We are who we are because of the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
~ Thomas Spanbauer
Such a pleasure to spend time with my friends in Bodø, Norway. Even though we only met 10 years ago, we have been friends for 50 years. We tell ourselves the stories & we recognize each other's stories.
It's the morning of my first full day. Almost everything I want to see or do is within half a mile of my hotel, but so far everything has been 3-4x as far to get to as get back. Hoping to figure out the winding, not-always-marked streets as I'm here longer (& less jet-lagged). The hotel is quiet & clean, & serves (free!) an extensive breakfast, a mid-afternoon snack, & a substantial dinner.
So far the only person who had no idea what I was trying to say in Norwegian turned out not to speak a word of it. That was encouraging!
Funniest mistake: I got to the front desk of the hotel & said I had a reservation & was hoping for early check-in. She tapped her computer & said, Ditt navn? which if I weren't jet-lagged I would have known meant she was asking my name. I'm so used to my name being mispronounced & was so impressed that she knew "you are Nauen (Navn)?" that I enthusiastically said, Yes!
Norge har vakker natur.
That's the first sentence I remember learning in Norwegian: Norway has beautiful nature.
I go back today, to live in the bookstores, breathe the pure air, see friends, see a stave church, get lost, be lonely, be inspired, find out how much I really have learned to say in the fascinating language.
Johnny is more OK by the hour, so I am as well. I've had a little but painful sinus thing that I think is better, & I didn't lose my bank card for the second time this summer, & I held my own, although not "more than," in my norsk class, so Friday is definitely pulling itself together & behaving. This is all I can manage, though.
It's a relief to have him here with me & a relief that everyone's concern was more his going safely about his life than that this would happen again. It isn't actually clear what happened. A stroke... not a stroke... not a stroke in the hospital. Anyway, he is himself, although walking more gingerly. The social worker at Bellevue said I'm not a monster for going away next week, so I'm going away next week....
Have 3 hours passed? Have 23? Why is it so hot? Are they also running an orchard farm? When will he be spung?
There's a lot I like about getting older: friends I've known for half a century... senior citizen discount... the pleasure of secretly knowing it all... But I'm not crazy about the sneak attacks on my beloved, who right now is moldering in Bellevue after falling yesterday, hitting his head, & passing out. It sucks to see his beautiful face scarred, his lilting walk crumpled to a shuffle, his thinking uncertain. He's still great, he's still my handsome winsome Johnny, he's still a man's man & a woman's dream. But....
Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and pruning knife.
~ Margaret Fuller
All the more is this true of mere talent! You can always tell a lazy artist. Nice to be Ted Williams but most of us can at best hope to be Pete Rose & make a lot out of not-so-much.
For years, I've said my 2 slogans if I were to run for office are:
If you're for it, so am I.
&
A vote for me is a vote for me.
Did I hear & absorb them or did I make them up? I never wondered where they came from. I quoted "a vote for me" to my friend the poet Steve Levine, & he produced this flyer from, we're pretty sure, 1978. I remembered that election but not who was running or this poster. Clearly I got the line from him. How many other sayings or thoughts are crammed into my head from unacknowledged writers or speakers? I hope some of my treasure chest comes from great poets & thinkers & not only the wise asses. Who knows? I mean, we all get our vocabulary & views from thousands of years of discussions, books, songs that mysteriously float in the air & into our heads. It's just surprising to run straight into a source.
The few couples I know who have been married since they were very young (20 or 21) & for a long time (60 or more years) have a couple of things in common: one is that they "had" to get married, not because she was pregnant, which was the motivation in my youth for quick ("shotgun") marriages but because he was going off to war or had a fellowship that would pay for a wife to come along but not a girlfriend. That kind of thing. It has always seemed miraculous that they continued to like each other all those years later. But then I think of friends I've known since I was in or fresh out of high school. Why did those friendships last? I suppose if I had been forced to live with most of them, the friendship would NOT have survived but the part about liking each other through all the changes has been true for a lot of people. I have many more friends of 50 or more years than less, though plenty of those too. I guess I'm only thinking it HAPPENS so it isn't impossible to marry at 20 & still relish that person at 90 or 100.
Feeling despondent, how can I have the conversations I need to when she's gone, dead & gone?
Here are some things people have written recently, in the Poetry Project Newsletter, & this lovely piece, "Always Being Myself," by Nick Sturm from the Poetry Foundation.
... on little cold feet.... I like it... maybe I'll find the money I lost once my brain sharpens up, once my brain isn't dragging 16 tons of humidity every waking minute.
Still a little shocking that it's been 4 years since my mother died. I still regret that I neglected to mention in her obituary that she was a nudist.
Here's the penultimate line of that obit & it still sums up best some of her wonderful qualities:
Her family invites you to honor her life by, most of all, embracing open-mindedly and with good humor everyone you meet, and by donating to causes that support justice, Judaism, art, and music.
The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi, by Elin Anna Labba, translated from the Swedish by Fiona Graham, is the first book I've starred of the 32 I've finished so far this year. In case that title makes it sound dull or academic, it's not, although built on extensive research & consulting of government papers; it also includes photos, songs, personal testimony.
Along with heavy sadness, the book made me feel fury & outrage: not only were the Samí pushed out of their ancestrral lands a hundred years ago, in many instances they were made to pay for guides, transportation, & delays. All too similar to the treatment of Native Americans in the U.S. & Canada.
In Sweden, Labba writes, this is "hardly ever documented in history books. ... Samí history is considered to be a Samí matter, not an integral part of Swedish history." Ditto in Norway. Labba goes a long way towards pushing this tragic & infuriating story into our consciousnesses & consciences.
My sweet little Lefty sauntered into the kitchen with a bird in his mouth, feathers shaking off its body. He dropped it & leapt faster & higher than the poor little adolescent pigeon to snag it again. He's not used to the game & the bird got away, unhurt. I can't figure out how he caught it to begin with. It couldn't have come in our screened window but I don't think he brought it down from the roof. It got away another time or two & finally huddled on the coatrack. The two neighbor cats watched, staying far far from the scene. Maggie, the bird whisperer, came down, spoke sweetly & picked it up in a towel with no fuss; she's done this before. Up to the roof they went & in a moment the bird flew off. I wonder what Lefty was expecting. I guess like all urban creatures, his instincts have been deracinated.
Spent a wonderful & educational morning at the Jackie Robinson museum in lower Manhattan (on Varick & Canal). It opened a couple of years ago but I had heard very little about it. Lots of great pictures & audio clips & a couple of short movies. Go now, while Rachel Robinson is still alive (age 103!) ~ she shows up every once in a while, I hear. I went with two knowledgeable baseball friends, one the former head of the research library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, one a mover & shaker in the Babe Ruth museum in Baltimore as well as in women & sports, & it was great fun to catch up. The mission of the JRM is not simply to show his life as an athlete & his importance as the first Black player in modern baseball, but to showcase all he did for civil rights & Black advancement.
So happy to wake up with freezing feet. Rather than put on socks, I let them get as cold as possible then warm them on my not-asleep-much-longer husband. Who marveled that anyone's feet could get that icy. What a great morning. The first day of the weather I relish.
A wee note to say I'm having a problem sending email. It's frustrating because I can't even figure out what is happening, let alone what's causing it. I need a young person. We Boomers invented all of this. A lot of good that does me. Someone at the Apple store yesterday told me I should come to one of their many informative lectures. No thanks, I said, I've learned everything I'm a'gonna ~ besides, I heard him say fractals.
For my Norwegian homework, I'm writing about my upcoming (less than 3 weeks away) trip to Norway. Here it is:
Min tur til Norge 2025
Jeg flyr til Oslo 8 September og kommer tilbake på 17 September.
Målene mine er / jeg planlegger:
å snakke norsk så mye som mulig. (Takk, Lianna, for anbefalingen om å spørre det samme spørsmålet om og om igjen, eller en spørsmål jeg vet svaret på for å øve på snakke og lytte.)
å bo i bokhandlere!
å bli kjent Oslo: jeg skal går og går og går.
å puste luften av Norge!
Jeg vil besøk Ibsenhus (selvfølgelig!), museer, kanskje ta en båt på fjorden (jeg er en dårlig seiler), spiser brunostis(!). Jeg fortsetter denne listen senere….
Mitt hotell i Oslo er Folketeateret Hotell. Dessverre, jeg ble lurt av "folk" og forventet Samisk eventyr eller en Hans Christian Andersen opera men teateret produserer Book of Mormon.
Jeg spiser ikke fisk elle svinekjøtt, så er takknemlig for hotellfrokoster med brød, smør, ost, frukt…
Jeg kal slapp av i Oslo: det er ingen som foreslår andre planer. Fri til a skape mine egne dager - fantastisk!
Jeg lager en liste over forfattere jeg skal utforske og vurdere:
Sigbjørn Skåden
Helene Uri (Fordi jeg elsker deg)
Thorbjørn Egner (Kardemomme by et al)
Hobbit på norsk?
Hans Christian Andersen
Samtidige poeter (jeg liker Rolf Jacobsen, Tarjei og Halldis Moren Vesaas, også den danske poeten Inger Christensen (som jeg bare har lest på engelsk). Kanskje en antologi?
Vær så snill, anbefal flere. Barnabøker, krim (ikke skummel!), ingenting for filosofisk eller langt. Mellomnivå, tror jeg.
Jeg vil bli overrasket og gledet av Oslo, men også føle meg ensom og usikker, noe som ikke er ubehagelig når det er midlertidig…
I morges sendte vennen min meg et bilde (1838) av skyer av en norsk kunstner, Knud Baade. Jeg skal til Nasjonalmuseet for å se dette og andre malerier. Jeg er en stor fan av skyer og av kunst.
Jeg skal også til Bodø i to dager, hvor jeg har venninner. Bodø har et utendørs folkemuseum som jeg har lyst til å se.
Denne er litt tilfeldig - ikke et essay men bare tanker…. jeg er spent!
All readers are tourists. We want to make sense of what we see and hear, to find the balance between what is unknown and what we can call ours.
~ Margo Jefferson
Hot.
Humid.
Hotter.
Muggier.
Back when the weather allows.
Not excited about anything in particular, just kinda wired from taking a hard class on yet another really hot & humid day - if I had left my house before the cutoff for canceling class, I would have, so that I wouldn't have to drag myself to the gym. There was a second class but as it's "stretched & balanced" with the lights turned down, I can't really claim that it's hard. I have a lot of deadlines but none of them are today so I'm farting around when I really need to get crackin'. Is that an expression anyone still uses? Weggy's didn't have the herb tofu I like so I didn't bother getting anything else & now I'm hungry. I had a frozen Indian dinner for breakfast but there wasn't a lot to it. I have lots of appointments for the week that keep getting moved. Gotta write a sermon & a blurb, figure out if I need to buy waterproof sneakers for Norway & do I need kroners or can I charge everything. I appreciate the minutiae of my life because it means I'm not on the run, the same as I appreciate paying taxes because it means I'm a citizen, a member of society, someone who belongs & has a stake.
Lovely Glorious Nothings
It could be god or wealth I long for
but it's poetry, scattering
bright in a Massachusetts farmhouse
or a New York tenement
Life is poetry
(What else is there?)
It doesn't matter if it's good
(It only matters,
all that matters
is if it's good)
Fall down 7 times get up 8
Museums are places of conservation, education, and about protecting something sacred. We need to assign those same values to our oceans.
~ Jason deCaires Taylor
Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor, environmentalist, professional underwater photographer, and founder of MUSAN (Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa) in the Mediterranean in Cyprus. For almost two decades, he has been creating underwater museums and sculpture parks, submerging some 1,200 living artworks throughout the world's oceans and seas to highlight the climate emergency and environmental activism. "The sculptures create a habitat for marine life while illustrating humanity's fragility and its relationship with the marine world."
Just came from seeing Folktales, a documentary focusing on three 19-year-olds & the year they spend at a folk school in northern Norway, 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. They learn to work as a team caring for dogs, survive alone in the wilderness, & how to be less anxious about themselves and their futures. We see plenty of Norway's beautiful nature too. I went with two 14-year-olds who both found it appealing, although they couldn't quite imagine taking a whole year off to actually attend a school like that.
It was about half in English & half in Norwegian, & I'm happy to report that I understood almost all of the Norwegian. At one point I was following so well that it took me a moment to realize they were speaking in norsk.
Almost every day I go to the library for a book or 2, buy an e-book for a buck or 2. By the time I get them home, I sometimes barely open them. I like them piling up, lush with potential. I knew someone who had 5 kids. A mutual friend said, He likes to have a lot of stuff. I don't like to have a lot of stuff, only a lot of books. Paper is elemental. Pleasing. Words too. For a project I've been asking if people have a favorite word. I'm curious what it is, but mostly just if they have one. The writers & poets all do, everyone else says "favorite word?" as in a concept new to them, & then tells me "love" or "heart." (The writers' favorite words include yonder, companion, & I've forgotten the others.)
Update: I didn't know when I wrote this that August 8 (or was it August 9?) is International Book Day. But that's every day, no?
Well, I looked in my file of "scanned treasures" too plop in something from the vault, but today they didn't seem all that valuable, except in being happy to see familiar names, many of them no longer around, which is, of course, bittersweet - my happiness at knowing them matched by the loss. I found a lot of obscure in-jokes that are funny to me but would require a ton of explanation & then you still would have had to be there. The weather is pleasing & I did a bunch of those things that I didn't do the last couple of days AND I DID MY LAUNDRY, my favorite task to cross off the list. I'm reading about Norway & the Sami & a million other interesting things & if only we had a sane president & an unsheep congress, life would be about as good as I could ever want.
Just came from the funeral of a 101-year-old friend, Bebe Beder. Living to a great age was the smallest of her accomplishments. Having been married to Sy for 78 years was a big one. (Sy died in January 2022, a few months after his 99th birthday.) Being the queen of our synagogue was right up there, & that's thanks to her qualities of wit, listening, frankness, & kindness. I think the secret was that she & Sy made you feel that while they liked everyone, they liked you just a smidgen more. I think everyone felt that they were secretly the favorite. Why'd you get married so young? I asked her. Look at him, she gestured. I didn't want anyone else to get their hooks into Sy (the Paul Newman of the synagogue). Bebe was surprised that she was exactly the same age as my mother ~ she thought we were peers. And we were, just not in age. She & Sy counseled draft resisters during Vietnam, this after Sy had flown a bomber (named "Bebe") during WWII. He & I would occasionally go to a baseball game together. Once he called & canceled: "I don't want to be away from Bebe that long."
I didn't go to a movie (Folktales, set in Norway), though I had all afternoon free. I didn't do my laundry, because I'm not quite desperate enough. I didn't find the bag of $20s & my bank card that I managed to lose, although I did cancel the card. It's weird to lose cash & have no idea where it could be. My pants have deep pockets, my bag is zipped, & I don't know where else to look. While I didn't start either of the new projects I have in mind, I did spend time pondering how to go about them, with mounting excitement at the possibilities. I didn't finish any of the zillion books I'm in the middle of. I did buy shampoo & toilet paper, & I did take a nice soaky bath, & I did comb the aisles of the soon-to-close Rite Aid on my corner, where I bought some moisturizer for half off. I guess that's my life every day, isn't it, doing some things, neglecting or forgetting others, being surprised / pleased / discouraged / infuriated / cheered.....