I spent the last week in France, visiting my friend Malcolm. Malcolm used to live here in Lund. I guess I first met him back in '91, when I was recruited for work with one of the students' parties. A very affable guy, Malcolm. Well travelled. Well groomed. Good looking. A head honcho with the pinball machines. Well read. Well bred. Super smart. Politically correct. Social genius. We weren't really close friends for a couple of years. We met at student places and various social gatherings over the years. Suddenly, in 1996 or so, we became pretty fucking close friends.

Malcolm had just dropped his long time girlfriend in an allegedly pretty darn shitty way. But droppings are always shitty affairs so what the hey? Now, he enjoyed the intimate company of a fairly well known alternarock starlet. He met her in London, Denmark, Stockholm, USA and whatnot. Later on, she dropped him for a very well known rock star. This is the way things go. Droppings are shitty business. Even though my friend Alexander and I used to mock Malcolm a bit, we suffered with him. All 3 of us knew the pain of being scorned, spurned and left all alone in a single minded non-feeling world. Cast to the sharks. Fucked in the rear by solitude and self pity.

Anyhow. That's all years ago. Under the bridge. These days, Malcolm's with the World Bank, that oft scorned behemoth of foreign aid. Their reputation is still far from good, but Malcolm's one of the people trying to fix that image. Young, soulful. No hard ass bank man. Swift, bit of a bon viveur. Poster guy for the perfect boyfriend to show off to your parents. At least in many ways, right? Right. Malcolm's offices are in Paris. He has a good salary. He drives an $800 black Mercedes. His one room apartment has a postcard view, starring a who's who of Paris sights. He has amassed a darn good selection of wines. The posters on his walls are the same he had on his student room walls in Lund. His bathroom is kitsch marine, content-wise. The toilet seat is a bit too short, so that your balls touch cool matter when you sit down. The floor is 11.

So: I flew down to Paris to visit Malcolm & have a spot of vacation. We still have fairly good contact, despite the geographic distance, still an obstacle to any friend- or relationship. Phone & e-mail. It was really good seeing him, but the surroundings made the whole thing pretty surreal. Very soon, I realized that I had been caught in a rut for far too long. The real world made sense, but it also provided a sensory overload. I know but a modicum of french. I've been to Paris on 2 earlier occasions. But I've been stuck here in Lund, living my life behind a computer screen to a far greater extent that I had thought. My senses: neutered. My edge: neutered. My self: neutered. Dreamwalking. Is that the word? I felt I have to do this much more often, this travel thing, this change of environment. I very soon felt that I really need to change my life. Then comes the fat ass importante Q, crashing down from the big blue yonder: what the fuck am I going to do with my life?