Scary....

When you have a theory, and it is new, and nobody else has looked at things from that perspective: Are you then happy, - since you have dicovered something? Or scared that everyone else is right and you are wrong?

Just wondering.

Roots - thoughts made as verse

4th of June 2003. Soundtrack: Lustwijns Wijsa.

When I leave
eventually
as I expect that I must
I'll steal away lots and lots of
choir notes
to sing elsewhere.
Spread the music.

What I've done
is borrow roots.
Theirs were deep and
encompassing.
Good to rest for a while
leaning my back to such trunks.

When I leave
the memory of me
is kept
at the keeper of records' place
in the middle of the forest.

I wanted to ask you
Where are your roots?
How deep and strong are they?
How did they grow?

What made you decide
This is where I belong,
Here is where I build,
This is where I'll stay.

Because MY roots are weak.
I can move, for sure, and I have,
recoiling at the thought of
going back to where
home used to be.

They are, granted,
deeper here than before
but if pressed
I know they've tested the soil
and it is loose; we can go.

If need demands it.

You see
I'd somehow like to know
that this is home
for longer than a five-year-plan.
I can't just DECIDE
can I?
Is that what people do?
or do they
stay
out of fear

What I do know
is that heartroots
never forget a soil however brief the stay.
So I carry it with me,
in my heart
the reasons for love
and the reasons to go.

Can you teach me, please,
how to stay?
Sticking to a place
for better or for worse
Give me a reason to stay?
at least one to return.

Do you know why I am restless
- Oh so restless -
Will you please halt my fear
and let me, let me see...

While most fear change
maybe I fear
stagnation
and so I flee.

Kom arbeidslyst.....

Det er Solan Gundersen som sier det.

"Kom arbeidslyst og treng deg på,
her skal du motstand finne."

'Dette er det aller siste', lover veileder. Etter at vi var nesten ferdig for omtrent to måneder siden har vi gjort 'bare en ting til' i uken.
Men nå er det det siste.

Det er blitt veldig bra, da. Ikke noe å si på det. Det er bare at jeg har så lite guff igjen. Er ingen sånn pedant som elsker å knytte sammen løse tråder.
Og jeg vet at det er mye mer å gjøre på de uferdige tingene enn det burde også.

Huff huff huff.
Musikk på - bit tennene sammen.
Og vær så snill, radio, noe annet enn Avril Lavigne!

TV dating - endless permutations

I confess!
Sometimes I watch reality-TV of the dating genre like Bachelor, Bachelorette, For love or money or whatever they are called. One of the Swedish commercial channels seems to have bought a dating package, because new shows keep appearing.

Last night I watched the first program in a series where the twist is - that SOME of the men are GAY! Woooo.

Little Ms. Jackie (who LOVES dating and romance and hopes to meet Mr. Right) will share a million dollars with her beau provided she manages to choose a straight man. If she chooses a gay man, he gets the million all to himself.

As the show began, fourteen studs arrived to the ranch wearing jeans and checked shirts. Upon learning of this unexpected twist in the tale, they started worrying about how their feminine sides would be perceived. They ALSO worried about sharing a room with a possible gay man, and whether or not having a pink room would matter.

Actually, it was pretty hilarious.
It was not so hilarious when the self-acclaimed small-town-values girl learned about it in public. Choosing three relatively 'feminine' men for her "swing dates", they were all telling her that "I'm straight, even if I seem feminine". One defended the hairdryer-debacle (why does a man with short hair bring a hair-dryer to a ranch?! Maybe he gets ear infections easily?).

When the time for the elimination came, she told the second of the poor men who had to leave that "you didn't put yourself forward at dinner. I think a straight man would have". Oh dear. This girl surely knows less of gay and straight than most.
Both her rejects turned out to be - straight.

The remaining men were stunned. We thought for sure that HE was gay, they said.
I wonder:
Is this the step forward in recognizing that prejudice is just that: Prejudice?
How do the gay men feel about having to pretend to be appalled about possibly being ogled during bedtime while possibly doing just that.
Will the gay men fall to temptation with each other.
Will she continue to remove men she thinks are gay, instead of removing those she dislikes?

I can't wait.
Of course, equipped as one is with internet access, the easier path is to google the show. Alas, nine of the starting 14 were gay, but she managed to choose a straight man in the end. AND, what is more, they are still dating.

Ah, - true love conquers all.
How romantic!

Det sier seg selv

- Men hva vil DU da, sier de kanskje, når jeg har lagt fram en forholdsvis kortfattet beskrivelse av situasjonen, hvem som sa hva og hvordan og en skisse over små naturlige berøringer.
- Vil, sier jeg. Og fortsetter med litt halvt svada.

De har ikke forstått noen ting. Hvis jeg ikke ville noe hadde det ikke vært noe å diskutere.

Mellom linjene

Dette er et lite dikt uten innhold.
At jeg gjors på å gå med hæler igår, for eksempel

det trenger ikke egentlig stå noe sted.
Jeg er jo lengst. Og liker hæler.

Og om jeg har notert med en viss interesse
at vi var vel så mye i hverandres space som vi ellers er
når vi er alene.
Ja, da har jeg vel det.

Et dikt uten innhold men med følelse.

Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

Finally, the snow came, even here.

On Sunday we were walking along the river. You said
"looks like it may snow"
in a hopeful voice, and now it did and made me send you an email
since you haven't called me.

I want it to be you this time. You asking me.
Not like Sunday, where you took over, but I had done the asking.

The waiting time is here.

I'm not fretting, not very much, at least.
And I enjoy going over
that joke, that smile, the goodbye.

But I will you to call,
You should call, at the latest tonight, because
I would like
seing you
for my birthday celebration.

So I send you an email, saying that look, you were right, we have snow!
And in the ensuing dialogue
I remind you that there's a party
to which you respond
"what time?"

And when the party is over the waiting time continues.
But it's a good wait and not one for fretting.

Dear diary

Let's face it. Isn't that what a blog is? A kind of diary.

I've succeeded in making some very nice looking histograms, and am consequently done with a third of what I want to achieve, workwise, today. Having operated under the assumption that I had a date for tonight, time opened up before me as the man in question suggested to go for a walk and have a late lunch tomorrow instead.

I'm not sure if this means that he upgraded or downgraded the date, or that Sunday just suited him better. I don't know him nearly well enough to speculate in motive, but I do know that Sunday is a less loaded kind of setting than Saturday night. Maybe that's for the better. I'm pretty unsure of my seduction technique, it seems to be beyond my control whether or not something happens. Really quite Victorian, the woman's task is to say no (or agree, of course). I got a funny joke on my cell phone the other day: "The rooster is chasing the hen. The hen thinks to herself: If I stop, I'm easy, if I run, I'm not getting any. I'd better fall. "

Lots of things are happening. First of all, after fretting for two weeks, England turned me down. Somewhat disappointed but mostly relieved. The best part of it was when the longest and possibly most prestigious position got back to me with the message that I was one of only two appointable. Good for the ego, and no commitments.

Being faced with choices, however hypothetical, makes you realize what you really want. And right now, I probably was less ready for packing and moving than I thought only half a year ago. There will be other opportunities, and I have some hopes in a non-academic direction. But that's for the future.
Another nice incident was that the advisor got some funding, so I'll have more money coming my way. Boy what a relief that was.

On the less happy side, the mother of an old friend passed away. It was cancer, and expected, but quite young and very sad. I can't really fathom what it is like to live for the rest of your life on fond memories, though I'm very grateful I have so many of them.

Work is waiting. After plotting a figure without color, I need to check the text again - it must be changed to accommodate the new histograms.

And then I'll ... I don't know. See a movie with one of the terrific people who always lift my heart, and sleep fitfully in anticipation for yet another strange get-together with "the guy".

I love mom!

I love my mother.
(Hi, mom! (she's one of quite few who's got my blog address))

This subject is one of many words, anecdotes, cheeky grins and plenty of pride. And should there ever be a need for a longer piece, I can contribute from any number of angles. The Mom, the Wife, the Friend, the Boss, the Daughter, and the superb vanillasaucedependent Woman.
So it can be an ongoing piece, really.

This morning, the newspaper reported that Aqua-Lene (you know, the singer of the pop-band Aqua) had had her child: "It was a Barbie-girl".

You remember the song?

I'm a barbie girl
in a barbie world
I'm fantastic
made of plastic
You can brush my hair
caress me everywhere....

As I recall, some people were quite upset over the lyrics, said they were a backlash for women's lib and whatnot.
Not my mom. She came laughing home having heard the song on the car radio.
"such irony" she said.

That's my mom.

And yet I do

I have no time
for dithering
for random thoughts
and daydreams.

I have no time
for poetry
for bad tv
for sleep.

I have no time
for arguments
for petty fights
for silly things.

I have no time
to dream of you
or chat with you
obsess for you.

I haven't even
really time
do dare to say
'let's meet! let's meet!'

And yet I will, and yet I will.

Metaphorically speaking, of course...

Thought it was time for a diary-entry again.
I was just now smiling at the strangeness of convention.

The convention of measuring direction, to be more exact.
You see, wind speed is measured as the direction the wind is blowing from, and north is zero (or 360). So a wind from the north has direction zero degrees, wind from the east has direction 90 degrees and so on. And everyone knows this, don't you - the low pressures follow the westerlies over the Atlantic to Scandinavia where the rain falls down. Northern winds are from the north, southerly winds from the south.

With ocean currents, the opposite is true. You measure the direction of the current as the direction the current moves to, so a current goes to the south. A current from the north has the direction 180 degrees.

Now, in mathematical terms, you could fear that you'd get into trouble. After all, angles in a Cartesian coordinate system has zero to the east, ninety to the north, and so on. Not only is zero pointing to the direction perpendicular to the geographical system, the angles rotate different ways. It turns out that this is pretty ingenious and the conversion is straightforward. As long as you know what is what.

Then, I was looking at the wave direction. Common knowledge says that surface waves have the same direction as the wind. But - surprise, the numbers were way off.
Fortunately, I had the wave sensor manual. Wave direction is measured in the proper Cartesian system. So I have three different properties, measured in degrees from zero to 360, but each with its own system.
I think this is done to justify educating PhDs.

For the non-scientist, something more general. Have you noticed how your metaphors for life are affected by your knowledge? I will invariably relate things to math, periodicity, time series analysis, non-linearity, but there are a whole lot of other things that I also fit my life to. Ibsen is a great man for any occasion to so with self-deception or when you do things too halfheartedly. The Bible pops up any number of times during the day, and also poetry. I'm a fan of the Dane, Piet Hein, so I'll quote him to myself. And lyrics from songs, all this is the fabric with which I explain myself to me. And images like floating or sinking, the ups and downs of a roller coaster, or the dreams where you are blind.

Strange. I thought I had loads to say, and the thoughts just petered out. I'll leave you with e.e.cummings - one of my points of reference.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

See also
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/

Trött.....

Lite trött i själen.
Jag är.

Krama mig, hårt.




Tell her not to cry
I just got scared that’s all
Tell her I’ll be by her side, all she has to do is call


Some people never say the words "I love you". It ain't their style