These are pieces of ice that have accumulated and frozen together, not churning waters. As I said yesterday, a night ago the river froze over. Barring some unexpected news, it will stay that way till spring.

I have  acquired some more respect for the elderly couple who used to live here before the house was fixed up a bit and rented out to me. It was almost certainly no better insulated then, possibly less. And frankly the electric fuses don’t allow me to heat the whole house even if I wanted to waste that much money. (At least the couple did not have to pay rent, but I am sure they had their expenses on the house as well.) So they probably had to sleep in an ice cold bedroom, and huddle in the living room for the four months of the year which real winter lasts around here.

This is how winter in Norway was until my childhood or thereabout, when people started building windtight, insulated homes. I remember my early childhood living in a house like this, but then my father had it insulated in various ways. And at least we did not get the northern wind ever, because the mountains loomed over us in that direction. Here, the valley runs north-south, so the old folks must have had this howling northern wind every winter. Evidently they still survived well into old age, though.

If I don’t reach the ripe old age of my ancestors, it will probably not be because of the house. What gets at people in this time and age is something else, namely stress.

I am rereading “Tips to Find Happiness – Creating a Harmonious Home for Your Spouse, Your Children and Yourself” by Ryuho Okawa. I feel as ambivalent about this man as ever. It is just disturbing to think that someone of his obvious intelligence and even wisdom would pretend to be God, even in a manner of speaking. Luckily this is one of the many books in which he does not bring up the matter of his divinity at all, though he does recommend reading his books and listening to his lectures to get Heavenly light in your life.  Then again, I wish I could recommend you read the Chaos Node to get Heavenly light into your life. Perhaps one day. Right now it is a bit flickering, I guess.

Anyway, the view of health and illness that he presents in this book is very similar to my own view. It takes (as befits the Buddha) a middle path: Not the chemical materialism of modern medicine, and not the “faith healing” approach of some religious movements where illness is seen as a proof of sin. Some illness cannot be avoided, says Mr Okawa, but often illness is a result of stress, and this can be greatly reduced with the right attitude.

In addition to the modern concept of stress, Mr Okawa also operates with the Mahayana Buddhist concepts of negative spiritual influences, which may come from dead people but also from the living. The mind of a human has the ability to influence other people’s bodies, but only through their own mind. If your mind glows with divine life, negative influences will not be able to attach to you, whether they come from the living or the dead.

This theory of spiritual influences may sound pretty weird to us, but it is really similar to Jung’s theory of complexes: Independent balls of thought or emotion living in the subconscious, which may be formed by our experiences with other people (living or dead) or archetypes, generic ideas of our culture or the human race. So it is not some “hocus pocus”, it is the way the human mind works. These complexes can be counterproductive, sometimes very much so, making us do things we know are bad ideas, but suddenly we do them anyway or even just realize that we have done them, like staying up half the night reading a book, or eating lots of unhealthy foods. These things don’t just happen, there are these dark dust bunnies of the soul pulling our strings.

As you may guess, I am a little out of my best shape myself. Something vaguely sinus related seems to bother my head, and my eyes and nose and throat are all sore. So is the skin on the back of my hands. I should probably do something about this dry air.  That, and shine more brightly with inner light. ^_^

Not quite “in hoc signo vinces”…

…but at least a sign that I managed to write 50 000 words of more or less coherent novel text during National Novel Writing Month. So that’s a step up from last year, although I have made it twice before.

In the end, the story that grew to 50 000 words was “TSI”, my fanfic for the movie “Buddha Saitan” (The Rebirth of Buddha) based on a book by Ryuho Okawa. The connection to the movie is actually quite loose: The eponymous organisation is referenced numerous times in the movie and also in my story, but there is very little about the actual organization in the movie. We know that they have meetings in large halls where Taiyou Sorano, the Buddha Reborn, speaks in simple but deeply moving and uplifting words to the congregation, who then begin to glow with an inner light (presumably only visible to spiritual sight, as the main character of the movie has).

Unfortunately my story takes place in a nameless city in the USA, so Master Sorano only appears on a big screen. Plus, the city only has about 150 TSI members at the time of the book, so it is unlikely that any bigger events will take place unless my hero makes a trip to the nearest temple (or whatever they are called in TSI).

The story is therefore mostly slice of life, with none of the movie characters actually appearing in person. (This has the benefit that I might rewrite it into a non-fanfic if need be, but that would take most of the fun out of it for me.) The story is told in first person by a male college student, born and raised in America by Japanese parents. Things don’t go too well in college: He begins to go drinking and partying in order to have sex, which is a long time in coming (insert bitter comments about prejudices against Japanese male reproductive apparatus here) and even when it finally happens it is not all it was supposed to be. He turns to online gaming, and gets totally hooked. His grades decline further. All things collapse.  His father gets a terminal illness, his love life goes straight down the drain as his online girlfriend turns out to be a guy, and his online guild is destroyed by his careless mistake. Lonely and miserable he cries alone in the park, when a small girl comes by and gives him a book of Master Sorano’s Teachings of the Mind.

Actually, his father still dies and his love life still sucks, but now he has Buddha’s Truth and friends he can trust, so he is happy anyway. ^_^

Well, a lot of things happens. After all, if slice of life was interesting, people could just read my journal instead, right? So there are dreams and visions and girls with crushes and guardian angels and stuff, not as dramatic as the movie but more dramatic than watching other people’s kids play soccer.

I still have water in the kitchen, long my it last! The river froze over tonight. Still no snow.

There are only small spots of snow outside, but this morning the temperature was -9 degrees (for the 6.5 billion people who use Celsius, 16 degrees above zero for the few who use Fahrenheit.)

Unfortunately, these temperatures means that my water will freeze, given half a chance, since it runs in pipes in the ground under the house with no insulation. Experience from last winter shows that it has no effect to heat the rooms above to hotter than summer temperature. The heat does not travel down into the ground, at least not enough to make a difference. The only way to keep the pipes from freezing when it gets below -4 or so, is to keep the water dripping. Because I thought of this yesterday, I still have water in the kitchen. The bathroom has only hot water, but that’s not a big deal. The shower is frozen until the weather turns warm again, whether that is next week or next year. It does not have a drip option, just on/off, so if I had kept it running there would have been no hot water in the house. I suppose I could have gotten up every couple hours and turned it on for a little while, but I don’t think that is a viable lifestyle for the duration of the winter.

I’m renting the house, so digging up the pipes to insulate them is probably not an option either. Still, for as long as I can remember to put the faucets to dripping each night, I should be fine. I grew up before the age of showers, after all.

The wind has lessened, but walking to the shop and back is still a dangerous proposal for an old man. This winter, it seems that my heart is always lurching when I am outside in freezing cold for a few minutes. By “lurching” I mean it is like it tries to change speed but gives up immediately, or something like that. It is almost certainly harmless. Heart problems seem to be so rare in my family, if I get them it is likely to be by divine intervention. Whenever I have had doctors check my heart, they tend to wish it was their own. Still, I’m opting for bus for now.

Today I took the bus to the city again and bought plenty of cheese, and some other stuff. Two bags of groceries. It won’t last long, my appetite is gearing up for the winter too. When I am cold much of the time, I tend to compensate by burning more calories, and then I compensate for that again by eating more.

Forecasts say it will get a little less cold on Monday (but still below freezing) and at that time there will be snow and strong wind. So I guess the summer is over for this time! ^_^

It was only about one degree below freezing when I set out for the grocery shop this afternoon, a fairly reasonable temperature as I saw it. But I had not gone far before the howling wind from the north convinced me that thermometers are not telling the whole truth. Still, I felt fine, so I continued walking the half-hour road to the shop, even though there was nothing I urgently needed. I just wanted some yogurt and such, I had eaten the last of my yogurt during the weekend.

After about 20 minutes, I started to realize that I had underestimated the power of wind chill. But by then I was most of the way there, so I kept walking. By the time I arrived, I could only apologize silently for being an idiot.  I felt strangely weak, and was still cold after walking for half an hour, something that is rare. Walking briskly produces a good deal of heat.

The walk home was easier, as I had the wind at my back, but it was still chilly and I felt stiff and strangely weak, as if the northern wind somehow leeched my strength. That seems an unreasonable allegation, but a little while after I came home I sat down on the exercise bike, just sitting there for a while without pedaling, and my pulse was quite a bit higher than usual. Like 30 beats or more above normal.

When your pulse remains higher than usual for a while after training, it is because of what I call “body alchemy”, the changing of stuff into other stuff. Your muscles and liver rebuild their stock of glycogen, a molecule that very easily dissolves back into glucose. Glucose is used in the beginning of any physical activity, as it gives a quick clean energy and can even be used without extra oxygen for a little while.  When the body rebuilds this, the opposite happens:  You burn more fat while the sugar in your blood is used to build up these sugar spirals for next time. Burning fat is a much more complex task and requires plenty of oxygen, so your lungs and heart work a little more than usual.

So anyway, I have known for years that old people can get heart problems in the winter and die. That’s quite common actually. So I have a problem with the global warming journalists who count all the people who die during heat waves, but forget all the people who would have died if not for the mild winters. We are a tropical species after all.  But I used to assume these folks all died while shoveling snow. It certainly is hard work! But I wonder if even that is necessary.  My heart was definitely working harder than during a walk in summer or spring or fall.  I did not wear a pulse watch (it is out of batteries, which may well have been a good thing) but my pulse was quite high for a while. I could feel that.

So, a bit of a learning experience there. Now having eaten a pasta meal, I will definitely restore all my lost glycogen – and probably a little extra for just in case I do such a dumb thing again in the near future.  After all, doing dumb things is a habit with us humans.

I embrace space-age technology!

I had not left Holum since I came home on the last Friday in October. When I wanted more groceries (mostly yogurt and some Pepsi Raw) I walked to the shop across the bridge, some half an hour’s walk from home. Yesterday I tried to do that too, but it was below freezing and a strong wind, and after about 20 minutes my heart began to lurch so I turned around and walked home. It is not usually a big deal, but I usually sleep during the day and write in the night now (following American time while living in Norway) so I had gone a long time without sleeping. Not the best time to test my blizzard resistance, I cautiously concluded.

So today I went to Kristiansand again. That’s the city (by Norwegian standards at least) where I work. I had planned to not do that until the very end of the month. My bus card expired near the beginning of the month, so I could have saved about $200 by staying home all month. It is not like I have much to do in the city, since I can’t go to work during my vacation. Norway has enforced 5 weeks of vacation, so I have to take a month off whether I want to or not. I use that time for NaNoWriMo, since that would distract me from my work (and the other way around) anyway.

Taking the bus to the city felt pleasantly familiar. It is a great time for reading as well as checking everyone’s FaceBook.

In the city I went to the local phone shop and looked at various android phones. My HTC Hero is still working fine, except that it no longer plays the songs from my Opera Unite server in the Flash applet. I have to download them and play them in some other music player, which is inconvenient. So I asked them if the newest HTC they had could do that. (It is called HTC Desire HD and looks to be a great device, but I hate the name with a vengeance. Can you imagine Jesus or the Buddha lugging around a device named “desire”? What’s next, “HTC Rumors” or perhaps “HTC Homesickness”?) Anyway, the shop did not know and the importer did not know (we talked with them on the phone). They recommended trying a third-party Flash.

I also looked at the Galaxy Tab, a thing with a size in between a mobile phone and an iPad. It is nifty, but does not fit into a shirt pocket and probably not all jackets either. And it is badly overpriced right now. In the end, I did not buy anything, as expected.

Afterwards I went to the library. I don’t remember when I was there last time. I am quite sure I have not actually borrowed books there this century, but I do have a library card from 1993 so I did use it as late as that. Of course they don’t use that kind of cards anymore, it was not even magnetic, much less a smart card like people use today. I think I have stopped by a few times later without borrowing anything, but I am not sure how long ago even that was. Years for sure.

They sure have a lot of books. I read a little in some Norse mythology. Perhaps I am going to continue my “Shadow of Yggdrasil” novel at some point, but currently I enjoy writing my Rebirth of Buddha fanfic, with happy sect members doing happy things. Love, self-reflection, cute girls, wisdom, Buddha and eternal progress. Come the way you are and become like us!

Anyway, there sure were a lot of books, and it made me think. If the change of technology had slowed down instead of just speeding up more and more… if everyday technology today was roughly similar to 20 years ago, I would probably have spent a good deal of my free time in that library. When I was unemployed for 13 months back in the 1980es after the collapse of the yuppie boom, I spent much of the time in the library, and I believe I have benefited greatly from it. (I made my way through several of C.G. Jung’s books, including his autobiography which made an indelible mark on me, because it was frankly the first time I read about someone similar to myself, in their own words more or less.)

But of course the world did not stop or even slow down in 1990. And for the most part I embrace new technology heartily. For instance, today I embraced a new frying pan. (I eventually destroyed the old one by overheating it while playing a game. The voice in my heart alarmed me before it could actually catch fire, but the non-stick cover was ruined and it became very sticky and started burning my food.)

The new one is still space age tech, with Teflon coating. If I don’t overheat it, it may last until they invent nanotech frying pans. I am not sure what they will do that this one doesn’t, but I am fairly sure they will appear eventually.