Later yesterday, I found a single glass jar that had escaped the fate of its brethren.  I would have taken it to the city today to dump it with the others in the glass container, but instead I pulled the flowers up from the trash can and put them in the the glass jar with water.  That way they will die more slowly, and isn’t that what we all want?

Under the perspective of eternity – or even geology – we are all withering like flowers at the height of our strength.  But each day is another day.  For now, I feel fine.  Well, except for the mowing of the lawn.  “What does not kill us makes us stiff and sore.”

This was the sight that met me when I came home from work.  A flower bouquet on my doorstep. I immediately thought someone had misdelivered it, of course, and hopefully it was a close enough neighbor that I could just walk over with it.  But as I came close, I saw that it was my name and address on the label.

My next reaction was “wtf sick joke”.  Next “talk to the flower company and see if I can find some way to trace it and find out who this sicko is, then decide what to do  to make him regret.”

Before doing that, however, I looked at the package of flowers more closely. Something was wrong – I know almost nothing about flowers, but shouldn’t there be at least some white if they were celebrating someone’s death? I believe I have read so.  And then I saw that there was a different text on a card inside. And it had the sender.  Turned out it was from my fellow staff at my old workplace (where I was employed for nearly three decades until last Friday).

Relieved, I dumped the package unopened in the trash can.  I don’t have a vase.  I had one when I was young, because I won it in some high school competition where I came in as the third best in the country. Can’t remember what it was we competed in, but it was either maths or economics I think. Probably economics, since it was sponsored by a bank. Anyway, it is a fairly small country, and the vase was probably not very valuable. It was made of heavy glass, which is called “crystal” around here even though it is not crystalline but just glass with some lead mixed in, I believe.  I took it with me home to my birth family after high school, but I thought perhaps I had brought it with me again when I got the job a few months later.  I can’t find it here though, so either I don’t have it or it is buried along with some stuff I haven’t opened after I moved.  If it is here, hopefully I will eventually find it when I have thrown away enough stuff.  (I try to throw away something every day.)  But it will probably be months if not years until I can say for sure whether I have a vase or not.  The flowers won’t last that long.

It is kind of sad, you know. It is too late for the flowers, and it is too late for me.  I no longer take pleasure in the death of innocent plants, the way humans do.  But perhaps I should still pick them up from the trash can and place them someplace where I can see them slowly die, just like you can see me fading from this world through the glass between us. Until only a memory of lost beauty and needless suffering remains.  Memento mori. “All things made of parts will eventually come apart.”

Today was hot. Really hot.  Well, not by most of the world’s standards, of course, but this is Norway.  It can’t be helped, since it is summer, but I am weak to heat.  And since the summer is so short, almost no one has air conditioning.  (Except in their cars.)

A couple years ago I talked to the landlord about getting installed a two-way heat pump, which would provide heat in the winter and cool in the summer.  The utility offered to install it at no immediate cost, and just add the payment to the electricity bill over the course of several years.  Since it would save a good deal of heating in winter, the price would not be excessively higher than before.  I was all for it, and I would after all be the one paying it for as long as I stayed here. But I can’t just modify the house without the consent of the landlord, and he (not living here) just evaded the topic.  So I am stuck in the heat.

I have a moderately large fan that I use on the hottest days, but that is not all good either.  My body is then colder on one side than the other, and does not know quite what to do.  And of course a fan does not actually cool down the air.  It just makes more air pass by the body, so my sweat evaporates more quickly rather than collecting on the skin.  I still lose a good deal of water, and tend to not drink enough.  I try, though.

Another trick I use is to keep my hair wet.  It has a pretty large surface, what with all the individual hairs, from which the water can evaporate.  And that water does not have to pass through my body first.  If worst comes to worst, I will apply water elsewhere too.  It is not like I wear more than the barest minimum of clothes anyway.

But I write this each summer, don’t I?