Carlsbad

Nearly ten years ago, I left Interstate 5 in Carlsbad to capture the sun setting over the Pacific.

After a week on the road from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, I had developed a rather intimate relationship with a certain evil coffee empire and even devised my own "gangsta name", R.A. (while reserving "Raz" for more affectionate moments). Refuelled with a tall Americano, I was ready to drive down the last miles to San Diego. Very flattering, my friend Niclas once asked me how I can look so youthful. I answered him that the secret is strong coffee and lots of flying in coach.

Thief in the night

Woke up at 5:23 local time, feeling irreversibly awake. Walked around the quiet apartment, picked up a handful of red grapes and decided to turn on my computer and some Rolling Stones with “Bridges to Babylon”.


As daybreak gets closer I will change to shorts and put on my running shoes. Taking a swim last night inspired me but it was the burger which finally convinced me of the necessity :-)

Where are the windswept plains?

Starschmuck mornings which give me time to read ECPR conference papers, slurp a grande non-fat latte and listen to XM satellite radio customized for the creative class. Of course, this could have been anywhere: Ann Arbor, Kowloon or Cambridge.

But now it is Texas, and the light rain outside the window surprises me. It is so green, so welcoming and the people sitting around me seem to work just as relentlessly as everywhere else in America. Our apartment is not so far from the railroad and, at night, the cargo trains blast their dreamlike horns as they make their way through Arlington. I am eager to explore, to sink into that special vacation-like mood in which you develop a sensibility for the small details. As the Welsh poet William Henry Davies once put it:

“What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. ... No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night.”

Brief Bio

This morning I received e-mails from both John Barry, who will be discussant of my paper, and Robert Ballinger, who will chair the panel. Las Vegas is indeed drawing closer. Robert asked me to provide a brief bio. Guess I will take the standard one: “Rasmus Karlsson is a PhD Candidate in political science at Lund University, Sweden. His research interests traverse theories of intergenerational justice, sustainable development, and the temporal dimension of democracy.”

Still in Europe though. Still lunch time. Still snowing.