back in Norway after a period of several years away. finding out what is up. the school here is well-funded. oil is still flowing (at a reduced price than before). the North Sea. there is a creeping feeling of the country being hemmed-in, although active in the EFTA (European Free-Trade Area) and in the now-fractured Nordic Union, economically, Norway feels isolated. it is noticeable by the contents of shop-shelves which don’t reflect the same variety as those in, say, Finland or Sweden. aside from not being ego-centric, any foray into socio-political observations are based in vague and passing whim of mind, not soul.
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is “I desire you” and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. — Roland Barthes