Yesterday was Norway's birthday, May 17th.
Throughout the country schoolchildren participate in colorful parades, celebrating 17 May 1814, when the Norwegian constitution was signed and Norway was finally declared to be a separate nation. In Oslo, the barnetoget (children's parade) begins down by the water and winds uphill to the Royal Palace. It is the largest parade in the country; about 100 schools participate, and the number of spectators can reach 100,000! At the palace, the royal family stand on the balcony to inspect each school and band as it goes by.
King Karl Johan, King of Sweden and Norway at the time the constitution was signed, also inspects the schools as they pass. Norwegians are very patriotic, though not necessarily in the way I was brought up to think of patriotism in the U.S. Love of country simply laces every celebration. It's not strange to have a Norwegian flag displayed at a birthday or anniversary party, and Christmas decorations often include flag ornaments and ribbons. But on Constitution Day, flags run a red, white, and blue river all the way up Karl Johans gate.
This means we get our own flags, too!
Continue reading Syttende mai!.
Today is 17 May, Norway's Constitution Day, the biggest national celebration of the year. Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the parades, national costumes, the king and queen, and the spectacular weather we enjoyed all day. Tonight, all I have energy for is a simple post about a singular pleasure.
The sun was still high in the sky as we took an after dinner walk down to the fjord. We walked the bike path by the quiet harbor, leaving behind the pump and whine of ten thousand parties vibrating throughout the city center. The water was glass. The green of the spring-plump trees like alien flames against the sky.
It was good to stretch our legs and find some time away from all the activity. Spectating on days like today is fun, of course. We ogle the colorful bunader, silver jewelry glittering at the waists, the wrists, the throats. We bob along to the bass beat as marching bands pass by playing songs we do not recognize. But under it all, there is a danger for foreigners like us.
Days like today, we feel freshly outside. Untouched. Unnecessary to this long-standing tradition. This is not our history. And while tourists are able to run back to the familiar confines of their home countries and rejuvenate their own sense of identity and national pride, expats aren't so lucky. This is our home. Even when we have not the language nor the costume nor the roots of everyone else around us.
Continue reading A Singular Pleasure.
I love many of the statues in Oslo, but this is one of my favorites. Gunnar Fridtjof Thurmann Sønsteby is stationed at Solli plass, just down the street from our place. Nearby stands a larger-than-life, stooped-shouldered Winston Churchill. But Sønsteby is the one who catches the eye.
It could be his posture, relaxed but alert; it could be his bicycle. Today it was the pile of roses and flags at his feet and tangled in his handlebars.
Sønsteby was the most famous member of the Norwegian underground during WWII. To this day he remains to be the most decorated person in Norway's history, receiving awards and honors and medals from both the Norwegian government and the American government for his efforts during the Nazi occupation. He was known (or unknown) as Agent 24 during the war, and received saboteur training in England. All around, a pretty brave, pretty cool guy.
Sønsteby passed away last week (10 May) at the age of 94. As a lover of history, it's a beautiful thing to see appreciation expressed for this man and his personal efforts and sacrifices so many decades after the fact, by way of flowers and flags.
American author Jennifer Egan drew a sellout crowd to Oslo's Litteraturhuset on Wednesday night. Organizers had to set out extra rows of chairs on the floor of the main theater to accommodate Egan's fans. The room was warm, thick with anticipation and the rumble of low voices. My friend, Zoë, and I edged in toward two empty seats.
"Note to self," I whispered to her. "Win a Pulitzer."
And Zoë, who never fails to keep things real, whispered back, "Note to self: Get published first."
I took the last sip of my pinot noir as we settled in. We were only two of what I'm sure were many aspiring authors in the room, including a few of our fellow members from the Oslo International Writers Group. But that night, all of us had come primarily as readers, fans of Egan's work.
She'd arrived in Oslo to promote and discuss A Visit from the Goon Squad, the novel which earned her the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book is as impossible to describe succinctly as it is to spoil for those who have not yet read it. Written as a series of nonlinear chapters which each read as a standalone story starring a different protagonist, Goon Squad is a fresh take on the art of the novel, one influenced by both the 19th century serialized fiction of Dickens and the HBO mob hit The Sopranos. It is organized in two "sides," A and B, like a record or a cassette tape, and every chapter, like a song, is complete in itself, but also builds to create a full album.
As Litteraturhuset's Head of Programming, Silje Riise Naess, said in her introduction, "It's about time Jennifer Egan was published here in Norway!"
Norwegian author Linn Ullmann led the interview, and the first thing she asked Egan about was that crazy title, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which has given Scandinavian publishers a bit of trouble. Norwegian publishers ultimately decided on the title En bølle på døra, which translates to something like A Bully at Your Door.
"I came up with the title years before I started the book," Egan said. "For a long time, whenever I had a new idea, I wondered, Will this book be Goon Squad? And it finally was."
"What exactly is a goon?" Ullman asked. "One of your characters says, Time is a goon. What does he mean?"
"A goon is a comic thing. Not a scary term, a silly term," she said. "It's like a very cartoonish thug. And Time is a goon is a completely made-up saying, but [it means] that time wins. The Grim Reaper, but in a lighter sense."
Everything about Egan was confident. She's been through dozens and dozens of interviews just like this one. I watched her shake back her hair, cut short, silky in the stage lights, the same silver-brown of a Yorkshire terrier's coat. I could picture her, a New York City adoptee (born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco), walking around Brooklyn with her ear-buds in, listening to Elvis Costello. Confident. Creative. Nothing Egan said in her interview was perfunctory or unthinking. Hundreds of people had gathered in Oslo just as similar crowds had in interviews across the U.S., everyone eager to catch a glimpse of the mind that had conceived a book this different, this wacky... a work Time Magazine described as an "expert fillet" of an epic novel.
Continue reading Litteraturhuset Series: Jennifer Egan.
On a gray Wednesday evening in April, I walked to Oslo's Litteraturhuset under the red blossom of my umbrella. I was on my way to see Australian author Anna Funder talk about her debut novel, All That I Am. Cars splashed murky water from the gutters up onto the sidewalk. I worried that my heart was about to break.
As a hopeful, student author, I've been told a thousand times that good writing is always genuine. That I must write from a place of sincerity and passion. Time and again, my mentors and professors have said to me, Write the story you must. Like any other helpful adage, however, once this truth has been used as a device to stimulate creativity a few dozen times, it loses its shine, its magic, its ability to impel. It becomes personal affirmation. Still true, but benign.
Then last winter, I heard a teacher say something new.
Bill Lychack, author of The Architect of Flowers, spoke to my class about what a writer's product is and where it comes from. Snow dusted the bare trees outside our classroom in Cambridge. When it came to his own process, Lychack said, "What I must do is all that concerns me." But then he went on...
Write the thing that would break your heart if someone else wrote it first.
Continue reading Litteraturhuset Series: Anna Funder.
"I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word... Don't worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed." -- Don Miller
So we left.
Maybe it was that all of our familiar furniture was already placed in these foreign rooms, or maybe it was that sunlight streamed in through all our garret windows and made the place glow. Whatever the case, our cats had no trouble adjusting to their new surroundings. We unzipped the carriers slowly so that Disney and Crypto could ease their way out into the new space. They still wore their harnesses. Green camo for Disney and pink floral for Crypto. They'd spent the last 24 hours enclosed in the carriers, most of that time on planes between San Francisco and New York, then New York and Oslo. We'd pulled them out a few terrorizing times: going through security at SFO and then again at EWR, for a brief rest period at an airport hotel in Newark, New Jersey, and then finally at OSL where a veterinarian was on hand to examine them and grant our precious cargo official entry into Norway.
That was the longest day of our lives.
Two planes, a train, a taxi. Five giant suitcases, two cat carriers, and two whining cats. Four flights of stairs.
But as we entered the new flat, at once aware of our solitude and our togetherness, all the stress of the melted away.
Disney found the circle window in the living room quickly. He hopped up to the sill multiple times that first day to check out the new street so far below him. Birds played in the sky at his eye-level. He purred contentedly. Crypto sprawled on the floor in one of the rectangular patches of yellow sunlight on the wooden floor. She lay there like a swimmer floating in a pool of light.
Jonathan and I stepped out on our patio and walked to the corner of it. I pushed up on the banister and leaned forward, face full into the fresh April air, pointing myself southwest where I could see, half a kilometer away, the water of the Oslofjord. Jonathan stood behind me and placed one hand on each of mine, his chest pressed warmly to my shoulder blades.
That was exactly one year ago. And since then...
Continue reading One Year in Oslo.
I was fortunate to be able to see Ali Smith interviewed at Oslo's Litteraturhuset earlier this month. I've been a fan of Smith's work since I happened to pick up a well-thumbed copy of The Whole Story and Other Stories at a used bookstore in Davis, California several years ago. Smith's work has twice been short-listed for the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize. When I heard she was coming to Oslo to promote There But For The, her latest novel and eighth Norwegian-translation, I couldn't wait to see her.
"The next time you have a whiskey, drink to my dad."
At this the audience broke out in applause. Smith nodded and raised a pretend glass in salute to the crowd. The gesture summed up the mood of the evening, more a conversation in a pub with a mentor than a lecture given by an award winning author.
Oslo's Litteraturhuset lecture hall was full of avid Smith fans on the evening of 11 April, eager to hear about the famed Scottish author's writing process and philosophy. After two introductions, one in English and one in Norwegian, Smith took her place onstage.
She sat in one of two chairs, each angled slightly toward the other, and in doing so, was forced to duck under an encroaching microphone stand. Her movement, while not quite graceful, was confident. She wore cuffed jeans and heavy brown boots, and her dark hair swung around her face in a plain, perfunctory bob. Over the course of her interview, conducted as a conversation with book critic Margunn Vikingstad, Smith displayed a delicate vigor. Her voice was both soft and tough as it waxed and wound around words, and her Scottish accent made every declaration sound both optimistic and final, as though no one could or would want to argue.
"But is the best word."
"We forget the formative moments of life until much later, but then they always have revolved around something kind."
"Clichés are a dead language, but they're wonderful. We need them. They offer a shared truth... an 'Oh good, that's happened to you, too.'"
In her chair, Smith sat with scrunched shoulders and one foot tucked up underneath herself. Her eyes sparkled as she recounted her early days as a writer, when the kindnesses of people like one of her first Cambridge landlords ("Now there was a versatile man. He was a plumber who also made hats!") nurtured her. He didn't mind whether she couldn't pay the rent. He'd take what she could pay, drink a cup of tea with her and her roommates, and then leave with thanks.
Continue reading Litteraturhuset Series: Ali Smith.
When you move from one place to another, the big changes are evident first. Snow in winter. A new, unintelligible language. Whether cars drive down the left or right-hand side of the street. These changes are big. Adjustments are necessary. You must learn the basics all over again: how to walk, how to speak, how to live.
Only after you adjust to the landscape and the currency of your new home do you begin to sense the other, more subtle differences:
The average height of women in Norway is a full two inches taller than the average height of women in the U.S.
Police officers walking their beats do not carry guns.
The bills of the magpies in the tree just outside our window are black, not yellow. Would anyone notice that except me?
Birds filled the skies, trees, and fields of my California childhood. Long-billed curlews dipped their curved beaks into the turf of the high school football field at dawn. Mountain blue birds fluttered into our backyard like fragments of sky. The killdeer scurried across vacant lots crying about murder. Our parents taught us to identify them all.
Now, no matter where the path I'm walking leads, I notice the birds.
Flocks. Gaggles. Charms. Suits. Murders. Exaltations.
We'd lived here only three months when I stopped in a bookstore and asked where I could find a book on fugler. Birds. Armed with our new full-color guide to the birds of Norway, Jonathan and I have been setting out to find and identify them. To make sense of this subtle, feathered shift in the scope of our new home.
Because I haven't been able to find a good online source of info on the Birds of Norway (or the Birds of Oslo), I thought I'd make one myself. Photos are sourced from Wikipedia. If/when I take passable photos on my own, I'll note that, as well.
The following are all the birds we've identified here in Norway. English name, Latin name, Norwegian name.
Black-headed Gull
Larus ridibundus
Hettemåke
Blue Tit
Parus caeruleus
Blåmeis
Canada Goose
Branta canadensis
Kanadagås
Carrion Crow
Corvus corone
Kråke
Common Goldeneye
Bucephala clangula
Kvinand
Continue reading Fugler: Birds of Norway.
Last night, Jonathan and I took our favorite short walk in Oslo: straight southeast from our flat in Frogner, through the grounds of det kongelig slott (the Royal Palace), down Karl Johans gate, to Jernbanetorget (Oslo Central Station). Temperatures reached the high 50s yesterday, but dropped off quickly once the sun lowered behind the buildings. We stuffed our icy, white hands deep in our pockets and moved at a quick clip to keep the blood moving in our toes.
The ponds behind the palace are still empty. We watched children, bundled up in chubby, one-piece suits, toddling across the pebbled surface to kick at the last, dirty piles of snow. After the first major snowfall, trucks had buzzed along our streets spilling gravel over the flat surfaces to provide traction for pedestrians. Last night we watched another large truck equipped with something like a mega-shop-vac as it howled along one of the paved paths near the palace and inhaled the gravel once again, leaving the dry path clean behind it.
Walking down the hill into the city center, I happened to glance at one of the large, winter-barren planters to my left. I stopped short. Flowers! The earliest, tightly coiled purple and yellow buds are nosing their way up through the dark soil beneath the still-bare trees.
So, Veldig Oslo - Volume 02 is spring color! Within the next few weeks, these brave buds will open toward the sky in bursts of yellow and purple glory.
Veldig Oslo - Volume 02: Yellow daffodils and purple pansies on the Oslo Royal Palace grounds in April 2011
Crossing my fingers against any impending frost. Survival of the brightest. Bring on the spring!
Spring is striving beyond winter's boundaries right now. After what turned out to be a fairly mild winter here in Oslo, we've had two weeks of "warm" weather in a row. Lots of sunshine. Lots of little birds filling dormant, leafless bushes with song. The snow has melted; only the rare patch of murky, aged ice remains in high, untrafficked places. Cafe tables and folding chairs have begun to reemerge outside Olso's sidewalk eateries. These are all signs of spring.
But we haven't seen the true indicator, the no-looking-back-now symbol of spring's arrival and dominion.The Oslo Bysykkel system is not yet active. And because the days are getting longer and the weather only warmer, this brings me to a new series of blog-thoughts... things I love (and currently miss) about spring, summer, and autumn in Oslo... Veldig Oslo (Very Oslo) - Volume 01:
Veldig Oslo - Volume 01: Cruising along the fjord near Akershus in July 2011.
Oslo Bysykkel racks are located all over the city. By purchasing a rental card, you have access to all of the racks. You can then pick up a bike anywhere and drop it off anywhere. It's that simple. The three-speed bikes come equipped with a bell and a small basket. They're not fancy, but they get you from here to there, and in a pedestrian-friendly city like Oslo, it's a safe way to travel, too.
This is one of the things I've missed most of all since the bikes' removal in late autumn. Jonathan and I used the system constantly for more than six straight months. We didn't leave the house without grabbing our bike cards!
Oslo Bysykkel rental bikes near Nowegian Maritime Museum on Bygdøy
The bike rental system is available to tourists in Oslo, as well:
Tourists wishing to use bicycles during their stay in Oslo should contact the Tourist Information Centre by the Central Station, the central station or Fridtjof Nansen Square 5, entrance gate Roald Amundsen, who will assist with the provision of tourist card. (This is a translated excerpt; for more information, visit the Oslo Bysykkel website.)
Per the website, bikes should reappear at rental racks in early April. Then, bring on the spring!
On Saturday we venture to Geilo. It is a city I know little of, save that it is one stop along a famed railway line between Oslo and Bergen, and that it holds an annual Ice Music Festival each February. Our trip will coincide with this festival, a happy coincidence. The temperatures in Geilo are predicted to be lower than anything I've felt yet in my lifetime: -20 to -30 Celsius. I imagine it will be the kind of cold that will make my eyes ache.
If we can summon the spirit, we will head outdoors to ski. At any rate we will lug our equipment along. It is to be a true vacation, so neither of us will mind if we end up in our room most of the time.
We also plan to attend the Ice Music Festival and listen to a concert played forth on instruments of ice. It is something I never would have thought up on my own. After nine months in Norway (a full year for Jonathan) some things are still entirely alien to us.
Continue reading Bound for Geilo.
Yesterday, I had lunch with a new friend and her four-year-old niece. The little girl spoke no English, with a couple of pleasant exceptions. "Okay." "Gimme five." "Yo dude."
"Makes sense," I said, sipping my peppermint mocha. "She's spending so much time with a California girl."
"Believe it or not, that wasn't me. My Norwegian sister-in-law actually taught her that one."
While we adults talked, the little one played and played. A toy tube of fake lipstick kept her occupied for a few minutes. Eventually the separate plastic pieces skittered across the floor. Then she scribbled and sketched on a paper placemat. Then she crawled under the table and proceeded to "hide" from us for a while, shrieking with delighted terror when we "found" her.
After a while, though, she'd had enough of our all-English conversation, our low-and-steady adult voices, and she popped up like a gopher, grabbing for the delicate white and black patterned infinity scarf around my friend's neck.
The brain of any child is a mystery to me, but I enjoyed watching her take this scarf through its paces. From one moment to the next the scarf was a hat, a blanket, a hammock, the veil of a spøkelse (ghost). Her voice warbled through the fabric, a haunting howl. When the ghost-game was done (in a matter of less than two minutes), she demanded a dress from her aunt. My friend proceeded to wrap the scarf around the child's tiny waist, covering her red Helly Hansen snow bibs, and then tied and tucked the remaining end, pulling her hands away to reveal a makeshift dress.
The little girl stared down at her new garment in wonder, twisting her head far around both sides to examine it, making sure it was a true dress, that no part of her was left exposed. Determining herself truly elegant, she drew back and hurled herself into her aunt's lap, wrapping her slender arms around my friend's neck. Grateful.
Continue reading A Mug of Kakao.
As of midnight on New Year's Eve, I only had one spoken-aloud resolution.
"I want to take the time to sit and eat breakfast each morning before checking my email."
It was a noble, if somewhat unambitious, goal. I've noticed that my heart races and I can't calm my mind at night if I've spent more than a little time before the glowing specter of my computer screen. It's just email. It can wait fifteen minutes for me to make tea and peel a banana.
Day Two dawned and I slipped into my office and began working without a moment's hesitation to boil water for oatmeal.
Resolution Fail.
So, what's important? What am I aiming for this year? After all, there must be a goal, something to work toward and anticipate.
I'd like to post more often here. My thesis work sometimes coincides with first drafts here, but not always. It would be good to take some of the pressure off of myself and write journal entries here, too. After all, daily life just isn't always interesting, inspiring, or memoir-worthy.
_____________
Dear Journal:
Woke up late. Checked my email before breakfast. Resolution Fail. Got caught up with work while listening to Adele belt out Someone Like You on repeat for two straight hours. Her voice haunts me. I switched to Adele after trying the same thing with Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger, and ended up dreaming about a stomping, gyrating Carson Kressley. The growling of my stomach startled the cat into jumping off my lap around 1:30. Almost forgot to eat lunch. Down to my last frozen bagel, really only a bagel in the literal sense. Round. Risen dough. Works as a vehicle for cream cheese. I'm dying for Noah's.
Especially since the cream cheese is hardly worth chewing my way through a make-believe bagel. I cave and buy reduced-fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese every time I visit the store just because of the look Jonathan gives me when I grab the real thing. Like he knows so much better. Like we'll gain ten thousand pounds if I shop the way I want to. Like I don't know that. So, I buy the reduced-fat garbage and suffer through the oddly rubbered texture of it all for peace at home. And less poundage on my hips. Hips which, as Shakira warned me years ago, do not lie.
Continue reading Resolute.
Christmas cards and Christmas letters, chronicles of our year at a time of supreme reflection, appear to be a very American phenomenon. It's one I like. I have a box of cards collected over the years from my friends, and in the pictures I can see them fall in love. I am reminded up their weddings. I can marvel at the growth of their children and follow their adventures throughout the world.
We may live in a digital age that allows us uniquely (and sometimes disturbingly) intimate access to the lives of friends and acquaintances alike, but these paper cards are important to me. In fact, the more digitized the world becomes, the more special it is that someone would take the time to sit and put pen to paper or lick a stamp and press it to the top corner of an envelope. (I'm exaggerating. No one licks stamps anymore.)
This year, due to the cost of printing and shipping and paying for international postage, I wasn't able to send as many of the paper cards as I have in years past. To make up for that, I thought I'd post the card here, too. After all, if you read my blog, you're important to me. You remind me that my writing is worthwhile. You help hold me accountable. You make me go on.
So... drum roll please...
Continue reading Our Christmas Card.
A predictable post, I suppose, considering that I'm a California girl at the commencement of her first winter in Norway. For California kids, certain Christmas songs and lore carry a different kind of mystique. Not only Irving Berlin's White Christmas, but also Jingle Bells, Winter Wonderland, and Frosty the Snowman. We don't understand these things. That is, unless our parents dragged us to the house of a relative who was fortunate enough to live someplace where it snowed. While my Illinois cousins spent the afternoon of Christmas Day throwing snowballs and sledding, my brothers and I were out rollerskating on sunny sidewalks through our neighborhood. Without coats on. And while my cousins might have debated the point, I still say we were the ones who drew the short straw.
So, you can understand my excitement when, after the warmest November Norway has on record, big, fat flakes of white began falling damply and intermittently from the evening sky.
Continue reading Snow!.
On September 22, Jonathan and I joined the rest of Oslo in celebrating the Autumnal Equinox. We followed the crowds down to the Akerselva River walk in Grünerløkka, and snapped photos all along the way. Night lowered itself over the city, flooding the winding river canal with shadows. Colorful light installations glowed at every other turn. We saw fairies, giant mushrooms, an enormous dragon kite leering from behind a building in vicious shades of pink and orange. We stuffed our hands deeper into our pockets and walked slowly with everyone else. There was muffled laughter and catcalling in Norwegian, all of it made somehow more sinister by the darkness and the otherworldly images around us.Several different small choirs had gathered to sing traditional songs. Their breath puffed white as they sang. We stopped for waffles and jam at a stand near a bridge. The pastry was hot through the napkin and warmed our hands, though just for a moment.
All of the color and fluid light, candle flames dancing in the windows, reminded me of why I love this season so much. It's the spirit of the people, children beginning anew at school in spite of the way the natural world is drawing itself to an end, young people dancing in pairs and trios, stretching their mouths carelessly around every lyric, and old people standing back, wrapped in the wisdom of their experience, considering the minor beauties of this time from a place most mindful and most appreciative.
Recently in Norwegian class, Jonathan and I learned a new verb: å glede seg. It means to look forward to, or to anticipate. So what am I anticipating this season?
Baking pumpkin bread.
Mom passed along her scrumptious pumpkin bread recipe to me the moment I asked for it. It was the fall of 2005. I'd been married a full year and hadn't baked a thing in my new kitchen. She came over and walked me through the recipe, swiping the flour flat in the measuring cup, scooping the pumpkin goop from the can into the bowl, and showing me how I should err on the side of extra with the cinnamon.
Since then I have baked it several times each autumn. Here in Oslo, though, a single can of pumpkin costs something around $12. Pumpkin bread will be a luxury for us here, but as the days retract into darkness and the cold wind forces us to close our windows tight, I look forward to pulling golden-brown loaves from the oven and letting the scent of cinnamon, cloves, and pumpkin fill the flat.
Piles of leaves.
Walking in the fall is more fun than it is any other time of the year. The sidewalks are covered in a deep, crunchy blanket of leaves, brightly colored and dry and light as air. Every step kicks up a few so that they tumble into new piles around me. If I move fast enough, they whirl a bit in my wake. I like to stand on our street when the wind begins to blow just to watch the yellow and red leaves in the trees release their hold on the branches and take their fluttering, circuitous journey downward and into my path.
Sweaters & scarves.
Here the wardrobe change has happened quicker than I'm used to. In California I would wear sweaters from November through the beginning of March. In Oslo, sweaters are necessary from the beginning of October all the way into April. The thick woolens feel soft against my skin. I layer a scarf around my neck, swirling and tying it so that it protects me from the cold fingers of the wind. I am wearing overcoats and rain coats. Soon I'll be pulling on a parka! But for now, I'm excited to be reunited with all my colorful sweaters.
Continue reading What I love about Halloweentime.
Our last perfect weather day was last Thursday. I took the bus to Lysaker to drop something at Jonathan's office and afterward I took a walk.
The water gulped against the wood and stone side of the pier below me. I was thirty feet up on a flat, grassy space between several buildings, glass and concrete exteriors housing posh condos with an extensive view of the fjord. Four men sat at the end of the pier, fishing poles aloft, tackle swinging and blinking in the sunlight. A small yacht was moored there, too, but all I could see were the long white masts and the smart red and blue flag.
There was quiet except for the scuttled chasings of two yellow-billed magpie. They swirled against each other, so close I could see the teal patches on their wings. They snickered and hopped back into the short hedges nearby. I watched them for a while and then bowed my head to read and scribble in the margins of my book. Everyone once in a while I took a sip of my lemon soda.
These days I favor my lemonades and sodas flavored with citron. It is a flavor I will forever associate with this time in my life - perfect days when the words had all the time in the world to conceive themselves in my mind and come to me.
More than one perfect day has been squandered since my arrival in Norway, of course. My cup runneth over with time and dreams coming true; my cup is so full that some time and dreams have been lost. I cannot mourn them now, though. There is too much to record. I am a journalist as much as I am a poet.
Last night our Norwegian instructor asked about our hobbies.
"Jeg skriver... poems," I said, because I've been writing poetry again, but I lacked the correct word for poems.
"Dikt," he said.
"Pardon me?"
"Dikt. Du skriver dikt," he said, chortling behind his answer. "Liker ikke du det? Hvorfor ikke?" You don't like it? Why not?
"Nei! Jeg liker ikke det! Fordi... Because that's a terribly ugly word for something as pretty as a poem!"
To soften the blow he added that the Norwegian word for poet is also poet, and the word for poetry is poesi. Now that's more like it.
So I record these bits of language that keep my life so interesting in this Nordic land. I record the weather, the street names, the tragedies, the carnivals. I have a responsibility to the page, and that truth, as esoteric as it is, keeps my pen moving, especially on the perfect days.
I paused in my scribbling last Thursday to watch as a motor boat cut a curve in the water and turned back on its own wake to thump its stern against the waves. My lemonade was pale yellow and only half full. The skinny, triangular Norwegian flag atop the yacht's mast nearby curled and unfurled at turns in the breeze. The sun warmed my back, and I wrote:
This is the stuff of my life, and as long as I can put it down in ink, my heart may be at peace.
Continue reading The Stuff of my Life.
Today I went out to watch other people run the Oslo Marathon. It's a big event. In 2010 it attracted 16,000 runners, more than half of them women. People came from all over the world. It's a beautiful course, winding along the edge of the Oslofjord and then up into our sparkling city. Jonathan and I live about three blocks from the middle of the course, so we walked over to cheer the runners on.
Running is not second nature to me. It's not even natural. My gait isn't graceless or anything. I played sports for too many years to be clumsy when I run. It's just that my lungs, my heart, my mouth, my thighs, my calves, my feet, my knees, my arms, my hands, and my ponytail can't seem to find the appropriate harmony when I try to use them all at once.
Believe me, I've tried. Jonathan and I have completed the Disneyland Half Marathon twice, first in 2008 and then again in 2010. We also ran the Death Valley 30K together in a record rainstorm, and Jonathan had an injured knee that time, so we basically walked the last half of it. I've also done a sprint triathlon with the Mermaid organization in California, an event which required me to face my fear of sharks and swim out around a pier in Santa Cruz (and making excellent time, I might add, due to that fear). After the swim, I biked 11 miles and ran the final 2.5. I dragged myself over that finish line, my skin a vibrant shade of pink blotched with red. Throw in a couple of 5K races and the weekly timed miles in my high school P.E. class and you've got the grand total of my life as a runner.
But it all seems like so long ago. And unfortunately, being able to point back a year or two and say, "See? I ran that once. I went from here to there. Not very fast, mind you, but faster than if I'd walked it," well, it stops being satisfying after a while.
The start time for the Oslo 10K had been 9:40 a.m. When we arrived at the part of the course closest to our place, the stragglers from that race were huffing and puffing their way up Karl Johans Gate, the long pedestrianized street which runs from Oslo Central train station uphill to the grand, yellow royal palace. We watched people of all ages, all sizes, and all levels of skill as they rounded that turn.
Most were dragging their feet, sweat thick in their hair. Some were limping over muscles strained somewhere earlier on. These were the survivors. I knew they'd finish. Give them another hour or two and they'd barrel stiff-legged over the line. Victorious, but pained, haggard, battle-worn.
I've been there. If I were to attempt a half marathon now, having not run seriously in over a year, it's how I'd look and feel. That's a tough truth for someone who likes to think of herself as healthy.
Continue reading Running. A goal..
Yesterday we arrived in Norway. All together. Two humans, two cats, six bags. Somehow we managed to lug everything from customs to the airport train station, from the Nationaltheatret station to the taxi stand, from the taxi up five flights of stairs. Twenty-four hours of constant motion culminated in the moment Jonathan turned the key in the lock of our new flat in Oslo, pulling the front door open with a theatrical sweep.
It's beautiful. Cozy. Light. Charming. Perfect. I giggled and spun as I entered each room, trying to memorize every inch of every wall. Our belongings arrived in early March, and Jonathan has spent the last six weeks setting things up for me. The nest, as it were, has been built, and he did it all exactly right.
We reached our flat before 10:00 on Wednesday, so the whole day was ours for the spending. However, this coming weekend is Easter, and Norwegians take their Easter holiday very seriously. Maundy Thursday, the Christian commemoration of the Last Supper, and Good Friday, the Christian commemoration of Christ's crucifixion, are public holidays. The Monday following Easter Sunday is also a public holiday, making the weekend officially five days long! The day we arrived in Oslo was the last working day of the week and many shops were set to close early, and remain closed until next Tuesday. We needed to get out and grab some groceries.
Continue reading Velkommen til Oslo!.
Audrey Camp
I'm an American expat and freelance writer living in Oslo, Norway with my husband. I love language, adventure, dogs and classic movies.
