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.

Adventures in Oslo

Busy and nice days here in Oslo. Ben and I have had a whole series of small adventures over the past few days. Thursday morning before class we took a tour of the east side, Oslo Ost, which encompasses Grunnerlokka and Gronnland and is the haven and home for immigrants. Oslo Ost is very different from where we live. It's like you pop out on one side of Torgate and all of a sudden the faces are more diverse, the streets are dirtier, the shops are ethnic, the kebab places are more frequent, and the vibe is entirely different. I like posh Oslo West, but of course I love to go to the east side. We found our Asian market, our Halal shop, and a very authentic kebab/eats place, flying a flag of a country I have yet to identify. We bought all kinds of spices and veggies and Asian things we've missed--fish sauce, coconut milk--and then stocked up on olives and other middle eastern goodies.

Thursday night there was an Equinox festival, lights on the Akershelva, where the entire city seemed to pour onto the walkway of the Akershelva (Akers River) to see performance art and singing groups and other public art projects. The entire way was lit with candles in tunafish cans, and sometimes the river itself was lit by fires or strobes. It was overall a really neat evening, preceded by a heavy traditional Norwegian dinner with Fulbrighters at a restaurant called Kaffistova (don't need to go there again, but the company was good), a glass of wine at a bar, and then the long stroll. One thing I will say: after living in San Francisco, my tolerance for bad street art is fairly low. Firedancers are fine. So is contact improv. But in California I saw enough to last me a lifetime.



It's so nice to be outside these days. It's fall--a real, New England–style fall, the one I have missed terribly since I moved to California. (Oregon has a fall that, with an active imagination, can seem somewhat enchanting. California's fall sucks.) The air is crisp and clean, the trees are all red and orange and yellow, and we're having these random gusts of wind that periodically envelope you in big swirling tornadoes of leaves...sorry, I'm waxing a little too much on this. Suffice to say, it's lovely, and we've been making time to be out in it. Friday, we took the T Bane (subway) up to Oslomarka and went on a long walk with another Fulbrighter, Charlie. We eventually found our way to a hytte and then back to another T Bane stop, and hopped back into town. In the winter, this wooded area is apparently all lit cross-country ski trails.

When we came back from the hike it was time to go to the embassy for a happy hour election shindig we'd been invited to. There had been a series of speakers, too, but we bailed on those, opting to show up for the 25 kroner wine and 20 kroner beer (cheapest in town). The embassy was packed with Americans, but, weirdly, those of us who showed up when we did were greeted with a fair amount of hostility at the visitor's entrance. They took our passports, scanned them, kept them while we waited outside for twenty minutes or so, grilled us about why we were there, played dumb when we said we were there for the event ("what event?" asked the security guard)--frankly, it was very uncomfortable and sort of strange, and it turns out it all turned on something silly like they were expecting us earlier and didn't know what to do when we showed up when we did. The experience made me realize that since 9/11 the government is totally paranoid, even of its own citizens; but also that we, as Americans, feel constantly entitled to better treatment. Ben was this close to getting really shirty with the guard, and I'll admit that my tone was pretty sharp when she asked me who'd invited us to the embassy: "The Fulbright foundation," I said, nose in the air...the Norwegians around us patiently waiting their turn...

Ah well; we got in eventually.

Phew, busy day, that--we then had Petter and Eldri for dinner, our almost-first guests since we've been here (we had an impromptu dinner with Alexis, a friend of my brother's, two weeks ago). It was good to be able to cook for them for a change. Ben's Malaysian roast chicken was delicious, my Vietnamese spring rolls excellent, and the conversation was nice too. I loved that when Petter and Eldri arrived they looked like they were going out for a nice dinner. Eldri in a skirt, Petter in a sweater, carrying wine and flowers from the garden. It's a small gesture to cook dinner for them after everything they've done for us since we got here, but I think they enjoyed themselves and we really did too.

So, tired, we went to bed around midnight, but got up at 3:00 a.m to watch the live presidential debate. My man Obama held his own, I thought, though his demeanor was a little stiff. I wanted to coach him not to mutter "John, I never said that," every time McCain made a false allegation, to save it up for later and really slam him. I think Obama is a pretty classy guy, but he seemed vaguely petulant at times. That said, I still thought he did alright in what I expected would be a tough debate. But of course when it was over at 4:30 and Ben fell immediately back asleep I tossed and turned for hours more, worrying about the election. Petter called at 10:00 and woke us up; Petter is the sort of man who makes you want to appear like you're up at eight every Saturday morning doing something productive (because you know by ten he's halfway through his to-do list). Turns out he was calling to tell me they were rebroadcasting the debate on TV at a reasonable hour. I hope they do that with the next one, because I'm afraid if I get up in the middle of the night to listen to Sarah Palin go head to head with Joe Biden I might have Kafka dreams for a week.

But I digress.

Can I go on a little longer about our adventures? So much to tell--yesterday we took a ferry out to Hovedoya, one of the islands in the Oslofjord. It was a blustery cold fall day, and we walked through these cloister ruins:




and then hiked around the island. The landscape was similar to that of my beloved Cushings Island, and similar I guess too in that there were remains of lots of old stuff, the cloisters and then these two small armories:



Some cannons. And sheep! Lots of sheep. The sheep look pretty awesome in their winter coats. They're so ragged they pick up burs and sticks wherever they go, and then have to drag them around all winter.





(That's Ben on the right.)

That island was cool. It was a very romantic place, somehow. You kind of wanted to just sit in someone's arms and look at the sea all day.



One brief last note: my Norwegian is exploding a little, at least in my own head. I'm starting to form sentences that make sense, and my guessing is getting better.

Pa gjensyn!

Bright Days in Oslo

It was so nice to read comments from my cousin Ellen on the subject of worrying moms who are proud of their daughters, Pattie Belle, our fellow Fulbright-and-dependents-in-crime on the subject of adjusting, and Jesse, who took over our apartment in San Francisco and admits to using lots of exclamation points to stress how happy she is! In a new place! Wowee!

But it's a lovely day in Oslo, is the truth, and I'm finding myself feeling pretty happy and at home today. Ben is off playing frisbee again, or, more accurately, probably getting a beer with his frisbee mates, and I just did a Norwegian lesson (Gotta snakker bedre Norsk if jeg vil get some arbeid her) all about visiting Oslo and the many fine things there are to see here, like the Vigelands park--which, by the way, is a ten-minute walk from our flat. Did I ever mention that we live in the posh part of town? Which is sort of ironic if you think about it.

This morning I wrote at the Nasjonal Bibliotek, a gorgeous space to work. A chapter of my memoir was a finalist in a contest a while back, and I finally got around to finishing the revision and sending it in for publication. Then I worked on a poem and a short story. After many weeks away, even months, I wasn't able to put in one of my epic, five-hour sessions, where I emerge bleary-eyed and unable to talk like a normal human being for the rest of the day, but it was a good start. Then I spent the afternoon with Kristin. We had tea and scones first, then walked over to the Barnehage--the Kindergarten, which here is like day care all kids go to, and the government subsidizes it, and it's very cool--and picked up Rannveig and Agnes. On the way home (Agnes on her razor scooter, Rams on her tricycle) we stopped in this little unassuming chapel and lit candles. I lit one for my mother in law Samm, who isn't well. I am not very religious, but sometimes the urge hits me and I make a gesture in a church or on a mountain top. It felt good to do that today.

Yesterday morning Ben and I walked down to the waterfront, got a coffee and sat and looked at the boats and the Akershus Festning. It was very peaceful. These are wonderful days to be outside.

We Are Doing OK.

I got some good comments on my last blog entry, which leads me to believe others than my faithful mom are actually reading this thing. Which is nice to know. Is there some notice you people get when there's a new post? That last one cracked me up on the rereading, and to update everyone: a) I got into the chorus, phew; and b) I have not bought one bar of Walter's since I wrote (I did cave on a small bar of the Freia product called "Melk Sjokolade med Non-Stop," which is, to add insult to injury, chocolate with fake M&ms (Non Stops) in it, and thankfully, it was not very good. So we may be be over the worst).

Today in the Schlottsparken: a guy battling a real addiction, all doubled over on heroin, with needles all around him and blood dripping down his arm. Ben called the authorities, who never showed up; mere months ago, he saw this kind of thing daily in the Tenderloin, and would never have called the authorities because he would have known they would never show up. Funny how your perspective adjusts. I saw a homeless guy yesterday. One homeless guy! He's about the fifth I've seen since I've been in Oslo.

So, speaking of adjusting, we are doing okay. My mom has asked me several times lately, "Are you doing okay?" Partially I think she asks because, like most moms, she is actually a worry wart dressed in a mom suit, and I love her for it, but also because she has been noticing me forcing smiles on my Skype screen when we talk and occasionally sounding down in my emails. So I decided to write about it a little. Another Fulbrighter, Jen, said something about how she spends a lot of time on Skype with her friends trying to sound like her life in Norway is really exciting. I knew instantly what she meant, that we want everyone at home to think we're having such an amazing adventure! Because we are! So many new experiences! But then, we're also not having such an amazing adventure, at least not all the time, and then I thought, well, actually it's complicated, and then I thought I'd just explain myself. So here goes.

It's an adjustment, moving to a new place, and if you're like me, and have done so every three years since you graduated from college, you know that after a while the old bones feel achy just thinking about a new apartment, new job, new city, new community, new set of friends, new coffee shop, new grocery store. It's always really fun to discover new things, but sometimes, you get homesick for the old things. That's all it is, really. But somehow moving to a new country—where you add to that list "new language" and "new culture" and "new set of incredibly annoying bureaucratic procedures"—makes that homesickness more compounded, at times. The upside being, the exciting is more exciting, too, and when Norway has been at its finest, it has been some of the nicest times I've had in ages and ages. So my prediction is that it will all level out, we'll come to love this place, to find it home-like, and to not be homesick at all. But right now, it feels a little like an adjustment, and I suspect it will for a bit.

Onto happier subjects, like Norway at its finest.

We spent 24 hours at Thor and Kristin's cabin in the woods last weekend, just Ben, me, Thor, and Rams, who at one point said, "Daddy, I'm having such a nice time." The cabin is a classic Norwegian hytte but just better. It's such a cosy little place, solar-powered lights, fireplace, no running water, little sauna, loft, and lots of places to hike. The air there is very, very fresh, the landscape wet and mossy and high. We wore rubber boots the entire time we were outside. They did not save me when I plunged through the moss and into the pond in front of the cabin. I'll spare you the details.

Sunday was one of the most lovely days we've had in Oslo, an early fall kind of day. Sunny. Ben played frisbee in the Vigelands Park, so I took the opportunity to go watch him play and take some photos. Enjoy.