t=59&emne0=10.10.2007&bloggtekst0=Countdown project description: I have been an active and internationally acclaimed artist for more than 30 years. The result of my active exhibition production consists of a vast multitude of images, sculptures, videos and installations. All together these over 50 different projects represent a significant value aesthetically and artistically but also commercially. This potential has not yet been realized, in spite of the fact that some of the work is a part of The National Gallery collection in Norway. As one gets older, one starts to think of what is going to happen to this collection of work after ones departure. Countdown is going to be the last of my projects. The idea is to redo some of the old projects anew in order to improve and perfect those, which have survived the test of time. It should be sufficient to summarize my life work in about 15 projects each of which will include both exhibition materials, documentation, critique and background materials. These 15 projects can be exhibited in parallel or in turn and organized chronologically or thematically. The variation and scope of these projects and their combinations is practically unlimited. The realization of the Countdown project is dependent on finding a suitable location capable of housing this work. The idea is to find an institution or organization that could be interested in receiving this collection as a donation based on an agreement defining certain conditions guaranteeing that the work will be exposed to public. Specific details can be discussed accordingly, depending on the space, localization and organizational form. The suitable host may be a gallery, a museum, an organization, a private collector or an institution, either public or private. I am still an active art practitioner. I will therefore dedicate as much time as I have left to building up and establishing this collection as an attraction and a value. This presumes that I will be able to stay nearby or at the location in periods while working on the project, which can then be exposed to public gradually or all at once after completion of the first stage. Countdown has been conceived as a potentially commercial attraction, which can bring both public and money to the host, enrich the local community and offer an unusual and new form of entertainment and tourism.I am open to proposals from all countries, people and institutions. Just take contact with me directly.&emne1=19.08.2007&bloggtekst1=Helmond, Holland I am sitting in a corner of a big big empty room with huge windows towards the rail tracks and main traffic road. Behind me is a kitchen corner and a shower box. To the left is another big big room, where I work on my pictures of the Dutch people for the show that will stay here after the main exhibition is over. I sleep in a corner around the corner from where I am sitting now. I am 54. This last year I have been traveling the world. First the French Riviera, Chateau de La Napoule, so Italy, Sienna, three months in China autumn 2006, after that Japan, Shigaraki and now here. Why am I doing it? What is wrong with me? Why do I need to get away from my comfortable studio and warm home? What has it given me, all this traveling? My son is moving back to where he came from. He has been very ill for a long long time. Maybe that is what I have been trying to run away from? But that is with me, no matter where I go. Perhaps only when I am so far my helplessness is somehow more legitimized. There is nothing I can do to help him. I am paralyzed. Perhaps my life at home is not exactly how I want it to be? Perhaps I could not admit it to myself? So I just run away? Maybe my son is just doing what I have never dared to do? Leaving that damned country, where we never can feel at home? Only I have no other or better place to go. &emne2=14.04.2007&bloggtekst2=Here is a free quotation from Ayn Rand, which has made a deep impression on me, it has made me think about my own situation again: Seflessness in the absolute sense? True selflessness in the philosophical sense? Altruism? Devotion to the others? A true altruist should not leave it up to other people to decide what they want! He should determine, whether he likes it or not, whether they like it or not, but what HE THINKS THEY SHOULD LIKE, and then ram it down their throats. What else can one do but to impose on everybody by force your own idea of everybodies good? Where does decency start? What begins where altruism ends? I am not an altruist. I do not decide for others. You have sold your life and soul for a good price, power! The thing that is destroying the world is actual selflessness. People who have no self. They live within others, they live secondhand. They borrow from others ideas in order to make an impression on others. That is what actual selflessness is, a betrayed ego. Men who lie and cheat, but preserve a respectable front. They know themselves to be dishonest, but others think that they are honest, therefore they derive selfrespect from that secondhand. Men who take credit for the achievements, which are not their own. They are aware of themselves being mediocre, but they look great in the eyes of the others. Their sole aim is to make money. But money is only a means to make an impression on others again. They are acting on a selfish motive of being noticed, liked, and admired by others at the price of their own self respect. They place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He does not need it. Weakness and cowardice help to spread this vicious nonsense of altruism. Your ego is your strictest judge. It is easy to donate to charity and consider oneself noble than to base self respect on personal standards of personal achievements. It is simple to seek substitutes for competence, such easy substitutes as love, charm, kindness, and charity. But there is no substitute for competence. Secondhanders have no concern for facts, ideas, and work. They are only concerned with people. They do not judge, but repeat. They do not do, but give an impression of doing. There is no creation, only show. No ability, but friendship. WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED TO THE WORLD WITHOUT THOSE WHO DO, THINK, WORK, AND PRODUCE? Those are the egotists. They do not think through others brain and do not work through others hands. Secondhanders have no sense of reality. Their reality is not within them, but somewhere in that space which divides one human body from another, emptiness. Men without an ego. Opinion without a rational process. Power without responsibility. A secondhander is not open to reason. He is a blind man running amuck, to crush you without sense or purpose. He would accept anything, but a man who stands alone. Secondhanders recognize him at once by instinct. They have a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form for mutual dependence, secondhanders need ties. They have got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them. They have been taught to seek themselves in others. But no man can achieve the kind of absolute humility that would need no self esteem in any form. He would not survive. So that is why the doctrine of altruism is the ultimate ideal, it is accepted by seeking self esteem through others by living second hand. It has opened the way for every kind of horror. In order to cure the world from selfishness, we have been asked to destroy the self. Prestige is the main secondhanders delusion, a stamp of approval, but not his own, only approval of some others. The only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. The only quality I respect in men is a self sufficient ego. The worst secondhanders of them all are men who go after power. &emne3=08.03.2007&bloggtekst3=It is my birthday today, now I am not 53 born in 1953 anymore. How fast the time is running by! just as my famous misspell in Norwegian, livet gaar sin vei! My life is slow and boring for the time being, which is fine. I am still very concerned about my son, his health and well being. In fact that is all what I am trully concerned about right now. All the other things are just cover up operations, which I need in order to survive myself, while the two people who stand me closest are slowly fading away. I have always been the one, who had to have the energy to survive and give support to other weaker people, who needed me. Sometimes it empties me up and so I try to run away, no matter if it is out of the house or out of the country, I never manage to run away from myself. My bad conciousness is killing me, no matter, where I try to hide. They both are going to some shrinks in addition, talk to close friends and other relatives, while I am locked inside my own skin. If I go somewhere and tell someone about what I think and feel, they would lock me in at some institution, I guess. That is the price of being different! All the psycologist I have talked to in the past have not been of any help to me. I have analysed them instead and gave them advices about their life and problems! So perhaps that is not exactly what I need right now either? Lots of friends called me today, which is a good sign. I am not alone in the world! But they are all so far away! &emne4=25.01.2007&bloggtekst4=My coffin has arrived from China and all the troubles are unpacked out of it. So strange that nothing helps to grab or understand a foreign mentality! I really tried being openminded and prepared, but it turns out that I hurt people and do everything wrong. I knew in theory that one should never blame a Chinese person on anything, but that is exactly what I have been doing to both Chang, Jim and even Sarah. Just by placing a stupid question I make them admit or face the facts that show them not from their best side. Even if it is not their fault by any means, by admitting that something went wrong they loose face as it is called. Anyway, now all the people whom I cared most for, probably hate me. Marieke told me that Chang lost a lot of money on me, so did she, as some people were charging twice, both her and me, hoping we will never find out? Or was it an act of despair forced by lack of money and other worries? Is it excusable in that case? I have no idea how marieke manages to live with those lies all the time, she needs to ignore it as small irrelevant nonsenses, I guess? Than she is GRAND! I myself have such an exagerated sense of justice that I would have never survived in that culture! Sarah used to complain so much on those people who were telling her lies about the appartment she has been renting, but it appears that she herself has been acting just about like them? They all dropped contact with me, which upsets me a lot, but maybe it is just because no normal people are able to keep up like I do. They are probably just busy and have other things on their minds. I have to concentrate on other things and move on. I have to learn to just leave some stuff behind, both physically and metaphorically.&emne5=13.12.2006&bloggtekst5=Sitting on the plane to Helsinki, 8 hours and 40 minutes, well about 5 hours left. The last days in Xiamen have been really unpleasant in many ways. Maybe it is a sign that I should never come back to China again? On Monday I went for some last minute shopping to fill up the coffin. There were a few things I really liked here and have not seen any other places like real big towels, which one can use instead of bed covers, when it is real hot and wet weather. We could have use for them in Italy in summertime. Or those slow cookers with ceramic pots inside, which are so great! Of course I did not know about some details that would pop up the day after, as it is usual in China. When I met Mr. Chang at 5 as agreed, he has been just shaking his head in doubt all the time. It appeared that I should have made a precise list of contents in the box with all the prices etc. On the other hand, there should not be too many items mentioned on the list either, he said. The price for sending the box appeared to be three times, compared to what he has told me before. It is only my intuition that got me to get out more money of the bank before I went to see him. He has not mentioned to me that both customs and something else will cost money. Suddenly Jim had popped up too. He was somehow involved in all this business too. They both were uncertain about sending my box. Too many different items have created the main problem, I understand. But why have they not explained all these things to me beforehand? I have a suspicion that they are all earning some extra money this way, which makes me feel uncomfortable. I thought that Jim has been a friend? He left hardly saying good buy to me. If I am going to receive this box it will be a miracle! Later I texted some words to Jim asking if he hates me or something, but he replied that there is nothing wrong. Mysterious are the ways of the Chinese people! Marieke has stepped by in the evening to ask me about our trip. I think she was jealous that Sarah has invited me to join and have not mentioned that to her. But Marieke said she would go next year. They all talk a bit strange about each other behind each others back! Marieke said that Sarah is moody as a child. Sarah said that there are quite a few things she does not like about how Marieke is running her business. That I understand. I also did not want to participate in that system of Favour Bank investments that Marieke is driving all the time licking the asses of those Foundation people from Holland in order to get a permanent support. That woman without eyelashes, who I thought was the bosses and appeared to be just a secretary? Marieke has been taking good care of them during their two days stay in Xiamen, and I have probably spoiled the whole matter for her by talking about cockroaches and mice in the apartment? The lashless woman told me during the foot massage that they decided not to support Headlands, as it was not good enough! Well, they will probably give a permanent support to CEAC! On Tuesday Marieke asked me to get out of the apartment as Ai Xiu had to clean, because a new artist was coming. It was really ugly of her not to be able to wait one more day. I really needed to be alone in order to collect my thoughts and to sum up my stay! But it is obvious that in this business Marieke has to ignore certain things, like feelings of an artist, who is about to leave. It is only the first impression that matters. Ai Xiu told me that Marieke went to buy new bed covers, as the old ones were real old. They were, but Marieke has not bothered to change them for me? Maybe the new artist, who is coming now, is a bit more important? Ai Xiu had to work till everything has been done, so when I came back at 12.30 as agreed, she has not been finished yet. I had to just sit and do my knitting with my feet up, so she could do her job. She was both tired and hungry, as she has not got her 12 oclock lunch that she is used to have. Marieke does not care for such details, she commands her slaves with an iron hand. Anyway both she and her husband came to see me off. It felt, as if they wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible. I told her that I need to leave by taxi at 3 oclock, but they popped up at 2.30, so I had to go. I told Marieke that I am going to miss them, which was in a way a true feeling, but she asked: “What? In spite of all?” So there must have been some information being passed around, maybe by Sarah, maybe by some other people, I have no idea. I just say what I think, without taking such matters into consideration. Anyway, I will not be coming back to Xiamen, I think. The new Dutch invasion can continue without my interference. On the flight from Xiamen to Beijing I have been sitting near a guy, who has been clearing his throat all the time the famous Chinese way. That is one of the things I really had difficulties with during my stay in China. Since he could not spit on the carpets in the airplane, he kept making those sounds just endlessly, and I was about to throw up right into his face! The Chinese find it to be a very bad manner to blow noses in public, but harking and spitting on the floors is just fine! Linda ordered a different hotel for me from what I have asked for. I had difficulties sending emails from Lianzhou, so Marieke has obviously not forwarded my email to Linda. I did not want to bother Linda on her day off, so I decided to let it go, as it has been organised for me, in spite of the fact that it looked somewhat suspicious to me. On the websites that I have seen the pick up was included in the price, but here I was supposed to pay a 100 RMB extra. I came out a little late as my suitcase had arrived half empty! It has been damaged during the transport. It took some time to gather all the things from the band, and I have no idea, if anything has been lost. I have got a new empty suitcase from the airplane company, so I could repack everything at the hotel before the next flight. There were three guys waiting for me in Beijing with my name card. They dragged all my three cases to some far destination. We walked for maybe ten minutes to get to some dark parking lot. The luggage department of the car has been full, and there was no space for my luggage. So we all sat tight together with the suitcases over us. It was rather cold outside, but the guy sitting next to me in the back seat kept the window wide open all the time, and it has been blowing cold air right onto my aching neck. I asked him to close the window, which has been a fatal mistake. A few minutes after he started puking all over the place! The stunk and the feeling have been unbearable!!! My suitcase that he had on his lap has been covered with his puke. They stopped the car and tried to dry the horror with some dirty towels. The rest of the trip I had the windows wide open on both sides! The trip has taken about half an hour, as they did not know where to drive. We have been driving round and round for a while, till they found the right exit off the motorway. When we have finally arrived to the hotel, the guy started asking about an arrangement for the next morning!!! When I told him that I would prefer to order a taxi the day after, he kept calling to my room assuring me that he can do the job much better the next time! I smoked in bed and fell asleep totally worn out. Woke up in the middle of the night and started washing my suitcase from his puke and repacking the broken one. Believe me, I am glad to sit on the plane home right now, even though I know it will take many hours. I read China Daily sitting on the plane and decided that there were so many things I have not learned about China during my stay there. I am not sure that I want to learn them either! &emne6=10.12.2006&bloggtekst6=I am back in my apartment in Xiamen. It has been a long and tiresome travel, very close to a Chinese person all the time. We have been sharing a room, and we hang together most of the time. Even though I really like the girl, it is difficult for me not to be independent. We hardly know each other, but we had to sleep in the same room, eat together every meal, and talk days long. I have also real difficulties with this situation of us two being in different economical position. Each time I had to pay for things, I felt guilty, as if I was doing something ugly to her, which is in fact the opposite. When I gave her some money in the end, she took it without even thanking. I had an awkward feeling that maybe I have given her too little, maybe she had expected much more. It is hard to know. But I am pretty broke, and I honestly have given, what I could! It must be difficult to be in her position and accept all these payments like that. Sarah had bought in Guangzhou a big ceramic pot for making soup, which I promised to help her to carry to the plane. It reminded me of my earlier trips here and there, and how I have been dragging all kinds of things back and forth. We also talked about a habit of taking with you all the small shampoo bottles from the hotels. Small signs of being used to being poor. Now I have to pack and get one suitcase into my coffin, which I am going to send by sea. Have to make an appointment with Mr. Chang, get out more money out of the bank and get ready for leaving China. I have been mentally ready for some time already. &emne7=09.12.2006&bloggtekst7=I was not able to get up and go anywhere yesterday, so I joined Sarah for another round of the shows. It was good, as I discovered many new features, which I have not noticed before. Still there were some shows I could not remember, when people talked about them. In the evening we went to see a documentary film at the square projected onto a big screen. It was from one of the remote villages in Yanin province, really amazing documentary, full of truthful details. Unfortunately we are not going to see the other part of it, so I will never know the end of the story. It was hard to believe that this was from 2002, people live there as savages with shaman doctors and animal offerings, starving and suffering, coming home after many years in jail for opium sail. It was so freezing cold to sit on bare chairs at the square! I went to the hotel before Sarah and filled the bath to get warm. When she got back, I could not hear her knocking on the door. She had to go down to the reception again and call me from there. I jumped out of the bath to answer the phone. This has been real embarassing! She must have been freesing waiting for me, but she did not complain. People are so kind and patient here! I would have made a sceene if I were her. Today however I was ready for another adventure and joined for another trip, this time to the mountains, walking up and down the valley, seeing clean blue water and waterfalls. There was a Chinese woman in the group, who has been wearing high hilled stylish boots! I have no idea, how she managed to walk in them in the wilderness. The path was well prepared, but still rather hard, slippery and not easy, even wearing proper mountain boots. It has been very, very cold the whole day, humid and windy. Fortunately we were not as many on this trip, so we finished earlier and went for lunch to another village, not so very interesting. The food was not as bad as the last time, but not particularly exiting either. I got to chat with the Chinese participants in some sort of sign language mixed with a few English words they could, and it worked well. People are really open and friendly. They take particularly good care of us foreigners on these trips. I feel very much more at home in China than I do in Norway, if I think about human and behaviour factors. Sarah decided to change our tickets for going back tomorrow instead of on Monday, so I will have one day extra before leaving Xiamen, and we do not need to spend a night in Guangzhou. This is good. I talked to a nice German guy at dinner. He was one of the organizers of this event, and he has lived in China for 5 years. He has told me about censureship and governmental control of everything what is going on. All the emails are registered, copied and put to an archive, he said. My idea about photographing the crippled kids and asking for their wishes would not be welcomed, he said. Besides, it is real dangerous. In addition, it would lead me to being expelled from China and being prohibited an entrance in the future. I do not know, how much of it is truth and how much is imagination. I guess, nobody knows. I have also had long discussions with Sarah about censorship. Sarah, Xuan and Jim, all say the same thing: censorship of art is an absolute necessity! Without it the young people like them would not know, what is good and what is bad! It may be even dangerous! When I tell them that I disagree, they blame it on my difficult childhood in Soviet Union. Tomorrow we are going to Guangzhou to see the exhibition space and take some photos. We fly back to Xiamen late in the evening. &emne8=07.12.2006&bloggtekst8=I am really exhausted physically today as opposed to being mentally exhausted yesterday. We went on an organised trip to Yao villages and to underground river and caves. The villages are always amazing, with the markets, the people, and the animals, all mixed together in a sort of a colourful kaleidoscope. The lunch there has been a test of my tolerance more than ever before. I was sure, I would get sick and need a WC at the most inappropriate moment, but to my surprise it was ok. The whole bunch of people from some Chinese photography association have been running after each other taking the same pictures, aping each other. I have never seen anything like it before, so it was definitely a new experience too. The underground river was over 5 km long. First we climbed up and down some endless stairs, and in the end we were taken by boats to the other side, climbed more stairs, and drove in shaky buses to another village again. Right now I am totally finished, and my whole body is aching. It was nice to take a shower at the hotel! Sarah had the energy to go to watch some slides from the exhibition at the main square, but I am not able to move. We shall go for a blind massage later, when she gets back. It costs only 25 RMB for one hour here, third the price compared to Xiamen, and more than ten times less than back home, so we could afford this luxury. Tomorrow we shall separate, as I want to go for another trip, while she wants to see more exhibitions. She is going to write an article for Artzine again about this festival, so she is doing a serious research. &emne9=06.12.2006&bloggtekst9=We are in a city called Lianzhou. I am at a photo festival here together with Sarah, who invited me to join her for this event. It was very generous of her to suggest this to me. Right now I am totally worn down after a long day looking at different exhibitions, walking around and talking to people. The last week in Xiamen has been rather boring, so I was very glad to get away. I have spent some time at the textile market ordering some clothes, but otherwise there was nothing much happening. I had a crazy idea of buying an electric bike and sending it to Norway in my wooden coffin, which Mr. Chang has made for sending my exhibition back. The coffin is half empty, so I had to find something to fill it up with. But the bicycle appeared to be way too big, so I had to apologize and ask them to take it away, which was very embarrassing. Later Chang told me that it was not certain I could send it anyway, as they might be not allowed for export. These bicycles are so fantastic that I got tempted, but maybe it is good that it did not fit into the box, otherwise I could have got into real trouble. I tried to pack my stuff before leaving for this trip, and I have too many things anyway! Vanjas exhibition opened on December 1 on Friday. It is a miracle that she managed to finish it, as she had been running around hysterically trying to get things done. She got made many umbrellas with some images on them, and mounted them on a sort of bamboo structure, so they were filling up the space. It was not so good to my opinion, but interesting to see, how the space has changed. Vanja asked me to take some pictures for her at the opening, so I did. I always have difficulties giving away raw material, as Vanja would not know, how to handle it. Maybe, she would think the pictures are not good at all? How can I explain to her that the light was bad and the setting was not good? I am usually doing this kind of documentary for some others only when getting a professional fee of 100$ an hour, but here it is different. Vanja is good at getting other people to work for her for free, and she forgets sometimes to pay her shares of restaurant bills, but we are all different, are we not? There was another dinner party after the exhibition. Children were playing under the table naked, as it has been rather hot in the room. I was getting tired from these dinners! I am feeling so different from all the other artists here. They all went out for a drink after, but I went back to my room. I have nothing more to talk to them about, and I am fed up with speaking this broken English! I am longing to go home! The day after I met a girl called Xuan Mao, who has told me that she has been visiting Norway under some art event near Kristiansand, where she had a project asking people to write their wishes on paper and put them into bottles that were then thrown into the sea. Strange coincidence! One day I might find one of her bottles there! Xuan has invited me for a trip to the oil painters village in Xiamen. It was amazing! She called them commercial painters, they fake everything, they paint from photographs and copy famous paintings of all times and stiles. I was so sorry that I have not discovered that earlier, as I could have used them to do some work for me. As opposed to some other Chinese painters, who get thousands of dollars for their kitsch paintings, these are really poor, they do not consider themselves as artists, they are just skilled technicians, who would paint whatever one asks them to paint for very little money. They live under such conditions that they would be happy for any money. I could have exploited them along with all the others I have exploited here. Maybe I would do it the next time, when I come to China again in two years? It could be interesting to combine photographs and oil painting. I have sent a mail to all the other artists recommending this trip. Maybe, someone else will pick up the idea before I do? I am so little considerate about such matters! But I cannot change! It is too late for me to change. This travel has shown me so many things about life and about myself! It will be difficult to digest it all, that will take some time. Sarah has organised an exhibition for me in Guangzhou in September 2008, so we are going to visit that gallery on our way back from here. The first day here there has been a grand opening with a rock concert on the main square. I find everything so fascinating and different! I wish I could get hold of the music they played! The amount of photographs and videos I am taking is growing quickly. There is a big food market here with all sorts of local specialities like dried dogs and ducks, fried small birds and oysters, tree mushrooms and what not else. The smells here are different and even stronger than ever, if that can be possible. This province is famous for eating dogs! Sarah got really upset about that, as these dogs are exactly the same type as her dog Silver. Today there was a big local Yao people festival organised by the government. More policemen than visitors, dancing and marching of big groups of people in colourful costumes being photographed by all the photographers from the photofestival. Observe and be observed it was called. Everything is so noisy and grand here in China! But I am so grateful to Sarah for bringing me here! I could not have managed to see it without her help. She is a bit upset about all the people and free meals at the hotel, where we are staying. All is organised and provided for free. Maybe I am doing something wrong again? Maybe I should have asked her for dinner somewhere else? But I am so tired now that even a thought of it makes me sad. I will find out later how to compensate her for her troubles! Tomorrow we are going for a field trip to the villages nearby. I am looking forward to it. My stay in China is coming to an end! We are back to Xiamen on Sunday night, and I am flying back on Monday. I will have to spend a night in Beijing at some airport hotel and proceed to Helsinki the day after. 12 hours flight, some waiting, and a few more hours to Oslo. I cannot believe it is the end of this amazing experience! I have a feeling that I only got to see a very little part of China, and that there are so many more things to see and to learn. But I am glad I have done it, it gave me a feeling of how many more things there are in this world to learn about. And also how lucky I actually am to be living in Norway.&emne10=30.11.2006&bloggtekst10=This last week has been both slow and empty, as I got real bad backpain, which kept me busy with acupuncture, massage, exercise, all in vain! No sightseeing as planned, no entertainment aside from watching five old movies a day. Pasolini, Kurosawa, Polansky, Kieslowsky, Scorsese, Juzo Itami, author of Tampopo and Taxing woman, and Almodovar dubbed to Russian, so far. They sell here full editions, like 20 films in a package of each film director, so I have bought them all, at least the ones that are supposed to be subtitled to English, which not always is the case, but it does not say on the cover. DVD player I have in the apartment does not have a remote control, so I cannot switch the subtitles anyway. Well, since I have seen all these movies once before, it has been a special experience watching them without understanding the language, some in Polish, others dubbed to Chinese. It has even been special kind of experience, particularly with Kieslowsky, as I realized, I can actually understand Polish quite well , when it is going in such a slow motion, and is such a clear concept, as it is the case in his movies. Today I got a new Chinese wonder medicine in liquid form, which I plaster on my back. In five days I should be like new! In the meanwhile I am still in a horizontal position most of the time. A lot of thinking is going through my brains that way. I suppose, it might take a long time to digest all the impressions from these three months in China, sort out over 5.000 snapshots and organize them somehow. Yesterday I decided to go for a walk in botanical gardens, as I have to move a little. But it was not just a little! The gardens are amazing and very big, and I have spent most of the day there. Maybe, that is the reason I am so totally wrecked today? As Sarah has once told me, one does not need to be rich to have a good time in Xiamen. There are so many beautiful places! They are all well taken care of, there are paths and marks and even garbage pans formed as trees and stones, so they do not stick out so badly as they do other places. It came to my mind though that all these gardens are the original ones, which gave inspiration to the Japanese. The Japanese ones are always true, natural, original and delicate. Chinese gardens are always full of fake, just like everything else. Stones are not stones, but cast concrete. Water in the lakes stinks. Mist in the rainforest is sprayed from special pipes and is way overdone. But nature is still there and the climate allows everything to grow! Another thing that strikes me is how little crime there is still here. It is safe for me to go everywhere alone at any hour with all my cash, as no cards are in use here, and all my cameras. The only bad thing that has happened to some others, so they taught me, are being given false money everywhere, so one has to watch it. Oh, they do not get ashamed or upset, when you refuse to take a fault banknote, they just give you another. Sarah told me that she and her Brutish boyfriend are being thrown out of the house they are renting without any time to find a new one. It has been sold without them getting any advance notice. Sarah has been furious about it. She said, it is typical for the province and the city, people are telling lies. Maybe she has just been upset? I have also noticed that people are telling dishonest things without even feeling how false it sounds. Once I went for a nail treatment, irresistible luxury for 100 RMB or about 10 euro for both hands and feet. That made me feel like the old lady in “Repulsion”, whom Cathrine Deneuve has cut the finger off. The girl, who has been speaking a little English, has been all over me, bringing the tea and the biscuits, talking my brains stuffed with all the impossible nonsense, and when I was leaving, she told me she is going to cry, she will miss me so much, so I have to come back! Say, it was a bit of an overdoing it!!! But she sounded absolutely thruthfull! All those contrasts and comparisons drive me crazy! How am I supposed to live from now on? Should I forget it all? Close my eyes and go back, as if these three months here have never happened? How am I going to keep the small talk by Christmas table stuffed with all that meat, fat, drinks and luxury that could keep a small poor village alive here for a year or more? I have never been a charity person, as most charity goes to those, who organize it. But here it is still innocent, or at least it looks that way. There are students and others, who do organize some charity stuff and help the poorest of the poor. See it on www.ohch.org and www.xmfish.com/forum-66-1.html , but no English there whatsoever, so start learning Chinese or ask a friend for help. I really have to think these things properly through! I am not good for any charity work, so what can I do? How? I know a woman, who could have put me in contact with some people, but I am asked to keep away from her for personal reasons. Maybe, it will work out somehow even without her being involved. I hope to talk to some people at Vanjas opening tomorrow. Sanja has made a not so good project to my opinion, even compared to what she has been doing earlier. But I feel sorry for her, poor thing, she got a real fat stipend to spent here, so it all went to her brains, she kept eating and traveling, enjoying life. The project has been done in about two weeks, so what can you expect? She is happy though and is planning to spend a couple of weeks in Hong Kong before going back to Holland, in order to spend the rest of the money. That is how it has to be done!!! Galina has still a lot to learn!!! If I am able to move, I might join Sarah and Jerry on their trip to Quangchou, a city not so far. We shall discuss it tomorrow at dinner after the opening. I skipped the opening of the professors exhibition, which I suspected to be real bad, but I also missed visiting the house of these two crazy American homosexuals on Gulanguy, who are stuffed with money and are buying about everything around the city, also galleries. Marieke is starting a new cooperation with them, they are going to open a bar and a café in addition. I think, she is getting more and more money oriented, but that is none of my busyness, is it? I am sorry though I have not seen their house on Gulanguy, as I am curious how those houses look now, especially from the inside. The article in Artzinechina is coming in January issue, not in December one, as they told me before, the issue is dedicated to some prominent Chinese artists of the 80es. Well, I do not expect anything from anyone anymore!!! &emne11=23.11.2006&bloggtekst11=It has been raining dogs and cats for two days around the clock. How is it possible to get such amounts of water to get absorbed into the ground, I do not know? The sea should have been overfilled and the new arch built again! At least it is going to be cleaner in the streets. They are brushing the dust away everywhere, but I have never seen any washing done. Maybe, there is not enough water? Maybe, they do not have the machines? Maybe, they think that lifting the dust into the air is sufficient cleaning? Xiamen is the cleanest city of China! I can imagine how it looks other places! I have used the time to make a documentary video of the exhibition. After I finished, I went to the electronic city again to make copies, but it all went wrong. There are small failures in the film, which we could not figure out, what they were coming of. So I have been going back and forth six times repairing the video, changing this and that, but it has been wrong each time at a new place. In the end I have discovered that they are running my Sony cassette on a Panasonic camera, which is a totally different system! By that time all my money and all my energy were gone, so I gave up and sent somewhat faulty videos out to the galleries, who have invited me. That I am not proud of, but on the other hand, it tells something about China. It will be a memory for a lifetime! China is a different world, it always has been! I have been reading a lot, while being here, and my impression is that they have never mixed well with the westerners. The westerners like me keep coming though, curious and anxious to change their world. Yes, China is extremely brutal! It is a totally different world of manners and morals. I do not know to what extent we are entitled to judge though. We should not have been here, that is for sure! They do not have any good of the western presence, and God knows, what their presence in the west will lead to? They are so many!!! About the kidnapping and the deforming of the kids: those are the only ones, I really could not take pictures of! But maybe, I should make an effort? Maybe, the world should know about it? I am not sure. It is like the discussion about female circumcision in Norway: what can we say about that culture? What do we know? Yes, I am sure, it has to be stopped! But how? What is there to be done??? Tell me! I am happy now to be free from any obligations. Vanja called and asked me to help her with her exhibition. She is really hysterical and works around the clock. But maybe, I have turned more brutal here in China or more egoistic, so I have apologized and refused to stay day round and cut the fabric for her umbrellas that she is making. My back is killing me, and my eyes are not good at all. I am going for acupuncture each second day and sometimes for a massage. I deserve to have some time free! She has been traveling, shopping and enjoying life till the last moment, but now she is stressed! It is and should be her problem! But I feel sorry for her. I promised to take down my exhibition a couple of days earlier so that she gets more time to mount hers. So I am preparing for a take down on Saturday. I have ordered a wooden box to pack everything into, and I am going to send it all back home. If there are going to be more exhibitions in China later, as they all have been talking about, I will bring it back. At the moment there are no specific agreements, maybe in 2008. There is going to come out an article in an art magazine here, see it in December issue on www.artzinechina.com. The paper version of November issue has not come out yet, so I will probably not get it before I leave. Sarah has spent a few hours here yesterday helping me to prepare the pictures and the texts for all those, who wanted it. So we went to the post office to mail it. That has been a very complicated process with a lot of papers to be filled in. After that we went for dinner and then back to my place to collect her stuff and send her home in a taxi. Later I sat down to relax and watch an Almodovar movie in Russian. There are many Russian DVDs circulating here, probably due to the price level. It was very strange for me to see a Spanish film dubbed to Russian here in China! It is somewhat absurd, but is probably only a matter of what one is used to. There are many other countries where they dub every movie, like Italy f.e. I remember how it is to be watching American movies in Italian back in Filattiera! Now I am really counting days before going home! Maybe Sarah will take me for a short trip to the mountains next week, we shall see! Otherwise I only hope the weather will improve! Today it is still grey, but not raining. Now even the sun has popped out. So I am going out! &emne12=20.11.2006&bloggtekst12=Days go by and I am not counting them, which is pretty enjoyable. I wish, I could live like this all the rest of my life! No appointments, no obligations, waking up, when I am waking up and going to eat or to sleep exactly, when I feel like it. But that is not going to happen, as I also do not want to stay alone and lonely as I am now. One can get most lonely in a middle of a crowd! The last days went very quickly by. It has been raining bad the whole day on Saturday and night to Sunday, not as if God was not wearing his trousers as Mayakovsky described it, but as if he has been pouring water with buckets or emptying a sea. Enormous amounts of water came down from above! It felt as if the whole city is going to float. But on Sunday morning there was sun in the sky and over 30 degrees in the shadow again. We all got a message from the office that there is going to be some procession with the dragons and the boats to be set onto the water in order to praise the Buddha, who should in turn protect the fishermen. So I have been sitting by the sea for hours waiting for this procession, which would not appear. After a while some other artists popped up and told me that it has been delayed and should be coming soon. Marieke came down as well, and we were all sitting there talking about all kinds of things. I am so careless sometimes, when I get engaged in a conversation, so I manage to step on everybodys toes each time I open my mouth. Perhaps I should start exercising to not say anything and let the others talk? Could be interesting! I am always the one interrupting and having opinions. We were talking about honesty and cheating, and I managed to say something about the artists always covering up for their real income in order to pay less. Marieke expressed her admiration for that, so I realized, how stupid it was of me to say anything like that in her presence. She is collecting all the money from us in cash only, which is a definite indication of cheating with her taxes. Why would she not allow us to pay to her bank account? She says that everything is operated in cash here, which is true. But that is not a reason good enough? She could have taken money out of her bank, when she needed it. I realized how mad she must have turned at me, when she made a great scene, when I went to take a picture of a street cleaner, which has been slightly protesting and not very happy to pose for me with her masked face, which is perfectly understandable. Marieke accused me of being brutal and ugly towards poor woman, she shouted at me and said that I should never, never do it again. She also told me that some people here believe that it brings bad luck to be taken photographs of and that I should respect such things. I have been really upset for hours after that scene. They all went further to follow the procession that has finally showed up. I went back home to treat my poor back, which is not reparable any longer. I have been to the blind massage and to acupuncture, but the stone hard bed and uncomfortable chairs together with my rusty bicycle are killing me. Perhaps I am too old to travel like this? Marieke also told us a story about beggars. We have been talking about those crippled children placed strategically everywhere around the city. They look unreal! Their limbs are so deformed that it is hard to imagine, what disease could have caused it. Marieke said that these children are kidnapped and deformed on purpose in order to collect more money from rich idiots like us, who give the more money the more deformed and dirty these kids are. I think I am completely ready to go home! We also had a confrontation about technical matters. She insisted that I should make a copy of her VHS copy of her original poor camera recording from the opening of my exhibition. I tried to explain to her that it is going to be very poor quality, but she got so angry. She said she has done it before and it is close to perfect quality! So I had to pay 30 RMB and do it just to demonstrate her, how bad it is! But obviously our understandings of good and bad are not the same. Here is a quotation from one of her mails, her English is beyond comprehension! Dear All, Tomorrow starting at 5 pm their will be a celebration from the foreigner students from Xiamen University at the big building on you right hand when you come throe the West Gate, mean entree from the University. Their will be performances etc. When you want to no more about it please call Ai Xiu. You can take all your friends with you. Regards... &emne13=17.11.2006&bloggtekst13=As Svein told me, the time is running very quickly now, even if nothing much is happening. Today is Friday. On Wednesday we went for another field trip, the whole bunch of us, 12 grownups and three kids. We went to some nearby villages by a speedboat, about two hours in each direction. It was much more pleasant than the bus, but perhaps even more dangerous, taken the state of the boat into consideration. Here all the normal standards are sort of forgotten. At home I would have never set my foot on a vehicle like that, but here we all happily climb the wreck and keep going. It went all right, but there were many situations, when it could have gone wrong. We were again riding those crazy motorbike taxies from one place to another, me with a newly acquired bamboo stick 2 meters long sticking straight up and marking the way for all the others following after, 10 motorbikes in a convey through the wilderness. Local people had an entertainment out of the ordinary! The first thing we had to do was to buy umbrellas and plastic coats, as it was raining! The first real rain here since September! It was not raining heavily though, so it has actually been just a waste of time and money. Besides, we could not possibly use those umbrellas and the cameras at the same time or use them, while riding the motorbikes. But Marieke told us to buy umbrellas and we have willingly obeyed all of us, looking like visitors from another planet, all dressed in the same colour raincoats and holding the same colour umbrellas. Charly decided to buy the one that differed, it was a delicate pale blue one, with some beautiful embroidery around, but that appeared to be the kind of umbrella used against the sun, so it was raining straight through it, to the great excitement of all of us. First, we walked through the first village, buying different stuff, just looking around and taking pictures. People were buying clothes and helmets, baskets and what not. I have triumphantly got hold of a bamboo stick with a hook at each end that I have admired for a long time. It is used to carry some heavy baskets and stuff, maybe I should start collecting those, as they are so beautiful? So I had to find a WC, which was not an easy project at all. We had a lunch at some inner room of some restaurant a bit later, so they could have told me that it was coming, and I would not have needed to run around the village looking for a WC, but no one seems to think logically here. There were many different dishes, many of which remained untouched. The kids would not eat any of the stuff, but I fortunately had some small crackers that they seemed to like. So we went to a little Buddhist temple that looked like a family house, at least people both lived and slept there. I have donated some money and got to throw the sticks to find out about the future of my son, sort of future telling. First you buy some incense sticks and stick them into a pot to burn to honour the Buddha. Then, you throw some wooden sticks from a pot, and the one that falls out has some number on it. So they look it up in the handwritten book and tell you, what it says. According to their prognoses Igal is going soon to get rich and happily married. I wish, it were true! At least, it does not hurt anyone to have tried it, but again, normally I would have never done it. After the temple we just walked straight into a banana plantation and some other fields. I did not know that banana trees have such fantastic flowers, very big and very beautiful, violet in colour, looking like some enormous cocoons of butterflies about to open. I only wish, we had the time to take proper pictures! They were mocking me all the time for being late and getting lost. My still image camera went on strike fortunately, so it was only one video camera that I could use. Otherwise I would have certainly been left behind somewhere in the bushes. We also went to see some big pig grounds, but it was dark inside, and the stunk has been unbearable and beyond any comprehension. I have no idea yet, what I am going to do with all those pictures! The next village was very similar to the first one, but we had to wait for the boat, so we started playing games with the kids, taking their portraits and showing them the pictures, they loved that, so they stopped being shy and turned rather active by the end. Of cause, walking like that in a group gives nearly the same pictures to everyone. When we got back, it was dark and exactly dinnertime, so we spent a long time trying to get a taxi. Marieke kept walking towards some unknown destinations. Me, Aase and her kids kept following after obediently. We got a taxi after crossing to another side of the road and walking for a while. We were all rather exhausted and hungry. I hope, no one gets sick from all those fly bites and dirty dishes! On Thursday Ai Xju called me and said she got hold of an old bicycle for me for 100 yean. So we went there to fetch it, it was near the hospital. I had my acupuncture again, and this time the doctor stuck his needles directly into my eye, which has been very scary. I do not know, if it helps or not, it is hard to say. Maybe it does a little? I hope it does! I still see everything double, which gives me headaches and makes me dizzy. I will go there two more times, but after that I will stop. They gave me some new herbs to cook too. If none of these help, I will just start living again as normal and stop torturing myself by all these hopeless procedures. I met Sarah in the afternoon and we talked more about different other places in China, where I could show my project. But it does not look very promissing, everything is so corrupt and money oriented here. My work is not commercial, and I am not really Chinese, even if I am pretending to be. That is a provocation that scares the hell out of them. So most probably, I will just send the exhibition back home. I have to take it down a bit earlier, as Vanja is in panic, she needs more time to mount her installation. I have ordered a box in which it will be packed, so I shall decide later where to send it. Today the sun is shining again, but I am sitting here destroying my eyes and my back by a computer! I will go for a bike ride now. There is a foreign student party later tonight. The student party appeared to be some sort of concert with a lot of singing of some sort of Chinese opera vocal, so I run away. Met all the other girls on my way home, they were heading towards a bar for a drink, but my back demanded to go home and lay down, and so I did. Watched another movie by Roman Polansky, as I have bought the whole collection, but it felt very boring. Strange, how our perceptions of things change with the time, I used to like “China town” and his other movies, but now it seems to be just boring and slow, especially “The tenant”, but also “Repulsion”. &emne14=12.11.2006&bloggtekst14=Aaah sjuuu faaah zjaaan… or similar in a monotonous high voice. I can hear outside the window, that is how the morning starts. Somebody is announcing that he is collecting something. They are collecting everything, all of that is pure private initiative, they can deliver and sell paper and plastic, metal and what not, probably for very little money, but they have very little from before, and they manage on very little somehow, nobody knows how. So this makes China into a perfect recycling society, absolutely nothing goes to waste. People, who work for the government, still enjoy some of the leftovers from the socialist times, they get houses following the job, medical care, and they get some pension, when they get old. But most people have to manage on their own. Hospital is very expensive, medicines too. Primary school is free and obligatory, but nobody is controlling it, so there are lots of children in the countryside, who have to work instead, like that boy, who got to make that stupid dog sculpture for me, because his father was too drunk. But high school and college education costs are just like in USA, about 60.000 yean a year, which is impossible for most families, but they still do it, borrowing, getting into slavery contracts and what not. They have just one child in each family, and it is a family obligation to give that child education. Education means everything, they look up to educated people, they highly respect educated people, and they want their children to get to the best schools, and they work very hard for it. They are very proud, when they can say that they have their kids at good schools. There are many private schools as well, but those are very expensive. Children still go with that red handkerchief around the neck and are young pioneers, when they are at school. I wonder what they are learning? I have seen how it works at the art college here. They get lots of sporadic classes, no structure whatsoever. But I have no idea about the demands or the obligations. Jim dropped by at 12.30 at night day before yesterday, after the student exhibition. I did not join them, when they went somewhere after the opening, as I had very bad backpains after those 10 hours on a shaky bus to Dehua city. They have obviously been out for a drink or two, as he was moody and crying. So he stayed for a couple of hours till I got real tired and sent him home. We talked a bit about art education, he told me about his romantic love affair a couple of years ago, and that he is still very much in love with that girl, that he will never have another. I think he might be gay without admitting it even to himself! Marieke told me that he had been dressing up as a girl for photography and video sessions of himself, but I have no idea. There is some problem, it is clear, but he would never admit if he is gay, Marieke said, as it is still very much a taboo here in China. Well. I do not know anything about that. I have watched a film by that young star Wong Kar Wei, which has been very much exposing a homosexual relationship, but that is forbidden here, Marieke told me, which does not stop the film from being sold on every corner. Anyway, I do not care about Jims sexual preferences anyhow! He is good to talk to, a very smart, clever and intelligent boy. I really enjoy his company! But he is just like my own son, sentimental and romantic, all sobs and tears. I have been also reading a new art magazine, that started a short while ago, see it on www.artzinechina.com, very interesting and depressing reading. Depressing, because it only confirms my impression of how commercialized and corrupt the art scene here is. There is an article in the first issue about a filmmaker Yang Fudong. I wish, my son had the patience to read it. Maybe he would not feel so lost and different then? It looks like millions of young Chinese are all just like him, lost and uncertain. But I do not know if it helps so much to know that one is not so much different from many others, perhaps even the opposite, it only makes it all worse. Oh, I do not know, how I can help Igal or Jim for that matter! Jim kept talking about death, which he is unavoidably facing, which is probably a part of the rest of his life, which is probably the reason, why he would not commit to any girl or lover. What do you say to a boy of 30, when he tells you that he does not want to live? He says, people are awful and unkind, even though he has only experienced the opposite himself most of the time. His parents did not love him, he said. That is the reason for all his pain. Why do they always blame on the parents? If I had done it in my earlier years, I would have never managed to survive. Well, thank God or whoever there is, for my son not being able to blame on lack of love from his parents! But he finds some other falts about his parents to blame on. Yesterday I went to another hospital with Ai Xju again, for acupuncture. That has been like a miracle. They put me on a dirty bench with some blankets that they never change. Ai Xju has not told me that I should have brought a towel, and they put 20 needles here and there with some heating lamp over them for half an hour. After that they put 20 round air bottles on my back and neck, so I am now all blue and yellow, but it helped. So now I can move, and I am going to come back there 4 more times next week. If I do not catch some skin disease or bad infection from those needles, I will be like new. Some strange Eric person asked me to give an interview to his son, who has to write about art at school, so I went to the centre to do that. Nobody in the western world would allow himself to ask an artist to come especially in order to give answers to his child for some school paper. This guy was from Finland, but was obviously married to a Chinese woman, judging his sons looks. He has lived here for 12 years, he said. He said, he knows China better than I do, and that my impressions are all wrong. What is going on here is just wonderful, China is facing a prosperous future of Mac Donalds on every corner! After that I rent a bicycle and drove into the sunset along the sea. The bicycle broke down after a short while, so I had to walk back and came 5 minutes later than I should have done, so they tried to charge me for another hour! There was the edge of my patience, so even if it was very stupid to refuse to pay that little money, but to me it became a matter of principle. Anywhere I go, they try to charge me three times more than what it costs. One is always supposed to bargain, it is a part of the ritual. But I hate that, so either I pay what they ask, and they consider me an idiot, or I walk away. I could not live or survive here over a long time! &emne15=09.11.2006&bloggtekst15=Yesterday has been quiet and pleasant. I got up rather late, at 9, I think, which is luxury after stressful weeks with early mornings. I decided to go to visit the island called Gulangyu, a sad memorial to the colonial times and opium treaties from the end of 18 hundreds. I have read about it a bit ahead and it is described as an amalgam of many beautiful places like Old Havana, Mexican San Miquel, The Cinque Terre of Italy, Hawaii and an Austrian village with piano and violin music coming from open windows. At least that is what it said on http://www.newcolonist.com/gulangyu.html. One has to take a ferry over, which is free of charge, but one has to pay to get out of there again. Ferry goes till 5, but then there are speedboats, waterbikes and what not. In reality the island is now all touristy, with cable car that costs some ridiculous amount of money and lots of souvenir shops. All the good areas are behind bars, so one has to pay entrance fees everywhere. It must have been beautiful in the end of 19th century and before the Japanese came in 1939, but now everything is falling apart, is dirty and sad, like all the other places, where the Englishmen ruled before. I have seen it on Bahamas too, for not to talk about Middle East and India, where all kinds of conflicts are going to flourish for ages. Some houses are reoccupied and all renovation is done by manual labour, there are no machines or tractors on the island. One could not get them up the hills through narrow streets anyhow. No animals are being used either, manpower is probably cheaper. So there are these thin little men running up and down with big carriages full of stones and rubbish. Every single stone is cut by hand and put in place by hand. And Marieke is telling that they are bringing and exchanging culture here! It is a new occupation with all the disasters included, just new catastrophes somewhat different from the old ones. There are ruins of beautiful houses with totally wild gardens behind high fences. One can just take a look through the closed gates. There are many new ugly buildings everywhere, which are occupied by Chinese people. Some beautiful villas are taken over and renovated by rich foreigners, but those are closed and locked properly. I asked someone about property prices in Xiamen, and they are very high, even according to Norwegian level, so probably totally unaffordable to the locals. I have no idea how they manage or how they get places to live. Probably most of them live there illegally and wait to be thrown out at any moment, just like it is in Beijing. I have bought some small things for presents and Christmas gifts, but I have no idea how I am going to get all that home. My luggage is too heavy as it is. I will have to send back the exhibition, which is probably very expensive, but I have received support from Norwegian Craft organisation for that, the only support I have got for this travel. I watched another film by Polansky on a DVD and went for a blind massage in the evening. Today I am just waiting for Sarah to come by and talk to me about other future exhibitions in China that they want me to do. Vanja has dropped by to use the WC, she is so stressed by all what she has to do now before her own exhibition. She is working with some sawing ladies in the basement of my building, or rather they are working for her. She had difficulties communicating with them, so she had to ask Sarah for help. It looked unbelievable down there! Very tiny room, no place to turn around, and a lot of fabrics everywhere. I have no idea how they manage to work there! I will need to take my exhibition down a little earlier, maybe, so that Vanja gets more time to mount hers. Poor girl, she has been having a good time a bit too long, so now she is very nervious. Marieke came later with a copy of the English language newspaper, they had a big article about my exhibition with many pictures, so that is good. We talked a bit about different things and plans for the future exhibitions in Shanghai and Beijing. She is really trying to organize something, so we shall see how that goes. Tomorrow there is another opening of the student exhibition here, so everybody will be there again. I have to take more pictures of the Wall of Wishes, as there are more and more wishes popping up. I hope, there will be enough holes in the wall for all of them! &emne16=07.11.2006&bloggtekst16=It is so strange that there is no timepressure on me anymore. I am a little bit as a balloon that is emptied for all the air, just the scale all wrinkled and ugly left in the dirt. I think I am depressed. Nothing seems to be cheering me up, and all seems to be black and negative. Today I have just stayed in my apartment most of the time, just went for a long, long walk along the sea. There are such wooden paths built all along the coast, just like near Cap Antibes, the stones are similar too. Only the water is dirtier and there are signs of destruction and depression here and there. Restaurants and wedding photographers with their models, whom I tried to congratulate earlier, are exchanged by some enormous metal pipes sticking out of the water, some forgotten old bridges still floating there banded by some rusty chains. The sea was high and rather high waves washed over all those fragile wooden constructions that I walked on. I got all wet just after the first meters, but so I did not care any more. It was very hot today too, maybe above 30 in the sun, but pleasant, because of the wind. I walked for maybe a couple of hours each way, got tired and went to sleep. So now I am awake and am probably going to wonder about the whole night, but it does not matter. Now there are no obligations. Maybe this mail exchange with Igal has thrown me totally out of balance. I am so worried about him, if I could leave now, I would have gone home right away. But the exhibition has to be taken down and sent back, I cannot ask other people to do it. Besides I am broke and it will be a disaster to buy a new ticket. I will have to keep a low profile for a long time to come after this travel. It is Tuesday today. I went together with a Dutch girl Charly for a trip to the ceramic villages nearby on Sunday. We stayed overnight at a hotel and came back yesterday evening. I had an appointment for blind massage at 8, but I was too tired to go. I had no money either and no energy to run to the bank and so on. The trip has left a feeling of deep disgust and sadness. I have taken a shower five times during the day today, but I still feel dirty and dusty all through. We were taken there by bus by a local guide named Ziay Tzien, a guy of something between 30 and 40, smiling most of the time, because his English is not so good. The trip took about 4,5 hours one way, and we arrived to some little town. There were no taxies, only many, many motorcycles. At first I refused to be taken to the next bus by one of those, we walked for a while with our heavy bags, and so I had to give up. I sat on one bike behind the driver, holding in his coat. Charly and Ziay Tzien sat together behind another driver on a little bigger bike. Charlys naked legs in rubber slippers were nearly touching the ground, and I have been expecting the worst, imagining how I have to spend the rest of my stay here at a Chinese hospital with broken bones. Traffic is the worst I have ever seen in my life. They are moving around everything on these bikes! Sometimes packs three times the size of the bike, sometimes cages with birds and animals, and the whole family with crying babies on top of it. It looks just unbelievable! Naturally, that was not the right moment to take pictures! Then we got off these bikes and went for lunch at a restaurant. Ziay Tzien made a lot of sounds while eating and spitting straight on the table. I noticed his manners already on the bus, when I gave him an apple to eat, when he said he was very hungry. He ate just as a pig, chewing and spitting, and nuffnuffing. But it was something out of this world to eat at the same small table together with him. I tried to look away, but one cannot close the ears unfortunately. After the restaurant we went to a ceramic factory in town. Not very big, just a few workers. They were making cast porcelain, some flowers and buddhas. The owner was also a teacher at a local ceramic school. I showed him some pictures of baby Pushkin that I thought I would order as a present to Svein. He said it was very difficult, but he could make it for 4.000 yean, which is ridiculous. Charly ordered one of her projects though, which was good. They will make it in white porcelain and pack it in a beautiful traditional box. It looks like a snake with three heads, and she is going to use it for some sort of installation work. It will be connected to some other stuff, she said. We had a tour of the factory, took some photos of the place and got out of there. After that we hired a very old and thin bicycle rickshaw, which biked all the three of us with all our bags up the road for two yean. So we got onto another bus of smaller dimensions and much older one. I was sitting there thinking about Frida Kahlo and how she got stuck all through by some metal pipe in a bus accident, when she was a little girl. It must have been a bus just like that. There were nearly accidents several times during our drive. The bus was braking, and people falling, and bags flying around. After half an hour drive we got off that shaky wreck. On the way we saw rice fields, small fields everywhere, all the smallest flat pieces of ground are planted with something, the mountainside looks like stairs to heaven, small terraces of rice fields or vegetables covering it from bottom to top. I was thinking that if those dusty leaves are the ones we eat here everyday, I must never ever be sick anymore. My immune system is probably prepared for all kinds of bacteria. There is no possibility to take any machines to this small parcels, so they are carrying water and fertilisers on their backs using these special bamboo sticks with a bend at each end, where they hang a bucket or something else, jus like on the old pictures about China. Nothing has changed there for thousands of years, I guess. There was a company of very different looking Chinese men on that bus. They were some minority people from the North of China, they said. They looked Italian, with blue round eyes and “normal” features of a white man. I did not know, there were Chinese looking like that, but when I give it a thought, yes, naturally, it is such a big country, with so many migrations and invasions through its history during those thousands of years of its existence. When we got of that last bus, we had to walk through the village for a while. No streets, just small dirty paths between the houses. Water and excrements running in deep gutters along these paths, ducks and chickens, dogs and pigs enjoying themselves in the garbage piles at each corner. The smells are not describable. We walked around several corners and through several streets like that, when we finally arrived to our destination. They call it a ceramic factory! In reality it is one man production, he was making pots on a wheel, painting them by hand, just traditional blue mountains and trees. Charly wanted to order some special sort of two cups with some pipe in between. At first he denied, but after I explained to him how to do it, he said he would try. His family lived in the same house, his daughter with a small baby in her arms was standing there watching our strange faces, and I took a picture of her. I also took a picture of the family pig living in his little section downstairs. He looked very cheerful and was very talkative. They asked us if we were going for dinner in their village, and we understood that they wanted us to invite them for dinner, so we did. We walked the whole bunch of us to some distant destination in the dark. I was only thinking about what I am stepping at. The restaurant looked just like all the other houses, we were taken to the second floor and put in a small empty room with one round table and a few chairs. Charly went down to the kitchen to order the food. I felt I would rather not see how it looks there. So she got back and told me it was good she went along, because they wanted to order dog meat and she asked them to get chicken instead. But chicken was not fresh, said Ziay Tzien, so they have ordered some other stuff and a lot of beer and alcohol. The guys mixed white 30% rice vodka with wine and beer, we all were cheering up after some time, laughing more and more, forgetting the bad food and how they eat it. Charly is very good with the language, she picked up a lot during her stay here, and she is trying to understand. I am not even trying. They are speaking a dialect here too, so it is hopeless for me to follow. But Cam pain, Cheers, Skaal, Prost, Na zdorovie etc. everybody practiced happily during the evening. Charly said I had to hold her on the way back, but she has been exaggerating, she was ok. It was worse with Ziay Tzien, he started clapping Charly on the knee and telling her how fond he is of Dutch girls. He has already managed to get into the pants of one of them, he said. His girlfriend, he said. So I had to try to keep his labs off Charly the rest of the evening. During the party they looked at my pictures and said they can make that sculpture, no problem. I was so drunk that I do not remember how I agreed to that order. But we decided to come back the day after and have a look at the sketch. The whole village came to have a look at us, while we were waiting for the bus. The potter wanted us to stay in his house, which would be for free, he said. But we managed to thank no to that generous offer, got on the bus and got back to town. We found a middle class hotel, clean and not very expensive. Ziay Tzien wanted to share a room with Charly, but in the end we managed to send him to bed. We had to pay all his expenses and his pay in addition, which was not cheap. The meal with all the booze was not so cheap either. We shared a room with two beds, clean linen and clean bathroom that was a reward after that day. In the morning we went around the city first, but there was not much to see. Pots and buddhas, some small gifts I bought etc. A new bicycle rickshaw took us to the bus, a new shaky tour followed, and we were in the village again. To my great surprise they have managed to make some sort of animal, which looked a little bit as a hippo, but there was no way out of it, I had to order it for 1000 RMB. That will be a memory for a lifetime! If I decide to drag it with me, of course! We shall see. It should be ready in two weeks. Charly plans to go back there again when her boyfriend arrives, so she will collect it for me together with her own stuff. After that we were shown around another little production place, a brother of the companion of the potter was the boss there. We even got a cd with all the pictures of his products, so we could order them later. So he drove us back to town in his car, he must be doing well selling all those pots, clever guy. We had a quick lunch at a highclass hotel, but had to run for the last bus out of there. It has taken more than 5 hours to get back because of the traffic, we said our goodbuys and went home by a taxi. Charly got off at the supermarket. I think she wanted to cook her dinner herself that night! I did not want to eat at all. Now I will just try to stay still, walk around and recover after all these impressions and shocking news from my son! The exhibition is very well visited, they said, some more articles are coming out tomorrow. I will go and talk to Linda tomorrow, I think, maybe in the afternoon. &emne17=04.11.2006&bloggtekst17=Yesterday I was sort of stressed and depressed before the opening, I am sorry, if I was unfair. I know that my friends are there for me, but they all were so far away, and I felt so lonely. Sometimes I have my doubts about what I am doing and if there is any need for it in the world. I am having fun while I work, but I get sort of empty and upset, when it is finished. So what am I going to do now? Today it is summer here again, sunny and hot, nearly too hot for me! Strange how quickly it is changing. Yesterday at the opening it was dark and even a few drops of rain came down from above. I realised it because all the girls were having their umbrellas open, which looked strange on that grey and windy day. They usually have their umbrellas open to protect their bleached faces from the sun. Most Chinese women like their faces to be bluish white, and all the cosmetics have an addition of some strong bleach. I have no idea what I am going to do, when I run off my cosmetics. The opening was very late yesterday, as at 5 there were nearly no people. They all slowly popped up at around 6, had their drinks and cakes, and then came my performance in Russian, just for two minutes or so, but long enough to make them get the point. Sarah got sick, so we had to call Jim. He got the speech in his hand just minutes before the start, so he was very nervous. And I have not read it from the paper, but improvised, so poor guy had real difficulties, but he managed somehow, even though I have no idea about what he said. At around 6.30 we have opened the doors and people went in. It has turned totally dark outside by that time, so we had to have the lights on in the room, which was not good for the video at all. So I did not like it, but people did not mind. We switched the light on and off, so they could se both the pictures and the video.The whole installation has been designed for certain opening hours, so this was very stupid. Marieke run into the storage room and brought some sort of spotlight, which she pointed towards the entrance, so everybody got totally blinded, when they walked in. The opening times at the gallery are always before 5, so the room looks good with the doors open both for the video and for the pictures. So I had to apologize and to explain. At around 7 we all got into taxies and went to a restaurant for dinner, which Marieke is always offering after an opening. I find that both generous and nice. Naturally it is a part of our payment, but still. It was a nice evening with a lot of good food, beer and wine. We walked through the campus back together with the professor and with Marieke. Today I went out to the World Trade Centre and the Wallmart supermarket together with Alexandra, a new artist from Switzerland. She looks good in her black outfit, with very white face and red lipstick, a bit satanic though. She must be a bit younger than me, but not much. The noise level at the shopping centre was so high that we got completely exhausted and tired after just about an hour. I went for a haircut, the place was decorated with many wigs in all colours, but it looked a little cleaner than the one near the west gate of the university. I had a drawing with some instructions in Chinese, which I had Linda to make for me, so it al went well, I look similar to how I looked before. It is good to have that done before we go to the ceramic villages outside the city tomorrow. I also bought a new backpack for all my stuff. We will have to spend a night at a hotel out there. I am going together with another artist, Charly from Holland, a very nice young girl. I am so glad to finely get out of the city, and I am really looking forward to it. My videocamera is striking, so I am happy that Jim has changed up his mind again and decided to rent one instead of borrowing mine. It is best for the both of us, I think. &emne18=02.11.2006&bloggtekst18=Today there has been a press conference for my exhibition. As opposite to how things go back home, here there came four journalists from the main newspapers, one in English and the other called Utopia daily, the photographer followed with huge old fashioned cameras. They tortured me for three hours, so I hope, they write something sensible. I finished all the documentation, both on photo and on video, so now I can start working on that. I have actually had some photos ready before the conference, which was handy for the photographer to see, or otherwise he would have made some idiotic pictures. After that we all went for dinner, some new artists who had arrived newly, joined us, and Jim came as well, he is back too. We ate and talked, and talked and ate. The beer is very light here, so nobody gets drunk, which is nice. Chinese never get drunk, it is said. I have never seen anyone drunk or drugged anywhere, but there are certain places, Marieke told me. Tomorrow is the big day, I am excited and upset, as no one of my dear friends or relatives, except Iq, has sent me any greetings or wishes. Not nice! I am really disappointed over that. Not even my living partner or my dear son found it necessary to say a word or two. Good luck could be enough! So I am going to act accordingly and not send any more letters to them, sorry! &emne19=01.11.2006&bloggtekst19=Yes, I have managed to get the film back to camera again, after that I went to the electronic city in order to burn it. Jim is away, so I had to manage by myself. Sign language works well, it is only to be inventive. Later today I will test how the new version of the movie works on two beamers, so that will be fun. Marieke is mad at me again, as I insist on speaking Russian at the opening. She finds that to be a personal provocation to her, I do not know why. On the other hand, she wants me to be happy, so she will give up after all, I hope. I gave her two big silk pictures, which she was glad to receive, I think. She gave me a kiss, so we are friends again. I tried to take a bus back from the electronic city, but I did not recognize the stop, where I was supposed to get of or maybe I went in the wrong direction, so it took me all the way to the end station. It cost me twice as much to get back by taxi, as it would have been, if I took a taxi in the first place. But at least I had some sightseeing of Xiamen for the first time. It is a beautiful place, with lakes and channels, with water on all sides, with pretty sidewalks along the water and beautiful modern buildings, constructions and even some sculptures here and there, and not only busts of Mao and co. There are places that have not changed since the Mao times, so one can see his portraits on the wall and slogans in red about the virtues of the workers. All that stands in great contrast to the old parts of town, to the market places, to the old harbour area. I have read a book written by foreigners, who have spent some time in this city. They are all mostly Americans with communist sympathies, so the book is a praise to progress a la 10 Mac Donald’s in Xiamen have appeared in just 1 year. Now there is an invasion of the Dutch and the Icelandic, thanks to Marieke and Izzy. I really am looking forward to exploring the city and discovering things that appeal to my understandings. The weather has changed in just a day or two. It is windy and cloudy, much cooler, about 20 C. That is just the perfect timing for me. &emne20=29.10.2006&bloggtekst20=I can never stop, can I? I decided that there was time enough to make some corrections to the video, because it is only after I had seen it running on two projectors that I could see what has to be changed. I have been sitting on it for days and nights, so now there is only a job of making DVDs, but there I got stuck. Something is wrong, but I do not know exactly what, it can be a videocassette or a DVD disk, it can be the camera, or it can be the computer. Now I am struggling against all that equipment, it takes 8 to 12 hours to burn a DVD, and it is all wrong in the end. I make a change, and make a new try, so there are more hours to wait. But it does not work, no matter what I do. It must be a computer, or rather burning software, but there are no Apple stores in Xiamen, and there is no time to run around to try to find what I need. I will try one more thing, I will get it over to camera and take a trip to the electronic city, and they must be able to burn a DVD for me. There is a big production of fake movies here. They sell DVDs of old classics and modern films from everywhere. I have spent a lot of money on those, even though they only cost about a euro per piece. So I have been watching old classics, while waiting for the computer to finish the burning. What else could I do? One cannot touch that machine while it is burning. I could not go away from it either in case it all stops again.&emne21=26.10.2006&bloggtekst21=Linda was the one, who saved my life today! Marieke could not find a new beamer, nobody wanted to lend it, and neither she nor me could afford to buy a new one. So we were sort of stuck for a while. Linda decided to take it for repair today, but that will take some time, if it is possible at all. Then she called me and said that her husbands electricity company can lend me their projector. Her husband came with a brand new high quality machine that made me as happy as I can be, while my baby son is so far down. So now everything works as it should, and I am practically finished. Yesterday I thought I would collapse, because the guy, who has been helping me to hang up the stuff, just wanted to get everything finished as soon as possible. So we worked nonstop from 10 to 18 without any brakes even for drinking water, so I got a killing headache. The last part has gone too quickly by the end. I was too tired to think. So I had to do it all over again today, but at least all the hooks were there, so I only had to change the pictures around and adjust the lengths of the threads. I have been dreaming about it all night, so I brought with me the hook that is used to hang up the clothes for drying. That way I did not need to put the leader on the table, I would not have dared to climb that high with my double vision, I am nearly falling down, while walking, so it would have been a suicide to climb up that high. But the cloths hook did the job. It looks OK now! I started to take documentary shots today, and that looks not bad either! Strange, how I managed to communicate with the helping guy, whose name I do not even know! He knows like three words in English and I know three words in Chinese, but it went just fine. I paid the guy 25 euro for the whole job. He has been flying around as a monkey and just as quick. He was happy about the payment, especially after that Marieke told him that he will have to do the job on the doors over again without any additional pay. But Marieke is right, he has done a bad work there, it looks real hopeless. I do not care. &emne22=24.10.2006&bloggtekst22=Just got a message from my son that he is back in Singapore and going home tomorrow. I hope, he calls me soon, I am so worried about him, how he feels, if he is even unhappier after this travel, what happened. I have been working at the centre the whole day organizing the stuff, trying out the video etc. Lots of nonsense again about appointments and arrangements, but in the end everything went, as it should, that is the most amazing fact. The helping guy has made some horrible covers for the door, so Marieke has been furious about it. Fortunately, it is her responsibility and expense, which is very kind of her to offer. I do not care, that it looks bad, it holds the light out, that is all what I care about. After all, the idea is that the public should look at my work, not at the plates on the door. The video on the silk panels works like magic! It is magnificently beautiful, which makes me both proud and happy. I could not know, if it would work at all, it could have been a disaster! Jim came after all by the end of the day and tried to fix the color on one of the video beamers, which is all wrong, but that is not possible, as it is probably too old or used too much. But Marieke will fix that problem, I am sure. Jim has been thrown out of his parents house, because he had a discussion with his father, so now he had to move all his stuff again, God knows to where. That is why he was so angry yesterday, he was not sleeping, he was crying, and it had nothing to do with me, but his whole situation. I feel really sorry for him, this clever boy, half death and with a tumor growing inside his head, but I should not get too much involved, as it is Marieke, who has adopted him and takes care of him. But I cannot help comparing him to Igal, thinking about attitudes and problems. Jim does not complain, he takes it as it is, he told me. He does not feel unhappy either. He just wants to borrow my camera to make a new video himself! Tomorrow there is more work. I think I am going to need all the time there is before the opening! &emne23=23.10.2006&bloggtekst23=The guy, who was supposed to come at 10, has not appeared before 11 and nobody called to tell me that he is late. That is the usual run of affairs here, just that I cannot get used to it. Somehow, when Chinese do not know something or fail to do things the right way, they just smile, they will never try to explain or apologize as it means loosing a face. The worst thing that can happen to an Asian person is to be confronted with lack of knowledge or incompetence, so one should avoid direct questions and never expect direct answers. I know all that, but still it is very difficult to remember, when one is in the middle of it. Assumptions are the most natural thing, no matter, how many mistakes and misunderstandings it can lead to. Well, in the end we arrived to the centre, the helping guy sitting behind in an open van on top of all my stuff, which has not made me feel happy at first, but later I noticed that he has been very careful, practically hanging over it, holding to the sides somehow. He appeared to be both clever and very efficient, so it all went well. We got started and got all the small pictures in place, and in addition hang some big silk panels as well, so I can start experimenting with video tomorrow. By the end of the day I had to call Jim and ask, if he would be coming on Tuesday as we agreed. I obviously woke him up. He was very slow and angry. Again, I have made a mistake, I should not have called. The reason I called was to find out, when he was planning to come, so I could make an arrangement with the other guy. The other guy wanted to keep on working on the doors to the centre, as they have to be blocked with some black panels, so it is not too light for the video. But it appeared that he would not be there alone without me. Nobody wants to be there alone, said Jim. Is it because they are afraid that they can be accused of something, if something happens? I do not know, I took the keys from Marieke without any hesitation. We are used to show trust and take chances, but not the Chinese. This is strange too. Marieke seems to be rather mad at me, but maybe I misinterpret again. Anyhow, she hardly speaks to me, and she left without saying goodbye. Another cultural collision. She had sent me her speech for the opening, which is exactly, what I do not want. But I will not offend her. If she feels offended by my idea of speaking in Russian and translating only to Chinese at the opening, I will have to give up, even though her speech is really terrifyingly hopeless and in horrible English, but it is her centre, after all. I will not want to hurt her in any way. I have really a lot of respect for this lady and a lot of sympathy. The whole affair is another misunderstanding, I hope, we will be able to talk about it later. Marieke is a nurse by education, and she is acting like one towards her artists in residency. That is exactly what the artists need! A nurse! Not a smart curator or a commercially focused gallerist, but a nurse. On the other hand, I have to admit that it all looks not so professional, as it could have been, if a professional has been in charge. Marieke is doing the best she can, and she takes into consideration a lot of things she learned, being first a wife and later also a mother of an artist. In any case, I am in the seventh heaven to be here with her and not somebody else! She is so wonderfully kind and considerate! When I arrived, she went to collect me at the airport, so I did not need to worry and find out how to get to the house. The house was cleaned, there were flowers on the table and the refrigerator was full of food. One feels really taken care of by her. She is so efficient. She does not wait till tomorrow to fix things. I cannot understand, how she survives among the Chinese, who have exactly the opposite attitude. &emne24=22.10.2006&bloggtekst24=I could not sleep, as I have been going again and again through all the questions and could not find any answers. At about 4 at night I had given up and taken a pill, slept till 5.30, when all the sounds from the market start and the birds are very loud as well. Tried to sleep more, but could not, and would not get up either, so the time has passed till 10, then I climbed out of my birdcage over the bed (a mosquito net) and got started somehow. I am actually ready to start hanging up stuff on Monday, so I just went out for a walk, took next 56 pictures that there is a place for on my memory card, so now I have over a thousand shots. What am I going to do with all that material? Just going through it will take some hours. Old Typhoon Harbour, the boats, the people... I wanted to make a sort of documentary book about this project, but since nobody ever answers my emails, I assume that it is not interesting to anybody but myself. So why to use more money and energy on something that nobody else would read? I am going to have enough trouble to find out what to do with all the materials from this exhibition as it is already now. I packed and packed, and there are many things that weight quite a lot and are big in size. I will have to order a part of a container in order to send it back. What is going to happen to all those things, when I die? Igal told me once that he is going to order a big container and send all of it to garbage. Somehow it is sad to think about that. Marieke told me that she thinks it should be my last project to find out what to do with all my endless projects. She thinks I should travel to Sakhalin and find somebody, who will invest in a museum for me there. Go back to where I was born. Maybe it is not such a bad idea? Maybe I should go there from here, it is not so far away? Go back to the roots? &emne25=21.10.2006&bloggtekst25=Yesterday we were all asked by the Icelandic couple to come on the roof of the studio near the Old Typhoon Harbor. She and her husband have been teaching a class of Chinese students for four weeks, so they wanted to make a sort of presentation. I took a taxi together with Marieke and we walked through the harbor factory area, which has made a deep impression on me. Both the stunk and the rats were as huge as elephants. We walked by the small factories, where people with white masks over their mouths were sitting and polishing some wooden boxes by sandpaper. Olafur has told us later that they are brought there from the villages, they live in the room besides, where they sleep in three floor wooden beds constructed temporarily just for that. They work about 18 hours a day, they get a short brake when they are served some food prepared at the spot on the open flames. It looked worse than German or Russian labor camps to me. The students have not made much. There were about three projects to see. One consisted of some photographs of faces that have been mounted on top front parts of the houses nearby. It was like giving the houses some faces. Quite beautiful actually! Nice pictures too! Another project was about shelters from the sun. There were made some sort of textiles stretched over some sticks on the roof, not very impressive. The last one was a tent made of some sort of black canvas with photographs from the neighborhood. Not very interesting either. Aase has been talking about the difficulties of communication, difficulties to get any sort of respond or activity from the students. She said that they are sort of used to be told what to do. They get scared, when you expect them to take any initiative. The professor here told them to build a system of punishment and reward, the only system that works here, he said. I started thinking if I would be interested to do any teaching under these circumstances. After that we all went for dinner at a restaurant nearby, stinky and dirty on the outside. I have been so unfortunate that I had to visit the toilet, after that I had to meditate for a while outside before going in again. So I have paid attention to how the dishes are washed on the pathway outside. I have taken some photographs in the kitchen, which lead me to become less and less hungry for every moment. But when I looked at the four kids of Aase and Olafur, who were dirty in their faces, have not washed their hands or anything, but ate with good appetite and were cheerful and happy, then I got ashamed of myself, pulled myself together and joined the party. Later we were invited for coffee by another Icelander here (looks like there will soon be quite a colony here in Xiamen), his name was something like Odinur. He was the head of the Commissions committee for the artists in Iceland and obviously a welloff person. He lived in a three floors apartment on top of a tall building just nearby. We took an elevator to a different world! It was luxury and very bad taste everywhere, but what a relieve it has been to visit the toilet there! He had a cleaning lady, a cooking lady, a gardener and three daughters. We were sitting for hours on a balcony with a view over the sea, watching some fishing boats going out. Olafur talked about damned capitalists and child education in Iceland, he wanted to move to the countryside and become a farmer. The more gin went down the throats the more talkative they all became. Aase is the head of the artist organization in Iceland, she spoke her perfect Russian to me once in a while, and we have planned to go out together one day, just her and me, and speak even more Russian. She lived for a year in Odessa once upon a time. She seems to be very good at learning languages, as she speaks some Chinese just after one month here. I do not even think of trying to pick up any simple words. When we took a taxi back together with Charly (a new Dutch artist), the gate to my house has been closed for the night, so I had to climb over a rather high fence. I felt like a criminal, but it went OK. Today Marieke came by and told me there is a parcel at the post office for me, as I have mentioned earlier that I am expecting one. But it appeared to be a parcel to Vanja, which we were not allowed to collect without her. So Marieke helped me to find the way back to the Old Harbor again as I wanted to take pictures. The stunk there is nearly unbearable, but it is an amazing neighborhood, where a lot of people live and work. They all look clean and well organized, even while living under such primitive conditions. Jim has lived there once upon a time, Marieke said, while she lived in a high building not so far. The monks at the temple that we passed by have always asked her for lunch, she mentioned. It has been an amazing area and I would have never found it all by myself. Later we went to see The Outseas Museum, a museum about Chinese emigration to the other parts of the world, well done, but not very interesting. And as usual, a lot of mistakes and nonsense on the way, which Marieke does not seem to mind at all, it is looked upon as a part of her life here. So we first have purchased a couple of tickets to the childrens playground with some dinosaurs and other plastic creatures. Then she managed to understand, what one of the boys tried to tell us, and we found the right museum around the corner, bought new tickets, but had only half an hour left to look at it, as it was getting closed. I mentioned to her that I would like to ask Sarah to hold a speech at the opening in Chinese for me. Suddenly she turned aggressive and sort of unhappy. She is probably provoked and thinks that I am teasing her, which is not true at all. Well, maybe she has just turned tired or misunderstood again as usual. Or maybe I do not realize that I am touching an aching spot? This project is mostly about understanding and misunderstanding! We will have to talk about it, but I am more and more convinced that I would like to do it! I want to hold a speech in Chinese by Sarah, which I repeat in Russian, without any English translation at all. We shall see if Marieke asks me to take that away, or maybe she thinks again and allows it, we shall see! My thoughts and feelings are somewhere else today, as my dear son has left for Singapore to see the girl that he had run away from just before the marriage a short time ago. Now he wants her back! There is nothing I can do to help him, but I am not used to feel so helpless, it is killing me! I hope he will survive and become happy again! He has sent me his wishes, and I will place them into my wall and pray to all the Gods I can imagine! &emne26=19.10.2006&bloggtekst26=It is only 8 in the evening, but I feel completely empty and tired. Igal has landed in Singapore. I am only thinking about how he is doing. I dedicated this project to him because it has been very much influenced by him, his life, his problems in life and all my thoughts and feelings have been about him all these last months. Now I cannot work more today, as I am only crying all the time. I think he is making a great mistake, but there is nothing I can do about it. After Jim left, I watched a movie, no director mentioned anywhere on the Chinese cover, but probably a well known one, “The Human Stain”, with Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, a sad movie, not a very good one either. That has not improved my spirits. Jim has spent the whole day here writing the wishes in Chinese directly on my photographs. 53 different wishes, some short, some long, all in different colours indicating the mood. White wishes, red wishes, black regrets and blue memories. The video is finished and copied, I managed to get it work, so I do not need to go anywhere anymore in order to do that, which is a great relieve. Now there are only a few small things I need to get finished. In the morning earlier today I went to the centre to test the video and have made an appointment with a guy, who is going to help me to transport and hang up the stuff on Monday. Everything costs money, not much compared to Norway, but still a lot of money. I will have to go on a serious diet for the rest of my stay here, though it does not help much, as it is not the food that empties my accounts. Well, I did take Jim for dinner again yesterday, as he does not eat at all otherwise. He is still very sick with high fever, but he has been working the whole day for me anyway. I am afraid I might have been catching his flu, as my nose is running and my head is aching badly. Not the best timing for getting sick. I have learned a few things from this quiet boy. He does not say much, but he is quick and clever, it is a delight to deal with him. He does not hear half of what one is saying and he does not understand the other half due to language problems, but he is guessing it all right, and he is doing it all right. I could not have managed without him, as all the other people are useless in compare. This project is the first and the last one during my carrier, when I have been totally dependent on other people. I am comparing myself to the emperors, who had built The Great Wall, they had not built it by their own hands either! So there is certain logic to it. I still have a lot of details to go through, a lot of small things to fix, but I have a feeling that I am getting it slowly under control. I do not know, if I can rest after the opening, as I will need to make documentation, both photo and video. I also want to make a book by hand and a book in printing, if I can afford it. So I might not get the time to see either China or Xiamen at all. Sarah wants me to give an interview to the Shanghai art magazine and we have to send some material to Beijing. My inner life has been more intense than ever though, I have done a lot of thinking, and I have many new impressions to digest anyhow. I am meeting many new people, even though I am not going out so much. There has been another dinner together with the rest of the artists last Monday. I talked a bit to the Icelandic couple with four kids. How relative are all troubles! They have a few more things to take care of compared to me. They are teaching at the college here and they are teaching their own kids, as it is school time of coarse. She seems to be an amazing person, and she is so beautiful, so are the kids. The Chinese people, who want to touch them, to pat them etc, are attacking them constantly. She speaks a perfect Russian as she has spent a year in Odessa in her youth. We have to go out together the two of us and speak Russian one day! &emne27=14.10.2006&bloggtekst27=I have just finished the last of 31 silk panels. It has been a very boring and timeconsuming work. Now it is only to deliver it to the sawing lady next door tomorrow. I will ask the cleaning lady to come along and explain that she should not hurry, but do it properly, or otherwise she is not able to make a single straight line. Now I have folded and sawed everything by hand for her, so if she cannot do it right now, I do not know what to say. This project has been a war against misinterpretations all the time. I ask one person to tell another person what to do, it is translated, I have no idea how, and I am getting something totally different from what I have originally asked for. Even when it has nothing to do with Chinese, for example the whole affair about asking people to write their wishes for me. Exactly, their wishes for me! All, and I mean, all, my Russian friends have sent me their wishes for me!!! Like, we want you to make a good project or we wish you to have a lot of fun etc. Imagine, it is as if they have no wishes for themselves at all. So there were those funny mails from people, who do not speak very good English, but instead of writing their wishes in their native tongue, they sent me wishes in such a broken English, that it is hard to understand, what they are wishing for. Well, everything goes directly into cyberspace just as it is! Jim is sick, so I am worried not only about his condition, but also about my prospects to finish everything in time without him. It is embarrassing to call and ask how he is doing, as he will certainly think that I am only pressing him to work for me. A new Dutch artist has arrived today. They are all young and beautiful, what the hell am I doing here? It is absolutely frustrating to depend on others in connection to my own work. I am longing home, to my studio, to my family, to my dog. What am I going to do here after the opening? Well, I have not seen much around here. I guess, I have to have a look at real China? It will be cooler in November, I hope. As it is now, I am still alive thanks to the two big fans blowing at me from both sides around the clock, also all through the night. The moment one goes out, one gets wet all through, the sweat is running, I have to drag a towel with me all the time, it does not help to have a napkin. So now it is only to finish the portraits, to write the wishes, and mount the exhibition. I am starting next week or maybe even on Sunday. Just one week to finish the portraits and the wishes! What if Jim is still sick? Who is going to write the Chinese wishes? I asked one of the secretaries, but it turned to be a disaster. Jim is a genius compared to her, so I hope he comes back to me. I have no idea if the video is going to work, as it is only after the whole thing is mounted that I can try to see, how that functions. Vanja gave me a wonderful CD with old classic Chinese music, so at least I have some good sound! It has a special meaning to me because it is her CD! I had to cut and paste it to the right length, but it sounds not so bad anyhow. I am very curious about the whole thing! Just hope, people are going to send me their wishes, not their wishes for me, but their wishes for themselves! I went to the kitchen in order to cook the medicine from the doctor and have been as unfortunate as to look at what it actually was! This time it does not smell good, when cooked. There are different bugs and small snakes in addition to some sand and broken shells. Heaven, what am I doing? Now it will be real difficult to swallow that stuff, I am afraid. &emne28=13.10.2006&bloggtekst28=The poster and the invitation arrived yesterday and look OK. I must say, it worked very effectively, quick and professional service. Now there is no way back! I am working about around the clock now, not going out or anything, just sleeping and eating in between. Jim finished the frames, very good work. So now it is all up to me, no one else to blame on. Just realized that it is Friday the 13th today, maybe that is the reason why I have such a headache? We went again to the traditional Chinese doctor today, and I got really scared. The first time it was somewhat different, but today the place has been very crowded, full of people with skin problems and many others, looking very sick. The doctor checks the pulse on both hands on each patient and looks at the tongue, he does not wash hands in between, the tiny room is full of people, while he is talking to the patients. It all looked rather dangerous to me. He kept saying that I should go to the western hospital. Obviously, he does not know, what to do with me. He gave me more herbs to cook, and we left by a taxi. I might try to keep cooking the stuff for one more week (one has to cook a new portion every day), but I doubt, I will go back again. Ai Xju tried to get me to her sister’s house as she is an expert in acupuncture, but that does not sound good to me either. So I drop all the nonsense. I have more than enough to do before the end of the next week, when everything has to be ready. After that I shall see what I can do. I have been wondering, why all the garbage pans outside are always empty, when I go out with the garbage. Today I got to know why. When I got out, there were two guys quarrelling about the garbage, going through it with their hands and eating strait from the pan. I run back home and had to sit down for a moment to collect myself. It is so obvious and still so surprising! There are lots of people starving and nearly everybody has to count every yean. The social help does not exist, people are managing as good as they can. I definitely could not live here permanently as Marieke and Izzy do! As if it is any better to be far away and not to think about it? In any case, it will be difficult for me to watch, how much is going to waste back home. &emne29=10.10.2006&bloggtekst29=Yesterday we went to the printing house together with Sarah, a Chinese secretary, who is responsible for more intelligent tasks. She is a delight to talk to! Speaks very good English for a change and knows a lot about art. She has just been to both Beijing and Shanghai to visit the galleries in order to stay updated on what is going on. She sort of adopted me, she asks me difficult questions all the time about why I do things like this and not like that. So she told me that an art magazine in Shanghai wanted to interview me later, after the opening. We worked very effectively on the poster and the invitation; they should be ready in a couple of days. So we went to a lunch place nearby together, ate very fresh and tasty noodles, 6 yean each, which is about half euro. Sarah told me that there has been a problem at the Art Centre, where everything on the outside of the building has been destroyed, the name letters has been removed and the glass door has been broken. They could not get inside though, as there are metal bars on every door everywhere. This has been an expression of protest against western invasion into China! That has been happening before too, she said, it is not the first time. I did not like it at all. I kept sweating over the video for the rest of the day, but got stuck and had to call Jim. He came right away, helped me to solve my problems, would not have any money as usual, and told me, how difficult it was for him to live in Holland. People never asked him in or out, or helped with anything, he thought it was very strange; he could not live in such a country and among such people! This reminded me of Olga visiting me in Norway and getting upset about people drinking each from own wine bottle during a party. Today we talked with Vanja, the Serbian girl from Holland, about this problem with Jim and decided to take him out for dinner, hope, he will do that. Vanja is young and beautiful, and to make sure that she does not forget it, she wrote it on the wall in her bedroom, so she can see it the moment she opens her eyes in the morning: “Hello, beautiful!” Or maybe it is in hope to find a nice person to wake up beside, so he can remember, what to say, when he wakes up beside her? Vanja is separated and has a 3 years old daughter; the father lives in the apartment beneath them in Amsterdam. He is Serbian too, half Muslim and half Jew. The girl spent a month together with her father in Barcelona, but tomorrow she will arrive here together with a friend of Vanja. Vanja loves Chinese moviemakers and is afraid of about everything here: the bugs, the water, and her coming exhibition. She is the next victim after me. &emne30=08.10.2006&bloggtekst30=Everything is so big in China! Construction sites for 50 floor buildings are all over the place. Flying cockroaches are as big as 4 cm, jumping spiders look like scorpions and today I have seen a bee as big as a bird, about 7 cm long! I could not believe my eyes, but it was sitting there directly on my measuring band, so I am not exaggerating as usual. When I got up to get a camera, it went away unfortunately. Yesterday, when going to some shop, I walked by foot for a while. I do it sometimes, I walk till I get completely lost and so take a taxi back home. It is strange to be the only one, who is different. People are staring at me, as if I were an alien from another planet. As opposite to how it is to be one of a kind in Norway, here people are friendly. They help in all situations, and they are willing to guess, what I am trying to explain. Sign language functions not so badly, it is only important not to be shy, which I do not have any tendency to be! Today has been a nearly too busy and too social day for me. After several days without getting out at all, I had to attend to both lunch and dinner together with the rest of the resident artists and the guests of honour from Holland.Marieke has been practically getting out of her skin in order to please these two members of some important fond that is giving money to her Dutch residents. She herself does not apply, she says, she likes to be independent, she says. Still, she has definately been investing into the Favour Bank! Her huge investment is going to carry interest and pay off later on, so she cannot say, she is not playing the game along with the rest of them… Anyway, the food has been fantastic to my taste! At the lunch restaurant, which was directly on the beach with a magnificent view and a fresh breeze, we could point out the sea animals, the shells and the vegetables we wanted. Everything is always being served in the middle of the table on a sort of turning plate, so everybody can reach with their chopsticks and pick up stuff into their own small balls. The waste is put on a little plate beside and is removed by the servants immediately, so that will not attract flies and other insects. Tea is served in tiny cups that are filled up all the time too. Some people had wine and beer, but I had to work later, so I dropped that. About 20 different big plates has been brought and taken away, but so came the fruit of all sorts, familiar and totally unknown to me. Everything looked very fresh, exotic and beautiful! We all conversed politely about secrets of this mystic land, as there were some Chinese present at the table. The academy professor this and that, the secretaries and the students followed closely our opinions and said very little themselves being busy with the food, as it is not every day they eat like that, I guess. I walked home along the beach for the first time in days noticing the sea breeze, the heat and all the people, very many people everywhere. Worked till 6.30, and so I had to get ready for dinner. We were given small notes with the name of the dinner restaurant, so we could take a taxi there. Naturally, all the clothes that I have with me are totally useless here. I cannot stand anything tight on my body in this heat, so there is just one dress and there is one blouse that I am using all the time, but nobody really cares. Even though I feel like being on stage all the time, there is always somebody watching me carefully, noticing all the smallest things, as I am the rare animal here. The dinner has been taking place on the 29th floor of some high building, but we could not realize that, as we were placed in a small private room. The noise is too high in the open areas they said. There were about 10 servants running around the table filling up the glasses and changing plates, all speaking some sort of English, which I have difficulties to understand. Fortunately, I have been placed near the professor, so he could explain to me, what they wanted from me, as I had to confirm my wishes. The food again has been just incredible, lobsters and crabs, many changes, fish and duck, pork and beef, everything coming in some strange order. Sweet and sour, hot and gentle in taste, everything mixed. Tomatoes are served by the end together with watermelons and peaches, they are considered to be fruit here. The party ended by the whole group going for a foot massage, taking many taxies to a far away destination and later back home. We were placed in one little room opposite each other in two long lines, the massaging stuff sitting in the middle back to back, us all reclining in deep chairs towards the walls and facing each other. A TV high on the wall has been showing CNN news just for us. Marieke said, I have been lying there with a wide smile on my face the whole time. &emne31=07.10.2006&bloggtekst31=I had to get up and have a look at the calendar in order to find out, what day and date it is! This week has flied away just as quickly as all my money. I had to buy a lot of things, like a 100 meters of silk and a 100 plexiglass rods to hang it on etc. Today I have discovered that prices can vary nearly 10 times from shop to shop, so maybe I have been unfair towards the computer guy saying that he had been cheating. This will remain a mystery like so much else in China! Ineke has found a boy, who could help me with different practical matters about my project; his name is Jim (like everybody else, he does not use his Chinese name as nobody can pronounce it correctly and that irritates him). Jim is maybe 30 years old, half death, as he has a tumour growing in his brain slowly going to kill him. Marieke and her husband have sort of adopted him, they sent him to Amsterdam to live in their house and go to school there on a Dutch stipend. He is a genius in many ways, perhaps exactly because of his brain tumour, who knows. Now he has been offered a teaching position at the art academy in Amsterdam, but he had refused the offer and came back here. So now he is homeless and penniless, and Marieke fixes small jobs for him, when she can, like helping me or teaching another artist here some Chinese. He lives in one of the empty apartments that she has for her artist residents. But it is a bit of a job to make him accept the payment, he just wants to help out of the goodness of his heart, money does not interest him at all. It is especially difficult, as he has lived in the west and knows about the income differences etc, so he knows that what we pay our Chinese slaves here is so absurd compared to our own income back home! He knows he is being used as a slave and prefers to let it go. It has been a revelation talking to this guy, I think I have learned quite a few things about life, and my own difficulties seem so much smaller! But he has something to live on! So I have asked Ineke for help, she promised to talk to him about it. Otherwise I have been running around for getting all what I need, taking taxies to the different ends of town. I am nearly ready with the materials for the poster and the invitation. That has to go to the printing house on Monday morning. I have got a new name, a Chinese name. My new name is Fu Yang, which is written in an unusual way in Chinese and means something like a Fortunate Big Man. But when I go to the doctors here, they spell it in a more regular way, which then means something like a person with the heart huge as a sea. I like both variations. Yesterday I went together with the cleaning lady Ai Xju (the only one left with a Chinese name) to a traditional Chinese clinic to see a medicine man. He gave me a bunch of herbs to cook every day, which makes me completely drained for all poison and all energy so far. That was the reason why I could not go together with all the others to the Moon Festival celebration that has fallen on the same date as the 47-th year celebration of the republic this year. I have heard that it has not been a fortunate affair, as they kept walking for hours in an enormous crowd of people without even getting any closer to the centre of all the events. I am a bit scared of all the crowds! The fireworks were not very impressive here either, maybe somewhat better in the big cities like Shanghai or Beijing? I thought that the Chinese were the masters of the fireworks, but that is a myth, like so many other myths about China. Nobody waves their head the wrong ways, when saying yes and no, luck cookies are the western invention and there is no such a thing as a Chinese. Chinese are a bunch of many different nationalities and cultures, speaking many different languages, practising many different religions and eating very different food. Many things remind me of Russia, which has certainly to do with the remains of socialism everywhere, contrasts between shabby and luxury and differences in standard of living among the people. As a true exhomosovieticus and a true believer of the equality between all people of all nations I do not like it that way. I could not live here on a permanent basis, I think. Norway is exactly what I need and deserve! In Norway the ideal of utopia of socialism has reached its top point, which suits me well. So it is good I had a chance to compare things! When I stay only in Norway, I get so critical and negative. But now I think that Norway is close to paradise! &emne32=01.10.2006&bloggtekst32=Working, working, and working… A short brake day before yesterday, first I had to go to the computer market after all to get more ink and more transparencies for my negatives. The procedure has been rather complicated. I went to the photography shop, where I have shown my old ink package and asked if they could write down on a note a name of the place, where I could get the stuff, in Chinese. So I took another taxi to the other side of town and found that Electronic City as they call it. Endless lines of shops in several floors selling all kinds of things that have to do with computers! I have discovered that the computer boy has been cheating and charging me twice the price for everything, which has been very upsetting! I have found my ink, but the shops were closing and I had to start hunting for a taxi in a rush hour… It has taken about an hour to get a car, and I was about to give up, sit down on the ground and die… Finally I got a car, but no energy left to go for dinner anywhere, so I just got back home, ate more noodles, prepared the emulsion for the next day and went to the supermarket. On the way I met two young Chinese, who asked me if I were Russian. How could you guess?, I asked. By your accent in English, the boy answered. And the girl started talking a perfect Russian to me… I thought I did not have that obvious Russian accent in any foreign language! How wrong can one be? I printed those ten negatives I needed for the next morning before going to bed, and that was it. More printing in the morning on Saturday, so I called the Chinese guy, named Jim, who will help me with the frames. It appeared that he is moving and cannot help me before the end of next week. But he told me that all the shops are open as usual, so I could go to the Electronic City again. So I did. Showed my cover for the transparencies at one store, a young girl walked half the globe with me to another store. Thery are so kind and helpfull here! They called somebody and sent a boy to get it. I have got some tee served while waiting, and in 15 minutes the boy turned up with exactly what I have been looking for at third part of the price the computer expert demanded! I will not allow anyone to fool around with me like that!I have been giving him more money than what he has been asking. Marieke turned mad at me for destroying her complex system of rates and prices. But the moment I discover that I have been fooled, I put my foot down and stop all the contact with the person. Maybe it is a silly thing to do here? Today I have been printing more pictures, and I still have a lot that I can use, so I do not need to go out for more photography just yet! I am quite happy about how the pictures turn out. I have ordered the frames, they should be ready on Tuesday, and Jim is going to stretch the pictures on the frames for me. After that I will start painting over the photographs in white, black and red… I cannot wait to start that part, as I have never done anything like it before, and I am very curious about how that is going to look like! Suddenly I got an upsetting mail, which has thrown me out of function for hours… So I read a little about the Magic of Amoy, as the island of Xiamen has been called earlier. They have a website as well www.amoymagic.com, but I have not looked at it yet. The Internet connection is very slow here; it is a torture to surf! But you can have a look! I really want some company here! It is not fun to be alone! I have a guest room and it will not cost anything, but the ticket and a little bit for food and fun! I wish Igal could come! There are endless opportunities here! He would have loved it! It is much better than Singapore! Xiamen is the cleanest city in China, the most westernised, most cultivated and very interesting! I have not seen any of it yet, but I would have loved some company for exploring its wonders later, after my exhibition has been put up, after November 3! &emne33=28.09.2006&bloggtekst33=I have been just working, working and working again, from about 8 in the morning to about 12 at night, not going out even for food, only to the nearest supermarket to get some noodles and frozen meat balls… Have been eating that for three days now… The reason is that I have to get about 100 portraits finished as soon as possible… Next week there is some sort of national holiday for one week, so and so many years of the republic! Everything is going to be closed. I have problems with the ink for the printer, as it is fake as everything else here, it is clogging my nozzles and gives me only three prints per cartridge, which is ridiculous. The computer guy, who has been buying things for me at some mysterious computer market, is on leave with his new wed wife, visiting his parents somewhere in the countryside, so I am totally lost now. I am getting a panic, as the opening of my exhibition here is set to November 3. I have to make everything finished till then, and it is far too little time! But maybe it is good that it is like that, so that I can get some other things done after the exhibition has opened. Wonderful Marieke has been trying to organize a new exhibition appointment for me somewhere else in China, either in Beijing or in Shanghai, but that will not be before a long time ahead from now as all galleries are fully booked about two years ahead. Ole has naturally popped up for me here, because everybody knows everything about everybody, and about what is going on in these small circles. Well, maybe it is time to talk to him? I have been trying to avoid a confrontation as well as I only could… Today Vanja has taken me out for dinner at a luxury harbour hotel restaurant with a magnificent view over the islands nearby. The food was strange as usual, but at least it was a sort of serving table, where one could point out the things that one wanted to get cooked and served. Otherwise one never knows what one is going to get, there are no English menus anywhere. We have got a list of some basic food names with a translation to English, so we can point it out, but that is not so easy either. So I actually prefer to get some simple things at the store and eat yogurt and drink carrot juice once in a while, I am getting tired of Chinese spices. There is an American Wall mart, at a Trade Centre, but we were asked not to shop there in order not to support the invasion of American culture to China, as it does everywhere else in the world. I have not been there yet, but one could get normal food there, which one could see the label of! Otherwise it is all based on imagination. Tomorrow I will go to the textile market again and get more textiles. Silk samples from three different factories ended up to be one little stripe of one type of silk, which is not what I want! I am getting very angry about it! Imagine not being able to get hold of any silk in China! It is all due to communication problems. &emne34=25.09.2006&bloggtekst34=I woke up at about 6.30 in the morning, but did not get out of bed before 8. Organized some stuff and packed my bag for the day. It has to be different each time dependent on what I am going to do... So today I had to get out of the house because the cleaning lady does not like to have people in her way while she is washing. I can understand that! First she took me to a tailor next door as I naturally could not withstand the temptation and bought some fabric at the textile market. So I cut a blouse out of it and delivered that for tailoring, it costs 10 yean, about 1 euro, that is... I wish I could send a container from here! But they say it is rather complicated... After that visit to the hospital in a search for sterile water, nothing could surprise me anymore! So I went for a walk around the university campus and to the Buddhist temple just nearby. There was a magnificent park with water, giant water plants and a lot of people, whom I could try to take pictures of. That was not easy! They do not mind if I take pictures of their children, but old people do not like to be taken pictures of. They believe that one can only put pictures of dead people on the wall. So if I take their picture and put it on the wall, they may die soon!!! Scary! I started walking towards the house shopping some small things on the way. Bought two records of a Japanese singer Lisa Ono, she sings Latino and French lyrics, very nice and totally crazy to find that in China of all places! I got back after eating lunch at a vegetarian restaurant for a change, and suddenly the guy, who promised to take me to the factories, called. I had to empty the camera in a rush and change for the new adventure. I was clever enough to put on trousers and boots instead of an open dress and sandals. Here I really need different uniforms for different appearances, people judge very much by how one looks. If I want them to allow me to take their pictures, I should look as plain and invisible as possible, I think. But that is only my guess, who knows; maybe it should be the opposite? In any case, it was not what I wanted at all! The places were tiny, ugly and dirty. I hoped to take some videos of moving wheels and noisy hammers,a la Vertov movies from the earlier Soviet times, but it was a ceramic factory, where they make small Buddhas all by hand. The boys sculpt, the girls paint. So there was that other place, where they make bronze and steel sculptures by hammering and welding. Two boys, two dogs and a female owner! The ugliest sculptures I have ever seen! I went by myself to another stone carving place just next door, there were some moving and noisy instruments finally! After that the businessman has taken me home. He sells stone for buildings and architects in the west. He also helps western artists to get their big orders realized here for very little money. He drives a car, not a very fancy one, but in any case, a car, with air condition and automatic doors and windows. I cannot see the difference between Lada and Mercedes, so to me it looked fine enough. I was stupid enough to ask if he wanted some money for the trip. He has just laughed in my face! Well, I have still a few things to learn!!! I made some food myself at home today, as I wanted to get started with my chemicals tonight in order to make some first tests tomorrow. I bought some noodles and some frozen meatballs and dumplings that I have in the fridge just for the days like this. It was not bad. Later I washed my clothes as I cannot put myself to give my dirty underwear to someone else to wash, which is probably stupid, as I take some possible income from the poor woman. Maybe I have to give her at least something to wash; otherwise she will think that I am simply greedy. And finally I made my emulsions and organized some improvised drying place for that, not too good, but better than nothing. I want to do both this and that, so it all takes time... Why do I always want to do so much? There is never enough time for all the things that I want to get done. I want to make a video as well! And I bought a beautiful album that I want to fill up with pictures. It has wooden cover and handmade paper inside, opens as an accordion, so I can have pictures on both sides. I want to make brown van dykes on brown handmade paper, glue them inside, and ask someone to do some texts in Chinese in gold by calligraphy for me. So I want to make portraits of all these Chinese faces, print them in blue on cotton, mount them on some wooden frames, and put more texts about their imaginary dreams on small notes in red, black and white notes. That will be an illustration for those visitors who should write their wishes on those same notes and place them in my Wall of The Wishes. All those notes are going to end up on my wailingwall website later. &emne35=24.09.2006&bloggtekst35=Yesterday I wanted to go to a textile market together with Vanja, the Serbian girl, who lives in Holland. She was supposed to get a taxi to my house, so we could go further together, but everything went wrong again... it seems it does rather often here in China! But she got very angry with me because she spent an hour driving around the campus in a taxi, and it has cost her a lot of money. So she called me to the house and asked me to come out, so she could see me. So I did, but I did not have her mobile phone number. I waited for 15 minutes and then I went to the market by myself in another taxi. Suddenly she called me on my mobile and told me that she had finally found the house, but I am not there! It has been so idiotic, the whole affair! I asked her to come to the textile market, and in the end it all went well, but it only explains, how confusing and strange things can be here, without language and without knowing things... I was sort of satisfied that it is not only me making stupid mistakes etc. We walked around that textile market for several hours, bargaining about the prices, even though it is very cheap for us anyhow. If you do not bargain, they think you are just stupid and do not follow the right order of things. Bargaining for the price is a part of the game; it is a ritual one has to go through. I bought some cotton for my pictures and some silk for a blouse I want to make. Vanja bought a lot of different cotton fabrics because she wants to redecorate her living space here in order to feel at home. I am not doing anything like that as I do not want to feel at home here! So we went to a westernized cafe for lunch, she quarreled with the stuff a bit, as she got some different dish from what she had ordered, but in the end we got to be friends and had a good time together! She told me about their adventures at the Swedish bar the night before. She went out after that fellow dinner after the exhibition opening together with a Scandinavian couple. The Danish boy of 19 and the Swedish girl of 30, who had her birthday that night. She said it was very crazy that night, but she was glad she had seen how it is, so she does not have to do it again. So we took a taxi together close to her house and went to an art supply shop together. It was just fantastic, especially the brushes! I wanted to have them all even though I do not paint... I would have started, just because the brushes were so amazing! After that I went home, finally got hold of Syver on Skype, so the computer guy came with the Wacom tablet and the transparencies I needed. While I talked to Syver on Skype, there came a proposal to talk to Andrej, my old schoolmate from Moscow, I have not seen him since that first time I went to Moscow in 1986, 20 years ago. So now he is a famous historian and a book writer, a grandfather of two, married for the third time, and sounds happy! I remember him from the school days as the first boyfriend of Ira Berlavsky, who lives now in Boston in USA, who got married there also for the third or the forth time I think. I have met her that time I was in NY city in 1997, she got a marriage proposal in a classical manner from the guy falling on his knees in front of her on top of the World Trade Centre, I have some pictures of the towers before they collapsed on September 11 later. We live in a strange world! I could not sleep thinking of all these things. I fell asleep finally at 6 in the morning and had a terrible nightmare. It was a fantasy, but everything was there, connection both to the past, to the present and maybe the worries about the future. I cannot remember it all exactly now as I did not get a chance to write it all down right away then. I had to get out of the house, as there came the workers to change the broken window. But the dream was about my parents renting out my house, while I have been away. When I came back, all my things were destroyed, thrown out and taken away, and I felt so helpless and so frustrated! My parents did not care and could not understand, why I went so mad. I woke up in anger and a feeling of total loss of control or ability to be myself. I have lost my privacy, my independence, and my dignity. I felt so exposed and hurt! At that moment the telephone rang and I had to rush to the shower before the workers came... The rest of the day I spent together with Marieke, the head of the Centre here. I feel very relaxed and well together with her, so for me she is a blessing! She is so generous and helpful! We started by going to the centre in order to make some arrangements for going to some places I want to go to. We called the silk factories in Shanghai. I took some measurements. So we went to the art store together and she helped me to get what I needed. Then we went for lunch at the restaurant nearby. She told me her life story, I told her mine. It was nice talking together like that. So we took all the stuff to my house and we went to the Blind People Massage Centre. It is a place where blind people are trained to give professional massage. They have better abilities than normal people as they have better sensitivity in their hands. They are good taken care of and it all is very decent and clean! It has been a fantastic relaxation and I will certainly go there again! After that came the worse nightmare than the one last night. We went looking for a place to get hold of sterile water for my photo emulsions. We went from one pharmacy to another, we were sent around the whole city and in the end we went to a hospital. The procedure there has been unbelievable! First we had to pay for the admission to the hospital, so we had to go to a doctor for a prescription, to the cashier to pay for it, and finally to the pharmacy to get the stuff. They had to send the guardian to the operation room to get it, and he came down with salt water solution for the injections! Also not what I have asked for! The same procedure backwards, aside from the fact that they kept the admission money, and we go for a cafe for a drink as we are totally exhausted both of us again... Quite a round!!! We sat on the top of a high building and ate our smoothies, talking more about all kinds of things. Then we walked home through the campus. My eyes are not well, especially in the evenings after all the stress, so it was good to have her to help me to cross the crazy traffic roads. Ineke lives in the same house as me, so she came down to me with salt and cockroach killer. So now I am ready to go to bed! &emne36=22.09.2006&bloggtekst36=The day started in a wrong way, I managed to get a taxi to take me to the wrong place, far away, really silly... so I just had to get back. Discovered that the Internet is dead again, so I had to get the computer guy to come again, he had some troubles, but in the end he suggested to install WLAN, which seems to work now! I hope it will stay that way... Now I can sleep with my computer and be online, which is good taking the time difference into consideration. Perhaps, people will try to call me sometimes on Skype? Later the computer guy took me to the supermarket, which I have been trying to find earlier in the day, when I ended up on the other side of town. Each time I am doing some new small mistakes, forgetting to buy salt or washing powder... I do not want to go out for both lunch and dinner every day. It is actually cheaper to eat out, even if one has to take a taxi back and forth, but I prefer to eat just fruit and yogurt sometimes instead of noodles and rice. I am getting fatter and fatter! It is far too hot for me to walk around so much, so I have to find out how to do things. Maybe I should go for longer walks early in the morning or late at night. Only they close the gate at 11 at night, but Marieke told me that she usually just climbs over the gate! If she can do it, I must be able to do it too... I started printing out some pictures, so it is getting to be more fun! Everything is a project here! It is not just go and get what you need. One has to get help, to organize a translator, to write down on a piece of paper the name of the place one wants to get to in Chinese, to show them what is written on another piece of paper telling what you are after and so on... I am glad I have brought some stuff with me! It would not have been possible to make the bigger pieces here. There are no facilities, no darkroom or anything. So I will have to do the whole project in my tiny toilet here. I am afraid it is not going to be easy... So I just want to start making some A4 pictures that is the biggest I can get. Thank me; I have brought my little printer along! This is really the end of the world... Tonight I went to the exhibition opening at the centre and for dinner later. A lot of good food and a lot of good people! It was a cooperative project with the students from Amsterdam and Xiamen, very interesting! It only lasted for one week, but they have made a lot of very interesting stuff! I have not seen that level of student work before anywhere... Their teacher asked me if I could do a workshop with the students here. It sounds interesting, but I have to think... It should not be at the account of my own work. Tomorrow I am going to a textile market together with a Serbian girl, who is doing a residency at the same time as me here. I started doing some pictures, but I am not sure yet if that is what I want to do. Maybe it will come to me later! &emne37=21.09.2006&bloggtekst37=From now on it will not be so that I write every day. Now I have arrived to my final destination, there have been no problems with the overweight of my luggage at the airport. Aside from the fact that everybody spoke Chinese, it looked just like any other airport in the world with all the security control, the restaurants and the shops... I have actually been surprised how westernized it all is, even more than Russia. Most people are very friendly and very honest. No one expects any tip, not even at the restaurants or the taxies. Marieke, who is Dutch, has picked me up at the airport; she is married to an islander, painter, sculptor and novel writer Izzy. She is the head of Chinese European Art Centre (www.ceac99.com), and they are both absolutely charming, an old couple, married for 45 years, they have traveled all over the world and ended up here just by a pure chance. He had a commission in Nederland, which he gave a wrong price proposal for. So he had to find a place to produce it cheaply, and that is how he ended up in China. They liked it here, so they stayed. She discovered that there are more people, who want to come to China from the west, make exhibitions etc. So she started the centre, offering exhibitions, studios, and residences. She is independent and mostly self supported. She does not want to apply for any support, so that no one can tell her what to do. I like her very much in all ways! This is the perfect place for me! Just what I have been looking for! I have got a 4 rooms apartment at the university campus, which is as big as a little town, there is a map, and one cannot just walk around it. Most people buy a bicycle for 100 yean, which is about 10 dollars. But I do not think that I should do it with my eyes, traffic is pretty chaotic around here. The house is old and shabby, there are huge cockroaches jumping out of the cupboards. No air condition, or rather to say, the one that is here does not make any sense to use, as all the windows are half broken, they are not tight. But they try to keep it as clean as they can, there is a cleaning lady coming once a week, they told me. I am happy, and I find it charming in a way. I do not want to be a rich western idiot here, which is probably impossible anyway, but at least I feel closer to reality here, when I live as I do now... I have been thinking a lot about this entire living standard thing. When I travel together with my partner around Europe, we stay at middle class hotels, we eat well etc. If I were traveling alone, I would have probably lived much cheaper, as I am used to a low standard... But my son is not, for example... I would have rather used all the saved money on totally other things, like traveling more or buying books I cannot allow myself to buy now. In the evening yesterday we were taken to a restaurant by the sea, it was a birthday party for Izzy, and some other artists have been leaving the day after. It was just an amazing place! Big stone table with a wooden part in the middle that has been going around, and they were bringing, and bringing, and bringing more, and more, and more sea food of all sorts!!! Shells and crabs, lobsters and fish, seaweed and nuts, mushrooms and other unfamiliar animals... All strait from the sea, real fresh and nearly alive! There is a little market just by the house where I live. I went there today to take pictures of the sea creatures and other creatures. I am so impressed and excited about all the stuff! Guess, how fed up I must have been with all the potatoes and beef at home! My stomach is fine; I do not need to take more pills as I had to in Beijing. Today I spent most of the day fighting with my computer and connecting to Internet. Marieke hired a guy to help me, but even together we used many hours to figure out what and how, as everything is different here. There are communication problems as well. But this guy is a treasure for me; he can help me to get hold of things etc. There is a huge computer market, where they all go. I can not go there alone anyhow, so I can very well give him some money to do that for me. This I consider to be a good investment. Now I am online, my printer is in function; the last worry is about the parcel that I have mailed from Beijing, interesting if that arrives or it does not! Later Marieke came back with her Chinese assistant Linda, who showed me a little around the centre of town, where to shop, where to eat, what to see. She helped me to get a new phonecard as well, as the one from Beijing is not good for local people to call to me, it is going through Beijing, so it is expensive for them. Then she took me for lunch to a nice place, where we could point out what we wanted to eat together with our noodles, it was very good and fresh. Later I just went for a short walk along the sea and watched the sunset. Took some pictures. Tomorrow I shall try to go to the centre on my own or maybe just walk around the campus, I shall see how it feels. In the evening there is an opening of an exhibition of some students from Amsterdam. I have to go, everybody is coming there, and I have to see the space, which I will be using for my exhibition as well. The only thing that drives me crazy here are the insects, small irritating ones, they eat me for breakfast, lunch and dinner! At night there is a net over the bed, which I can zip completely closed. The moment I get out of bed, I start scratching... I should have got some stuff with me from home, insect killers here are probably poisonous to people too! &emne38=19.09.2006&bloggtekst38=This is my last day in Beijing before going to Xiamen. It was not so easy to decide how to spend this last day, there are so many things I would have wanted to do! Going to a different section of the Wall did not make any more sense to me, so I have decided against it. The Great Wall is going to turn to be a Great Hole instead! Therefore I went to another art district here, situated even further out of centre, sort of a different level. It is a district of artist studios and living spaces, all rented from some entrepreneur, who had built it totally illegally as the most things are in China now. Artists pay a rent, but they risk to be thrown out at any moment, all their things to be ruined etc. I called a Swedish guy, his name I have got from one of those fortunate Norwegian artists who had a stipend to go to China, as opposed to me. Bengt has a fantastic personality and a fantastic background. He had lived in Japan for 20 years, has two children there. Now he lives partly in France, partly here, has a younger child in Paris, speaks all kinds of languages, including Russian. He rents out studios and living spaces, has a gallery at district 798 and collects ancient Asian art. In addition he is a painter too! Seems like every foreign artist living here is sort of unique, has a crazy background and a lot of guts! One has to have guts in order to be able to stay here for a long time. I have learned a lot of things from Bengt. He has given me some sort of understanding I really think is going to make a great difference in connection to what I am going to do here. I realized for example that I must have been dreaming thinking about showing my project in Beijing! It is all so very much based on the idea of who knows whom, why and what for. In addition it has to sell! They all have to survive! There is very little interest or space for people like me. But it was fun to see the area, to talk to Lennart, to visit the studios etc. After that I went to the district 798 again to see more art there. The bookstore Timezone 8 was the most important discovery! They have a fantastic collection of things one cannot get anywhere else, and it all can be ordered online. I looked through many books there, and I want to have like about 50 of them right away! Money, money, money... I found a book of photographs by a Dutch photographer, who certainly is the origin or as they say inspiration for this Norwegian so called famous star photographer. Unbelievable! Do they think that knowbody finds out? Well, maybe nobody finds out in Norway. I have not heard about this Dutch girl till now either, shame on me! I feel I am better oriented and better prepared for my new project now! I have to change the concept to a great extend! But that is the way it is supposed to be... I am looking forward to getting to Xiamen, settling down, relaxing a bit... I have spent a few hours running up and down the streets to the post office, getting boxes, packing and repacking, mailing some stuff to Xiamen. After all that trouble I still have about 15 kg too much weight! The worst part is that one can only have 5 kg cabin luggage, while I have nearly 18, if my handbag is to be taken into consideration... I cannot send my cameras, printer or computer! So I am really worried about tomorrow! I shall try to get there earlier... &emne39=18.09.2006&bloggtekst39=My life has a different intensity now, my mind and soul are overloaded with new impressions, and it will probably take a long time to absorb them and to modify my system accordingly. I am sure that we as human beings are under a constant change. No matter if I believe in destinies or not, there must be certain factors that can change our ways of living, thinking and feeling. How would I have turned to be in a few months time from now if I did not go to China? Why has it happened so that I did not go to Japan in June as it was planned? Are these things casual coincidences or predestines? Does it matter what I think or feel about it? It was a very hot day today. I understand now why China is called the land of a rising sun. The sun is round, red and low in the sky both early in the morning and at the sunset, totally different from any other place I have been to before. The day started by fighting with the camera shop about money return for the memory card that did not work. It surprises me how easily people tell lies here in the most natural way. It certainly is not a country of Christian believes and values! I do not know what kind of morality is being taught at schools here now. Again, it is a matter of Good and Evil, right and wrong. We all know about Chinese faking, there is no shame about steeling and fooling other people, rather the opposite. They think they are clever and smart, if they manage to do that. They get angry and dangerous, if they are prevented to succeed in that one way or another. It is failure and dishonor for a Chinese to be stopped from fooling and steeling. Anyhow the hotel clerks were very helpful, they are trained to be. They suggested that I call them from the shop, so that they could talk to the shop personal and help me to recover the money. It did not go easy, I spent about half an hour there, but have got my money back in the end, which does not compensate me for the fact that I have nearly no pictures from yesterday trip to Simatai or for the time I have used to take those pictures. But maybe there is a certain sign in that? Maybe it was not right for me to get those pictures? Maybe it will lead me to a different solution, a better idea? So I walked to the famous square and the Forbidden City. A portrait of the chairman Mao is still hanging above the main gate. The sun was burning, so I turned half Chinese and used my umbrella as everybody else. So many people everywhere! So many different people! Some are dirty baggers, others just tourists like me. I had contact with many people all the time, no problem without language. I took their pictures, and they took mine. It was easy to take pictures of small kids and old ladies. But the girls had to ask their boyfriends or fathers for the permission, who said sometimes yes or sometimes no. So I have been taking pictures of faces and trees, very old trees in the park, all marked with names and taken good care of. I filled up my old memory card within an hour and had to turn back to the hotel. It was good to take a shower, but the water does not smell clean, which is rather scary along with the signs advising not to drink water from the tub. But one has no choice, and I had to chill down! I am still living in the Norwegian times, so I fall asleep after that, woke up in the afternoon, went out for lunch, bought some more water and decided to stay inside for the rest of the day. It is Monday, and the galleries are closed. Tomorrow is my last day here before going to Xiamen. I have to decide if I need more pictures of the wall or I should go to see more galleries and talk to some people. I tend to prefer the last! Maybe I am a fatalist? &emne40=17.09.2006&bloggtekst40=It has been a long day. I went to a remote part of The Great Wall at Simatai; about three hours drive north of Beijing. Ordered a taxi, who took me there and waited for me to take me back, the whole affair for about a hundred dollars... an enormous sum for a Chinese person. The guide girl told me that she gets a hundred yean a day, if there are tourists, which is for a long working day. So the 800 that I paid to the taxi guy must have been sufficient. He was a very nice person, even though he could not say so much in English, but he could understand quite a lot, so we have managed fine. The subject of money and difference of living standard makes me so uneasy here! I remember how it used to be real poor and watch other people spending their money on things that I could not even dream of. Here comes the famous story about me being pregnant and asking my husband to buy me a bagger of strawberry yogurt. He said we could not afford it... Or how I used to be taken for being a nanny for rich peoples child, my son. We were dressed so differently, him wearing a fur coat, me a thin shabby jacket. It was after the divorce, my husband refused to pay anything directly to me, but rather invest the money directly into the boy. So the boy got a fur coat, while I could not even buy milk for him. Here in China I am a rich woman, being dragged around by rickshaws and taxis... I do not know how to behave... Today there was a woman on the wall, who walked after me all the time fanning me and holding me under the elbow, so I do not fall down the steep steps. She said she was a peasant from the village nearby, selling souvenirs, trying to survive. I told her, I do not need anything, but she could not understand, what I was saying, and kept following me all the time, it was very frustrating. In the end I wanted to give her some money, telling her that I have to take a flight to Xiamen, that my luggage is too heavy... She got really offended and did not want to take the money without giving me some of the junk. It was a very difficult experience. I somehow managed to hurt her pride! On the other hand, I find it very irritating to be pressed for shopping like that. But she was not a bagger that was her honest way of earning money! God knows what I would have done if I were put in her situation? Simatai Great Wall is well-organized machinery for pressing out the money from tourists. That has been a Great Disappointment, not the Great Wall! Somehow I hoped to get to the most remote areas that have not been renovated yet and look like authentic ruins. In Order to get there I should have been 30 years younger or 30 times richer and hired a helicopter. But it has been a Great Experience anyhow. I am not interested in ancient history so much at the moment; I wanted to take pictures in order to use them as symbolic values for my exhibition in Xiamen. I will need to reconsider that completely! Especially because it happened so that I have been sold a fake memory card for my still image camera. So there are no pictures!!! Only some video sequences, which I am not particularly happy about. Maybe it is fate! Maybe the idea did not withstand the trial of reality? In any case, I will need to find some new solutions, which might be only good... I got tired and sunburned. On the way back the rush towards the big city took us. That has been an unforgettable experience! Tracks crushing, apples spread all over the high way, dirty cows screaming from open cages loaded on top of each other, people on bicycles with all sorts of carriages and constructions going in the opposite direction in the middle of the road! The expression MEXICAN DRIVING has no meaning here, but I must say this reminded me of RUSSIAN DRIVING and the motorway conditions in many ways, only much more exotic... My driver has been driving like God! I felt completely safe and secure even in the situations that did not look very secure. My head is so full of impressions; I cannot find the words right now. But I have some images after all! &emne41=16.09.2006&bloggtekst41=Well, today has been an arty day... tiresome, but inspiring... The most striking thing was the amount of stuff! I never thought it could be possible to develop such an amount of modern art in such a short time, the last 30 years. Naturally, if to think about it with simple logic, it stands in proportion to the population. How many artists per 100 citizens? How many good ones among those? If this logic works the other way too, one can possibly come to a conclusion that Norway with its 4 million citizens does not stand a chance in the world, or in the world of art? Perhaps, I have chosen a wrong place to be again? Now at the age of over 50 I feel I have to settle some place for good, but if I have made a wrong choice, it is far too late to start a new immigration. Which brings me to a conclusion that maybe I have made the most important decision dedicating this year to traveling so much, getting a better orientation. After all, in the years to come the world will certainly become an open place. By choosing to work through the Internet mostly, I can actually live physically at any place I want, it would not make a difference. The important thing is to have the right knowledge and orientation. Why should I keep fighting against Norwegian ignorance and lack of knowledge? I want to reach a different audience, and I should change my own orientation...This is a major understanding!!! I visited the biggest gallery owner in Beijing, and he seemed to be a nice person. Who knows? Maybe, maybe... I have this new idea... After I finish my installation in Xiamen, I will contact him again... There is a whole district of art galleries in Beijing. I have spent the whole day there, and I have maybe seen a one little bit of what there is to see. I am getting totally loaded with impressions within such a short period of time! It stands in such a contrast to my life in the province! There were two great bookstores too! If only I could drag all those books with me! If only I had the money to buy them! I have learned more today than in the run of the last ten years, I think! My head is exploding with ideas! I wish I were younger and healthier! I have just realized how few years I have left to work! No matter if it is 10, 20 or 30... It is far too little... There are so many things I still want to bring to realization! It is so hard to start the count down! The guide girl yesterday said that she does not drink tee like her parents, but she prefers orange juice! I wish I could do something that would be understandable for both generations and perhaps even the ones to come... Like Marina Ztvetaeva, I want to talk to my lover in a hundreds years from now! I never thought I could get such ambitions, but I did now, here, today... &emne42=15.09.2006&bloggtekst42=My first impressions of Beijing are not fitting with any of my expectations. It is hard to explain, but somehow in spite of all my experiences of traveling around the globe, I have been imagining things and drawing pictures in my mind, which I know never relate to reality. The first thing to say is how westernized the city is, nearly everybody understands English, many people manage to express themselves in some form of English, which is hard to understand sometimes, but still, it is not difficult to manage around. I have been chatting with people in the streets, in the shops and got a lot of help at the hotel. The hotel is a high standard and an absolutely western style and is totally affordable to me, who is comparing with Norwegian prices, all the people in service have western names, like Kitty, Helen, Irene, Leon etc. The city is more like Moscow though, changing from very shiny and touristy to very dirty, smelly and grey all the time and everywhere. There are all kinds of restaurants and shops; from very cheap to very expensive, and just like in todays Russia, the quality has nothing to do with the prices. At the same time there is no doubt about the fact that one is in Asia, that is visible in everything and everywhere. I like it; I really like Asian about everything, from food to philosophy. There has been monkey meat and jellyfish on the menu at the restaurant, where I went yesterday. And so there are the smells! Strong smells! I remember how I wrote once about boarding an Aeroflot airplane, talking about the smells of my motherland entering my nostrils. Here the smells are certainly foreign, a bit scary, and not necessarily very pleasant... Today I decided to be a real tourist and get on one of the guided tours. I have made a good choice. First we were taken to The Lama Temple. We were five people in a little van with the guide, me and an Australian family with two kids. Lama temple is a Tibetan Buddhist temple settled on the grounds of an earlier imperial palace. Lots of people go there to lit fragrances and pray, just like in Russia; again, religion is flourishing up among both young and old. Next we were taken to the Panda Zoo, the 7 pandas there looked very sad, fat and unhappy. I got bit by some insect there, started scratching myself, disinfecting the wounds and thinking about fly flu or mosquito flu, God knows, what comes next... The last part was the reward for all that suffering! We were taken to Hutongs area, the oldest part of town, nearly unchanged since the 13th century. Now it is a protected area owned by the government. Those who stayed there for generations still pay a very symbolic rent, while others, who moved there out of prestige, pay 10 times more. So there are those symbols everywhere, everything has a meaning... How many bars are there above the gate, what is the color of the gate... Colors and forms have always a symbolic value. We were taken around by bicycle rickshaws, two people on each bike. I felt so uncomfortable, because I was so heavy. Poor little old guy had to work hard and sweat to get me around the place! I felt I had to give him a big tip, about 2 dollars... There has been climbing up and down some ancient towers, and in the end we were taken to an ordinary simple family for lunch. Nice and real, we could see, how people lived in there and what they eat for lunch, or maybe that was only a performance for tourists. It was only offered to the tourists, the guides did not get anything... The father of the family was an artist, an expert in painting inside glass bottles! It looked so similar in technique and idea to what I have just seen in Copenhagen, glass sculptures from Swedish and German famous glass factories... I am learning more and more just about everything every day, but not what I have been expecting to learn at all! It is about totally different matters and details. Have bought a book by Paulo Coelho at the airport in Helsinki, it is about Good and Evil. There is a passage there about Chinese legends and believes. It made me think. ...the Chinese believed that the souls of sinners went to a mountain range known as the Little Wall of Iron and surrounded by another mountain range known as the Great Wall. In the space between these two ranges, there were no less than eight large hells one on top of the other, each of which controlled sixteen smaller hells, which in turn controlled ten million hells beneath them. The Chinese also said that devils were maid up of the souls of those who had already completed their punishment. The Chinese were also the only ones to offer a convincing explanation of the origin of devils, they were evil because they had personal experience of evil, and now they wanted to pass it on to others, in an eternal cycle of vengeance... I am going to send that book to my son. He had once written an essay on the subject. I want him to rewrite it again. &emne43=Igals story, part 4&bloggtekst43=It was June 1994, Oslo was provincial and quiet, like it always was, and nobody was expecting the major change about to take place. The exams in Psychology that year were about Psychoanalysis, a topic appearing every two years, yet it strikes students as a surprise every single time. They cannot give us Freud again, can they? In any case, Igal managed to flunk. It was somewhat expected, as he had spent a year playing pool and partying, but it still came as a shock. For some people, this could have been the beginning of a few more years of partying, as the Norwegian university system permits flunking upto three times, but for Igal, this was more than enough. Freud or not, he just could not flunk an exam. It is possible that he would have continued on his ill ways, but a few days after the exam results came in, a major change took place. Igal went to the bank, this strange institution, making money by giving it away to people. He had been withdrawing money from his account and wanted to check whether there was anything left on it. The lady behind the counter did not even know it, but she was about to change Igals life. She asked him for his credit card, this crazy invention, made of plastic and allowing you to get an overdraft and pay outrageous interest rates. As soon as the lady got the card, she took out a pair of scissors and cut the card in two, telling him he had taken way too much money out of his account and had an overdraft of over NOK 6.000! Is it not this, what credits cards are for? Igal was stunned, broke and wanted a cigarette, but he had no money whatsoever. A great moment to quit smoking, by the way, but it did not work for him. In any case, he got so frustrated, he swore to himself he will never be this broke ever again. He went straight to the student job office, submitted his CV, which was quite disappointing at that time, apart from all the languages, and hoped for the best. A professor once told him, hope is only a way to avoid doing anything rational. He might have been right. When nothing happened the next morning, as if it would in one day, he got lucky. He saw an add on the board in the hallway, from the Norwegian Mail, asking for help with postal package sorting. He called them up and got the job! The job involved sorting big brown boxes of mail, and as one had to punch in the postal code before each package was thrown into the corresponding container, Igal proved to be a very quick puncher. Do not worry, he was only punching numbers. His boss actually told him to slow down. He could not believe it. Within a month he had managed to cover his overdraft, and the next few months he worked from 0630 AM till 1800 at night and studied in the evenings to take up his failed exam. Not only did he manage to pass his exam, but he actually completed his psychology studies by the following summer and had started on his Social Anthropology, soon to become a Candidatus Magisterius or a Bachelor, in popular language... Do not ever ask him, what the curriculum was, as 75 procents of it is long forgotten, and the rest is also somewhat of a blur... However, since the diploma is there, this is the only thing that mattered... So what was so special about the events above, you may ask. Well, the reason the above entailed such a big change was because from this point on, Igal has never stopped working. And this was at the age of 19. Probably this does not sound too special, but looking back at it from the age of 31, it is difficult to believe that for the next 5 years Igal had worked full time and completed his degree and even bought an apartment and a car, never complaining or feeling tired. Where did all this energy come from? Was Igal eating some magic vitamins? No, sadly enough, the key lies in racism and stubbornness. At the Mail, most of the other workers were Norwegians, quite a wild gang, actually. They were simple people and they did not like foreigners, so they mocked Igal and the other Pakistanis working there. Igal decided he is going to prove them all wrong, get a degree and a better job and show them all... as if they cared... Which he did. He enlisted with Manpower, bragging about his computer skills and eventually after getting some strain jobs here and there, got a job at an advertising agency, where he became IT support responsible for 4 Scandinavian offices. He even got to fly around between Sweden, Norway and Denmark and fix the servers. Sometimes the female workers would ask Igal for help and he would have to crawl under their desk, thus getting some very interesting insights into the advertising business. In any case, although he did spend a couple of years taking any job he could get, one of them being an engineering assistant on a building site, every time someone told him he was not Norwegian and therefore worth less than other people, he got filled with determination and motivation to succeed. Funny how things work, but all this negativity worked magic. Without all this racism and negativity, Igal might have become yet another failing student with a huge study loan and bad grades.. During these hard working years, Igal had gotten together with a girlfriend, whom he lived with for two years, had left her, and got involved in some short relationships here and there, and then finally, when he was 23, it happened. He met the girl, he knew, he could never get, and thought to himself that this is the kind of girl he should be together with, but never will get, as he cannot possibly get that lucky. Since he did not think he could get her, he flirted with her freely and within a month it turned out, she fell in love with him. Her name was Esther and she later ended up canceling Igals wedding at the last moment. Had he only known, this is the way things are going to end... Avoiding painful topics, we can reveal that by the end of 1998 Igal had decided to quit his job at the advertising agency and start his own company, providing workshops and consulting organizations on how to learn better. Amazing, but this actually worked for three whole years, up until Igals partner got too greedy, and Igal decided to bail out and got his current library development job. Please do not ask, how come, Igal knows anything about developing libraries, as the reply might be embarrassing, especially to Igals boss. Just barely started on his library job, the contrast between working 16 hours a day for his company and sitting in an office between 10 and 16, became too much! Igal decided to take yet another Masters degree, simply out of boredom, but also because it included 6 months in Singapore. Little did he know that his semester in Asia will start with a Tsunami and end up with a wedding that only proved to get cancelled at the last moment. The waves bring strange things with them sometimes. Even floating penises, as was the case in Krabi, where the sculptures of fertility got destroyed and ended up floating all around the place... What is it that makes us search for meaning in life? Why do things happen the way they do, and how can we convince ourselves, we shall be happy? These questions and a few others shall be the topic of the next part of this story, so please be prepared! &emne44=Igals story, part 3&bloggtekst44=Igal landed in Norway in winter 1991. The first gulf war had begun, and Norway was cold and full of snow. Igal did not know anyone in Norway, and he could not speak Norwegian. However, he quickly enlisted in an evening school to learn the language, and was lucky enough to become the best student in class, so that he got admitted to a special university summer language school later that year, where he really learned to speak fluently. He had to write one essay per day in Norwegian, and as he was quickly running out of topics to write on, he wrote about talking microwaves and cheeses that could dance. His teachers did not seem to mind, as long as the language was ok. As he had arrived in the middle of the school year, and had only completed half of his first gymnasium year, no schools would accept him before august. His mother did manage, however, to enlist him into this special school, where the students have as much power as the teachers and where it is voluntary to take exams and come to class. Most of the students took their freedom quite literally and never actually came to school. Or if they did, they stood in the courtyard and smoked joints. In any case, Igal was lucky enough to be welcomed to the class by this very cute girl called Silje, whom he really liked and whom he obviously rather quickly fell in love with. One day he gathered his strength and invited her to the cinema. She joined him and after the film invited him to her place for some cookies and tea. He thought he was going to be the luckiest man on earth, as he had heard all these great things about blond Norwegian girls, and what they do with sweet innocent boys like Igal. But just as they were approaching her house, Silje said: when we come up, you will be able to meet my girlfriend, her name is Karin. Igal was absolutely shocked, and all his dreams were instantaneously shattered. He was in love with a lesbian! And she did not even like boys! No Norwegian blond for him! Thus the school year ended with nothing exciting except a few exams, which were in Norwegian, and thus somewhat difficult, but Igal somehow managed them, using his dictionary and improvising on-the-fly. That summer he went to the language school, and by August he could really speak this strange Scandinavian language, he even went to the theatre one day and impressed himself by understanding, what the play was about. It was a Strindberg piece. He found out that there was an international gymnasium in Oslo, called International Baccalaureate, and he applied there, and managed to get in. He thus ended up doing his two last gymnasium years in a class with people from 20 countries, including this shy nerd, who was thin and not too tall, and who was half African and half Norwegian. 14 years later Igal went to Barcelona with this African nerd, who by that time had grown tall, but had still failed to get a proper haircut. The first year of school Igal was mostly together with the class nerds, including Peer, but then he went to Israel for his summer vacation and started smoking cigarettes. So during his second school year, he was discovered by the cool people in class, as they all stood outside during the breaks and smoked cigarettes together. Everyone at school was 1 year older than Igal, as they started school when they were 7, while in Israel school started at 6. They changed that now here too. This means that all the girls in class were a whole year older and Igal did not get any attention, or at least he thought so. Later he found out that two of the girls in class actually liked him, but thought he was being snobbish. Had he only known! He was just too shy... In the middle of the last school year Igal decided to become independent and moved out from his mothers place, at the age of 17, to live on his own. In order to cover the costs of the apartment, he had to share it with someone, and this girl, who happened to be the schools craziest punk, accepted his invitation. They had separate bedrooms, however, and soon enough Igal found out for the first time in his life how women sound, when they have sex. He was not unfortunately participating in it, but he could hear his flatmate through the thin walls. Just after school ended, Igal applied to the university, and went to travel in the US, while waiting for the results. Luckily he got in, and decided to study psychology, mostly because it sounded interesting, but also because there were 800 girls and 50 boys taking this particular subject. He signed up for the Psychology student association, a group called Libido, and became chief of marketing. That is how our little boy of 18 finally got to experience, what girls look like under their clothes. With long curly hair, the chief of marketing had some good times with those psychology students. As a matter of fact, he partied so much that by the end of the first year, he was totally broke and was about to, for the first time in his life, flunk his exam. That spring of 1994 turned out to be quite fateful, since after flunking the exam Igal totally changed. The reader is probably curious, how this change took place and why? For that, our story of three parts has just been extended and will thereby contain 4 different parts. The reader will thus not find out, what happened after 1994 until the next part is uncovered. With this enigmatic ending, I have managed to save myself yet another opportunity to write a new story, something I definitely shall do tomorrow or the day after... &emne45=Igals story, part 2&bloggtekst45=As the attentive reader surely can remember how our storys first part ends with the young child Igal returning from vacation and discovering that his mother had moved to Norway, and that he has been forced to stay with his grandparents in Tel Aviv. He started his new school there and fell in love decided that he should start swimming and playing tennis, in addition to continuing his earlier commencing self defense lessons. Igal hated tennis, but liked swimming, as this gave him an advantage during gym lessons, when the class was taken to the university swimming pool once every two weeks. The most interesting part of the swimming lessons was obviously the girls bikinis or his imagination of what was hidden under them. His teachers nightmare was finally realized, when Igal became the best friend of the most noisy and wild girl in the class, pretending he was teaching her mathematics, but actually being desperately in love with her. She never reciprocated, or perhaps got tired of waiting for Igal to actually kiss her, a mystery still unsolved till the present day. The fact remains, they never actually made out, in spite of Igals grandmothers suspicions. When Igal turned 14, he was moved to the Universitys Special School for Gifted Children, which was to prove a real nightmare, as there were 14 boys in class and only 4 girls, 3 of them quite ugly, and this is a friendly way of putting it. However, Igal got his romantic ambitions realized after a few months, as he started going out to discotheques with a classmate from schoo, and when he was 14 and 7 months old he met the girl, who was to become his first girlfriend. They danced and kissed, and he even got to touch her under the shirt, a fact he was so excited about, he had long discussions about it with his classmate the day after. Unfortunately, their romance ended 6 weeks after it started, as Igal went to Spain for vacation, and the girl decided to break up with him. She later tried to get back together with him, but he was so mad at her, he pushed her away, only to regret it later. Slowly growing up, Igal started to think that perhaps he should move to live together with his mother, as his grandparents were getting older and his mother seemed a much cooler person. Besides, she lived in Norway, and that sounded quite exciting, although frightening. At age 15 and 6 months, after having traveled to Norway a few times on vacations, and having spent every summer in a different country in Europe, Igal finally made his move. His mother got him an airplane ticket, he told his grandparents that he was going on a ski vacation, and he went to Norway, to stay there until the present day. When he called his father to tell him he was planning on staying in Norway, his father got so angry, he wouldnt speak to him for 2 weeks. Gradually, however, both his father and his grandparents were convinced that this perhaps was the best for everyone... Our readers would be excited to learn that the next few years of Igals life involved some intense stories, that shall at a later stage be revealed. It is however time to finish the current part of our story, but the reader can look forward to the next part, to be published soon enough. &emne46=Igals story, part 1&bloggtekst46=I was apparently made somewhere in the English countryside, in a castle belonging to Sir Canterbury of The House of Lords, whom my parents were staying with as part of a mission to get the British government to help put pressure on the Soviet Union to release my grandfather from prison. He was a dissident and was arrested by the KGB for participating in antisoviet activity, cooperating with Synavski and Daniel, and publishing Samizdat. That samizdat is still published, and is now a journal known as Journal 22, rather famous in certain, shall we say, Russian Intelligentsia circles. I can send you the URL if you are interested. Eventually, my parents completed their public relations trip in England and continued on to Israel, where I was born on the Mountain of Olives in Jerusalem, three weeks overdue. My mum was only 22 years old, and the doctors thought she will give birth without any problems, so even though I was delayed by three weeks, they out her a normal hospital room. However, it turned out I did not want to come out, so they suddenly decided to operate her by Cesarian and rolled her over to the operation room. My heart has stopped and there was a lot of panic. Apparently, I have been reanimated and alive, and the panic settled down, but my father fainted, and my mum lost her consciousness too during the procedure that has been done without any anesthesy, there has been no time. So, I was quite alone for the first few minutes of my life... I grew up in the center of Jerusalem, living with my mother, since my clever parents changed their mind about being married and divorced already, when I was 1,5 years old. My mum dragged me with her to the art school, where she was studying, and later I used to be put on top of a chair near the blackboard, while my mum was teaching, when she later became a teacher in that same art school. The students thought that was ok, for some reason. Art students, you know, they were probably half stoned or something. Anyway, since my mum was quite busy working and everything, I used to be babyseated by my great grandmother, who ran a Russian library in Jerusalem, and who decided to teach me Russian, mostly by getting me to learn Pushkin by heart. I did learn Russian, but I can barely remember any poems... Na goru vzbirayetsa veshiy Oleg, otmstit nepokornim hazaram... Think Vysotskys version is much better, to be honest... emu to skazali, ni s togo ni s sego, chto primet on smert ot konya svoevo. By the age of six I started to go to school, and was running wild in the old city of Jerusalem with my school friends. This was 1981 and Intifada did not exist, so East Jerusalem was as safe as it should be. I even tried climbing Davids Tower and The Wailing Wall and got some very cheap falafel and Baklawa, Arab sweet pastry, from the old guys in the narrow streets of the old city. In addition to running about, by the age of 7 I discovered Chuck Norris and James Bond and started going to the cinema every Thursday, at that time violence in the movies did not seem to prevent kids from watching them. I hated when Bond kissed and liked it when he was shooting, only to change my preferences to the opposite by the age of 12. Between the ages of 6 and 10 I used to spend my summers travelling with my grandparents, who went abroad every summer in connection with my grandfathers work. I got to see France, Spain, Italy, the USA, Canada and Germany. Liked the Niagara falls and hated all the museums they took me to, particularly the Prado and the Louvre, which were way too large and had too many pictures in them. God, it was a long walk just to see this woman called Mona. When I was 10, during summer vacation I went to Seattle, Washington and New York with my grandparents, and then my mum suddenly got a position at the art school in Oslo and decided to move here. My father objected to her taking me with her, and since he already was married to another woman, a lovely French mathematics teacher, my family decided I was to stay in Israel, but live with my grandparents in Tel Aviv. So, when I came back from vacation at the age of 10, I had to move to Tel Aviv. I cried, but to no avail, and thus I started at a new school, in a new city, with great stories at dinnertime but without my parents. At this new school, I was the new kid in class and got lots of attention the first few months. I abused it immediately and fell in love with the class queen. She never knew I did, though, so my love to her remains a big secret, even today, not that I know where she is, what she does, and whether I still like her, but I doubt, I would even recognize her if I met her, but she was my first love and she did not know it. Lucky woman... &emne47=06.06.2006&bloggtekst47=Even if you are thinking that today is a special date, and it represents what it obviously should, you are mistaken! Sex is the last thing I could think of right now! That is not what is bothering me. My thread of thought is leading me to a different galaxy. My fate is to learn something new as long as I am breathing. Now, this time it is going to be about simple ways of living. Living from day to day, not planning or thinking about either the past or the future. I will have to learn to live like that, I have never done it before. My life has always been formed by ambitions and desires, not necessarilly my own, but there has always been an aim, a purpose, a plan and a program. From now on I am not free to do, what I want any longer. From now on I will have a responsibility for another grown up person, who is not only uncapable to take care of himself, but is going to sabotate all my actions and decisions. He is going to be rude and harsh towards me, and he is going to make me frustrated, upset and misarable, but I will have to put up with that! I will not be able to protect myself against these attacks or fight back, because it is my son, who is doing it to me. I will have to put up with the fact that there is no personal life for me any longer. Everything is going to circle around him, his life and problems. He is not a baby any more, so it is much harder to take care of him now. I am the only person he can use to take out his frustrations on. I know, it is not his purpose to hurt me, but he does. He says, I am the reason and the coase for all his troubles. I can not even commit a suicide, as that will make an impact on the rest of his life! I have been considering to disappear, to travel away, without telling anyone, where I am going. I am so lonely again among all those people around me! Blood is thicker than water, they say. I have never felt that way before. I have never felt that way towards my parents or sister. Maybe it is because they were older? I felt, it has been their obligation to take care of me, not the other way around. But they never did. Noone has ever asked me, how I felt or what I thought, when I was little. They have just expected me to do, what they ment was right. Now I am probably overreacting and overcorrecting. I do not want my son to think the same thought, when he gets old. Selvsacrifice is what is necessary here. It does not come naturally to me! &emne48=09.03.2005&bloggtekst48=
My partners mother has passed away after half a year of illness and hospitalisation. This time has been like nightmare for us, visiting her every day at different hospitals, sometimes driving over en hour in each direction. It was mostly I and he carrying the burden, all the others just did it when they had some spare time. He has always been and still is mammas boy. It must have been a strong experience for him. He lost a lot of weight during this last time, his stomach now is flat like young boys, and his ex-wives find him to be very attractive now.


During the burial ceremony his first ex-wife has hold a speech, where she talked warm about his mother and father, about how nice they have always been towards her and the children. I felt to be at a wrong place at a wrong time, not belonging there at all. She always comes forward at family gatherings and makes herself visible like that. Who am I than, what am I doing there? I am not his present wife, I am only responsible for all the dirty work. I call my status a rent paying housekeeper, a status I have chosen myself.


He kept telling me how the two of his ex-wives pressed him to that marriage status, he just played along. I have been also married twice before, so I do not need another ceremony to secure my status. I know that it does not help to secure the relationship in any way. But sometimes and especially at some public and official occasions like this I feel that it is difficult to be in that self chosen status of a rent paying house keeper. The world is still such a conservative place.


I am thinking about his oldest children who both show their respect and sympathy. That is important to me. It has not been easy to achieve that. I had to fight for that, I had to require that, it has not come by itself. The children, his children are neither intelligent nor educated, they never read books, well, only junk books. But they are not stupid either. It has taken me some time to adjust to that. It has taken some effort to learn to respect them for whom they are and not to demand that they turn to be the way I would have wished my own children should be. They are not my own children and they will never be. They are nice and kind kids, all the three of them.


Sometimes I think that I must have made some influence on them during all these years anyway, if we wanted that or not. Since august we have had a hard and tight program visiting Aase everyday. I wish my son would do that when I get old. But I do not wish that for his part, he hates hospitals. That is how I found out that I do not want to be alone, that I need a partner, a husband. But perhaps I have not been thinking that it goes both ways. In my case it goes mostly the other way ever since I have moved inn. The last half a year has been hard and depressive. I am sort of happy that it is over.


I liked and respected his mother. I hope she felt the same for me, but I have also been competitive and jealous. She has been so perfect to everybodys eyes, I had no chance to do anything as well as she did. I am a good cook, I believe, but they all liked her cooking better. I could never clean, wash, hold the house or command her boys as well as she did. They have all obeyed her without protests, she has always been an absolute authority. I can look long for that.


Now she is gone. I do not know how we are going to survive that. We have the old grandfather to take care of, he is totally helpless without her. Now he eats dinner with us every day, but I refuse to wash him or wash his dirty underwear, there is another woman doing that for money. The old man is slightly forgetful, so the main job is to find him and bring him home before dinner, otherwise he is sitting alone in the dark all night long and is staring at TV or dosing off. He lives in the house beside us, so we can keep an eye on him. He is not making any trouble aside from the fact that we cannot go anywhere.


I feel now as a criminal as I am sitting here on the train to the airport. I shall be away in 10 days. I hope they manage without me. My son has been away for a few months and now I am looking forward to meeting him again.


Singapore and Japan are on the program. I have never been there before, so I am really excited. Strange how important it is to me to travel, to see other people, to change the surroundings. Norway is the centre of the world in the eyes of the Norwegians. If I stay here too long in a row, I might begin to think the same. I used to travel much more often before, but my partner has no interest in travelling and he does not like to fly, so it is hard to get him along. But I have made up my mind and will travel more alone since he does not want to join me.


My partners first ex-wife is born just a few days after me, so we like the same colours and we have some mutual understanding, but there are more differences than similarities, I decided. I hope she does not take over my place completely while I am away. She is going to stay in my studio while I am away. I have offered her that as she was about to move to a new apartment, but that was not ready yet, so she had no place to live. Now there are rumours going on in town about me moving together with her, the worst scenario my partner can imagine. I hope I do not need to share either him or my studio with his ex-wife for too long.


People mean it was generous and kind of me to offer her to stay there, but I feel just stupid and foreign again. According to my Russian understanding one has to invite and the other has to thank no, which is the ritual of politeness. But here it all goes wrong as people do not think about rituals and take what you say for what it is. Nobody takes your own needs into consideration or thanks no out of decency. If I am stupid enough to offer my house, people just grab the chance. Nobody even thinks about how it will be for me. In any case, done is done, I just hope it does not last too long.


&emne49=17.08.2004&bloggtekst49=At the airport Sjeremetievo 2 on my way back home to Norway after 8 days stay with my sister and her family in Moscow I felt nearly as reborn. It was as if I have lost all my hopes to be able to go back and to become myself again, but now I was looking forward to it again. In a way it was sort of nice to become a baby at the age of 50. My sister and her husband addressed me only as the child. They were really kind and carrying towards me all the time. My sister cooked and covered all the expenses, I was not even allowed to change the money. She said that it was her way to share a part of our parents inheritance with me. Naturally, she has not taken any chances on me. When my mother died, she would not even allow me to come to the funeral, she was afraid I might ask for my part of the apartment that was left. Now she is renting it out and it gives her a descent addition to her pension every month. I have never had any intention to claim my rights for that flat, it has never even crossed my mind. The flat has been registered in my nephews name and I knew that it was going to be his. He is an ill and disabled person, I could never possibly take it from him! But my sister took no chances on me! She took no chances on our cousins either, that is why they have cut all contact with her. My cousin from my mothers side, Marina, has moved to Kiev. Nobody knows her new address, she probably got hurt by my sisters behavior too. I feel sorry for my sister, for her miserable life, for the conditions they live under, for their perspectives for the future. They themselves do not think that those are bad, they do not know better. I visited their summer cottage this time and it was a nightmare. I have forgotten that it is possible to live like that. There is nothing they are dreaming about, aside from a natural wish that their son got healthier. That is the real tragedy, the real horror of their lives. Perhaps I could invite them for another nice holiday soon? But they prefer to be independent, I can understand that. It is much better for them to go on an organized guided tour somewhere instead of visiting me in Norway. Strange how life goes. I have got bad consciousness because we quarreled so much the last time she came to visit. I showed her no sympathy or support because I was so agitated by her way of controlling me. It is first now, after I have experienced myself, how it is to watch a person get weaker and weaker in front of your eyes that I start feeling, how she must have felt while our mother was sick. I am sorry that I have not shown more compassion and support, when she came to visit in a desperate search for a close family that she has just lost. I have lost my close family for a long long time ago and I am used to handle my own problems totally by myself. But she has always had my parents to tell her what to do. Now she came to me to ask for help, but I could not give her the same type of help she was used to get. And she was not used to get advice or respect opinions of her little sister, the child. I feel now sorry and embarrassed, I should have been smarter and understood it all better then.&emne50=05.04.2003&bloggtekst50=We are back from Portugal. Nearly blind and with muscle pains that make me invalid I was not exactly a perfect tourist, but still it was nice to be in a different setting, see other people and eat a lot of seafood that i am so fond of. We did the most of the tourist things, walked our feet sour and listened to fado. Fado is very close to gypsy music to my understanding. Perhaps a little less exaggerated in tears and sobs, but very much about sadness, tragedy, deep feelings, emotions, soul movements, heartbreaking and touching the listener on the inside. Nearly forgotten ways and paths for me now, but awakening some memories. In Norway one is supposed to hide all that stuff, be tuff and never complain or tell anybody about your pain either it is physical or emotional. I have never been nostalgic in any way, not for any country, not for any person. Nostalgia has been cured by the officers at Sheremetievo 2, when I was leaving Moscow forever as I thought. Later a few times I got a few more treats against it, when the guys I loved gave me a cold shoulder. The only thing I regret now is those moments and periods of deep sadness and suffering. It has always taken me a long time to come over tragedies. Strange to think that there is only one person in the world whom I really miss very much, but it is the same person who I know does not miss me a bit. So I am glad that I managed to understand that after many years of hopeless search for contact. Now I am for the first time in my life in a relationship that is free for feelings, emotions, tragedies or pain. I often hear from my friends that I am made for tragedies, that I was looking for troubles, creating worries and enjoying the pain, as if it was the only thing that has made me feel alive. The only reason why I do put up with my quiet and organized life now is my physical health condition. I realize that I cannot manage on my own any longer, I need help and support both physically and mentally. I found it now with my new family, really the only family I have ever had.&emne51=06.05.2004&bloggtekst51=A speech at the opening of an exhibition Sammenvevd at the International Cultural Art Centre and Museum in Oslo. First of all I want to thank those who has taken their chances by letting me stand on this stage and speak freely. It takes courage to take chances. I am standing here as a representative for the participating artists, but I want to underline that I am not talking in the name of all the others. This exhibition is composed by different types of art and different types of artists, who all sure have their own thoughts and opinions. I am not sure that their opinions are the same as what I am going to say here. The only thing we have in common is the fact that we get inspired by other cultural traditions than Norwegian. One may ask if that is reason good enough for a fellow exhibition. An exhibition can have so many different forms. This exhibition is setting focus on an important aspect and is inviting for an important debate. In my notes it has got a codename Ghetto. Ghetto is an area where a group of people is segregated from the others. This exhibition is not including or integrating, it is focusing on excluding the foreign element from the rest. My name is Galina Manikova. I am collecting the misspellings of my name. People call me all kinds of names, all from Gardina and Bernina till Guru Mohammad. This exhibition is not an acceptation. I am often wondering why this is happening. My conclusion is that it is difficult for people to read and remember a foreign name. Some people change their names when they move to a foreign country. That is usually done in order to be integrated better, to be treated on equal terms with the others. Perhaps I should have taken an artist name Kari Nordmann? I sometimes wonder if that could have helped me to get integrated better in the Norwegian art world? To get my work bought into a Norwegian Cultural Fond collection? Not to be treated different than the others? I have lived in Norway for 19 years, in fact just as long as I had lived in my homeland Russia. When I meet new people here, the first thing they ask is where do I come from. And it does not help to say that I am coming from my mothers womb just like all the other people come from their mothers wombs. They want to know where on the globe I was born. I like to make myself more interesting by saying that I am born in Japan, grew up in Russia and got educated in Israel. So they ask if I am Jewish, for some reason it is very important to them. I say that unfortunately I am not. The next thing they say is that I am speaking very good Norwegian. And I am thinking that it would be strange not to do it after nearly 20 years in the country, they must think that I am underdeveloped or sick. In spite of my Norwegian citizenship, I am not turning to be Norwegian. Therefore I am trying to keep some accent and some linguistic mistakes that I am famous for, like that life is going away from me, for example. I have lived in Norway for 19 years, but this is the first fellow exhibition that I am chosen to participate at. As an artist without genetic bonds to this country, I experience very often to be excluded from the fellow events, not to be treated equally with the others and not to be evaluated and judged according to my real knowledge and ability. I feel that there is no expertise in this country to be able to evaluate my work or experience. My artistic production gets disqualified because those who evaluate it do not have basic knowledge or expertise in the field I am working in order to appreciate or analyse it. There now goes a debate among the artists here about disqualification of jury members on the basis of friendships or relations. In a little country like Norway, where everybody knows everybody, it is important to hang around the right people and get to know those, who sit in different juries or stipend committees. Foreigners like me do not have the essential network in order to be included in that system. Perhaps it would have helped to change my name to some famous Norwegian artist name? Norway is one of the richest countries in the world thanks to oil. For some 50 years ago Norway was completely isolated and far away place in Europe. Most people travelled very little and there were nearly no foreigners in the country. But this has changed very quickly. Now people travel a lot and see very many foreign traditions and cultures both here and there in the big and open world. Still Norwegian should remain to be Norwegian. There are three different sides to this case. How is a foreign artist influenced by his original culture and tradition on one side and Norwegian reality on the other, how do foreign artists in Norway influence the art community and art administration, and how foreign art and artists are understood or misunderstood by the public and by art critics here. An artist who experiences to be in a discriminated minority carries along a foreign culture that makes an impact on all aspects of his (or her) life and work. That includes ideas, concepts, thoughts, political and ethical preferences, tastes, fashions, colours, music, behavioural, ethical and aesthetical norms, expectations and reactions. In confrontation with the reality this artist gets influenced by the art society on one side and the public on the other. All artists are totally dependent on the response from the wide public and from the professional community. Those who do not get proper response and understanding, get isolated in their own world, which in its turn is making influence on their work. Frustration, bitterness, protests against injustice makes a strong impact on both subjects and artistic expression these artists are using. If one does not get a response that gives a feeling of satisfaction for reaching forward with own ideas, there is no reason to keep doing it. I have chosen to appeal towards public outside of Norway and search for response there. This was the only right thing to do, as I can see now. But that leaded to the growing difference in evaluation of my work here at home and at other places in the world. I have experienced to be honoured highly abroad and be ignored and refused completely here for the same work. I think the explanation must be that everybody expects that the artist with a minority background does not hold his head too straight and stick his nose far too high. Norwegians love weak groups, one should not believe that one is any better than the others, one should not come here and tell anybody what to do or teach them anything. I think that I can teach you something. I have two immigrations behind and I have seen how one can solve assimilation problems. There are two ways to go. One can exclude and use quote system or one can integrate without giving any advantages. In the first case one could make rules about how many artists with a minority background should participate at fellow exhibitions, how many of them should get stipends and prizes, how many of them should be bought into national collections etc. Do you think this politics could be met with open minds by a majority of other artists, by right wing politicians and by new nazists? Fight for equality for women has shown that women do not want to get any advantages based on gender or get privileges according to quotations. Women prefer to be discriminated, discrimination makes women stronger. Those women who get leading positions in industry or financial world have to be far more qualified and mentally strong then men who get the same job. The same is relevant in connection to foreign artists. In order to succeed, we have to be ten times stronger, more qualified, more educated, more patient and we have to fight for our rights. I am looking for equality. I do not want segregation or quotation based on my nationality or cultural heritage. I do not want to be excluded, isolated and placed in a ghetto. I do not want to be looked upon as a discriminated minority and be compensated for all the misfortunes that this status brings along. I grow stronger when I am excluded and discriminated. I learn more and turn to be a better artist while I need to work ten times harder than the others in order to survive economically. Those who oppose me do me a favour by making my life harder. Norway is my new homeland, but I do not want to turn to be a Norwegian. I do not want to get anything for free. My art gets more intensive and interesting because I cannot relax and enjoy life. I have learned to come forward and say what I mean. I provoke people by suggesting myself to leading positions in the art organisations. I do it because nobody else does. I use much of my time and energy to make people understand that their old rusted routines should change. When I came to Norway in 1986 as an artist ready educated at one of the most interesting art academies in the world at the time and a teacher with a solid experience, I hoped that I could continue to be an artist and a teacher in this country. Instead I had to wash flours and get social support. It is a shame that my new homeland did not have any use for my education and experience. It is not me who has lost most in this case. I have experienced a lot. My art is influenced by my life both before and after I moved to Norway. I hope to be able to show what I do and what I can. I hope to be looked upon as a resource instead of to be threatened as a disaster. I would like to be included in the art community on the base of what I do without any privileges or quotations. For that to happen, the art community, the public, the art administration must change. It is not only me who has to assimilate. World is turning to be an open space. It is happening everywhere. It is the time to realize it, to discuss it and to make the changes here too. This exhibition sets focus on this subject. But there is a long way to go. I wish I could see some research about living conditions for the artists from the minority backgrounds. I wish I could see statistics on integration, representation at different museums and collections, statistics on stipends and orders. I can only keep my own statistics and compare my own situation with for example those who got their Master degree from the National Academy of Art and Design together with me. I can just mention that I have not been equally positioned. I am grateful for that! Being an artist demands a certain sacrifice, one has to suffer in order to create, one has to bleed in order to express pain! I am different, I grew up with totally different set of rules and social norms than those that I am forced to follow because I live in Norway. I know exactly what I could have done in order to get integrated better. It is expected that I behave according to the rules and that I am modest and grateful. It is expected that I learn to know my place. My temperament and reactions do not fit in. But I chose to underline that I am a foreigner and I chose to be proud of who I am. I use my life and my personal experiences as a source of inspiration for my art. I am a true cosmopolite and a citizen of the world. I hope there is room also for me in Norway. &emne52=10.04.2004&bloggtekst52=I have discovered that I am not as open minded as I wished to think I was. I am condemning some others as if I were free for sin myself. Who am I to throw the stone? Perhaps that is the real dilemma to relate to in my next project? Especially when I am thinking about the stone fences on the west coast of Norway, where the exhibition is going to be? They are religious there too. My work is placed on a neutral ground between art, craft and design, between photography and sculpture, between the materials and the techniques. My expression is complex and sophisticated, I like to create many layers of expression and interpretation. People who are looking for peace and simplicity will not like or understand my work. Still I am screaming, shouting and waving my hands in order to explain. Wonderfully eclectic, says one critic. Total chaos of elements and thoughts, says the other. So where is the one who can try to relate to all of it, make a serious analysis and tell me something I do not know about? &emne53=03.04.2004&bloggtekst53=Gee, I was sure that it was a joke on April 1! I have got a stipend this year! I still cannot relax and believe that it actually has happened. I am thinking about what that means in connection to all my big projects and big plans. I am thinking about how grateful and proud it makes me feel. I am thinking that I should have apologized for all the bitterness and all the sadness that I have expressed before. I am thinking about how much this means to me, how this stipend is actually giving me hope and opportunity to come further. I do not have to sell my car now! I can use it to transport the stuff, I can save so much time and money now! I feel gratitude to all those who have given me this new chance. I nearly want to cry. I hereby promise and swear that I shall do my best to show that I deserved this trust. Oh, my God, I am dancing, and jumping, and singing in the rain! Forgive me all those who got another refusal this year! &emne54=13.03.2004&bloggtekst54=Murakami and Calatrava have got me by their unique originality, I will never reach them, it is too late for me. My ambitions are not there either, it is like as if I have reached the point of total satisfaction. I am happy that I can create what I want and be satisfied with little. I am happy that I have not got any stipends or any support from the Norwegian art system lately. That means I can look in the eyes of all the other artists around here with clean consciousness. I have not taken anything from anybody. I finance my projects by my own money, I am as free and independent as one can be. If they gave me some money, my projects would have been grander, but I am starting to worry about my inheritance. What is my poor son going to do with all that enormous amount of pictures, sculptures and objects? I am definitively not going to donate all that to the local authorities! Perhaps I should find a little place somewhere far away and build a mausoleum to myself? Write a testament and ask them to slice me in two from hip to hip and from head to feet and place me in two glass boxes with formalin, so that the visitors could have a look at my brains and my soul?&emne55=11.02.2004&bloggtekst55=Mariann, Mariann, Mariann. I have a signature made by a little girl by that name in a book from my first big exhibition here. She was a daughter of an art administrator and she became an art administrator herself. Time is running out for me. If my name was Mohammad I could have counted on their pettiness. My problem is that I am not poor enough, not stupid enough and I believe that I know something and can teach them something. Norwegians like to support the weak on condition that they are preferably situated far away. It is probably a part of being a good samaritanian. I really wondered why she got so mad at me for my application. Maybe it is because her husband got a little too exited about my work? You never know when you may step into shit. It is a small country.&emne56=07.01.2004&bloggtekst56=In Norway one can become a professor without any formal education at all. I used to think that that was wonderful. I sort of changed up my mind about it after a discussion with my daughter in law. She said that Americans are primitive and most of them are illiterate, they cannot even read and write. I got rather angry about that generalisation and asked her if she has read any of the Russian classics. No, she has not, but that was not obligatory at school, she said. If I only read what was obligatory at school, I said, I would only have learned history of the communist party!&emne57=13.09.2002&bloggtekst57=
I have left Moscow because I was desperate to get rid of my parents and sister. It has been a burden, always a shame for me, my father, my mother, my sister; even my grandparents. It is as if I always looked at them from a distance and felt that they are not the way people are supposed to be. I have always been envious with other families, with other children. I have always found boyfriends who had such wonderful fathers. I have always wished I had a background to be proud of. Did not have to be anything special, just the way I can accept. I felt always responsible for all the wrong things my family said and did. It has always been my fault and my mistake. as if I could choose. I had no control over any of my family members, they have never listened to me or showed any respect to my meanings and demands. They only wanted to control me, to make me think and behave the way they thought was right. I hated that and my only purpose in life has been to brake free.


20.11.2003

I wish I could get satisfied with little. Is it ambition? Is it arrogance and pride? Basically, I am above the crowd. I do not want their recognition or respect. I only want to know that I have not compromised with any of my basic believes, that I have been faithful towards myself. That marriage never ends.


01.01.2003

Sweet Hot Free Lame Pretty Wild Sexy Young Attractive Proud Giddy Seductive Delicious Cloudy Loving Imperious Wonderful Childish Little Blond Silly Naive Smart Affected Unfaithful Rough Vulgar Crazy Thrilling Choppy Magic Easy Impudent Indecent Nervous Unreasonable Feminine Desired Sacrificial Boring Obscure Mysterious Diverting Unsteady Solitary Wounded Exhausted Raped Abused Depraved Rotten Vicious Careful Dissipated Ecstatic Hysterical Angry Tender Dissolute Affectionate Strange Unknown Inexplicate Inscrutable Unfeasible Inaccessible Celestial Innocent Pure Virgin Fragile Frail Spare Skinny Slender Lustful Submissive Obedient Resigned Surrendered Lost Finished Tired.


23.01.2004

I was asked to meet a Russian woman who has just moved to Norway from Vilnius. She is an artist educated at an art academy in Tallinn and is working with leather. She married a Norwegian and moved here, just like me. She looked desperate, nobody is interested in her, she is rejected to enter artist organisations, and she does not know a soul. 
I remembered how it was for me here in the beginning. We, who come here from a different world, expect people to understand our situation and be interested to help us. That is not the case. Nobody cares, people mind their own business and think about their own problems. If a newcomer takes contact, that only leads to envy, rejection, deception and refusal, among the other things. Norwegians love weak groups preferably situated on the other side of the world, then they show their support and enthusiasm. But do not come here and demonstrate that you know something better then the others. That they definitively do not like. They will do their best to make you understand that you are nothing worth here and should know your place. No wonder she is disappointed and scared.

She is washing floors at a school and her higher education is not recognized or valued in any way. Moral standards are different here. It is normal to be egoistic, to ride over the dead bodies of friends and colleagues, steal their good ideas and present them as their own. If you do not do the same, you are considered just stupid and incapable to assimilate.

&emne58=&bloggtekst58=
07.07.2003

His mother has made a fatal mistake: she has been far too kind. No other woman can possibly compete with her or compares to her. I will never be able to make the food the way she does, to wash the clothes clean enough or keep the house as neat and pretty as hers. In addition I made a tragic mistake: I put a cloth-softener into the washing machine. Nothing of what I do is ever right. I feel like a Cinderella without a fairy and a prince, only the dirty dishes and ironing the shirts. Maybe I should let the phone keep ringing Sometimes I wonder about my Russian fatalism: is everything really fixed and nailed in advance? Am I free to go? There are thousands of reasons why we do the things the way we do. I wish I could ask someone about my fate and do it the other way. 
29.02.2000

My father, a high officer in the military, was lucky to survive Stalins purges. Sakhalin was exile, but better than inside the barbed wire. He was released and returned to Moscow after 8 years. I was reading forbidden literature (Solzjenitsyn, etc.), copied by hand and passed along; we often had only a few hours to read a book. By the age of 15, I came to a serious confrontation with my father on politics. When I was 17, I moved out and went to live with my school boyfriend and his parents. 
24.06.2003

Reading Agnar Mykle, identifying with another misunderstood and lynched artist in this land where I live now: Culture means: art not to create. Naturally, we have to have those crazy creatures in a society who cannot live without create artists. Art and culture are not the same though. Artistic genius is often independent from the surroundings. Michelangelo has been born and developed in a highly cultivated land, Italy; Henrik Ibsen grown up in a barbarian country that has never given a helping hand to an artist. That is the nature of a creative artist. He explodes in a bright light even when he is frozen down and pressed under an ice mountain. But culture is all about how not to create. Culture is all about how to enjoy. Culture is not about to give, but to take. We cannot and should not worry about those creative geniuses. A society cannot create a genius. What we can do though is to create a cultivated society, teach people to listen and to see, create an atmosphere where a genius can breath and greet one when he comes. What we need are people who have a capacity to see the difference between good and bad, people who have a capacity to enjoy. That is culture. 
30.05.2002

Living in Norway is like a free fall... you never know, but it is enjoyable.Sometimes it is the opposite: climbing up from dirt, suffering and compromising for security and safety.There are no slums in Oslo.I were so lucky to crash my neck in a car accident. If not that, my life would have still been miserable. At least I get some basic money for basic needs. God knows how my life could have turned to be if I were a bit healthier! I would have certainly been at a different place. Kept moving. 
15.06.2003

I can definitely say that I have never been a member of any mafia. Oh, yes, I had to compromise a lot! Life is nothing else than compromises! It is only a matter of the degree. 
10.08.2000

I wish I could get satisfied with little... Is it ambition? Is it arrogance and pride? Basically, I am above the crowd. I do not want their recognition or respect. I only want to know that I have not compromised with any of my basic believes, that I have been faithful towards myself. That marriage never ends. 
01.07.2003

I am a total fatalist as most literate Russians are, so coincidences and signs fascinate me. Why do the things turn up the way they do? How do we make our choices? Could I have ever guessed that I will end up where I am now? 
05.06.1998

I moved in with Svein in 1998, leading to a total confusion and disorder in all matters for both of us for a long time. Practical matters like renovating his house, so renovating my old house in Oslo and renting it out. Then after half a year of driving on the high way back and forth to Oslo to my studio, with each eye looking in its own direction, I decided to rent a little space in Horten and establish a workshop and an art gallery with a cafe. 
03.02.1997

I dialled his number again... shame on me! Fortunately it did not work; he probably has moved or changed the number. It has been a long time since I tried to reach him, it feels like years, but actually it is only a few months. But I am rather proud of myself. Each time I am down and blue I try to call him again. I am idealising him again as if what we had has been so special. He has never looked at it that way. I think he felt trapped in that relationship, imprisoned inside me. While I only grabbed him in vanity and despair and never could keep holding him close enough. He has just left, disappeared, got lost. Inside me. 
11.12.1999

I have left Moscow because I was desperate to get rid of my parents and sister. It has been a burden, always a shame for me: my father, my mother, my sister, even my grandparents. It is as if I always looked at them from a distance and felt that they are not the way people are supposed to be. I have always been envious with other families, with other children. I have always found boyfriends who had such wonderful fathers. 
07.07.1999

I have always wished I had a background to be proud of. Did not have to be anything special, just the way I can accept. I felt always responsible for all the wrong things my family said and did. It has always been my fault and my mistake, as if I could choose. 
23.09.1999

I had no control over any of my family members; they have never listened to me or showed any respect to my meanings and demands. They only wanted to control me, to make me think and behave the way they think is right. I hated that and my only purpose in life has been to brake free. 
05.10.1994

I could not sleep. I took 3 beautiful sleeping dolls with my tea to bed last night. My whole body was shaking with lust. My skin was soft and damp and my lips were open and trembling. My desire was so enormous, I could not breath, it overflowed every cell and pore, it poured my blood all the way down to my fingertips and toes, and there it was waving, pressing, pushing, touching my skin from within, drawing new lines and curves for a gypsy girl to read. I wanted to get up and go find you, touch your lips with those fingers, touch your balls with my toes, let you pick up the rhythm and sing to my music. I wanted to tune your body, your skin stretched on the drum of your bones. I wanted you. I wanted you to play me as a flute. I wanted to feel your lips and your tongue, your hands pulling my strings apart and together. Your hands all over me, gentle and strong, careful and tough, soft and hard, understanding and hurting, making me scream from pain and frustration. I wanted you to penetrate through my nostrils, pierce my brain, so that I can stop thinking, thinking, thinking, so that only a pure sensation of feeling, emotion, vibration is left. I wanted to forget myself, to hide, to disappear, to dissolve myself into you, get lost inside you, die and get buried there forever. I wanted to touch you from within, caress your inner parts, touch your chest from the other side, hold your pulsating heart in my hand and feel you feeling what I am feeling. I wanted you. 
05.08.2002

Another refusal. They tell me that I amclever and talented, but they do not give me a chance to show it in public: I could not get a decent exhibition space in Norway during those 16 years that I have lived here. The first exhibition was thanks to Oles personal connections became also the last, as I was not willing to behave according to his rules. He told me he would personally take care so that I starve in this country, he should make me eat garbage. Well, he did not succeed that much, but I can make a long list of galleries and museums who had refused my applications. Maybe, like Boltansky, I will make an exhibition of those letters of refusals one day: We are here to inform you that you are not among those who had been granted a space, a place, a stipend, a price. It is all so unfair, unjust and frustrating. I am watching the list of those few fortunate ones who has been granted this and that here. Most of them are in good relations with the right persons, they are not necessarily so good in their work, but they are good at promotions and public relations, the whole system is being ruled from the bedrooms and the corridors. And me, poor stupid me. I do not want their recognition. I only fight for the right to be myself, to work and to show my work in public. We all are dependent on respond, on showing our work. I do not want their credits, grades and grants. I have been so fortunate to break my neck in a car accident, so now I parasite on their social support system, get my pension and am not dependent on their art support system. I do not compete with the others on that, I do not steel their money. So they could let me rest in piece? Well, they would have done it if they could, but I am making troubles myself: I talk too much, I do not behave according to their rules and I complain, provoke and reveal. If they could, they would have killed me to make me shut up. They nearly managed, but I still keep jumping with my mouth open as a fish onshore.