I shot Paulo Coelho

A few days ago I handed in the first chapters of the dissertation to my supervisor. Despite my best intentions I still have about ten pages to write until I can say that the manuscript is complete (for now). Once done, September looms on the horizon as one of the busiest months ever with fifty hours of teaching, one article to revise for Environmental Politics and several new conference abstracts to write.

In the midst of all this, I began reading a brief novel by Staffan Vahlquist. It is a sinister fantasy, the kind of exaggerated tale one can dream up after too many bottles of wine on a winter night, a furious assault on all the metaphysical mumbojumbo making up “New Age” and its prevailing hegemony of superficiality. All the things that one could say, yet seconds later realize that it will only lead to further estrangement and meta-ontological rupture rather than bridge-building and understanding. But sometimes, one just have to let it out :-)