Classic Transition

We are in the Second World War. For exp. in Brittany, spring 1940. Everything must be put in a historical perspective. The Germans are marching in! I'm a fisherman's son. Dad is out on the sea. His boat is sunk by the black-market pirates, or maybe by submarines, the same. By gunpowder for sure. I was not involved in any fight but I lost a lot. The next morning, the girls came to play anyway. They told me not to worry about the war. Nicole was one of them. The prettiest. We found love. I used to read books  written by Hemingway for her.

"Only idiots die for America". She laughs meaningfully!

"Do you think they're going to bomb us tomorrow?"

"Are you familiar with any Resistance people?"

"Do you have a passport? GOLD?"

"Do you know any Nazis?"

“No, but I know a Jewish refugee from Poland. They're killing them there ... "

"I have a boat... We could escape to Ireland ourselves."

"Your Dad would say no to that, he was half German."

"But Mum is a Caucasian gypsy!"

"Nobody is going to kill us, look at the peace out there, not a single shadow is in the sky, no wind, this is the West, Atlantic Ocean, and if Churchill loses the election in Britain it's over, nobody likes conservative racists over there!"

"It's dangerous to help a refugee!"

“It's Mum who does it, she and her friend from Paris who work in the Ministries are saving the children at large. They can fix fake documents to travel to Lisbon - and on to Florida. It's not dangerous, just corrupt! "

"Shall we travel soon?"

"DON'T KNOW, DON'T WORRY, READ MORE FROM THE BOOK!"

"It's all over... Farewell to Weapons, there are candles and flowers everywhere."

We didn't flee. Why should we? By 1944 I became very rich fishing and smuggling. Two old policemen were riding their bikes without noticing any of my business. The closest German soldiers were 14 miles east and it was easy to sell tobacco here and there. It was expensive to smoke so to speak. Eastern France was the best in Victorian furniture and all kinds of art. For four years I read to Nicole at night in her father's house. Mother was crying in her villa. Dad never read to her. That day Allied soldiers came from the sea, Nicole and I were in bed. She dressed in my clothes. She looked like a handsome boy and fooled horny soldiers away. I got the Camel of Americans. The war is not over I thought. The next year we couldn't shop, could't sail with a boat, the trains were for the military, the telegraph was off, while the radio had no program. We were free but poor. Nicole's mother fell for an American general. She didn't want to share war booty with me and took Nicole to Florida. And I started writing about this.Yep, here you are, you just read the first happy ending in this book. There are many different endings in life, many breaks, multiple stops and brand new developments. It may be possible to write about life as it really is.

Many many years after The Eternal War someone will make a movie of my writing, perhaps. A lot of movies are in making all of the time. Several people I know have made movies. A close friend of mine has made a thriller about people astray, lost in the bureaucracy, in Turkey. Kafka and such. Should anyone ever realize the innocence of the heroes? Ask the dust, not me! I like strange transitions in movies and want to have it in my book too. Most people like strange transitions. Another friend of mine has made a short movie that seems very far-fetched, it's about One who goes around constantly repeating how Ibsen is shit. My friends are like me, a sensation lusty dreamers filled with hope,  all kinds of hopes, mostly to survive. Most of us are recognized artists but few live by it, we say we live for the art. We live by the fact that our case has come to an end, that we have been invalided. The state is losing out on us financially, but what enrichment we spread around nobody can measure, not in a time like this.

Well, Nicole is forgotten now and I have to play alone. I'm writing a romanticized autobiography, just have to. The poet in me deliberately wants to ignore the dull boundaries of the consensus about reality in favor of a better and more experimental move in the memo. Hopefully for the pleasure of both me and readers. The ambition is to be called a bizarre author with a tag - absurdist. I can name many celebrities and scandals, if the public relations agent will, so my agenda gets a little more marketable? Possibly, if I write about celebrities you won't need any content. Why bother the reader with substance? Or, does it hold with if I just stream of some strange information about something unknown and foreign, exotic and, maybe totally new? Something puzzling? What about bitter rebellion on something? 

Oh, sorry, my phone rings! Friends. Want to join an Exhibition in a house called Barabara? Bands will play and people will dance for many days and nights. Frozen soldiers will find warmth after all the muddy fighting. Hot and happy women are already there. Stones are knocking other stones and making lots of sand. The bottom of the rivers are changing their shape, new coasts are established, new life forms emerge along the edge and eventually a large delta will be formed before it all wash in to the sea. You can go all the way. 

If you are looking for reading material that engages and respects you, don't read on, don't be selfish, world is not about you and I! Read in Esperanto, or in Volapük*. Be timeless. We all should do something important, something political, not so comfortable! We have to flow to the lounges and talk about books we read yesterday. Get some relief and wine! Drama is on the stage. Man in golden coat. Tourist in the fjord.

Suddenly, we are at Swinging Oslo 1996, I'm a half of men I use to be. Future auditors will say Oslo was a peaceful oasis, in a peaceful Norway, in the most peaceful time since WW ll. Possible, but I've seen people of a pure fighting spirit. Some of them been writing books, played music and painted painting just like they are shooting someone. 1996 was a year of God. Life was at stake around the world too. It was tough all over. We had to wake the ant-witches from death. We had to occupy the property of a rich and dangerous speculator. Fortunately, we got help from America and from some angels. We risked huge losses for little peace for our evening readings. During the day we wrote! We wrote about sprinkling earth, we listened with our backs and wrote about a wall in that house, a refractory wall, about raw torture, about a man burning to steam. Nothing remains of fire, no echo of the army's tramp, Paal Brekke said that. We launched thousands of books per party. And we were partying a lot. We were in defenseless position, but we did't give up... we and our friends. Yes there where friends before Facebook. Than came Facebook, and depression, and all the other illness, and pills, and age not worth of living but somehow mindful and alarmingly meriting and justifying to the utmost; to the full extent of one's powers and ability to be helpful and kind, as long as possible, to the last excellency of the last breath, thanks to the all good choices we took as young.   

 

Finally, I lie in the crematorium quietly snoring in harmony with Bach's mass in B Minor. Gladly I reflect that life has worked well. I remember all my deaths. While I was alive I forgot everything. Is that the case with everyone? I start every life with the hope of managing to rip a good opening line? Could I cry at birth again, or take my first breath like it's the last one? Should I pretend to do something no one did before? Life is a complex interruption of eternity, it is human to be born but my first book should, to be concerned with death, bu shit happens.

* Volapük - is a constructed language created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer,

**Volapük Literature and Culture Forum Oslo holds 2001 in Swiss villa in Kruses gate 7 of 9.

    The houses were occupied by the student organization OIKOS in the summer of 1989.

From The End, With Love

Farewell, I’m leaving you now! I’m going on a tripp! Backpacking to anywhere. The station is huge. Public space is used to provide comfort, safety and information about all journeys possible. Information about everything really, advertisements etc. Interactive displays are everywhere. It is a night.

Lady Kiosk: ”Need a book, now? Special offer, two for the price of one? Last year turn-pagers, crime and love etc.” 

OH, people can write about Love so well. The world is fulfilled with Love. People get to borrow cups of sugar from neighbors in the name of Love. Love colors my past and flags along the ways I’m going to go by. My Love is laughing like a flower and has red hair! It never comes to me for real but I have seen her shadow dancing on the walls. Love is certainly bashful as a girl on her first high-heeled shoes. Some books claim meeting  Love makes the streets impossible to walk again. Some books mention Love in every sentence, sometimes twice, Love with capital letter too.

Really, I have nothing against valentines and tangos while we're waiting for Love but my book is likely about something else. Maybe it’s about battlefields and fortresses, cavalry, aviation and participation in the progression, and why not, book about ability to refuse flyers from some manic street preacher? Possibly, this is a story about a full price for an unimaginable drama of the big hat, of some sombrero. Why let Love star everything? This could be a book about hunting the people, about wildlife, maybe about next life too, angels, demons, ah, my struggle… about stone throwing and dogmas, revolt, nerves and eternal peace, my ass. About a greater Germany, Huge Russia, Gods America, Soviet Asia, Mighty Angola, Fiat Italy, Custom Palestine ... each country should be a better country, or what?!

I’m kidding. I will not write about what I could write about. What man can write about anyway? What critics and publishing executives like to read the most? What ordinary man on the street asks himself frequently? Well, exactly. I am constrained to resort to cliches and will explain everything about everything in a good time. 

If a poet can say that he has a hundred voices and a hundredfold consciousness and that he sings a hundred songs from a hundred of his throats, that he thunders and shouts, that Goddess of freedom has not yet crucified him, that sad news has not hit him yet and that it never will...  then maybe we are one nation. One for nothing, whatever for all!

But most important first, I actually account for en Linda, a large and strange flower no one has seen yet. My next book will be more common, calculated to target audiences, with market research, the best solutions will be conducted in collaboration with all interested publishers and everything will be tested upon test groups long before I start with writing. Art is a product after all and it should be treated accordingly. You can try to sell cakes made from cowshit to reach some crazy point, and someone should try to sell it, for sure. There's lots of shit on the market. But I am not so sure it is wise to promote shit as it is an electric bike. Who knows, I have to do a blind shot until I get the experience. Maybe this is the great novel about walking into the innermost, about a move without a trace, about someone who never crossed any boundaries, about a unicorn who doesn't believe in his own magic in his mirror image? Irony might not sell as much. Feminists say that irony is an expression of sad man's impotence, both physically and mentally. True, I agree. No to irony! Sad man must give up now, or I'll name a book: “How to Avoid the Partner? And why not? ”. 

I could write about my hometown, parents, wife's and kids. I live in Oslo and Oslo has no hair. I just don't see any hair, this is not San Francisco, or a planet in some universe far far away, to say so. Take that as a metaphor. That's it, this should be a travel book with a funny title. Title is always a figure of speaking, some hook or a simple joyful and creative free expression.

This Book may be of inconceivable bestiality and it will be written in the new language, Goalian! Goalian stands for figurative abstractions,  its goals to fascinate and challenge a imagination. If there has to be some action in this fabel, it should start in a war. Everyone asks me about the war I fled from anyway. Almost everyone talks about some kind of war, yours and mine, before and now. Millions are on the run from war all the time, literally and metaphorically, on multiple levels. Migration is a huge industry.

Do you think you are at home or in some kind of quarantine? War itself is not an industry, no, it is just the consequence of a particular escape, basically. All yesterday's parties I've been to were warlike as well. There is war over the last beer, the music, the hashish, cocaine, war about free ladies and gentlemen, about my ass, about when should I go home? I can't write without writing about a war. I don't want to be a stranger to the common culture. Maybe it's best to have a good timeline ready for the novel and forget about my individual unfolding, linguistic problems, semantic acrobatics and all holism? I will be more specific about inner life in my third book. Now I have to get to chapter No.2 first. Ok?