Who does he think he is...

6.

Hi,

I had a thought about writing to you during the day, answer and reflect on your words. Words about pros and cons regarding unusual last names (in this case pros, if you ask me... interesting reading), about drums and the piano and the desire to learn how to play... About helping and remaking, change through meetings, seeing yourself through others, about use and abuse, about dogs and cats... about isolation.

But the thought will be for another day, if my feeling speaks correctly to me, that we will hear from each other again...

How was your day?

The Circus “Estate” stole my energy, mentally, physically. How can people become like that? What is it about money that turn them into screaming, crying, petty, cheap, greedy... somethings?

In all of that was me and I was only able to marvel and be intimidated... and be grateful I´m not like them.

Sometimes I wonder if I was exchanged at birth...

I´m sure they do too... Who is he, he who looks so funny at us, says such peculiar things... about things, about money, about values, about life, about ethics and moral...

Who does he think he is...

I am who I am and I am proud of who I am, never want to be like them... only be myself.

Greetings from me to you.

T.

Smiling! Can´t stop smiling!

5.

Smiling! Can´t stop smiling! With the voice of Freddie Wadling in my materially empty apartment, he fills it...

A minimalistic apartment furnished with findings from basements, containers and so on.

Laying in my bed I built myself from thrown away stuff writing to you, it´s your lines, it´s content that´s making me smile.

It was not “The Sorrows of an American” I got but “The Enchantment of Lily Dahl”. But I saw they had “The Sorrows of an American” at the book-sale so now that you made such a nice suggestion, to read the same novel and discuss it I am going to take another trip to the sale, I also saw they had the collected poetry of Paul Auster... By Siri I have read “The Blindfold” and “What I Loved”. The later a very moving reading experience... on many levels, both read during my time as homeless, by the way.

Too bad my things were burned, which is what I believe about my books or I would have hoped they were given to someone who appreciates books. I had everything written by Coetzee, when I discover an author I like it´s not unusual for me to get all of their novels, I read everything. “Dusklands”, “Waiting for the Barbarians”, “Disgrace”, three favorites, novels that attract me more than usual. But that does not mean I don´t appreciate his other works. “Life and times of Michael K”, “The Master of Petersburg” and “Diary of a bad year”. Everything by J.M. Coetzee... is worth reading... still not quite as good as the above mentioned.

Just like you I read lots.

I also like “The road” and “No Country for Old men”, even the adaptations, and speaking of movies, the adaptation of “Disgrace” starring John Malkovich, also “Being John Malkovich” should be mentioned as a good movie.

Sure it´s the same Fowles who has written “The Collector”, a special novel, even if I appreciate it I appreciate “The Magus” more, however the two should not in any way be compared, just two novels by the same author. I would like to read “The Magus” soon again, perhaps a novel to read at the same time/discuss? A novel that was in my collection just like “Walden”. I don´t know, don´t know if she is angry, I hope she is happy, well, like me moved on.

The latest I read by Joyce Carol Oates / Rosamond Smith was “Snake Eyes” (had time to read a lot when I was homeless), I like her novels.

As you ask you will be answered, may sound like an afterthought but somehow I knew what your answer would be... living in the moment. I would have answered that too, even if there are thoughts regarding the future nothing is decided, but here and now...

Speaking of things, feeling trapped, can feel a sense of panic with too many belongings, like they are binding me, even if I know I can walk away and leave them behind the feeling is there... So a sign saying “Free stuff” is sympathetic, I would stop by if/when I see one. Even me with my view on things can be appealed by going to yard sales/auctions... mostly because of the books you can find...

More speaking of things, tomorrow I am going to my grandmothers house to “clean up”, the house is going to be sold. I want to live there, a house by a lake my grandfather built. But people/relatives become like crazy, or if they already are when they smell money and letting the black sheep of the family take over the house is not an option... in their world, and not economically in mine. I don´t have one or a few million in my mattress. Or who knows, I found it in a basement, will check...

Jokes aside, anyways it´s too bad the house is being sold, the subject of contemplation for me today.

I think both my grandmother and grandfather would appreciate the thought of the house staying in the family, it´s not that I have to own it, just live in it, take care of it... but as I said, people and their view of money make my idea utopian.

All kinds of forced joining is sick! Let´s send our passports to the elected (not by me though) and let them know our decision, from now on we/I cancel my/our citizenship in your game, the mapdrawers borders.

Of course there is a difference between use and abuse, wish I could have a smoke in the morning, one in the day and one at night... sounds kind of like medicin...

Can´t be worse than the vaccine the authorities wanted to inject people with and so did. That is abuse... tricking/hurting people.

Writing that after pressing send I am going to have a hot bath might not be so kind writing to you, now...

Sorry.

But speaking of baths, bathtubs, I want one of those in the place I am going to live in, in the forest. An outdoors-bathtub... heated by firewood... with a starry sky to gaze at... now it will be a candle.

I don´t want to be secretive towards you!

Now I am going to write to your email.

Thomas

A bit frightening, exciting, interesting

4.

I wrote the above before I read your answer.

So here are a few more lines...

Hi again,

thanks for your honesty, a good beginning in a meeting with a new person, honesty. I also think there are a lot of advantages to sharing tour life with someone. Something that´s evolved in me, the feeling that I want to share my adventure, life, with someone, and I don´t think that this someone is someone you “have to” change to be right. By that I´m not saying you made unreasonable demands, from what little I know about your former relation, sobriety and honesty seem totally reasonable.

There are so many roads in your letter I want to go down...

I lie and smile when I read what you write...

Recognize myself in so much...

And I am happy when I read the word contemplation, the question is if you are not the first one to use that word when writing me, but I often use it, as an answer to how I spend my days, contemplate!

About alcohol: nothing I drink... a choice I made a few years ago, a choice from the insight that alcohol doesn´t bring anything to my life... there is nothing I know of that I can do better with alcohol in by blood, or that would enhance an experience of some kind, in any form.

But I do drink coffee...

A bit frightening, exciting, interesting how your words and description of yourself and yours with a few alterations could be a story about me, my thoughts, values and dreams...

There have been occasions when I have sat with a pair of scissors or by a lake or/and thought about where to turn to to eliminate your citizenship... send your passport/drivers license.

 

T.

What do you want?

3.

Hello again,

feels good, fun, interesting to write to you. A few thoughts from today. A few words from my time as homeless.

I made contact with my ex and told her I was coming to the cottage to get my things. Turns out she had gotten rid of them, thrown away, sold and burned them!

My first reaction was what the fuck, and I thought about calling the cops. But then I thought it over... thought it was just things.

It feels kind of nice to own only what you can carry, what fits in a backpack. A nice feeling, a feeling of freedom.

But surely there is a difference between things and things. Some things are good to have, for example a few books. That was what made me go to town today, the lack of a book on my nightstand (an answer to the question about what I do at night, I read). I got two books, one by Paul Auster and one by Siri Hustvedt. Did you read any of the two? Do you have nay favorite authors?

I like the above mentioned and also John Fowles (The Magus).

Do you have any tips?

This was a lot about me...

Want to know more about you, curious...

Tell me, whatever you want to.

What do your days/nights look like?

Thoughts about the future?

What do you want?

Why I don´t write and paint... not the “right” time, too much else “demanding” my time. Because when I finally do it I want to be able to give it all of my time, that is when I found my place...

Kind of like when I play the drums, I become absorbed and don´t want anything to bother me... But the writing/painting/drumming can also have a releasing effect, an emptying of thoughts that bother, that you afterwards feel clean, cleansed. So it doesn´t have to be wrong.

Now it´s about me again...

I´m going to finish off for this time and leave it to you, to tell about you, if you want to, whatever you want to.

No demands, just a curious me...

 

Thomas

This became a lot of words for answering your question

2.

Hi,

thanks, and I like your letter/letters, “ad”, your answers.

I just don´t know where to begin my answer, which in itself is a beginning... let me start a year ago, when I was living in a cottage in the forest, alone, like you as some self-appointed hermit.

There was only one problem, it was/is my ex who has the lease on the place, I will get back to that. A life that I felt strongly for, the self-sufficient one.

I left this society and it´s demands, demands for service in return for permission to participate, where it´s not enough to be a citizen... with a right in my world to citizen´s wages. You are supposed to be humiliated and stand with your hat in your hand and be forced to apply for jobs you don´t want, ask social services for”help”, and so on. I can´t deal with that!

But that does not mean I don´t like to work... I like to dig in the earth, to farm. Head out into the forest and chop my wood... and that is how I lived.

Then my ex thought, she was my ex then already, that she too wanted to live there, in the cottage, in the forest. After some discussions on “rules” for such a solution she moved in there and at first it went well. Then we came to what I feared, that she wanted so much more with us living in the cottage, she wanted to be more than just friends... Of course you can´t help how you feel any way... but I had been very clear on how I felt and that is if we were both going to live there it would be as friends, nothing else.

So my choice was in the end pretty easy. I packed a bag and left... I should also say that I had payed the rent for a year, gathered a large amount of firewood and food, started growing some vegetables, and so on, so there I stood with a backpack, almost broke (for money), without any safety net to fall on... Mixed emotions, a feeling of freedom, being able to do what I liked, but also some loss from having to leave what I built up, where I was supposed to live for (at least) a year.

 

I could have been the snowbound one writing you from a cottage...

Instead I am answering from an apartment...

But between the cottage and the apartment a lot had time to happen... a few homeless months I would not want to be without, even if it they were tough, cold and poor. But I also had learning experiences, warm, loving and rich... Met a lot of interesting people on that “trip”, that adventure.

This became a lot of words for answering your question, what is my passion.

My passion is the “simple” life in the forest... fixing your own heat and food. I am passionate about meeting new interesting people, like now...

There is also a lot of other things I am passionate about, I am happy when I can/am able to play the drums...

What are you passionate about?

What is/does civil disobedience mean to you?

And I recognize myself in what you write, I don´t work for money either, money does not make me happy, and I don´t have nor do I want a TV. But I think you are wrong when you write “when you have neither work nor TV there seem to be nothing to talk about”, I think/believe we have a lot to talk about.

Let us talk, like now for example.

A good beginning of a conversation...

Quantum physics and zen buddhism, interesting.

I know the old Greeks talked about atoms, I´m with you that far... And I have heard about Siddharta Gautama...

I like your questions, what I am passionate about and how I spend my days, my nights... probably the most important questions in a persons life, how you spend your time...

My passion faded some after the move/escape from the cottage, but it´s coming back...

I am waiting... waiting for and making opportunities... I feel a bit like that, like I am waiting, getting ready... Waiting for a spring... I got somewhat a taste for the homeless life, being on the road... and one doesn´t have to leave out the other, I don´t see a cottage and being on the road as incompatible, it can be nice to know you have a place to rest, a place to just be... a place I don´t know where it is, but I know it is.

How did you end up where you are at?

So how I spend my time, “seeking” for interesting developing meetings in the form of people, my own and the thoughts of others, books, music, movies, nature... where I think many clues are, if not any given answers...

In that case I feel exactly as you wrote: “I come close to something there”... a something which is´nt easy to put in words but which humbles me, a good feeling, of belonging...

I live in a small town called ------, no place I have any prior connections to, but I got a tip about a vacant apartment here... and it´s beautiful, I like it here, as much as you can like living in an apartment... a good place for planning... for continuing the trip...

Speaking of traveling... it is four hours by train between where I am sitting writing, and you.

This was a long answer... I feel like there is so much I want to answer...

But for this time it´s enough, I have to take a trip to “town”...

But I hope I hear from you soon again.

Warm friendly greetings Thomas.

Strange coincidences (like this one...)

1.

Yes, I am interested in animals (I was just outside for a while in the forest, fed the deer with apples, enjoying the sight of them, and I have a weakness for cats and owls...), forest (want to live in one...), old buildings (can walk for hours in old buildings, breathing in the atmosphere, the smells, the sounds, the building techniques, sometimes I even spend the night in old buildings), philosophy (studied philosophy on an academical level, everything from the old Greeks to contemporary philosophers such as Rawels and Nozick, but philosophy is so much more than just academical studies... everyday-philosophy...), all kinds of books (just like old buildings I can walk around in bookshops... I like the atmosphere of books, a feeling which in me creates a feeling of home, knowledge... I can find books beautiful), making plans (absolutely, preferably with someone), walking about on a whim and enjoying myself (I sometimes pack my backpack and just head out... what you wrote about the trip and the goal, where many times it is the trip which is the goal, not a set place in the future), chilling in the couch in front of the fireplace (I´d love to... with wood I chopped myself an a cup of tea and nice company), artistic activities (want to paint more, and write... perhaps life is an artistic activity), strange coincidences (like this one...) the destinies of people (what is coincidence and what is fate... or do you have to catch the moment, be ready for whatever comes in your way... like answering your words. To do precisely that, precisely now, to have a history, a destiny that brought me to where I am today, to whom I am today... all of us have a story worth listening to, a destiny worth sharing... it´s probably “only” about taking time for listening/telling), civil disobedience (ABSOLUTELY! everything from salvaging all that is thrown away such as food, to refusing the stupidity of government), roadtrips (by foot, bike or car?), native cultures (we have a lot to learn there, from them), movies (nice, why not in a couch with a fire crackling... “Into the wild”... both good movie and music), conservation (good... and the pleasantness of gathering everything that can be conserved... everything from the pantry of nature), smart solutions (I think citizen´s wages are a smart solution...) rowing (hours on the lake with some food and maybe a tent, being able to row ashore and make a fire... yes please), building restoration (want to find an old cottage to restore...)

 

What kind of book are you trying to write?

 

I who is wondering am a human/man/kid/boy thirtysomething... as you can see above likes your lines... perhaps also is a bit shy...

 

But...

Warm friendly greetings Thomas