The Anguish of a Writer

The last month or so, I've been struggling with an old novel of mine, editing it for a new release. The struggle has been one of extreme doubt – should I really publish this book again, or let it continue its merciful sleep in oblivion?

It's a stone age story I wrote already in the late 1970's, which was published in Sweden in 1982 as Evigheten väntar (Eternity Awaits). See the cover of the book above. Already the title reveals its weakness – a tendency towards the overly sentimental and melodramatic. The text is quite pretentious at times, with wordings that reek of poetic gluttony.

It was intentional, in a way, since my aim with the book was to explore what kind of meaning stone age people found for their life, and how their brains, already at least as big as ours, perceived their world. They did not just live their lives, but indulged in them, marveled at the wonders of the world around them, and meditated their own beings with amazement.

Still, that made the text heavy with exaggeration and sticky with ornamentation.

So, when starting to edit the novel, some 30 years after it was written, I went through quite a lot of anguish. Could this firework of a text at all be edited into something readable?

I did what I could, without changing the novel into some other story. It was an edit, not a rewrite, although the idea of the latter was sometimes tempting. I made a number of little changes on just about each and every page, and still it felt thick with the kind of sentiment that almost turns itself into parody.

Several times I considered giving it up, and turn my attention to another script instead. I have a few to choose from. But with a persistence that got its energy from frustration instead of any strength of my character, I carried on until the last page. The script had gotten quite messy from all the marks of my pen, and it took a while to type all the corrections into the Word file.

I made a PageMaker file of the text, still very unsure of its quality, and started sketching on a cover design. That was some kind of comfort. I always enjoy making the book design, deciding on typography, caring about page breaks, and so on. That can be more pleasing than writing the book. It was certainly the case with this one.

When I was ready with that, I printed the whole thing out on paper, to have one last editing session with it. This final reading I usually do on restaurants, coffee shops, train rides and such, just to get out of my home.

On a local restaurant that I frequent regularly, a friend got curious about the manuscript and asked if he could have a look at it. This friend is a priest, struggling with his daily professional duties, which can be grim at times, as well as with his own faith and its collisions with the flawed institution that is his church. I value his opinion, since he has put in a tremendous effort to reach it.

Now, he opened the script and read the first few lines out loud. They contain a very comprised creation myth of sorts, as told by the book's main character, and how it sort of leads to his own birth and emergence in the world. It plays on the word “föda”, which means both breed and feed. Here it is, in a rough translation from the Swedish original:

I am.
Now, I command my spirit.

Mountain breeds sand, breeds soil. Soil breeds the trees, which breed all the animals. The animals breed the people. People breed people and nothing more.

People bred me, Imri, the last. I remember how I slipped out of the embrace of my maternal flesh. It was cold, but light came and warmed by body. The sun dried my skin.

And so on.
The priest was pleased, and so was I. He said several kind words about the poetic expressions and found them delightful. To my surprise, so did I. For a few months, I had worked so hard on the editing that I had forgotten to taste the words and let them get to me. Now they did.

He read a few sentences here and there in the manuscript, and we both felt the pleasure remain. Not only did the decorated text make sense, but I found that it was enjoyable. It was not over the top, at least not more so than needed for the story it had to tell.

What I had not been able to discover by myself was obvious through the medium of my friend's reading. Actually, he could have done it in silence, and it would have worked the same. When I allowed him to read it and watched him doing so, I was suddenly aware of the text's qualities and my belief in it. My anguish disappeared and I thanked my frustrating persistence, which had all along known better than my mind did.

So, now I will hurry to get the book published. But I will change the title – and the cover.

Characters With Character

Now that Charlie Sheen is fired, I don't see how the sitcom Two and a Half Men can possibly continue. They'll probably try it, but the circle is broken. That perfect set of characteristic characters can't be rearranged.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Characters With Character

Skateboard Shadow

I had the idea of taking photos of shadows. I took some, but then other things got in between. But here is one of them – a skateboarder nice enough to jump for me. He had to do it over and over, before I got it right.

Sometimes I pull out my camera and stroll around town with a certain theme in mind. One was closeups, one was autumn leaves, a recurring theme has been water, and so on.

Shadows can be intriguing, so I decided to make a theme of it, a couple of years ago. I took a few photos, but then life got in the way. I have taken an occasional shot or two on that theme since, but I still don't have enough of them to make a gallery on my website.

So, here's a peak preview of what might become a gallery of shadow photos. On a local skateboard park, one of the young skaters was gracious enough to do his jumps until I got a photo I was pleased with. We had to do it twenty times or so. He had patience.

Here's the photo I like the most in that series. Click on it to see an enlarged version.

Bland Leads Dull Glee

The TV world has its own natural laws, some of them more difficult to understand than those of Einstein's relativity and string theory. I often wonder about casting. Especially those who get to play the lead roles are frequently chosen as if failure is the goal. Glee is a typical example of this.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Bland Leads Dull Glee

A Ratatouille of the Heart

Last night, I watched Ratatouille again. It's a charming animated film. For me, it's particularly amusing to see the devilish portrayal of Ego, the restaurant critic, since I was one for twelve years. Not like him, I hope, but that's for others to decide.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

A Ratatouille of the Heart

Olof Palme – the Swedish JFK

Today it's 25 years since the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death on a Stockholm street, leaving the country in a shock that we're still not completely over. There are many similarities to his fate and that of John F. Kennedy, as well as the traumatic effect these assassinations had on Swedish and US society.

The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Olof Palme - the Swedish JFK

It's All Real - the World According to the Tao Te Ching

I recently published my English version of the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching. As an appetizer, here's the start of the first chapter of the book. This is where Lao Tzu, the legendary writer of the book, sets out his cosmology and the basic principles behind his world view. It's not an easy text to interpret in its Chinese origin, nor to translate into another language with any confidence. Not to mention grasping its ideas. So, this is how I see it. Others may see it very differently.

1
The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of all things.

Therefore:
Free from desire you see the mystery.
Full of desire you see the manifestations.
These two have the same origin but differ in name.
That is the secret,
The secret of secrets,
The gate to all mysteries.

It’s All Real
Lao Tzu begins his writing about Tao, the Way, by stating that the written word cannot fully encompass the real thing. The workings of the Way are hidden behind what we can observe. It was present at the dawn of time and the birth of the universe, but it’s visible only through what has been created out of it, in accordance with it: the whole world and all its creatures. Tao is the Way the universe works...

Here is my full commentary on this Tao Te Ching chapter:
Tao Te Ching Chapter 1 Translation and Commentary


(The image above is the first chapter of the Tao Te Ching in Chinese, the Wang Pi version.)

Here is more about my English version of the book:
Tao Te Ching – The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained
Here is the book on Amazon:
Tao Te Ching on Amazon
It's also a Kindle ebook:
Tao Te Ching – Kindle ebook

If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

Was the Old Man a Woman?

Working on my English version of the Tao Te Ching, I speculated on the age old questions about the identity of the old man said to be the writer of the text. An intriguing possibility gnawed on my mind – what if the old man was in fact a woman?

Tao Te Ching, the classic on Taoism, repeatedly expresses preference of the traits traditionally linked to the female – such as humility, care, and yielding instead of struggling to take the lead. This was quite unusual in China at the time of the text's appearance, which would be somewhere during the 6th to the 4th century BC.

Legend has it that the writer was Lao Tzu, a man who had worked as a civil servant at the court of the emperor. When he got old, he left the court and the country, riding a water buffalo. A border guard convinced him to write down his wisdom, before leaving the country for good. This he did, and the result is the Tao Te Ching.

Nothing is known for sure about the man. Lao Tzu simply means Old Master, as if his own name didn't matter. Some annals claim that he was an older contemporary of Confucius, but that can be discussed. Many modern scholars doubt that he existed at all. They believe that the Tao Te Ching is just a collections of proverbs and such.

The title Lao Tzu, Old Master, might also be plural – the Old Masters. That would argue for the book being a collection of proverbs from here and there in Chinese tradition. The title also lacks gender specification. The Old Master might just as well be a woman.

Many historians and other experts on ancient China would object that a female author of this or any other classic is highly unlikely. Maybe so, but definitely not impossible. We probably have no way of knowing for sure, but I like the idea.

There is something about the mildness of the Taoist philosophy, the compassion of the Taoist ideals, and the soft words by which they are expressed in the Tao Te Ching, that suggest a female writer. Men in those days, mostly also today, have had a tendency to proclaim their wisdom much more firmly, announcing it proudly. They usually reason and argue quite categorically, without any hesitation.

Certainly, there's nothing ruling out a male writer of the Tao Te Ching, either. Most writers up until the last couple of centuries have been male, in every part of the world. But not all of them. This could be one exception.

In any case, the Tao Te Ching is surprisingly soft-spoken and pensive, for a classic that has become one of the most prominent texts of ancient wisdom. Whether male or female, we should all be more like Lao Tzu.

Here is more about my English version of the book:
Tao Te Ching – The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained
Here is the book on Amazon:
Tao Te Ching on Amazon
It's also a Kindle ebook:
Tao Te Ching – Kindle ebook

If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

Tao Moving

Yesterday, I finally finished the work on my English version of the Tao Te Ching, and uploaded the files to the publisher. The book will be available on Internet bookstores in a few days - both as a Kindle ebook and in regular print.

If I may say so, myself, I am very pleased with the result. I managed to get the translations of the 81 Lao Tzu chapters as clear and simple as intended, which is how I perceive the Chinese original. Also, my comments on each chapter didn't feel out of place, when I was proof reading. Now, I am eager to see if future readers will agree or not.

So, if you come across the book and have a look at it, please let me know what you think about it. As soon as the book is out on Amazon, I'll put links to it on this blog.

The image above is the book's cover.

Added February 13:
Now, the book can be ordered at Amazon and other Internet bookstores. Here are links to it:
Tao Te Ching at Amazon US
Tao Te Ching as a Kindle ebook
More about the book

In the Stillness of Tao

My long silence on this blog is due to intense work on my English version of Tao Te Ching, the Chinese Taoist classic.

I'm almost ready with it, now, so I take a few minutes to write this message. I still have some editing to do, and the introduction is not completed. But I hope to have the book out in a few weeks.

I will let you know, here and elsewhere. In the meantime, you find more about Tao Te Ching and my version of it here:
Taoistic.com

What They Should Have Sung

Some songs have an element of magic. They squeeze your heart and flood your mind. It's far from always clear why, but it can happen in an instant, and it happens again each time you hear the song anew. The mystery of music – but lyrics have a lot to do with it, too.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

What They Should Have Sung

White Christmas

Summer is very far away.

Bye to Censorship – and Hello

Sweden stops censoring movies. It's the last of the democratic countries to do so, and it was one of the first countries to start it in 1911. Swedish tradition is one of government control in order to “protect” its citizens from bad influence – but the last few decades of censoring movies have dealt with excessive violence, and not sex scenes. That makes some sense.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Bye to Censorship – and Hello

Suicide or Bombing

A man carrying bombs blew his car and himself up in Stockholm. Fortunately, nobody else was seriously wounded. The first terrorist suicide bomber in Sweden. There are so many aspects to this, I hardly know where to begin. Nothing in this world is simple, nor black and white.


The essay has been moved to my personal website:

Suicide or Bombing

Aikido – the Peaceful Martial Art

In 1971, when I was 17, I came across aikido for the first time. On my request, a friend showed the technique nikyo on me, bringing me down on the floor painfully. I forgot the pain in my amazement and decided that I had to learn that mysterious art. Now, almost 40 years later, I'm still working on it, and I'm still just as amazed.

My friend Christer was a couple of years older. I had known him for quite some time before realizing that he had practiced one of those Japanese martial arts, and I didn't understand why he had not bragged about it. Any teenage boy would. But I had to drag it out of him, and I had to insist on him showing me anything at all.

In those days, little more than the “judo chops” that Austin Powers jokes about, and the karate of Oddjob in the Goldfinger movie were at all known to the general public. Aikido I had not heard about at all. It seemed like magic. Christer just sort of waved his hand around mine, and I was down, in a flash of pain.

I went to the local club, one of the few in all of Sweden at the time, put on a blue training overall, and started to practice. It was an immediate passion. I even dreamed about aikido, and could think of little else – including schoolwork.

By now, it's an integral part of who I am. Its peaceful strategy of avoiding conflict by solving it without confrontation, or simply passing by it, has become a reflex. My breathing, posture, and ways of moving my body, are always the same as when I practice in the dojo. My way of looking at the world is greatly influenced by how to perceive the surroundings at keiko, the training. It's no longer possible to extract aikido from the rest of me.

I think that everyone who has done aikido for any significant period of time has the same experience. One could call it a way of life, but I prefer to regard aikido as an ingredient in it. Aikido is not a way of living, but one of the tools by which to refine the vehicle of one's path through life.

The Koan Art
It's an odd martial art. Aikido contains no attack techniques, only defense. Therefore, competition is impossible, as well as excluded out of principle. There should be no loser. It's complicated enough to take a lifetime to learn, and during that time the difficulties seem to increase rather than to diminish – as one becomes aware of how much more there is to perfect.

It's a martial art that is nothing less than a koan, the riddle used in Zen. The answer to a question is mostly another question, and learning is done best by not trying to know. You practice, although your mind understands neither how nor why, and gradually your body's experience will enlighten the mind, with a language not consisting of words.

Eastern philosophy has one distinct difference from that of the West. The latter is theoretical, made up by sentences, whereas the former is nothing, if not expressed in the body and in actions. Thinking must turn into doing. In aikido, it starts by doing, which leads to thinking, but it's still all about the doing.

The peacefulness of the aikido solutions is expressed by how softly and gently the body performs the techniques, and how pleasant the experience is to the attacker. That increases by time and persistent practice only. No shortcuts, no end result around the corner.

Books and Stuff

Since I'm a writer by profession, I just had to make a book about aikido. But it took almost 20 years. When I finally got around to writing it, I was surprised to discover how much of its content I had received already in my very first years of practicing aikido, and listening to my first Japanese teacher Toshikazu Ichimura, who was the head instructor in Sweden in those days.

He was a complicated man, which is not rare in this strange art, but he was also very generous with trying hard to emit all that he was able, and all that he knew. He followed faithfully the principle of trying to make his students surpass him. I hope I do the same.

My first aikido book was initially called Aikido – the Peaceful Martial Art, but the new edition is renamed Aikido Principles, to clarify that it's a book about aikido theory, not a manual on how to do the techniques. There's little point in trying to learn aikido from a book, so why pretend it's possible by writing one that way? But there's a lot to talk about, when not engaged in training.
So my book talks about all those things one might think about when keiko is over.

Here's more about the book: Aikido Principles. You find it on most Internet bookstores, for example at Amazon. If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

I have also written a book about the attack techniques. True, there is no attack in aikido, but we need to be attacked in order to practice it. The attack technique training is often neglected in aikido dojos, so I got the idea to write a book about how to develop one's skills at this, and what to consider about the attacks, for the aikido practice to improve. Actually, to advance properly in your aikido, you need to work with increasingly advanced attacks.

The book is straightforwardly called Attacks in Aikido. Here it is on Amazon. If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

I've so far written two more books relating to the aikido theme (and more books might come in the future). Aikibatto is about sword and staff training, which are part of the aikido curriculum. The Japanese sword is well known for its sharpness and the myths about it. The staff is less famed, but also practiced extensively in most aikido dojos. Here is the book on Amazon). If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

Ki is the life force principle of Eastern tradition. It is also spelled chi or qi. It's essential in aikido as well, so much that it's part of the name of this art. Aikido means approximately “the way of joining the life forces” (those of the defender and the attacker). Most people are quite bewildered about it, so I wrote a book presenting ki and how to exercise it: Qi – Increase Your Life Energy. Here it is on Amazon. If you're Swedish, it's quicker and cheaper to order the book from AdLibris.

But there's a limit as to what can be learned about aikido from reading, so I also made a bunch of videos, where I try to show it. Here is my YouTube account, where I put these videos: Aikidostenudd. There are also lots of texts, images, and videos about aikido on my website: stenudd.com.

Mainly, though, it's a thing to practice together with others in a dojo. Enough said.