Anima natura

In natura gloriam est. Or something like that. How often have I forgotten or neglected the true power of silence filled with noise easy on the ears, pugnant smells free of heavy metals, fears immediate and easily explained after a great mystery.

In simple terms, being outdoors is what you and me both are most fitted for. We might envelop ourselves in comfortable habits, under a great woolen blanket in front of a droning television set, full of blurb and praise of all man made. Be sure though, that your body will never seize to react to the fresh air after heavy rain, the changing light of the day or stop reacting to the smell of wild strawberries. No matter if you experienced any of these things, as soon as you spend ANY time in surroundings giving you those things, you will react.

Funkadelic Parliament have an album called Free your mind and your ass will follow. In essence, yes, I agree. I also believe the opposite is true - Free your ass and your mind will follow.

I am straying from my path. Let me more concise.

Light
Over the course of the day, our bodies secrete a number of hormones meant to regulate everything from food intake, alertness and sleep pattern. We are born under a sun, or rather, circling a sun giving a rhythm we cannot escape. Time define us as much as we try to define time. Seasonal anxiety disorder comes from lack of light, due to the fact that biologically we are all from equator and expects time to tick with an easily predictable rhythm. Living up north or down south, where there are great variations in the amount of light our bodies and eyes receive, the secretion of our glands comes out of whack with available goods to be delivered from the surroundings. Mistreating your body by being in an artificially lighted room when there is plenty of natural light is a not so effective thing to do to yourself.

Oxygen
We are not very happy in an office all our lives. We cannot be. Our bodies functions much better outdoors after a heavy rain, when most microparticles, dust, pollen and the like are washed to the ground. Our lungs gets a much better oxygen uptake in fresh air and our brains suddenly goes harmony. Fresh air promotes physical activity, which in its turn promotes an even more effective oxygen uptake.

Sound
Again, we are wired with a propensity to adapt to our surroundings. If you are in an environment with no or few unexpected variations in the level, pitch and frequency variations, you are much more alert and relaxed than in an enviroment full of noise. Noise is a major health hazard. Stress hormons are produced over an extended period of time and you overload both your nerveends in your ears and the ability to relax.

Ok, enough with such boring descriptions of what our bodies are able to and best suited to do. I could go on with how touching petals make you feel different than say rubbing plastic on a keyboard, or how subtle changes in barometric pressure or direction of the wind makes you feel alive, or how the pulse drops after half an hour in the woods.

I have no idea how to describe the joy I have of nature. My eyes are pleased, I feel invigorated, I feel relaxed as if I am one with everything. I am happy as in the arms of a loved one. I am more able to see nuances in colour, to hear subtle variations and to sense the mood of those I speak to when I return. Balanced, I guess that is what it makes me.

Western society prides itself on its great advances in technology and comfort. Bugger that. Technology was a matter of necessity, in order to survive in harsh conditions. With no doubt, nature have made western, or rather northern societies more adept at change than societies not having to think of tedious details like planning ahed for winter. We have just gone a bit too far, when our technolgy makes us forget how wonderful the real thing really is.

Next thing I'll write about nature will be strictly based on some story or the other, better able to describe a good experience. The mad cat Mono is sleeping in front of me on the desk.

1982?

25 years ago. That's a long time. A clown then, a clown now. A skewed smile, a skewed look on life.

I'm not sure if I was much different then than I am now. I like to play, I like to put on a face. It opens up so much. Perhaps I was closer to my friends then than now. It might be said I have a tendency yo zone out, to dream away, to make worlds where a clown is the most serious person there.

I am not yet so old that I have any reason to look back, to make any autobiography. Still, it is nice seeing that picture again. It was a beautiful august day, together with my neighbour, her somewhat nervous little brother and her cousin in the background. I remember I looked forward to seeing that cousing, totally captivated by her beauty. Maybe I did not have very vivid fantasies of what to do with that stomach churning feeling when attracted to beauty, and I cannot say I was in love. Seeing beauty just sort of made me feel good. Then as now.

What I dream of now is perhaps that life be a bit more like walking carelessly with a clowns mask, playing, skipping down the street, careless and free of worries. Life is, or should not be, just worries, work and obligation.

These thoughts might have popped up after the death of Mwalami. A few days after his death I got to know how he lived those last months, and the reason for his untimely demise. As it happens, he fell out of a tree - probably while being his usual carefree self, playing and laughing. He became unconsciuos, but seemed to get along well after a few weeks. Six months later, the night before an exam, he dropped dead. Just like that.

He continued at school. From when I helped him get into fourth grade, his first experience with school, he now was having final exams in seventh grade. He supposedly did splendidly at school. He was, according to those who lived with him, a very happy boy. As I knew him. Just those simple facts gave me great consolation. Knowing that what we struggled with, all those letters and numbers and swim strokes, did not go wasted. Yes, I choose to celebrate his life, and the life of all children finding the world exciting, strange and full of people and things to explore. No use being sad of all that did not become.

Get out and play.

Obituary

Mwalami Mtumbi, son of Mzee, brother of Adija and Bahati, went away yesterday. He became 14. How he perished or if he was content up to that moment, I do not know.

If I knew him at all, I would say he smiled all the way until the afterworld swallowed his dear memory. He was my hero, my very best friend and pride of my life. He was a funny boy who gave me great company, who listened rapt and attent, who taught me more than I could teach him. He was a student, a child never before gone to school. He who wanted so much to learn that he got everything needed to read and write and do the math quickly within three months. He showed me the monkeys, how they also wanted to play. Then we learned how to shoot straight with the bow and arrow to scare those who stole our food. Swimming lessons and sports. It is not possible to think of him without the smile popping through.

Honoured I am for having known him. I miss him. I am sad I did not get to see him again. It must not be to late to meet his family once more though. I had more friends amongst the Mtumbis than anyone can wish for. Mwalami was a very special person and I hope he lived well. Life can be cruel, but hopefully not all the way. I know those good memories I have of him and I am conviced he must have many a good moment, those moments that never fade, never becoming anything less than a feeling of utter content. Life, hope and faith. A memory lives forever.

M&Ms for facilitators

Now that Edvard Munchs paintings Scream and Madonna are recovered, absolutely not sitting with a filthy rich collector in some secluded room, M&M will have to pay out the promised reward of two million M&Ms. That's a whole lot of candy. Two metric tons actually.

David Toska, as we well remember, was one of the robbers at NOKAS in Stavanger, April 5th 2004. While the police now was in the midst of the most prolonged and extensive hunt ever, Munchs paintings were stolen by some cannonfodder August 22th 2004. The police quickly caught on, or not, and all hope seemed lost after just a couple of links. He was caught, or rather called home and surrendered himself, April 5th 2005. Convicted, he has also started talking about the network of lies, deceptions and power implicit in the robbery of Munchs paintings. If not, he has at least been dropping subtle hints through connections having ties to some reporter or the other, as his face has featured with such information now and then the last two years.

Also during the two years which has passed since the NOKAS, certain coercive tactics by the police have been disclosed to great embarrassment

On wiki I attempted to be very factual. As I don't know if that text will be there or not in a day or two in its current form, I cite it:

In 1996 he was arrested for carrying a loaded weapon in a bar in Oslo. When the police searched his home they found an MP5 sub-machine gun, explosives and tools for committing robberies. He is considered the mastermind behind the break-in at Norsk Medisinaldepot (2000), the safe-deposit box robbery at Bryn (2001), the commando-style robbery of Postens brevsentral October 27th 2003 and the NOKAS robbery April 5th 2004.

He admitted his involvement in the deposit robbery at Bryn and the Medicinal Depot, was committed, but later acquitted because of questionable motives and plausible coercion by the police. Emptying the bank boxes in 2001 brought out approximately 3 million USD, or about 20 million Norwegian Kroner in values. A security employee, by the order of the police, fed Toska with information, and so the police was said to make possible and facilitate both robberies.

The NOKAS robbery is probably the gravest example of hardened criminal activity in Norway. Never before has such brutality been evident on such a scale. The robbers got away with approximately 56 million NOK. Following the robbery the police started the most extensive investigation in modern times and focused all their forces on unraveling a hornets nest of suspected syndicate crime. Edvard Munchs paintings Scream and Madonna were stolen August 22th 2004 by three no-ones. All clues as to whom might have ordered the theft seemed to run dry after a few links and hints. Toska was arrested in Spain on April 5th 2005.

In the NOKAS-trial against Toska he and his accomplices confessed to participation in the robbery, but not to the killing. On March 5th 2006 Toska was sentenced to 19 years in prison. August 30 2006 Munchs paintings returned almost unscathed. Police refuses to say a word about where they found the paintings, nor whom they might suspect. No arrests were said to be made or any reward for tips having been paid. M&M however, pledged to pay out 40.000 bags of itself to whomever might have facilitated the rescue of Munchs paintings. Toskas face once more dove into the limelight.

The intricacy of this life of crime might explain his prominence in the media.

Please be aware that some of the information in that article was put there by fellow wikipedians. Most of the form is mine. Every date is verifiable.

More M&Ms to come?

Of course. There are circumstantial, even hard evidence of Toska being under the surveillance of the police in one way or the other since at least 2000. As in This is revolution a whole network has been threathened. Who might comprise that network is what is interesting, as surely it includes at the very least a few rotten apples within the police, or simply subterfuge. That is not conspiracy, that is just planning forward. We come well prepared with the few prominent examples of disclosed crime we have - first there was Treholt, pure espionage. Then came white collar criminals, pyramids, fraud and outright con-men. None high profile, but a few prominent hints into a deceptive net. Then violence erupted and Toska came down as first the devil and then a moderator.

Well, he might be a changed man, but boy, what have our police come to when they have known him, intimately, for the last 10 years? Without managing to take him down. I effin' don't believe it.

Politiet uttrykker i pressemelding 04.09.2006:
Politiet har ikke inngått noen avtale med Toska hva angår de forhold som er omtalt i pressemeldingen.

Pobrezinhos

Os brasileiros não prestam de jogar futebol. Brasil - Noruega, 1-1.

Brasil has never, I repeat, never beaten Norway in a football match. Poor souls.