#### About my dark retreat. Five days and six nights, from Friday at 7 pm until Thursday at 7 am is 475,200 seconds. Ask me how I know. In 475,200 seconds you can drive from the top of Norway to Gibraltar, run a couple of marathons, and then drive back. In 475,200 seconds, you can watch all the six original Star Wars films 10 times. In 475,200 seconds you can listen to the Sound of silence 2527 times and still have a couple of seconds to spare. In 475,200 seconds you can leave your office, go out to on town, come back home rather late, sleep for ages, eat a long breakfast, go for a walk, wash the bathroom, read half a novel, play football with the kids, mow the lawn, call your brother, watch a film, practice rubik’s cube, test your new toothbrush and thousands of other things — and still have four days and four nights for whatever you want. Me? I chose not to. I chose something else. I chose to lock myself in a little room, all by myself, draw all the curtains, turn off the lights – and wait. In pitch darkness. For 475,200 seconds. Ask me again how I know. And the reason? In the darkness you don't need reasons. #### Day 1 I am in a little room somewhere out in the French countryside. All the windows are covered by black curtains over a black mattresses over closed shutters. All the lights are turned off and all the light switches are taped over and the only source of light is a candle flickering over worn carpet, an empty cupboard, a box in the wall for food, a bed, a table, a chair, and a tiny kitchen. I am alone here now. Half an hour ago, the host was here and explained to me how the box in the wall works, when food will be served, how the heater and the fan work, how I can write notes and put it in the box if there's something I need to communicate. Good luck, she said. You might want to light the candle first, meditate over the light, go slowly into the dark. You have a long journey ahead of you. Good luck, again. And then walked down the stairs, out the door downstairs and was gone. Outside the church bells toll seven times. In twelve hours there will be breakfast. The only thing I know, is that it will be vegan. The only thing I hope is that it won't be oatmeal with bananas. Oatmeal without bananas is okay, but with bananas, sticky, yucky, smucky, ucky… But it won't be oatmeal with bananas. It must be something more solid, surely. I put my bag behind the bed, so as not to trip over it in the dark. The toothbrush is on the edge of the sink in the bathroom. The layout of the room is more or less memorised. The last messages have been sent and the telephone has been switched off. So. I suppose we're ready? I lean over the table and blow out the candle. In one moment there is nothing but pitch black darkness. And there are only 475,199 moments left. #### Day 2 The lingering taste of banana oatmeal is still stuck between my teeth. It's sometime after midday, maybe three or four pm, I'm not quite sure, I can't hear the church bells through the earmuffs. And I still find remnants of banana around my molars. And I regret. Oh, not the breakfast, not really, and not what I'm doing in the darkness at all, but rather what I have done in the light. I regret singing a mean song to a teacher in fourth grade – the lyrics were something like «shut up shut up shut up» – while she was sitting in the classroom going through our essays. I regret losing contact with a friend, really breaking up with him, not because something had happened, or because he had been a jerk, but because I was restless, I wanted to move on and see new worlds, constantly new worlds, new people, new lives. As if I already was a tagalong spouse not pre factum. I regret all the times I have failed or betrayed or let down my children or parents or my wife or anyone who trusted me and leaned on me and suddenly realised I wasn't there anymore, at least not the way they needed and expected. I regret hugs I didn't give, or gave, or could've given, or should've given. Why did I do that? Why didn't I do that? So many times I messed up for myself and others! A piece of banana gets unstuck from a molar and spreads it’s sticky yuckiness along my tongue. I am on the floor, where I spent the night, and everything is just dark, both with and without the sleeping mask I bought last week. Maybe I should sleep a bit again. Maybe 12 hours isn't enough. I mean, there's not much else to do. #### Day 3 I see stars. Up there in the dark somewhere, it's hard to calculate the distance, I see hundreds of small, white, shining dots, just like real stars in the night sky, dancing and jumping and skipping and then disappearing when I try to look at them. When I look away, they come back. Some of them come in pairs, almost like two shining mouse eyes. One of the stars shoots across the ceiling – because that is the ceiling, right? – and I'm trying to make a wish, but before I know what I want, it's too late. A quote by Nietzsche pops up in my head: Ich sage euch: man muß noch Chaos in sich haben, um einen tanzenden Stern gebären zu können. Ich sage euch: ihr habt noch Chaos in euch. On must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. The darkness is pushing down on my chest like a physical weight. I am in baby pose – let's call this yoga – under a blanket on the floor, next to the heater, and I can feel the darkness pushing and crushing me from all sides. But I don't run away. The door is unlocked and I can just walk out any time I want, but I choose to stay here. The light switch is half a metre from my hand, and my telephone, with an infinite amount of entertainment, is on the table. But I remain here. And I think to myself, what good is regretting? I am here now, that's all that counts. Of course I've let people down, who hasn't? Of course I've been a moron and jerk at times. But I am a human being, I think to myself. Like all the other jerks and morons. Let it be. What is, is. What was, is no more. And I forgive others for what they've done to me. And I forgive myself for what I've done to others. A fuzzy cloud of dirty mint green light slowly passes in front of my eyes. I recognise it. It's the same sky as that time in our old house, that time I was in bed and couldn't sleep, that time I visited my dad after the divorce, the time I was fiddling with a loose tooth and discovered that you can create those skies by pushing on your eyeballs. It's 40 years ago now. But it's the same cloud of light. I open my eyes. I close my eyes. It doesn't make a difference. A piece of banana gets unstuck from a different molar this time and gets stuck to another tooth. My stomach is rumbling. Must be dinner soon. #### Day 4 Boring. Jesus fucking Christ this is boring. I've taken off my earmuffs, but I'm keeping the sleeping mask on. I mean, what if there suddenly is a flash or a spark from my watch or through the window of the heater or something? It would probably destroy everything. And I prefer not to start from scratch. Some pigeons coo outside. On the windowsill, probably? Most of the time they don't say much, it's almost as if they're not there, but sometimes it seems one of them comes back from where the pigeons go when they pigeon, and they all coo how amazing it is that they are together again and how good it is to be together here on the windowsill. And then they are quiet again, together with each other, and together with me. As for me, I haven't said a word since Friday at 7 pm. A couple of hundred thousand moments ago now. Not a whisper, not even a cough to clear my throat. There's no one to talk to, and I don't have to say anything loud in order for me to hear it. I could've sung, maybe. I sometimes do at home. Maybe they sing at home now, together, without me. I could have recited one of the three poems I know by heart, to make time pass. But no. In the darkness you are quiet. It doesn't invite anything else. And time passes anyway. I open my eyes in the darkness, or better, I focus on the stars and the lights. They are still there, but the lights are stronger now. They last longer and take more of the space – and many times they are full of intricate geometrical patterns, black lines and curves which also disappear when I look straight at them and which also seem to skip and dance and jump. Some look like old-fashioned iron fences. In some places the lights are being cut through by sharp edged black shadows of trees or rocks or grass or even small animals showing themselves in profile for a moment or two before they are gone. A large shadow drifts past me on the right. A short burst of fear shoots through me, but disappears again before I have time to feel frightened. I trust this darkness, and even if some of the mouse eyes were actual mouse eyes of actual mice, they are my friends, and we have nothing to fear. If I had been afraid, it might have alleviated the boredom a bit, and it might even have made some of the moments more bearable. But I continue to be here, unagitated, unmoved. Unafraid. In the boredom I choose – or maybe it's not me, maybe it just happens by itself – to imagine things. I imagine how I should be a better person: how I in the future can minimise things I might regret later, actions and words which don't make the world a better place, neither for me nor others. How do I want to be as a human being? And I'm trying to control my thoughts in a somewhat reasonable direction, to plan, to envision this future me, but it's as if they are being usurped by a frenetic Dali. I try to envision myself at home next week, but the house turns into a blue whale which turns into something cucumberish which again turns into some melting maps which again turn into a kaleidoscope of shapes. I try to imagine a car, it turns into a butterfly with a donkey's tail. I try to envision old basketball achievements, like I did yesterday, when I sat for at least one hour just going through all my best shots and passes and blocks and steals. But even that turns into chaos now, no moved, no people, just seemingly random connections of random atoms of my mind. Everything I try to imagine, evaporates, melts, disappears, changes form and shape and colour. I can't hold onto anything anymore. I try to imagine my wife. Her voice is not a problem, and her face I can somewhat hold onto – but then I for some reason try to envision her with green face paint. And I can’t. For some reason the face paint is blue. OK, I say, let’s imagine her with blue face paint — and it turns green. And so on. OK. Let's do something really simple. Imagine a table with a red cloth. That's it. Just a normal table, like the one we have at home, with a normal, completely red cloth just like the one we have at home. But no. The very moment I think I have this red cloth in my mind’s eye, a pattern of gnomes appear on the cloth, or lines of different colours, or the cloth for some reason refuses to lay still on the table. Just a normal plain red cloth seems to be impossible. I imagine my wife and me standing in the living room, holding a cloth between us, and she says «Wow, look at this completely read cloth», and I answer «Yes it is completely red and just red». And even when I think I've nailed it, it takes just a moment or two, and the cost is everything else but red again. It's like a dream on steroids. In a normal dream there is some kind of logic, you have objects and feelings which last, you have some kind of permanence and you can tell about it in a way which makes sense. This, however, is utter anarchy. No object permanence, no inner logic, just an endless stream of constantly permuting and changing quasi objects which I hardly can control at all. But breathe. The church bells have tolled four times. Almost dinner time. Soon there will be a little box with some rice or pasta so I can focus on something else. And soon, finally, I'll get rid of the taste of banana oatmeal from today's breakfast. And after that, I’ll sleep properly again. Inchallah. #### Day 5 The church bells have stopped tolling. At least for me. That is, I hear them when I have my earmuffs on, far away, in the distance; when I take my earmuffs off, it's just wind and birds and a random car on the street down below. No tolling, even when I stand complete still for at least an hour and wait anxiously. In other words, the tolling I hear now is a hallucination, has to be a hallucination, no church bells toll better through hearing protection than without. In other words, I have no idea what time it is. Sometime between dinner – which comes around three our six or… I can't remember when – and midnight, when I haven't heard the church bells these last days, probably because I've been asleep. But I've eaten for the last time, of that I'm sure. Sometime tomorrow morning around 7 am, she will bring me the last breakfast, but it will be banana oatmeal again, like all other mornings, and I can't stand it anymore. But it's a church bells have gone silent, my own body has become louder and louder. I scratch my fingers over my face and I can hear the clawing sound, just like in an extreme close-up in an intense psychological thriller. When I see from side to side, or at least move my eyes as if seeing from side to side, I can hear my eyeballs moving – maybe because the eyelashes and the eyebrows are rubbing against each other, or maybe it's the eyeballs themselves rubbing against the skin. In my ears there is a constant voice or whisper of breath or wind in an eternal anapest, like a soft version of we will rock you –dam dam dish, dam dam dish – over a never-ending, intense squeaking or squaling from everywhere. The harmony of the spheres? The thunder of Nirvana? Deep insights galloping in my general direction? A neighbour breathing heavily? No. Just my tinnitus reminding me of the cannons in the army. Just the sound of my own heart sometimes beating so hard it keeps me awake in the darkness. Well, if you can call that darkness. In some moments that are complete, complicated scenes in front of my eyes, like extremely detailed and intricate stills from mythological blockbusters. In an instance I see a table with hundreds of small, strange details, a garden through the window, paintings on the walls, a wooden floor with stains from yesterday's tomato soup… and then in the next instance it's gone again, before I can study it more closely. My eyes, first the left, then the right, have begun to vibrate light, more more often there is a white light blinking in front of them, or under them, or inside them, as if someone is holding a torch on my nose and pointing it upwards. The stars are still there, a bit in the background, and also the dirty mint green clouds, but now often with colourful paintings or drawings within themselves. But my thoughts and my imaginations become more and more grey. No matter what I'm trying to imagine, it’s as if there's a thick layer of grey volcanic ashes bubbling or streaming in from the side and turning everything into the same colour. So this is when I become mad? This is when social isolation and the lack of lights gets to me? Will I soon start screaming, hit the wall, run naked out in the villages in the middle of the night, start mumbling that the end is nigh? No, not really. The end is near, but just the end of my dark room retreat, and I am occasionally a bit impatient, but that's all. Most of all I feel a deep calm. I lie in baby pose or walk round and round on the carpet or sit in my chair or lie on the bed or stand in the middle of the room and just wait. Mostly in a chair under a blanket, like an old age pensioneer, while thinking about everything and nothing. Right now that I'm really looking forward, after a few hundred thousand moments, to finally have a shower and change clothes again. But first, I'll be studying dancing stars. #### Day 6 –Jostein? A soft knock on the door. –Jostein? It's Thursday morning. A slightly less soft knock on the door. – It's 7 o'clock. I get off the floor, where I have been sleeping, again, and hear myself answer with a murky, gruffy voice: –Yes. I made it. – I'll just put your breakfast in the box and give you time, says the voice. I’ll meet you outside at 10. Then I hear her steps down the stairs and a door been opened and shut. So. Here we are. Ready? Five more moments. Some pigeon coo just outside the curtains. A tractor, it has to be a tractor, goes back and forth far out in the distance in a field somewhere. I get up, shuffle over to the box, velcro away the cloth, push aside the hatch cover, if that's the word, and take out a spoon and a square glass box with plastic lid. It smells as expected. Then I shuffle over with a spoon in the box to the cupboard, then to the wrong edge of the carpet, and finally, after a few seconds of recalibration, over to the table where I put the box down. So, that was it? Level done? Four more moments. The darkness around me isn’t dark anymore. A few random white lights pulsating from below, some mint green clouds passing by from my right towards my left, a strange ash grey scene with lots of strange details – but before I understand what I see, or not see, or see in my minds eye, it mutates into completely different scenes, completely different skies, completely different lights. I see the mint green wall of the room, and I know it must be in a complete different place and in a completely different colour. In the background stars are dancing. Yes. That was it. With dancing stars and an uneaten banana oatmeal. Three more moments. I take a deep breath. It's like sitting there with the last piece of a huge puzzle and then hesitate. Not because you don't want to finish the puzzle, but because you don't know what will happen afterwards. But if I've learned one thing here, it’s this: time flows on anyway. And that there is a value to hang on to the very moment you're in at any given time — and then let it pass. And now I'm here on this threshold. And now I'm going over. For five days and six nights, I have chosen to continue, not to turn on the light, not to find my phone, not to go out to life, but just be here, in the dark, alone, isolated in the middle of the world in the French countryside. For five days and six nights I have been in moment after the moment, second after second, seen them come and pass, grain of sand after grain of sand until they turned into a big bloody sandcastle. I have learned to trust the darkness, to feel at ease here. I have seen monsters and chaos, angels and patterns, but never been afraid, never felt anxious, neither for the darkness nor for my own thoughts. This is also me, I thought and forgave myself. Or not even forgave, there was nothing to forgive. It's just the way I am. It's just the way everything is. And it's neither good nor bad, neither fantastic not terrible. It just is. And that's unjudgable. Two more moments. I feel my way to the matchbox on the table, take out a match and hold it towards the edge of the box. The smell of sparks. The feeling of the match against my thumb. The weight of the box in the other hand. I stare against the spot where I think the flame will come. So. I suppose we're ready? One more moment. Goodbye darkness, my old friend. Outside the church bells toll seven times. They have come to life. So let us come to life together. 475 200

In 12 hours, I'll embark on a new quest. The goal: to become a better person. No less. I'll tackle one domain from the VIA inventory of strengths every other month. Sometimes it will be easy — I hope I won't have a hard time being curious about the world — and sometimes it will be hard — I am far from a natural leader, and I never even understood what it means to be spiritual. But that's what I'll do: try to improve all aspects of my personality. If nothing else, I will learn what I really stink at. Why I do this? I am sick and tired of excusing myself for not being the person I expect myself to be. I consider myself calm, and yet I have my unexplained outbursts of unreasonable anger. I am mercy personified, except when I am not. I am grateful for everything I have, and yet I complain about the smallest and most insignificant trivialities as soon as I get the chance. I am a great listener, and yet I talk more and more about myself. The list could go on and on. I have always considered myself a good person: reality shows me more and more that I am not. And I want to do something about that. The other reason: I'm almost 40. I am halfway in this life. The first half was spent dreaming about becoming the next celebrity, the next superstar athlete, the next great philosopher, writer, business man — the next great anything, really. But it never happened. I am too old to be the next Michael Jordan, too stupid to become the next great philosopher, too lazy to become the next anything. But I refuse to become a bitter, negative old man, sitting in his arm chair and complaining about everyone and everything. I will, if nothing else, lead a kind of life that makes people be happy for me, and happy they know me. I am not old yet, but when I grow old, I want to be ready. I want to be wise and happy in my old age. I'm not even close to being that kind of person yet. That's why I have to try. My plan for the next year is like this. In January and February, I'll try to be as curious, creative, wise etc as possible. How I'll do that, I'm not sure yet — one way will be to find heroes during the year, role models I can emulate or at least model my behaviour after. They will all be male, and they will all be old. Another way will be to find rules about how I should live my life to be healthy, happy, live long, feel better, or improve one of the 24 strengths. Some will be scientific, some will be based on some gut feeling, some will be based on some aspects of my new found heroes, some will turn out to be wrong. I will also try to look the part. I have not yet decided what that means, but a search for “wise old man” gives quite clear indications that I should end up with a long, white sage-like beard. I began saving up for a beard two hours ago. It also means going barefoot as much as possible. I already do it sometimes, and I have already run a barefoot marathon, but from now on, it will be a quest. I will not wear shoes unless I really have to. And one final rule on day 0: I will not surf the web. I will not read newspapers, I will not check NBA results, or any other sports results, I will not find entertainment on YouTube. Reading newspapers is bad for you, news is bad for you, despite some occasional gems. And sports is bad for you, it turns you away from the real issues. If I am bored, I will be bored and let the boredom linger on until I manage to push it away by my own force. Otherwise I'll end up like old people who watch all the news, all the time, just to “see what's going on in the world” — and all they ever get out of it, is tabloid sensationalism and exaggerated and skewed fears. No, whenever I use the Internet, it will be to pay bills or research my writing. Other than that, I'll use the real world instead. This concludes day 0. Happy New Year.

In 12 hours, I'll embark on a new quest. The goal: to become a better person. No less. I'll tackle one domain from the VIA inventory of strengths every other month. Sometimes it will be easy — I hope I won't have a hard time being curious about the world — and sometimes it will be hard — I am far from a natural leader, and I never even understood what it means to be spiritual. But that's what I'll do: try to improve all aspects of my personality. If nothing else, I will learn what I really stink at. Why I do this? I am sick and tired of excusing myself for not being the person I expect myself to be. I consider myself calm, and yet I have my unexplained outbursts of unreasonable anger. I am mercy personified, except when I am not. I am grateful for everything I have, and yet I complain about the smallest and most insignificant trivialities as soon as I get the chance. I am a great listener, and yet I talk more and more about myself. The list could go on and on. I have always considered myself a good person: reality shows me more and more that I am not. And I want to do something about that. The other reason: I'm almost 40. I am halfway in this life. The first half was spent dreaming about becoming the next celebrity, the next superstar athlete, the next great philosopher, writer, business man — the next great anything, really. But it never happened. I am too old to be the next Michael Jordan, too stupid to become the next great philosopher, too lazy to become the next anything. But I refuse to become a bitter, negative old man, sitting in his arm chair and complaining about everyone and everything. I will, if nothing else, lead a kind of life that makes people be happy for me, and happy they know me. I am not old yet, but when I grow old, I want to be ready. I want to be wise and happy in my old age. I'm not even close to being that kind of person yet. That's why I have to try. My plan for the next year is like this. In January and February, I'll try to be as curious, creative, wise etc as possible. How I'll do that, I'm not sure yet — one way will be to find heroes during the year, role models I can emulate or at least model my behaviour after. They will all be male, and they will all be old. Another way will be to find rules about how I should live my life to be healthy, happy, live long, feel better, or improve one of the 24 strengths. Some will be scientific, some will be based on some gut feeling, some will be based on some aspects of my new found heroes, some will turn out to be wrong. I will also try to look the part. I have not yet decided what that means, but a search for “wise old man” gives quite clear indications that I should end up with a long, white sage-like beard. I began saving up for a beard two hours ago. It also means going barefoot as much as possible. I already do it sometimes, and I have already run a barefoot marathon, but from now on, it will be a quest. I will not wear shoes unless I really have to. And one final rule on day 0: I will not surf the web. I will not read newspapers, I will not check NBA results, or any other sports results, I will not find entertainment on YouTube. Reading newspapers is bad for you, news is bad for you, despite some occasional gems. And sports is bad for you, it turns you away from the real issues. If I am bored, I will be bored and let the boredom linger on until I manage to push it away by my own force. Otherwise I'll end up like old people who watch all the news, all the time, just to “see what's going on in the world” — and all they ever get out of it, is tabloid sensationalism and exaggerated and skewed fears. No, whenever I use the Internet, it will be to pay bills or research my writing. Other than that, I'll use the real world instead. This concludes day 0. Happy New Year.

The end of the Soviet Union promised a new day. But Russia’s pattern of autocratic leadership re-emerged.

<p>Powerful. Personal. Private. It’s a web browser. But fun. It comes with a bunch of clever features built in. It’s super flexible and does not track you. Get the Vivaldi browser for desktop, mobile, and your car!</p>

Create a simple blog that brings out your writing.

1.78K Posts, 158 Following, 4.35K Followers · Type words, put them on the internet — and fediverse. Powered by @WriteFreely. Part of the @musing@musing.studio suite. @snap_as@musing.studio · @remark_as@musing.studio · @submit_as@musing.studio Toots here by @matt.

I have been at WHO for over 10 years. Like my colleagues, I have worked my butt off day and night to fight Covid and work towards universal access to health care. This place frustrates me every day.

Jedes Jahr ein neues Smartphone, das sich kaum vom Vorgänger unterscheidet – das bringt doch nichts. Liebe Hersteller, steigt lieber auf einen Zweijahres-Rhythmus um.

Not only that, but Errol Musk, Elon’s father has been quoted that he read the book and named Elon after this character [https://youtu.be/6zL9yNDs9M4]. And Elon’s grandfather was a member of a pro-Hitler fascist group in the '30s and '40s.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/52214419 [https://lemm.ee/post/52214419]

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