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
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"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.