Since this website is a personal journal more than anything else, I thought I would include an excerpt from my current Oslo Journal as a separate article – notes from a day in my life.
Oslo, Thursday June 11, 2026
SADNESS
I have some sadness come up these days, mixed in with grief and melancholy.
Grief that my parents are gone forever, and especially my father since he died more recently and he, in some ways, meant more for me. It’s a slow quiet grief, and this one is mixed in with gratitude for what he and my parents gave me. They did create an exceptional home filled with art, antiques, frequent gatherings, and lot of nature experiences.
CREATING A LIFE THAT MATCHES MY ISSUES MORE THAN MY MANY GIFTS
There is also some grief that I don’t have a family on my own. I have longed for that, but have not chosen the right partners for it. I didn’t want them to be the mother of my children, which in itself was a clear sign they were not right. The two times I was in a relationship that felt deeply right, I moved it in a direction to end it. Not in a dramatic way, but I made it inevitable. Mostly likely because it felt too good, and it didn’t match feeling unlovable which is quite central to my psyche.
There is grief over missed opportunities in many areas of my life, and knowing that I made myself miss them. It wasn’t circumstances, they were mostly very and sometimes ridiculously favorable. It was my own decisions, it was the trajectory I put myself on because of the issues of being unlovable, not enough, and so on. I created a life that matched those issues as much as it matches the many inner and outer gifts life has given me.
I initially wrote “matches my life more” but that’s not quite true. It all colors my life, and it’s difficult to say that one is more than another.
WHO & WHAT
There is grief, images of the past and what could have been, and so on. Some gentle and familiar contractions in my body. And also a noticing of all of that as space. As made of up of this awake space.
That’s a reminder of my nature, which is a relief and home – and possibly the nature of existence itself. And it doesn’t change my human life and experiences, although it creates a different context for it which does change it in some ways.
MY WOUNDS ARE PART OF MY GIFTS
I wrote that I have created a life that matches my issues more than – or as much as – my many gifts.
That’s true, and it’s also true that my wounds are part of those gifts.
It’s only the human psyche, embedded in this culture, that says differentiates the two in that way. It reflects my culture more than anything else. What my personality likes becomes a gift, and what it doesn’t like becomes something else. That’s not how life itself is.
It’s all part of the same seamless life.
It’s all part of the same seamless awake space that everything is, here and now – what a thought may call sadness, gentle familiar contractions, the music, these arms and hands, this screen, a quiet bliss, images of my parents and my childhood home, images of the two relationships I had that felt deeply right, images of something in me ending them because they didn’t match unlovable, and so on.
ILLUSION?
It’s all space taking all of these forms, and it’s real enough as that.
I get that some call it illusions. It’s dreamlike, made up of the same as dreams. It’s what I am forming itself into all these experiences.
And I don’t really or primarily see it as illusions. Dreamlike, yes. Illusions, not so much. This human life and this Earthly world is real enough, as that. It’s real in the ways dreams are real enough. They are real as an experience.
DREAM
This reminds me of my dream from this morning. I am in a place with several people and a sense of community. An older man, a respected artist, comes, and I realize I am sitting in his chair. I move out of the way. We have a good connection. As I wake up, I sense him as my father, and I am brought back to when I was little and my father would lie down next to me in the bed and I would fall asleep on his arm while he was reading to me. Often adventure books.
PLANT DATABASE
I went to bed early last night, after not sleeping so much the night before. I spent most of the day working on the plant database for Barichara / Finca Milagros. I may not do much more this time.
Eventually, I’ll add other kinds of life – mammals, birds/dinosaurs, insects, reptiles, fungi, lichen, fossils, and so on. I’ll also add a private version for Finca Milagros where I/we can add our own notes. I may also make that possible for others in the area so they can use it and make it their own.
The screenshots are part of the current interface. There are a little over 250 plants in the database so far, and a few dozen fields for each. I have included as many natives as possible, and any plants useful for regeneration and/or developing a food forest. It’s aimed specifically at the Barichara area. I am making it with Google Sheets and Google Apps Scripts.
MORNING
As I write this, I am sitting by the window with a cup of tea (spice). It’s still morning, and the forest is lit up by the sun. It’s cool and refreshing outside. I plan to go out to do some things in central Oslo.
For breakfast, I am having a mix of frozen berries with cream and cinnamon, followed by a few walnuts. It feels good, and I’ll likely have something more substantial a little later.
When I say it feels good, I mean that it feels good for my body. It’s what matches where it’s at right now. It’s also tasty (as most people think of it), of course, but it’s more important that it’s tasty for my body and being as a whole.
A NOTE ON NOTICING SPACE
Noticing space seems to be a good medicine for me these days. That includes noticing anything that this personality may take as me or I as space too – sensations in the head area, any sense of a doer or observer, and so on. I do a simple scan for anything that feels like me or I or a center, and notice that too as space. Something gently releases.
A SUMMER DAY
I went out mid-morning and enjoyed the walk to the train station, along and across the river. As I suspected, I missed my regular train, but caught one that was delayed.
Did some errands in the morning, including getting some new earbuds (Anker Soundcore Liberty) and looking at Nikon cameras and lenses (Z5ii vs Z6iii, and some S lenses). I have a Canon with OK lenses, but feel it’s time to upgrade, and am still considering a couple of different bodies and 2-3 lenses.
Then the tram to Frogner and matinée at Gimle Kino which I think may be my favorite movie theater in Oslo. It’s a nice location, and it has the old cinema/theater feel and usually good movies.
I went to the café at the Oslo museum after the movie, and then sat on my usual bench by the waterfall in Frognerparken for a while, before taking the train home.
DISCLOSURE DAY
I watched Disclosure Day and enjoyed it very much. It was engaging and obviously very well made in a way that seemed almost effortless. As the name suggests, it’s about UFOs/UAPs, disclosure, and so on, and it’s based on testimonials. Some will see it almost as a documentary. I have written about UFOs in other articles – including as a good practice for honest and grounded reasoning, an opportunity to explore projections, and my own UFO/UAP experience about ten years ago.
Some say that the really weird experiences are more trustworthy since most wouldn’t make that up. In my case, the experience was so boring that we wouldn’t be likely to make it up! The most interesting part of it is what was revealed a couple of years later: what I saw may have been two tic-tac UFOs of the type later described by the US marines, and they were not very far away.
PLANT DATABASE
I made a few changes to the plant database interface. It has three sections: discover, design, and identify. Under design, I added a regeneration vs food forest workflow. The regeneration side only uses native plants.
I have done programming since I was ten or so and enjoy it, especially for meaningful projects. I tend to get absorbed into it and work for hours at a time. At the same time, I notice that’s not very good for more than one or two days at a time!