Oslofjord

It's like a soul cleanse. I wish there were a better way to describe it using less woo-woo language, but that's how it feels. I'm on a small island -- about 12 miles long -- in the middle of the Oslofjord, a place I've come to for fifty years, a place that makes sense to me. In the small hours of the night wild geese flew over the roof; you could hear the powerful mechanics of their wings overhead. This is what it's like to be alive, I thought, planted smack in the middle of it all, on a rainy little island surrounded by blue-grey seas, nourished by wild strawberries and raspberries and sorrel and more kinds of wildflower than anywhere else in this long country. Thrown into its center, circled by sparrows and seagulls, spending grey mornings drinking strong tea the leaves floating on it as there isn't a strainer, playing cards, listening to Chopin's nocturnes, in a quiet, stillness.

I love the rain. It hammers us. It bathes the raspberries so that they shine an impossible cerise, brightens the leaves to a technicolor glow, makes your skin pink and puffy and healthy, your eyes more blue, your legs more eager to go forward, stride by stride. It inspires optimism, a big, fat, round world picture, not frayed or grey, but robust, bursting with ideas.

And you want to forgive. There is time to think about people you love or have loved, or people you should love. And all around, forgiveness. We do our best. Remember this. We all do our best. Inflicted pain is hardly ever intentional. "The days are more kind than unkind."

I am lucky. I come here to recharge. Sleep still eludes me still but I feel the anxiety washing away, my world expanding, the dots reconnecting, an ambling, gamboling, rambling, rollicking happiness that isn't so very far away any more.