On heresay

I'm not here.

Oh, don't you worry. I don't mean literally. Well, actually, I do. Assuming that "here" is defined by where you are at the moment, since you are reading it, and a text automatically belongs to the reader once it has left the authors hand (or so the post-structuralists say) (or maybe they don't say that, but bear with me) (in fact, don't. I'm not here. As the author of this text I am dead, post-structurally speaking, and I am also physically not in the same place as you, real-world-istically speaking. Unless you also happens to sit on a train on the way to Oslo. But I highly doubt that.)

I'm on a train to Oslo. This train may or may not have wifi - I don't know that now (now being the time of writing of this text), even if I will know by the time "now" becomes now (now being the time of you reading this text, since that realistically have to be at least eight hours after I write it, since that is when I am scheduling it for). Regardless of whether I know now or "now" if my train has wifi, though, that still won't interfere with my statement "I am not here", because I still will have written and scheduled this post now (before), and not now (after). So I am not - physically, obviously, but also metaphysically and mentally - here, if "here" is the blog, or the place from which you are reading this blog, or perhaps the Internet in general. I'm not there. Here. Whereorwhatever.

It's complicated, I know. Barthes and Derrida would have been proud. Except for the fact that I am making a thorough effort to place myself in the text by defining myself out of it, so in fact it seems as though I am here, now, even if I claim that I am not. Instead, I will claim I am elsewhere. On the train, yes, you already know that. On my way to Oslo. To where a job (a job!) is awaiting. A temporary job, but still. You will be free of the endless complaints of my unemployedness for a few weeks, at least. Hooray!

But also. My intention for defining myself out of this text by stating the obvious "I am not here", was not simply to confuse you or make you question my presence/existence/mental state. I meant to direct your attention towards the places where I do define myself as present. Such as the Burrow blog, where I have written a slightly less (but not by much) silly post that this one. It won't post till noon GMT, so if you are looking for me there before then you won't find me. I'll still be on the train, of course.

The other place, however, I wanted to direct your attention to, is here - in a sense - but it is here in a past "now". In yesterday's now in fact. The now that was (is!) a now when I wrote (am writing!) this. Yesterday I wrote a much more sensible post about an important topic I feel the need to share again. So, if you're tired of looking for me here, you might as well go here to find a more serious me.

In the meantime I need to get off this train and try to figure out where I am and what I'm supposed to do here. It is not unlikely that it might involve the death of the author.