On the broom

The first thing I did when I came home this evening was to pick up the broom by the door. Holding it upside-down, I paraded in with my staff, as if to say "My home is my castle." Yeah. Yeah. What was it I had come home to do today? To sweep, or to take my staff out onto the balcony where I might hold audience? So many current subjects to address. So much dust that has collected here.
As absurd as I may have appeared from a distance, I did actually choose to go out into the chill and tramp the sooty snow on my balcony. I didn't go out to clean, though. It's too early for that. I went out because I wanted to count the patined pipes of the wind chimes that had been hanging out there so quietly all winter. I weathered the cold to confirm that my instrument did still, in fact, consist of five pipes, all the prerequisites for a global pentatonic scale, enough for amazing grace to sound in passing winds.

Once out in the cold I had to lean and stretch across the pots, planter boxes, and insulation material, and get into a position to poke and pat around the rails to distinguish the brass pipes from the surrounding wrought iron bars. I had to give them a knock to break the dry twist of last year's grape vines, climbing roses and sweet peas. My rummaging failed to make much of a peal. Was I deaf or had the filth of the traffic on the street below, coupled with winter's icy grip, muted them so?

Eager to hear more, I took ahold of the bristles of the broom, its scruffy mane, lifted the wooden handle and having caught sight of what I was looking for, hit the bars and pipes as hard as I could. Damned. I wanted to hear those pipes, loudly and clearly. Then suddenly, overcome by a fear that someone - on the street below, on their way home from their job, to the bus, so-called normal people on their way to the grocery store, or to pick up children from school, afraid of losing their jobs - might misinterpret what I was up to. So I stopped and went in. Silly goose? Ghost? What had I seen? What had I heard? Was it the angry shout of a rebel army in the courtyard below, calling for my abdication? Delusions of grandeur? Someone else's resignation? My own? Or was it simply an elusive glee in the cacaphony of an unexpected prison break? I LOLed, indoors.

How could I ever forget? The broom? My ever faithful vehicle?

One of my first jobs in this old – new to me – country, to which I came ostensibly for love, was to rise each day at the crack of dawn and clean the floors of the John Wall AB Hardware Store – everything for house and home. I swept, though not groomed to push a broom. I didn't mind much. My colleagues were all sorts of friendly women from other countries, none of whom spoke much Swedish. We communicated with our hands and feet and trusted one another. Katarina and Yolanda and I were a team. Our hours there were five to nine ante meridiem , upside-down work hours in the year of the world (a.m.), Monday through Saturday. That was before we organized to punch the clocks for one another in the basement of Paul U Bergströms, thus enabling an hour or so of extra of sleep, at least one day a week. The supervisor didn't arrive until 8.30 and by then we were all there on duty with our mops in hand, bent over a wet floor. We did it. In a pinch, we could do it again. When I punched out at 9 a.m., I went on to art school and Katarina and Yolanda left for their day jobs.

A year or so later.
up against the Wall
I could finally write
my long awaited
Dear John letter:

Bäste John,
Efter flera års utbildning vid ett av de främsta universiteten i världen, och ett år på en konstskola här i Sverige, har jag nu lärt mig tillräckligt mycket svenska (och om Sverige) för att kunna säga upp mig som Er morgonstäderska.
vänliga hälsningar
En glad dam

I was pleased to announce my resignation as one of his many cleaning ladies. That was many years and jobs ago, when I could still expect a raise by getting another academic degree warmer and changing jobs. Even though my immigrant status and gender had probably set me back a couple of decades, compared to my Swedish mates, there was some strange security in knowing that as long as I was physically fit I could always push a broom.

Some four decades later, four flights up, on my corner balcony, I suddenly realized that I was still pushing the broom, and that maybe it was high time to ride it instead, now that I'm broken in here. What I did last night was to use my broom to knock on the pipes, hit the letter keys and space bars and alarm clock, and ring all the doorbells for neighbors to hear the sweeping sound it makes: I REFUSE to WASTE more time. I am replacing myself now with an older woman who wishes to age gracefully, dependent upon my neighbors for support. "Why can't we defy fire department and insurance company rules, and take a few risks needed to make this place fit for human life. Set up a bookshelf and a table by the door, exchange books and magazines and flowers and gingerbread in the empty spaces we share. Mop our own floors." That's what I said at the board meeting of my condominium association last night.
-------------
I am in the software store now, of my godchildren, generations to come or not, listening to the carillons of doctors, lawyers, chimney sweepers, carpenters and candlestick-makers. I wish to be free from all the file pushers and peddlers, and jump off the deep end into the Pirate Bay of legitimate file sharers. Sign me up for the new digital world where I can clap my hands, and tap my feet wherever I go. Watch out, sweeping through, this big bag lady is on the broom.

Caught between a rock and a hard place

Today I'm reacting to the local (Sweden) debate on nuclear energy vs. fossil fuel:

I dagens globala värld som kännetecknas av medicinska och teknologiska framgångar är det engelska uttrycket “to be caught between a rock and a hard place “ (svårigheten att konfronteras med två otillfredställande val) onekligen mer tidsenig än “att fångas mellan pest och cholera”. Ska vi, och många generationer efter oss, nu bli fångna i ett “slutförvar” under Oskarshamn eller Forsmark, mellan urberget och en kopparkapsel? Eller mer kortsiktigt mellan Vyborg och Greifswald?

Vetenskapsmännen ifrågasätter hypoteser om CO2 som den globala smutskastaren. Vem ifrågasätter politiker? Jag har svårt att förstå varför vissa politiker fortsätter att förklara politiska framgångar såsom det vore ett val mellan ytterligheter, mellan den “rena” kärnkraften och det “smutsiga” fossila bränslet.

Är det för mycket begärt att den politiska debatten nuanseras för att rymma existentiella spörsmål? Alternativ ur ett existensiellt perspektiv, medveten om begränsningar i människans liksom jordens resurser?

Trots min generationstillhörighet tror jag att jag börjar förstå ungdomars (Warcraft) uttryck “between a rock and a Thistlefur”.

Moodysson's Mammoth

On an editorial published yesterday in a Swedish daily newspaper (Per Gudmundsson SvD 6/2/09, http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/artikel_2430341.svd) about the film "Mammoth", by the Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. I write:

Det var onekligen intressant att notera en gränsöverskridande recension om Moodyssons film på ledarsidan igår. Intressant också att inlägget rubricerades med en retorisk fråga. "Inte är väl Lukas Moodyssons film kvinnofientlig?" Är det av en slump att kulturdelen av Svenska Dagbladet inbäddades igår i en bilaga om den globala finanskrisen? Kanske har vi Lukas Moodysson att tacka för att kulturen äntligen fick lyftas till ledarsidan?
Även om jag inte kan hysa den hybrisen (läs: kristallkulan) som svar på frågan förutsätter, kan jag åtminstone delge några av mina funderingar. Jag kan tillägga att jag berördes varken av Moodyssons Tillsammans eller Fucking Åmal, men däremot av Lilja 4Ever och Mammoth, kanske för att perspektiven för de två förstnämnda var för lokala (applåderna på biografen fick mig att känna mig som en främmande fågel bland sällskapsresenärerna). Flera av mina utländska arbetskamrater visar sig benägna att hålla med.
Som engelskspråkig, associera jag ordet “Mammoth” förstås med “mamma" och "mother”, liksom med den sårbara “moth” som i mörkret och kylan söker sig till ljuset som människan tänder. Det ostyckade substantivet “mammoth” står även för en död, utslocknad, ett jättedjur som en gång fanns på norra jordklotet. Att allt detta får mig (en gammal kärring född i Asien som varken har svenska som modersmål, eller barn) att fatta pennan på egenhändig svenska uppfattar jag som stort. Och för mig ryms kraften i ordet "mammoth" vare sig på en PowerPoint eller ett pennskaft, eller på en insändarsida.
Jag uppfattar inte att filmen är kvinnofientlig - inte att läkarmamman från New York eller au pair mamman från Filippinerna vantrivs med sina jobb. Inte heller uppfattar jag att dessa kvinnor misslyckas etiskt med sina arbetsinsatser. Förutsättningarna är ju begränsade, vilket de tycks begripa. Däremot är det klart att männen i filmen tycks spela mindre etiskt försvarbara roller, som gränsöverskridande affärsmän respektive pedofil. Trots detta och till skillnad från ledaren, finner jag ingen tydlig sensmoral - åtminstone inte den som ledaren föreslår: att yrkesarbetande kvinnor leder till otrogna män och döda barn - utan snarare att filmen pekar på att problemen är ytterst komplexa.

Utan en mysbrasa* framför mig (snarare med ett ständigt raseri inombords) betraktar jag orättvisan och girigheten i världen, liksom inom mig. Vem vill se sig själv som en nattfjäril, bländad av sin längtan, eller som en benknota inlagd i ett pennskaft? Som en människa vill jag varken identifieras med ett utrotat djur eller med en insekt. Begränsad av min mänsklig sårbarhet vill jag hellre identifiera mig med kvinnorna än med männen i denna film, liksom med deras vingslag mot en stjärnhimmel och arbete med blod och bleck.

*ledaren betraktar filmen som en trösterikt fredagsnöje för småbarnsföräldrar.

Stringing natural pearls

4 Haikus

Stringing natural pearls.
Keep piling up on the stove.
Notes and anecdotes.

Rolling round noontime.
Beady-eyed spoon stirs in blue.
Forever strung out.

Halo time to scour.
Bright whistling copper kettle.
Tea tone for myself.

Nuclear deposit
Between rock and a hard place,
devil and the deep blue sea.

String note on a wet bag.

A grain of sand

However sloppy they may be, I try to make a note of my thoughts as often as possible. Sometimes I discover notes scribbled on crumpled pieces of paper in my pocket, by my bedside table, on a notepad by the phone, or at the bottom of my backpack, and wonder who wrote them. While I discard most of them, some remain a source of irritation or stimulation.
Natural pearls are hard to come by.

Judit's second-hand

Why do I know this? How do I recognize her?

Sally came to Stockholm to visit me in the spring of 1994. Every chance we had to share her story was precious. We were seldom alone. One day, as we boarded the bus to go out to the castle in Drottningholm, we managed to find and occupy a couple of empty seats alongside one another for one of those all too brief moments. Her second husband took a seat behind us. We were passing Judit's Second Hand, a vintage clothing store, when I pointed to the shop window and mentioned that Judit and I had come to Sweden the same year, and studied at Stockholm University together in the 1970s. I told Sally that Judit was a Hungarian refugee.

That's when Sally told me about her dream of having a second-hand shop, a dream that had been awakened a few years earlier (see previous blogg entry today) as she was hanging her mother's wardrobe in the bay window. She had wanted to keep her first wedding gown, to do something with it. That's why she had stored it in her mother's closet in the first place, nearly fifty years earlier, and why she had pinned the note "To be left behind" on it when her mother had died just a few years earlier. The removers hadn't seen her note, and when she returned to the empty house, it was gone. Too late, but the dream had lingered.

A second-hand shop, where she dreamt of fondling all the old clothing that people might bring in to her to sell. A place where she could put the past on display, pursue a legitimate occupation whether she made any money at it or not. Hadn't she loved and hoped and dispaired? She could spend each workday touching and feeling the grain of worn fabrics, breath in and listen to their stories. She would clean and iron them, sort them on racks together with other skirts and blouses, dresses, slacks and jackets, by color, material and season. They would be hers for a while, as she observed others rummaging, sliding hangers to get a better view of one lift one and lift another out with curiosity and delight, to take to a dressing room. Her eyes would follow them to the intimate space, and watch them as they emerged from backstage, from behind the curtain, to strut around the shop. She too would catch their reflection from a little distance, in a full-length mirror, and sense the dizziness as they spun around and stopped, shifting weight and planting the palms of hands on hips. Did this piece suit them? Together for a moment, they would observe how the fabric fell over shoulders and across breasts. Did it do the trick, and manage to conceal a vulnerable bulge in their thighs or buttocks? Did they see something new, in themselves, some unexplored territory? Look what a nice cut, such a flattering color or line around the waist. She would relish in the chatter, the giggles. What do you think? Doesn't the color do wonders? She would look back with them, and meet new owners, new lives.

After the war things will be different

Yes, after graduation from college things are going to be different.

When Grandma Abigail passed in June 1982, the sorting, cleaning, and emptying of her house had been overwhelming. So much to sift through, so many decisions, piles of letters, documents and photographs. Sally, her only daughter, didn’t want to save much, but on the day before the removers were to come she decided to take one last look through the stacks of boxes and bags of garbage. The chaos was now ordered, or so she thought. She glanced at the notes she had taped and pinned here and there to let whomever was to come know where to deliver things – “to the Salvation Army”, “to our house”, “to household waste management”, “to the recycling center”. She packed boxes for her two sons, and put aside a couple of mementos and a few pieces of furniture for herself.

Sensing that she had done as much as she could, she sat down on her mother’s bulky armchair, sinking into the seat that had long since lost its bounce, having given in to the weight of her mother’s body, once and for all. The upholstered arm rests were also well worn, evidence of the loyal support they had given her mother on so many occasions, especially when she had to get quickly back onto her feet. They were the levers that had helped to heave her heavy body to an upright position so that she could move on to her chores.

Sally wasn’t ready to get up yet though. She leaned back and surveyed the room, breathing a sigh of relief over a job well done, and let her eyes wander along the empty spaces and through the passageways between boxes and furniture.There were all those pieces of clothing she thought might be of value, to anyone, that she had brought out of the closets and hung on the curtain rod in the light of the bay window earlier in the week. She could clearly see the note she had pinned to the woolen overcoat, hanging in front of this open wardrobe. She knew that the message read that everything hanging in this window, with the exception of one dress, was for the Salvation Army pick-up. Waiting for a feverish flush to subside, she recalled the note that she had attached to that one dress: “To be left behind”. Though she couldn’t see that note just now, she was quite sure that it was still there, pinned to the front of an elegant bone-white gown with a full-length skirt that fell far below the hems of all the other clothing hanging in the window.

She was looking at that gown now, the one she had worn on her first wedding day in June 1942, when she had married her college love. Were they crazy? They had set the date. They were to be married just two weeks after her graduation from Stanford and a month after Tom’s return from service as a Royal Air Force pilot. He had enlisted after his own graduation from Stanford in 1940, just six months before the US had entered the war. Would Tom soon be returning to the front, or stay for good? Would things be different now that she had graduated and could work too? The questions were there, but on that day they had put them aside to celebrate. Love, hope and charity.