[Stolen Scenes is a collection of very short written pieces taken from my eight journal books. These writings are pretty much autobiographical, short writings that are basically little "scenes" taken from my life and experiences. Yet there is not really a whole complete story to build up around them. For myself, personally, I really like the writings and yes, believe they are good, and have always wanted to use them for something.]
[From journal book One]
I pushed open the door to the bowling alley and rushed outside - all in one motion as if I was upset on something or someone - maybe I was, I don't know...I don't know why I seem to get set off in horrible moods when out with people, when I'm suppose to be having fun....
I walked out of that cold bowling alley into a dark night sky, rain, raindrops falling hard to break up the calmness of the sitting puddles. I moved quickly to get to my truck. I got in and sped off - quick turning the corners of the parking lot to get away, but get away from what? In a short time I made it out onto the main road of highway 60. I drove pretty slow down the wet rain soaked road, with the wipers going every now and again (I let the raindrops gather to clutter the windshield and blur sight). It just seemed to fit the scene - how I was feeling. I drove in silence, no music from the radio, just myself - staring blankly at the road ahead. Silence, but my ears still rang with the sounds of the alley...and so many thoughts ran through my mind. Just a lot of fucked up thoughts....
_
One week after one wasted Saturday night brings one more wasted Saturday night. Robert, Jordan, and Justin knock on my bedroom window at 12:20AM. They tell me to meet them up the block. I change clothes and grab my camera gear thinking to myself, we'll just cruise up to downtown Tampa - the usual spot of the amphitheatre - smoke out, hot box in the Ranger, fuck around and shoot photos in Tampa. That was what was to be planned. What really happened was a lot of bullshit. Oh, we did make it to the theatre but a sleeping bum freaked the others out. I got them to shut up and calm down for a moment - until I took out the camera. They freaked out once more, thinking I was going to take photos as they were hitting the pipe. Then the situation didn't get any better when a shit load of other people showed up. At that point we left downtown to head for the beach - Clearwater. I was so fucked up from all the weed that I got on North I-275 instead of South 275. We ended up in Temple Terrace. From Temple Terrace, we drove back through downtown, got back onto 275 South, and went to the airport for some unknown reason. I parked on the rooftop level of the parking garage. The four of us ran around freaked out - stoned at how high off the ground we were. Then we proceeded in bound, into the airport where we all basically walked in a circle then left. Parking cost $1.00. From the airport we finally managed to end up at Denny's at 4:30AM. We all ate probably the greaseiest shit food known to mankind. And from all that, we went home.
_
It was sometime around 11:50PM, Robert and I went over to Shannon's house to get some weed. Shannon, Robert, and I smoked a bit before Robert and I headed back out. About an hour later, Len and Eric show up at my house. Robert has with him this bong which belongs to this kid - Zack. The four of us pile back into my truck and drive a few miles to park by some railroad tracks to smoke out of this bong. I end up smoking my limit plus of weed. I started to throw-up, then the freaking out came along. I guess I blacked out a few times - as I was told the next day. For being as stoned as I know I was, I actually remember quite a lot of what had happened. I collapsed while Robert was talking to me. I laid in dirt and broken glass thinking it was a dream and that I was home in my bed. Robert was almost yelling at me to get up but my body couldn't function. He didn't even try to help, he just laughed. Len, who was the only one to really have any concern, yelled at Robert to take my keys to drive us home. Robert kept laughing, thinking I was just fucking around. Len helped me up off the ground and stayed by my side trying to talk to me. Again, I started to collapse but Len grabbed me. Some how I ended up in the passenger seat of my truck with my head back, listening to the others outside. Robert and Len arguing and Eric wanting to smoke more weed. At this time a pick-up truck came down the road. Slowly it passes where my truck is parked. The other three duck behind my truck leaving me alone in the front seat with the door open, dome light is on, I'm in plain view and don't have much capability to move or speak. The truck finally passes all the way and I hear Len talking - saying we need to leave now and get Kyle home to bed, while Eric still wants to smoke more weed. The sound of another pick-up truck comes into play. I hear this one coming and try to get out of my truck, close the door, and hide fast enough. It doesn't work that easily. I tried to get out so fast that I just fell, hitting my back on part of my truck. So there in the dirt, outside of my truck I sat starting to freak out again. Too many thoughts were in my brain, they always are. I was begging for that truck not to be a cop car. I was begging to leave, to be home and in my bed. Len helped me up again and I gave my keys to Robert. He drove us home and the whole way home I silently kept apologizing.
_
[From journal book Two]
On The Road - Part One, This is Sleezy
Matt and I left Tampa on a very hot Thursday afternoon. I-75 North, the traffick wasn't so bad and we had about four days till Ohio, so we had time on the road. Our first stop wasn't one that was originally planned but hell, nothing was really seriously planned. Forty-five minutes North of Tampa is a small town called Dade City. A friend of mine, Andre, owns and runs a skateboard company called Ghetto and also has a damn good mini ramp in a barn. It was Matt's first time there. After a good skate sesh and a nice hold down sesh, Matt and I got back onto 75 North. We took a brief stop off in downtown Atlanta to walk around as I shot photos of graffiti. We camped that night just North of Atlanta at Indian Creek state park. Matt didn't bring a flashlight. We had rolled into the campground around 11:30PM, so we had to set up the tent and find fire wood in the dark. When we got wood, it was almost too wet to light. It took Matt three or four tries to get the fire going. We even had burned the road map. Luckily Matt bought a brand new atlas - as did I. Our next stop was Nashville, Tennessee to hit up the skatepark there and to spend the night at my cousin's. It was good knowing you have a free place to stay when low on money and on the road. Good times were had in Nashville. No skate photos, but plenty of night time, going to honky tonks and getting drunk photos. We actually never did meet up with my cousin that night. His room mate Crystal was our tour guide for Nashville. The honky tonks ended up not even being all that good. Matt and I had more fun singing Hank and Cash songs with some street performer. On Saturday we headed into Kentucky to go to the Louisville skatepark. We got to Louisville a little bit before dark and we ate a way over priced meal at a Hard Rock Cafe. Then it was to a liquor store in the hood to pick up a twelve pack of Pabst. We got to the park around 10PM, I was going to try to sleep in the bed of my truck for a bit when we got there, but it didn't happen. We skated all night until around 5AM. It was such a long, but good, night. We met a lot of good people. From here, on Sunday morning, Matt took over the driving duty and we headed to his home - Circleville, Ohio.
(This is from the Summer of 2007, unfortunately I kind of messed this story up myself. It's never been finished. There was a lot more that I had intended to write, and even what is written here is actually missing quite some details. There is also a Part Two: Welcome to Camp Sleezy! It was to be a story on the Sleezy Skates crew at Skatopia in Rutland Ohio. I do have one page written - started for that story, yet the writing is more of a set up - an introduction for the Sleezy crew and Skatopia. I feel it's not something worthy of publishing at this time. Who knows, maybe someday I will actually finish the story.)
_
It really was a Kerouac-esque warm Autumn Sunday. I sat with my back against a wooden fence in some woods out back of the shop where my truck was. It was just noon but had the feeling of later in the day. I packed my chiller with a bowl of herb, to rest my mind and think over my finances. The sun hung in the sky just ahead - facing down on me cutting through the small openings of the leaves and branches on the trees. The sky was a vibrant bright crystal blue with a few pillowy clouds strung about.
It was later on that day, late afternoon on into the early evening. The air was cooling. I was now a bit more North, in Lutz at Corey's new house. There was a bar-bq going on with music and conversations. Corey and Robert were jamming on drums and a bass guitar. My truck still hadn't been fixed so I went on my motorcycle. I hadn't rode it for some time so it backfired and sputtered along city streets, back roads, and a stretch of interstate. Sitting there, I already knew it was going to be a long and chilly ride to where I was staying South. But I looked forward to the ride home. I wanted a different route to take. More country back roads. A scenic ride with clean crisp air under stars. Even the sky now is painted.
I was back in my little room drinking iced white tea with a candle burning, smoking the very end of what little herb I had left in the chiller earlier that day. The ride home I took only a slightly different route. Back highway roads that at times lead through random towns that wanted to act like they were big cities. The air was warm riding through the towns and a lot cooler on those back highways. But it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.
Late that night I sat on my bed and ate a meal of blueberry waffles with butter and maple syrup, watching Born Into This, a documentary on Charles Bukowski. Even though it was getting pretty late into the night, by the time I drifted off to sleep it was a bit earlier than I usually go to sleep. I needed a good night's rest.
_
I'm off, there I went bobbing through town once more on back highway roads with my motorcycle still sputtering along popping backfires as I pass by cars and trucks and those big rigs like my old man used to drive for a living. It was a Monday late afternoon, it was breezy out with a few more clouds spread through that crystal Florida Autumn sky. Though it felt more like Spring time. I sat outside of the place I was working at - at the time, under the shade of palms in an empty grass lot. I looked up to those silvery gray puffed up clouds which taunted us on the ground with threats of rain that wouldn't come until later in the week and in time to spoil the weekend. Unlike the rain of Summer in Florida, the Fall rains meant cooler weather. And again I knew my ride Southeast was going to be a chilly one tonight.
_
And just like that, the night alone became just like old times. I knew I was addicted - it was weed and whiskey. I was staying in the lab, it was my small room at my folk's. Of course the air was filled with the scent of incense and the sound of a film in the background as I wrote. In the usual fashion the tea was drank and smoked. It felt good to have a night like this one. The film was an old favourite of mine - The Basketball Diaries from the poet and writer Jim Carroll. My eyes glazed over from the weed, my brain swam in all the whiskey. Riders on the Storm played on the soundtrack to the film and everything came together. The Doors fit. Jim Carroll had basketball. I had skateboarding.
_
One of those nights. Sweet thoughts of Ohio. Randomly just push play on the Ipod's shuffle and the first song on is from Hank Sr. And in that instant, there I am in Henry and Darin's kitchen in the middle of the afternoon with not a thing to do but shots of whiskey. To make those moments even better, shots were drank from a Connecticut shot glass. They had shot glasses from almost all fifty states, just missing a few. The building they lived in was this amazing and old - a bit run down brick three story. At street level on Main Street was a pizza shop. I ate bread sticks from there one day, with marinara sauce. They were the type of bread sticks you would expect from the type of pizza shop this was. They were cheap. The apartments were on the second and third floors. Chad and Zack and Zack's girlfriend lived in one, and Henry and Darin lived in the other - and only other apartment on the second floor. The third floor was the entire last apartment. Zack's mom owned the building. The upstairs apartment's kitchen window led out to the roof. Which we all hung out on quite often drinking or not. Sometimes throwing rocks, bricks, empty soda or tea bottles, and etc. onto the roof of the building next door. There was one afternoon, there was a pretty bad storm coming. The sky was real dark gray with tremendous cracks of lightning. Matt, Henry, and Darin all got stoked hoping for a tornado.
I leaned back with my eyes drifting, half closed. Again back in Henry's kitchen. Sometimes in those country lazy small town afternoons taking shots of whiskey, I'd be the only one in the apartment, or Darin would be asleep. The front door was always open, never locked. The best was the day I wandered alone one weekday afternoon on Main Street shooting photos of Circleville. I heard my name called out from above. At first it put me in a daze, until I turned around to the right and looked up to see Henry in the window of that vacant third floor apartment. Or there was a holiday, maybe Fourth of July - whichever. Matt and I had downtown Circleville to ourselves. With a few passing cars every now and then, we skated. For a small mid-West town it definitely was a lot of fun and good times. (Due to all the great friends.)
_
It was only going to be a few days of a stay but it was going to be all out Kerouac in spirit. I was staying out in Winter Haven at Robert and Rebecca's place. Robert's ankle was broken, it had been a week so far and his leg was still too swollen for the surgery he needed. I needed to be out, away from my folk's house where I had been still staying at. I was camped out on their back patio - second story. There was a heavy dampness in the air. Fog was rolling in all around, and every so often a strong breeze would blow through and cool things down greatly. But I had my two heavy quilted blankets with me to wrap myself in - along with my hemp hooded jacket which I zipped up over my t-shirt and the hood up. I also had on my dusty black corduroys and socks. I felt greatful for what I have.
_
[From journal book Three]
When the phone rang it was around 9AM so it really wasn't all too early, I needed to get my hungover ass out of bed. It was Zack. Chris, he, and I had talked about an early Tuesday paint session at the Bro-Bowl. My head was pounding from the blueberry wine and smoke from the Monday night before. Zack said he couldn't get a hold of Chris. I hung up the phone, rolled over going back to sleep for about forty-five minutes. Zack called back and I finally got up. He was on his way over to my folk's where I was staying. He still couldn't get a hold of Chris so I too started calling him. Within thirty minutes Zack's little jeep came around the corner pulling up in front of my folk's. I loaded up my backpack of spray paint and an extra pair of shoes into Zack's jeep, and off we headed across town to bang on the door of Chris's mom's townhouse and get him out of bed. We made a by-pass through Ybor to grab some beer and tacos at Mema's Alaskan, then we walked down to Urban Outfitters - I had to collect ten dollars from my friend Sam who worked there with our friend Anthony. We all stood around the store talking art. Now it was mid-afternoon, blazing hot with humidity, crystal blue sky but with dark clouds rolling in. We knew it would rain, but how long till it came down on us? Chris rattled his cans away on the back wall bank of the bowl- painting a female face between another graffiti piece he did and an old piece of mine. I did a small three colour throw up along the snake run and got bored, done with it. I didn't have my sketchbook with and I wasn't prepared to really paint anything (good). Zack was painting one of the locked up doors to the old bathrooms in the run down pavillion building that's next to the bowl. I got stoked on that and grabbed my bag of paint and relocated under the covering, to the door left of Zack. I started to freestyle a door throw up doing my letters vertically stacked. Zack painted a black and white character art piece. He was getting his detail work and shading done while I was about half way through my piece, that's when a cop car crept up on the sidewalk from behind us to the left. I spotted the patrol car out of the corner of my eye as I bent over my pack of spray cans to grab a different colour. I set the can back inside the bag, stood up and turned to my right to Zack and simply just said his name, "Zack". He looked up and past me and saw. The cops ran our I.D.'s and we both ended up with court dates. We knew it could be worse, we could have gone to jail. There was paperwork to be signed and we had to give our right thumb print. After our ordeal with the Tampa PD - minutes later - Chris ran out of paint and was unable to finish his piece. Minutes after that there were nice gusts of wind, the sky had become darker with those giant puffed gray clouds. The skies opened up and finally the rain poured down on unfinished art ending our late afternoon.
_
[From journal book Four]
It's another cold, gray, mid-morning in February in Oslo. Outside the cafe where I sit in the Aker Brygge district of the city it's snowing heavily. I sat alone that Thursday morning sipping on a double black coffee, eating a chocolate croissant, soft oriental harmonies filled the cafe as the barista did his tai-chi movements behind the front counter. The rest of the day would be the same as usual. I was in the city to find work. Most of the store were not open yet, so I was killing my time - getting some writing done.
A few minutes after 8AM I stood on the platform at the train station in Ski, under an overhang trying my best to stay out of the snowfall as I awaited a late arriving train. The train that morning was packed - no seats available, standing room only. I was still tired and a bit stressed, it felt like the longest thirty minutes into the city. I knew I needed to be looking for work a bit harder than I was this day, but it was also a nice feeling sitting in the cafe, sipping on a coffee getting a book started, and gazing out the window to watch the snowfall. Yet I also knew I couldn't sit there all morning. Just a bit after 10AM and a phone call from my wife, I figured I really should venture out into that snow filled late morning to once again try to find work. The air wasn't unbearably cold but the heavy snow fall and sidewalks covered in dirty-wet slush was. I chose to stick with the indoor shopping malls of the Aker Brygge district. I wasn't having much luck with the stores in the mall. I wandered into a book store to browse the American selections which there wasn't much of. I wanted to find Bulowski, again no such luck. So I ventured back out to the snow fall and ice and slush.
_
My Norwegian language class ran a bit late on this Tuesday night - the first night of March. My shoulder bag with my laptop and notebooks was quite a heavy load. I walked slow on the ice covered sidewalk, with no care if I missed the train to Son - almost as if I wanted to miss it. Maybe I could have made it. I called my wife to let her know I had missed the train and that the next one wasn't for another hour. She had planned to walk to the Sonsveien station to meet me. When I called, she was already half way to the station. I told her when I finally would get there that I would just take the bus back to the center then walk up the hill of Løkkeveien to our apartment. There she would have a dinner of homemade lentil soup and fresh baked bread waiting for me.
_
It's been just about fifteen hours by now. This has been the kind of Monday I really just may have needed. The alarm on my cell phone was set for 6AM but I've been having horrible insomnia again like I had when I was back in Florida. I was awake by ten minutes after 5AM. I tried to go back to sleep but really couldn't. A half an hour later I just decided to get out of bed. I had to go to work at the sign shop earlier than usual anyway, and I was still unsure if my boss Per Otto was going to pick me up or if I would have to walk to the train station. My wife was still in bed asleep. Around a quarter after 7AM Per called me to tell me he was on the way to Son to pick me up, and that he would be there in about ten minutes. I grabbed my small army style shoulder bag and left the apartment to walk down to the town center to meet Per. Løkkeveien, the street Elin and I live on, is a pretty steep hill and the street this windy cold morning was covered in ice which made my walk into town very difficult. After a quick stop at a gas station in Vestby for coffee, we got to the shop around 8AM. It was a long busy day. Elin picked me up around quarter after 5PM with just enough time to drive me back into the town center so I could go to my Norwegian language class which started at 5:30PM. She had a meeting at the school where she worked at 7:30PM and my class was done at 8PM. When I got out of class I had to walk back up to the school to wait for Elin to finish with the meeting. I sat in the breakroom doing my language homework. We left the kindergarten around 9:30PM and got home just about 10PM. My body was sore and worn, we ate a quick late dinner then showered. Once I got into bed I was asleep right away.
_
It was the beginning of August, the midnight sun was no more. The light was already changing. I had to get up to go to the bathroom on a Wednesday morn, I looked at the clock - it was 4:29AM and it was still almost dark outside the window. The night before, it was dark just before 11PM.
I usually quit work for the day at the same time as my wife, but things have been real slow the past couple of weeks at the sign shop so I have been getting off work an hour or two early. This Wednesday was a bit busier yet I was still off an hour before Elin would be. It was 4PM when I walked out of the shop - the way the sunlight hit and the shadows cast, you could tell Autumn was coming soon.
I sat on a park bench, under a big shade tree with perfect breezes, in the cemetery at the old church across the street from the kindergarten where Elin worked, reading a Bukowski book.
_
I needed something for myself, maybe alone time - Kyle time. It was a Friday, October was almost over, the air was cold. You could see the fog of your breath in the air and there was ice on the windows of the car in these mornings which had to be scraped off. I was already going to be working at the DC store from 4PM to 8PM tonight, and I had planned on working the morning shift at the sign shop, but I took the morning off. I ended up at the Ski library and in the English section found a Kerouac book I did not know of - Maggie Cassidy. I immediately checked it out - got it for four weeks. I started to read it, sitting in the library. It feels right, needed. What I need (and want - or could use). New England in the late thirties. Good old Americana! I was born there, in New England - Bristol, Connecticut. Though I was raised in the South - in Florida, yet throughout my life I really always wondered how my life would have been if I had never moved from Bristol.
_
It was the last day of October - a Monday, Halloween day, a bit warm for a Scandinavian Autumn morn. Ten minutes to 9AM I locked the down stairs front door to our apartment, and started off on my walk to the train station. The train was at 9:22AM. The air still did have a slight chill, you could see the fog of your breath, I walked along the mid morning wet narrow streets past the sleepy old wooden houses of Son. The sun was bright shining - hung low in the sky. I was in a poetic - sad Kerouac-esque somber mood that morning, yet I smiled to myself as that bright sun shined on my face and I walked past young kids on their way to school in all their glorious playful dreaming innocence. I wondered curious and carelessly about how my life would be if I had never moved from Bristol. Forgotten non-existent childhood memories of a house built by my father and a barn out back, with two sisters, and two cousins living next door. Within reading Jack's words, the way he describes his Winter New England of the late thirties - and now coming into my second Winter here in Norway - walking that Halloween morning to the train station, and the next day's morn, waking before my wife to sit quiet, alone, eating a breakfast of yogurt with honey and oats, a buttered piece of bread with cheese, and drinking a cup of hot black Swedish coffee, looking out the balcony window over those sleepy rooftops through the barren empty trees, the gray heavy fog out over the fjord. The sun didn't shine on this morn as it did the morning before. The day was gray and wet, heavy fog. In Norway, missing a small New England town I never knew. I worked just a few hours that Tuesday - the first of November - from late morning to mid afternoon. After work - to save on money, I chose to walk to the Vestby train station - it took me just twenty-five minutes. The day was gray and dark, still heavy fog, no rain - yet, but the streets and sidewalks were damp - wet, the air was mild cool. Just 4PM but it seemed hours later. The orange-yellow glow of the street lights had now come on to illuminate the fog. I sat on a bench outside the station, waiting for the train to Ski in the bleakness, that heavy fog and wet ground. Still - with the dreaminess of Jack's thirties New England. I couldn't keep my thoughts away from it. The train was at 4:30PM, ten minutes later I would be in Ski. I got to the station and in Ski there was a slight drizzle of rain, I had a few blocks to walk to get to the building where I was taking Norwegian language classes. With my thoughts still on the Maggie Cassidy book - I left the hood of my Winter coat back - off my head, letting the little drops of drizzle fall on my head - in my hair - thinking of the opening pages and words from Jack - oh the beautiful babes, zeet! rings out in my head. By the time it was just 5PM - it was already completely dark outside.
_
I got up at 6:30AM with Elin. I didn't have to be at work until two in the afternoon but as Elin got herself ready for work, I went out into the cold dark to scrape the snow and ice off the car and get it started - warming it up for her. Around 7:30AM I went back to sleep and by 9:30AM I was awake again. Late in the morning I ate a bowl of rice noodles with teriyaki sauce and cups of hot tea. I caught the 11:59AM bus and took it all the way into Vestby to the station there. The route went along the back roads, through the small village of Hølen. I sat in the front of the bus, staring out the window with headphones on listening to the soundtrack to Almost Famous. Perfect music for a thirty minute bus tour - past snow covered sleepy wooden houses, barns, farm fields and trees - all in glorious bright gleaming clear blue Winter Scandinavian sky. As I gazed out the window, I hoped to spot an elk running across one of those snow blanketed fields. The train from Son only takes seven minutes to get to Vestby, but it goes from Sonsveien station twenty-two minutes over every hour, and despite the bus route is thirty minutes - but it leaves Son twenty-three minutes earlier, it still puts me in Vestby at the same time and the same cost of twenty-eight kroners. So, once I got into Vestby I had my usual hour to kill before the next bus which is at every twenty-five minutes over the hour. That's the bus that takes me up to the outlet mall - to work. I had my camera with me that day so I decided to spend the hour walking about the small downtown area of Vestby snapping some photos.
_
[From journal book Five]
Still early into a new year, end of Winter, I had finished writing my fourth journal book and started reading Kerouac's Big Sur. I was in a rush - a kind of natural high, fiending off Jack's words. I had now been living in Norway for one year and three months - clean of herb. It felt nice and good to be clean, clear headed. Jack's words became my drug. In the past few months I went through Maggie Cassidy and Satori in Paris. Good old Jack's words were what I needed, forget the weed - yet I was still drinking booze (beer and wine). His words at times may have made the homesickness worse - oh good ol Americana, but they helped also - for the memories. In everything else, it was back to routines....
A couple of weeks have gone by - missed opportunities to write - been busy with work at a regular job, and Norwegian language classes. Spending money on bus and train tickets - staring out the windows, watching the on coming Spring green fight and push its way up through the last of the Winter's ice still trying to hold fast with its cold claw grasp. As the ice melts away making the sidewalks and streets slick - slippery and treacherous. The sky these days have been clear - crystal blue.
It was a Tuesday evening, on the inside - in my mind - I was a train wreck. I was having slight headaches, (almost dizzy spells), I was feeling not at all like my own self - physically and emotionally drained out - (again). I was suppose to be in my Norwegian language class right now. I knew I should go, I needed to be there. I wanted to go and I didn't want to go - all in the same, it was both. I had three job interviews this day. The first one was at some cafe - it was bullshit, and I didn't care. The other two went better, and were for better jobs. So there I was, I found myself sitting in the Ski library - as I have a hundred times. I wasn't happy, and it was a harsh realization.
Wandering for a few hours...- the library closed at 7PM, I left ten minutes earlier. I strolled around the mall. I went to Norli - a book store, there I found Bukowski's Post Office. Then I flipped through a Norway graffiti art book. I had a schedule to stick to - still had to catch the 8:11PM train to Son. I had an hour. I sat in the Ski station. I hoped I would be able to hop the train undetected and ride for free - (as I have done many times), I really didn't have so much money - not totally broke, but close. Just put on my headphones, hopefully make a window seat and stare out - looking off into the night, to the lights of small towns and farm houses passing by.
_
[From journal book Six]
I looked at the clock, it was exactly eleven P.M. on a February Thursday night, Elin and I figured it was getting late enough that we should go to sleep. I put down the Vonnegut book I was reading and turned out the lights. I knew I had to try to sleep and I wanted to - the thoughts of many artistic ideas filled my head. I was awake again, and with my wife's snoring, there was no chance I could sleep. I grabbed my pillow and blanket and relocated out to the couch - it was now 12:30A.M. I laid on the couch listening to the howling winds and pouring rain.
_
My brain was mush again - scrambled thoughts...yesterday was a Tuesday, the third day of March, my mom's birthday - she would have been seventy-four years old. The sun shined bright that day, and it's shining bright today - the fourth day of March - a Wednesday. It's the first two days the sun has shined in a little while. I was in the city - in Oslo trying to still find a job - just about two months unemployed now. It seemed nothing was working out for me. The only luck I was having was not good luck. I was getting frustrated and annoyed. - On this particular Wednesday I was out of bed and dressed by quarter to eight A.M. I had some house work to get done before I left - dishes to wash, laundry, make the bed and straighten up the apartment. I took my time, slacking a little, ended up taking too much time. At first, I really thought of taking the 9:20AM bus to Sonsveien station but there was no chance of that happening, so I planned to catch the 10:20AM bus instead. Figuring I now had some extra time, I took even more time doing my house chores. It ruined me, I blew it. Now I had to take the 11:20AM bus, and I just could not miss that one. At ten minutes to eleven A.M. I was on my out of the house. My friend Kristian and his wife Annette had just gotten to the house - our landlord Frank is Annette's dad, and they had stopped by to pick up some things. As I was leaving, Annette asked me what I was going into Oslo for and what I was going to do. I told her I was going job hunting. She asked me why, asked why I didn't just stay home and search the internet, asked if I was getting my dagpenger - unemployment money from NAV yet. I told her yes that my unemployment money had started coming in. Then she asked me - said - why bother looking for a new job since I was getting money from NAV. She said why not just work on your photography stuff. I told her I wanted to work. I wanted a job.
I got into the city at 12:20PM. Some hours later, I got a phone call - it was Kristian, he had driven into Oslo to go to some photo store/lab, he was picking up some 120 medium format film he had gotten developed and needed to also buy a film negative scanner. I took a break from the search for work to meet up with him for a little while. Then it was back to the hunt. And since I was in the city, I had also planned - tried to meet up with another friend, Les, who lives in Oslo and I haven't seen for quite a long time. Les is a fellow American. We had planned to meet up in the late afternoon/early evening, after I was done with my job searching, and have dinner with some brews. It didn't happen. By now it was some time around five P.M. - I wasn't sure if it was before or after five P.M. I purposely did not check the time, I didn't want to know. I sat at a pizza joint in the Oslo central station drinking a couple Brooklyn lagers.
I had finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkeyhouse. Now I'm reading his book Breakfast of Champions. I'm about half way through it. The Son bibliotek has a couple more of Vonnegut's books which I'll probably check out when I'm done with Breakfast of Champions. I didn't know what it was - how to explain it...maybe - the dark humor of Vonnegut's stories, his words, my slight depression, stress, and anxieties, frustrations and annoyances with being unemployed again...I felt very cynical. I remembered and thought of a quote from Vonnegut I once read in the St. Pete Times newspaper. This is not the exact quote, it's been too many years and I can not remember it word for word - but it was something to this extent - about the human race and our planet, planet Earth - Vonnegut said we should give up, pack it in, that we were wrecking the place anyhow - meaning, he meant, the human race should die off. I know this is a harsh thing to say, pretty negative, depressing. Yet I can't help it, I kind of agree. It's a sad truth. Sad, but true. My very good friend and old room mate Mike once said that the planet - planet Earth and mother nature would shake off the human race like a disease, or a plague - like a dog shaking off fleas. I liked those words as well.
Well, I finally checked the time - a quarter to seven P.M., and the train home goes at 7:18PM, I have about a half an hour, guess I'll go buy the ticket and make my way home. I got on that 7:18PM train home, took a window seat and stared off into the now dark evening sky. As the train left Oslo central, I rested my head back on the seat and for a split second - a fleeting moment - I imagined - pictured home, the small apartment in Son, and having a job, working someplace close to home - like in Moss or Vestby. It gave me a happy calm, relaxed feeling - like all warm and fuzzy inside. I felt so very far away in Oslo.
_
[From journal book Eight]
Thursday September 29, 2016
It was my day off from work, an anxiety - stressed filled day...windy, gray, raining out - getting cold...I had to get the car fixed - I drove a half an hour to Ski to my friend Joel's auto shop, I got there around 8:30 A.M. and about an hour later his mechanics started to work on the car. Another hour later - around 10:30 A.M. Joel drove me to the mall. I wandered aimlessly around the mall with nothing at all to do - just stuck in my head, to deal with my thoughts. I had so much on my mind it felt too overwhelming, my anxiety level was high. I felt sick to my stomach, yet I needed to eat. I wanted a falafel but the Istanbul BBQ joint was closed. I ended up going to Peppe's Pizza Pub and got a cheese pizza and a coke. Around 11:30 A.M. as I sat there almost forcing myself to eat, Joel called me back to tell me they were having problems and they would have to order more parts - more money to the cost, and it would take longer but still get done this day. I needed the car to be done today. My stomach knotted up even more, more anxiety, I felt like I was going to vomit. I almost wanted to cry. I went back to the mall - walked around feeling so lost, hung out at the library for a short while, sat in the small park area by the city hall building, thinking, over thinking - stress and worry...long near forgotten Kerouac-esque memories. I just felt so lost. The rain stopped. The sun came back yet it was still overcast and cloudy, it got a little warmer yet the wind blew strong. By now it was ten minutes over 1 P.M., I knew the car wasn't ready yet but I was over hanging out in the town center. I decided to walk back to the auto shop. I had no idea of how long the walk back would take, yet for some reason I figured about thirty minutes and I was right. There was no sidewalk for most of the way along the main road, so it felt kind of sketchy to walk it. When I got back to Joel's shop I took a cup of coffee and sat on a bench outside. Being back at the auto shop to wait for the car to be finished somehow did help to calm me down. I got a little more relaxed and some of the stress and anxiety faded away. A little over an hour later - around 3 P.M. - the car was ready. As I drove home, I thought how wasted away my day off was when I could have been spending time with my wife and my son - with family.
_
A Sunday. August 13, 2017.
I had the alarm clock on my iPhone set for 10 A.M., I woke up twice in the eight o'clock hour - I looked at the clock on my phone but I don't remember what time it was, I fell back asleep both times, and woke up again a third time sometime after 9 A.M. It was ten minutes before ten - 9:50 A.M. - before my alarm went off when I actually got out of bed. I took a shower and shaved, did some house chores - straightened up the apartment, and packed up my backpack with a change of clothes. I walked out the front door right at 12 P.M. noon, my bus to Moss was at 12:15 P.M. The bus was right on scheduled time. It was a thirty minute bus ride from Son to Moss, then a ten minute walk to the Moss train station - forty minutes of travel time. It was 12:55 P.M. when I got to Moss station, I had fifty minutes to wait for the 1:44 P.M. train to Goteborg Sweden. I sat on a bench outside the station house next to track one. I sat with my thoughts...days and weeks of anxiety and stress - I'm all messed up in my head, in my mind. Not taking care of myself, my body, properly as I know I should be doing. Not eating right, especially barely eating any breakfast - usually just drinking coffee, and most likely too much coffee - hell, I know I probably drink far too much coffee in the mornings. I had a three hour train ride - from Moss Norway to Goteborg Sweden. I took a window seat. I love to drift off in my mind, in my thoughts, and stare out of train windows. In the seven years that I have now been living in Scandinavia, this is actually my first time going to Goteborg by train. I had the camera App open on my iPhone with the idea to shoot some photos through the window - somewhat of a little documentation of my journey - passing farm houses and fields of wheat and grain, through the towns like Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg and Halden, crossing the border - Norway into Sweden, industrial warehouse buildings laced with graffiti, train station houses. Missed opportunities - so far no photos taken.
_
The car wouldn't be fixed today, it would be ready the next day. I stood outside the Mekonomen auto shop in the overcast gray, chilly autumn air pondering my thoughts for around five to ten minutes. It was around 12:10 P.M. or 12:15 P.M. - somewhere in there. I thought about walking into Skövde centrum to the bus station and taking a bus home, but I really didn't just want to go home. It was still early in the day. I needed to do something, something else, something more? I didn't know. Time alone for myself. I just started walking. I followed the paved sidewalk path along the highway road of the 26 in the direction of Södra Ryd. I honestly was not sure - had no idea at all of which sidewalks I really had to walk to get back to Södra Ryd, back home. I just walked. I walked through and past industrial areas - warehouses, along railroad tracks. I saw houses, and came out to a main road and began to realize where I was. I looked up the road to my left and saw the backside of a building that I was sure is the Skövde Stadskommun building, and I knew the Skövde Arena was in that direction too. So, it was to the right that I would walk. I walked through the Stallsiken shopping plaza area, following a random sidewalk - a tunnel/bridge way under railroad tracks, and along the backside of houses - a neighborhood. At this point, I thought I was really getting turned around, mixed up in my direction, lost. But I didn't really care if I was a bit lost. I was just walking. Alone with my thoughts, wasting away in life. I was starting to get very hungry, and knew I should eat, after all I only had two cups of coffee for breakfast - nothing to eat. But I didn't want to spend any money at all. So I didn't eat. I just kept walking. Through some trees and that neighborhood I spotted the sign for Åspö Gård, so again I found my way - knew where I was and was getting closer to Södra Ryd. A slight feeling of disappointment washed over me. Now realizing again that I knew where I was, and not mixed up in my direction or lost. I felt a bit like I didn't want my aimless walking journey to come to an end too soon. To just keep walking, like Jesus. I walked now through the woods on dirt pathways covered with the yellow, red, and orange fallen autumn leaves, past small lakes and creeks. I just walked on. Paved sidewalk pathways along busy, travelled roads and through the woods - the rest of the way into Södra Ryd centrum. It was 1:40 P.M. when I walked into the centrum.
(circa: hour and a half trek)
_
One week after one wasted Saturday night brings one more wasted Saturday night. Robert, Jordan, and Justin knock on my bedroom window at 12:20AM. They tell me to meet them up the block. I change clothes and grab my camera gear thinking to myself, we'll just cruise up to downtown Tampa - the usual spot of the amphitheatre - smoke out, hot box in the Ranger, fuck around and shoot photos in Tampa. That was what was to be planned. What really happened was a lot of bullshit. Oh, we did make it to the theatre but a sleeping bum freaked the others out. I got them to shut up and calm down for a moment - until I took out the camera. They freaked out once more, thinking I was going to take photos as they were hitting the pipe. Then the situation didn't get any better when a shit load of other people showed up. At that point we left downtown to head for the beach - Clearwater. I was so fucked up from all the weed that I got on North I-275 instead of South 275. We ended up in Temple Terrace. From Temple Terrace, we drove back through downtown, got back onto 275 South, and went to the airport for some unknown reason. I parked on the rooftop level of the parking garage. The four of us ran around freaked out - stoned at how high off the ground we were. Then we proceeded in bound, into the airport where we all basically walked in a circle then left. Parking cost $1.00. From the airport we finally managed to end up at Denny's at 4:30AM. We all ate probably the greaseiest shit food known to mankind. And from all that, we went home.
_
It was sometime around 11:50PM, Robert and I went over to Shannon's house to get some weed. Shannon, Robert, and I smoked a bit before Robert and I headed back out. About an hour later, Len and Eric show up at my house. Robert has with him this bong which belongs to this kid - Zack. The four of us pile back into my truck and drive a few miles to park by some railroad tracks to smoke out of this bong. I end up smoking my limit plus of weed. I started to throw-up, then the freaking out came along. I guess I blacked out a few times - as I was told the next day. For being as stoned as I know I was, I actually remember quite a lot of what had happened. I collapsed while Robert was talking to me. I laid in dirt and broken glass thinking it was a dream and that I was home in my bed. Robert was almost yelling at me to get up but my body couldn't function. He didn't even try to help, he just laughed. Len, who was the only one to really have any concern, yelled at Robert to take my keys to drive us home. Robert kept laughing, thinking I was just fucking around. Len helped me up off the ground and stayed by my side trying to talk to me. Again, I started to collapse but Len grabbed me. Some how I ended up in the passenger seat of my truck with my head back, listening to the others outside. Robert and Len arguing and Eric wanting to smoke more weed. At this time a pick-up truck came down the road. Slowly it passes where my truck is parked. The other three duck behind my truck leaving me alone in the front seat with the door open, dome light is on, I'm in plain view and don't have much capability to move or speak. The truck finally passes all the way and I hear Len talking - saying we need to leave now and get Kyle home to bed, while Eric still wants to smoke more weed. The sound of another pick-up truck comes into play. I hear this one coming and try to get out of my truck, close the door, and hide fast enough. It doesn't work that easily. I tried to get out so fast that I just fell, hitting my back on part of my truck. So there in the dirt, outside of my truck I sat starting to freak out again. Too many thoughts were in my brain, they always are. I was begging for that truck not to be a cop car. I was begging to leave, to be home and in my bed. Len helped me up again and I gave my keys to Robert. He drove us home and the whole way home I silently kept apologizing.
_
[From journal book Two]
On The Road - Part One, This is Sleezy
Matt and I left Tampa on a very hot Thursday afternoon. I-75 North, the traffick wasn't so bad and we had about four days till Ohio, so we had time on the road. Our first stop wasn't one that was originally planned but hell, nothing was really seriously planned. Forty-five minutes North of Tampa is a small town called Dade City. A friend of mine, Andre, owns and runs a skateboard company called Ghetto and also has a damn good mini ramp in a barn. It was Matt's first time there. After a good skate sesh and a nice hold down sesh, Matt and I got back onto 75 North. We took a brief stop off in downtown Atlanta to walk around as I shot photos of graffiti. We camped that night just North of Atlanta at Indian Creek state park. Matt didn't bring a flashlight. We had rolled into the campground around 11:30PM, so we had to set up the tent and find fire wood in the dark. When we got wood, it was almost too wet to light. It took Matt three or four tries to get the fire going. We even had burned the road map. Luckily Matt bought a brand new atlas - as did I. Our next stop was Nashville, Tennessee to hit up the skatepark there and to spend the night at my cousin's. It was good knowing you have a free place to stay when low on money and on the road. Good times were had in Nashville. No skate photos, but plenty of night time, going to honky tonks and getting drunk photos. We actually never did meet up with my cousin that night. His room mate Crystal was our tour guide for Nashville. The honky tonks ended up not even being all that good. Matt and I had more fun singing Hank and Cash songs with some street performer. On Saturday we headed into Kentucky to go to the Louisville skatepark. We got to Louisville a little bit before dark and we ate a way over priced meal at a Hard Rock Cafe. Then it was to a liquor store in the hood to pick up a twelve pack of Pabst. We got to the park around 10PM, I was going to try to sleep in the bed of my truck for a bit when we got there, but it didn't happen. We skated all night until around 5AM. It was such a long, but good, night. We met a lot of good people. From here, on Sunday morning, Matt took over the driving duty and we headed to his home - Circleville, Ohio.
(This is from the Summer of 2007, unfortunately I kind of messed this story up myself. It's never been finished. There was a lot more that I had intended to write, and even what is written here is actually missing quite some details. There is also a Part Two: Welcome to Camp Sleezy! It was to be a story on the Sleezy Skates crew at Skatopia in Rutland Ohio. I do have one page written - started for that story, yet the writing is more of a set up - an introduction for the Sleezy crew and Skatopia. I feel it's not something worthy of publishing at this time. Who knows, maybe someday I will actually finish the story.)
_
It really was a Kerouac-esque warm Autumn Sunday. I sat with my back against a wooden fence in some woods out back of the shop where my truck was. It was just noon but had the feeling of later in the day. I packed my chiller with a bowl of herb, to rest my mind and think over my finances. The sun hung in the sky just ahead - facing down on me cutting through the small openings of the leaves and branches on the trees. The sky was a vibrant bright crystal blue with a few pillowy clouds strung about.
It was later on that day, late afternoon on into the early evening. The air was cooling. I was now a bit more North, in Lutz at Corey's new house. There was a bar-bq going on with music and conversations. Corey and Robert were jamming on drums and a bass guitar. My truck still hadn't been fixed so I went on my motorcycle. I hadn't rode it for some time so it backfired and sputtered along city streets, back roads, and a stretch of interstate. Sitting there, I already knew it was going to be a long and chilly ride to where I was staying South. But I looked forward to the ride home. I wanted a different route to take. More country back roads. A scenic ride with clean crisp air under stars. Even the sky now is painted.
I was back in my little room drinking iced white tea with a candle burning, smoking the very end of what little herb I had left in the chiller earlier that day. The ride home I took only a slightly different route. Back highway roads that at times lead through random towns that wanted to act like they were big cities. The air was warm riding through the towns and a lot cooler on those back highways. But it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.
Late that night I sat on my bed and ate a meal of blueberry waffles with butter and maple syrup, watching Born Into This, a documentary on Charles Bukowski. Even though it was getting pretty late into the night, by the time I drifted off to sleep it was a bit earlier than I usually go to sleep. I needed a good night's rest.
_
I'm off, there I went bobbing through town once more on back highway roads with my motorcycle still sputtering along popping backfires as I pass by cars and trucks and those big rigs like my old man used to drive for a living. It was a Monday late afternoon, it was breezy out with a few more clouds spread through that crystal Florida Autumn sky. Though it felt more like Spring time. I sat outside of the place I was working at - at the time, under the shade of palms in an empty grass lot. I looked up to those silvery gray puffed up clouds which taunted us on the ground with threats of rain that wouldn't come until later in the week and in time to spoil the weekend. Unlike the rain of Summer in Florida, the Fall rains meant cooler weather. And again I knew my ride Southeast was going to be a chilly one tonight.
_
And just like that, the night alone became just like old times. I knew I was addicted - it was weed and whiskey. I was staying in the lab, it was my small room at my folk's. Of course the air was filled with the scent of incense and the sound of a film in the background as I wrote. In the usual fashion the tea was drank and smoked. It felt good to have a night like this one. The film was an old favourite of mine - The Basketball Diaries from the poet and writer Jim Carroll. My eyes glazed over from the weed, my brain swam in all the whiskey. Riders on the Storm played on the soundtrack to the film and everything came together. The Doors fit. Jim Carroll had basketball. I had skateboarding.
_
One of those nights. Sweet thoughts of Ohio. Randomly just push play on the Ipod's shuffle and the first song on is from Hank Sr. And in that instant, there I am in Henry and Darin's kitchen in the middle of the afternoon with not a thing to do but shots of whiskey. To make those moments even better, shots were drank from a Connecticut shot glass. They had shot glasses from almost all fifty states, just missing a few. The building they lived in was this amazing and old - a bit run down brick three story. At street level on Main Street was a pizza shop. I ate bread sticks from there one day, with marinara sauce. They were the type of bread sticks you would expect from the type of pizza shop this was. They were cheap. The apartments were on the second and third floors. Chad and Zack and Zack's girlfriend lived in one, and Henry and Darin lived in the other - and only other apartment on the second floor. The third floor was the entire last apartment. Zack's mom owned the building. The upstairs apartment's kitchen window led out to the roof. Which we all hung out on quite often drinking or not. Sometimes throwing rocks, bricks, empty soda or tea bottles, and etc. onto the roof of the building next door. There was one afternoon, there was a pretty bad storm coming. The sky was real dark gray with tremendous cracks of lightning. Matt, Henry, and Darin all got stoked hoping for a tornado.
I leaned back with my eyes drifting, half closed. Again back in Henry's kitchen. Sometimes in those country lazy small town afternoons taking shots of whiskey, I'd be the only one in the apartment, or Darin would be asleep. The front door was always open, never locked. The best was the day I wandered alone one weekday afternoon on Main Street shooting photos of Circleville. I heard my name called out from above. At first it put me in a daze, until I turned around to the right and looked up to see Henry in the window of that vacant third floor apartment. Or there was a holiday, maybe Fourth of July - whichever. Matt and I had downtown Circleville to ourselves. With a few passing cars every now and then, we skated. For a small mid-West town it definitely was a lot of fun and good times. (Due to all the great friends.)
_
It was only going to be a few days of a stay but it was going to be all out Kerouac in spirit. I was staying out in Winter Haven at Robert and Rebecca's place. Robert's ankle was broken, it had been a week so far and his leg was still too swollen for the surgery he needed. I needed to be out, away from my folk's house where I had been still staying at. I was camped out on their back patio - second story. There was a heavy dampness in the air. Fog was rolling in all around, and every so often a strong breeze would blow through and cool things down greatly. But I had my two heavy quilted blankets with me to wrap myself in - along with my hemp hooded jacket which I zipped up over my t-shirt and the hood up. I also had on my dusty black corduroys and socks. I felt greatful for what I have.
_
[From journal book Three]
When the phone rang it was around 9AM so it really wasn't all too early, I needed to get my hungover ass out of bed. It was Zack. Chris, he, and I had talked about an early Tuesday paint session at the Bro-Bowl. My head was pounding from the blueberry wine and smoke from the Monday night before. Zack said he couldn't get a hold of Chris. I hung up the phone, rolled over going back to sleep for about forty-five minutes. Zack called back and I finally got up. He was on his way over to my folk's where I was staying. He still couldn't get a hold of Chris so I too started calling him. Within thirty minutes Zack's little jeep came around the corner pulling up in front of my folk's. I loaded up my backpack of spray paint and an extra pair of shoes into Zack's jeep, and off we headed across town to bang on the door of Chris's mom's townhouse and get him out of bed. We made a by-pass through Ybor to grab some beer and tacos at Mema's Alaskan, then we walked down to Urban Outfitters - I had to collect ten dollars from my friend Sam who worked there with our friend Anthony. We all stood around the store talking art. Now it was mid-afternoon, blazing hot with humidity, crystal blue sky but with dark clouds rolling in. We knew it would rain, but how long till it came down on us? Chris rattled his cans away on the back wall bank of the bowl- painting a female face between another graffiti piece he did and an old piece of mine. I did a small three colour throw up along the snake run and got bored, done with it. I didn't have my sketchbook with and I wasn't prepared to really paint anything (good). Zack was painting one of the locked up doors to the old bathrooms in the run down pavillion building that's next to the bowl. I got stoked on that and grabbed my bag of paint and relocated under the covering, to the door left of Zack. I started to freestyle a door throw up doing my letters vertically stacked. Zack painted a black and white character art piece. He was getting his detail work and shading done while I was about half way through my piece, that's when a cop car crept up on the sidewalk from behind us to the left. I spotted the patrol car out of the corner of my eye as I bent over my pack of spray cans to grab a different colour. I set the can back inside the bag, stood up and turned to my right to Zack and simply just said his name, "Zack". He looked up and past me and saw. The cops ran our I.D.'s and we both ended up with court dates. We knew it could be worse, we could have gone to jail. There was paperwork to be signed and we had to give our right thumb print. After our ordeal with the Tampa PD - minutes later - Chris ran out of paint and was unable to finish his piece. Minutes after that there were nice gusts of wind, the sky had become darker with those giant puffed gray clouds. The skies opened up and finally the rain poured down on unfinished art ending our late afternoon.
_
[From journal book Four]
It's another cold, gray, mid-morning in February in Oslo. Outside the cafe where I sit in the Aker Brygge district of the city it's snowing heavily. I sat alone that Thursday morning sipping on a double black coffee, eating a chocolate croissant, soft oriental harmonies filled the cafe as the barista did his tai-chi movements behind the front counter. The rest of the day would be the same as usual. I was in the city to find work. Most of the store were not open yet, so I was killing my time - getting some writing done.
A few minutes after 8AM I stood on the platform at the train station in Ski, under an overhang trying my best to stay out of the snowfall as I awaited a late arriving train. The train that morning was packed - no seats available, standing room only. I was still tired and a bit stressed, it felt like the longest thirty minutes into the city. I knew I needed to be looking for work a bit harder than I was this day, but it was also a nice feeling sitting in the cafe, sipping on a coffee getting a book started, and gazing out the window to watch the snowfall. Yet I also knew I couldn't sit there all morning. Just a bit after 10AM and a phone call from my wife, I figured I really should venture out into that snow filled late morning to once again try to find work. The air wasn't unbearably cold but the heavy snow fall and sidewalks covered in dirty-wet slush was. I chose to stick with the indoor shopping malls of the Aker Brygge district. I wasn't having much luck with the stores in the mall. I wandered into a book store to browse the American selections which there wasn't much of. I wanted to find Bulowski, again no such luck. So I ventured back out to the snow fall and ice and slush.
_
My Norwegian language class ran a bit late on this Tuesday night - the first night of March. My shoulder bag with my laptop and notebooks was quite a heavy load. I walked slow on the ice covered sidewalk, with no care if I missed the train to Son - almost as if I wanted to miss it. Maybe I could have made it. I called my wife to let her know I had missed the train and that the next one wasn't for another hour. She had planned to walk to the Sonsveien station to meet me. When I called, she was already half way to the station. I told her when I finally would get there that I would just take the bus back to the center then walk up the hill of Løkkeveien to our apartment. There she would have a dinner of homemade lentil soup and fresh baked bread waiting for me.
_
It's been just about fifteen hours by now. This has been the kind of Monday I really just may have needed. The alarm on my cell phone was set for 6AM but I've been having horrible insomnia again like I had when I was back in Florida. I was awake by ten minutes after 5AM. I tried to go back to sleep but really couldn't. A half an hour later I just decided to get out of bed. I had to go to work at the sign shop earlier than usual anyway, and I was still unsure if my boss Per Otto was going to pick me up or if I would have to walk to the train station. My wife was still in bed asleep. Around a quarter after 7AM Per called me to tell me he was on the way to Son to pick me up, and that he would be there in about ten minutes. I grabbed my small army style shoulder bag and left the apartment to walk down to the town center to meet Per. Løkkeveien, the street Elin and I live on, is a pretty steep hill and the street this windy cold morning was covered in ice which made my walk into town very difficult. After a quick stop at a gas station in Vestby for coffee, we got to the shop around 8AM. It was a long busy day. Elin picked me up around quarter after 5PM with just enough time to drive me back into the town center so I could go to my Norwegian language class which started at 5:30PM. She had a meeting at the school where she worked at 7:30PM and my class was done at 8PM. When I got out of class I had to walk back up to the school to wait for Elin to finish with the meeting. I sat in the breakroom doing my language homework. We left the kindergarten around 9:30PM and got home just about 10PM. My body was sore and worn, we ate a quick late dinner then showered. Once I got into bed I was asleep right away.
_
It was the beginning of August, the midnight sun was no more. The light was already changing. I had to get up to go to the bathroom on a Wednesday morn, I looked at the clock - it was 4:29AM and it was still almost dark outside the window. The night before, it was dark just before 11PM.
I usually quit work for the day at the same time as my wife, but things have been real slow the past couple of weeks at the sign shop so I have been getting off work an hour or two early. This Wednesday was a bit busier yet I was still off an hour before Elin would be. It was 4PM when I walked out of the shop - the way the sunlight hit and the shadows cast, you could tell Autumn was coming soon.
I sat on a park bench, under a big shade tree with perfect breezes, in the cemetery at the old church across the street from the kindergarten where Elin worked, reading a Bukowski book.
_
I needed something for myself, maybe alone time - Kyle time. It was a Friday, October was almost over, the air was cold. You could see the fog of your breath in the air and there was ice on the windows of the car in these mornings which had to be scraped off. I was already going to be working at the DC store from 4PM to 8PM tonight, and I had planned on working the morning shift at the sign shop, but I took the morning off. I ended up at the Ski library and in the English section found a Kerouac book I did not know of - Maggie Cassidy. I immediately checked it out - got it for four weeks. I started to read it, sitting in the library. It feels right, needed. What I need (and want - or could use). New England in the late thirties. Good old Americana! I was born there, in New England - Bristol, Connecticut. Though I was raised in the South - in Florida, yet throughout my life I really always wondered how my life would have been if I had never moved from Bristol.
_
It was the last day of October - a Monday, Halloween day, a bit warm for a Scandinavian Autumn morn. Ten minutes to 9AM I locked the down stairs front door to our apartment, and started off on my walk to the train station. The train was at 9:22AM. The air still did have a slight chill, you could see the fog of your breath, I walked along the mid morning wet narrow streets past the sleepy old wooden houses of Son. The sun was bright shining - hung low in the sky. I was in a poetic - sad Kerouac-esque somber mood that morning, yet I smiled to myself as that bright sun shined on my face and I walked past young kids on their way to school in all their glorious playful dreaming innocence. I wondered curious and carelessly about how my life would be if I had never moved from Bristol. Forgotten non-existent childhood memories of a house built by my father and a barn out back, with two sisters, and two cousins living next door. Within reading Jack's words, the way he describes his Winter New England of the late thirties - and now coming into my second Winter here in Norway - walking that Halloween morning to the train station, and the next day's morn, waking before my wife to sit quiet, alone, eating a breakfast of yogurt with honey and oats, a buttered piece of bread with cheese, and drinking a cup of hot black Swedish coffee, looking out the balcony window over those sleepy rooftops through the barren empty trees, the gray heavy fog out over the fjord. The sun didn't shine on this morn as it did the morning before. The day was gray and wet, heavy fog. In Norway, missing a small New England town I never knew. I worked just a few hours that Tuesday - the first of November - from late morning to mid afternoon. After work - to save on money, I chose to walk to the Vestby train station - it took me just twenty-five minutes. The day was gray and dark, still heavy fog, no rain - yet, but the streets and sidewalks were damp - wet, the air was mild cool. Just 4PM but it seemed hours later. The orange-yellow glow of the street lights had now come on to illuminate the fog. I sat on a bench outside the station, waiting for the train to Ski in the bleakness, that heavy fog and wet ground. Still - with the dreaminess of Jack's thirties New England. I couldn't keep my thoughts away from it. The train was at 4:30PM, ten minutes later I would be in Ski. I got to the station and in Ski there was a slight drizzle of rain, I had a few blocks to walk to get to the building where I was taking Norwegian language classes. With my thoughts still on the Maggie Cassidy book - I left the hood of my Winter coat back - off my head, letting the little drops of drizzle fall on my head - in my hair - thinking of the opening pages and words from Jack - oh the beautiful babes, zeet! rings out in my head. By the time it was just 5PM - it was already completely dark outside.
_
I got up at 6:30AM with Elin. I didn't have to be at work until two in the afternoon but as Elin got herself ready for work, I went out into the cold dark to scrape the snow and ice off the car and get it started - warming it up for her. Around 7:30AM I went back to sleep and by 9:30AM I was awake again. Late in the morning I ate a bowl of rice noodles with teriyaki sauce and cups of hot tea. I caught the 11:59AM bus and took it all the way into Vestby to the station there. The route went along the back roads, through the small village of Hølen. I sat in the front of the bus, staring out the window with headphones on listening to the soundtrack to Almost Famous. Perfect music for a thirty minute bus tour - past snow covered sleepy wooden houses, barns, farm fields and trees - all in glorious bright gleaming clear blue Winter Scandinavian sky. As I gazed out the window, I hoped to spot an elk running across one of those snow blanketed fields. The train from Son only takes seven minutes to get to Vestby, but it goes from Sonsveien station twenty-two minutes over every hour, and despite the bus route is thirty minutes - but it leaves Son twenty-three minutes earlier, it still puts me in Vestby at the same time and the same cost of twenty-eight kroners. So, once I got into Vestby I had my usual hour to kill before the next bus which is at every twenty-five minutes over the hour. That's the bus that takes me up to the outlet mall - to work. I had my camera with me that day so I decided to spend the hour walking about the small downtown area of Vestby snapping some photos.
_
[From journal book Five]
Still early into a new year, end of Winter, I had finished writing my fourth journal book and started reading Kerouac's Big Sur. I was in a rush - a kind of natural high, fiending off Jack's words. I had now been living in Norway for one year and three months - clean of herb. It felt nice and good to be clean, clear headed. Jack's words became my drug. In the past few months I went through Maggie Cassidy and Satori in Paris. Good old Jack's words were what I needed, forget the weed - yet I was still drinking booze (beer and wine). His words at times may have made the homesickness worse - oh good ol Americana, but they helped also - for the memories. In everything else, it was back to routines....
A couple of weeks have gone by - missed opportunities to write - been busy with work at a regular job, and Norwegian language classes. Spending money on bus and train tickets - staring out the windows, watching the on coming Spring green fight and push its way up through the last of the Winter's ice still trying to hold fast with its cold claw grasp. As the ice melts away making the sidewalks and streets slick - slippery and treacherous. The sky these days have been clear - crystal blue.
It was a Tuesday evening, on the inside - in my mind - I was a train wreck. I was having slight headaches, (almost dizzy spells), I was feeling not at all like my own self - physically and emotionally drained out - (again). I was suppose to be in my Norwegian language class right now. I knew I should go, I needed to be there. I wanted to go and I didn't want to go - all in the same, it was both. I had three job interviews this day. The first one was at some cafe - it was bullshit, and I didn't care. The other two went better, and were for better jobs. So there I was, I found myself sitting in the Ski library - as I have a hundred times. I wasn't happy, and it was a harsh realization.
Wandering for a few hours...- the library closed at 7PM, I left ten minutes earlier. I strolled around the mall. I went to Norli - a book store, there I found Bukowski's Post Office. Then I flipped through a Norway graffiti art book. I had a schedule to stick to - still had to catch the 8:11PM train to Son. I had an hour. I sat in the Ski station. I hoped I would be able to hop the train undetected and ride for free - (as I have done many times), I really didn't have so much money - not totally broke, but close. Just put on my headphones, hopefully make a window seat and stare out - looking off into the night, to the lights of small towns and farm houses passing by.
_
[From journal book Six]
I looked at the clock, it was exactly eleven P.M. on a February Thursday night, Elin and I figured it was getting late enough that we should go to sleep. I put down the Vonnegut book I was reading and turned out the lights. I knew I had to try to sleep and I wanted to - the thoughts of many artistic ideas filled my head. I was awake again, and with my wife's snoring, there was no chance I could sleep. I grabbed my pillow and blanket and relocated out to the couch - it was now 12:30A.M. I laid on the couch listening to the howling winds and pouring rain.
_
My brain was mush again - scrambled thoughts...yesterday was a Tuesday, the third day of March, my mom's birthday - she would have been seventy-four years old. The sun shined bright that day, and it's shining bright today - the fourth day of March - a Wednesday. It's the first two days the sun has shined in a little while. I was in the city - in Oslo trying to still find a job - just about two months unemployed now. It seemed nothing was working out for me. The only luck I was having was not good luck. I was getting frustrated and annoyed. - On this particular Wednesday I was out of bed and dressed by quarter to eight A.M. I had some house work to get done before I left - dishes to wash, laundry, make the bed and straighten up the apartment. I took my time, slacking a little, ended up taking too much time. At first, I really thought of taking the 9:20AM bus to Sonsveien station but there was no chance of that happening, so I planned to catch the 10:20AM bus instead. Figuring I now had some extra time, I took even more time doing my house chores. It ruined me, I blew it. Now I had to take the 11:20AM bus, and I just could not miss that one. At ten minutes to eleven A.M. I was on my out of the house. My friend Kristian and his wife Annette had just gotten to the house - our landlord Frank is Annette's dad, and they had stopped by to pick up some things. As I was leaving, Annette asked me what I was going into Oslo for and what I was going to do. I told her I was going job hunting. She asked me why, asked why I didn't just stay home and search the internet, asked if I was getting my dagpenger - unemployment money from NAV yet. I told her yes that my unemployment money had started coming in. Then she asked me - said - why bother looking for a new job since I was getting money from NAV. She said why not just work on your photography stuff. I told her I wanted to work. I wanted a job.
I got into the city at 12:20PM. Some hours later, I got a phone call - it was Kristian, he had driven into Oslo to go to some photo store/lab, he was picking up some 120 medium format film he had gotten developed and needed to also buy a film negative scanner. I took a break from the search for work to meet up with him for a little while. Then it was back to the hunt. And since I was in the city, I had also planned - tried to meet up with another friend, Les, who lives in Oslo and I haven't seen for quite a long time. Les is a fellow American. We had planned to meet up in the late afternoon/early evening, after I was done with my job searching, and have dinner with some brews. It didn't happen. By now it was some time around five P.M. - I wasn't sure if it was before or after five P.M. I purposely did not check the time, I didn't want to know. I sat at a pizza joint in the Oslo central station drinking a couple Brooklyn lagers.
I had finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkeyhouse. Now I'm reading his book Breakfast of Champions. I'm about half way through it. The Son bibliotek has a couple more of Vonnegut's books which I'll probably check out when I'm done with Breakfast of Champions. I didn't know what it was - how to explain it...maybe - the dark humor of Vonnegut's stories, his words, my slight depression, stress, and anxieties, frustrations and annoyances with being unemployed again...I felt very cynical. I remembered and thought of a quote from Vonnegut I once read in the St. Pete Times newspaper. This is not the exact quote, it's been too many years and I can not remember it word for word - but it was something to this extent - about the human race and our planet, planet Earth - Vonnegut said we should give up, pack it in, that we were wrecking the place anyhow - meaning, he meant, the human race should die off. I know this is a harsh thing to say, pretty negative, depressing. Yet I can't help it, I kind of agree. It's a sad truth. Sad, but true. My very good friend and old room mate Mike once said that the planet - planet Earth and mother nature would shake off the human race like a disease, or a plague - like a dog shaking off fleas. I liked those words as well.
Well, I finally checked the time - a quarter to seven P.M., and the train home goes at 7:18PM, I have about a half an hour, guess I'll go buy the ticket and make my way home. I got on that 7:18PM train home, took a window seat and stared off into the now dark evening sky. As the train left Oslo central, I rested my head back on the seat and for a split second - a fleeting moment - I imagined - pictured home, the small apartment in Son, and having a job, working someplace close to home - like in Moss or Vestby. It gave me a happy calm, relaxed feeling - like all warm and fuzzy inside. I felt so very far away in Oslo.
_
[From journal book Eight]
Thursday September 29, 2016
It was my day off from work, an anxiety - stressed filled day...windy, gray, raining out - getting cold...I had to get the car fixed - I drove a half an hour to Ski to my friend Joel's auto shop, I got there around 8:30 A.M. and about an hour later his mechanics started to work on the car. Another hour later - around 10:30 A.M. Joel drove me to the mall. I wandered aimlessly around the mall with nothing at all to do - just stuck in my head, to deal with my thoughts. I had so much on my mind it felt too overwhelming, my anxiety level was high. I felt sick to my stomach, yet I needed to eat. I wanted a falafel but the Istanbul BBQ joint was closed. I ended up going to Peppe's Pizza Pub and got a cheese pizza and a coke. Around 11:30 A.M. as I sat there almost forcing myself to eat, Joel called me back to tell me they were having problems and they would have to order more parts - more money to the cost, and it would take longer but still get done this day. I needed the car to be done today. My stomach knotted up even more, more anxiety, I felt like I was going to vomit. I almost wanted to cry. I went back to the mall - walked around feeling so lost, hung out at the library for a short while, sat in the small park area by the city hall building, thinking, over thinking - stress and worry...long near forgotten Kerouac-esque memories. I just felt so lost. The rain stopped. The sun came back yet it was still overcast and cloudy, it got a little warmer yet the wind blew strong. By now it was ten minutes over 1 P.M., I knew the car wasn't ready yet but I was over hanging out in the town center. I decided to walk back to the auto shop. I had no idea of how long the walk back would take, yet for some reason I figured about thirty minutes and I was right. There was no sidewalk for most of the way along the main road, so it felt kind of sketchy to walk it. When I got back to Joel's shop I took a cup of coffee and sat on a bench outside. Being back at the auto shop to wait for the car to be finished somehow did help to calm me down. I got a little more relaxed and some of the stress and anxiety faded away. A little over an hour later - around 3 P.M. - the car was ready. As I drove home, I thought how wasted away my day off was when I could have been spending time with my wife and my son - with family.
_
A Sunday. August 13, 2017.
I had the alarm clock on my iPhone set for 10 A.M., I woke up twice in the eight o'clock hour - I looked at the clock on my phone but I don't remember what time it was, I fell back asleep both times, and woke up again a third time sometime after 9 A.M. It was ten minutes before ten - 9:50 A.M. - before my alarm went off when I actually got out of bed. I took a shower and shaved, did some house chores - straightened up the apartment, and packed up my backpack with a change of clothes. I walked out the front door right at 12 P.M. noon, my bus to Moss was at 12:15 P.M. The bus was right on scheduled time. It was a thirty minute bus ride from Son to Moss, then a ten minute walk to the Moss train station - forty minutes of travel time. It was 12:55 P.M. when I got to Moss station, I had fifty minutes to wait for the 1:44 P.M. train to Goteborg Sweden. I sat on a bench outside the station house next to track one. I sat with my thoughts...days and weeks of anxiety and stress - I'm all messed up in my head, in my mind. Not taking care of myself, my body, properly as I know I should be doing. Not eating right, especially barely eating any breakfast - usually just drinking coffee, and most likely too much coffee - hell, I know I probably drink far too much coffee in the mornings. I had a three hour train ride - from Moss Norway to Goteborg Sweden. I took a window seat. I love to drift off in my mind, in my thoughts, and stare out of train windows. In the seven years that I have now been living in Scandinavia, this is actually my first time going to Goteborg by train. I had the camera App open on my iPhone with the idea to shoot some photos through the window - somewhat of a little documentation of my journey - passing farm houses and fields of wheat and grain, through the towns like Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg and Halden, crossing the border - Norway into Sweden, industrial warehouse buildings laced with graffiti, train station houses. Missed opportunities - so far no photos taken.
_
The car wouldn't be fixed today, it would be ready the next day. I stood outside the Mekonomen auto shop in the overcast gray, chilly autumn air pondering my thoughts for around five to ten minutes. It was around 12:10 P.M. or 12:15 P.M. - somewhere in there. I thought about walking into Skövde centrum to the bus station and taking a bus home, but I really didn't just want to go home. It was still early in the day. I needed to do something, something else, something more? I didn't know. Time alone for myself. I just started walking. I followed the paved sidewalk path along the highway road of the 26 in the direction of Södra Ryd. I honestly was not sure - had no idea at all of which sidewalks I really had to walk to get back to Södra Ryd, back home. I just walked. I walked through and past industrial areas - warehouses, along railroad tracks. I saw houses, and came out to a main road and began to realize where I was. I looked up the road to my left and saw the backside of a building that I was sure is the Skövde Stadskommun building, and I knew the Skövde Arena was in that direction too. So, it was to the right that I would walk. I walked through the Stallsiken shopping plaza area, following a random sidewalk - a tunnel/bridge way under railroad tracks, and along the backside of houses - a neighborhood. At this point, I thought I was really getting turned around, mixed up in my direction, lost. But I didn't really care if I was a bit lost. I was just walking. Alone with my thoughts, wasting away in life. I was starting to get very hungry, and knew I should eat, after all I only had two cups of coffee for breakfast - nothing to eat. But I didn't want to spend any money at all. So I didn't eat. I just kept walking. Through some trees and that neighborhood I spotted the sign for Åspö Gård, so again I found my way - knew where I was and was getting closer to Södra Ryd. A slight feeling of disappointment washed over me. Now realizing again that I knew where I was, and not mixed up in my direction or lost. I felt a bit like I didn't want my aimless walking journey to come to an end too soon. To just keep walking, like Jesus. I walked now through the woods on dirt pathways covered with the yellow, red, and orange fallen autumn leaves, past small lakes and creeks. I just walked on. Paved sidewalk pathways along busy, travelled roads and through the woods - the rest of the way into Södra Ryd centrum. It was 1:40 P.M. when I walked into the centrum.
(circa: hour and a half trek)
