Category Archives: slice of life

The explosion that wasn’t

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Something really strange happened last night, at 2AM. Lately I haven’t been awake as late as 2AM, but last night I was, for various reasons.  I was not even in bed, although I was going there soon.  A train had just passed by.  There are a couple houses and a road between here and the railway track, but when the heavy goods trains pass at their best speed, it still makes the house shake a little.  I have gotten used to it, so it doesn’t wake me if I am already asleep, but I sure notice it when I’m awake.  This was a pretty heavy one, so I consciously noticed.

Half a minute later, perhaps, I heard a single explosion, and the house jumped, but only once.  It was not even like thunder, rolling over a distance. It was just one single BOOM, as if someone fired off a cannon nearby.  But obviously people in this quiet neighborhood don’t have cannons.

I got up, put on clothes, checked the basement (nothing unusual there) and went out. I went as far as to the railway station, about five minutes walk, but nowhere did I see or hear anything unusual at all.  If it had been that far away and still so loud, it would have had the whole neighborhood awake, but I was the only one around.  There were no unusual sounds or sights or even smells. Well, there was a strange chemical smell when I passed the closest neighbor, but it had been there in the afternoon too, when I mowed the lawn, many hours before.

I went to bed eventually, and got up and it was daylight, but still nothing strange anywhere.  I have just written it off by now.

Mostly in jest I thought perhaps it happened in the parallel world that my bathroom is connected to. You see, this house has a nice enough bathroom, considering that it is from around 1970. The tub is a bit cramped for me, but was probably ideal for the grandparent generation.  Anyway, it is a nice bathroom except that I often hear voices there. Not in the bathroom itself, but just outside.  However, one of the lawns is outside. When I check, there is no one there, and no one visible or audible around the neighbor’s house either. The voices sound very much like Norwegian, in the sounds and the tone, but I can never understand what they say.  They are slightly distorted, so that I almost think I might understand it if they spoke a little more clearly, but it never happens.

If the voices are not enough, there are the smells.  Now, we all know that bathrooms can smell.  That is not what I am talking about.  There are smells that don’t come from anything in my house.  The strongest one is of turpentine or white spirit or some such.  It happens some days and can last for hours.  There is no such thing in the house that I know of.  Sometimes it smells of flowers or perhaps some kind of shampoo or something with flower smell.  None of mine are like that.  It is not always the same, I think. It generally does not last as long as the turpentine smell though.  The smell is generally not at the same time as the voices, though I won’t say it has never happened.

Most likely there is some way the plumbing is carrying sound (and smell) from one of the neighbors further away.  I really doubt there is a parallel earth that is connected to ours through my bathroom, even though that would certainly explain it all.  If so, I’m afraid they had a very bad night there.  I will feel a slight jolt of relief when I next hear the voices outside, knowing that they are still alive… wherever they are.

Trip: Done!

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Amazingly, I actually did make it to the train, and to the 5 hours introduction to the new software in Oslo.  Count me more surprised than anyone else.  I even could not sleep more than about an hour and a half in the night.  It was a warm and itchy night, but even after a shower I still could not sleep.  That is pretty rare for me.

The taxi was on time, and the train was mostly empty. I had a double seat for myself to curl up.  Even so, I only slept lightly and for a fairly short time.  I did spend some time meditating though.  Still, I was barely conscious during the first hours of the presentation. Luckily I was not the one presenting, and luckily I did not actually get qwerty on my face. I think I got most of what we were supposed to.

Oh, and I had the invitation mail and the road map on my mobile phone, which came in quite handy to find the place.  I hadn’t been there in something like 10 years, and I my sense of direction is somewhat like a parrot fresh out of its cage. I was afraid I would have to use the GPS and Google maps, but the mail and attachments were enough (despite a false start.)

The train home was a bit slower, and also I spent the first half of it with only one seat, which made it hard to sleep.  After a while the guy beside me left.  He was probably just fed up with me cuddling up to him. ^_^ After that I slept well for a while and was not tired at all for the rest of the evening.

I left home a bit before 5 AM and came back a bit past 22 (10PM).  In my physical mailbox was a package from Amazon with the movie “Peaceful Warrior”.  It is not particularly good, don’t buy it.  Just borrow it.  Luckily it was fairly cheap, at least by Norwegian standards. Some people I kinda know have been talking about it so I got curious.  I guess there is always the Pirate Bay, but for some reason they seem to have a shortage of spiritual films…

Anyway, with that there was no time left, quite the opposite.

Travel day

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When this entry is posted, I should be on my way to Oslo, for my job.  I bought train tickets online on Monday, and fetched them at the railway station yesterday.  All is in readiness, for casual values of readiness.

Based on the past, however, I will probably not be on that train.  Something will have happened to keep me from going.  Most likely I got sick during the night or in the morning. But I may also have overslept despite having both my clock radio and mobile phone set to 4AM.  The taxi that should take me to the train station did not find my address, or the road was blocked for some reason.  I read the wrong time on the ticket, despite reading it 10 times.  I forgot the tickets.  I have no idea what, but for the last couple years or more I have been virtually unable  to travel any long distance.

And I used to enjoy traveling with train, too.  Oh well.  Let us see what happens this time.

Happy Science and hard work

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di090809

“I’ll show you the kind of work angels do” – they are always ready to help people become more happy.  Even in Europe.

Late Saturday night I got a mail from the helpful contact person at IRHH Europe.  The abbreviation is for Institute for Research in Human Happiness, recently updated to the shorter, more catchy “Happy Science”, which supposedly is also a translation of their Japanese name, Kofuku-no-Kagaku.  I don’t know nearly enough Japanese to say for sure. Luckily they have a European branch, in London. I inquired there as to buying their movies, but I had not expected them to be working late at night on a Saturday.  Clearly other people’s happiness is more important to them than relaxing on the weekend. Perhaps they are like the bodhisattvas of the anime, whose joy was in helping others.

Unfortunately, the movies are only available in Japan, but they would try to see if there was a way to buy them from there.  They also told me that there will be a showing of one of their movies in Oslo on August 29!  Unfortunately this is in the Swine Flu season, and I still have all the other problems with travel because of my digestion.  But it would certainly been interesting to see it on the big screen, and meet some of the locals.  Although I fear this might disappoint me.  I have found religious organizations that proselytize tend to have a disturbingly high content of glassy-eyed people with a dysfunctional relationship to things like work, humans, and self-image.  (As in, the self-image is grossly exaggerated relative to the  rest.)

At least Happy Science encourages people to study and work hard and act in the best interest of other people. Do the actual members live according to this?  I don’t know. If they do, they would certainly soon have a noticeable effect toward a better world. And in any case, it certainly seems the European branch office lives the way it teaches.

One week later

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di090808

This is a lot like me without GPS. (It’s actually from the Laws of Eternity though.)

A week after the half-day fever and the onset of the super hemorrhoid, I can barely feel anything at all.  There is only the slightest hint of blood, and I can live my life as usual. I haven’t quite done that, and ideally I never will.  One should take advantage of learning experiences like this.

I spent literally hours today trying to find out where I can buy the movies by Happy Science. I have seen snippets from three of them  on YouTube, including the latest, the Laws of Eternity, which I have seen in full (albeit in a low-resolution download) and will review tomorrow.

In the end, I sent a mail to their European contact address.  Hopefully they won’t track me down, kidnap me and brainwash me into worshiping El Cantare. I love their anime (see tomorrow) but I see it as pious fiction.  Kind of like the “Left Behind” series… if Left Behind was written by happy, optimistic technologists instead of angry, frightened Luddites.

I still haven’t bought tickets to the job course in Oslo next week. I probably should. Unless something new happens, I should be able to go, as long as I don’t stray too far from the nearest toilet.  And with my new phone with GPS and Google Maps I should be able to find my way despite having the sense of direction of a drunk badger. The main problem could be to dodge the Swine Flu.  It has begun its attack on Norway now (tourists have brought it home from abroad), although it is set to explode only when the schools open.

Feeling better day

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di090806

“I didn’t know that angels were making so much effort.”  From the anime “The Laws of Eternity”.  It seems eerily fitting.

I am feeling much better today.  Amazingly so, actually.  It is almost hard to believe.  And I am not sure whether it is going to last.  But I do enjoy it for now.  I have not felt this good since last Friday before the fever.  (Although I still view the bike with horror and revulsion…)

On my way home from work, I even thought that I ought to try mowing the lawn again. I have not been able to do this for the almost a week I have been ill, and I decided I would have to be very careful about it.  But I just could not let it grow any taller if there was a reasonable chance to do something about it without serious harm to my body.

When I came home, however, there was a car in front of the house.  The landlord’s mother and grandmother were just about to leave.  The landlord had already left.  Before that, however, he had used the motorized lawnmower on all the lawns.  I appreciate that, although I suspect he did not appreciate having to do it.  Especially since the tool shed, in which the mower was stored, was now the home of a tribe of wasps.  They were very unhappy over being disturbed and had stung.  I wish this could have been avoided, but honestly, for the last week any physical work has been just plain unthinkable.  I might as well try to jump over the roof.

The wasps are still there, but at least it is far from the doors, so I can come and go safely.

Last night I watched an animated movie till 2AM.  This used to be my normal bedtime for a long while, but lately I have gone to bed around midnight for some reason.  The movie was “Laws of Eternity”. It is kind of based on the book by the same name, except not really.  The movie is a story about four young people who travel to the spirit world – the afterlife, if you will – while still alive, and get the grand tour.  The layout of the spirit world is based on the book, which is technically non-fiction, although I suspect few people outside the sect would agree with this. I didn’t mind the preachy explanations, I was just happy to find an anime that represented the universe as layered in a vaguely similar way to what I described two days ago.  Full review to come, I hope.  I have tried twice now writing a review, but decided to watch it again before that.  It is kind of weird to see such a likable anime supposedly made by a fascist.  Then again sects always get put in a bad light, so who knows.

I can understand why the anime is so hated by the typical anime audience though. To the otaku, the ideals of purity in thought and selfless service to mankind must burn like the fire of Muspellheim.  But for me, it may be just what the doctor ordered.

OMG I’m bleeding!

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di090805

I could need some help of the toilet fairy, actually. Or some other higher power, I guess.

Real life Divine Butt Attack Punishment progressed today to its next level, that of bleeding hemorrhoids. At the very least.

I have spent the time from this past Friday afternoon till now with a painfully swollen hemorrhoid (not counting my usual suite of itchy hemorrhoids, which are probably still there, just paling in comparison).  Today, at work, during a visit to the toilet, the hemorrhoid broke and painted the inside of the toilet bowl in bright red.  This was not a complete shock, but still unexpected because the hemorrhoid was external, as far as I could feel.  (It might be internal and protruding, but if so it has certainly not been inside for a long time. It is kind of hard for me to see, you know, where the sun never shines.)

In any case, my first ever bleeding hemorrhoid. Another complication!  Now to avoid getting it infected, and still giving it a chance to heal.  At home I can shower after each defecation, as I already habitually do. It should remove most fecal matter, but of course it also keeps the sore fresh. Certainly cuts on my hands stay open for quite a while if I wash them regularly.  Anyway, at work I don’t have the option of showering my anus, and that’s where I usually dump the heavy ballast during the workweek.

Online sites are vague on the practicalities, as they either are aimed at the medical student or peddle some herbal remedy (for the simpler sites) or some hi-tec surgery (for the more professional sites).  Given the very high survival rates, however, the human body must have some way of resisting the resultant infections, I suppose.  Either that or the Secret to treating hemorrhoids is passed down from mother to daughter during the first pregnancy.  I doubt that though, giving the relationship between generations for the first 30 or so years.

On the bright side, the constant pain of the last 4 days is gone. There may be another pain when infection sets in, but for now, being able to be conscious without feeling acute pain is pretty awesome.  And I have enough blood for a long time if it continues this sparingly.

I may not be that lucky, however.  There is still the invisible knife in the belly. And it still happens, even after the hemorrhoid broke.  I have found out when it happens:  A couple to a few minutes before the urge of a bowel movement.  It distinctly starts in a point in the lower rectum (but not outside, where the hemorrhoid was) and then stabs through to the front, somewhere to the right of the belly button but clearly front rather than side. It is brief (so far) but intense. Because of the timing, I must conclude that the stool passing through the lower rectum hits some kind of irregularity.

Yes, that is a bad thing.  Possibly a very bad thing. And I suspect that even finding out whether it is a bad thing (like an internal hemorroid or diverticule) or a very bad thing (like cancer or a   weak spot in the rectal wall about to break) will require an all-out colonoscopy, which is known as the front porch of Hell in itself, or at least Purgatory.  Then again, in the memorable words of a fellow Dark Age of Camelot player years ago, “dyin suxx”.

And of course, the Swine Flu is starting to hit Norway, and may shut down most of the rest of our health system until winter.  I may try to sneak a doctor appointment in before that, but at the risk of contracting the flu in the waiting room.  I can’t see it making my condition any better. But then again, most people my age have bumpy rectum, so… it may not kill me.  Or even put me first in the hospital line. I mean, I waited most of a summer with a lump in my breast, so I don’t really expect express boarding card with a bloody hemorrhoid.

At least all who think I am a pain in the behind can now rejoice in the Divine Butt Attack Punishment.

Health, Hell, Oblivion and Niflheim

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di090804

O Lord, forgive me.  In particular, forgive me for downloading the anime Butt Attack Punisher Girl, from which this picture is taken.  To say that it is not safe for work is an understatement. Combining elements of Christianity, Buddhism and Butt Punishment, it is not even safe for home even if you are alone in the house.  I did get this screenshot though before deleting it.  What profits it a man if he gains a truly rare old anime but loses his soul?

You can usually suspect that my health is not in the top ten days when I start writing about religion. If it gets really bad, I may even pull out the Bible, which will almost invariably threaten me with horrible death and doom.  This is as it should be, as the same book says, “Serpentspawn! Who taught you to flee the coming wrath?”  But there is also a more practical reason why I usually just open the book to some instance of the Wrath of the Lord:  The Bible consists mostly (in quantity, I mean) of divine wrath.

If you are a casual Christian, or just raised in a Christian society, you may have the opposite impression.  Based on the Bible quotes you hear most often, and especially all the pious talk that is not actually Bible quotes at all, it is reasonable to suspect (as many atheists do) that religion is opium for the masses, an attempt to soothe their fear of the unknown and unknowable, of which death is the greatest.  If only!  Once you start reading the book for yourself, you will see that God’s main project is not to comfort people, but to make them LESS comfortable. It is more of a loud alarm clock than a lullaby. There is page after page threatening loss, ruin, pain and a humiliating death unless the reader takes the spoon in the other hand and repents. Perhaps even then, but at least then there may be a chance.  The God of the Bible is NOT impressed with the dominant species of the planet, and he goes into great detail on the issue.

With the wisdom of Solomon, I predict that the atheists who dismissed the Bible as an attempt to placate people will be even less eager to get in line when it turns out to be the opposite. Oh well. What I want to write about today is equally valid for atheists and theists, and probably equally offensive to both as well. We’ll also stop by Norse mythology and a point where it is disturbingly exact.  Still, let’s start with a quote from the Bible:

“But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.”

This probably means something to you if you are a Christian. To me, it means not being a hikikomori. I bet that was not what you expected.  Let me explain.

In Japan, the hikikomori (person who stays in their room) is an extreme case of the otaku,  a person obsessed with comics, animated TV series or computer games. By spending an inordinate amount of time and thought on these topics, the otaku (usually a young man) becomes gradually unable to live in the real world.  He withdraws to home and eventually to his own room, neglects practicalities down to even personal hygiene, satisfying only the basic needs of the body as needed to remain alive and obsessed.  Due to the strong sense of family duty in Asia, parents will usually provide for these men quietly.

As we see, the hikikomori has withdrawn from the  hard reality of ordinary life, into a world of daydream, a small world where they are in control.  As a result, they are destroyed as humans, specifically their sanity.

Regardless of the local culture, anyone who withdraws from reality to live in daydream will experience dissolution.  They enter into a sea of chaos, losing sanity and energy.  You can say they lose substance, “like a slug that dissolves as it moves” to throw another Bible quote at you.  (Slug here being the mollusc, not the projectile.)

You may at first glance think that the hikikomori is similar to the hermit. And for some hermits, unfortunately, this is true.  Withdrawal, loss of mental substance, and outright insanity are very possible threats for those who seek solitude.  However, this is clearly not the case for all hermits. Some of the greatest thinkers throughout the ages were either complete or partial hermits.  This is because the everyday world – consensus reality – lies not on the end of the spectrum of reality, but somewhere in the middle.  There are worlds that are MORE real than this one, just like there are many worlds that are LESS real.  I have written about this extensively in the past.  One easy example of a higher world is that of mathematics.  Just like we create lower worlds, we are created through higher worlds.

The ancient Norsemen believed that the cosmos came to be in the meeting of two extremes: The fiery heat of Muspellheim and the freezing cold of Niflheim. From their meeting, the beginning of all substance emerged.

This is surprisingly similar to my current metaphysics.  I believe that the multi-layered universe is a thick multidimensional membrane between two non-existences:  The void, the absolute empty nothingness, and the Ground of Being, the absolute and undivided First Principle, which is also no-thing in the sense that it cannot be described as part of creation.

The universe available to man then has a gradient of reality. Some of the realms accessible to mind are less real than ordinary life, while others are MORE real.  By using the realms of mathematics and physics, we can predict and influence the ordinary world with great leverage. Modern society depends on this for its very existence.  Think of the people who traveled in their minds into the realm of nuclear physics, and how the work of these few adventurers changed the course of human history forever.

Less visible are the effects of those who have colonized the worlds of ideas, or the “mythical” worlds of  religion.  Yet some of the people who were active in these mental realms have changed the course of history in their own very drastic ways.  By adapting to a more real world, they grew more real themselves, becoming “larger than life” and able to exert enormous influence.  This is quite a contrast to those who have adapted to the LESS real worlds – they become powerless to even control their own lives.

Living near consensus reality, I have never ventured truly far in either direction, although I have some familiarity with neighboring realms. But I cannot imagine how it feels to draw close to Niflheim, the absolute zero (for cold is the absence of energy), where life is drained of all color and warmth, and even the sense of self dissolves into nothingness.  Nor can I imagine the white-hot fire of Muspellheim, the Forge of Creation,  beyond all myth, all symbols, and all natural laws, where all laws of nature are unified not just in theory but in experience, where pure existence wells up from something that is beyond even existence itself.

So, as Microsoft used to say: “Where do you want to go today?”

Better and worse

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The days pass,  and it gets a little easier to live with the super hemorrhoid.  And then today, a few times, something more sinister happens.  Suddenly there is a twitch of pain in the hemorrhoids, and immediately a knife-sharp pain of great magnitude stabs the FRONT of my belly, on the same side (slightly right of center), above the belt but below the thoracic diaphragm.

(Do people really say “diaphragm”?  An ordinary thing needs a more ordinary name. In Norwegian we refer to the sheet of muscle below the lungs as “mellomgolv”, middle floor or in-between floor. I can’t see people using the same word for the essential breathing muscle and a contraceptive, but then again English is a weird language spoken by weird people.)

Anyway, I survived, at least this far.  But it was out of the ordinary painful, although it only lasted for less than a second.  Instinctively I  jumped out of my current position, and the pain both here and there ceased immediately, leaving only a cold, numb echo along the front of my belly, running vaguely vertically.

Since it only happens when I sit on reasonably full bowels and since it can be felt both in front (most intensely) and behind (less so), I ass-sume it to be an effect of the rhoids. If not, I would just as well have guessed kidney sand – I have heard that sudden, extreme pain can happen when a grain is moving down through the urinary tract, which probably is somewhere around there? But that goes nowhere near the anus at any time, quite the opposite.

Anyway, the illness is still fascinating for me, although I bet it is a lot less interesting for everyone else.

Unfortunately it also means I can’t mow the lawn, and it is growing like crazy in the ever changing sun and rain of the last week.  If I have to stay off it for another week, it will be seriously hairy, and the landlord will NOT be pleased.  As if this wasn’t problematic enough to begin with. It was from mowing while weak from fever that I got this in the first place, after all.  I am not ready to risk making it even much worse by trying to mow again until reasonably healed.

Forced Sabbath

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di090801

OK, I guess I have been a lot like this lately.  Perhaps an emergency brake was needed. It is still a pain in the ass, though. Literally.

This morning I felt better from the hemorrhoids. Not like they were gone or anything, but bearable. I decided against going to the city to look for some topical medication. (Subconsciously it may have played a role that going to the city would mean sitting on a hard  bus seat for half an hour…) Anyway, I probably made a mistake. It’s evening now, and the pain has returned to a level similar to yesterday. Perhaps not quite as bad, or perhaps I’m getting used to it.

In any case, the pain makes it impractical for me to sit for a long time, and especially in the position I normally use when I type or play. So if I had planned to spend most of the day playing City of Heroes, forget that. (That would at the face of it seem a reasonable plan, because it is currently “double XP weekend” in the game, an event that happens only a few times a year and draws a lot of players.

(Incidentally, I have been dictating this entry so far, but I am not kidding when I say I usually don’t speak anymore. My throat has more or less run out by now!)

I have been playing a bit, but I’m not really in the mood. Not just because the sitting is a pain in the ass, but I also occasionally feel queasy and begin shivering for a while. My heart is also beating faster then. But the temperature only goes up by about half a degree Celsius, then it stops, and a bit later I begin sweating and feel better. I am not sure whether or not this is related to the hemorrhoids. From what I have been reading (and I have been reading quite a bit last night) hemorrhoids are almost never life-threatening. If they could actually get infected, you’d think they would be a cause for much more concern. Anyway! The feeling is not conductive to lighthearted gaming.

The mood is more suitable to contemplate “the shortness of life, the certainty of death and the length of eternity”. (That was a favorite phrase in the good old days of the Christian Church. Actually, I am not sure eternity even has length or duration. I mean, it is always eternity! Even now. We just don’t notice.)

I have been told that this was the true purpose of the Sabbath, to make room in time to become aware of eternity. By setting aside a day of sacred time, people got their break from the endless march of seemingly important everyday events and got closer to timelessness. That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. But it is probably just a few scattered mystics here and there who perceive it that way. I mean, Christians used to have the Sunday as a holy day, although they did not enforce it quite as strictly. But for 45 years I never heard anyone talk about eternity as anything other than an infinitely long duration of time. Certainly not as something that is always waiting just outside our reach, waiting for us to invite it into time.

Then again, perhaps you have to enforce the Sabbath fiercely for it to work? Now that Sunday is just a day off, it is so easy to just fill it with all kinds of fun stuff. Inviting the restlessness of the rest of the week into the day of rest of the week, to coin a pun. Instead of inviting the opposite, the timelessness that encloses time, which is at the beginning of time and at the end of time and at the present moment, like the sky that is always above us every time we stop and look up, no matter where on the road we are. The only moment that is quite real is now. Well, that’s not quite right: Every moment is real, but you can only access one at a time. And every time we do that, every time we stop and look up (even metaphorically), time and eternity meet.

But usually we don’t stop, we just keep running,  even just for fun.  We’ll get to eternity sooner or later anyway, of course, but will we be at home there?  I wonder.  I don’t feel very at home with eternity right now, let me tell you.