Category: general

02
Jul
2006

DON’T WISH IT AWAY, DON’T LOOK AT IT LIKE IT’S FOREVER

For the most part, penultimate summer lives only in our memories, a childhood haze of endless sunny days with no school spent poolside, our limbs sealy and brown, slick with water. Mother’s voice, calling distant, while the lightning bugs gather and flash and the streetlamps buzz and strengthen as we skip along the hedgerow, with the sun still lighting our way home despite the hour. 3 days and counting: Perfect summer in Sweden. This is when the tourist board rushes out to photograph the countryside, sunlight and warmth lighting up the red wooden houses and blue and gold crossed flags...

01
Jul
2006

SALT LICORICE SACRILEGE AND PUPPY LOVE

Around here, Friday evenings, and sometimes Saturdays, are known as myskväll. It’s a hard word to translate properly, since mys means, essentially, “to enjoy oneself”…but it often gets used in the sense of cozy and cuddly. As our family has interpreted it, it means staying home and gathering in the living room to watch a movie or special television program, with popcorn and candy (which is forbidden the rest of the week), and an 1.5-hour extension on bedtime. At first, the candy bags were huge, and completely out of control. But after one of Martin’s dentist visits where we discovered...

29
Jun
2006

POETRY THURSDAY

I won’t stop writing. I know that I would miss it terribly, it would carve a hole in my heart. And I won’t stop writing here either, because the hole in my heart if I did would be you-shaped. Writing is a comforter, warm and dovey. It’s a shock to the system. It’s an electric wire snapping and hissing in the rain. Writing wakes me up, it shakes me up, it quivers and leaps to life before me. It brings me unspeakable satisfaction. It makes me want to tear my hair out. It makes me feel like God. To Poem...

28
Jun
2006

MY MENTAL MOOD RING IS AMBER

If I stopped writing here, in this space that used to feel so comfortable, what would I do with the time it freed up? Would I write elsewhere? A book of short stories and poetry and meanderng essays? A plotless novel, full of characters and quirky writing? A silly correspondence between myself and me? A paper diary? Doubtful. I never kept any kind of consistent diary until I started this journal, and it often appears the only thing that has really kept me writing has been the audience participation. Would I have a cleaner house? Doubtful. I’ve always been of...

26
Jun
2006

MASTER RELAXER, MISSING MOM, REMINISCES

On my mother’s last day here we spent a lot of time in the car, a lot of time in the sun and a lot of time laughing and playing with things. We got up relatively early and we drove away into the sunshine. An hour north found us in the green, green woods of the Wanås castle grounds. We wandered through the old stalls and barns, now scrubbed and whitewashed and turned to gallery installations, and then out into the sunshine and the bright translucent green of the beech leaves high above us. Since 1987, Wanås has been an...

24
Jun
2006

PORTRAIT OF THE STARVING ARTIST AS A YOUNG GIRL

Overnight, it seems, my daughter has become obsessed with money. She and Martin have had piggybanks since they were very small, promotional items from our bank, two fat translucent piggies with a lock in the bottom, one red, one blue. They have collected coins of all denominations and currencies up to and including the plastic ones that came with her Baby’s First Cash Register. We are careful not to indiscriminately purchase everything and anything our children desire, perhaps sometimes to the point of going overboard (I have steadfastly refused to let any other form of gaming enter the household besides...

22
Jun
2006

POETRY THURSDAY

Joshilyn Jackson had an interesting post and subsequent comments discussion not too long ago about people who were good at one thing versus people who were good at several. It was fascinating to hear how people described themselves as one or the other, and why. She based the post on a television commercial featuring a crab (good at one thing: pinching) and a Honda Element (good at everything). As I have not seen the ad, I can’t comment on its veracity, but I, too, think that people generally tend to fall into the one vs. the many when it comes...

21
Jun
2006

ZEIG MIR DIE ZÄHNE!*

While we were in Germany, we did lots of things (despite the weather). We toured a castle and we went to playplaces and we played card games and we attended a wedding and we hung out and we went to the theater and we ate lots of pork products and we went to Legoland. And while we were there, we JUMPED THE SHARK! Our kids, and my sister’s kids Rachel and Bryce, and then even Anders tried to get in on the action…

20
Jun
2006

SOMETHING TO SAY, OF SORTS

I am quite possibly the only person in Sweden right now not watching the soccer game. I felt this sudden compulsion to get up and come write, even though I honestly have been thinking for over a week that I don’t know what to write about, how to get started again, what even sounds worthy of putting up here. Writing about not knowing what to write is so last year. But, there it is. And here I am. It is nearly midsummer. Tomorrow is the longest day, and it’s all downhill from there, round the sling of another year…zip! It...

18
Jun
2006

GUEST BLOGGING BY LIZARDMOM

Today I went to Hell and back—took my daughter and grandson too! Not at all what you would expect! We had our choice of which color hell* (red, fuschia, pink, even white) we wanted to hide in, or more likely…to get lost in. It is actually a very lovely place, beautiful fragrances, colorful, cool—(since it is hidden from the sun when you’re in it), and an almost magical place. If you looked closely, with softened eyes, you could see fairies, too! It was a fanciful place, complete with an ear to the ground listening for our words and thoughts, a...

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