Showing posts with label Wilfred Thesiger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wilfred Thesiger. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Back home

It's business as usual. Running, bonding, sleeping, eating, washing and sweating. Still hot.

I'm sorting out my personal archive together with Helene. Stuff written by me, or to me, or newspaper articles I've saved, it's all being organized finally. Now it's like my whole life is spread out on the floor, or at least the last 19 years. There's been a lot of that lately, and it's both nostalgic and interesting. To see both how I've changed and how I haven't.

Another nostalgic thing is to watch The Cosby Show on TV. Haven't seen it for 20 years maybe but on one of the many channels the airwaves are littered with these days, they're showing the old episodes again. It's not the best in television history (although very influential), but it's comforting to watch. Soothing somehow. It's weird though how much the acting abilities differ among the cast.

I've finished reading Wilfred Thesiger. I liked the book a lot. At one point he's trying to get some sleep in the cold desert night. He's very hungry and even more thirsty and is feeling miserable. But then he asks himself if there's some place he'd rather be and when he realizes that the answer to that question is No, he relaxes, stops feeling sorry about himself and falls asleep.

And from Thesiger I've moved on to C.P. Snow. I'm now on my third of his Strangers and Brothers novels, The Affair. It's not great literature but he's sharp and knowledgable and they're unputdownable. After reading them you almost feel like you're a Fellow at Cambridge yourself, and that the selection of a new Master (as in The Masters) are among the most important things in your life.

By the way, I hope you know I have a film blog as well? Fredrik on Film. Go nuts!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Catwalk

It's weird but since I left work three weeks ago I've felt disorganized and stressed, for no apparent reason. But actually there's a very good reason. I've had so much to do and I've not really been handling my priorities as a pro. But now I've almost done everything that needed to be done, and feeling more and more secure.

Today's been a good day. For a moment it looked as if I would be angry and disappointed because I was meant to see someone but she cancelled with very short notice. But instead I had a very nice evening, with some stadtbummeln, very good sushi, a nice drink and a fashion show in the open. (I do so like fashion shows, which might not be what people think.) And I began the day with long run, which went ever so smoothly.

Today I've also begun reading Wilfred Thesiger's account of him and two Bedouins crossing the Empty Quarter, in the south of the Arabian peninsula, on camel. It's a fascinating read, and as something of a desert fetishist myself, it was unavoidable that I read it, sooner or later.