(con't from "One of those days" 11 January):
I suppose I should be grateful for the elusiveness of that day now. When father suggested, from under his bushy grey brow, that we take a walk in the woods, I knew that it was more than a suggestion. When he gave me that surly, ashen look it meant that I would not only benefit from exercise and fresh air, but immediately and duly be rewarded. Another initiation into one of his secrets places was forthcoming. Father takes great pride in his familiarity with virgin forests and all their magic glades, moist mires, and plentiful pantries full of berries and edible mushrooms. These are the kinds of secrets that are meant to make poor people feel rich.
His grey-green high rubber boots make his feet seem oversized, add a funny footing to his slight build. The volume of his boots, coupled with the vision of his bulky handknit Norwegian sweater and down hunting vest, give him the semblance of a varsity team player. I wonder what he would make of my association today. His fur-lined earflap cap is a queer helmet that shadows his brow and softens his mien, as if to say ‘I am content, because you want to understand the secrets of the forest, your most intimate birthright.”
Under the staircase were various and sundry shoes and boots. I pulled out a couple of pairs for R to try on. They fit and she seemed delighted.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Notes from Laxdale
This bog is full of disordered fragments. (con't from 23 Nov.)
Had my father lived to be the author of this story, it would undoubtedly have been very different. Now it is high time to reveal what surfaces in fairy rings, in all the knotted morelles and truffles and berries that were laid out on our dinner table.
To tell my story is not easy because most of its images are not visible to the naked eye. It is a story quite different from tangible scenes of violence, sexual or other kinds of physical abuse that people seem to easily understand. Insults are not always physical, nor are they contained in isolated sentences, word against word, evidence that cannot be used to hold up in court. To think that all that unavoidable filth still nourishes mushrooms, meadow grasses, wild flowers and berries.
Like original sin, many insults are subtly, insidiously, and manipulatively developed over decades and so passed on from generation to generation. I believe that the purpose of art is not to nourish these sins nor to sublimate them, but to lift them to the light for forgiveness.
To tell my story I must carefully unwind all the strands that connect frostbitten cranberries afloat in a bog that father revealed to us that day. Precious few are privy to witness the scrabble that these tiny fruits, like a myriad of uppercase and lowercase letters, compose in their natural habitat. Once embedded in the moss, it is quite a painstaking task to untangle all the delicate threads of deep red and purple letters that have grown and drifted so far apart. And yet this what I must do in order to decipher the original order of these words, the sense of my story, to fulfill the purpose of my own art and craft.
Treachery lies not in the silence of this pristine quagmire itself, but in the silence of those who have been seen this magic carpet and were at a loss to sit down and tell its story. Knowing that this thick green moss both dampens sound and conceals natural decay, I walk carefully upon it, bearing witness to unfolding fantasies without fear of an inevitable ripple, at a pace quick enough to avoid sinking. I am travelling on a magic carpet.
Had my father lived to be the author of this story, it would undoubtedly have been very different. Now it is high time to reveal what surfaces in fairy rings, in all the knotted morelles and truffles and berries that were laid out on our dinner table.
To tell my story is not easy because most of its images are not visible to the naked eye. It is a story quite different from tangible scenes of violence, sexual or other kinds of physical abuse that people seem to easily understand. Insults are not always physical, nor are they contained in isolated sentences, word against word, evidence that cannot be used to hold up in court. To think that all that unavoidable filth still nourishes mushrooms, meadow grasses, wild flowers and berries.
Like original sin, many insults are subtly, insidiously, and manipulatively developed over decades and so passed on from generation to generation. I believe that the purpose of art is not to nourish these sins nor to sublimate them, but to lift them to the light for forgiveness.
To tell my story I must carefully unwind all the strands that connect frostbitten cranberries afloat in a bog that father revealed to us that day. Precious few are privy to witness the scrabble that these tiny fruits, like a myriad of uppercase and lowercase letters, compose in their natural habitat. Once embedded in the moss, it is quite a painstaking task to untangle all the delicate threads of deep red and purple letters that have grown and drifted so far apart. And yet this what I must do in order to decipher the original order of these words, the sense of my story, to fulfill the purpose of my own art and craft.
Treachery lies not in the silence of this pristine quagmire itself, but in the silence of those who have been seen this magic carpet and were at a loss to sit down and tell its story. Knowing that this thick green moss both dampens sound and conceals natural decay, I walk carefully upon it, bearing witness to unfolding fantasies without fear of an inevitable ripple, at a pace quick enough to avoid sinking. I am travelling on a magic carpet.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
One of those days
It is one of those long bare winter days in Sweden that I usually have such a hard time remembering, much less describing. There are so many of these days, all so alike, so monotonously grey, void of sounds and colors. You wake up to a cool, damp daylight, rather than to sunlight. Day in and day out, no fog, but a mist that veils contours and deceives depth. When you look out the window, the weather is as enigmatic as it is predictable and thus an easy excuse to go back to bed, curl up and read. It is one of those days.
When I woke up this morning I made a pot of tea and then went back to bed and read for a couple of hours. After a shower I managed to put in another intensive couple of hours of writing before it was time to join some friends for jazzbrunch at Mosebacke with Swing Magnifique.
On the way to Mosebacke, M and I talked about the history and demography of Palestine, of the Gaza strip. We agreed that we are tired of macabre reports and at a loss to affect change, but we can at least try to understand.
Late breakfast, later lunch, good company and swinging music had my feet tapping to sounds like Django Reinhardt. The view across the approach to Stockholm was magnificent, even if the water was invisible.
Now I am recalling a day like today some 30 years ago, spent with a friend on her father’s farm in the Swedish countryside. Perhaps I was confused, maybe even frightened, by the unfamiliar landscape, by strange signs and tacit signals from my company then. On a milky day like today, I find myself easily preoccupied - then as now - by something that happened before, on another day, in another place. Yes, it is a day like that, when I am neither here nor now for very long.
When I woke up this morning I made a pot of tea and then went back to bed and read for a couple of hours. After a shower I managed to put in another intensive couple of hours of writing before it was time to join some friends for jazzbrunch at Mosebacke with Swing Magnifique.
On the way to Mosebacke, M and I talked about the history and demography of Palestine, of the Gaza strip. We agreed that we are tired of macabre reports and at a loss to affect change, but we can at least try to understand.
Late breakfast, later lunch, good company and swinging music had my feet tapping to sounds like Django Reinhardt. The view across the approach to Stockholm was magnificent, even if the water was invisible.
Now I am recalling a day like today some 30 years ago, spent with a friend on her father’s farm in the Swedish countryside. Perhaps I was confused, maybe even frightened, by the unfamiliar landscape, by strange signs and tacit signals from my company then. On a milky day like today, I find myself easily preoccupied - then as now - by something that happened before, on another day, in another place. Yes, it is a day like that, when I am neither here nor now for very long.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Better late than never
Even stale bread can be broken...if only to feed the birds.
I would have put these out fresh for you, but my Swedish Internet Service Provider (comhem.se) has been unable to deliver. Sorry Karin Thunberg (SvD today). I know you don't like the word "to deliver" (leverera), but we can always try to teach the younger generation the meaning of words and hope that they get the message.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
On counter-generational garb
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.
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.
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.
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