To talk through one’s nightcap by Leif Elggren

I have always hated nights, but I’ve written down my dreams since I was fourteen. My father was a sleepwalker who used to remove paintings from the walls. Aunt Astrid suffered from narcolepsy and could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. And when I sleep I have to wake up all the time to make sure I’m still alive. These are important things, these are things that keep me going. I remember when I found Swedenborg’s book of dreams in my teens. I remember Salvador Dali’s etchings to Lautréamont’s Maldoror. I remember when Werner Herzog invited whoever was interested into a back room at that restaurant in Munich, and hypnotised them one by one and had them enter a large forest where, in the middle of a clearing, there was a smooth rock with a text hewn in it that no-one had ever read, and the hypnotised person was asked to report what it said. A stable boy from the mounted police became a poet. Someone else became an actor.

I remember when Lauri Perälä wrote to the Market Committee and complained about adverts in dreams and how he received a reply from the Market Court (1974-04-10) in which they said that the correct government authority to contact was the Consumer Ombudsman.

Talking through one’s hat (or nightcap) is of course associated with ridicule and stupidity and humiliation, circumstances that undoubtedly reduce the speaker’s social and mental capital to nothing. To talk through one’s hat is an expression that singles out and disowns, that stigmatises and separates. As usual and yet again, it constitutes an effective weapon in the hands (or mouth) of those who have appropriated the power and the preferential right of interpretation, regardless of whether it is in the school yard, at the bank, in court or in the offices of government. He who talks into his hat is powerless and down for the count. But talking through one’s hat has also, sometimes, meant something special and exclusive, and in certain specific cases the hat-talking has been a speech worth listening to, often in extreme situations when desperation or fear has struck those in power (in the school yard, at the bank, in court or the offices of government), the singer, the oracle, the prophet or the poet has been summoned, perhaps even the madman.

There is also another side to the hat-talking: the real rubbish, that which lies and seduces. Simply the consciously misleading rhetoric among those in power themselves. Lies as a kind of willed Alzheimer blunders emerging between well-kept teeth.

The cobblestone is still the weapon of the proletariat (in sleep as well as in waking life).

Wake up from having swallowed an angel. One of those little flat brass angels that hang from chimes in which the heat of small candles creates the movement. I get up violently, gag and tear at my throat to get it out. Eva is awake and tells me as usual that it was just a dream. I don’t believe her, of course. Convinced of my terrible plight, I rush into the bathroom and attempt to get the dangerous piece of metal out of my throat with my fingers. I spit blood into the basin. In the morning I awake with sore throat, my palate mangled by my attempts to remove the dreamt angel.

(Stockholm, night of 30 Dec 1988)

I had swallowed two LPs, I was coughing and hawking, trying desperately to get them out of my throat, but instead they lodged themselves far up my nasal cavity. I thought a lot about how to get them out. – I have further swallowed one carved oak head, one angel, one rubber seal for a jam jar, one paper doll, aluminium foil, my drawings, the prongs of a loose-leaf binder, a peach stone, the serrated tear-off bit on a sellotape holder.

– I am putting gold in my throat.

I have swallowed one carved oak head, one angel, one rubber seal for a jam jar, one paper doll, aluminium foil, my drawings, the prongs of a loose-leaf binder, one peach stone, the serrated tear-off bit on a sellotape holder, I am choking on gold. I swallow one safety pin, one piece of firewood, one grey plastic royal crown. I put small soft-sweet cars in my throat, they are strung on a thin metal blade. I swallow a roll of tape.

During 1981, I had several dreams which I could not remember in the morning, all that was left was a weak, passing sensation, a memory of the dream’s form: first, a main dream, large and actual, then a small dream which in some way picks up on the large dream’s idea, but which summarises it and shows it from another perspective, more concentrated and with a different content. The form manifests itself as:

XXXX XX

We are in a kitchen on the first floor of an old building, we are standing by the kitchen table, talking. I look out of the window, a small stream runs past there, I catch sight of a plastic handle in the stream, struggling upstream. I go outside and approach the stream where it has been dammed up. That is where the handle has got stuck. I pick it up, it is made of yellowish-white plastic, like a piece of pipe with a nylon string attached at the middle. I pull on it and pull up a salmon trout stuck at the other end of the string. The string has got wound several times around its “neck”. (Belgrade, night of 25 Aug 1976)

This fact that certain dreams are impossible to recapture in the morning. They just slip past all one’s attempts to catch them. As if the air we exhale and inhale were full of them, as if they were stuck to the particles of spit that flow in and out.

(Stockholm, night of 12 Sep 1984)

I get an awful lot of mail at Hallandsgatan, letters, cards and printed matter pour in through the letterbox, but all of it is late, and on top of that, opened. The envelopes have been brusquely torn open and checked, – I suspect my neighbour…

(Stockholm, night of 2 Aug 1984)

We are in a picnic area by a major road, we are seated around a typical picnic-area table with typical picnic-area benches, we are eating food that we have brought with us, a short distance away is Saddam Hussein, we have captured him, he is sitting by himself and looking out towards the traffic, he is smiling, he is dressed in green clothes and wears a violet beret jauntily askew, he has his back turned towards us and in his lap is a paper box with different objects wrapped in tissue paper, he has shown us these things earlier, some of them, I have lots of thin copper pipes lying on the ground next to where we are sitting, every now and then I pick up a pipe and poke him, he continues to smile, I see that he has picked up a new object wrapped in tissue paper from the box, I see that it is a small pistol, I jump to my feet and try to take cover, I shout at the others to do the same, Saddam is aiming at me…

(Stockholm, night of 28 April 2003)

I am in Florence, on a journey with a group of people. When it is time to proclaim the new country there is a coup d’état. We cheat the army out of their weapons: they stand to attention in the square. I command them to lay their weapons on the ground. I tell my companions to pick up all the weapons and place them in the prams that surround the square. Everyone is surprised at how easy everything is going. The take over of power is a fact. Time seems to stand still. This is the decisive moment, we must proclaim the new state, present the new guiding principles and instil hope in everyone. I try to persuade my friends/fellow travellers to seize the moment, especially one woman. She is uncertain, but I know that she really wants to (she possesses great strength and importance). We must win some time. I step to one side with her. We wade under a bridge over the canal on slippery stones in the shallow water. I make some remark about Florentine sewers that go directly into the water. She answers that we are dealing with the most fundamental. She has a thick coat over her shoulders. I am wearing a big quilt with quilt covers which I hold about my body like an ankle-length cowl. I draw her to one side. I try to influence her to seize the moment. I say that we must talk to them, give them hope and belief and something new. She hesitates, but allows herself to be convinced. We go back to the square (which is like a flat island in the middle of the city surrounded by a canal with several bridges over it). We wade over the shallow water, now in a new place underneath another bridge with other slippery stones. I have pulled down the quilt and now wear it around the lower part of my body. I see the others in small groups at the square, talking quietly, expectantly. I realize that we definitely must say something now. Certain concrete guidelines must be given, that, for example, we should abolish death...

(Stockholm, night of 15 June 1982.)

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AGAINST ALL EVENS

Despite all the uniformity.

Despite all those even.

Despite all those indifferent.

Despite all those mediocre.

Despite all those grey.

Despite all those dull.

Despite all those cowardly.

Despite all those cautious.

Despite all those dusty.

Despite all the fear.

Despite all the injustice.

Despite all the goddamn bullies who believe they can run other people’s lives regardless of whether they are the most insignificant writhing worms in all mankind or the least insignificant writhing worms in all mankind. For fuck’s sake, there aren’t any insignificant writhing worms in mankind! That sort of thinking will always end up leading to hell. Then there we are again, with the idea that some will have to be sacrificed, some will have to abandon ship and it will always be the worst off, those who are already powerless, those who have nothing and know nothing and mean nothing, those who lack words, who lack worth. They can easily be sacrificed, no hesitation, just chuck them overboard, after all they’re almost in the water already. After all, they are insignificant writhing worms in mankind and we don’t want to know about them anyway. Recently beggars and homeless people have become all the more common in Sweden. Only ten years ago, you hardly saw any, at least not beggars, people who lay in doorways seeking a moment’s rest. Now they are all over, they are many, they are tangible, they intrude, they are unpleasant, they smell and are horrid, and what does it really mean? That they are crawling out of their holes? That they were really there all the time? Although we haven’t seen them before. Were they hidden from view by the authorities? Were they mad? Were they confined to various sorts of asylums? Or is it that Sweden used to have a kind of social safety net that caught those that fell? That took care of its citizens. Is that how it was? But now, perhaps now we haven’t got that safety net to help each other any more. Is that it? We don’t give a shit about each other? Because we can still talk about a WE here, can’t we? Or can we? That WE are the ones who make up this social structure we call our society, a community of equal circumstances, equal conditions, equal opportunity, equal rights. Is that how it is? But then why the hell do some people sleep outdoors in the biting cold on winter nights? Why don’t they have a home? Perhaps they don’t want a home. Perhaps they’re just a bit odd, better to let them be. Or? Leave them alone, they’ll manage. Or? And the others, the ones we can’t see, the ones that don’t beg or try to sleep in doorways? Those who scream and fight in their flats in the suburbs. Those who hate and scare everyone stiff. Those who steal cars and drive like maniacs through the city at night when everyone else is trying to sleep so they can get up in the morning. Those who threaten the checkout person at SevenEleven with a rusty nail and take the cash box and immediately get a stimulus that lasts for several days, both materially and emotionally. Those who beat up chinks outside the gym and those who rape young girls on their way home from school and those who don’t say a word just stand there staring like they’re not even breathing and the others who are on the ground crawling around trying to find the sewing needle in the pool of vomit they’ve just puked up inside the doorway. Why do they do it? – There are two explanations: one is that they are completely unintelligent and inhuman and damned and stupid and lost causes and ought to be dumped on the rubbish heap as soon as possible (human refuse). The other explanation is that they realized when they were seven years old that everything is closed to them anyway, that it is no use, that there are no possibilities and that there is definitely no fucking justice whatsoever! – There, take your pick! Which of the two bloody alternatives is it? There’s only one answer, for fuck’s sake! (But note that there are two different perspectives. Be careful!)

Those brown envelopes, the kind with gum arabic for licking on the edge of the flap, are manufactured by prisoners, and they pee into the glue vat so the glue becomes contaminated with their vengeance and hatred, which means that everyone who licks the glue swallows some of these charged urinary secretions, like a kind of Trojan horses of urine, like a kind of discreet missiles that strike blindly in all directions (not to mention the diseases that run rife among the dregs of society!).

Take care to be civil with restaurant staff. If you shout and rage, or if you’re just generally rude when you order your food or your drink, you can be sure that a gob in the sauce or a bogie under the steak or unwashed hands after the toilet visit will work a treat. Not to mention the cook who emptied his shaver over the mushroom sauce which was about to be served to that fop who had called the waiter a fucking poof!

Those peaches in the fruit counter, with their velvety skin, their rich beckoning colours and their scent – perhaps you shouldn’t just sink your teeth into them, it’s happened that some madman has stuck broken-off sewing needles in them, filled them with sewing needles and turned those luscious fruits into a kind of nightmarish mace for palate and gums.

And that intravenous drug user who kept all the needles he used during a whole year and then broke them off and went from seat to seat in the tube and planted them randomly in the upholstery, points facing upwards. They couldn’t be seen, but they were certainly felt.

And the guy with tuberculosis who went from one restaurant to the next, coughing over the food on the buffet tables.

And he who broke razor blades into pieces and stuck them into the gaps on the swimming jetty.

And he who smelt of alcohol without having drunk.

And he who left his tie at work.

And he who used to pull his trousers down and shit outside the large windows of restaurants; for everyone to see, he used to drop large turds on the pavement.

And she who crushed the testicles of the guy who had shot her cat.

And he who poured yoghurt into his typewriter without being aware of it. It was 1972, and he was just about to write his first letter to the editor of the local newspaper, but it all came to naught because he had just poured yoghurt into the typewriter and he didn’t know anyone else so that was that.

And she who cut her head off in the paper cutter, both hands firmly on the two-handed grip.

And he who tried to pee without unbuttoning his fly while he was on the phone with the most powerful woman in the world.

And she who was a he and who was fond of sweets but didn’t understand where to put them.

And he who was a squirrel without realising it and just wanted to buy a paper in the newsstand and was shooed away with a broom but never gave up until he lay there as if a car had run him over at Kungens kurva.

And she who boasted about the fine curtains in the bedroom.

And he who had a cat with a duodenum.

And he who just left a note with a recipe behind (that was all):

Visit some of the city’s public toilets for men, collect deposits from the frequently (fortunately) badly cleaned urinals. Try to include some of the cloudy yellow liquor that usually remains around the drains of the urinals. A normal soupspoon will do just fine for this. Try to spoon up around 20 cl. Take home and store in a cool place.

Now it’s time to go out hunting for gobs of spittle on the city’s pavements. Use a soupspoon and a vessel such as a well cleaned glass jar. Try to collect only the biggest, greasiest, most mucous gobs and try to get about 10 cl. Take home and store in a cool place.

And finally, about 50 cl of beer dregs out of abandoned glasses in some nightly bar. Take home and leave at room temperature overnight.

Mix the three ingredients together in a large shaker, add 10 cl of vodka, and shake well. Serve in large, old-style tumblers.

A birdshit garnish is an excellent final touch. Preferably from an inner-city pigeon.

And he who wanted the whole world to perish with him (and it did!).

But then there was another one who was a bit more clever and who only wanted to eat half the cake and then send his sister to fetch something from the other room and in the meantime hide the other half and then when she got back smack his lips with pleasure and say that that was really a tasty cake and then she with triumphant grin still had hers which she slowly ate with all the self-righteousness of those who get the last laugh while he with feigned jealousy looked on. But then, as if by magic, when she had finished her piece and enjoyed victory for a moment, to pull the saved half out of its hiding place and REALLY gloat for having snatched victory from her so utterly and to enjoy his cake to the sound of loud and angry crying.

They had just gone upstairs to count when the others came in and said that the cat was on the loose again and shitting in the raspberry jam without giving anything in return. That’s not good, said the first ones and knocked out the teeth of the other ones, and no one was upset, they just moistened the balls with the tongue once. It’s like a miracle! they cried as they ran down the stairs with the slime dangling around their hips. It’s like a miracle!

But those who had stayed behind and not been upset and who had the little genitals around their neck, they just smiled and watched the weather forecast and it didn’t look good at all, no it didn’t look good at all. It was as if a haze was approaching from the east and it was no small thing, it looked like it was a big haze that turned grey and didn’t smell very good at all, no, it smelt like shit and it was good without once being awful in the mouth and throat and you just kind of fell asleep without like counting even once.

The others, those who were stupid and weren’t there, they had exquisite treasures in their desk drawers and there wasn’t anyone, not a single soul, who knew anything about this and that gave them such inconceivable satisfaction that it was almost crazy, yes it really was crazy and all the others thought it was too, they just laughed and thought they were daft in the head.

Do you know why the little slime slips so quickly down the drains? she asked as she sat on the loo wiping her bum with a bar of soap. It wants to join its friends down there and feel indifferent before its task.

Do you know why the little drool hangs quivering from mummy’s chin? She’s crying because you were so stupid and cut off all your fingers with grandma’s cake slice when there were hefty carving knives on the draining board. Now the little drool hangs there quivering, threatening to drop into the porridge and destroy us all. Is that how you want it to be? Well? – Go on, answer me, is that how you want it to be?

The small, compact dog is sitting on top of the tall fence and shitting on it; he isn’t dropping his excrement to the left or to the right, no, he posits his fresh product right on the narrow top edge.

My father is sitting on a low wall, in the corner, he is only wearing a short jumper, he needs to have a poo, he is trying to hold it back but he can’t, it comes out under him anyway, squeezed out backwards between wall and bum, he is so unspeakably embarrassed because it is such a busy spot, it is a bridge over a river, he slips down to the ground below the wall, where someone else has already taken a shit, there is also a large roll of toilet paper there, the kind you find in public toilets, he has to wipe his behind after all, he pulls out a length of paper but soon notices that it has already been used and then rolled up again, somebody has wiped their poo-covered hands on the paper, he tries to find a clean bit, unrolls and tears off lengths here and there, nauseated he tries to clean himself as best he can, it is dark and he has to try to make his way home, but he has no key…

She urged him on. Again and again she urged him on.

She who lies under also lies beside. He who lies on top also lies beside. And those who lie beside also lie beside.

In the voodoo doll’s tunic is a hidden mechanism. A small metal blade sensitively registers the variations of the weak electric impulse. This also gives rise to a kind of glimmer on the tip of each needle that is stuck into the doll’s body. It is a most curious mechanism. It conducts fear away from the wishes of the perpetrator. It conducts dread away from the body of the victim.

Despite all the sorrow.

Despite all the memories.

Despite all the things you can’t do anything about, that are incomprehensible and cry in corners.

Despite everything.

Nothing is clear as day in this world, there are always clouds and fog and not least shadow and darkness which means that time is endless and that we all have plenty of time, and even if it should happen that time runs out, all we have to do is go into the next room where everything remains yet again albeit in a slightly different shape, it is nevver too late (yes, it’s important, that spelling mistake!).

Just a few more lines, then it’ll be over!

It is said that God screams alone in space (or whatever we should call the dark celestial emptiness that encloses us all), screams alone at night and creates the vibration which has set everything in motion since the beginning of time, set off the brief pulsations and cycles we know as the sanctity of everyday life and the joy of life on Earth.

Direct suggestion, influence. It is no coincidence that almost all sound-bearing media have a circular shape and a circular progression in their reproductive aspect. And it is no coincidence that an enormous temptation lies in the notion of being a sounding center which temporarily attracts complete attention; this manifest tool of immortality, to be an imitation of the procreator of everything.

At the beginning: a fast alternation (during 2 time units) between the two rooms, with a leftward direction: from the smaller to the larger. Ends up in a state of rest in the larger, for an extended period (16 time units). Then up to the level above, to a very small room (during 7 time units) and then straight down (90º) to the point of departure, the triangle is closed, complete.

– Then two parallel rooms far apart in the world during 5 time units. And then one room with several parallel rooms separated during varying time units.

You know, the leaders, the presidents, the kings and the ministers, seems to be even fatter as the years are passing. That might not be surprising, to be fat is very common among powerful people. The power might need some substantial fat to be visible. The food is always excellent in the corridors of power and the restaurants along the road are always first class. This is how it has been since the dawn of human history. I am thinking of Ariel Sharon. He seems to be a sickly fat statesman. And we should not forget Helmut Kohl, wherever he is these days. Maybe he is sitting eating somewhere, the only thing that was left for him to do after he retired from his powerful job as the German Chancellor. Idi Amin was another fatty that, aside from being the dictator over Uganda, appointed himself King of Scotland. He did it without wiping his mouth even once, with fat sauce running down his chin. He never cared; he did not need to.

You know, to become fat in the top of power is no problem. It is a question of status and authority, sending out signals of wealth and safety to the people. Power needs to have a visible face that gives a certain message of prosperity and the natural right to all good in life. The big body meritoriously takes place.

I am thinking of Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Strife of Lent with Shrove-tide. – Or as it could be described: Two thin eating one fat. Two poor fellows that seem to starvingly, with bare teeth, snatch a bite of a fat monk’s face. The Church has always been connected to political power and maintained its privileges. And the power; the political, economic, social, yes the worldly, have gained access to the unworldly part of human communion. A perfect combination, a perfect collaboration, a perfect meal.

The human body is created around a framework of bones. Muscular tissue makes the framework function and gives the human body its characteristic shape. Inside this basic framework there are several essential details that make this body work, to be an important part in that process we call human life. Everything we do in this life relates, in one way or another, to this our human body, the biological vessel that keeps us together, gives us a manifest form in this world between birth and death. A vessel that we borrow for a short period of time and in the end to restore to that process of metamorphosis that everything is subordinated in this world. Everything that we do are related to this functional outer. The inner is a mystery, hidden. – Every size, proportion, all functions, all constructions and creations are mirroring our substantiality. Without our body we can not think, it is a basic condition and a fixed point in this existence. We are born to this world as small fragile mankind-looking creatures. Quickly we grow and develop what we should develop, reach a certain culmination, before slowly falling off, fading out. Birth and death, the only true things in life. But in between?

We eat and we shit. But in between? In between there are a lot of things going on. A delicate system that distributes the chemical components to the functions that need them the most. It portions carefully, not too much, not too little, a delicate system. The slightest disturbance in this system generates unbalance and undesired effects. Everything is closely packed, wall to wall, pressed together to make use of the smallest space, to keep the constitutional outer border to the world. Economical.

Then the little central, almost in the middle, so important, that rythmically keeps the whole thing going, gives the peripheral as well as the central its obvious role, that never sleeps, always focused on its task. There are those who have penetrated the human body with pegs of iron and discovered chaos, a flow of incomprehensibility, a mess that has sprung forth like panic among those who gets lost, confusion. – How frightening!

Everything has its place, its shape and its logic, visible on the outside, where the protecting cover keeps it all in perfect order. Naked we all look almost the same; we know that and that is frightening, so the clothes that we wear announce our place in the social hierarchical system. But the body in itself can be the bearer of expressions for social signals. Fatness will then be a  tool. Fatness among the rich and wealthy. Fatness among the noble. Motionless. Fatness as an escape from fear of being wiped out, of death. That we know, that death means loss of weight, total loss of weight, to the skin, or better said: into the bones. No one wants to die. Better then to eat until we explode, like Mr. Creosote, now while it is possible; to eat, to be in the best of health, to prosper. It should be visible. We know for sure that the skinny ones have never been highly ranked on the normative social ladder. The thin ones have mostly been functioning as models, links to the ideal, to the unreachable, as saints and idols. As the inners longing for something else, such as an unconscious certainty (that we try to keep distance from) that it is not the terrifying unjust social order that is for real, that there is something else, even if it is almost unbearable. Like the fat power’s constant envy of the thin one’s, of they standing in passionate closeness, they in life living, they in motion. But the privilege to become fat remains. It will not be given away by free will, it gives a super human comfort and a distance to the world around. – Which is not to say that it is only the powerful who are fat, but that’s another story.

And then, that little trigger unit that laterally viewed seems to be positioned at the top. It seems to control most of what is going on and is often also attributed unworldly relations. The one that is without a body, like Krang in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who, forsaken and vulnerable, has built himself a shell of metal, an artificial body that becomes invincible and immortal. – The transparent that is being stored, but nevertheless practises its influencial effect, its capacity. It is not easy to be without a container for your thoughts, it is not easy to be an immortal without space, to be an impulse without an executor, to be a flow without a flow, to be a teacher without a class, to be a dream without a limitation, to be a limitation without a dream. – This is of course fundamental, but needs anyway to be repeated over and over again. Don’t you think? It is so goddam difficult! So fucking difficult to get hold of. It always slips through your teeth.

And you can not be eaten the whole time either, eh? It is also necessary to eat a bit now and then, to have the possibility to keep it going. Because it is the sex, or better; the genitals. It is the genitals who serve the purpose that is so incomprehensibly functional. Docking the bodies in the most important stage of them all. When the flow goes from body to body. When the flow is being taken care of, stored, processed and resulting in something else, something that is inconceivably functional. It is rare that Krang enters the human arena. Not even Johnny from Johnny Got His Gun. No, Johnny won’t enter at all, because he’s got no legs, no arms, no eyes, no mouth and no ears. But he’s got sensations in the rest; in his skin, in his genital and in his intestines. In the package that still, after all, is being carefully stored, packed, within the covering. It is like a miracle. It is like a miracle that the flow keeps on going, that what is left is still working. Supposedly this is the last that leaves us. Death.

There have been so many discussions about where the wings of the angels emanate from. From the shoulder-blades or from the upper part of the arms or alongside, or attached directly to the chest. There have been so many discussions about this, there have been so many discussions about this. – But the wings of the angels emanate from the brain! Nothing else! The brain is filled with wings. Feathers. That is good. There have been so many discussions about this, that it is the angels that dock us up to the big unknown. This sounds very much like a pedagogical model for interpretation that we, poor fellows, have been fed since early childhood by falseness itself: the Church and the State.

Then the pain in the nails, and the pimples and fistulas and boils and warts and varicose veins. And the blisters and everything that affects the surface. Not to forget scratches and wounds. And bites from mosquitos and stabs from knives and pegs and whatever. From teeth as well. And the pressure, yes, the pressure on the outside. The pressure from the inside. The threat that feels, that leaks out inbetween, that leaks through, that threats again. It is after all not totally tight. Suddenly it can open up, somewhere, and something small is oozing out. As it should. No one who penetrates with pegs of iron. Just flows that threaten and have to leave. Just as they should. But still suffering. An anxiety. Vomit for example. Or tears. Sweat. But not blood, no not blood, then there are the pegs again, the pegs of iron or similar, and we don’t want that, no, no.

And the food. The food that should go in and then go out. And inbetween? That should be chewed and should be digested. That comes out as it should, like flows in well-balanced portions, in well-balanced directions. That is good. It has done its best and is falling back. Back to where it belongs. And then back again, over and over again. And the air, the air that we inhale. That we create the words with, that squeaks and whines, that whistle and sings, that screams, that claims. That is God. That is one in my thoughts, but another in my words.   

“Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of Kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, the flesh of all men, both free and slave, small and great.” (Revelation, 19:17 and 18.)

And what do we really look like? Darwin looked like an ape; supposedly that was his trauma that he projected on the rest of the world. That’s how we do it, we humans, project what we have in there and internalize what we have out there, in an eternal exchange, for good or for bad. Hitler wanted to drag the whole world with him into death. It is said that he said, before he crossed the threshold: I shall drag the whole world with me into the abyss! And that’s how we want it, yes? No one wants to die alone, though we all do it anyway. That is good. But, it has to be said, for the one who dies everything, the whole world, goes with him. That’s how it is. That’s how it is. But before this? While we are here. While we have our bodies. Our shells, our vessels. As a loan. What do we really look like? Why do we look like we do? – Well, it is like this, listen carefully now! We look like we do because we have an interior, an inner self. The inner manifests itself in the outer. Every monk (priest) knows this, and politician too. We have a good chance, while we are here, to do something about it; to influence and change the outer. We can all change the outer. Look a little bit better. For each other. We all know how important that is, don’t we? Every newspaper or magazine or TV-programme is filled with information about how to lose weight or rebuild your ass or whatever. It’s fundamental! Who wants to look like Göring? The fact is that we can easily do it by ourselves; recreate. It is enough to place yourself in front of the mirror and get going. How do I want to look? – Decide yourself and start working on the project, it will quickly give you a visible effect. We cannot hide anything! When I was little I thought it was possible for other people to see when I thought, what I thought. As in the cartoons, you know, like Donald Duck who had a thought-cloud over his head. A thought-cloud where everyone within reach could freely read from my inner flow of the most personal. Nothing can be hidden, the shame is big but the guilt is bigger, it is mental.

Oh yes, this eternal materialization, this chance of a body, an opportunity. As I write this they report in the media that the population in Sweden has just become nine million bodies. Nine million bodies that come from where? From where?

I remember that when my kids were big enough we could, in one way or another, communicate verbally. I used to ask them where they came from. – Where do you come from? Do you know? Do you remember? I was wondering if they had some small reminiscences left, some small memories or so. They were still so close. So close to that incomprehensible. So close to that threshold just recently passed.

Leif Elggren

http://www.leifelggren.org/

foot paths

long hair