Experience is the teacher of all things

Landed in New Zeeland two hours ago. Now sprawled on my brother's couch, winding down. Soon a shower and then male bonding over rugby and beer. Mmm...bonding...

Ten things I've learned/remembered over the past 36 hours.

1. People I know pop up in the weirdest places. This time it was Set Himself On Fire, so named after an incident involving a can of gas. He has been off my social radar for quite some time. Turned out we were on the same flight, so we reminisced a bit over food and duty free shopping before boarding.

2. 11 hours in the air was less uncomfortable than I thought, but felt longer than I had anticipated.

3. In flight entertainment is the best thing to happen to flights, ever. Six movies, or at least parts of six movies, were consumed over two flights. And episodes of House, Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock.

4. Wolverine really is a POS movie. Horrifying.

5. Kevin Costner can act. I tend to forget this in light of The Postman and Waterworld.

6. I am slowly moving towards being a video game nerd. The "upcoming games" feature in the Xbox magazine I bought for the flight has drool stains all over it.

7. The bed I slept in at the Kuala Lumpur Transit Hotel was the second hardest bed I have ever experienced, only eclipsed by the bed in Prague that felt like three slabs of concrete joined together cross-wise by metal rods that protruded a good inch from the bed.

8. H1N1 is a big deal in Malaysia. Seemed like every other person at the airport was wearing a face mask of some sort. No Outbreak suits visible, though I expect hordes of men dressed in them waiting in sterile rooms to bodytackles feverish travellers.

9. Shutter Island and Inception may well rekindle my faith in Leonardo de Caprio.

10. Jetlag is a gloriuos thing. Jetlag going east is even more glorious. I expect it to be even more glorious in a few hours.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

We saw Anton Corbijn's “Control” on Sunday. Spectacular movie, even though I'm not really a Joy Division fan. Black and white, long sweeping shots, and so mind-numbingly tragic I think it's a good idea to hide away any razorblades you have at home if you're going to see it.

On Sunday night I had nightmares. If you know anything about Joy Division, you know how that particular story ends. To me it wasn't surprising that I dreamed of Henrik. So sleep was frequently interrupted, and I was a very unhappy camper on Monday morning.

Then, between Tuesday and Wednesday, I had nightmares again. And bad. Really frickin' bad. I woke up screaming, at 0330. I haven't done that since I was fifteen or so, dreaming of falling endlessly into darkness. Unless you count that one time when a painting fell off the wall over the bed and landed on my leg.

This time the nightmares were all nooses, dead bodies and spiders. Big hairy fuckers. Spiders are the emissaries of Satan, only eclipsed by earwigs, who are actual children of Beelzebub. And the nooses, swinging from rafters, from staircases, made from rope, extension cords, wire. Bodies strewn all over, cold and dead. So I woke up screaming, and during what little sleep I had the nightmares continued to plague me.

Photo by Lynn Radeka. Used with permission

I really do believe that dreams are all about the subconscious processing things that your conscious mind can't or won't. I know I still have a lot of issues around his death, and that my number one fear is the death of those closest to me. The most powerful dreams I've ever had have been about death and loss, usually involving people I care deeply about.

So what to do? I'm not sure there's anything I can do. This time the nightmares were obviously triggered by the film, so maybe I should avoid pop culture references to suicide, especially by noose. Then I guess it's all down to time. That and maybe a couple of therapy sessions...

The smell of sunshine

I don’t get to drive much. We don’t have a car, since we live close to both bus and train and don’t have kids to transport. Basically it’s an unnecessary cost for us. Now we’ve rented a car for the week, and yesterday we spent six and a half hours driving the 230 kilometers from Flemingsberg to Karlskoga.

And no. I didn’t drive 35 kilometers per hour. We made a few stops and took a few detours. Going outside those tunnels.

We had planned to go to the zoo in Eskilstuna to watch some felines (they have tigers, cougars, snow leopards, etc) but that didn’t happen. Instead we took an unexpected right turn, following a sign to Taxinge Castle. Now, to me, a castle obviously isn’t the same thing as to the designers of Taxinge, but whatever. It was a nice detour even so. There was a Tim Burtonesque tree in the garden. And the café at the castle had a dessert table six meters long. Mmm….cake…

We kept to the back roads and off the highway for a while longer, stopping off at an antique store housed in a massive barn, full of furniture, old photos and less identifiable stuff. Eerie forties music emanated from cracked speakers. We bought a beautiful old wooden box, intended for three square bottles. Very nice.

At Arboga, we choose the smaller road again, and turned into the town itself when mah girl spotted what appeared to be an old water tower. Turned out it was St Nicolai’s church, with foundations and stone walls from the 13th century. Cool.

St Nicolai's church

For a while we were Lost in Arboga (Danger, Beard Robinson!), but got out safely. Phew! Made a few more stops on the way to snap pics.

Mah girl down by the water. Little fish, big fish...

Turns out I walked around with an airline luggage label on my ass from yesterday morning when we packed until six o'clock at night. Bravo.

Upon arrival at my parents’ place in Karlskoga, I realized the werewolf children are all grown up. Time flies. Next door a whole pride of kittens gallivanted about on the lawn. We played some cards, and cursed the heat (a recurring theme over the past few weeks).

Today it’s raining (laptop and DVD weather! Yay!) and a pie has been made.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Life is good. Except for the earwigs. Earwigs suck.