Saturday, November 22, 2008
p.s.
We finally caved, bought a new bed at IKEA yesterday. I was sick of waking up with cramped shoulders from gripping so tightly to my 1.5 feet of space. So Thor hooked a trailer up to his car and we carried the bed home and loaded it in. Ol' Agnes walked into our apartment and looked around. "But where's Ben's bed?" she asked. Apparently we've been like Ernie and Bert in her mind.
Six Hours of True Daylight...
No, seven.
The sun is "up" at eight and it's dusk by three. The true bright sunlight is from about ten to two these days. I did my daily walk at 3:30 today and caught another of Oslo's brilliant sunsets through the trees skirting the Vigeland Park.
These are the koselig days...I just stocked up on candles at IKEA, and so far, so good on the seasonal affective disorder. At this point, only a month or so into winter, the dark feels sort of festive and romantic and nice, and I value the light so much when it's here. I wonder how I'll be doing in January? February?
We went to England for a few days. My parents were there and I went and spent two days with them at my aunt and uncle's place in Reading. Ben met me there in time for an Indian feast and then the two of us went into London for three days. Nice times in London; despite some rainy weather and a little travel-weariness on my part we saw some great art and some great friends. The Rothko at the Tate Modern was fabulous, but then, I have seldom met a Rothko I didn't like.
We also saw the Turner Prize finalists at the Tate Britain, which to my mind was not worth the seven-pound entrance fee, as well as a Gerhard Richter exhibit at the Serpentine Gallery that was good but made much better by the quality of the Serpentine Gallery's bookstore, where Ben and I spent an hour and would have spent more had our old friend Sarah not called to arrange immediate lunch plans. Sarah is our friend from Peru, a woman we lived with for a month in Cusco in 2004 and whom we'd not seen since January 2, 2005, when, still hungover from New Year's Eve, Ben and I left her in the pouring rain to catch a bus to Bolivia. She hasn't changed--it was lovely to see her.
Then an amazing vegetarian Indian meal with my relatives Sue and Derek. I think I would have enjoyed the meal even more if I hadn't had Nepalese for lunch and Indian the two previous nights. Oops.
Then back to winter in Oslo. Agnes clearly thinks it's time to ski:
But Inga just wants to lie around doing eye-rubs.
And this, friends, is truly the man of the hour: guess who passed the California Bar on the first try? The one, the only...
Marcus Benjamin Eichenberg. Hurra! Gratulerer, Ben!
Vi sees,
Susie
The sun is "up" at eight and it's dusk by three. The true bright sunlight is from about ten to two these days. I did my daily walk at 3:30 today and caught another of Oslo's brilliant sunsets through the trees skirting the Vigeland Park.
These are the koselig days...I just stocked up on candles at IKEA, and so far, so good on the seasonal affective disorder. At this point, only a month or so into winter, the dark feels sort of festive and romantic and nice, and I value the light so much when it's here. I wonder how I'll be doing in January? February?
We went to England for a few days. My parents were there and I went and spent two days with them at my aunt and uncle's place in Reading. Ben met me there in time for an Indian feast and then the two of us went into London for three days. Nice times in London; despite some rainy weather and a little travel-weariness on my part we saw some great art and some great friends. The Rothko at the Tate Modern was fabulous, but then, I have seldom met a Rothko I didn't like.
We also saw the Turner Prize finalists at the Tate Britain, which to my mind was not worth the seven-pound entrance fee, as well as a Gerhard Richter exhibit at the Serpentine Gallery that was good but made much better by the quality of the Serpentine Gallery's bookstore, where Ben and I spent an hour and would have spent more had our old friend Sarah not called to arrange immediate lunch plans. Sarah is our friend from Peru, a woman we lived with for a month in Cusco in 2004 and whom we'd not seen since January 2, 2005, when, still hungover from New Year's Eve, Ben and I left her in the pouring rain to catch a bus to Bolivia. She hasn't changed--it was lovely to see her.
Then an amazing vegetarian Indian meal with my relatives Sue and Derek. I think I would have enjoyed the meal even more if I hadn't had Nepalese for lunch and Indian the two previous nights. Oops.
Then back to winter in Oslo. Agnes clearly thinks it's time to ski:
But Inga just wants to lie around doing eye-rubs.
And this, friends, is truly the man of the hour: guess who passed the California Bar on the first try? The one, the only...
Marcus Benjamin Eichenberg. Hurra! Gratulerer, Ben!
Vi sees,
Susie
Monday, November 10, 2008
Nesodden, Hafsjell, Oslo
Hei hei,
Probably because I'm procrastinating on all the many things I hope/have to do before I fly to London for five days on Friday, I decided to check in. Not tons to report; it's been a fairly busy and fairly happy/happier/at least not-so-bad couple of weeks. One highlight was our trip to Nesodden, a peninsula outside of Oslo, on the Sunday before Election Day (another highlight, of course, was election day. I surprised myself by feeling pretty blasé about the whole thing in the end, though I did get sort of emotional when I talked to my Norwegian students about how proud I was that we have an African-American president-elect--and they all looked up at me and nodded solemnly in agreement). Pattie Belle, another Fulbrighter, and her husband Bjørn, and her daughter August, are renting a tiny ancient Norwegian house that overlooks the Oslofjørd and is just...so...perfect. I mean, check this out:
and the company was good, too. We of course talked politics and drank tea all afternoon, and after a walk where we posed for a photo--
we caught a ferry back to Oslo. It was about four thirty, and the sky was lit up in the most outrageous oranges and yellows and even purples. It turns out that one of the upshots of days that start to end at 4:00 is they go out with a spectacularly elongated bang.
Norway is indeed beautiful, a lot of the time. I'm realizing that it's a wet and rainy place, though (do I always end up in these places, or is it just me?), and some days are so gray it looks quite drab. Last night, driving home from Hafsjell--near Lillehammer, in the mountains, where we went to ski but there was no snow--it was pouring the whole time, and passing through one of those areas of highway that's all empty space and occasional industrial-type buildings just outside Oslo I said to Ben, "This place kind of reminds me of Moscow." Ben insists that because I was in Moscow when I was fifteen I can't remember it very well, but he's wrong, and I do, and for a second there I could see a long, cold, and very gray winter ahead...
Ben has been stressed out because exams are in a month and he missed a lot of school when Samm died. Ben is also a major procrastinator, but you didn't hear it from me. So he's been hitting the binders pretty faithfully as I do my own thing: read for class, read for fun, go for walks, write, teach, and stress out about marketing my book.
My brother has announced that he's coming for three weeks. Three weeks! It's a long time for anyone to crash in our twenty-by-fifteen apartment, and this is another reason I'm trying to get a lot of work done so I feel I can relax with J. when he comes. Since it's now public knowledge I might as well just come out with it: his wife of four months left him, out of the blue, with no warning and no reason that I can wrap my head around, and has proceeded to bad mouth him all over town--and because he has five weeks off from medical school he's coming here (Hawaii first, then Oslo...hmm). My little brother and I are extraordinarily close. We have that sort of relationship where, when I hear that someone has hurt or wronged him--though I know objectively he's a grownup now--I feel it in my own body. I got so upset when he told me what had happened I thought I might have a breakdown. (It didn't help that Samm had just died.) What's been funny about the whole thing, though, is how many people have told me that I shouldn't feel that way. "It's just a divorce," someone said. "It isn't about you," someone else said. "She's behaving like I'd expect someone to behave," someone else said. I finally took Thorbjørn to task on it this weekend. We were on a long walk and I happened to mention the fairly violent and angry dream I'd had about my brother's wife, and how I realized that it was better to work that out in dreams than in real life (duh). Then he told me he didn't understand why I was angry. As I explained to him, it's easy for him to say--and while I wish I could be the sort of person who looks at lemons and starts rattling off a lemonade recipe in her head, I'm not. So while, intellectually, I can see that what I need to do is put the whole thing behind me and encourage my bro to do the same, it's been hard. I am much better, but I took this photo of myself a few weeks ago. I was out at Bygdøy, looking into the water and feeling awful. It's a terrible picture. I mean, thank God I don't look like this all the time, eh?
But, to continue with this thought, I love that I have the sort of relationship with Thor where I can tell him when he's full of it. I was ruminating on it this weekend, when we went with him and Kristin and jentene--the girls--up to Hafsjell. We have this really nice friendship. He's sort of like a brother and an old friend wrapped up together. And lovely Kristin is just the icing on the cake.
Ben and I both had visits from Samm this week; him in a dream, me in an email. Mine I know will challenge even those of you who think you're woo woo, but I swear it was profound. I was looking through my email account, my old one I don't use too much but check weekly, and all of a sudden there were all these new emails I hadn't seen--some were resends, because I'd opened them before but there they were, new; and some I hadn't seen ever. Samm had written me an email for my birthday, just four days before she died, and when it appeared in my inbox, new message from Samm, I sort of gasped. I think what was most neat about it was that she said she wished she were in a foreign country, and in a way, I guess she is now, whatever it might look like there.
We're off to London this week, both of us. My folks will be there on the weekend, and I'm excited to see them. Then we'll spend a few days in the city with some friends of Ben's from Portland. I'm looking forward to it, both getting away and seeing some pals. My students turn in their mandatory essays this week, and I'm done teaching on Thursday--but with a fair amount of grading to do until my contract runs out at the end of December.
A few more pics of Norway I wanted to share:
Bygdøy; Ben with his old pal John McCain at the Grand Hotel in Oslo, circa three a.m., Election Day; and Stine and Kreg, new pals, with Agnes, on Halloween:
Smiling Rams:
Smiling Agnes:
"Smiling" Ben:
And "smiling" Thor:
Hope all of you are well. Drop me a line!
Love,
Susie
Probably because I'm procrastinating on all the many things I hope/have to do before I fly to London for five days on Friday, I decided to check in. Not tons to report; it's been a fairly busy and fairly happy/happier/at least not-so-bad couple of weeks. One highlight was our trip to Nesodden, a peninsula outside of Oslo, on the Sunday before Election Day (another highlight, of course, was election day. I surprised myself by feeling pretty blasé about the whole thing in the end, though I did get sort of emotional when I talked to my Norwegian students about how proud I was that we have an African-American president-elect--and they all looked up at me and nodded solemnly in agreement). Pattie Belle, another Fulbrighter, and her husband Bjørn, and her daughter August, are renting a tiny ancient Norwegian house that overlooks the Oslofjørd and is just...so...perfect. I mean, check this out:
and the company was good, too. We of course talked politics and drank tea all afternoon, and after a walk where we posed for a photo--
we caught a ferry back to Oslo. It was about four thirty, and the sky was lit up in the most outrageous oranges and yellows and even purples. It turns out that one of the upshots of days that start to end at 4:00 is they go out with a spectacularly elongated bang.
Norway is indeed beautiful, a lot of the time. I'm realizing that it's a wet and rainy place, though (do I always end up in these places, or is it just me?), and some days are so gray it looks quite drab. Last night, driving home from Hafsjell--near Lillehammer, in the mountains, where we went to ski but there was no snow--it was pouring the whole time, and passing through one of those areas of highway that's all empty space and occasional industrial-type buildings just outside Oslo I said to Ben, "This place kind of reminds me of Moscow." Ben insists that because I was in Moscow when I was fifteen I can't remember it very well, but he's wrong, and I do, and for a second there I could see a long, cold, and very gray winter ahead...
Ben has been stressed out because exams are in a month and he missed a lot of school when Samm died. Ben is also a major procrastinator, but you didn't hear it from me. So he's been hitting the binders pretty faithfully as I do my own thing: read for class, read for fun, go for walks, write, teach, and stress out about marketing my book.
My brother has announced that he's coming for three weeks. Three weeks! It's a long time for anyone to crash in our twenty-by-fifteen apartment, and this is another reason I'm trying to get a lot of work done so I feel I can relax with J. when he comes. Since it's now public knowledge I might as well just come out with it: his wife of four months left him, out of the blue, with no warning and no reason that I can wrap my head around, and has proceeded to bad mouth him all over town--and because he has five weeks off from medical school he's coming here (Hawaii first, then Oslo...hmm). My little brother and I are extraordinarily close. We have that sort of relationship where, when I hear that someone has hurt or wronged him--though I know objectively he's a grownup now--I feel it in my own body. I got so upset when he told me what had happened I thought I might have a breakdown. (It didn't help that Samm had just died.) What's been funny about the whole thing, though, is how many people have told me that I shouldn't feel that way. "It's just a divorce," someone said. "It isn't about you," someone else said. "She's behaving like I'd expect someone to behave," someone else said. I finally took Thorbjørn to task on it this weekend. We were on a long walk and I happened to mention the fairly violent and angry dream I'd had about my brother's wife, and how I realized that it was better to work that out in dreams than in real life (duh). Then he told me he didn't understand why I was angry. As I explained to him, it's easy for him to say--and while I wish I could be the sort of person who looks at lemons and starts rattling off a lemonade recipe in her head, I'm not. So while, intellectually, I can see that what I need to do is put the whole thing behind me and encourage my bro to do the same, it's been hard. I am much better, but I took this photo of myself a few weeks ago. I was out at Bygdøy, looking into the water and feeling awful. It's a terrible picture. I mean, thank God I don't look like this all the time, eh?
But, to continue with this thought, I love that I have the sort of relationship with Thor where I can tell him when he's full of it. I was ruminating on it this weekend, when we went with him and Kristin and jentene--the girls--up to Hafsjell. We have this really nice friendship. He's sort of like a brother and an old friend wrapped up together. And lovely Kristin is just the icing on the cake.
Ben and I both had visits from Samm this week; him in a dream, me in an email. Mine I know will challenge even those of you who think you're woo woo, but I swear it was profound. I was looking through my email account, my old one I don't use too much but check weekly, and all of a sudden there were all these new emails I hadn't seen--some were resends, because I'd opened them before but there they were, new; and some I hadn't seen ever. Samm had written me an email for my birthday, just four days before she died, and when it appeared in my inbox, new message from Samm, I sort of gasped. I think what was most neat about it was that she said she wished she were in a foreign country, and in a way, I guess she is now, whatever it might look like there.
We're off to London this week, both of us. My folks will be there on the weekend, and I'm excited to see them. Then we'll spend a few days in the city with some friends of Ben's from Portland. I'm looking forward to it, both getting away and seeing some pals. My students turn in their mandatory essays this week, and I'm done teaching on Thursday--but with a fair amount of grading to do until my contract runs out at the end of December.
A few more pics of Norway I wanted to share:
Bygdøy; Ben with his old pal John McCain at the Grand Hotel in Oslo, circa three a.m., Election Day; and Stine and Kreg, new pals, with Agnes, on Halloween:
Smiling Rams:
Smiling Agnes:
"Smiling" Ben:
And "smiling" Thor:
Hope all of you are well. Drop me a line!
Love,
Susie
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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
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
Monday, October 27, 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:
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
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):
.jpg)
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
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
.jpg)
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:
.jpg)
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):
.jpg)
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
.jpg)
Sunday, October 19, 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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.
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.
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