What fell?

I tell yall.
It was big en heavy,
en loaded wit
sharp talons.
xx&urr XX&URR
witches waya sayin
parta sumpin bigger
like a lock
dat press by de key
en shoot de bolt
cclick cclick BOOOM,
like sum playin card
leff on de table
after de New Deal.
En wha happen den?
Eyes gunna tell yall
he aint gunna fall.
No he dun up
en split,
leff her lone.
Dat darn ol' cone
coulda cum down
on his head.
En who wanna
play dummy?
Bess he lie low
en play dead
less he be depress.

On time

Winter still holds us in its icy grip, despite the passing spring equinox. Meteorologist are predicting warmer weather soon.
I am here... the result of the cycles and sequences of events in which my ancestors participated, fashioned also by individual transformations.

Apropos fashioned: Today I wore the same outdoor clothing as I have for the past hundred days: a crocheted woolen scullcap decorated with hundreds of pink pearls, a loosely handknit mohair shawl, rustbrown leather gloves, and a dark blue duffel coat with toggle buttons made of reindeer horn...in case you fail to recognize me by my face.

Please excuse me for my computer illiteracy, or lack of etiquette.
Blogging out now before it gets too late.

On Lotta Lotass' Redwood (Ps. 96:12)

Snows still flurry here today. Seven days after the spring equinox.
Yet trees like these rise majestically above petty concerns and poverty. I am playing solitaire with a Redwood logger’s prayer book, a deck of picture postcards that were once sent by relatives and friends. Order is not immediately apparent in any well-shuffled deck. But when you begin meditating on playing cards - gathering, pressing, scanning, importing, retouching and cropping the motive - you eventually begin to distinguish the rank and file of each flake, unique people whom you never knew. And if you are lucky, a pile of sawdust will suddenly appear to mask what it would reveal.

Forgive me, for scratching xxu&rr at your portal for so long. Rubbing my twigs dry, day after day, I am still hoping to ignite a fire and release a seed to sow. Redwood cones call for extreme heat.

Redwood fire

On Redwood and other natural names (Gen 11:3)

for Lotta Lottas and other catkins

I am here in a land where a mushroom is not just a vulgar word for fungi, but a fleshy space where common names spell survival. Who would not prefer a Karl Johan (Boletus edulis) to a Sly Fly (Amanita phalloides), regardless of the taste or smell of the pulp, once they had learned to survive the two?

I live in a land where the alder, the tallest of which is altus, have red wood and flowers called catkins. Alders grow quickly and bees flock to their pollen. Come let us call it alder of the genus alnus, the deepest of which is altus, and have black wood and enrich the soil in burnt areas and in mines.

Come let us (also pronounced ‘lotass’ in other parts of the world, for the world no longer has but one tongue) move east and find a desert and settle there and chop and split wood, dig cubby holes, build a fire, and so live by that hearth, where nothing they plan will condescend and confuse us.

On Lotta Lotass' Redwood 1:5

“Trees, according to their type, correspond to the perception and cognition of the good and the true from which intelligence and wisdom derive. For that reason, the ancients, proficient in the knowledge of correspondences, performed their sacred rituals in groves. And thus trees so often replace Scripture, and the sky the church….”

Emmanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and its Wonders, and Hell

Whatever you may be expecting when you click on the link that brings you to Lotta Lotass’ Redwood site, you must first step onto a digital doormat and swat your paw at a number. cclLICK. Is this an illusion of order, a table of contents in the syntax of biblical references, a list of prayers for the canonical hours, a stack of library cards, or a bowl of milk? And where are the missing links in Linnaean binomial taxonomy? From here on you are only a cclLICK away from a picture of the genus Sequoia, named after an indigenous tribe of the North American indians. Each postcard is a vivisection of a pre-Christian pith, a life lived among giant trees, and the people who felled, sawed and transported them. The latter are literally as small as Tom Thumbs or Nils Holgerssons next to the vast perimeters and heights reached in one, and only one, place in the world.

While the bark - Meoww meoww - of Lotass' work tells you that questions about the work in progress can be sent to the 'ordfabriken' [word factory], I am still waiting for a response: why Redwood? Is it a coincidence? A question of good or bad luck? Size, time, place? Why not a local species: a 'tall' [pine], an 'ek' [oak, spoke], a 'gran' [spruce], or a 'bok' [beech, book]?

“Tall stories grow naturally among the tall timber,” says Louis Untermeyer in his foreword to the Wonderful Adventures of Paul Bunyan (Heritage Press, 1945). Paul Bunyan is the legendary folktale of a lumberjack in the Northwest who was born in the days when the country itself was young, and forests were vast and dark, and men were few and lonely. Dwarfed by the trees, men had to make themselves big, if only by way of their imagination. Paul Bunyan is the immigrant pioneer dream, a symbol of youth, bigger than the trees. “The Best is never good enough, and even the Biggest lifts itself by its bootstraps to be bigger. 'That,' we say proudly - perhaps a little too proudly – 'that’s America for you!'"

Lotass' Redwood brings lonely immigrants back to reality, to the Old World revisited. And of course, there was so much more of the world back then, however unevenly distributed. When you went west, you promised not to be so “territorial” about the land you left behind, but I could read in your letters that you were frightened, that you too had been wounded. You couldn't let go of what you believed was your birth right. Eliza Doolittle's lines gradually became more and more evasive, like an actress who has rehearsed for hours on end for a role, without really understanding how the play really ends. Is that so?

Back home the Internet lynx is likely to close in - xu&rr xu&rr- and haunt you for want of more. And then a storm is sure to rise up in Littleland, and everything must be cut back down, sawed and sectioned for transport. No more giant branches or book shelves or tree rings to climb on, leap and swing from. And remember how we used to laugh at the cartoons. Little Orphan Annie and ‘gee whiskers’ and ‘leapin’ lizards, and ‘warbucks’ and you will be alone once again in the clear cut, among the stubs, the twigs, the slash and the scrub. The “America trunks” are long since gone, removed, transported, emptied. Abandoned by generations before you, though you are still hanging onto the handle. And you are ashamed to say so. Why is this so?

You would begin by collecting a thing, things, and then a structure in which you could contain things, like fear and loneliness and where did I come from and where am I going, and all the other things that are everywhere always so alike. Do you have enough of that thing now, that thing on this thing? Is there a nature reserve big enough to contain it? Don’t worry, it’s still somewhere around here, a protected species. So when are you coming home?

...tbc

On Lotta Lotass

When the Swedish Academy announced last week that Lotta Lotass had been appointed to seat no. 1, I have to admit my curiosity nearly ran amuck. I had never read anything by her before, though the name sounded familiar. Her family name alone ‘Lotass’ [lynx paw] was enough to leave a scratch, which is pronounced: Xu&rr XU&RR. That no single person by the family name ‘Lotass’ exists in the Swedish public telephone directory, coupled with the fact that the word ‘lotass’ does not exist in the Swedish Academy’s own glossary of Swedish words, is curious - to say the least. Xu&rr XU&RR . Nor is the first name ‘Lotta’ on the Swedish Academy’s list of first names. Otherwise we know that Lotta is a nickname for Charlotta, a feminine diminutive of Charles - Purrr Purrr – and that a ‘lotta’ is a dutiful member of the Swedish Women’s Voluntary Defence Organization, a kind of a local girl scout.

Lo and behold her paw, I think I’ve got it: a poetic Pseudonym At Work. Perfect for Internet publications, with lots of links to what is to come from this particular species of a rare (undomesticated) domestic animal. An illegitimate kitten (born 1964) is to become a legitimate member of the family on 20 December, even though she's unlisted.

To refresh our window, let us recall that this is a beast that still lives in the forests that cover most of Sweden’s inland territory, and in rocky places. It prowls mostly at night like most Internet users. The lynx also likes to climb trees and go out on limbs. Its paws are large enough to serve as snowshoes, which prevent it - unlike its prey - from breaking through the crust. The lynx lives mostly on foxes and deer, and sometimes on sheep and chickens. The female lynx is known to use her claws to fight viciously for her kit n kin, her most powerful links to the future.

So the Swedish Academy is installing a Swedish girl scout to use her lynx paws to work hard, primarily in defence of the Swedish language, in a modern global medium. The Swedish Academy is installing the AUTOR_ETER program, a species of persona non grata to do the dirty work, and catch up.

Having done my homework, a little basic research, I proceeded to google the name “Lotta Lotass” and take a walk to my local bookstore, where I purchased a copy of “Den röda himlen” [The red sky]. There I note (on the back cover flap) that Lotta Lotass was born in 1964 in Borsheden, a small town in western Dalarna, the province most known for its Swedish cultural work horses. Her maternal grandmother’s father, Leonard Karlsson, was a diamond driller for the Grängesberg mining company who disappeared while working in Russia at the outbreak of World War I. He was pronounced non-existent on the 20th of December 1920.

We’ve got less than a year from now to find out for sure whether or not Lotta Lotass really exists. Her installation is planned for the 20th of December 2009 according to a press release from the Academy (6 mars 2009), in Swedish only. Read, and read on. What could be a more legitimate cause to celebrate?

Stockh_____ March 2009

Freiheitliche ordnung
1:6 Let there be expanse between the waters
to separate water from water
1:8 And God called the expanse "sky".
to fill depressions in the earth's surface
2:2 and on the seventh day he rested

Today's Oxymoron:
mournful optimist

Engelbrekt's Freedom Song

I am reminded today of a translation I did in the early 80s for an international peace conference at the Stockholm Concert Hall of this psalm, which was sung in four part harmony by children of Adolf Fredrik's Music School. If anyone out there happens to have a recording, I'd be grateful.


Freedom is God's open hand
To be sought in every land
By one who knows to hold it
By one who knows to hold it.
God has given soul and mind
Better free than chains that bind
With freedom cometh honor
With freedom cometh honor

Se original text (1439) på svenska med musik av Alice Tegnér:

http://runeberg.org/display.pl?mode=facsimile&work=vitaband&page=0128

Investigation on the bridge

The Investigating officer (IO) has been asked to interview Anna Modig (AM) and Inga Svanmärkt (IS), both artists-in-residence, on the scene of an alleged crime.

AM: Remember officer I am coming from different directions and so my perspective may be different.
IO: Well, could you please begin by telling me a little about that perspective. Where you were going, what you intended to do when you got to the bridge?
AM: I wasn't going anywhere, officer. That's just the point. I am becoming.
IS: She didn’t intend to do anything here, sir. She is just passing over. She's a commuter, sir. She crosses that bridge every day to get to her job.
AM: I’m following her; I have no intention, really, other than to keep an eye on her, focus on my work. Watch and see what she does.
IO: So why did you choose the western bridge?
AM: I don’t think of it that way sir. I mean that it is a western bridge. For me, it could just as well be an eastern bridge. Depends on where you come from I guess. No, I didn’t think of it as a western bridge, though we do live and work in the west.
IO: So you were not trying to flee from the east by taking the western bridge?
IS: No sir, she had no idea she could choose a different bridge, only that she has to get to work.
AM: The view can be dramatic from the middle of the bridge.
IO: Dramatic?
AM: Maybe that’s going too far, saying too much. I don’ want to exaggerate, but the view at sunrise and sunset can be dramatic, and I must admit there is something very special about a perspective that spans an ocean, from one continent to another.
IO: Excuse me, where did you say you live?
IS: She lives somewhere between Stockholm and San Francisco now.
AM: That’s mostly where I work too.
IO: Now that is very important information.
IO: Is there anything else that may have affected your choice of a bridge?
AM: Yes, as a matter of fact, I like the shape…Upside-down single suspension. I think it looks familiar, reminds me of my childhood. And it has both a foot and a bike path. No matter how you look at it, it is close on both ends to where I live and work today. Reliable for personal transfer.
IO: Excuse me, the shape, what were you about to say about the shape?
IS: Well, it’s like a full moon rising. And if you look at its reflection when the water is still, and fall for it, you can see the big dipper.
IO: Has it occurred to you that your intentions may have distorted your observations?
AM: Not mine so much, but Ingo’s perhaps. The rush hour commute can be exhausting.
IO: And so how do you think that her distortions may have affected the outcome of this investigation?
AM: Maybe I interpret the bridge to be a part of my golden cultural heritage, a right of passage. Maybe she thinks it is a gateway to the other side.
IO: Can you speak for yourself Inga?
IS: Maybe I jump too quickly to conclusions. I was just trying to get to work, maybe afraid of losing my job.
IO: And what did you think was at the other end?
AM: That’s what I'm still anxious to find out.

International Women's Day

Last night I found myself reading my diary from a trip to Mexico in 1979. It was an unexpected page-turner. I was fascinated by the most intimate reflections of a young woman, traveling alone in a foreign country, at the tender age of 32 – her self-esteem, empathy, intellectual mobility, and vulnerability. I LOLed and WOPed over her portraits of many of the people whom she encountered, some of whom she “hung out" or traveled with during those months.
One of many constantly recurring themes in this diary is how this smart, independent, young and therefore attractive this woman - who was me too - chooses to deal with the discovery that she is being followed, sometimes harassed by men. The natures of the incidents vary, as does the way she handles each potentially precarious situation. Could it be me? So very alive and in touch with her inner, and in the spirit of International Women’s Day, I offer an excerpt from that handwritten diary:

Mexico City, August 10, 1979:
…when I finally calmed down after the bus ride back into the city, I went out to the Anthropological Museum in Chapultepec. I spent a lot of time in the bookstore, browsing and reading and then took a look at the sound and light orientation show, which gave a dramatic perspective on the museum. Afterwards I went and sat in the sun on the museum terrace. A young Mexican man approached me and we had a conversation about rituals, he even wanted to talk about drugs. He seemed naïve, though sincere. Mostly I was happy that he enabled me to speak again to young Mexican men, face their weaknesses, their vulnerability without feeling so vulnerable myself. Unfortunately, on the bus home to the Velasco’s I was forced to confront one more insipid type who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and muster the courage to say: “¿No puede dejarle la mano a su mismo? [Can’t you keep your hands to yourself?] He looked vacuously awestruck. He got off at the next stop and the rest of the bus ride back was pleasant.
When I returned home I let off a little steam with Olivia and then went upstairs to wash off the filth of Mexico City streets. The shower helped a lot; felt like a new person. After a cup of coffee with Alberto, and a brief nap, I went back downtown to the Zona Rosa without any incidents. I planned to meet Angela for a concert later in the evening.
I arrived at the Toulouse L’Autrec [my favorite restaurant with its inexpensive and delicious tortilla soup, which I make to this day], just in time before the afternoon deluge, the inevitable torrential rainfall. I found a table in the courtyard, under the awnings where I could watch it pour cats and dogs, and even marbles and baseballs, huge bits of hail that bounced like ping pong balls off the awnings and terrace, forcing people who sat too close to the edge to move indoors or to some other cover. It was a short, merciless hailstorm that I found entertaining. I was one of the only people still outdoors.
After dinner, while sipping my coffee, a tiny hunch-backed woman came up to me with an enormous bouquet of pink roses, saying “Los caballeros en la mesa alli le han mandado.” I asked her which table and she pointed up to a table along the balcony railing of another restaurant facing onto the courtyard. I looked up and saw a table of handsome young men looking in my direction. I lifted my hand and nodded toward them to say thanks, and one of them nodded and waved back. I rubbed my nose in the fragrance of the flowers, and breathed deeply. When I left the restaurant no one was following me. I had enjoyed an elegant gesture.
I left for the concert, where the first piece was The Selection of Love of a poet: “Si me has amado, cariñito, te mando todas mis flores, y ante tu ventana resonorará la canción del un señor. “

…To be continued

Time out for the multicultural human being?

Many people, even in a country like Sweden that has been quite homogeneous until fairly recently, live a multicultural life. We do so not because it is fashionable, not because it serves a worthy social cause, or to profile ourselves in the local media, but because it is an aspect of our identity, an integral part of who we are.

As one of the last to appear at an “all-employee, last-hired, first-fired, age before beautiful information meetings” in the spirit of the global financial crisis this week, I remarked facetiously to one of my colleagues who was already seated to my left: “I think I’ll plead age and take a seat here.” Expecting a welcoming smile, despite the tension in the air, I was shocked by the response: “So where do you think everyone else is supposed to sit, on the floor?”

Powerful feelings produce a void in thought, a time-out, where language and meaning can enter to effect a shift of consciousness that blurs the boundaries between self and other. I am in a twilight zone occupied by rituals, open wounds, islands, dreams awakening, solstices, beaches, immigrants, witches and brooms. As a writer, editor and translator, I am constantly investigating the many ways in which my cultural backgrounds affect my sense of self, what it means to live a multicultural identity, as well as other aspects of being human.

Perhaps I am preparing to consider what the future may hold once globalization becomes so extensive that individuals begin to shift their identities in-between cultures, to a seat where identity is less associated with specific ideologies, values or traditions, and more self-reflexive.

On youth-in-asia?

Our Mago, Gammie, Gerdie, Gertrude Kreigh Ryan died in Menlo Park, California, in the early spring of 1977, just before her 91st birthday.
Official cause of death: drug poisoning, an ill-fated mixture of medicines, separately prescribed to treat what may have been symptoms of an undiagnosed pancreatic cancer. I am told that just prior to her death she pulled out the intravenous feeding line and the oxygen tubing and said: “If this is what’s necessary to keep me alive, then I’m not for it.”

That night I dreamt that Mago had called us all to her bedside. She sat up with her unwieldy grey mane sprawled over and above delicate deaf ears. And there was that huge, familiar horse- tooth smile, likewise the ever-present twinkling of eternity in her big black-brown eyes. She was holding audience for the first and last time in her life, in a hospital room. As she waved to us all to have a seat, I noticed her bony index finger pointing toward the Duralex glass on her bedside table. She would drink, but not yet.
First she wanted to thank us all for coming, emphasizing how humbled and happy she was that we all could be there. Then nothing she said could be a surprise any more. “My father time has come with his scythe and wants to take me home to his pig farm in Indiana. I’m gonna surprise him though, gonna put on my slippers now and shuffle off the diving board. When he comes you can tell him I’ve already jumped off the deep end, into the deep blue waters of the San Francisco Bay, that there’s no point in lookin after me, cause I'll be sunk like a rock to the bottom.”
She then picked up a little foil packet and sprinkled its content into her glass. I knew then that the water in her glass wasn’t as fresh and pure as it appeared. It seemed clear enough, but became saturated with cowbane as the flakes fell like snow on wet Stockholm streets at this time of year, I recognized the bulk medium, the tiny seed-coats that can absorb so much moisture. You had to swallow it fast before it solidified. I knew that Mago would therefore empty the glass immediately, in one fell swoop, and so I left the room alone.
I took a seat in the corridor of the hospital and waited. After a few minutes the doctor came out to inform me that you had passed.

-----
Apropå den svenska debatten om aktiv dödshjälp i livets slutskede, undrar jag varför Sverige inte uppmuntrar något som i USA kallas "Medical Power of Attorney" där en vuxen, klart medveten människa får uttrycka sin vilja om huruvida livsuppehållande åtgärder ska tillämpas i olika situationer medan hon är mentalt frisk. Beträffande livsuppehållande åtgärder i livets början, bör ingen enskild läkare behöva fatta ett sådant beslut eller agera ensamt, utan efter diskussion och gemensamt beslut med ytterligare en medicinsk kunnig samt minst en förälder tycker jag.

On a magic carpet

Dear Mago,
I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing the moment I learned of your death. I was in the basement of an apartment building on St. Eriksgatan in Stockholm, helping a friend to move furniture into her new storage space. I had slipped an unopened letter from my sister into my pocket earlier that day, awaiting a moment when I could reflect on its content. A letter from my sister was rare, always well-written and to be cherished, at the right moment.
Alone for a moment, resting on a rolled rug, I recalled the letter. I pulled it out of my pocket, held it up to the light for a second, and decided that the moment had come. I hoped to have just enough time, to rip open the envelope and read:

Dear Sue Anne,
I just wanted to let you know that Mago passed a couple of weeks ago…”

I managed to read the entire letter, to learn about your funeral, who was there, some of the many memories of you that had been shared there, just before the automatic timer extinguished the basement lights.

When my friends returned some minutes later, they found me in the dark, sitting on that rug roll, devastated, feeling deprived of my own history. They have probably forgotten the incident - I was there to help them move - but I haven't. Tonight I plan to unroll that magic carpet.

… to be continued in the morning when my dream is refreshed.