Mot ett glittrande stim

Innan jag somnar
vill jag försegla havet
i en kristallkula.
Och medan tungan tumlar
över salt och skum
spottar jag upp
ur en uppsjö av dagsrester
ett nystan av fiskben
som inte kan smältas.
Sedan ligger jag utsträckt
på hälleberget vid det stilla havet
där mina vingar ska torkas
i väntan på en ny våg
av ofrånkomliga gäster.
När jag får syn på dem
ska jag dyka
som en storskarv
mot ett glittrande stim.

Portrait gallery

Occupied

To be continued...

legacy of loss

Last night I went to a writer's talk sponsored by Bromberg’s, a Swedish publishing house. Nicole Krauss, who was the guest of honor, said that she had very little contact with her readers and had therefore thought of putting a blank postcard at the back of her book, The History of Love, and asking readers to use it to share with her where they were when they read the book. She also mentioned a postcard pact she had with one of her readers and how she kept the card (which documented her promise to this reader to publish a new book every other year) on her desk while she was writing her most recent book, Great House.

During the pause, I had the opportunity to chat briefly with Nicole, mentioning that I didn't remember where I was when I read The History of Love, but that I did remember being so moved by it that I sent it to my 90-year-old mom in the US, and that it happened to be the last book my mom read, or rather had read aloud to her by my sister. I told her that I would never forget, however, where and when I was reading her first novel, Man Walks into a Room, because it was as I was sitting alone in a café in Stockholm on midsummer day 2007. An old friend (likewise a handsome actor and immigrant Jew in a white linen suit) walked in and sat down beside me, interrupting my reading only a minute or so before my brother called to say that my mother had just passed. Thus I was not alone when I learned of my mother’s death.

Interesting how literature can, like one writer's desk in Great House, serve as "a counterfeit world that offers comfort that life itself does not allow." Perfectly in keeping with the legacy of the literary imagination, and the reality of metafiction, Nicole touched my arm and thanked me for sharing. “As we grow older we draw more from experience than from what we have learned.” “Literature brings people together” were some more of what she said. Now I’ll never forget her big brown eyes, nor those of the man who walked into the café that midsummer.

March is a time

What ever happened to the February air
Did I not breathe you, did I not care?
Don’t tell me you were not by my side
the very chill in which I confide.
Lighter and brighter already the skies
Deepening the lines to my surprise.
Full of wisdom yet to learn
a crown that we can never earn
Cherries will blossom this I know
March is a time for bursting.

Rare flakes

Rare stud snowflakes. These travelers from a great height are formed only in very cold temperatures.

In New York, an autodidactic research scientist named Vincent J Schaefer created the first artificial snowflakes in a "cold box" into which he breathed. The moist air of his breath condensed into snow clouds. Later, he actually caused snow to fall in nature by using dry ice.

The reader is also referred to avalanche, glacier, hail, sleet, snow blindness, snow line, snowplow, and snowshoe.

Sundown 15.13 p.m. CET

All flares of rebellion soon tramped about
all suds of revolt quickly died out.
Left was a longing to come to terms
beyond tires of desire and retribution.

Are we not best when we crave
the good we are at a loss to brave,
beyond the pollution of this shoal,
pointing direction without a goal,
free from reckless strife?

Sundown 15.08 p.m. CET

(interpretation of Hades and Euclid II by Harry Martinson)

Hade’s oven fell
onto flat land
passing arbitrary judgments,
burning in brick huts
- superficial gravestones -
victims of shallow treatment,
without solace from above
without support from the depths,
regarded of no value
regarded without redress,
regarded without measure of eternity.
Their wailing meets with scorn,
and the crown of measure, Euclid,
cries out, seeking Chronos’ sphere.

Snowfall (dedicated to Christian Bök)

Snow falls, snow falls. Snow falls, and with it the ideas of snow (ideas playful, cool, elusive). The first snow falls with the graceful descent of a few feathery flakes. These scattered crystals mesmerize as they pass by our window, some generating particular awe as they float back up into the sky. We wonder if they are falling to confirm gravity or to prepare for a second coming. When snow falls we talk about the weather, how complex, irresolute and trivial it is, and how you must know everything to foresee it. And yet like meteorologists, when snow falls we continue to forecast, knowing all the while that we are just guessing. If the first snowfall seems to mock us, we are not offended, because we can see that as soon as it touches ground it is short-lived. The first snowfall hints at natural patterns, the beauty as well as the devastation of climate change. Scientists tell us that all snowflakes stem from hexagonal ice plates and that when the temperature is close to zero and the wind is still, these microscopic plates use the humidity of the atmosphere to branch out, but that when it is windy and only slightly cooler, they form hollow shafts, minute needles. And so as snow falls on a wind-still day like today, fluttering flakes – each with six extended wings – are silently lighting upon our windowsills like a cheerful chorus of Christmas carolers, though they remain silent. When snowflakes fall, we are reminded that they have not come to be heard, but to bring silence, to insulate, to seal cracks, to hush birds, muffle footsteps, dampen noisy traffic, and to reflect the light of the moon and the stars. Snowflakes fall, ever so quietly, fascinating us with their spectacular choreography in a new light. A couple of hexamerous bodies careen toward our panorama to the rhythm of a tango, freezing in a brief moment of passion and intimacy, before abruptly changing direction and swiftly disappearing from our sight. Others whirl like tiny dervishes in a trance. Each flake has its own path to follow through layer upon layer of atmospheric change. Each and every member of these dance troupes is unique and not to be mistaken for some frivolous, trifling or inanimate matter. Snow falls, and with it more and more dainty, winged crystals join together in a spirited flurry, like in the second act of Swan Lake. Then suddenly, the temperature plummets and the wind whips. Snow falls, and with it old ideas of snow (driven, bitter, apocalyptic), no longer content to fall gently in flakes, but intent on piercing with needles, throwing darts, spears and javelins in a random blizzard that is surely the beast of a Second Coming, if not a widening gyre that signals the revelation of a traceless void. When snow falls now it is charged to obliterate all marks of distinction, to bury everything in its path under powdery white blankets and crusty grey sheets, and to interfere with any clear vision by rapidly zooming in and out of focus. When snow falls now, it falls in a relentless flow of cosmic particles and icy asteroids that send chills up our spine as they scrape past our windows and ports. (Occasionally and incidentally) when the snowfall lets up we are temporarily relieved by a landscape view of the winter wonderland that has just touched down on planet Earth.

snowfall

The vertical fence posts planted in my garden last year are the earthbound foreground of an experiment for today. Pointing to the sky, like a row of pencils, they border the significance of choice among a myriad of ways to create new perspectives on a day (daylight is short at this time of year). The red points of the stakes have clearly taken on new form and color. Their rusty red tips, once the tools of a proofreader, are now soft, blunt, dull and grey as erasers. Perhaps they have become the stubs of a universal conscience with which poets communicate, or the toothless gum of a Muse?

Foreign assets at risk vs. risky foreign assets

Boy, am I glad I don’t live as far far south as Malmö or as far north as Umeå, Sweden!

Yesterday Swedish media reported on two more mysterious shots at foreigners in Malmö. Today there was an article in Svenska Dagbladet, the biggest daily Swedish newspaper (sourced from the biggest local news feed, Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå, TT) about doctors in Umeå doing controversial experimental surgery on foreigners. We have learned to trust our papers. Altercation. But real snipers and knifers are closing in (ever since Sverige Demokrater, the local populist party, entered the Swedish Riksdag?). I think this is getting really crazy (read: scary). Who and what are we to trust?

Maybe we should trust Google translate. After all, funny as it may be,it does at least give some sense (to the discerning mind?) of what is going on in the world around us.

The original TT article is in Swedish ( I encourage everyone who is familiar with English to enjoy testing Google translate) can be found at: http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/riskabel-hjarnkirurgi-pa-utlanningar_5550727.svd

This is the push:
A certain type of lobotomy-like brain surgery is no longer performed on patients because of the high risk of permanent damage. But operations continued in Umeå until 2007 - on Americans.

New snow

It snowed here yesterday.
They say that weather reports are trivial.
I say they’re fundamental.
Is it because I live in Sweden
where have all the flowers gone?



And to think that just last week
M and I packed our bikes
getting ready to move.

Swedish Election special

The dead can speak to the living, but the living cannot speak to the dead. Lars Gustafsson

If you haven’t yet read Dagens Nyheter’s article (19 Sept) “Two poets on their way to the ballot box” - email correspondence between poets Lars Gustafsson and Göran Greider published on election day - you might want to click on the aforementioned link (in Swedish).

It’s a rare wrap full of juicy election tidbits. Wise way to make use of a Swedish daily!

Having recently published a new collection of Lars Gustafsson's poems, a swell take on the Promythean myth, I can still envision Erland Josephsson sheltering a flame flickering in his hands as he trudges through the rain, splashing across a big puddle in Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia.

Let’s face it, there’s no key in the back of the Book. Though when 20 xenophobes (not just their house-trained leader) enter the Swedish Parliament, they're bound to grow some interesting bushisms). Then Gustafsson might be asked to take another look at his philosophical equations involving tolerance and intolerance. The church bells tolled on Swedish Election Day and Greider ultimately promised to wake up Gustafsson on Judgment Day.

In the meantime, you might want to follow Lars Gustavsson's blog, in Swedish.

Sommartid

“They must be keeping you in the deep freeze over there in Sweden. You still look just the way you did many summers ago.”
My Uncle Pollard (spoken at a family reunion in a redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains )

“Would he feel any cleaner in the snows of Sweden, reading at a distance about his people and their latest pranks?”
JM Coetzee (Summertime)

Ever since I first arrived in Sweden in the early 1970s I have always listened to a popular Swedish radio program called Sommar. These days the tag melody ‘Sommar sommar sommar’ is enough to put me into my laidback reception mode, prepared to reflect anew on the preludes to someone else’s achievement, ill-fated deeds or terms for life. Every afternoon, over a period of some 60 summer days, a series of more or less well-known personalities in Sweden are given the opportunity to host his or her own 90 minute public radio program. Air time consists of fragments of a personal monologue, broken up, tempered and joined by tracks of music.

The invitation to host the program is considered an honor, an opportunity for a seasonal crop of personalities to step out into the limelight and tell us some things we do not know, about themselves. The assumption is that those who are to host the program offer personal perspectives on life, anecdotes and reflections that will be of interest to a broad Swedish public. Many listeners believe that the honor should be a confirmation, not only of some pinnacle of achievement, but also of virtue. The latter is controversial.

Agenbite of inwit.

This summer I listened to the voice of Annika Östberg, a Swedish convict condemned to a sentence of 25 years to a lifetime, as an accomplice to two murders in California. After having served 28 years in San Quentin California State Prison, she had recently been deported to Sweden to serve the remainder of her “time”. Needlesstosay, I was curious, in much the same way as I am often curious about the lives of other Swedes who emigrated from Sweden to the San Francisco Bay Area, just before or around the same time that I immigrated to Sweden.

The thought occured to me that Annika Östberg may well have been one of the many young “street people” that I encountered in 1967 during the Summer of Love in San Francisco – a girl I saw propped up against the wall of Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley on my way to school, or a waif that asked me for spare change in the Haight -Ashbury, on a visit to my maternal grandparents. Perhaps she was that forsaken woman who caught my eye one day in Golden Gate Park, the summer before I turned away, helpless as she, to understand why. Life is not just.

I was curious to hear the voice of a woman for whom an idealized childhood suddenly came to a brutal end, despite the surrounding fragrance of the Bay Laurel and Eucalyptus. I wanted to hear the voice of a woman who for all those years - that happened to coincide with my years in Sweden - had been imprisoned behind walls that block out a magnificent view of the Richmond San Rafael Bridge and the surrounding bay. A picture postcard, without a message or an addressee and thus no chance of reprieval? I sensed that her grip on the concept of “home” was as firm as her grip on the bars of her cell. Highway to Hell (AC/DC) and Seismic Rumbles (Country Joe and the Fish) have never made so much sense, before. Was it pathetic of me to imagine that we had anything in common, that we had simply exchanged places, tit for tat? Or that we had been playing a game of musical chairs that caught us both off guard? Whose release party was I supposed to be celebrating? For what melody?

I was definitely on guard as I listened to "her" program. She must be reading, but who authored the script, I wondered? Who could have chosen a more nostalgic voice for a Swedophile: Jussi Björling, Nämner du Sverige [Mentioning Sweden]? Was it true that her grandmother’s favorite tune was En gang seglar jag i hamn [One day I’ll sail into the harbor] by Alice Babs? Swedish words seemed to flow naturally from her lips. So how had she managed to maintain her mother tongue, though she hadn’t been in the country for decades, since she was 10 years old? Like her producer, she seemed focused on this task, I thought. Over the years she has kept in touch, with plenty of support from the Swedish media, without Internet or a cell phone... Curious.

Supernaturally

For M
(inspired by Harry Martinson's Höstdikt
and M's rose heap)

Flowers drop with supernatural grace
handkerchiefs for wet noses
that snuff out every last space
in a heap of fallen roses.
Heaven spits cold
on a bell of cress
before washing and drying
her evanescent dress.

Summer play

For N, O & U
Inspired by Harry Martinson's "Sommarspel"

This is where summer's green path went.
Coaxed by the sun in the field
poppy petals, opiate flags, unfolded.
Cricket played at last a passage
Despite all winter ants warning.

Like the poppy, she too is dead now,
but they lived their brief life there
where summer was within,
grounded in its own life,
at home in her green house.

A room with a view

Christian Bonos purchased a concrete bunker designed by Albert Speer to house his collection of contemporary art (see my blog entry May 10, 2010).
The SPCA picks up strays dogs and tries to find them new owners.
The social welfare department places children who need nurturing in summer camps and foster homes.
Bag ladies and gentlemen scavenge and recycle aluminum cans and bottles.
We find drooping plants - herbs, vegetables and flowers - on sale at local garden stores. We replant them in the allotment space that O has hewn from bedrock (and reinforced with concrete), water and nurture them, and love watching them grow.
A lot is whatever you make of it.

Calm before the storm

Moved back into my apartment today. And even though today's gusty winds managed to knock over a big pot of sunflowers and cosmos on my corner balcony, their sturdy stalks proved resilient. We're upright.

ps. Remember the calm before the lightening storm
Före åskstormen by Harry Martinson (my translation)

The sky goes black in the July night
Branches flare in distant lightening
The dragonfly that rested on a calming stone
seeks refuge over charred waters.

Alms

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another,
either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye. Lord Acton





To give alms is nothing unless you give thought also.
John Ruskin






Work is love made visible.


And if you cannot work with love [...]
it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple …



and take alms of those who work with joy.
Kahlil Gibran

Dig where you are 2

My potatoes (middle box) needed earthing up in early June.
Back box: Jerusalem artichokes. Front box: lettuce, chard and ruccola.

Growing on an allotment.




























Less than a month later we could begin to harvest potatoes, and the slugs had yet to discover the lettuce that is now harvested daily despite them (slugs are hunted every evening under a flashlight and disarmed with garden scissors).