Goodbye Vernon

Goodbye my beloved Vernon neighbours, goodbye you wonderful, crazy americans. I hope Ceona's shoulder will heal and that her aquarium will stay beautiful, I hope Mike finds love, that Gary eventually sees a flying saucer, that Daniel will succeed in school and grow up to be an energetic young man, and that Jeannie will stay strong.

My adventures might one day bring me back to your exciting and dangerous country.

The Old Man and the Sea

To escape my dissertation work, I took a swim in the ocean. There was only one other person in the water, a sturdy madame, and then a few people on the beach.

I was floating in the surface, looking at the blue sky and feeling the bobbing of waves. A silent feeling of terror arose in me, when just next to me, the grey back of a whale-like fish emerged, only to disappear a second or two later. To my knowledge, nobody has ever been eaten at the shores of Denmark, but might I be the first? Had climate changes made our waters livable for new types of human predators? I hoped it was a porpoise and realized that there was nothing I could do about it all. Simultaneously, a feeling of awe ran through me. Nature was passing a message along: You are all part of me.