.

Saw Izzat. Rezpekkth, mann.

Rezzzpekkth.

Hva er livet uten de små riskene? Rundt hvert hjørne en ny mulighet, hvert lille steg blir eventuelt et liv, fylt med de usikre valg man kunne ha tatt.
Det slo meg idag at livet er ikke annet enn en serie konsekvenser av valg man overhodet ikke hadde noen forutsetninger for å forutsi. Denne tanken burde kanskje ha gjort meg særdeles deprimert, men den gjorde ikke det.

Den gjorde meg fri.

Sleeping in

Got a new wideangle-lens.

Life through a lens, how banal.