Life in the rear-view mirror

Life in the rear-view mirror

torsdag 25. oktober 2012

Panic

I’m walking alone in the dark. The road is abandoned except for my light, quiet footsteps and the soft moonlight. Ahead of me is the E6 highway. I make a few clumsy moves in response to the music in my ears, confident that no one will see me in the dim light beyond the highway. The road less travelled by descends and crawls out of view under the highway, set in its track of submission, of lesser importance. I follow it out of the moonlight and into the blackness. As I do, and old friend makes a reappearance as I start to feel a bit panicky. I want to run, but I cannot have this, it’s been too long. So I stop dead. I look into the ceiling. It’s black, like a pitfall into nothingness, or an elevator into the underworld. I generally hate elevators for the fear of where they might go. Maybe this is the underworld, it sure looks like somewhere dark things might like. I walk to the other side and stop again, looking back to find a home for all the images that play vividly in my mind, toying with me. But there is no such place I tell myself, as I have done so many times before. I just wish I could see it so I could calm down. Suddenly, a most disturbing view fills my mind and leaves no room for anything else. My brain attacks my system violently, prescribing a massive dose of adrenalin, because this is real! A light starts at the far end of the tunnel. It illuminates the entire width of the ceiling and progress towards me quickly, efficiently, without a sound. I stagger backwards helplessly, not sure how to respond. Eventually, my brain has caught up with the events and the spell of panic is broken with the revelation as to what this is. As the source of the phenomenon, a car, appear on the hilltop on the other side of the tunnel, I turn around and walk quickly away, giggling like a little kid, body still trembling uncontrollably from the adrenalin my brain has carelessly neglected to withdraw. Panic used to be a regular occurrence, but now days I’ve become so calm that the adrenalin seems to come in uncomfortable abundance whenever my brain has the faintest excuse to throw it at me.

I look back once the car has passed. Something had been following me trough that tunnel. It was so faint that I could barely make it out in the darkness and always straight across from me. Surely, I must have been my own shadow I tell myself as I walk away. Surely. Though the image continue to twist in my head, not quite dead yet. I know deep inside that such a shadow would make no sense at all, and they always do, don’t they? Being purely logical creatures, they never appear out of place.

Back in the tunnel, there is a most unreasonable shadow indeed. Still in the shape of the girl who just passed it by, it lingers by the opening. “Another time” it tells itself. She’ll be back for sure.




tirsdag 16. oktober 2012

Jeans

Once I walked into a store, thinking I’d get some jeans. This sales person immediately comes up to me and offers me some help. I usually avoid getting help but the complicated size system leaves me no choice but to accept. The lady immediately picks out about 5-6 jeans to try. Between trying each pair, I’m commanded to get out of the dressing room so the lady and my mum can see how they look. The lady goes on and on about style and fashion. Noticing the look on my face, she adds:
“if you’re interested in that sort of stuff...”
“Not so much” I reply, putting it very mildly.

By the next pair of pants she has already forgotten, going on and on about how unbelievably fashionable this particular pair is. Now slightly annoyed, I very carefully let her know that I don’t really give a shit about how fashionable it is. Finally done with trying; I sigh relived, but it’s not over yet.

The lady immediately grabs the pants from my hands, keeps two of them and throws the rest of them in a pile on the table behind her. She lays the remaining two out nicely and goes:
“These two look best on you!” she smiles widely, eyes now sparkling vividly, not picking up on my unsure look. Don’t I even get to buy the pair I want?
“But... I liked one of the other ones better” I start to point at the pile, but I can’t make out the right one in the blur of blue. Suddenly unsure, I’m lost for words.
The lady look at me almost pitiful and goes, smile now back in place:
“The way I see it, these two are your only real choice.”
“But what about the...”
“Those made your calves look too long”
“But what about...”
“Those made your ankles look fat!”
“But the...”
“That one made your knees look weird!”
“But I have a syndrome, my knees are weird...”
“They are also out of style”
“But...”

The atmosphere had changed quite dramatically, probably a few sentences ago, but I am not very good at social games and it was only now that it registered with me. I’m very dizzy, I need to sit down I think.

“Trust me!” she goes, “ You don’t want to get that one. You’ll regret it.”

The warm summer day outside feels increasingly far away, as my hair stands on end. The look on her face puts me off. I suddenly notice how tall she is. I’m not sure if that was a piece of advice or a threat. Anxiously, I look nervously around and notice that people all around are watching me. If my heart hadn’t been pounding so hard in my ears, I might have heard pins drop.

“I’ll take it!”

I was almost surprised at the frantic sound of my own voice, when I had not expected to hear it at all. I reached out and grabbed one of the pants she had picked out. Having magically appeared in my hand, I swear I could feel my credit card tremble when I looked at the price, but it would just have to do. No one messes with the Fashion, not even me.

Looking back and remembering my own reflection I can see now that she was right:

Drawing of distorted reflection in mirror


lørdag 6. oktober 2012

Photoreading

A while ago I wondered into a bookstore, as is my very bad habit... (if I could only read books half as fast as I can buy them). This particular store was located at my school, and it had a vast collection of self help books right next to the counter, these were all on the sort of topics that eager, hardworking students would be interested in. Like “How to improve your memory”, “How to write unbelievably long text” and such. I am pretty much allergic to this sort of literature, as I find it very annoying when some know-it-all tries to tell me that everybody works the same way. This might have something to do with all the teachers that have tried to tell that I will remember what they tell me better if I take notes. I hate to break it to you, but no matter the amount, quality and quantity of research the supports this, my brain refuses to adjust to it. It just doesn’t work for me. This annoyance at any form of generalization usually makes me stay fare away from these books, but that day I spotted an interesting title: Photoreading! It turned out to be about the exact thing I hoped: reading incredibly fast! I already have pretty damn good memory and I don’t even know if I want to learn to write those insufferable academic texts, but I want to read fast. I have dyslexia (word blindness) so reading has always been a bit of an uphill struggle for me. This book advertised that it can be read in 30 minutes. I had my doubts about this to say the least... I thought I might have to use some force (and several sharp metal objects) if I wanted to get that book in my head that fast. I actually managed to do it in about 45 minutes though. You’ll have to read it to find out how, but there was a bit of cheating involved. Every book should be like this! I might be a slow reader, but I’m a quick learner and it’s not fair to have to be spoon fed everything. I prefer to do my own thinking. Anyway, I don’t really remember what sort of techniques were presented in the book, but I am less interested in techniques and more interested in the idea. Instead, I figured I could reinvent my own reading.

I had already noticed that I sometimes read very fast; but most of the time reading feels a bit like walking in deep mud, with big grey clouds forming in my head like muddy cotton candy. At the time I was also reading Shutter Island (great book by the way!) and I found that if I concentrated hard I could almost flick a switch in my head. What happened was that it was almost like the story was playing in my head like a movie. It was awesome! It was like a whole new way of reading, but I can’t really explain it right. I tried to explain it to a friend of mine, but she didn’t really buy it. I suppose I might not understand it if someone tried to explain it to me. At the very least I would have assumed this was not for me and my problematic head. I don’t really know anyone else who is as interested in messing with their own head as I am. At least they’re not as keen to share it as I am. Come to think of it, I have one friend who tells me about strange stuff, but she has this way about her so I always believe everything she tells me. When I talk about stuff like this, I’m usually either depressed or so exited I’m bouncing up and down and talking way too fast... I suppose it doesn’t add to my credibility.

Back on point, (nooooo, I never sidetrack myself! For real!) I suppose my interest in reading as a phenomenon started a few years back, when I read my first book in English. The first pages seemed impossible to get trough, but after a few chapters it was going really good. Now days, it’s so easy that I actually forget which language I’m reading. Sometimes I’m just reading and reading and reading and suddenly there is a word I don’t understand. I sort of slow my brain down and have a real good look at the word. Sometimes this makes it even more confusing. So I look at the rest of the sentence, but suddenly I can’t understand a single word on the entire page (true story!). It might just as well have been Greek or something. It is sort of like I try to look it all up in my internal Norwegian dictionary and become terribly confused when I can’t find it anywhere. At some point I usually remember that English isn’t Norwegian at all and I can sort it all out. This left me with the impression that there is more to reading than what meets the eye.


Whenever my internal dictionairies proves insufficient, whatever the cause, I have a few external ones to help me out… there’s the English – Norwegian, the German – Norwegian, the French – Norwegian, the Finnish – Norwegian, the Norwegian – Norwegian, the English – English and the English Idioms… you know, just in case I’ll ever find the time to learn French (won’t happen) and more German and Finnish…



Other things I have been up to is some towing and some photoshoping: