saywords

for one year I have not been writing

2010-12-28T16:35:00.003+01:00

in this blog as I have been on a Norwegian blog , but I would like to make another attempt at saywords.

I'm exercising again

2009-12-10T13:05:00.002+01:00

after a period when there was little room for private prosjects. I do cross country running and some weight training, and try to do it every second day. When I feel fit I do the running first and the weight training afterwards, each of them takes 40-45 miinutes. I feel good afterwards.

I'm coming back

2009-11-17T23:10:00.001+01:00

I'm coming back now, after some absence. I'll stay for a while, but I don't know for how long.

I'll go inside

2009-01-05T15:05:00.001+01:00

and shut the door behind me and sit down to write just anything that pops up as I keep my pen on the paper and I shall not pay any heed to what is going on outside whether that be children quarreling and shouting for a glass of water on my doorstep or Israelis and Hamaz killing children on the Gaza strip. If that is at all possible.

Strawson's arguments against the narrativity paradigm

2008-05-30T15:46:00.002+02:00

are just what we need in order to envigorate a complacent and boring debate about identity and narrativity. He claims the following, and I cite from the intro to his article AGAINST NARRATIVITY.
"The first is a descriptive, empirical thesis about the nature of ordinary human experience: ‘each of us constructs and lives a “narrative” . . . this narrative is us, our identities’ (Oliver Sacks); ‘self is a perpetually rewritten story . . . in the end, we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives’ (Jerry Bruner); ‘we are all virtuoso novelists.
. . . We try to make all of our material cohere into a single good story. And that story is our autobiography. The chief fictional character . . . of that autobiography is one’s self’ (Dan Dennett).
The second is a normative, ethical claim: we ought to live our lives narratively, or as a story; a ‘basic condition of making sense of ourselves is that we grasp our lives in a narrative’ and have an understanding of our lives ‘as an unfolding story’ (Charles Taylor). A person ‘creates his identity [only] by forming an autobiographical narrative – a story of his life’, and must be in possession of a full and ‘explicit narrative [of his life] to develop fully as a person’ (Marya Schechtman)."

thanks to the coincidences

2008-05-30T09:18:00.006+02:00

of a day I bumped into both Galen Strawson, Michel Houellebecq, Vendela Vida and Nick Hornby within the span of 15 minutes this Friday morning. It started with an intervjue with Mrs. Vida in Klassekampen, who was said to write for the California based magazine The Believer which I happened to remember from Nick Hornby's book THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE. And as I read on in the interview I was introduced to the philosopher Galen Strawson who claims, in his essay AGAINST NARRATIVITY, that there are two types of people (Oh! these endless dicotomies): those who look upon life as a coherent story, and those who experience life as a series of incoherent episodes. And I immediately felt I belonged to the last group, even if these make up only 5% of us, according to Strawson. Then Michel Houellebecq comes in because he is one of the authors mentioned in this particular issue of The Believer. He writes: “Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
So why are all those people who are writing and talking about life and the world those that are fed up with it. They seem to care though.

I have been chopping wood

2008-05-26T22:54:00.002+02:00

lately, and today I finished what I had brought home and arranged it in piles to dry during the summer. Part of it goes to the cabin, part to my daughter's house and part to myself at home. It is a good feeling to watch the newly cut and piled wood.

I met an Australian man

2007-05-10T14:41:00.000+02:00

in his 80's when I was in Tarquinia, the ancient Etruscan city north of Rome. I was visiting some of the Etruscan necropolises, the tombs that have wall paintings. It was a fascinating experience, and I was put in a peculiar mood when an elderly man started talking to me.

At first he commented on some of the paintings, and we exchanged information on ancient rock paintings in our own parts of the world. He about the Aborigins and their painting, and I about what we have in Norway. The he started talking about the experience of getting old; that so much belongs to the past and so little to the future. He talked about being somewhere and doing something for the last time in his life and losing the spontaneous joy and laughter he used to have. There was so little to look forward to, according to him now.

He said that he forced himself to talk to other people, even if he didn't know them, in order to avoid being too silent and locked up in himself. He said his wife complained about that, and I just stood listening and let him talk among these old tombs. It was like being in a graveyard with somebody who was planning to remain there, and it reminded me of my father in his last years. He stopped talking altogether and just sat staring into empty air. It comes with old age, they say.

After about half an hour we parted, and I joined my own group and went to the museum of Tarquinia to learn more about the Etruscans.

he died in 632,

2007-05-03T18:09:00.000+02:00

but before that he did some amazing thinking at the same time as he made use of what others had thought earlier. He tried to impose order on the chaos as most of us do, and he established a few fixed rules for everything, and presented this in various curans as laws in what was later called the Koran, the lawbook. About women he said:
-Women can inherit goods.
-A man may not leave his wife simply because he has met another woman he likes.
-It is forbidden to use violence to make a woman sleep with you.
-Leave your wife alone if she is not feeling well.
Muhammad's laws were so unacceptable that the men conspired to kill him in his sleep.

narrare necesse est

2007-04-20T08:51:00.000+02:00

Walter Fisher, in his 1984, Narration as Human Communication Paradigm, writes in my paraphrase: People are essentially storytelling animals, and all communication is a form of storytelling. We make decisions on the basis of good reasons, and history, biography, culture, and character determine what we consider good reasons. Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories, and the world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create, our lives.

This is of course nothing new. Roland Barthes and others have expressed the same earlier, and later, Anthony Giddens, in his Modernity and Self-Identity, writes extensively on the narratives of self-identity and the necessity to keep a particular narrative going as a biographical protection, affirmation and continuity. In other words: narrare necesse est.

the attack of the starlings

2007-04-19T09:35:00.000+02:00

was one of the most dramatic events on the home front last week. We have for years had a nesting box for blue tits on the garage top, and some members have returned every year to take possession of it. I don't know, however, whether they are of the same family, those of them that might have survived the attacks from cat and crow. But the thing is that the hole is so small that few other birds may enter.

The blue tit is very early, arriving in March well before some of the other migrants. So this year the small family was safely installed when the next wave of air-borne travellers landed, among them the starlings. The latter seems to have a certain preference for man made bird houses, and four of the newcomers engaged in a regular air attach on the tit habitation. They tried to enter the hole with the intention of evicting those who already lived there, and they besieged the box for a couple of hours preventing anybody from whether coming out or going in.

I experienced an upsettinge and aggressive feeling of righteousness, and I ran out in my slippers to chase away the attackers, siding instinctively with the weaker part. I even dug out an old air rifle, loaded, and fired a shot at the garage in my fuming anger. Luckily I hit neither window glas, tit, cat nor starling, but the commotion led to the starling abandoning the field. One of the blue tits was witnessing the whole affair from a nearby tree, and to me it seemed as if it enjoyed the thing. At least it never showed any fear whatever I was doing to frighten the invaders.

So now the little family is at peace again, and since it is nesting so early in the spring, there are surely fledlings there putting on weight and building strength to enter the more dangerous world outside. Good luck to them.

I was going to change tires on my car today,

2007-04-18T20:07:00.000+02:00

but it is snowing again, and temperatures are going down to zero. Since I am driving up country this weekend to secure firewood for next winter, I had rather keep the winter tires on.

But there are signs of spring. For the last two weeks we have had formations of wild geese heading north above our house in the early morning hours. We have been half awake to their calls to each other, and we treasure that sound.

I read your comments, hm

2007-04-17T13:34:00.000+02:00

and I link to your blog, or do you have a German blog as well. Judging from your mastery of language, you might have one. That would be another voice for you, and enjoyable practice.

Pretty Woman

2007-03-21T22:46:00.000+01:00

is the film I am watching tonight. It is very good, Richard Geere and that girl, what is she called, Julia Roberts. It is a quality film: acting, story, clipping, whatever. Shaw's Pygmalion 77 years later, and Ovid's Pygmalion from way back. Eller vår egen kulturs Askepot, Cinda - fucking - rella, som en person i filmen sier det.

writing is the voice of

2007-03-19T12:58:00.000+01:00

a person who is not present, Freud said. And it is well formulated. On the one hand, the printing press and the Internet liberated writing from the confines of time and place. As writing before distributed print was tied to an object, a stone slab, and/or in any case existed only in one version. On the other hand, the Internet made writing more or less ubiquitous, and todays' chat-programs can give you nearly synchronous written communication.
So, the oral language gave man a symbol system with which to reflect on and communicate about things not present. You can imagine and think about the lions of the tropical savanna even in the northernmost parts of the world. Then writing liberated language from time and place, and it could be the voice of the person who lived long ago or who lives on the opposite part of the globe.

I was making a list of how I practiced language

2007-03-18T10:10:00.000+01:00

in the course of a day, and here are the language activities that I found:

oral:
- private talk, chats with friends
- professional talk, tuition
- 2-3 times a week: lectures and talks
- telephone calls

writing:
- sms, msn, e-mail
- blogging, 3-4 different
- lectures
- correcting, councelling others' writings
- taking notes, diary entries

reading:
- newspapers, magazines
- Internet news, googling, wikipedia, etc.
- faction
- fiction

listening (and watching):
- radio (news, variuous P2)
- TV (news, debates, entertainment)
- audio books (fact & fiction)

I might observe how much time I spend on these language activities.

I was listening to this audio book,

2007-03-17T22:50:00.000+01:00

The kite runner, and I found that having this book read to me created words and sentences in my own language, and I was inspired to write myself. Why hadn't I found this out earlier? I might have helped my writing a lot. Beacuse it is not like a lot of reading automatically creates more writing. It might instead slow the writing down; stop it.
But listening to the words instead of looking at them is another way into language, I observed. So I am going to study this further and try it out over a period of time.

In his diary Franz Kafka,

2007-03-07T21:04:00.000+01:00

on the 16. December 1910, says:
I won't give up the diary again. I must hold on here, it is the only place I can.
I would gladly explain the feeling of happiness which, like now, I have within me from time to time. It is really something effervescent that fills me completely with a light, pleasant quiver and that persuades me of the existence of abilities of whose non-existence I can convince myself with complete certainty at any moment, even now.

-- there is much to be said about his total dedication to writing. --

Last weekend I went to Madrid

2007-03-06T21:25:00.000+01:00

with R. We stayed there from Wednesday night to Sunday morning. We had a nice hotel at Calle Campomanes just off Plaza de Isabel II where you have the Opera metro station. It takes just 30 minutes on the metro from Barajas or Aeropuerto on line 8. Then you have to change to line 10 at Nuevos Ministerios and again to the R-line at Príncipe Pío, and it costs just 1 euro.
My reasons for going were two. I wanted to hear the Spanish language about me, and I wanted to visit the Prado to see the Spanish Golden Age painters, from Murillo and Velazquez to Goya. We stayed at the Prado for nearly a whole day, just visiting the first floor where you have the paintings from 1550 to 1850. I could have gone the next day as well. It was great.
From Campomanes you walk down to the Prado in twenty minutes. Down the Arenal, crossing Puerta del Sol, to the right down Carrera de San Jerónimo to Plaza Canovas del Castillo. Then you are nearly at the entrance where you pay 6 euro to get in.

a short note on Sunday

2007-02-25T18:48:00.000+01:00

will tell us about the grandchildren, Bjørk and Hilja, staying the night while their parents had an evening off. It will tell about taking the girls skating in the morning and taking av longer walk with the dog, allowing her to run free where she could do no harm. Luckily she didn't see the roe crossing the open field behind us and disappearing again behind the trees along the brook.
The days are noticeably longer, and the sun sets at 5.25 am.

Friday with a cold wind

2007-02-23T08:35:00.000+01:00

and we are discouraged from going to the cabin in the mountains. So we stay at home and arrange to meet some friends on Saturday. We start at the gym in the morning and end up with coffee and cakes somewhere. I shall take the dog for a walk, and there are a few things to be done both outside and inside the house.

this is to be a continuation of

2007-02-15T11:24:00.000+01:00

a blog created back in 2003, and it is going to be my English water hole in addition to blogs in other languages. The title Saywords is taken from Samuel Beckett: in order to go on he has just to say words.I have other ways of expression as well: my body in sports and outdoor life, music, art, etc. But language, speech and writing, is of ultimate importance and keeps me going.