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