Don't look back
on black leather jackets
everywhere for miles around.
Time to take the highway
off into the wild (Brando).
Wind up, once airborne, any cause will do.
Poor yellow jacket he's done
gone for fear of losing his sting.
Working class heroes seek
shelter from the edgy
nest of aging bikers (McQueen).
Homosapiens don dark hide,
tanned for a gay display,
a common fabric, of masculinity.
Even queens swing the
hetero leather road sign and
wear powerful dark
sunglasses on a rainy day
(or someother sad occasion).
Who knows when the boredom
of Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s (Pitt and Jolie)
will become as mutually threatening
as a modified ovipositor.
In the meantime, show solidarity.
Any cause will do.
When anti-heros pay tribute
there is another biker
in a black leather jacket
to boot and ride back.
Remember: you were first.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Foul play?
Portrait of a turkey
Thanksgiving Day 2008
Dear John (Cleese),
Re: "Feeding the beast".
Funny or tragic as your case may be, I'm glad to hear you say that you are happy (despite or due to your divorce).
An insight into the nature of capitalism (as opposed to the nature of love) is that wherever there is a breadwinner there must be a breadloser.
Turkey lovers unite and give thanks
for the sage
in the stuffing.
Mine shaft - November 23, 1008
I was raised in a dark forest, though I’m not quite sure anything but trees could ever really grow up around here where the task of the miner was to dig down, deeper. And who could ever grow tall enough to absorb light through such dense clusters of pine needles? Even the trunks of the tallest, cleanest and straightest pines were valuable only to the extent that they could be hollowed into wooden pipelines, destined to redirect the relentless trickle and flow out of the tunnels. Buckets and people were forever being dented, dropped and dragged day after day through the cold and damp underground. Most of the people who managed to live long enough to see the light were soon lowered into the dark corridors of these same mines, to fire, crack, pick, dig, haul and hoist ore into carts and up pulleys that ran parallel to pump lines. I suppose growth in this neck of the woods was never really intended to be equated with height, with grain or vegetables or trees, much less with how tall or wise a human being became, but with the weight of the ore, the depth of a shaft or the height of a mound of discarded stones. A heavy measure of fortune and misfortune.
Nowadays, pine trees seem to bow to the monumental ground swells that mark the depths of these woods, as though honoring the memory of a Viking chieftan. Draped with lichens and moss, and powdered by an occasional snowfall, the stones of these tumuli give witness to the iron filings and the magnetism that iron ore once attracted to this district. All the iron ore that laced the rock from Skottvång Mine went to the nearby cannon forge. Both the adjacent gun and powder factories exist yet, manufacturing, marketing and selling what they have renamed 'survivability'. It is also the privilege of centuries of Swedish monarchs to lie in Stockholm under the slender latticed spire wrought from Skottvång ore.
People who hike in summer along the recreational nature trail that passes through this terrain – along the repetitive traces of rotted railway sleepers – are more stimuated than misled by their daydreams. They can easily imagine grave settings from the late Iron Age and pittoresque forest meres. A few know that they are passing reflections at the entrances to deep waterlogged shafts, where human beings were lowered to slither and crawl only a generation or two ago.
The story I must tell begins here in an abandoned mining district in central Sweden. The terror and cruelty of my story is not easy to tell, because somehow I’ve always believed, like everyone else around here, that everything that I have witnessed in these parts, every fortune or misfortune, is a secret that I have promised to keep. Now I know that it is mine and that I am free to build the imaginary walls needed to reinforce my safe passage, to inject my antidote into sluggish veins and thus become the author of myself.
Nowadays, pine trees seem to bow to the monumental ground swells that mark the depths of these woods, as though honoring the memory of a Viking chieftan. Draped with lichens and moss, and powdered by an occasional snowfall, the stones of these tumuli give witness to the iron filings and the magnetism that iron ore once attracted to this district. All the iron ore that laced the rock from Skottvång Mine went to the nearby cannon forge. Both the adjacent gun and powder factories exist yet, manufacturing, marketing and selling what they have renamed 'survivability'. It is also the privilege of centuries of Swedish monarchs to lie in Stockholm under the slender latticed spire wrought from Skottvång ore.
People who hike in summer along the recreational nature trail that passes through this terrain – along the repetitive traces of rotted railway sleepers – are more stimuated than misled by their daydreams. They can easily imagine grave settings from the late Iron Age and pittoresque forest meres. A few know that they are passing reflections at the entrances to deep waterlogged shafts, where human beings were lowered to slither and crawl only a generation or two ago.
The story I must tell begins here in an abandoned mining district in central Sweden. The terror and cruelty of my story is not easy to tell, because somehow I’ve always believed, like everyone else around here, that everything that I have witnessed in these parts, every fortune or misfortune, is a secret that I have promised to keep. Now I know that it is mine and that I am free to build the imaginary walls needed to reinforce my safe passage, to inject my antidote into sluggish veins and thus become the author of myself.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
November 1, 2008
In dazzling sunlight today, M and I made our final preparations for the winter - planted more bulbs, took up the last root vegetables, raked maple leaves, cut back the climbing vines and still flowering roses. Then there was the savour of homegrown Jerusalem artichokes in a delicate creamed soup. And from a pot on my balcony: behold the ripe fruit!
Monday, October 13, 2008
Too easily burned?
Off in the distance, I have just caught sight of some people on this otherwise deserted beach. To my delight there’s a little girl who looks to be around my age. She is standing on a big towel in front of a weathered grey bathhouse. Perhaps she is someone who would like to play with me? As I begin running towards her, she looks familiar. I can see that she is bending over to pick up a T-shirt. Then suddenly I realize that she must be me, since I am the only 10-year-old redhead I’ve ever known who is so easily burned that she has to wear a long-sleeved T-shirt on a hot day like this.
What a wonderful opportunity, then, to watch myself as a child, lost in play on a clear day with such strong reflections from the sea. The trouble is, as I zoom in to observe her more closely, her face dissolves behind a coarse grain of fabric. She seems to be stuck, at a loss to get into or out of her T-shirt, and I awake in a panic. Will I never be able to look back and see her again, up closely? Is this the only way to protect sensitive skin from solar radiation, or to protect one's integrity from exploitation by an intrusive lens. Shame on me and the old woman on the Indian reservation?
What a wonderful opportunity, then, to watch myself as a child, lost in play on a clear day with such strong reflections from the sea. The trouble is, as I zoom in to observe her more closely, her face dissolves behind a coarse grain of fabric. She seems to be stuck, at a loss to get into or out of her T-shirt, and I awake in a panic. Will I never be able to look back and see her again, up closely? Is this the only way to protect sensitive skin from solar radiation, or to protect one's integrity from exploitation by an intrusive lens. Shame on me and the old woman on the Indian reservation?
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Suwa Maru
Did we have a special beach in mind? Not even mother Anne seemed to know where we were going, though we could see water everywhere. Groping in broad daylight, I followed a path through the Enen-kio brush toward a bank of the turquoise lagoon. I think I was following mother Anne, hoping that a dip would soon restore me the way it usually did. I was quickly let down. The beach proved to be uninviting, full of pebbles that were hard on my feet, and I had been warned to watch out for the poisonous coral along the waters edge. Even a rusty old diving board, constructed for the recreation of soldiers, did not coax me to play, but served only as a monument of isolation and abandonment to bully and mock whomever might happen to see it. Thus my obligatory descent into the lagoon was not at all refreshing, but tepid as the breeding ground for all sorts of invisible creatures.
I must have been perfectly exhausted that day (or was it really night?), and lost my appetite when I vomited onboard, because I cannot remember any of the meals we ate on the island or attempts to fall asleep in the metal hut.
The next day, dad asked me if I wanted to survey the island with him. Perhaps he asked other family members too, but I was apparently the most eager to join him on this excursion. Given my lingering disappointment from the day before, coupled with the fact that I was feeling better, I wanted to go somewhere else. Dad seemed keen on showing me a place where he had been before, or perhaps he simply wanted to share his innate need to reconnoiter the unfamilar, a war relic, a neglected springboard between the US and the Far East. We were there for a purpose, though it was not a place either of us would have chosen to visit. We were both taking orders. We walked along the outer shores of the atoll, where the waves lapped, and the breeze was more refreshing. A corroded shipwreck rose like the tail end of some giant seabird bent on obtaining some sustenance for survival.
Dad offered an explanation: “Her name was "Suwa Maru".
“Sue was…what?”, I asked.
“Suwa Maru. She was a merchant vessel that tried to pass the American block in 1943, World War II, and was hit by torpedoes. The captain beached her here, before she sank.”
“Oh”.
We continued along the south shore in silence until we arrived at the airstrip, where we turned back toward the huts.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tomorrow is another day
I have been told since that the reason I had seen flames licking the wings of our propeller plane was not because the engines had caught fire, but because fuel was being dumped to prepare for our unplanned landing on Wake – or Enen-kio as it was called by pre-European travelers after the orange-blossoming shrub which grows on this otherwise rather barren atoll. The Japanese who later occupied the island called it Otori-Shima or "Bird Island" for its birdlike shape.
We landed safely on the Wake airstrip. As we descended the ramp into the suffocating heat, I hoped that just setting foot on land would restore my balance. I could see a low control tower at the end of the strip, and a couple of GIs to the right who were prepared to guide us along the road to our accommodations in a couple of corrugated metal quansit huts. While we walked together as a family, mom, my sister and I were escorted to one hut, and dad and my brothers to the other. In the tumult of our separation, I could tell that dad felt slightly uncomfortable too. His look seemed to say: “be a good sport, tomorrow is another day.”
In rituals of the ancient Marshalles islands, it is claimed that tribal chiefs were installed by carving a mark into their skin with a sharp human bone. The latter required human sacrifice. A man could, however, save himself from being sacrificed if he could brave the journey to the Enen-kio atoll and obtain a wing bone from a large seabird that nested on the atoll. Could that have been the albatross of which Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
Entering the huge metal hut, I was overwhelmed by the pungent odor of all the army green woolen blankets spread neatly over each of the cots. I trudged down the aisle to where mom had laid claim to three. There seemed to be some sort of unwritten code that we should occupy beds at a respectful distance from the other women and children on the flight. Though I was tired, I didn’t feel like lying down on the rough blankets.
When our luggage was deposited alongside our beds, Mom tried to cheer me up by suggesting that we go for a swim. And so I eventually mustered up the energy to rummage through a bag to find my bathing suit. It seemed to take forever to find my suit and change, though perhaps it wouldn’t have been easier had the space felt more intimate.
In October of 1568, a Spanish explorer, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra discovered "a low barren island, judged to be eight leagues circumference," to which he gave the name of "San Francisco”. While it is believed that the island that he discovered was today’s Wake, named after the British trader William Wake who visited the atoll in 1796, the land that I set foot on at age 10, in August 1957, was nothing even remotely like the San Francisco, much less the Ocean Beach, that I had just left.
We landed safely on the Wake airstrip. As we descended the ramp into the suffocating heat, I hoped that just setting foot on land would restore my balance. I could see a low control tower at the end of the strip, and a couple of GIs to the right who were prepared to guide us along the road to our accommodations in a couple of corrugated metal quansit huts. While we walked together as a family, mom, my sister and I were escorted to one hut, and dad and my brothers to the other. In the tumult of our separation, I could tell that dad felt slightly uncomfortable too. His look seemed to say: “be a good sport, tomorrow is another day.”
In rituals of the ancient Marshalles islands, it is claimed that tribal chiefs were installed by carving a mark into their skin with a sharp human bone. The latter required human sacrifice. A man could, however, save himself from being sacrificed if he could brave the journey to the Enen-kio atoll and obtain a wing bone from a large seabird that nested on the atoll. Could that have been the albatross of which Samuel Taylor Coleridge speaks in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
Entering the huge metal hut, I was overwhelmed by the pungent odor of all the army green woolen blankets spread neatly over each of the cots. I trudged down the aisle to where mom had laid claim to three. There seemed to be some sort of unwritten code that we should occupy beds at a respectful distance from the other women and children on the flight. Though I was tired, I didn’t feel like lying down on the rough blankets.
When our luggage was deposited alongside our beds, Mom tried to cheer me up by suggesting that we go for a swim. And so I eventually mustered up the energy to rummage through a bag to find my bathing suit. It seemed to take forever to find my suit and change, though perhaps it wouldn’t have been easier had the space felt more intimate.
In October of 1568, a Spanish explorer, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra discovered "a low barren island, judged to be eight leagues circumference," to which he gave the name of "San Francisco”. While it is believed that the island that he discovered was today’s Wake, named after the British trader William Wake who visited the atoll in 1796, the land that I set foot on at age 10, in August 1957, was nothing even remotely like the San Francisco, much less the Ocean Beach, that I had just left.
Wake Island
I’m being told that I should dig, deeper, try to recall where I came from. How can anyone be asked to dig in the air? To hold on, by grabbing at a piece of sky? To see anything by crossing an imaginary line, by plunging to the depths of the Pacific, by dropping a bomb?
I keep returning to Wake (see entry on March 5, 2007…)
” I can still recall the pleasant voice of the stewardess as I gaze out the oval window and watch the flames licking the wings – the closest I can get to the calm of an open hearth. I am focusing on the horizon to still the nauseating turbulence of travel, in the hope that it will give me a clue as to the time of day, of year. As we cross the International Date Line, I'd rather be back on the mainland with my friends, the up-and-coming global generation, watching the Howdy Doody show, or with my grandmother.”
Mother Anne has caught sight of the atoll where we are headed. From the air, Wake Island looks like the cross section of an eyeball filled with a luminous emerald green liquid. The airstrip is at the inner, southeastern end of the lagoon, where the albatross once nested or so I'm told. When the hatch door is opened there will be no refreshing breeze or fragrant leis to greet us here, just the stifling humidity of this abandonned incubator.”
This is an emergency landing, no vacation in paradise. People whom I must trust have brought me here, even though we’ve evidently had to skip my 10th birthday to get here.
“Dad, what day is it? “
“It’s August 7th.”
“Why? What happened to August 6th?”
“We lost it when we crossed the International Date Line.”
“That’s a bummer. How can you just skip over someone's birthday? Does that mean that I could just as well have not been born? Or maybe it's like being born on April 29th? What is the International Date Line anyway?”
“Hold your horses, one question at a time." Dad often said "Hold your horses." "The International Date Line is an imaginary line where one day ends and the next begins, because the Earth is round. You see, just before we crossed the line, it was 12 noon on August 6th, and just after it was noon on August 7th," dad said and took out a piece of paper and drew a circle to help explain. He pointed to one spot on the circle and wrote 11 p.m., and 3 a.m. alongside another. " When we left San Francisco at 11 p.m. on August 5th, it was already 3 a.m. at the Date Line, and since it took us 8 hours to get to the Date Line it was already 11 a.m. on the 7th when we crossed it. "
He didn't answer my other questions, which were actually more important to me, because even if I could understand the logic of the Date Line math, I didn’t like the aftermath.
When we took off from Travis Air Force Base a few hours earlier, I had been told that I should be particularly excited because I was returning to the country where I was born, and that the plan was to celebrate my birthday when we arrived in Tokyo.
Rain does not fall everywhere at once
As I sift through memorabilia, things are slowly coming back:
Dear Mago,
It’s July 1957 and we have been traveling for over a week from Topeka (Remember: “We don’t live in Kansas anymore, do we Toto? From the Wizard of Oz) to visit you in San Francisco on our way to Tokyo. I am sure this summer will be memorable.
I remember, for example, exactly when I discovered that rain does not fall on everyone at the same time. As I looked straight ahead – to keep from becoming carsick – I could see the rain pouring cats and dogs down on the road ahead, though it was not hitting the windshield of our Pontiac. A warm glow filled me as I prepared for the spattering and blur, and the monotony of the windshield wipers, that I knew was soon to come. Still, I felt nauseated when it did.
We have been to Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and a Pueblo Indian reservation on the way. I first learned about stalactites and stalagmites from our tour of the Caverns, though I must admit I have never been able to remember which grow from the floor and which from the ceiling. Mom was terribly upset when the energy we had pent up after hours in the car was released at the Grand Canyon, fearing that we would fall off the rim. I thought she was hysterical, though I’m not sure I know what that means. My strongest memory from the Pueblo Indian reservation was not the from the buildings (we have been building clay pueblos in school last year), but from the embarrassment and shame I felt when an old Indian woman waved her arms in front of her face to avoid being photographed by my new Brownie camera. We talked about it later, but I was still sad.
I can’t wait to get to San Francisco. No one can make tuna sandwiches like you. And since mom doesn’t let us drink Coke, Fanta, and 7up, I look forward Uncle Bert’s soda stash in the garage (not to mention his collection of organ music). Dad says he’ll be to have a (about to turn) 10-year-old girl around so he can put on a record and teach me to waltz.
Two weeks later…
I liked it when you said I looked so freckly and cute, that I’d just swallowed a dollar that had broken out in pennies. Since your house is full we’re staying at the Pink Flamingo motel on Lombard Street, between the Presidio and Fort Mason.
You know that the night before we were supposed to leave Steve got very sick and dad had to rush him off to Letterman Army Hospital where he was operated on for acute appendicitis. Since we have to stay on for at least another week, we will be moving to a motel along Ocean Beach, so that the rest of us can visit the zoo and go to the beach. We are enjoying our days here, visiting Steve at the ward at the Fort Mason Dispensary where we can race wheelchairs, go swimming everyday despite mom’s fear of our crossing the Upper Great Highway and of the undertow. Hopefully we can also see more of you and Jon and Chris [our cousins]!.
Your loving ganddaughter
Dear Mago,
It’s July 1957 and we have been traveling for over a week from Topeka (Remember: “We don’t live in Kansas anymore, do we Toto? From the Wizard of Oz) to visit you in San Francisco on our way to Tokyo. I am sure this summer will be memorable.
I remember, for example, exactly when I discovered that rain does not fall on everyone at the same time. As I looked straight ahead – to keep from becoming carsick – I could see the rain pouring cats and dogs down on the road ahead, though it was not hitting the windshield of our Pontiac. A warm glow filled me as I prepared for the spattering and blur, and the monotony of the windshield wipers, that I knew was soon to come. Still, I felt nauseated when it did.
We have been to Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, and a Pueblo Indian reservation on the way. I first learned about stalactites and stalagmites from our tour of the Caverns, though I must admit I have never been able to remember which grow from the floor and which from the ceiling. Mom was terribly upset when the energy we had pent up after hours in the car was released at the Grand Canyon, fearing that we would fall off the rim. I thought she was hysterical, though I’m not sure I know what that means. My strongest memory from the Pueblo Indian reservation was not the from the buildings (we have been building clay pueblos in school last year), but from the embarrassment and shame I felt when an old Indian woman waved her arms in front of her face to avoid being photographed by my new Brownie camera. We talked about it later, but I was still sad.
I can’t wait to get to San Francisco. No one can make tuna sandwiches like you. And since mom doesn’t let us drink Coke, Fanta, and 7up, I look forward Uncle Bert’s soda stash in the garage (not to mention his collection of organ music). Dad says he’ll be to have a (about to turn) 10-year-old girl around so he can put on a record and teach me to waltz.
Two weeks later…
I liked it when you said I looked so freckly and cute, that I’d just swallowed a dollar that had broken out in pennies. Since your house is full we’re staying at the Pink Flamingo motel on Lombard Street, between the Presidio and Fort Mason.
You know that the night before we were supposed to leave Steve got very sick and dad had to rush him off to Letterman Army Hospital where he was operated on for acute appendicitis. Since we have to stay on for at least another week, we will be moving to a motel along Ocean Beach, so that the rest of us can visit the zoo and go to the beach. We are enjoying our days here, visiting Steve at the ward at the Fort Mason Dispensary where we can race wheelchairs, go swimming everyday despite mom’s fear of our crossing the Upper Great Highway and of the undertow. Hopefully we can also see more of you and Jon and Chris [our cousins]!.
Your loving ganddaughter
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Have you ever heard, a mocking bird?
Fallet "gäcka" (tr.) vs. "gäckas" (intr. dep.)
förenas i ett evigt gäckande.
Harper Lee.
Malvina Reynolds.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Chandler Harris.
Och många fler
vittnar om allt det där
Watcha gonna du witta rabbi?
Tar an' fedder 'er
brer?
förenas i ett evigt gäckande.
Harper Lee.
Malvina Reynolds.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Chandler Harris.
Och många fler
vittnar om allt det där
Watcha gonna du witta rabbi?
Tar an' fedder 'er
brer?
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Exam day
My flight has just landed in San Francisco, on schedule, at 5:15 p.m. In this twilight zone I am convinced that before I reach my final destination for this day, it will become dark.
When I boarded the plane earlier today, I was so full of expectation. Before I left my home this morning I had placed a copy of my will on my kitchen table, another in my NIV Study Bible on the bookshelf above my desk. I brewed a pot of coffee that I poured into a Thermos, and put it together with a bag of nuts and fruit, a couple of USB sticks, my passport, and my laptop, in my backpack. I zipped my brown carry-on bag, which was packed to the gills with all the reference literature I thought I might need for the exam, since we are not allowed to connect to the Internet. I locked both locks on the door to my apartment, and started out, wheeling my little brown bag after me down the street to the subway. A wonderful translation (Anne Born) of Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersson kept me company on the subway, at the gate, on the plane. I felt I was prepared.
The first leg of the flight went well, though I made a formatting error (forgot to double space and leave a 6 cm margin for comments) on the legal part of the exam and had to add a note to the Examiner.
When I boarded the second leg of this long journey between Stockholm and San Francisco, via Chicago, I happened to stumble over another passenger who mentioned that he was on his way to his mother’s funeral. When I offered him words to the same effect his reply was simply “I don’t want t to talk about it”, which made sense to me. I proceeded to take my seat on the other side of the aisle.
When I boarded the plane earlier today, I was so full of expectation. Before I left my home this morning I had placed a copy of my will on my kitchen table, another in my NIV Study Bible on the bookshelf above my desk. I brewed a pot of coffee that I poured into a Thermos, and put it together with a bag of nuts and fruit, a couple of USB sticks, my passport, and my laptop, in my backpack. I zipped my brown carry-on bag, which was packed to the gills with all the reference literature I thought I might need for the exam, since we are not allowed to connect to the Internet. I locked both locks on the door to my apartment, and started out, wheeling my little brown bag after me down the street to the subway. A wonderful translation (Anne Born) of Out Stealing Horses by Per Pettersson kept me company on the subway, at the gate, on the plane. I felt I was prepared.
The first leg of the flight went well, though I made a formatting error (forgot to double space and leave a 6 cm margin for comments) on the legal part of the exam and had to add a note to the Examiner.
When I boarded the second leg of this long journey between Stockholm and San Francisco, via Chicago, I happened to stumble over another passenger who mentioned that he was on his way to his mother’s funeral. When I offered him words to the same effect his reply was simply “I don’t want t to talk about it”, which made sense to me. I proceeded to take my seat on the other side of the aisle.
Ode to FRA
Is this the beginning of fraternity, eternity? I can see that you too are up well past midnight though I don't have access to any of the IPs that you are now plugged into in order to monitor international traffic, around the clock. I have evidence that you savor everything I write, whether I save it for you or not. I can see that you read it all whether it is addressed to you or not. Does that make you feel better? All those people, subject to a hell that cannot be explained rationally, simply documented in the underworld of your quasi-professional claims, legally aided these days by ISPs. Read what Kristina Lugn said in Hundstunden or in "Hej då, ha det så bra"
It's all there. It's all been said before by someone else.
Try using the first person, singular, next time you tap her words.
It's all there. It's all been said before by someone else.
Try using the first person, singular, next time you tap her words.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Original sin?
I wouldn’t have noticed the garland of pink roses beside the redwood coffin that held mother Anne’s corpse, had my Swedish sister-in-law not mentioned it as we were leaving the cemetery. She told me that her own mother had extended her condolences to "our family" by ordering a wreath with the epithet “Goodbye Anne, queen of the family” inscribed on its satin sash.
Later that same day, a couple of friends who had attended the funeral were leafing through the little album of photos that I had prepared for the gathering in my brother's home in San Francisco. The front cover of the album held a photo of mother Anne placing the first roses (which our father had once planted) of the year on his grave, which she knew would one day be her grave too. The back cover showed mother Anne, from a distance, crossing a stone bridge to a tiny islet in the Swedish archipelago. Most of the filler photos depicted mother Anne holding one of her grandchildren. In one photo she and two of her favorite grandsons are viewed from behind, sitting in the sand, gazing over a vast Pacific, into an expanse they all seem to realize is so much bigger than they. At the funeral gathering, my sister-in-law laid several boxes of photos of her own mother - vacationing on Eden Roc - alongside my little album. I looked at a couple of her photos and then politely put them to the side. Who and what had we gathered to remember? I was actually somehow relieved by the blatancy of my sister-in-law's revelation.
Last week, I met my sister-in-law’s mother in Stockholm, where we both live, for the first time in decades. When we spoke of mother Anne, she said “I’ll never forget the deeply haunting, penetrating look your mother gave me when I saw her the last time a month or so before her death. She seemed tired and didn’t want to talk to me.” Was it that four eyes had finally met in the abyss of female rivalry?
“…the women I interviewed spoke readily of competing with mothers, daughters, sisters, coworkers, and friends, many of them also seemed to buy into the myth of female solidarity, lamenting their own isolation from what they saw as a world of camaraderie and support,” writes Shapiro Barash, in her book Tripping the Prom Queen, adding “We can't understand female rivalry without understanding the pressure to conceal it.”
Back to work. Spent the weekend in my communal garden in Stockholm, laying a new stone path to the compost, preparing beds for the spring, cutting back roses, digging up weeds and ivy roots, and cutting grass. The sun was warm, the air balmy, and the sparkling waters of Lake Mälaren dazzling. Thanks M for all your good gardening tips, solid stance, and strong arms.
Later that same day, a couple of friends who had attended the funeral were leafing through the little album of photos that I had prepared for the gathering in my brother's home in San Francisco. The front cover of the album held a photo of mother Anne placing the first roses (which our father had once planted) of the year on his grave, which she knew would one day be her grave too. The back cover showed mother Anne, from a distance, crossing a stone bridge to a tiny islet in the Swedish archipelago. Most of the filler photos depicted mother Anne holding one of her grandchildren. In one photo she and two of her favorite grandsons are viewed from behind, sitting in the sand, gazing over a vast Pacific, into an expanse they all seem to realize is so much bigger than they. At the funeral gathering, my sister-in-law laid several boxes of photos of her own mother - vacationing on Eden Roc - alongside my little album. I looked at a couple of her photos and then politely put them to the side. Who and what had we gathered to remember? I was actually somehow relieved by the blatancy of my sister-in-law's revelation.
Last week, I met my sister-in-law’s mother in Stockholm, where we both live, for the first time in decades. When we spoke of mother Anne, she said “I’ll never forget the deeply haunting, penetrating look your mother gave me when I saw her the last time a month or so before her death. She seemed tired and didn’t want to talk to me.” Was it that four eyes had finally met in the abyss of female rivalry?
“…the women I interviewed spoke readily of competing with mothers, daughters, sisters, coworkers, and friends, many of them also seemed to buy into the myth of female solidarity, lamenting their own isolation from what they saw as a world of camaraderie and support,” writes Shapiro Barash, in her book Tripping the Prom Queen, adding “We can't understand female rivalry without understanding the pressure to conceal it.”
Back to work. Spent the weekend in my communal garden in Stockholm, laying a new stone path to the compost, preparing beds for the spring, cutting back roses, digging up weeds and ivy roots, and cutting grass. The sun was warm, the air balmy, and the sparkling waters of Lake Mälaren dazzling. Thanks M for all your good gardening tips, solid stance, and strong arms.
Friday, August 29, 2008
The root of the rose?
When I brought a bouquet to my old friend Gösta the other day, he asked: "Where is the root of the rose?" Typical Gösta, I thought to myself. We see the patterns of the blossom, the leaves, but the root? At age 98, Gösta remains full of questions. That's why I like to visit him at the assisted living facility in a suburb of Stockholm.
Since he's been reading Bhagavad Gita and Granth Sahib of late, he's particularly curious about Vox Pacis, and the cantata, "A challenge to humanity", which I've been rehearsing intensively these past few weeks. He talks about the challenges of ecumenism and his concern about the Church, for which he is personally so grateful as his own life draws to a close, for its inability to alter its approach to dialogue in the face of globalism. He emhasizes the challenges of "ethics versus loyalty".
Only the week before, I had taken the afternoon off from my regular job to rehearse together with solists and ensembles representing the major religions of the world. With no time for lunch, I grabbed an ice cream cone on the go, and was just finishing it when I caught site of one of the priests in my parish.
I noted that he was examining with delight the front end of a German tourist bus parked in front of the Swedish National Museum. Since his behavior reminded me of that of my brothers, I stepped off to the side to allow myself to be fascinated by his all too familiar boyish fascination. It was a German vehicle, and everything from the license plate, to the grid, tire, and the half-hidden front suspension, appeared of interest. In the process of observing him, I had evidently become an unwanted witness, because when he lifted his sight from the chassis and I could attract his attention long enough to say hello, the otherwise friendly priest became suddenly abrupt, in a hurry, and unable to refrain from a caustic comment about the luxury of my indulgence. I got the hint and moved on.
Ethics versus loyalty?
A couple of days later, one of his colleagues, another priest asked: "Är du fast här nu." ("Are you fixed/solid/attached/stationary here [in the Catholic Church] now?). I couldn't help disclose my dumbfoundedness: "Fixed, solid, attached?", whereupon the priest responded: "Well I haven't seen you here for such a long time and was wondering." It seems that some men become troubled when they're not sure when and where a female is going to turn up. "Such a long time" happened to have been just two weeks, but that seemed like superfluous information.
Loyalty vs. ethics?
Since he's been reading Bhagavad Gita and Granth Sahib of late, he's particularly curious about Vox Pacis, and the cantata, "A challenge to humanity", which I've been rehearsing intensively these past few weeks. He talks about the challenges of ecumenism and his concern about the Church, for which he is personally so grateful as his own life draws to a close, for its inability to alter its approach to dialogue in the face of globalism. He emhasizes the challenges of "ethics versus loyalty".
Only the week before, I had taken the afternoon off from my regular job to rehearse together with solists and ensembles representing the major religions of the world. With no time for lunch, I grabbed an ice cream cone on the go, and was just finishing it when I caught site of one of the priests in my parish.
I noted that he was examining with delight the front end of a German tourist bus parked in front of the Swedish National Museum. Since his behavior reminded me of that of my brothers, I stepped off to the side to allow myself to be fascinated by his all too familiar boyish fascination. It was a German vehicle, and everything from the license plate, to the grid, tire, and the half-hidden front suspension, appeared of interest. In the process of observing him, I had evidently become an unwanted witness, because when he lifted his sight from the chassis and I could attract his attention long enough to say hello, the otherwise friendly priest became suddenly abrupt, in a hurry, and unable to refrain from a caustic comment about the luxury of my indulgence. I got the hint and moved on.
Ethics versus loyalty?
A couple of days later, one of his colleagues, another priest asked: "Är du fast här nu." ("Are you fixed/solid/attached/stationary here [in the Catholic Church] now?). I couldn't help disclose my dumbfoundedness: "Fixed, solid, attached?", whereupon the priest responded: "Well I haven't seen you here for such a long time and was wondering." It seems that some men become troubled when they're not sure when and where a female is going to turn up. "Such a long time" happened to have been just two weeks, but that seemed like superfluous information.
Loyalty vs. ethics?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Reducing the Easter Bunny
Punny Pixels, hiphopping, Peter cottontail and the Easter bunny funny kept me company today.
I learned that according to the Easter myth, the hare was once a bird who, when Orion sent a sudden cold spell that froze his wings, was saved by the benevolence of the goddess Oster who transformed him into a hare. The vigilance and speed of the hare have hence come to immortalize the need to flee from sin and temptation, and become a reminder of the fleeting passage of life.
On nights like these, when the sky is clear, you can see him still - the Hare - at the feet of Orion. In the firmament he sits between the lines to the butcher, who keeps his sword in his belt until time immemorial, because the hare has been sentenced to save his skin by revealing his true origins in the eggs he brings every Easter. Ironically, to lay an egg in informal American English means “to fail to make people enjoy or be interested in something.”
While only the hare is at home among the thorns of the briar patch, this particular hare risks scathing, skinning (tarring and feathering too) because he is not truly at home in the briar patch (ref. Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus tales).
“Watch the birdie, smile and prepare to have your picture taken.”
“Maria Magdalena, could you please move in, a bit closer to Judas, I want to immortalize all of my disciples at the table tonight. Watch the birdie.” Click.
“ Yes, that was it, a great constellation. We are all gathered here to re-member...can't remember.”
“Before the cock crows you will have denied me …”
"But Rabbi..." was like the hare in all but sin.
Zoom in. “Quick, lay an egg!”
Now here comes Peter cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail.
Hippity, hoppity, Easter’s on her way.
And the cock crowed and the hen laid another egg.
And suddenly the whole story was reduced to a few golden, grey, green and brown pixels.
Zoom out. Hip hop.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
My first seamstress*
As the oldest in a family of five children, Mother Anne apparently learned early to assume her place as the competent and graceful, always on-top-of-it-all woman. She was a conversationalist, a given ”bell of the ball”, the gracious ”hostess with the mostest”. She often outdid herself and others. She was “always in charge”, as a friend of mine has recently said of her. In fact, she was “in charge” until the very end of her life.
As a young mother, she was a master of crafts. I didn’t think that any of the kids on our block in Wellesley, Massachussetts, had the hand-knitted sweaters, the handmade costumes for Halloween, the dresses, that we had. She was the one who taught my sister and I how to knit and gave us an appreciation for all sorts of handicrafts. She gave us beautiful linens, cutlery, high quality cooking utensils... long before the yuppy was ever invented. Her high school graduation present to both of her daughters was a Singer sewing machine. (That we both became amateur singers is another story.) Mother Anne wanted to equip us for life, for the kind of life she and many of her peers had enjoyed as a wife and mother.
But she wasn’t just the typical mother of her generation. As a child, I also remember her sitting at the typewriter, writing letters to a friend in some other country, or a column for a local newspaper. As I grew older I could also picture her behind the easel, painting a classical still life, struggling to capture the frost on a decanter or the reflections on a river. It’s in the same spirit that I can see her practicing calligraphy or shifting the budding branches in some Japanese minimal flower arrangement.
”Your mom has style before others", a friend would say. Her dinner parties were planned with meticulous attention to details, especially when it came to setting the table: starched linens, imaginative flower arrangements, tapered candles, and well-prepared and aesthetically served food. Mother Anne was also an excellent cook. I remember her practicing Japanese cooking on us (classes taught by Benedictine nuns in Tokyo!) when we still preferred hamburgers. Nonetheless we were proud of her ambition. It wasn’t just something she did for the big dinner parties that were a part of her obligation, but every day. I remember often coming home from school hungry and smelling something on the go. I could always look forward to sitting down to one of her well-prepared meals, served every evening at 6 p.m. sharp.
While mother Anne might ”hang out” in shorts and sneakers around the house she would never leave home, never be seen out, without being impeccably dressed, elegantly coifed and made up, with the accessories and jewelry to match. Even when she was out in front of her house washing her car in later years she’d be dressed to kill for the occasion. Egg yolk yellow tights and a blue silk scarf wrapped around her hip, sunglasses and a brimmed cap to match.
Mother Anne was also proud of her heritage as an ”original” San Franciscan (she left San Francisco with father Kreigh during the war and didn’t return until just before he died in the 60s.) She grew up steeped in medical lore as her father was a pharmacist and all of her paternal uncles were physicians. Her paternal grandfather was a physician (Hund) who immigrated from Germany, and set up practice in Marin County (His property is now Marin County College). Her maternal grandparents (Pollard) were wealthy merchants and shippers, primarily of redwood. While her own family lived comfortably during her early years in Saint Francis Wood in San Francisco, they virtually lost everything in the stock market crash in 1929. The death of her sister Carolyn during the polio epidemic of the early 30s, coupled with her mother’s chronic illness then, were other blows to the family in the 30s.
She met father Kreigh in 1934 (at the SF Yacht club on a blind date), and they were married in 1938. Mother Anne told us that she ”grew up” with father Kreigh, that he taught her about the world, about life and love. Life with father Kreigh apparently brought her out and away from the tragedies of her own family...first to South Carolina, then back to San Franicsco during the war, to Japan just after the war, to Boston, to Louisiana, Kansas, back to Japan again, and then Utah.
When I asked mother Anne only a few years ago what she thought were characteristics of her that I had inherited she said: ”I loved your father.” At first I wasn’t really sure what she meant, and wondered if she was trying to avoid my question, but when I thought about it later it seemed clear to me that her love for father Kreigh was…from the very start… the truest story of her life, and it was to that love that I owed my very existence. The last night I saw her she said ”Your father would have been so proud of you.” That was the ultimate expression of love from mom. In answer to my question she then added with some afterthought ”assertiveness and independence". She was indeed assertive, and independent. We could have talks like that over the phone between Sweden and the US. Often comforting and wise.
My last few weeks with mother Anne in April last year had many sweet moments, like when we had taken farewell of one another as I was returning to Sweden the next morning, and had said: ”I have to go now mom” she responded: ” we all have to go soon, dear.” Just a few hours before her death she said to my older brother: ”Can I let go of you now?” While his answer was No, that he’d be back tomorrow”, she remained assertive and independent to the very end. She didn’t want us to tell her what to do or when to go. When her time had come she went.
Her daughter,
Sue Anne
ps. Mother Anne also loved words and sunshine. A voracious reader, she was always a mistress of the word, i.e. ”perspicacious” was one of her favorites. She loved to sit and read in the sunshine, later in the sunlight of her bedroom or sitting room. Yet I’ll always remember her buried in some other world (even have painted her as such), hovering over a book in her lap, in the shade of a wide brimmed straw hat.
*My eulogy to mother Anne, Saint Agnes Church, San Francisco, June 29, 2007
As a young mother, she was a master of crafts. I didn’t think that any of the kids on our block in Wellesley, Massachussetts, had the hand-knitted sweaters, the handmade costumes for Halloween, the dresses, that we had. She was the one who taught my sister and I how to knit and gave us an appreciation for all sorts of handicrafts. She gave us beautiful linens, cutlery, high quality cooking utensils... long before the yuppy was ever invented. Her high school graduation present to both of her daughters was a Singer sewing machine. (That we both became amateur singers is another story.) Mother Anne wanted to equip us for life, for the kind of life she and many of her peers had enjoyed as a wife and mother.
But she wasn’t just the typical mother of her generation. As a child, I also remember her sitting at the typewriter, writing letters to a friend in some other country, or a column for a local newspaper. As I grew older I could also picture her behind the easel, painting a classical still life, struggling to capture the frost on a decanter or the reflections on a river. It’s in the same spirit that I can see her practicing calligraphy or shifting the budding branches in some Japanese minimal flower arrangement.
”Your mom has style before others", a friend would say. Her dinner parties were planned with meticulous attention to details, especially when it came to setting the table: starched linens, imaginative flower arrangements, tapered candles, and well-prepared and aesthetically served food. Mother Anne was also an excellent cook. I remember her practicing Japanese cooking on us (classes taught by Benedictine nuns in Tokyo!) when we still preferred hamburgers. Nonetheless we were proud of her ambition. It wasn’t just something she did for the big dinner parties that were a part of her obligation, but every day. I remember often coming home from school hungry and smelling something on the go. I could always look forward to sitting down to one of her well-prepared meals, served every evening at 6 p.m. sharp.
While mother Anne might ”hang out” in shorts and sneakers around the house she would never leave home, never be seen out, without being impeccably dressed, elegantly coifed and made up, with the accessories and jewelry to match. Even when she was out in front of her house washing her car in later years she’d be dressed to kill for the occasion. Egg yolk yellow tights and a blue silk scarf wrapped around her hip, sunglasses and a brimmed cap to match.
Mother Anne was also proud of her heritage as an ”original” San Franciscan (she left San Francisco with father Kreigh during the war and didn’t return until just before he died in the 60s.) She grew up steeped in medical lore as her father was a pharmacist and all of her paternal uncles were physicians. Her paternal grandfather was a physician (Hund) who immigrated from Germany, and set up practice in Marin County (His property is now Marin County College). Her maternal grandparents (Pollard) were wealthy merchants and shippers, primarily of redwood. While her own family lived comfortably during her early years in Saint Francis Wood in San Francisco, they virtually lost everything in the stock market crash in 1929. The death of her sister Carolyn during the polio epidemic of the early 30s, coupled with her mother’s chronic illness then, were other blows to the family in the 30s.
She met father Kreigh in 1934 (at the SF Yacht club on a blind date), and they were married in 1938. Mother Anne told us that she ”grew up” with father Kreigh, that he taught her about the world, about life and love. Life with father Kreigh apparently brought her out and away from the tragedies of her own family...first to South Carolina, then back to San Franicsco during the war, to Japan just after the war, to Boston, to Louisiana, Kansas, back to Japan again, and then Utah.
When I asked mother Anne only a few years ago what she thought were characteristics of her that I had inherited she said: ”I loved your father.” At first I wasn’t really sure what she meant, and wondered if she was trying to avoid my question, but when I thought about it later it seemed clear to me that her love for father Kreigh was…from the very start… the truest story of her life, and it was to that love that I owed my very existence. The last night I saw her she said ”Your father would have been so proud of you.” That was the ultimate expression of love from mom. In answer to my question she then added with some afterthought ”assertiveness and independence". She was indeed assertive, and independent. We could have talks like that over the phone between Sweden and the US. Often comforting and wise.
My last few weeks with mother Anne in April last year had many sweet moments, like when we had taken farewell of one another as I was returning to Sweden the next morning, and had said: ”I have to go now mom” she responded: ” we all have to go soon, dear.” Just a few hours before her death she said to my older brother: ”Can I let go of you now?” While his answer was No, that he’d be back tomorrow”, she remained assertive and independent to the very end. She didn’t want us to tell her what to do or when to go. When her time had come she went.
Her daughter,
Sue Anne
ps. Mother Anne also loved words and sunshine. A voracious reader, she was always a mistress of the word, i.e. ”perspicacious” was one of her favorites. She loved to sit and read in the sunshine, later in the sunlight of her bedroom or sitting room. Yet I’ll always remember her buried in some other world (even have painted her as such), hovering over a book in her lap, in the shade of a wide brimmed straw hat.
*My eulogy to mother Anne, Saint Agnes Church, San Francisco, June 29, 2007
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Contemplating an empty plate
This evening I had hoped to listen to Merete Mazzarella, a Swedish journalist, essaist and author, speak at Finlandsinstitutet in Stockholm about her two most recent books: När vi spelade Afrikas stjärna and Fredricka Charlotta född Tengström. While I arrived in good time for the talk, I was turned away together with 20 to 30 other disappointed listeners because the lecture hall for some 200 persons was already full, despite the fact that we had arrived in good time before the posted "meeting time".
In my frustration, several thoughts went through my mind: relax, go home and take it easy; you've already corresponded with Merete M by mail about these books, so you've satiated at least some of your curiosity; how different this situation is from the times I''ve found myself sitting with a dozen or so other diehards at the foot of a Nobel laureate in the Black Oak Bookstore in north Berkeley and been given so much to think about; Jante Law: what is the difference between the intellectual climate of Sweden/Finland/Scandinavia and the USA? I think I am starved here in Sweden and returned home, wherever that may be, this evening to contemplate my empty plate....and write on.
I find solace in knowing that tomorrow evening, I will break bread and eat fish with one of my favorite friends.
In my frustration, several thoughts went through my mind: relax, go home and take it easy; you've already corresponded with Merete M by mail about these books, so you've satiated at least some of your curiosity; how different this situation is from the times I''ve found myself sitting with a dozen or so other diehards at the foot of a Nobel laureate in the Black Oak Bookstore in north Berkeley and been given so much to think about; Jante Law: what is the difference between the intellectual climate of Sweden/Finland/Scandinavia and the USA? I think I am starved here in Sweden and returned home, wherever that may be, this evening to contemplate my empty plate....and write on.
I find solace in knowing that tomorrow evening, I will break bread and eat fish with one of my favorite friends.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Cultural clash
This morning I experienced an amusing culture clash.
We were four colleagues who had arrived simultaneously at the front door of our offices. The senior board member (a Swede) among us was quickest to pull out his magnetic entry card and hold the door open for the rest of us. All of a sudden my younger Chinese colleague backed into me, whereupon I nearly overturned the poor young Swedish colleague behind me. Instinctively grabbing a hold of my younger Chinese colleague for balance, I (typical American?) proceeded to push her in front of me through the door, ahead of our junior Swede.
My young Chinese colleague was of course flustered because she had not been the first to open the door for her senior colleagues, and in her failure to follow Asian protocol she at least wanted to be the last of us three remaining to enter. We all know that some (especially older) Swedes are chivalrous and that most Americans are pushy, right? Once we had all managed to enter the reception without setting off the alarm, we could laugh over a quick cultural debrief. Needlesstosay, I am privileged to work where the ceiling is high and a ubiquitous sense of humor prevails.
We were four colleagues who had arrived simultaneously at the front door of our offices. The senior board member (a Swede) among us was quickest to pull out his magnetic entry card and hold the door open for the rest of us. All of a sudden my younger Chinese colleague backed into me, whereupon I nearly overturned the poor young Swedish colleague behind me. Instinctively grabbing a hold of my younger Chinese colleague for balance, I (typical American?) proceeded to push her in front of me through the door, ahead of our junior Swede.
My young Chinese colleague was of course flustered because she had not been the first to open the door for her senior colleagues, and in her failure to follow Asian protocol she at least wanted to be the last of us three remaining to enter. We all know that some (especially older) Swedes are chivalrous and that most Americans are pushy, right? Once we had all managed to enter the reception without setting off the alarm, we could laugh over a quick cultural debrief. Needlesstosay, I am privileged to work where the ceiling is high and a ubiquitous sense of humor prevails.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
The primary election
My absentee vote is still waiting to be counted. I am glad I've had some choice, to bite or not to bite into the big juicy apple in the hands of Billary and Obama. "Some of the best choices we make are the ones we make when we don't have much choice," said Josephine M.
Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is the beginning the fast, the day of the liturgical year that is to remind us of our own mortality. I watch the priest as he presses his thumb into the bowl of ashes and then hear him say “Dust thou art to dust returneth” or “Return to the Word” as ashes fall before my eyes, like my funeral veil. At once I am shielded from having to show my face, and allowed to wear my grief with grace. I can see that now. My entry on Ash Wednesday last year mentions my plans to return soon to mother Anne’s bedside before her hour of death.
This day also reminds me of the significance of setting limits, of willingly abstaining from things I think I cannot do without. We succumb to temptation so much more easily when and where barriers are invisible. This day reminds me of the unseen black veil and unheard water falling, before the opening behind which I stand.
…All this and more
remains to be seen
in the sound of silence
at all the checkpoints
between the pauses
between the Acts
before passing
all old stations
of the Ubahn.
Listen carefully
nowhere any longer
wall or ashes falling
before our eyes
to let me see
what remains
for who am I
otherwise?
Berlin, February 1993
This day also reminds me of the significance of setting limits, of willingly abstaining from things I think I cannot do without. We succumb to temptation so much more easily when and where barriers are invisible. This day reminds me of the unseen black veil and unheard water falling, before the opening behind which I stand.
…All this and more
remains to be seen
in the sound of silence
at all the checkpoints
between the pauses
between the Acts
before passing
all old stations
of the Ubahn.
Listen carefully
nowhere any longer
wall or ashes falling
before our eyes
to let me see
what remains
for who am I
otherwise?
Berlin, February 1993
Thursday, January 31, 2008
A subway encounter in 1990
I have a note in my diary from 1990 that I ran into one of the architects of the Kaknästorn in the Stockholm subway on 31 January. The note doesn’t indicate where we entered the train or who was on the train first. I can only see that we were both on our way to work in the Old Town, and that while we acknowledged one another, I was apparently the first to open a conversation by saying 'hello'. The note adds that the architect was unable to place me immediately, likewise that he seemed relieved when he was able to make a connection to my face, and pose a perfect “cocktail party” question:
“Have you seen the Börjeson girls lately?” The architect had re-membered that I was a friend of the daughters of one of his oldest childhood friends from Örebro, Börje Börjeson, whose oldest daughter, Tina, had bought the little red house next door to mine. Tina had grown up on a nearby broiler chicken farm, and the little red cabin was where her father had once lodged several illegal immigrants to work the farm. She later encouraged me - whom she had met through mutual friends a few years earlier – to purchase the adjacent property when it too was up for sale the next year. Though the miner's residence I bought was much larger, it didn't have the same emotional ties to Tina as the little red house, to where she and her sister had often gone to escape from farm chores and isolation, and where there were several young available foreign men. It didn’t occur to me then that suggesting that I purchase the old miner's residence might be a dubious exercise of the popular Swedish expression “territorial control”*, nor that it could well become the scene of a modern drama.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” I answered the architect, adding “You know that Tina is married to my youngest brother.” I could see how the architect tensed, the way his face flushed as though I had suddenly offered him a piece of a totally different puzzle than the one he was working on.
“No, no she’s not,” he said impulsively, adding: “She married a rich American and moved to the United States.” I don’t think it was just his negation of my statement - and the obvious conviction with which he asserted that Tina had not married my brother - that was so absurd. There was something vulgar and impersonal about the way he pronounced the cliché “rich American” that caused me to react the way I did.
“No, no, she hasn’t, she’s married to my younger brother,” I said, instinctively defending myself from the source of his information as well as from his preferential right to interpret it, and hopefully protecting the integrity of my “poor little brother” at the same time. Who had told the architect about the marriage? Why did that messenger choose to identify the marriage with something like his Jaguar, a vehicle which he had chosen to hide in the woods because it spoiled the view of his own country house. What was it that the messenger had wanted, and had not wanted, the architect to see? Clearly embarrassed and flustered by the situation, the architect seemed relieved that the train was just approaching the Old Town.
“Yaha, well, I’m getting off here, goodbye for now.”
“Yes, well, I’m getting off here too,” I said, continuing to shuffle to the right of the architect as he stepped out of the subway car. I was curious and sensed that I had nothing to lose by pursuing the topic, despite whatever discomfort it may be causing. It seemed to be a perfect opportunity to consume our anxiety by disclosing the hypocrisy. We walked silently side by side until we were out of the station, when he motioned to the right.
“Well, I’m off here…”
“Yes, me too” I interrupted, continuing to keep pace alongside of him on the narrow cobblestoned street, “I have an appointment with a graphic designer on Ferkens Gränd.” I knew that the architect had an office next door to where I was going because I had seen his name many times before on the building. Thus, I could politely prepare him either for a few more minutes of conversation, or the chance to take a detour. He seemed to succumb, however reluctantly, to my company.
“Yes, they were married several years ago, and have a young son now.” I think that both the architect and I sensed the need to begin from the beginning, with the innocence of a child.
To be continued...
* Max Weber’s definition of state, which has long been appropriated by the Swedish foreign ministry (though applicable only to strong states): “unchallenged control of the territory within the defined boundaries under its control, monopolization of the legitimate use of force within the borders of the state, and the reliance upon impersonal rules in the governance of its citizens and subjects” (SIDA 2533n)
“Have you seen the Börjeson girls lately?” The architect had re-membered that I was a friend of the daughters of one of his oldest childhood friends from Örebro, Börje Börjeson, whose oldest daughter, Tina, had bought the little red house next door to mine. Tina had grown up on a nearby broiler chicken farm, and the little red cabin was where her father had once lodged several illegal immigrants to work the farm. She later encouraged me - whom she had met through mutual friends a few years earlier – to purchase the adjacent property when it too was up for sale the next year. Though the miner's residence I bought was much larger, it didn't have the same emotional ties to Tina as the little red house, to where she and her sister had often gone to escape from farm chores and isolation, and where there were several young available foreign men. It didn’t occur to me then that suggesting that I purchase the old miner's residence might be a dubious exercise of the popular Swedish expression “territorial control”*, nor that it could well become the scene of a modern drama.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I have,” I answered the architect, adding “You know that Tina is married to my youngest brother.” I could see how the architect tensed, the way his face flushed as though I had suddenly offered him a piece of a totally different puzzle than the one he was working on.
“No, no she’s not,” he said impulsively, adding: “She married a rich American and moved to the United States.” I don’t think it was just his negation of my statement - and the obvious conviction with which he asserted that Tina had not married my brother - that was so absurd. There was something vulgar and impersonal about the way he pronounced the cliché “rich American” that caused me to react the way I did.
“No, no, she hasn’t, she’s married to my younger brother,” I said, instinctively defending myself from the source of his information as well as from his preferential right to interpret it, and hopefully protecting the integrity of my “poor little brother” at the same time. Who had told the architect about the marriage? Why did that messenger choose to identify the marriage with something like his Jaguar, a vehicle which he had chosen to hide in the woods because it spoiled the view of his own country house. What was it that the messenger had wanted, and had not wanted, the architect to see? Clearly embarrassed and flustered by the situation, the architect seemed relieved that the train was just approaching the Old Town.
“Yaha, well, I’m getting off here, goodbye for now.”
“Yes, well, I’m getting off here too,” I said, continuing to shuffle to the right of the architect as he stepped out of the subway car. I was curious and sensed that I had nothing to lose by pursuing the topic, despite whatever discomfort it may be causing. It seemed to be a perfect opportunity to consume our anxiety by disclosing the hypocrisy. We walked silently side by side until we were out of the station, when he motioned to the right.
“Well, I’m off here…”
“Yes, me too” I interrupted, continuing to keep pace alongside of him on the narrow cobblestoned street, “I have an appointment with a graphic designer on Ferkens Gränd.” I knew that the architect had an office next door to where I was going because I had seen his name many times before on the building. Thus, I could politely prepare him either for a few more minutes of conversation, or the chance to take a detour. He seemed to succumb, however reluctantly, to my company.
“Yes, they were married several years ago, and have a young son now.” I think that both the architect and I sensed the need to begin from the beginning, with the innocence of a child.
To be continued...
* Max Weber’s definition of state, which has long been appropriated by the Swedish foreign ministry (though applicable only to strong states): “unchallenged control of the territory within the defined boundaries under its control, monopolization of the legitimate use of force within the borders of the state, and the reliance upon impersonal rules in the governance of its citizens and subjects” (SIDA 2533n)
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
In between flights
...and frights. Another pause in my story, brought to me by my first love (Michael Chase, Berkeley, CA, 1969):
FLIGHT
Hidden in suds,
while we were aloft,
the bashful sea played,
soapy and soft.
FLIGHT
Hidden in suds,
while we were aloft,
the bashful sea played,
soapy and soft.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The patron of Sweden
Over the past 30 years in Sweden I have read stacks of “technological poetry” and reflected enough on the ”timeless erection” [‘tidlös stake’ på svenska] that one of the architects of the Kaknästorn would evidently like to be remembered by. It has taken me many years, and many a twist and turn of words in the dark, to eventually confirm my own perspectives. Sometimes I wonder why it has taken me so long, but that’s another story.
In one of my diaries of early personal encounters in Sweden, I note that I ran into the quoted (last blog entry) Kaknästorn architect one day in the subway in Stockholm. We were both on our way to work in the Old Town. I recognized him because he had a quaint little house in the woods not far from my old country house, and sometimes stopped by to inspect my place.
He had also invited me once on a tour of his house, which I found to be a perfectly charming museum piece, a piously renovated and meticulously maintained 18th century cabin with no running water or electricity indoors. There were funky scrap metal sculptures and a little homemade generator along a dammed up stream that ran through the property. When there was enough water in the stream, a falling squirt was used to power a lightbulb in the outhouse, though it wasn’t working when I was there. This was where he chose to remind himself of his history. When he was there he always kept his Jaguar out of sight in the woods behind his house, as though it marred the timeless illusion. I was learning about Sweden and Swedes.
On the unannounced inspection days, he would park his Jaguar under the pear tree in front of my house. I might be up on the roof laying new tiles, on a ladder puttying the window panes, sanding the fir floors, laying bricks around a new hearth, or wallpapering – all in my attempts to make an old whitewashed miners’ residence that hadn’t been maintained for decades, inhabitable. I never remember him knocking, though I believed he should have since we did not know one another particularly well. He always seemed to appear in some sort of a professional capacity, somewhere between that of an industrial patron overseeing his foundry and a housing contractor inspecting his construction site.
Getting used to the patronizing manner of this man was part of the process of acclimation to the Swedish landscape. I was young, a female, and a foreigner to boot.
To be continued...
In one of my diaries of early personal encounters in Sweden, I note that I ran into the quoted (last blog entry) Kaknästorn architect one day in the subway in Stockholm. We were both on our way to work in the Old Town. I recognized him because he had a quaint little house in the woods not far from my old country house, and sometimes stopped by to inspect my place.
He had also invited me once on a tour of his house, which I found to be a perfectly charming museum piece, a piously renovated and meticulously maintained 18th century cabin with no running water or electricity indoors. There were funky scrap metal sculptures and a little homemade generator along a dammed up stream that ran through the property. When there was enough water in the stream, a falling squirt was used to power a lightbulb in the outhouse, though it wasn’t working when I was there. This was where he chose to remind himself of his history. When he was there he always kept his Jaguar out of sight in the woods behind his house, as though it marred the timeless illusion. I was learning about Sweden and Swedes.
On the unannounced inspection days, he would park his Jaguar under the pear tree in front of my house. I might be up on the roof laying new tiles, on a ladder puttying the window panes, sanding the fir floors, laying bricks around a new hearth, or wallpapering – all in my attempts to make an old whitewashed miners’ residence that hadn’t been maintained for decades, inhabitable. I never remember him knocking, though I believed he should have since we did not know one another particularly well. He always seemed to appear in some sort of a professional capacity, somewhere between that of an industrial patron overseeing his foundry and a housing contractor inspecting his construction site.
Getting used to the patronizing manner of this man was part of the process of acclimation to the Swedish landscape. I was young, a female, and a foreigner to boot.
To be continued...
Thursday, January 24, 2008
From this tower…
In the more than 30 years I’ve been living in Sweden I’ve only once been up inside Kaknästornet, a radio and TV tower and one of the highest structures in Scandinavia. I didn’t think the view from up there was particularly inspiring or helpful, and definitely didn’t appreciate the dizziness it triggered, especially since I was responsible for the welfare of my little godson the day I was there. So I’ve never been back.
Kaknästornet was built while I was still walking in the shadows of the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. It was built during the sixties, on the edge of a pasture in eastern Stockholm on the outskirts of the town, while politicians and architects were leveling more old buildings in the downtown area than all those that had been bombed out in Prague during the Second World War. The first time I visited Stockholm in the late sixites, it reminded me of a ground zero. Without the trauma and debt of the war, Sweden could afford to flaunt a ‘modern’ city more quickly than the rest of Europe. And to eliminate the critical housing shortage at that time, the same politicians and architects who dropped the bombs downtown raised enormous apartment complexes in the suburbs, edifices that I actually thought were military facilities when I first visited, although I later found these ‘folk homes’ to be well-planned and practical on the inside.
Sweden in the sixties had no beat generation, no anti-war movement, and no civil rights (very few blacks) or free speech movement. Intellectuals worked for the State. The Stockholm harbor didn’t open onto Asia, but was shielded from the Soviet by Finlandization. And I don’t suppose that Swedish engineering students were nerdy enough to build funky lighthouse sculptures out of fiber optic cables, the way they did in Berkeley. In Sweden they were still using wood, concrete, and scrap metal reinforcements to play.
According to one of the Kaknästorn architects: “there were so many strange words used then – modem, video – and we had no idea what they meant, but a sturdy, solid, concrete tower was needed to house all the technological poetry…I think it still works, like a timeless erection.”*
Perhaps needlesstosay, I experienced a profound cultural shock, though I've kept my mouth shut for years.
More on Swedish architectural poetry of the sixties, to be continued….
In the meantime, enjoy my friend and all-time favorite Swedish jazz singer Jeanette Lindström singing one of my absolute favorite songs of hers: From This Tower, music and lyrics by Jeanette Lindström. Better yet check her out live in Sweden!
* Video film (May 10, 2007) produced by Terracom for the the 40th anniversary of the opening of Kaknästornet.
Kaknästornet was built while I was still walking in the shadows of the Campanile on the Berkeley campus. It was built during the sixties, on the edge of a pasture in eastern Stockholm on the outskirts of the town, while politicians and architects were leveling more old buildings in the downtown area than all those that had been bombed out in Prague during the Second World War. The first time I visited Stockholm in the late sixites, it reminded me of a ground zero. Without the trauma and debt of the war, Sweden could afford to flaunt a ‘modern’ city more quickly than the rest of Europe. And to eliminate the critical housing shortage at that time, the same politicians and architects who dropped the bombs downtown raised enormous apartment complexes in the suburbs, edifices that I actually thought were military facilities when I first visited, although I later found these ‘folk homes’ to be well-planned and practical on the inside.
Sweden in the sixties had no beat generation, no anti-war movement, and no civil rights (very few blacks) or free speech movement. Intellectuals worked for the State. The Stockholm harbor didn’t open onto Asia, but was shielded from the Soviet by Finlandization. And I don’t suppose that Swedish engineering students were nerdy enough to build funky lighthouse sculptures out of fiber optic cables, the way they did in Berkeley. In Sweden they were still using wood, concrete, and scrap metal reinforcements to play.
According to one of the Kaknästorn architects: “there were so many strange words used then – modem, video – and we had no idea what they meant, but a sturdy, solid, concrete tower was needed to house all the technological poetry…I think it still works, like a timeless erection.”*
Perhaps needlesstosay, I experienced a profound cultural shock, though I've kept my mouth shut for years.
More on Swedish architectural poetry of the sixties, to be continued….
In the meantime, enjoy my friend and all-time favorite Swedish jazz singer Jeanette Lindström singing one of my absolute favorite songs of hers: From This Tower, music and lyrics by Jeanette Lindström. Better yet check her out live in Sweden!
* Video film (May 10, 2007) produced by Terracom for the the 40th anniversary of the opening of Kaknästornet.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Why does the moth
I still have this one once loved saved on a napkin and spotted with candlewax from the sixties:
Why does the moth
meandering upon the lake?
Is the dappled curtain so intriguing
as to blind him to the lurking shapes below?
Away, little moth,
to the leaves and in the fields,
safely there.
Thanks to MC
Why does the moth
meandering upon the lake?
Is the dappled curtain so intriguing
as to blind him to the lurking shapes below?
Away, little moth,
to the leaves and in the fields,
safely there.
Thanks to MC
Saturday, January 19, 2008
The sixties – were you really there?
Statements like: "If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there,"* never fail to make me a bit queasy. While I usually shrug them off with “that’s one way of looking at it, however glassy-eyed”, it’s the sort of comment that reminds me of one unfortunate legacy of youth, about how quickly things take place in a catalyzed (hormonal etc.) reaction. And before you know it, it’s over and the world looks quite different. It also reminds me of the time when the significance of words like “I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more, Toto” from The Wizard of Oz, or “mad as a hatter” had yet to mean much.
Another reason the statement makes me queasy is perhaps because it reminds me of the many ways in which people seem bent on protecting territory by avoiding dialogue, or committing any constructive memory to oblivion. Others do it by hiding behind some dubious professional role or institutional status - like the doctor who claims a right to diagnose anything and anyone regardless of context. Like the one man/woman posse bent on taking the law into their own hands, we seem to forget that an individual who is called upon to witness and chooses to plead the 5th amendment, does so only to spare the details of self-incrimination. Better to testify, now.
Need I be queasy when I recognize how many post-war baby boomers we were who formed the critical mass of the San Francisco Bay Area counterculture, easily a million. While the term globalization had yet to permeate widespread consciousness, many of our parents had lifted our sights to the horizons of the Far East during the war. Thus the sixties weren’t just a reaction to the political and social conservativism of our parents generation. We were also familiar with the new wave of post-war Asian immigrants, with the first movements toward ethnic civil rights, as well as with the expressions of the local beat generation in art and literature. The sixties in the Bay Area were (note plural conjugation) the result of a complex of inter-related cultural and political trends, catalyzed by the war in Vietnam and nuclear testing in the South Pacific. We - hundreds of thousands of baby boomers who attended the world renowned universities and colleges in the Bay Area - were uniquely positioned to observe, empirically test and endorse, many of the freedoms of personal expression expounded by our local artists and through the Free Speech movement. And by virtue of our numbers we could deviate en masse from the conventional norms and political conservatism that had been characteristic of mainstream America. When less energy is required to activate, as in any catalyzed reaction, the reaction rate is that much faster. Many were consumed in the process.
While we were voracious cultural consumers, not all of us put everything into our mouths. Perhaps I become a bit queasy when I am reminded of the rotten fruit, moldy bread and mushrooms, and see all the bottles of jug wine and the sugar cubes. I can still breathe in the marijuana and hashish along Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and in the Haight in San Francisco. Not all of us listened day and night to all the music, though we did listen. I was there, for example, at a Bob Dylan concert off Broadway, and remember Joan Baez in the row in front of me. I can still hear the psychedelic sound of Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit”, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, playing for free in the park during my lunch hour. I can also recall the ambiance at La Pena on Shattuck in Berkeley when Malvina Reynolds (Little Boxes) sang. I was there too, with lifted hands swaying to Aretha in her encore with Ray Charles at the Fillmore West. And as an usher at the Hyatt Regency, I was even privileged to listen to a rare Mahalia Jackson concert, for free, just a few years before her death. Yes, many of us were there and remember, even musical experiences, because we weren’t stoned out of our minds.
Many of us locals knew where the fault line went, because we had grown up in earthquake territory. Grandma and Grandpa lived in the Haight too, and went to mass regularly at Saint Agnes. We were young, naïve perhaps, but our survival instinct told us to watch where we put our foot. We knew already then that we were mortal human beings, just stepping out into the world.
While our episodic memory may be failing us now, it is said that our semantic memory is at its peak between the ages of 55 and 65, which puts mine at an all-time high. And so as I read through my old diaries, I’m finding that it’s easy to recall “the gist” of many of the happenings that I have described in more detail there. Like I wrote in my blog just a couple of weeks ago: “Remember we boomers have been around long enough to make a lot of connections.”
To be continued….
* Said by Paul Kantner, lead guitarist and singer in Jefferson Airplane, a San Francisco-based rock band, that had its hey dey between 1965 and 1970.
Another reason the statement makes me queasy is perhaps because it reminds me of the many ways in which people seem bent on protecting territory by avoiding dialogue, or committing any constructive memory to oblivion. Others do it by hiding behind some dubious professional role or institutional status - like the doctor who claims a right to diagnose anything and anyone regardless of context. Like the one man/woman posse bent on taking the law into their own hands, we seem to forget that an individual who is called upon to witness and chooses to plead the 5th amendment, does so only to spare the details of self-incrimination. Better to testify, now.
Need I be queasy when I recognize how many post-war baby boomers we were who formed the critical mass of the San Francisco Bay Area counterculture, easily a million. While the term globalization had yet to permeate widespread consciousness, many of our parents had lifted our sights to the horizons of the Far East during the war. Thus the sixties weren’t just a reaction to the political and social conservativism of our parents generation. We were also familiar with the new wave of post-war Asian immigrants, with the first movements toward ethnic civil rights, as well as with the expressions of the local beat generation in art and literature. The sixties in the Bay Area were (note plural conjugation) the result of a complex of inter-related cultural and political trends, catalyzed by the war in Vietnam and nuclear testing in the South Pacific. We - hundreds of thousands of baby boomers who attended the world renowned universities and colleges in the Bay Area - were uniquely positioned to observe, empirically test and endorse, many of the freedoms of personal expression expounded by our local artists and through the Free Speech movement. And by virtue of our numbers we could deviate en masse from the conventional norms and political conservatism that had been characteristic of mainstream America. When less energy is required to activate, as in any catalyzed reaction, the reaction rate is that much faster. Many were consumed in the process.
While we were voracious cultural consumers, not all of us put everything into our mouths. Perhaps I become a bit queasy when I am reminded of the rotten fruit, moldy bread and mushrooms, and see all the bottles of jug wine and the sugar cubes. I can still breathe in the marijuana and hashish along Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley and in the Haight in San Francisco. Not all of us listened day and night to all the music, though we did listen. I was there, for example, at a Bob Dylan concert off Broadway, and remember Joan Baez in the row in front of me. I can still hear the psychedelic sound of Grace Slick’s “White Rabbit”, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, playing for free in the park during my lunch hour. I can also recall the ambiance at La Pena on Shattuck in Berkeley when Malvina Reynolds (Little Boxes) sang. I was there too, with lifted hands swaying to Aretha in her encore with Ray Charles at the Fillmore West. And as an usher at the Hyatt Regency, I was even privileged to listen to a rare Mahalia Jackson concert, for free, just a few years before her death. Yes, many of us were there and remember, even musical experiences, because we weren’t stoned out of our minds.
Many of us locals knew where the fault line went, because we had grown up in earthquake territory. Grandma and Grandpa lived in the Haight too, and went to mass regularly at Saint Agnes. We were young, naïve perhaps, but our survival instinct told us to watch where we put our foot. We knew already then that we were mortal human beings, just stepping out into the world.
While our episodic memory may be failing us now, it is said that our semantic memory is at its peak between the ages of 55 and 65, which puts mine at an all-time high. And so as I read through my old diaries, I’m finding that it’s easy to recall “the gist” of many of the happenings that I have described in more detail there. Like I wrote in my blog just a couple of weeks ago: “Remember we boomers have been around long enough to make a lot of connections.”
To be continued….
* Said by Paul Kantner, lead guitarist and singer in Jefferson Airplane, a San Francisco-based rock band, that had its hey dey between 1965 and 1970.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Remembering Josephine Miles, cont...
It wasn’t Josephine who told me to go for a long walk today while the sun was still shining, and to breathe deeply of the fresh winter air. But while I was out walking I could distinctly hear her voice. With unusual authority and without reprimanding she reminded me to be honest, to take one step at a time, and keep it simple.
You’re nowhere near the edges of the crater you were born into, she might say. You’ve made it past the half life of the radioactivity from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You’ve survived another death in the family. No teargas, no curfew. No need to run for your life, or to nurse a roommate who has flipped out on some psychedelic drug. No, you’re not in Berkeley in the sixties anymore and there are no more deserters to bring home from Vancouver. No one is accusing you for the war any longer. You can take down the "Do not disturb" sign and be their witness. No need to skirt the globe. Let the world spin of its own accord and help you to wind your wool into a manageable ball. She seems to be saying: Though you may be an unwanted witness, don’t worry, it will all pull together before it’s too late to make something of it.
Josephine Miles is one of those threads of my life that seems to surface whenever there’s a snag. Her words are often there, somewhere in the weave, like (if I recall correctly): “The most important decisions we make in our lives are those we make when the choices are limited.” What did she mean by that? I’ve been asking myself this question every other day for decades, at once thanking and cursing the God who gave me so many gifts and continues to present me with countless choices, so many detours off the main route in the short story of my life.
Some twenty years ago one of my old roommates at Berkeley, Toni, and I were talking about Josephine. Toni (then head of the technical publications department of a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area) told me that a young writer in her department had recently interviewed Josephine, just prior to her death. Our discussion reminded me of all the English majors in the United States who work in industry to support themselves. Perhaps I appreciate that reminder because Swedes who can write are as reluctant to consider the option as industrial employers are to understand the benefits. It’s a sort of Catch 22. Toni’s writers don’t regard their day job as prostitution, but as the well-paid and appreciated deference to reality it is.
Toni sent me a copy of the interview. A major reality of Josephine’s life was that she was disabled, and confined to a wheelchair most of her adult life. In the interview she said that this probably helped her to focus, to dedicate her life to language and to teaching. These were things she could do even when the elevator was on the blink, because her students were always prepared to carry her up the stairs.
You’re nowhere near the edges of the crater you were born into, she might say. You’ve made it past the half life of the radioactivity from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You’ve survived another death in the family. No teargas, no curfew. No need to run for your life, or to nurse a roommate who has flipped out on some psychedelic drug. No, you’re not in Berkeley in the sixties anymore and there are no more deserters to bring home from Vancouver. No one is accusing you for the war any longer. You can take down the "Do not disturb" sign and be their witness. No need to skirt the globe. Let the world spin of its own accord and help you to wind your wool into a manageable ball. She seems to be saying: Though you may be an unwanted witness, don’t worry, it will all pull together before it’s too late to make something of it.
Josephine Miles is one of those threads of my life that seems to surface whenever there’s a snag. Her words are often there, somewhere in the weave, like (if I recall correctly): “The most important decisions we make in our lives are those we make when the choices are limited.” What did she mean by that? I’ve been asking myself this question every other day for decades, at once thanking and cursing the God who gave me so many gifts and continues to present me with countless choices, so many detours off the main route in the short story of my life.
Some twenty years ago one of my old roommates at Berkeley, Toni, and I were talking about Josephine. Toni (then head of the technical publications department of a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area) told me that a young writer in her department had recently interviewed Josephine, just prior to her death. Our discussion reminded me of all the English majors in the United States who work in industry to support themselves. Perhaps I appreciate that reminder because Swedes who can write are as reluctant to consider the option as industrial employers are to understand the benefits. It’s a sort of Catch 22. Toni’s writers don’t regard their day job as prostitution, but as the well-paid and appreciated deference to reality it is.
Toni sent me a copy of the interview. A major reality of Josephine’s life was that she was disabled, and confined to a wheelchair most of her adult life. In the interview she said that this probably helped her to focus, to dedicate her life to language and to teaching. These were things she could do even when the elevator was on the blink, because her students were always prepared to carry her up the stairs.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Pruned plane trees
The air was clean after a week of torrential rainfall. I was strolling to class along Sproul Plaza, between the rows of drastically pruned London plane trees. Anyone who has spent any time on the Berkeley campus and seen those esplanades knows what they look like at this time of year, after years of severe winter pruning. Tourists who visit in the spring and summer are seldom privy to see them raise their fists to the sky, to see what power gathers under their shady foliage. Yes, the trees on Sproul Plaza, just like the ones along the Campanile, really need to be cut back each year, and severely, not just because they are a landmark but because their naked branches and their defiant limbs are a signature. I used to think they were grotesque, a tool for some socialist realist woodcut, but now I actually think they are beautiful.
Drastically, pruned, London, plane? “Do you really need all those modifiers?” I hear the voice of another constant companion, another alma mater. I can hear Josephine ask, always reminding us, her students, to cut the crap (my words), to get rid of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs. I’ll never forget the first time I met Josephine.
It was in January 1965 and having passed the plane tree esplanade, I had just entered the foyer of Dwinelle Hall, the humanities building on campus. There was a bit of commotion there, which wasn’t at all unusual in those days. Students were engaged, outspoken, sometimes even belligerent and boisterous. I noticed some male students scrambling at the bottom of the staircase to the right. All of a sudden I saw that they had hoisted an older woman above their heads and were carrying her up the stairs. The woman seemed calm enough. Though the living body bearers didn’t look like athletes, they reminded me of a football team carrying a teammate who had just scored a winning goal. Students were also considerate and helpful, and full of initiative then. “It’s Josephine Miles”, I heard someone say, “you know, the English professor who’s crippled.” I think the elevator was broken and she had a class to teach.
Perhaps that’s when I first learned that English would be the jewel of my university studies (even though I was a history major and an art minor), and that Josephine would be the personification of my Alma Mater.
Read On Inhabiting an Orange, by Josephine Miles.
To be continued...
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Twelfth Night Tango
Someone called last night, with a voice from the past, and introduced himself as Astor Piazzolla, supposedly one of three biblical Magi. We were told by a Catholic priest in a sermon today that it's not the trip to Bethlehem that is the significance of the story of the Epiphany, but how the Magi navigated home and what happened on the way. I appreciated the reminder.
While I didn't recognize the voice on the phone last night, I did recognize the sound of the bandoneon and knew that whoever was calling had the wrong number, since the real Astor died years ago. He actually died of a stroke on his way to mass at Notre Dame. In an effort to be polite, however, I didn’t hang up immediately, but listened to the disk as it continued to spin (pirouetting) over and over on his turntable. I suppose he imagined that I was following him, every little thing he was trying to say, like the perfect dance partner. Or maybe he was just some old dj who had had too much to drink. Then, without waiting to be moved by the leitmotif, he hung up. Adios. I have since found out that he was born disabled, crippled for life by a hearing defect.
What tension he must have felt in that exacting impulse to hang up, allowing himself to be catapulted into the firmament, then back like a boomerang, past the computer screen and blurred proof sheet, dragging all the cords and pulling out all the plugs in the process.
Sigh. How effortlessly we seem to be thrown back by the music into our everlasting youth, hung up, and then suddenly turn (on slightly bent knees) to face that ever warm and lightfooted follower from another life, another time, another continent. We call it “work in progress". Who will hold the small of Viola's back on the next impulse to dance? Who - if not me - is prepared to follow her to the very end of a brief score on her way home, adieu.
I have to laugh (and cry) at a bizarre comedy of errors that is as well-written as well-directed to entertain. Sometimes we need these diversions - like Let's Dance - before the end of the holidays, huh?
While I didn't recognize the voice on the phone last night, I did recognize the sound of the bandoneon and knew that whoever was calling had the wrong number, since the real Astor died years ago. He actually died of a stroke on his way to mass at Notre Dame. In an effort to be polite, however, I didn’t hang up immediately, but listened to the disk as it continued to spin (pirouetting) over and over on his turntable. I suppose he imagined that I was following him, every little thing he was trying to say, like the perfect dance partner. Or maybe he was just some old dj who had had too much to drink. Then, without waiting to be moved by the leitmotif, he hung up. Adios. I have since found out that he was born disabled, crippled for life by a hearing defect.
What tension he must have felt in that exacting impulse to hang up, allowing himself to be catapulted into the firmament, then back like a boomerang, past the computer screen and blurred proof sheet, dragging all the cords and pulling out all the plugs in the process.
Sigh. How effortlessly we seem to be thrown back by the music into our everlasting youth, hung up, and then suddenly turn (on slightly bent knees) to face that ever warm and lightfooted follower from another life, another time, another continent. We call it “work in progress". Who will hold the small of Viola's back on the next impulse to dance? Who - if not me - is prepared to follow her to the very end of a brief score on her way home, adieu.
I have to laugh (and cry) at a bizarre comedy of errors that is as well-written as well-directed to entertain. Sometimes we need these diversions - like Let's Dance - before the end of the holidays, huh?
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Where do YOU come from?
The American Village,
Tokyo, Japan 1958
So you too have perhaps learned the meaning of another new word today. (I consider it part of my job as a translator). And hopefully you too are able to recall your own first dream. I find it interesting, between yesterday and today, to partake of an interview with the contemporary video filmmaker Bill Viola, in conjunction with the opening of his retrospective Hatsu-yume (First Dream) at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo at the close of last year: Interview with Bill Viola, Dec 2006
God forbid that the myriad of curious coincidences that connect us to places, events and people should render us superstitious (see my blog entry May 30, 2007). Remember we boomers have been around long enough to make a lot of connections.
When people ask me where I came from (which still happens regularly in Sweden), it’s not at all farfetched for me to think to respond “nowhere”, and bounce the question back, because we’ve all moved and changed our positions. And for me, the boundaries of so many of those spaces we call home - like a place, a house, a village, a town, not the least in Japan - have long since and literally imploded. Apparently obliterated, they have become an integral part of us, our memories, and the collective memory of everyone who has lived there too. Sometimes I think that if there were a mold for the post-war generation, for baby boomers, then my life must have been one of the first to be cast from it.
Several years ago, a Swedish acquaintance (pre-war) suggested that I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Since he didn’t know much about my background, I was more baffled than offended. For the record, let it be known that unlike most of my peers I did not receive support from my family or from the American government to put myself through one of the best, however the most expensive, public universities in the U.S. Because my parents had paid state taxes I was fortunately able to attend that university on resident tuition, which was considerably lower than than for out-of-state and foreign students. I paid for my schooling by working odd part-time jobs and received various scholarships because I was an ambitious student. When I came to Sweden I had a good education in my bagage, one suitcase, and enough money to support myself while learning Swedish and until I could find work. I have since realized that any post-war middle-class American was probably considered wealthy by pre-war Scandinavian standards, and that my friend’s projection was undoubtedly augmented by memories of ancestors who had emigrated from poverty to realize the American dream… and never returned. The Swedish dream then? Who the hell am I to pose such a question? When you try to entertain yourself with reflections on a silver spoon, you’re either right-side-up (convex) or upside-down (concave).
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Hatsuyume
For several years G has been in the process of writing a book which only recently has been accepted for publication. She called to share the good news and we made plans to get together during the Christmas holidays. I dreamed that just as I was leaving home for our appointment, the phone rang. It was the supervisor of the local Day Care Center calling to say that she was desperate. She was without personnel and the Day Care Center was full. She reminded me that I had signed up several years ago to work extra hours there. She insisted that I fulfill my promise, while I insisted on fulfilling my commitment to G. I woke up, and met G as planned. We had a wonderful long walk along the waterfronts of Stockholm in the brief daylight (no sunlight today), and ended up sharing not only our work and plans for the future, but also a pleasant lunch that included the escapades and more sustainable developments of our "babies". Meaning of hatsuyume?
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Kinga Shinnen
A collection of mother Anne's Japanese fans.
What American mother could imagine, in the middle of a second world war, that her first granddaughter would be born in the land of a "perpetrator" only a few years later? They say the occupation was successful. In the spirit of Japanese culture, may the new year be full of respect and joy: kinga shinnen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)