Talk about anticlimax!

I love “The Portrait of Dorian Gray”, and it would most likely rank within my top ten; I was therefor thrilled when I turned on the TV and realised a filmed version of the book was just about to be shown. But how could I ever have imagined that a 1945 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production would do the book justice!? The worst of it all was when Dorian went in the saucy club at the beginning. I was full of expectations as to whom would be portraying Sybil Vane. But my god! I could not believe my eyes! Onto the stage comes that “Murder She Wrote”-woman, Angela Lansbury! That’s when I stopped watching.

Oscar Wilde would not have been pleased.

Luckily before I stopped watching, I had had a fair share of Sir Henrys cynical statements. That man is cool!

“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.”

“It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But . . . it is better to be good than to be ugly.”

but of course this is all depending on if Karl Gunnarsson was busy

Interpol - Leif Erikson live

... and if Krause is busy Paul Banks will do fine ...

Six Feet Under

And on the “Who I’d Like to Meet”-question my answer is: ... Peter Krause ...

On my way to mindfulness I have decided to change paths. I will leave Buddhism and get on to Hollywood instead. Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley) might be on to the core of the matter …

“It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and … this incredible benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse. But it helps me remember … and I need to remember … Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart is going to cave in.”

All Set For the Venture of Mindfulness

Yesterday I was strolling along the shoreline, water up to my knees, listening to some fabulous music. There was a beautiful play of sunlight reflexes on the water, and everything was just so lovely - perfect in every way. Still, in this ideal situation, I realise I am not able to enjoy it for what it is, as thoughts on other things constantly distracts me. Seems like such a waste of a lovely moment, not being able to cherish it fully!

Buddha’s idea of even the loveliest experience being tainted by worry of loosing it seems relevant here. I therefore had the idea I might try some Buddhist meditation to see if it makes a difference in my trying to get to grips with my awareness problem. Having consulted the internet I have found some really cool stuff; Zen Buddhism being especially tantalizing. Zen is concerned with what actually is, rather than what we think or feel about what is. Zen is not a philosophy or a religion because Zen is not words. Zen tries to free the mind of the slavery of words and the constriction of logic.

By chance my friend the psychotherapist has been able to give me a scientific angle on the matter. In psychotherapy they talk about “mindfulness” as a way of mastering situations by seeing them for what they really are. (To master a phobia a patient is, for example, trained to view a situation exactly for what it is there and then, as a means of controlling it. When we experience something that frightens us the autonomic nervous system is triggered. Our mind then reads this as we actually should be scared and thus the panic is set on. The body fools the mind in other words. If we just calmly feel the here and now we peel of all the excessive thoughts that might fool us into being scared.)

And now for some audio files on Buddhist meditation ...

Wonderful!

This is Bosse. He is on his way over to his mates to watch the Sweden-Paraguay game.