1 hour ago
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Guardian Angel
I am the bird that knocks at your window in the morning
and your companion, whom you cannot know,
the blossoms that light up for the blind.
I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one
and the brass voices from cathedral towers.
The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday
and fills you with a singular happiness.
I am one you have loved long ago.
I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’t know it.
I am your third arm and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you don’t have the heart for
and who cannot ever forget you.
-- Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994), from North in the World
and your companion, whom you cannot know,
the blossoms that light up for the blind.
I am the glacier’s crest above the forests, the dazzling one
and the brass voices from cathedral towers.
The thought that suddenly comes over you at midday
and fills you with a singular happiness.
I am one you have loved long ago.
I walk alongside you by day and look intently at you
and put my mouth on your heart
but you don’t know it.
I am your third arm and your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you don’t have the heart for
and who cannot ever forget you.
-- Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994), from North in the World
Monday, July 26, 2010
Hipstanordic
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| walking to the jetty |
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| mi madre luminati |
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| boy, boat, indigo sea |
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| our enemy -- the jellyfish |
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| minky |
Norwegian wildflowers
It's 7pm and both children are sleeping. I'm settled on the wooden terrace with a cup of tea and two lemon creme biscuits shaped like flowers. A putt-putt fishing boat with a jaunty Norwegian flag at its stern is on its way out. There is supper to be made. But I'm thinking, what's the rush? What's the rush on this old codfish-colored day? If the weather keeps up, there is a Stave church to visit in the morning or even a trip to Fevik, because I'm interested to see where my friend Lucy spent her summers (though it's a three hour drive through Porsgrunn, Bamble, Kragero and Arendal and I'm still not so wild about the stick-shift Skoda I'm driving, Volkswagen engineering notwithstanding). And so I leave you with the flowers that sit in a bla eng jug in the middle of the table (I'm cheating a bit, this picture was taken on Saturday night when the sun was out, and my aunt was here and the light was pink.) These are wildflowers picked in the lane. Good day from Norway.
Munch (Warhol)
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| image via NRK |
Andy Warhol was a great fan of Munch. He first saw the work at a gallery in New York in 1982. Both men lost a parent at a very young age, and both, it seems were obsessed with death. His paintings and silkscreens are inspired by Munch's The Scream, Madonna and Self-portrait with Skeleton Arm.
Dongling it, Tjøme-style
With the use of the indefatigable Telenor "dongle" (my brother insists that this is the correct technological name for the cigarette lighter sized device which plugs into the space usually reserved for the USB port on the side of my mac) I have been scanning the web all morning looking for cultural activities, as the weather forecast is a little dreary for the next ten days (rain, rain and yes, rain). While the children are happy watching Running Scared (him) and old episodes of The Hills (her) downloaded on their computers back in Los Angeles, it's not quite what I had in mind for a jolly family holiday to our beloved island.
So far we've found a Warhol & Munch exhibit at the Haugar Museum in Tonsberg, Hoyjord Church, the only original Stave church in Vestfold, situated at Moa, and Haugen Farm in Jaberg which boast farm-themed carvings from 500-1500 BC. In typical fashion, my children are only excited by the Warhol, so much dragging and coaxing and no doubt bribery will ensue over the next couple of days.
As I look out over the fjord (which is, in fact, the North Sea) from our little Grimestad bay, the water and sky are the same color -- a flat, dull gray, not steel gray or a vibrant storm-heralding indigo, but pale gray as you might find on a building in the Eastern Bloc as imagined circa 1952. The islands, which stretch out over it like reaching fingers, the gray-brown granite rock sprinkled with pine trees and raspberry bushes, seem devoid of boats, although usually we see sail boats moored all around the bay. The sparrows are back on the flat, wooden rail of the deck, where we fed them yesterday crumbs from our lunch. They cock their heads to one side, inquisitively, like dogs, and it's hard for me not to take more bread out to them just to watch the parade. Ned has been videoing them, propping up his tripod in the kitchen and watching the endless cavalcade of fat little sparrows, who tustle and strut and swallow down pieces of bread as large as their heads.
Yesterday's great discovery was a medieval burial ground, perched on the top of a cliff face behind the working dairy farm at Magero. It's next to a lake, Kynna, where my mother bathed as a child during the war. My grandmother, thinking it a good place for the children to wash off the salt seawater, was oblivious to the fact that it was full of leeches, but my mother remembers that well. Across the road at Molledammen, Hans Christian Ringer, a hero of the Norwegian resistance, lived and farmed, but a few years ago his house was made into a few low-key modern apartments.
Viking ships and burial grounds are commonplace. They're found, it seems, whenever a house is raised and a new foundation built. We're sitting on thousands of years of artifacts, layered into the sand and the clay and the rock.
There is seed bread toasted with hard boiled eggs and kaviar for breakfast, boller warmed in the oven, cut in half and covered with a slice of brown goats' cheese, warm cups of tea in my grandmother's old cups. The children spread nutella on lompe (a flat, tortilla-like pancake in which the Norwegians like to wrap hotdogs.) And then there are mistakes. Boller (sweet cardamom buns) with raisins and chocolate chips -- if you take the most delicious thing in the world and think you can improve on it, you can't. Lesson learned.
The sea is cold. The Norwegians may disagree with me. But 17C is chilly at best. I've swum four times so I'm feeling incredibly smug. Yesterday it was dotted with jellyfish, tiny, light-colored ones, but stingers nonetheless. We wait on the trappen for a jellyfish-free moment and then fling ourselves out into the cold, midnight blue sea. My mother, who has the most Viking blood, swims laps between our jetty and the one next to ours. Ten laps most mornings, which leaves my children and I slack-jawed with awe.
A family supper on Saturday night -- steaks cooked most ably on the Weber by N, a salad with thinly sliced fennel, heart lettuce and almost translucent acid-green chervil, a gratin of potatoes and onions and nutmeg, peach clafoutis made by Minky -- revealed that my uncle (my aunt's domestic partner, aged a sprightly, handsome 80) believes that dogs are more intelligent than we believe. This is no epiphany to us dog folk, of course, but I was happy to have a partner in spirit, though we may be divided by culture and language and age. How civilized to sit next to a well-read, thoughtful, insightful elderly relative and discover that we are kin (or kind as the Deadheads would say) at least on the canine plane.
Off to Andy Warhol. Can't tell them apart at all.
So far we've found a Warhol & Munch exhibit at the Haugar Museum in Tonsberg, Hoyjord Church, the only original Stave church in Vestfold, situated at Moa, and Haugen Farm in Jaberg which boast farm-themed carvings from 500-1500 BC. In typical fashion, my children are only excited by the Warhol, so much dragging and coaxing and no doubt bribery will ensue over the next couple of days.
As I look out over the fjord (which is, in fact, the North Sea) from our little Grimestad bay, the water and sky are the same color -- a flat, dull gray, not steel gray or a vibrant storm-heralding indigo, but pale gray as you might find on a building in the Eastern Bloc as imagined circa 1952. The islands, which stretch out over it like reaching fingers, the gray-brown granite rock sprinkled with pine trees and raspberry bushes, seem devoid of boats, although usually we see sail boats moored all around the bay. The sparrows are back on the flat, wooden rail of the deck, where we fed them yesterday crumbs from our lunch. They cock their heads to one side, inquisitively, like dogs, and it's hard for me not to take more bread out to them just to watch the parade. Ned has been videoing them, propping up his tripod in the kitchen and watching the endless cavalcade of fat little sparrows, who tustle and strut and swallow down pieces of bread as large as their heads.
Yesterday's great discovery was a medieval burial ground, perched on the top of a cliff face behind the working dairy farm at Magero. It's next to a lake, Kynna, where my mother bathed as a child during the war. My grandmother, thinking it a good place for the children to wash off the salt seawater, was oblivious to the fact that it was full of leeches, but my mother remembers that well. Across the road at Molledammen, Hans Christian Ringer, a hero of the Norwegian resistance, lived and farmed, but a few years ago his house was made into a few low-key modern apartments.
Viking ships and burial grounds are commonplace. They're found, it seems, whenever a house is raised and a new foundation built. We're sitting on thousands of years of artifacts, layered into the sand and the clay and the rock.
There is seed bread toasted with hard boiled eggs and kaviar for breakfast, boller warmed in the oven, cut in half and covered with a slice of brown goats' cheese, warm cups of tea in my grandmother's old cups. The children spread nutella on lompe (a flat, tortilla-like pancake in which the Norwegians like to wrap hotdogs.) And then there are mistakes. Boller (sweet cardamom buns) with raisins and chocolate chips -- if you take the most delicious thing in the world and think you can improve on it, you can't. Lesson learned.
The sea is cold. The Norwegians may disagree with me. But 17C is chilly at best. I've swum four times so I'm feeling incredibly smug. Yesterday it was dotted with jellyfish, tiny, light-colored ones, but stingers nonetheless. We wait on the trappen for a jellyfish-free moment and then fling ourselves out into the cold, midnight blue sea. My mother, who has the most Viking blood, swims laps between our jetty and the one next to ours. Ten laps most mornings, which leaves my children and I slack-jawed with awe.
A family supper on Saturday night -- steaks cooked most ably on the Weber by N, a salad with thinly sliced fennel, heart lettuce and almost translucent acid-green chervil, a gratin of potatoes and onions and nutmeg, peach clafoutis made by Minky -- revealed that my uncle (my aunt's domestic partner, aged a sprightly, handsome 80) believes that dogs are more intelligent than we believe. This is no epiphany to us dog folk, of course, but I was happy to have a partner in spirit, though we may be divided by culture and language and age. How civilized to sit next to a well-read, thoughtful, insightful elderly relative and discover that we are kin (or kind as the Deadheads would say) at least on the canine plane.
Off to Andy Warhol. Can't tell them apart at all.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Wildflowers on Tjøme
Our island, Tjøme is known for its enormous range of wildflowers. Something to do with the confluence of the gulfstream and good weather separated by the lighthouse Faerder Fyr at the southern end of the island (at least this is my grandfather's theory) leads to the most fertile, alluvial soil (can you tell I'm a scientist?!). Stolen from Svein Nyhus's excellent blog, this is a picture of the fifty varieties of flower that Gro Dahle picked on one walk on one day on the island.
Swedish porcelain
My favorite of my grandmother's china is Rörstrand blå eld (blue fire). Only used at the summer house (where she delighted in trying out the more avant garde -- Oslo was still old school traditional), countless cups of tea have been served in these white cups with the asymmetrical herringbone design, and countless red Norwegian strawberries have been piled on the teardrop-shaped blue dishes.
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| Hertha also designed textiles |
Although Rörstrand no longer manufactures the Blue Fire line, a new line, Swedish Grace, caught my eye:
However, not much represents the Scandinavian summer better than this piece, also from Rörstrand (Kulinara):
Can you see the peas, the gooseberries, the chives, the elderberries, the parsley?
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Sonnet 29
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
-- William Shakespeare (h/t PF)
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Enzo speaks
It's awfully embarrassing to find oneself in a lovely wooden bed, in a little white room, under a yellow seersucker duvet, with the seagulls squawking & the clinking of masts at the jetty outside on this magical island in the Oslo fjord, crying so hard that ones eyes are like two blue pearl buttons swimming in a sea of pinkness. Massive heavings of my chest and back, throat full of choked sobs, face red and wet, nose running, the heels of my hands rubbing my swollen eyes -- I don't remember the last time I cried so hard. It's an attractive look, I can assure you.
And the reason:
The Art of Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein was a book given to me by a friend (Wendy) a few months ago, and sat by my bed until I threw it into my carry-on bag for our epic three-plane-one-car journey to Norway. If I'd seen the NY Times description (it lays at number 8 on the best-seller list) -- "An insightful Lab-terrier mix helps his owner, a struggling race car driver" -- I probably wouldn't have packed it. But are there, really, any mistakes? If you talk to your dog and believe he can hear you, read this book. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
And meanwhile, we survived our journey. Left home in Los Angeles at 5am on 7/20. Arrived at the cottage on Tjome at 4pm on 7/21. Total journey time: 27 hours. Total sleep: 2 hours.
Pale blue skies & watery sunshine met us as we drove in yesterday and my mother, with tea and boller and the blue ocean. I dived in, determined to start the trip as I meant to go on -- full of vim and vigor, being true to my Viking heritage. (Well, I didn't exactly dive, as my hair is particularly good at the moment -- a new straight, bob -- and you know how I love my smooth, blown-out hair. Like the lunar eclipse, it happens so infrequently I must savor it and toss my head appropriately.) So I ventured gingerly down the steps at the end of our jetty, held my breath, and start to swim out into the cold, salty water.
And the reason:
The Art of Racing In the Rain by Garth Stein was a book given to me by a friend (Wendy) a few months ago, and sat by my bed until I threw it into my carry-on bag for our epic three-plane-one-car journey to Norway. If I'd seen the NY Times description (it lays at number 8 on the best-seller list) -- "An insightful Lab-terrier mix helps his owner, a struggling race car driver" -- I probably wouldn't have packed it. But are there, really, any mistakes? If you talk to your dog and believe he can hear you, read this book. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
That which you manifest is before you.
-- Enzo
And meanwhile, we survived our journey. Left home in Los Angeles at 5am on 7/20. Arrived at the cottage on Tjome at 4pm on 7/21. Total journey time: 27 hours. Total sleep: 2 hours.
Pale blue skies & watery sunshine met us as we drove in yesterday and my mother, with tea and boller and the blue ocean. I dived in, determined to start the trip as I meant to go on -- full of vim and vigor, being true to my Viking heritage. (Well, I didn't exactly dive, as my hair is particularly good at the moment -- a new straight, bob -- and you know how I love my smooth, blown-out hair. Like the lunar eclipse, it happens so infrequently I must savor it and toss my head appropriately.) So I ventured gingerly down the steps at the end of our jetty, held my breath, and start to swim out into the cold, salty water.
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