Houses of God and cheese and imperial stout

I've been a little bit sick lately, so we didn't go skiing in the mountains this weekend. Today I went for a walk downtown, to return some books to the public library.  The sun was shining, and it was a nice day for walking. Apparently many people thought the same, because the streets were crowded. There were tall people and short people, skinny people and fat people. All of them carrying bags and backpacks with stuff they had bought.

I took a quick tour around downtown. I visited a shop were I bought a camembert cheese, produced by a local farm. Then, in a different store, I bought a bottle of porter and an imperial stout. The porter was from the town were i live now. The imperial stout was imported, brewed in Denver, Colorado, were I lived for a while in the past. It was a great place to live, by the way.

On the way back home, I passed by the old cathedral. On the other side of the street, the Catholics are building a new church. God is absent in both places. He's just a product of human fantasy, unlike the cheese and the beer I bought, which are real.

The old cathedral was Catholic too, from the time it was built 900 years ago, until the last arch bishop fled from the reformation in the 16th century. Now the Catholics are back. That's fine with me. I just wonder why they have to build a new church. We have plenty of churches already. In most of them both the congregation and God are absent. We could rather have given the Catholics one of the existing churches, giving back some of the property they lost in the reformation.

(Picture taken on my walk today. The old cathedral to the right, the new Catholic church, with the scaffolds, to the left). 

Saving lives

It was lunchtime, and Tom and Anna sat in the grass by the fjord. It was warm, and the sun was shining. They had just finished their sandwiches.

"Everything feels so right with you, so natural, even eating a shrimp sandwich," Anna said. "But now I want the desert”.  

She stroked the bulge on his trousers, and then she opened the zipper to feel his bare skin.

“Be careful”, he moaned, “I don’t want to spill it on neither your clothes nor mine.”

“Don’t worry, I will take care of it”.

She embraced his erected penis with her mouth. Her lips moved slowly up and down the shaft, and her tongue caressed the head. Tom felt relaxed and excited at the same time, lying on his back in the grass. He looked up at the blue sky, through the sparse green leaves of a birch. In a wonderful moment of joy, the leaves of the tree appeared yellow and red.

Anna looked at him and smiled.

“You’re clean now. Nothing was spilled,” she said.

“Thank you,” said Tom.

He put his hand on the inside of her naked thigh and started to explore. She had no panties on. She spread her legs to let him touch her wet and smooth cleft.  She closed her eyes and moaned, and the wrinkle of pleasure appeared between her eyes.

Her body started to shiver. Two ants were climbing up along her thigh. Tom snapped the ants away, saving them from drowning in her ocean of wetness

“We have just saved two lives,” he said.

"Yes, yours and mine."

They were two happy horses grassing on a green field, and with no fence around >:)

(Picture taken a couple of days ago. I don't know who the people are. There are people everywhere, doing all kind of weird things on these nice and warm summer days ... )

Corporate values

It was one of the sunny and warm summer days that are rare in the north. Tom Snare sat in his hot office, trying to solve an equation he had been struggling with for some time.  Occasionally, he looked at the fjord outside the window, where the sun was blinking in the calm sea surface. He wished he could go out to enjoy the sun, but he had this damned equation to solve.

Around noon, Anna knocked the door to his office. He was happy to see her sweet smile, and her green emerald eyes.

“Will you join me for lunch today, Tom?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll get some sandwiches and cold drinks for us,” she said, “and then we can meet down by the fjord.”

Ten minutes later, Tom pulled his ID card at the detector, to open the gate in the main entrance. Then he was out in the warm and pleasant sun.  He walked quickly down to the fjord, to the little cape where they sometimes met.

Anna arrived with sandwiches and soft drinks a couple of minutes later.

They sat in the grass eating, and talking about the sea and the sky.

When the sandwiches were swallowed and the bottles were empties, they lay down in the grass, so close that they could smell each other’s breaths, and hear each other’s heart beats. Tom closed his eyes and he felt Anna’s sweet lips against his, and he stroke the soft skin on her arm. His hand continued to explore under her skirt, and he could feel that she was moist and longing for him.

Tom watched a plane crossing the blue sky when Anna sat down on top of him.  She was wet and soft and wonderful.  He closed his eyes and enjoyed the thrilling flight of the moment. When he opened his eyes, the plane was gone, landed on the airport nearby.

Tom had landed too.

Anna again sat next to him in the grass, fiddling with her ID card. She read aloud the four words printed on the backside of the card:

“Courageous.  Open.  Hands-on.  Caring.”

“We’ve been through all of it now”, Anna said, and smiled.

“Yes”, said Tom, “sometimes I almost believe in corporate values.”

(Picture taken a couple of days ago, by the fjord. I have no idea who the girl in the picture is. She wasn't supposed to be there.)

Such a nice and sunny day

It's such a nice and sunny day. People are hiking
the trails along the fjord, and I'm sitting indoor in my office. Not for a long time, though. I'm just in for half an hour to print a student thesis that I have to read through, tonight on the plane to the North >:)

(It takes some time to print 170 pages. In the mean time, I took the picture above through the window, and wrote this post.)

Great skiing and a good book

We just had a weekend of fantastic sunny weather in the mountains. The skiing was great. For the first time this winter, we could ski in the high zone, above timber line. The wind chill was still like -20 degrees (-5 Fahrenheit) at the top, but in the sun it was quite pleasant.

Little boy and I was mostly skiing in the off-piste area. I've realized that I'm getting older, so I need to be somewhat careful. So, this is what I do: When we take a new route, I first send little boy alone. When he comes down (I hope), he can tell me if the route is recommended for me. Then we ski it together.

I needed something to read in the evenings. So, on the way to the slopes I stopped by a bookstore, and picked a book at random: Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin, an amazing book. It's an autobiographic novel about a boy of the Urka people, born and raised to become a criminal, in a traditional Siberian society.

(The Urka people was deported from Siberia to Transnistria, on the border between Moldova and Ukraine, in the Stalin era.)

The philosophy of the Urka people reminds me of Jean Genet (Thief's Journal, The Miracle of the Rose), in the sense that everything is turned upside down, compared to the "normal" society. Police and authorities are the enemies. Thieves and robbers, so-called "honest criminals", are heroic role models. Spending half a lifetime in jail is normal.

Nicolai Lilin doesn't quite match Jean Genet, though. But who does?

(I took the picture above this weekend. It's little boy, my main ski buddy, surrounded by the white gold, under the blue sky.)

Sublimation

Last Sunday, we had a fantastic winter day, cold and sunny and dry, hardly any wind. A perfect day for skiing above the timberline.

When the weather conditions are like that, the ice cover virtually evaporates from the highway. It's called sublimation, and happens in dry and cold conditions. Water goes directly from the solid phase (ice) to the gas phase (vapor), without passing through the liquid phase (water). It's the same as the process they use to make instant coffee (freeze-drying).

When little boy and I came down to the chair lift in the morning, we found a sign announcing: ski-in mass 11 am. I was curious.

"What the Hell is going on," I said.

"Maybe the priest wanna ski too", little boy suggested.

"Do you wanna attend the mass? Maybe the priest can bless your skis?"

"No, I don't want to waste my time," said little boy.

So, no mass. That's fine with me. Let the priest do whatever he wants, with or without skis. I'm done with that stuff long time ago. Little boy seems to agree.

I was just curious what a ski-in mass is like. I still don't know.

Anyway, the skiing was good. Little boy skied over the jumps. I'm too old for jumping. It hurts too much when I fall. Around noon we could even feel that the sun was warming. Maybe it was just the holy ghost leaking out from the mass.

It was one of those days when skiing is like a sublimation of God. The mountains are my cathedral. I don't need a priest >:)

(These sunny and cold winter days come now and then every year: I had forgotten my camera this time. The picture above was taken in January last year.)

Sun gone wild

The sun has gone crazy the last few days, with very powerful magnetic storms. I read in the newspapers that this has caused problems for the air traffic, in particular near the poles.

And it creates northern light.

The magnetic storms send bursts of electrically charged particles into space. When the particles come close to the the Earth, they follow the magnetic field towards the north and south poles. That's why you need to be far north (or far south) to see the norther (or southern) light.

It's not very often we see strong northern light as far south as our town (at 63 degrees north). It's a spectacular view, but it's just some cool physics in action >:)

(The picture is from our local newspaper. It shows the northern light flashing over the town.)

The gambler

There's a book that I read almost every summer on the beach. I've read it more than 10 times now. The twists and turns of the story are hardly surprising me anymore. Now I read the book mostly to admire the writing.

My copy is a nice hardbound and leather-back book. It was printed in 1946, and I bought it 2nd hand from an antiquarian many years ago.

The book I'm talking about is The Gambler by Dostoyevsky. It's a relatively short narrative novel, just a little bit more than 200 pages. It's an easy and entertaining read, and a very suitable beach book, I think.

The story takes place in a German gambling town with the brilliant name Roulettenburg. The protagonist and narrator is a tutor employed by a poor Russian General who has lost his past fortune. The General wants to marry a beatuiful woman, but to be able to do this, he needs money. Back in Russia is the old and very rich Grandmother who is expected to die very soon. Every day the General telegraphs to Russia, asking about her health. He is impatiently waiting for her death, and to inherit her fortune.

One day, the old Grandmother unexpectedly arrives in Roulettenburg. She goes straight to the casino, to put her fortune (and the General's heritage) at stake by the roulette table ... and this is were the real fun begins. I say no more.

Dostoyevsky was addicted to gambling himself. In this novel he gives a brilliant and in-depth exposition of gambling psychology, built on his personal experience (and if you're cusious about Dostoyevsky, I recommend the biography by Geir Kjetsaa)

(That's my footsteps in the picture above. I had been out swimming in the chill and refreshing fjord, and walked accross that rock, on the way back to my towel and my Dostoyevsky book on the beach)

Down by the seaside

It was the last week of the summer vacation, and we went to the coast down south. Actually, it's not very far south, just an hour driving south of Winterland.

Blackberries are growing wild by the roads, very nice to eat right off the bush. Blackberries don't grow in Winterland.

(I might use this as a definition; Winterland is the land north of the northermost blackberry bush.)

We had some nice and lazy days by the sea, swimming, jumping from cliffs (the kids, not me), fishing, or just racing around on the fjord in a small boat, just for fun.

Little boy caught a grasshopper and put it in a jar. He named it Roy and tried to teach it tricks. It turned out that Roy wasn't very willing to learn.

I've read some good books, of course. First, I read my every-summer-on-the-beach book; The Gambler by Dostoyevsky. It's about the 10th time I read it. Second, I read Boomerang by Tatiana de Rosnay. Good book, recommended.

Then I found this old book in a shelf; The Barble Bush by Charles Mergendahl. I had never heard of it before, but the text on the back cover made me curious; "2.5 million copies sold" (not necessarily a good sign), "mercy killing, adultry, seduction, insanity ... sordid ingredients". And the book wasn't bad, I think.

From time to time, I got tired of reading; I wanted to write. So, I got a notebook, and started to write a new novel. The notebook has pages labeled from A to Z (plus a couple of strange letters we're using here). Just for fun, I started a new chapter for every new heading-letter, and each chapter beginning with the same letter. I'm writing longhand, so I have to rewrite (and edit) everything later.

My new (so-called) novel is a story about two old men escaping from the nursery home, and their adventures as they travel northward. It's is kind of a road movie, except that it's a novel, and that they travel by train and ship rather than car. On their way, they summarize their different, but equally miserable lives and hope that their last journey will bring something exciting. I have no plot and no plan; we'll see where it ends.

Led Zeppelin? Yes, that's right. I borrowed the title of this post from a Led Zeppelin song on the Physical Graffiti album.

(I took the picture above on a nice and sunny day at the beach. The area along the coast is of great geological interest. The rocks were created by volcanic erruptions some 150 million years ago, and later carved and shaped by glaciers. It's nature's own art.)

The big magnet

I'm working late again tonight, preparing a lecture for Friday morning. Tomorrow night I'm taking Little Boy to skiing practice, so I have to prepare the lecture one day in advance. It doesn't mean I've got better habits, starting early. It's just because I have to.

The subject this week (for the lecture, not the skiing practice) is magnetotellurics. It's a crazy word composed of two parts:
o Magnet; everyone knows what a magnet is.
o Tellus, which is the The Earth.
The Earth (Tellus) acts like a huge magnet. That's why such things as an old-fashioned compass works. The arrow points towards the magnetic north pole of The Earth. The magnetic north pole is different from the geographic North Pole. So if you're very close to the geographic North Pole, your compass would point to some place in Canada rather than towards north (you better use GPS in that case).

Furthermore (and this is where the fun starts), our dear Sun sends out so-called solar winds, continuously. A swarm of electric charges is raining over The Earth, and pushing the magnetic field out of equilibrium.

Just relax. It's not dangerous, and there's no way to stop it. This will go on until the sun stops burning (which will be really dangerous, but it's still some billion years into the future).

When the earth-magnet is disturbed like this (by the solar storms), The Earth sends back an echo which reveals it's inner secrets, not all the details, but more like a rough sketch. If we put down some sensors and measure the echo, we can compute an image of the earth and it's inner structure, many kilometers below the surface.

Cool isn't it? Do you wanna know how to do it? Then you have to come to my lecture on Friday morning. We're starting at 9am, after a cup of hot coffee >:)

(The picture above is an illustration of solar winds distrubing the magnetic field of The Earth. I took it from a report written by a former MSc student of mine. He (the student) probably stole it on the internet. I don't steal stuff; I just borrow it.)

Fog and sun

It was one of these rare days. The morning was freezing cold and foggy down in the valley. The moist air made it feel even colder. We covered our faces with scarves, everything except the mouth and the nose.

Older boy and his buddies went to the terrain park, where the black run, with the biggest jumps, has just opened.

Little boy and I took the fast double-quad chair lift up in the mountain. When we jumped off at the top station, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. We decided to continue with the gondola, to the top of the mountain.


The buildings at the top were completely covered in snow and ice. There was no wind. The sun is low over the horizon at this time of the year, but we could feel it was warming. It was amazing.

We paused at the top for while, enjoying the pleasant weather and the fabulous view. The fog and the clouds were like a gray ocean down in the valley. Then we skied down the slope. Little boy was waiting for me when I came down. He’s too fast. I’m not able to keep up with him anymore.

It got very cold again when the sun set around 2 pm, but even though our noses ached, we continued to ski till the lifts closed at 3 o’clock.

Happy New Year >:)

Junk food and aged wine

The last couple of weeks we have been on vacation. A few days in Venice, then cruising around in the Adriatic Sea, visiting many interesting places, and eating lots of good food (and drinks? No, very little, I don't drink alcohol when I'm with the kids).

As usual, the Germans were walking around the pool with big beer-bellies and small Speedo pants; very ugly. As usual, the Italian girls had tiny bikinis; very nice! (where the Hell is the moral here?) And whenever I tried to take a picture of the kids or a nice scenery, some unknown jerk bustled in front of my camera in the moment I was pushing the button.

The best about vacation is having plenty of time to relax in the sun and read books. I started with some brain-junk-food; "The Darkest Room", a crime novel by Johan Theorin. It's one of these books that makes me shout: "What the Hell, I could have written better than this shit myself".

Then came the aged wine (when it comes to drinks I actually prefer beer, but never mind); The Gambler by Dostoyevsky, this fabulous little book that I read on the beach every summer. I looked around, feeling pity for all the people sitting there with their junk-literature; Robert Ludlum, Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Barbara Cartland, Stephenie Meyer ... and so on. Burgers and fries are OK now and then, but not every day.

And then, I discovered this little pearl of a book (actually I found it in my wife's suitcase): "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery. It's an intelligent and funny book about a concierge who loves the works of Tolstoy, and a super-smart 12-year-old girl who has decided to commit suicide on her 13th birthday ... well, I won't say more. Just read it!

The sun is coming back to the North

I’m going back to the North, again, flying Six Flags Airlines, as usual. I’m waiting in the airport. The plane is three hours delayed, technical problems. It will be a long night. Expected take-off is at midnight, then one hour and forty minutes flight. Not much to do about it, just sit and wait. I’m going 200 km (130 miles) North of the polar circle. Take a walk around the globe at that latitude, what places do you find? Point Hope, Inuvik, King William Island, Baffin Island, Harstad, Narvik, Kautokeino, Kiruna, Murmansk, Snezhnogorsk, Norilsk, Belaya Gora, Chersky. One of these places is my destination. I’m coming back to the town where my friend Foggy lives. The sun is coming back too, after eight weeks of polar darkness; first shining only on the mountain tops, later appearing above the horizon. The days are getting longer, rapidly, six minutes more daylight every day, almost an hour in a week. It’s amazing. Like a woman spreading her thighs, to reveal her delights; you know what you will see, what you will get, but still so exciting, so arousing, every time.