All the instants between heartbeats

Another month, another road trip :). This summer is shaping up nicely for racking up the miles! Only this time it was with the parents and down along the coast south from here down to Kristiansand and past. And I took a whole two weeks off. Getting back to work this morning was, well, difficult :). A thoroughly enjoyable break was had.

And as I drove back from Gardermoen having dropped the parents off, I decided to actually go in and order the bike I've been planning to buy for about a month now :P. As it happens, they had the right size one in stock, so I ended up walking out of the Storesenter with a fantastically bright orange bike and then spent the next few minutes hoping and praying that it would fit in the car :P. (Given that this was a bit of a spur of the moment thing, I didn't have my bike rack mounted on the car.) Well, with no one else in the car and using every inch of space available, it did fit!! Barely :). After three years and over 3700 km, the good old Union 40 was getting a bit iffy on the gears.... But I'll still feel bad stripping all the bits off of it and moving them to the Range 50. Oh well, such is life :). First new bike since first year of uni though :).

Right, back to that road trip then :). The weather was appropriately mixed up this time! The day we went to Lindesnes Fyr, the southernmost point on mainland Norway, was so cloudy that we could barely see the water 20m from the lighthouse! But then the very next day when we drove along the small coastal roads down to Arendal, the skies were the bright bright blue of Norway in all it's summer splendour!

We stayed at a little rental apartment in Lillesand and made the most of the kitchen (and the supermarket practically next door :D) and had some fun cooking up. In fact, I think the last couple of weeks was the most cooking I've done in any shortish period of time :). The idea was to keep the parental units happy and simultaneously away from the cooking :D. It worked, mostly!

There are times when different parts of your life come together. They could collide, crash and burn in the aftermath. Or they could flow into each other like streams of bright colours. Mixing, strands curling around each other. Making patterns of such beauty that take your breath away. This was like that :). It's been a good couple of weeks. Scratch that. It's been an awesome couple of weeks! :)

Listening to: Feint & Veela - The Journey

Space has a sense of warping itself around feelings, I find. Sometimes. The dark yet not completely lacking in colour midnight sky of Norway in summer. It seems to wind itself around a sense of timelessness I have, memories from different summer nights meshing together into something that's no longer quite a memory. But is in so many ways more.

It has been a lovely month of sunshine and almost unexpected warmth. Interspersed with rain, of course. You can't have it getting too awesome now can you? :-)

We continued the now almost traditional May road trip to the fjordlands. (Yes, I live practically a stones throw away from fjords, but these are tame and wide, almost benign fjords, here in the south east. Further west and northwards, they have those of the more wild and untamed variety.)

What weather! :-) Blazing sunshine every day! Perfect for a road trip along twisty narrow roads alongside the water, through valleys that kept switching between spring greens and winter whites. Fjords and lakes of such a variety of shapes and sizes as to constantly amaze!

There's also been a bit of cycling. And I've been feeling the off season. Not in a good way. But it seems the weather wants to cooperate somewhat, and lately I've been finding my pedalling legs again. :-) Since I managed to rather ruin my gears a bit over the last 3500 plus kilometres, I've even been considering a new bike. We shall see.

Time passes in the now familiar high-speed-slow-motion. Another month gone, the year almost half over. But the days seem full of... happenings? Not necessarily outside my head. But there we have it. :-) I mean this as a good thing in fact!

Life is beginning to feel more like itself rather than merely something like it.

A rather hasty catch-up

This has been an odd winter. The reason I say it like that (and not something like "it had been") is because it's been snowing this week. Let me just let that sink in a little bit. Snow. At the end of April! This is officially the weather gone mad! And for everyone that's going, oh but you live in Norway, that still means we're well into spring this close to May!

And to think we were so close to having a proper spring! The sun was shining for a week or so, the grass in my garden had finally emerged from under all the white and leaves had started showing themselves on the hedgerows all over the neighbourhood. And then it all sort of stopped and had a re-think. Reset the clock to early March, let's have some more wet snow, why don't we!

Yes, much head-shaking has been in evidence. Most people (myself included) have even switched to summer tyres. And while the snow doesn't last long enough to cause any real concerns, it's still rather disconcerting!

One thing I'm hoping for is that the snow is an aberration and it all goes back to normal spring/early summer service by next weekend, as that's the annual Holmenkollstafetten relay race! And I've signed up again! In fact this is the first time in 3 years that we've actually got a 'fun' team, so it would be really nice to have good weather for the run!

I've been reading a bit more lately. After struggling through two-thirds of A Casual Vacancy, I was rather relieved to sink into the windswept world of The Coffin Road set in the Isle of Skye in Scotland. And then followed that up with the swift and mostly interesting follow up to Stieg Larsson's Salander trilogy The Girl in the Spider's Web. And finally a very entertainingly different State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. 

The last book in particular was quite the intriguing one! The style of writing was one that was particularly mesmerizing in its manner of doling out detail. Lots of it for a while, and then barely anything for a bit. Switching between the world within the protagonist's mind and that outside in a particularly bewitching sort of way. I should really find some more books by the author :).

Having made a few forays out on the bike, I've decided that it's still way too cold for such things. And through a combination of things I managed to get myself rather Norway bound this last month and thus lost out on an awesome opportunity to visit the Philippines for a week.I guess the upside is that I'm now officially a permanent Norwegian resident :). Not entirely sure what that means yet...

Right, so there we are then, a rather quick and haphazard summary of the last month or more. I should really be taking more photos!!!

Currently: sleepy :)
Listening to: Jack Johnson - Breakdown

The allure of turning thoughts into words

A friend recently returned from a six month trip to Central and South America. While on the trip she kept us posted on her amazing experiences through her blog. One that, might I add, I helped convince her to start :D. There is a special sort of enjoyment, I find, in following others' experiences through their own words. Not just snapshot images, or short lines of text. Now that she's back home though, the posts have stopped. Not surprisingly, it was a travel blog.

I go through bouts of guilt when I see the date tag on the latest post that greets me on the blog these days. And when it gets too bothersome I post a bit of what surfaces from the last month or more that had no mention. I don't give much thought to why I like (and consequently miss) blogging. Writing, really.

But today for some reason I find myself taking a closer look. There is something to writing. Not just creative writing, any writing that's a translation of wisps and tendrils of thought churning deep within into something more tangible. There are moments of greater or lesser clarity. Some where the translation from thought to word seems clear and sharp, others when it's all a bit foggy. Still, every time, there's a thrill in some ways.

I suppose when I read I imagine some of the same going on. Although mostly I just read the stories.

Then there's the thrill of spilling thoughts and feelings and such into the light of the world outside. The potential for harsh dissection exists. But rarely does the reality of life live up the fantastic projections of a fearful mind :). And over time the knowledge of this makes one bolder.

There seemed to have been more. Thoughts lurking on the edge of consciousness that have been spooked by the light. That have since retreated to the darker corners beyond knowing. No matter. There are clearly reasons enough to keep going. If only to re-discover the thrill of writing every now and again :).

More on the snow that is slowly melting away another time...

Currently: hopeful
Listening to: Dirty South & Thomas Gold - Alive

Of memories, old and new

Generally speaking, I'm definitely one for blue skies, sunshine and the more full fat bright and cheeriness. But I do sometimes miss the more subdued but varied palette of sunrises and sunsets :). There's something altogether more ethereal and therefore magical in the blink and you miss it sort of beauty. And now that the days are getting a bit longer again it's nice to notice the departure and onset of twilight at more reasonable sort of times. As against in the middle of the day :).

I was reminded of a rather old post the other day, from almost ten years ago now, about an afternoon spent on a beach in Singapore. It's funny how one thing reminds you of another, then that leads you on to something else, and before you know it, you're right in the middle of a long and intricate net of criss-crossing memories.

It is nice sometimes, to just take some time out, create a bit of space for yourself. Wait till the noise dies down a little, life slows. And then find out a little about what's been going on underneath. What's been collecting, growing, maybe festering.... 

A gift of How the Marquis Got His Coat Back (which is a very quick and entertaining read, by the way) led me back to Neverwhere. Looking back I found that the last time I'd read it was on the flight over to Norway when I moved here :). So I've been enjoying reading a slightly different version of it the last few days. I've been enjoying finding out once again how Gaiman can layer darkness between light and colour. Reality between curtains of fantasy. I've been enjoying tickling my imagination, immensely :).

Currently: bored
Listening to: The Avener - Lonely boy