I had a writing grandmother, and during my early childhood she influenced me in the way of reading. She gave me books, we read together, and she introduced me to ways of thinking about reading that gave me a lot.
My grandmother died in 2008 – 15 years ago. This was also the year that one of my brothers got very sick mentally; he is still sick. She has since lost a lot of her piedestal position in my world, but the gifts she gave me in terms of a joy of reading has been with me, and has become a core of my being.
In 2020, I started being admin on a Facebook group called “We who will read 50 books (or a similar goal) in 2020”. The group has grown, and is now at 161 members, and we are still updating our own “reading threads”. During my depression which culminated in the autumn of 2022 and the winter of 2022/2023, I did not read much at all. But I recently started again, and for 2023 I am now on book 12. I don’t know if I can make the target of 50 for this year. It will take some priority. But it is no issue if I do not make it. Last year I stopped at 47.
The book 12 of 2023 is “Lyst” by Thomas Espedal. But as I am reading that book, I am also reflecting about my own reading, and my own writing.
This blog – DLTQ.org – does not have a Project now. There is no underlying principle, no set of rules, nothing that frames this blog firmly. There IS the principle that I record my process of writing the blog post as often as I feel like it. Like now – I am recording my writing this, and the Pink Floyd song in the headset, and I wonder now how these things interact with each other. My writing. My reading of what I am writing. My knowing that I am recording this process, and saving it on Dropbox for future days, months, decades; my knowing that in my creative urges…
Well. What are those urges? An urge. Not just interest. Not just passing fad, a phase through my life. Or can the urge also be immediate and explosive, in that moment, like
If you should go skating
[Source]
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don’t be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.
My fear, I think, is that while I walk forward in my life, new cracks in the ice of my modern life will form, and that my fear will flow out behind me as I claw the thin ice. My fear is that the traumas (will be it’s own tag later) in my childhood will haunt me, and create parts of the cracks, and – just imagine it – feeling surrounded by cracks, visible or invisible. And finding my ground, finding my routine, using my mental capabilities to not go too much in this or that direction.
According to psychoanalytic / literary theory, water is often a symbol of a person’s mental landscape, with images of deep, unfathomable water frequently connected with the unconscious mind – that part of the psyche that houses the majority of a person’s most basic and unrealized self. In this sense, a person’s mind has been compared to an iceberg: he is conscious of the 1/8th of his persona that juts out from the water and oblivious to the 7/8th of his personality’s submerged base. Accordingly, the upper part of Pink’s psyche is frozen over with thin ice, illustrating (or perhaps foreshadowing) the rigid and unemotional person he is or will become. At the same time, it’s this very thin layer of ice that keeps him from slipping into the uncharted depths of his subconscious, an action that would (and will) lead to some measure of insanity as a result of being submerged in his repressed and unrealized emotions.
[Source]
So. I read. And I think about reading. And I write. And I write about reading, and I read about writing, and it is 12:25 now, past noon, and I have no obligations, no plans, before tomorrow morning, Monday morning, when I will go to the office in central Oslo.
12:27. My time-centric approach to things. Second, minutes, hours, weeks. 15 days for a new phase. June 5th. June 30th. I want to create a workflow. A workflow that works for me. For sharing. For writing. For being in the moment, and expressing myself in that moment for my future moments.
Reading authors like Thomas Espedal gives me courage. To explore a certain path. And an urge to walk more. Among other things. Walking, not using the bicycle or the tram (as much as I Love the tram in Oslo; the old SL-79 model, not the loathesome SL-18 model).
Reading. Writing. Watching. Feeling. Smelling. Hearing.
How many senses are there? Do I often consider proprioception as often as I consider my sight? What about my gut feeling? Is that it’s own sense? Intuition. Some years ago I learned that the stomach has neurons (random link). Now, Human Design talks a lot about the gut, well, I guess they use other fancy words. As a generator in their classification system, the theory (I consider it theory, just like I consider astrology or religion theory, which you may or may not believe in, but can still be useful) talks about how I should listen more to my gut. The “Yes!”, the “uh-huh” (no) [I hate the tribalism of such movements, it’s like yoga at times, or veganism, or other things]. Anyway. I have become more aware of my gut feeling, scanning things. In a library, a big library, my eye suddenly “connects” with a book, and I end up borrowing it, and the book gave me something. Do I have to believe that there is a mystical power behind it? No. Of course not. But I still experiment with my gut feeling, my reaction to things, people, situations.
Anyway, what was my question?
12:43. Time to go outside!
[Video of process; 49m31s / 391MB]