A room of one´s own…reading Virginia Woolf!

Man, she is hard to read! I have tried to read her essay ” a room of ones own” since 2008; ever since I learned about her in literature class ! I have tried her essay in English. I prefer to read in English if the texts I am reading  is originally written in that language. For a veeeryy long time, I was considering reading her novel translated in Norwegian…..and when I finally did, it felt like I was cheating…but; that cheating didn´t help me further ! Cause she was still hard to interpret even in my own language (Norwegian)!  So …still stuck on page four then, even in Norwegian….well then,  I could as well try her out in her own language…again and again…

And now, I managed to conquer eleven pages in her book! I am so proud…before, I didn´t even manage four pages before I gave up! What made the difference now, 5 years after I first tried to read her essay the first time….

I guess I have grown intellectually and emotionally a lot since the first time I picked up the book…I feel more ready to read her language now. I am now more ready to understand her purpose with these writings.  And most of all; I am more concentrated and focused while I´m reading her. But to defend my lack of skill to read her kind of writings: she is saying so much on so few pages and gives readers like me (who are slow readers), too little time and room to digest everything at once! Sooooo much information and sooo little time to breathe and digest! To read her, I realized that I really needed some more mental growing before I would manage her….

I never gave up! Never! Still reading her, am I not? And I realized that I had to do more background check on her and to learn more about the context of her writing if I was at all going to manage her book.  I just couldn´t read her out of context, cause her writings didn´t feel that universal….but it becomes more universal the more you know her story and why and when she wrote what she wrote.

It is really an essay meant to aspire women to write,… and a book meant to explain why there haven´t been women writing as great and wonderful like Shakespeare…….a story we women need to hear, to learn….it is a part of our story even now days…or so I feel at least.  She says early in the essay what we women need if we are suppose to start writing:

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Yes! I´m ready! I´m gonna finish this book…..and it is not gonna take five more years before I do so this time….and I am gonna make my self room in both time and space to become a better reader and writer at all……thanks to Virginia Woolf, who after her life still can inspire a woman like me…..

When I´m finished with her book, I am going to write about her essay……it may not be on the next blog-post, but it will come…stay tuned.

Again…a while ago…since I was here.

Too often this everyday life drags me out of the sphere of blogging. And too often I am convinced that it is good for me to not blog nor write, cause living the real life is so much more important than just blogging for the sake of blogging. And so it has been, but why does it has to be a conflict between living the real life and to blog? The time issue? Sure, it takes time to blog good stuff, cause it then takes the attention and time away from other things worth doing in real life. 

I did blog for like 6 years, and enjoyed every moment of it…I loved the writing in it self, the the feedback and the response from the readers, and I loved to see my self grow as a writer and reader…….and now I feel that I still love it…what made me stop?

Real life? Yes, but what about it? Absolutely nothing….it was only an excuse for the real reason: that I lost the drive and inspiration to blog and write…..and I felt like just living a little bit. Nothing wrong with that. The blog is here anyway when I´m ready to blog again…like now…Now I feel ready…..now I feel I can balance it with real life living and blogging. And it feels good to have the inspiration to blog again…

 

Feels good to be back!

Carpe noctem!

The last two weeks out of the six weeks I worked on the ferry, I worked during the evenings and night-times…
…which screwed my day rythmn completely now on my free weeks home on land. It is hard to keep up with the rest of the people on land that has an 8 am to 4 pm work life. So…while they are working and doing everyday life matters , I just sleep….I’m missing the best hours of the sun, and keep regretting missing out the springtime now that it has popped up here in NOrway….

Today I woke up 12 o clock, went to bed again,slept most of the day away to 6 pm….the sun is down already, the moon is soon to be up…..it slightly different from day to day (or night to night) when I’m up and awake, but most of the time, it’s during the night…

I found out today that I just have to do most of the living during the nighttime now that it is my awakening hours. Stop wasting my energy trying to be synchronous with the rest of the society that manage to carpe diem during daytime…that has been a battle that I have been doomed to loose everyday because of fatigue. And what a waste that battle have been! Wasting my time and energy trying to be awake, and what have I accomplished with that? Nothing!  I could just have been naturally awake during the night and done so much more, living out the phrase carpe noctem!  I just have to accept that I am a night-people for now and do the best of it…   If I feel like beeing an awake daughter of the daytime again, I’ll be that when it feels natural for me again….

I enjoy the silence and peacefull darkness outdoors….and the candlelight in my livingroom shining out the darkness. The smell of fresh night air when I’m strolling outdoors……mmmm! I love it!  And the best part is; I have the stillness to read and write without interuptions from the world….The world and the time during daytime seems to move faster than nighttime…. people around are rushing, like there is a never ending timelimits out there that makes them have to grasp and cling to every moments of the day…or else, the timelimits will catch up with them and punish them with guilt and sorrows if they don’t manage everything that they should have done. If people took the time to just ponder about what night is compared to day, and not take for granted that night is just to be sleaped away, perhaps they would have arrived to the same insights as I have? The insight beeing how peacefull the night is, how calm the night beeing about “me-time”, and that there is possible to carpe noctem…Or maybe they can’t, cause they don’t I have the privilege to take the day off and not to worry about what should have been done from day to day etc…I have that privilege to sleep during daytime and carpe noctem! Yez!…

.After bed hours, it seems like the time stands still, there are no time limits, no obligations that has to be done during the night and no interuptions…It is me-time doing meditation, doing some strolling, working out, reading, writing, watching films and television series like Game of Thrones,cleaning the appartment, washing my clothes etc…..No worries, just good time with my self.

…..and now that I have accepted what day-rythmn I am, I feel more complete and ready to enjoy the best times of my life again…

Carpe noctem…! 😀

Drosseling about meditation and “pirates”.

I can’t stand the imaginary nor real life “pirates” when they invade my mind! They just seems to know just when to strike when all my attention is on mind-sitting.

You may ask what mind-sitting is?  And why these imaginary or real “pirates” seems to appear when I am doing mind-sitting?

This is how I define mind-sitting;

Mind-sitting is a sitting pose, where the meaning of it is just sitting and doing nothing. Not entirly true that you are doing nothing when you are mind-sitting, cause mind-sitting is all about introspection of the body and the mind through meditation….But it is doing nothing as not doing anything that has to do with everyday life-matters, like watching tv, working, driving, reading, sleeping etc. Mind-sitting is time spent with your self, just relaxing and focusing on your self….  some say they find inner peace, body-awearness and mindfullness through meditation in mind-sitting pose after a while, and some say they actually find nihilism or nothingness and that it makes them feel content. But is it always so? Does mind-sitting guarantee mindfullness and bodyawearness if you practising it long enough? Does it guarantee you anything at all? Does it guarantee truths? Truths about what, reality, our selves, about what?  And most importantly: does it reveal only truths?

I had an experience last year that is relevant to my questions above; I sat at the restaurant (or bar) Baku in Tønsberg (in Norway). I sat there writing in my diary…I was in a poetic state of mind….you now; the kind of poetic state of mind you seem to flow into when you feel Bacchus works it’s way into your vein’sl. I was content in my own company, just ocationally looking at the handsome bartender  when I needed some inspiration. I had been drinking and writing for hours…..I wasn’t drunk or anything like that, just tipsy. After midnight, a blonde Norwegian girl came in to the bar. I don’t know for how long she was there with her boyfriend before she disturbed my writings and drinking. But when she did,  she asked:

“What are you writing? And why are you writing [here]?”

I didn’t feel comfortable enough to reveal my poetry for the night to a stranger, but I felt she was seeking some life answers by the way she look at me with eyes hungry for knowledge. I didn’t think I had the answers she was looking for, but I thought perhaps we could find some answers together (?). So I thought maybe this was one of the moments in life where beeing in the same room with a stranger who implisit asks for my company, may expose some new directions in life through conversation. So I replyed to the second question;

“I like to see the ink of my soul on a piece of paper. I like the feeling of the ink beeing an extention of my self, and it has a therapautic effect on me. It makes my soul grow to read my selves in writings. To meet the “past Drosseldaisy” by reading it with the “present Drosseldaisy” interpretation, is always like visiting a friend from the past. I really enjoy my own coffe company with the past and the present “me” no matter what state of mind I am or was in; doesn’t matter if it is in delirium, in despair, in desire, in destruction, in death, in dream, in divine , in history, in ideas….etc…In the name of Bacchus tonight, he tells trough my veins some stories and metaphor’s who my friends from the past and present was and is, and let me be me what ever it means to be me……”

…I think that was what I said according to my memory….and I actually was satisfied with my own answer there and then…and thought she was going to reveal some deep yogi or poetic innsights too after my answer….well, that didn’t happen. Instead she suddenly bursted out:

“I used to do that, before I discovered mindfullness and bodyawearness….and now I am so free from the obsession of writing! Writing is a sin to the soul! Writing is pain because I had so much fantasy, and writing manifested all the pain from my colorful fantasies! Mindfullness and bodyawearness is the answer to make all the fantasies go away, which is the source to all depressions !”

I didn’t get her….why was the writing a sin for her? Was her fantasies that terrible in colours that she had to kill it with meditation? Does meditation even kill any part of your selves? Isn’t that against ahimsa philosophy in meditation; which means to be against to kill or violate your self? She tried to explain it in the simples way to me, but still, even to day, I don’t get it. She said (based on my memories, off course):

” I wrote so much for therapautic reasons, and I wrote my fantasy universe and my whole soul in poetry and stories; and it always made me more and more depressed and didn’t have the terapautic effect I was expecting at all! Meditation free’d me from all that now! You should seek out meditation and stop writing…seek inner peace!”

Pirate! A blonde Norwegian woman pirate! Not an imaginary “pirate” who occationally strikes at me when I am doing mind-sitting, but a real breathing  “wanna be” mindfull bodyaware woman who was trying to invade like a pirate and push her trauma and dogmas on me! Why? She knew nothing of me, and most of all: she didn’t know I did some meditation in mind-sitting too,…. and that was not what I had experienced through meditations nor writing nor through drinking. On the contrary; it made me feel free to feel the ink of my soul on the paper! So how rude of her to force her truth on me …and her truth based on what? Insights she got, apperantly, from mindfullness and bodyawearness trough mind-sitting and meditation….really? And she thought her insight would save me if I stop writing and fantasying and focus even more on mind-sitting, mindfullness and bodyawareness?

After she was done bragging about how far she had come in bodyawearness and mindfullness, after she was done prejudging my writing, she tried to make me aware of my lack of wisdom about writing matters; since I was many years and hours behind her in bodyawearness and mindfullness (apperantly)….

…, I sat there and was annoyed by here existence! After she was done lecturing me for beeing imprisoned with fantasies and the need to write it , she rushed and drank more beer with her boyfriend and enjoyed the nightlife; meaning that she was embracing life now that she never wrote nor fantasied anymore, and therefore where not depressed…… Maybe she was projecting herself on me and thought I had the same issues as her ? Maybe she thought she was saving me with the story of her life?

Sometimes, when I look back to that incident in the bar, I wonder if she was still looking for inner peace and bodyawearness and mindfullness…for why else would she brag about it to a stranger that she had found it? Maybe her bragging was an attempt to to convince her self more than me that she had found “it”?  She paradoxly tried to seek out inner peace, mindfullness and bodyawearness by affirmations to a stranger. This kind of affirmations to a person, is like children when they resently have learned a new word or two: they need to taste the word(s) in their pallet many times to make it real. The more they say the new words, the more they think they understands it by making it into affirmations, for them self and others. They need a real human mirror, as a listner, to confirm that they have learned the words and understood it, and then they make affirmations of it…So…maybe that day or that week she had finally learned mindfullness and bodyawearness, and needed to make it into affirmation to a complete stranger? Or maybe not…(?)

I don’t think meditation is about getting rid of your issues, drama, dogmas or anything. The more you try to reject part of yourself (or ignore it), even through meditation, the more it will do like the pirates always does: come back for more of your time! You are enpowering the pirates the more you are trying to get rid of them! I don’t think writing nor fantasies in it selves is wrong unless you make it into pirating of your time.

Time  is like a treasure. And pirates are always after your treasure. There will always be pirates out there trying to steal my time , steal my moments or even worse: they want me to turn into a pirate, to be one of them, with their dogmas and their way of living! But the worst thing with the pirates is when you become your own worst pirate in your life…time is treasure, don’t make the pirate steal it from you!

I like to visit my memories like I visit an old friend. I do that in my drosselhours through mind-sitting. As with all friends: I have them there for a coffe-hour in my mind, and then I need to let them go so I can focus on all the flow of the things happening in the imaginarium of my Drosselland. Occationally I just say hello and then wave good bye, cause they are friends that need to remain in the past so I can move on to the present and to the future. That’s also why I write; I write to my friends, wich means my self.  And then I move on…it is important to me that all parts of my selves remains my friends and don’t becomes pirates….that’s why I work so hard for all the friends within me. Sometimes parts of me invades me like pirates, but I always does my best to make them eventually my friends.

So for me, even to this day, I can’t see the harm in writing so I later on can have a dialog with my old self (an old friend); manifested on paper. How did the blonde Norwegian girl manage to come to that conclusion through meditating:

“writing and fantasying is harming the soul and therefore a sin”

while mine conclusion through meditation is:

“writing and fantasying is like a friend that makes you grow”.

So…through the same method, meditation through mind-sitting, which should have been a guarantee for truths, we somehow came to differents truths about writing…thats interesting…

When I think about that blonde girl from the bar, I feel that she, without knowing it,  thaught me a lot about imaginary pirates and real life “pirates”. And I appriciate that lesson for my life. If I meet her again, I will ask her about the progression of her bodyawearness and mindfullness. If she answer the same as last time, I know for sure she is lying and that she have made her self into her own worst pirate…why? Well , the way I see it:

Meditation is about accepting yourself as a friend the matter what you feel. It means befriending even your darkest light and get to know it so it wont harm you anymore….and then move on…. it doesn’t mean to supress it, like she did/does with writing and her fantasies….cause then it will like in Pandoras box; then the pirate will force itself out of the box and consume you…don’t you think?

the moral for my self is:

Ahimsa….Ahimsa means; don’t violate, no violence (passifism)…and in this case;  especially don’t violate your atman/ (ego) by supressing parts of your self that you should befriend with. Aknowledge it, accept it, and move on with peace. Or else the “pirates” will violate you….Therefore; my writings nor my fantasies will never harm me as long as I relate to it as a part of my self as a friend and don’t make them into pirates that ravishing me…

Ahimsa! Even though I can’t stand the real life “pirates” nor my imaginary “pirates”, I won’t harm them….Ahimsa!.

Who am I…

To tell you about who I am in just a minute, in English, is challenging. But I’ll try for the sake of the practise:

Am I my experience and my thought patterns? Yes…and I’m also just a fluke, coincedence, and a tiny part of evolutionary history on this planet and in this universe. In the big picture, I really don’t matter for life at all; I am just a brick on the wall…
Everytime I think about how big the universe is and how small I am compared to all the greatness in this galaxy, it makes me astonished how grande I make the trifle of my everyday life. It really doesn’t matter what I do in this life; for the universe, the planet and the stars will still function as it always has….or change into new course of causality if the law of the physics makes it so…

 

So who am I, compared to the universe, to the stars, to the planet? I am nothing, just a stardust and a microcosmos of my own little universe…I like that. It makes me relaxed to think about what ever happens here and now in the every now that flies by right now, it just happens. Life just happens. And I am just a tiny miny brick part of it…..

Does the brick matter? Does I matter? For the relations around me, perhaps I matter a little bit there and here because they feel loved, inspired or something by me. Do I make evil things happens? Sometimes, I admit, though it depends on what people consider evil is. Should I be ashamed of it? Maybe, it depends of who’s judging me. Or maybe not, cause why should I care what people think of my master destruction plans of evil? Oh yeah, it matters when I think about it, cause sometimes I want to rule over the universe and have the power to crush it with my right hand…..and when I do open my hand to see the destruction of the universe in billions of dust in my sweaty dry hand, I like to imagine I also have the power to reconstruct the universe from dust to completeness again just by the force of my thoughts. Is it evil to destroy an whole universe? And is it evil to rebuild it again in my own perfect imagination, with no faults and no errors, because I consider my self to be an image of the same perfection as the thing called universe that I have rebuild?

Now I spent actually several minutes to say who I am by showing you my thinking patterns. Did it reveal anything at all about me? For some it did, for some it was just rubbish….But I didn’t call this blogg imaginarium for nothing, cause it is all about how I imagine my drossel imaginarium reality said in big words…..;-)

Ship o hoi!

Been home for two days now….after a hard life on the sea working as a cleaninggirl or barrista or what ever they want me to do at the ferry Fantasy. The matter how hard and how much I work, it is all worth it those weeks I work like a slave just so I can have my free time home; doing what ever I want to with out feeling the time pressure…I’m gonna be home now for at least three weeks before I’m off to the sea again…and in the meantime: I’m gonna enjoy the time on land doing nothing or everything…and I’m gonna practice my English writing skills here on this blogg..

My reading skills in English is quite good now, and of course I’m good at conversation in English too now that I work at a Scandinavian ferry where my colleguas don’t nesecarly speak any Scandinavian language, so then everything has to be comunicated in English. So I got a lot of practice there in speaking and listening in English…but not necessarly in writing it.

So the main course here in this blog, while I’m home in my freetime, I’m gonna practice my English writing skills here…so please, blogtrolls, have mercy on my English to it gets improved…please be polite and understanding and most of all: don’t use harsh language . Ok?

From Drosseldaisy