Saturday October 6, 16:10. A 7Eleven in the centre of Gothenburg (or Göteborg as it is called in Swedish, and as some people are pushing for it to be called in English, too). By the window is two computer screens, and by one of them I am sitting. I have come here specifically to update this thing, as I've promised to do so every week and this may be the last good chance to do so before Monday. I'm waiting to hear from my parents, as I'm going to help them tonight and tomorrow with moving a couple of boats, and generally hang out with them at their summer house, where I'm not sure they will have brought a computer. Also, it may not be a good move to insist I have to go online as soon as I get there. And perhaps not very nice, either. I'll only be with them until the early afternoon tomorrow, but after that I'll be working until eight. (I'll tell y'all a bit more about work some other time. Or later in this post. If I don't die first, or the Internet dies or something. Maybe everything turns into marshmallow oak trees.) And then my girlfriend (
teh_ace ) would probably like me to give her some attention, rather than giving it to this journal.
So this is when I write (and now it's 16:28, the above took me 18 minutes to put together). And this is where I'm writing. I could have gone to the library instead and not had to pay, but I would be waiting on a call on my cellphone and I hesitated about going into the library knowing that the call was going to come and that I would have to take it. Also, I don't have my library card and I'm not sure I have my library card number (actually I am pretty sure I have it on a note in my pocket, but earlier I didn't even think about it) and I didn't really feel like going in with only my driver's license and ask for help with booking a computer.
And this is what I write. A pretty pointless text, so far, perhaps. Or at least it sort of seems that way to me. But only in some ways. First of all, it feels quite good sitting here just writing more or less what comes to me, in the order it comes to me. I am, after all, largely writing this for myself - necessarily so, until I manage to get some readers. Another thing I write for is documentation, giving the people of the future (including myself) some access to my life right now and the world around me, and for this purpose this kind of post is at least equally important as an "ode to vegetarisk sill". And finally, to a reader who just stumbles upon the text and who doesn't necessarily know me that well (or at all), I'm not sure it has to feel all that pointless and boring. If I'm wrong and it does, please feel free to ignore the rest of the text, and I'm sorry to have wasted your time. But I have a feeling this could have be read as a sort of short story, perhaps even a moderately interesting one. "We glimpse, but only glimpse, a Life in all its glory and tragedy, but also, and not the least..." sort of thing.
What I actually intended this to be, though I knew from the beginning I would simply write and let the result be what it happened to be, was a prose sketch of this particular place and time, with me (and my thoughts and memories and plans, and the gradual creation of this text) as the centre but ultimately as just one thing of many here. I don't know, it's been a lot about me so far and maybe that's okay. Still, I am one thing - one being of many - and that is an important part of my frame of mind at this moment. The city lives around me (though not in a very Manhattan kind of way). Many people passing, a few staying around a bit longer. Songs on the radio, succeeding eachother. Trees and houses, beautifully lit by the sun. Insects and spiders in the window. Autumn colors and leaves on the ground, but still quite a bit of green. Trams passing, for some local colour (though noone who reads this will probably fully appreciate the exoticness of this, as my most likely reader who does not live in Gothenburg lives in San Fransisco, which I think also has trams).
A reader will have made a mental picture by now. Correct or not is of course another matter. I'll have to leave soon(ish), and am trying to decide whether I should start filling out that picture with some more random details. I would prefer to give this text an ending that actually feels like it's finished. I want to read a friend's text about Facebook on the Swedish web community "helgon", I want to do some other Internet stuff before I go. Maybe we should call it a post?
Peace,
martinho