October Wonderland

We woke up this morning and it was snowing! It's October!

From our deck:





Obama in the snow...



Sleepy Susie with a cold, trundling out to the store with Ben...



© All photos copyright Benjamin H. Eichenberg, 2008

Wonkafied

I write for a lot of reasons, but essentially, it helps me stay afloat. And sometimes writing pulls me under. I'm working on this book, see, and it's been very hard to stay concentrated on it for some time now, but I try I try I try. Today I worked for several hours in a coffee shop, and the only thing I can do right now, because nothing feels very fluid, is make goals for myself, like: I will work on this chapter this week. And then I do. And sometimes it sucks and briefly, I imagine the deliciousness of throwing in the towel on the whole project and never having to look at it again. And then I imagine the flip side to that, i.e., the never finishing it, and that scenario feels worse. So I plug away. And then I decide to blog.

I will attempt, perhaps unsuccessfully, to make this a cheery entry. In this blog entry I will mimic what 90 percent of my students are doing in their mandatory papers--which I am grading right now--and tell you at the outset that I plan to discuss being Wonkafied, winter in Oslo, and then some other not so fun stuff, and then do a compare-contrast of all of those things. And the first point I plan to make is...

Geez, kids, just get to the point already. Take out the "I." Use examples from the text...

Last Friday we went to the Freia chocolate factory. Don't ask me why; because someone, Jen, organized it for the Fulbrighters, and because most of us were children of the seventies and eighties and had grown up loving those Sesame Street episodes where they make the crayons, the Asian noodles, and various car parts. So we wanted to see where they make Walter's Mandler, among other things. I can say right now that while we didn't see any oompa loompas, and no one fell into a vat of chocolate, I did occasionally feel like I'd licked the wallpaper. I mean, this was a three-hour tour of Freia, and involved us donning silly robes and hats:



and eating a quantity of chocolate that left me headachy and blood-sugar crazy all afternoon; we also got to see the factory itself (totally awesome, chocolate shooting in all directions and landing in wrappers) and the staff cantina, which is lined by an Edvard Munch frieze (amazing--not so much the paintings themselves, which seemed sort of blurry--but the fact that Freia gets a Munch frieze); and the staff gardens, where stone sprites pranced around; and then we got to make our own chocolate bars. Witness:





And then, then we took the Wonkavator downstairs and went in the time machine. First we entered a jungle where you get to see how the Incas looked if you were to have cartoon-drawn them on a wall. There was an alter in the middle of the room, the alter of chocolate, which of course we had to pray to:



And then we went in this time machine and poof! It was 1590-something, we were in the hold of a ship on the way to Spain, and then poof! We were in the first Freia chocolate store and something was completely lost on me, like why the chocolate factory had a time machine...next thing I knew, we were being told to be sure we ate carrots as well as chocolate and remained physically active (the obstacle course we got to go through, some sort of metaphor, I'm sure):



and then they handed us yet more chocolate, in a bag. I have never eaten so much chocolate in one day; Norwegians are big, big chocolate consumers, second, I believe, only to the Swiss.

So after a three-hour nap to counteract the chocolate...

Speaking of obstacle courses. We are still in one. Ben got back last Thursday night. It is good to have him back, though I fear we are both just bringing each other down sometimes. His sadness over Samm's death is palpable, still very raw and new. It's hard to see; I'd hoped being back in Oslo would cure him some, and I suppose in time it will, but not yet. Meanwhile we had daylight savings, so it's dark by 4:30, a fact that is redeemed partially by the fact that it's lighter earlier in the morning. And I have fifty papers to grade. And there is the little fact that my brother's wife left him. I almost can't commit it to blog, but there you have it.

I'm not sure I've had a more difficult month in about ten years. I'm crying a lot.

The paper-grading is the best of it all, in fact, a little escape from reality. My students are writing about "The Yellow Wallpaper" and The Great Gatsby, among others, and I am sort of delighted by every, oh, third paper or so. In fact, teaching the past two weeks has been a delight in itself--I have had that sense I get sometimes, that I'm doing something I love and am good at, and in discussions of Modernism last week I felt like I was actually making a difference in some my students' lives by turning them onto an author like Faulkner. Immeasurably exciting, though if I think hard about my relative worth at the Universitet--and the fact that I don't have a job lined up for the spring semester yet--it feels less rosy. Anyone want to hire me?

A really nice thing this week: giving the chocolate we made to Agnes and Rams on Sunday. Rams literally shrieked and danced around the dining room table when, after being told she had eaten enough dinner, it was time for her to eat her chocolate. Mature Agnes was more subdued, but both of them were just so excited, in a way I haven't seen kids be. It seemed almost old-fashioned, their excitement. Those were the days, eh?

Ha det bra,

Susie

Samm

Hey friends.

Sorry for the long hiatus. I hope I haven't lost all my subscribers. I wish I could say I haven't written because I joined the Olympic Luge team, but sadly the reason I haven't blogged for weeks is because I had to fly back to California. Ben's stepmom, Samm, died on Sunday, October 5, two days after my thirty-fifth birthday, and Ben and I went home to be with her and with Ben's family.

Samm had been sick with esophageal cancer since the spring, but we were all optimistic she might kick it. We were optimistic, at least, that she might live another year, though if I admit it to myself when I said goodbye to her in San Francisco in August I knew I wouldn't see her again. And when I lit a candle for her in a church in Oslo a couple of weeks ago, the candle snuffed itself out before it had time to make it to the candle stand, and I think that really affirmed something I suspected. I'm not sure Ben had the same realization, because of course you never want to suspect you won't see your mom again. Samm was his stepmom, but because she had been in his life since he was four or five, she was a significant force in his life for a long time. They had this loving and teasing relationship, a really authentic kind of love for one another.

Being in California was surreal, as well as good, terrible, important, difficult. When we arrived, middle of the night Oslo time, exhausted, expecting cold foggy San Francisco and being greeted by Indian Summer San Francisco, we didn't know if Samm would still be alive or not--she was in the hospital with pneumonia, on oxygen--but when we got to the airport Ben's dad was there to meet us. She had died the night before, about six thirty in the morning, Oslo time, the day before, right when we were boarding the plane. So we went to the beach and took a walk, and I saw dolphins, and the sun was a long piercing tube, and that was neat and appropriate. And then we began a week of grieving, remembering, laughing, and working on a DVD of photos about Samm's life. Making it, somehow I felt better, because in the movie you could see that this was a full and amazing life, and that even though no one wanted to see her go you couldn't look at that life--as Jorin's mom, as Ben's stepmom, as Tim's wife, as a semi-nerdy mycologist, as a super-hip designer of clothes, as one of the first glass blowers in California, as a successful painter, as a cook, and above all as someone many, many people loved, or admired, or envied, or all three--and think it hadn't been full of wonderful things.

There can be a lot of joy when someone dies, mixed in with the sadness. I'd say some of us mastered that balance, and we had lots of nice moments dealing with Samm's stuff, laughing--large family dinners with various friends, where we laughed and gossiped and reminisced and talked about other things. But being in a house full of grief can be so tiring after a while, and I don't mean that to sound selfish. It just can be. Tiring. Exhausting, actually. I was so happy I went, and also happy to come back to Oslo, for a break from it, and maybe also to really be with myself and figure out what it is I'm feeling.

It's been a sad time; in the midst of it all there was this other thing, too, someone very close to me who was having a bad time that became much worse while I was in California and has become worse since. I can't really say more than that here, not now, but suffice it to say that I discovered that when you're an adult and the people around you are falling apart, you go to them, and you try to be strong for them, even if your own heart is feeling a little broken. Or a lot broken. And sometimes you just can't fix things, no matter how badly you want to.

So, in a way, I was happy to get back to Oslo.

And lonely to be here by myself, but honestly just a little. Ben is coming home on Thursday night and I can't wait, but I have been fine without him for a few days. I don't know what kind of shape he will be in, or if his jetlag will be as bad as mine has been, but I hope we can just settle in again and try to find our rhythm. Being here alone has been, in many ways, good. Of course I have been spending a lot of my time in the warm embrace of the Steen clan, I almost wrote "clam"--drinking wine with Kristin og Therese, having Sunday dinner. Yesterday I helped Eldri put her gardens to bed, snipping the dahlias, which are the bulk of her gorgeous, gorgeous garden. Being in the cold crisp fall air with clippers and a wheelbarrow--trillebord--was restorative, cleansing.

Oslo is at least an hour darker than when I last wrote. It gets dusky around 5:30 or 6:00 these days, if you can believe it. The leaves are down, and everyone is preparing for winter. I have no preparations to make, really, since I live in an apartment, but I guess mentally I'm trying to get ready for the dark and cold. It's a nice time of year to settle in, and part of me is looking forward to it.

I'll leave you all with a photo of Ben and Samm when Ben was a kid. He was so cute, and she was always very beautiful. It makes me smile to look at it. It's fun to think that Ben was ever that small, that Samm was that young. I don't know.



And here is one of the three of us in Peru.



Promise to be more cheery next time.

Breathe life to the street

Is it possible that life in Scandinavia is just too good?

This is a random thought for today. I am sure I will have a lot more to write after this weekend, when, among other things, I turn 35 (you'll note I now just count Fridays as "the weekend..." Pathetic? Or highly evolved?), but I was ruminating a little on Norway today. Thor and Kristin came for brunch, and it was so lovely--så hygellig--to finally be able to feed them--it hadn't occurred to us that weekdays, when Thor isn't on call, the girls are at Barnehage, and Kristin is of course on her one-year paid maternity leave, and Ben doesn't have class until 2:00--and me not until 4:00, but this week not at all--would be a good time to have them over. After we ate a feast at our place, baby Ms. Inga squeaking like a mouse the whole time, we went to check out this museum that has a contemporary art exhibit every fall. Artists, famous or not, can submit their work to the exhibit, and there was a real mix of stuff: sculpture, paintings, installations (a large humming beehive fashioned of honeycomb was pretty great), prints, most notably some very cool prints by Pushwagner.

But Ben all of a sudden turned to me. "Is it just me, or is there no pain at all in any of this art?" Now, I admit we both have some heartache going on today. So maybe we were looking for heartache in that exhibit. But when I looked closer I saw just what he meant: none of the art was overtly or even very covertly political; none of it expressed loss. There was one big graffiti art structure thing with a neon sign flashing "fuck you." It was, by far, the angriest piece in the whole bunch--the most emotive piece in the whole bunch--and it felt gratuitous, false. The rest described a pretty cush life, in fact. There was lots of sex (people are pretty liberated here), there was some nature. But not a whole lot of pain or other tangible emotions besides joy and laughter. Lots of whimsy.

I dunno. Maybe marginal contemporary art by random members of the populace is the last place to look for the true nature of a culture (!), but it was, nonetheless, remarkable. For me, it's pretty amazing to live in a place where our friends get paid time off to raise a baby, and where the king rides the subway, and where the prime minister would be frowned upon if he went to a private clinic for his medical care--and where we go to an art exhibit and see people making art about how positive their world is. I worry that sounds like I don't realize how privileged Americans are, too. I don't mean that. But you come to Norway and the U.S. feels more like the developing world than the developed. Maybe if the economy weren't tanking I'd feel differently. The Norwegians keep asking us if we realize our country is totally falling apart. How does one answer a question like that?

A side note, related, but hard for me to explain exactly why right now: a friend who went to Stockholm said he saw way more immigrants in Norway than in Sweden. Norway is really struggling to deal with immigration right now. It's sort of a huge deal, and the prime minister just changed his stance on immigration, making it more conservative. But immigration has already happened, is happening, and the general sense I get from most Norwegians is that immigration is a good thing. Oslo is becoming quite diverse. As Thor says, "we have plenty of room here." Norway is evolving, too, becoming a country of refugees and laborers. That side of Norway was conspicuously absent at the art exhibit, save one painting of a bunch of different-colored people riding a ferry in the Oslofjord. So.

I'll think more about this. Perhaps being closer to 50 than 20 is making me introspective.

By the way: I just finished a beautiful book called Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson, which I recommend. It paints a different picture of Norway than the one I saw today: a lonelier, darker, and more beautiful picture. Check it out.

Kuss og klem fra Oslo.