A New Yorker in Oslo
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Heather Nova - Aquamarine
SLEEP by Amanaska
Monday, November 18, 2024
Are you a dreamer or a realist or somewhere in between?
Today's Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.....
Perhaps better to be a realistic dreamer? Or an optimistic realist? Are they 'realistic' possibilities in our black-and-white, have to choose one side world? Probably not, but they should be, since most people are dreamers sometimes and realists at other times, or somewhere in between.
Friday, November 15, 2024
My new poem--Friday afternoon
Friday afternoon
On a hill overlooking the river
Watching the autumn sky
The shifting colors of the clouds
From gray to blue to white and back to gray
The world looks inviting on a Friday afternoon
People hustling and bustling here and there
Voices of schoolchildren in the background
Playing happily
Crows and magpies hopping about on the wet leaves
Looking for an insect or two
In the mild autumn weather
I think, isn’t life a beautiful gift
To hold in one’s hands
A fragile one to be sure but beautiful just the same
Being this age, knowing that most of life is behind one
Not a care in the world, really
I can sit on a park bench
On a Friday afternoon
After a long walk
Free these past three years
From the stresses of a worklife
That I do not miss
That I grieved the loss of years ago
The loss of something that made it work
Until it no longer did
I think, this is the way to live life
To be able to be outdoors, to walk
To appreciate the ability to be able to
To have gratitude
Is it such that we must age
In order to be grateful
Or can we learn gratitude
At any age
It would behoove the world
To learn gratitude
To get on its collective knees
And thank the divine for all that it’s been given
The world is not very good at that
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
The series My Brilliant Friend has come to an end
As I have written about in previous posts, the Italian author Elena Ferrante wrote a brilliant series of books, My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child (the Neapolitan quartet), that were turned into a television series called My Brilliant Friend that currently airs on MAX (formerly HBO Max) (A New Yorker in Oslo: Elena Ferrante's brilliant Neapolitan quadrilogy; A New Yorker in Oslo: My Brilliant Friend is a brilliant HBO series).
The series is one of the few television series that manages to capture the intricacies and the emotional depth of the books and to describe the complicated and often warped friendship between Lila and Elena. It also manages to capture the heavy and claustrophobic atmosphere of the Naples neighborhood where they live, in an almost perfect way. Each book was filmed as one season, so there were four seasons in all. Each season, with the exception of season four, consisted of eight episodes; season four was ten episodes long. We watched the last episode tonight, which was an emotional experience for me, knowing that the story of Lila and Elena's lives has now come to an end. We will never know what happens to Lila; she disappears from Elena's life without a trace. Elena, now in her sixties and living in Turin, has had no contact with Lila for a number of years prior to her disappearance. Apparently Lila had not wanted that, even though they parted as good friends when Elena left Naples with Imma to move to Turin. Lila's son Gennaro is understandably upset about his mother's disappearance, and calls Elena to ask if she has heard from her. She has not. It is at that point that Elena decides to write the entire story of their lives together--when she knows that Lila has left her life for good. She is angry at her for disappearing, but at the same time I think she realized she was finally free.
There are several ways to interpret the ending. One afternoon, after Elena has been out walking her dog, she returns home to find a medium-sized package in her mailbox. When she opens it, she finds the dolls that she and Lila had when they were children, and which they threw into a damp dark cellar at Lila's prompting. When they went to retrieve them a day or so later, they couldn't find them. Lila said at that time that she knew who had stolen them, but as it turns out, it was likely Lila who had retrieved them and hidden them away for many years. Why, no one knows. The motif of the hidden doll reminds me of Ferrante's other book--The Lost Daughter--where the protagonist, a middle-aged woman, finds a doll on the beach and hides it away in her vacation apartment, fully knowing that there is a little girl on vacation with her parents who has lost that doll. There was an evil streak in Lila that surfaced from time to time; she could be mean and spiteful, and then suddenly nice and even kind. She pulled Elena toward her and then pushed her away. It was that kind of friendship, and Elena let it evolve that way, even accepting her role in its evolution. She rarely stood up to Lila, choosing more often to observe and reflect on the ups and downs of their friendship (and to eventually write about them). So if it was Lila who sent the dolls to Elena, why then? It was Lila's way of admitting that she had lied all along to Elena about what happened to the dolls. It was Lila's way of letting go of the past, of apologizing, of moving forward with her life after all the suffering she had been through (the disappearance of her daughter Tina) and all the suffering she caused others. But what happened to Lila? Did she 'disappear' in order to live the rest of her life on her terms? Did she commit suicide (she had talked about wanting to be deleted from society)? Did she meet an unhappy end? Did she reunite with Enzo and did they live 'happily ever after'? Did she spend the rest of her life wandering around Italy searching for her daughter Tina? Or did she accept that Tina was probably dead? If so, then she could move on with her life, live and travel without the burden of grief. And to be a bit provocative, is Elena Ferrante (a pseudonym) really Lila, or Elena? I have always thought Elena. We'll never know the answers to these questions.
I think that with the arrival of the lost dolls, Elena understood that she and Lila were now free of each other, free to pursue their lives independently of one another. It was a strange complex friendship and a rather unhealthy one. They were both dependent upon each other for different reasons; Elena on Lila because Lila encouraged her to write and forced/challenged her to have confidence in her abilities, even though she was envious of her. Elena was also driven by fear--fear that Lila would capture Nino's heart, and a fear (that she never completely shook) that Lila was (or would have been) the better writer. Lila needed Elena because Elena provided her with emotional and mental stability and a sense of normalcy. She could depend on Elena. Lila was emotionally-unstable, whereas Elena was more rational and cold in the sense of being the observer.
I will miss this series, miss the depiction of women's lives in Italy over many years, starting in the 1950s when Lila and Elena were children in Naples. How painful it was to see how difficult it was (and still is) for women to write and raise a family under a patriarchal system (personal and societal) where men ruled, and the often disturbing family dramas and conflicts. Elena, despite her success as a writer, is foolish when it comes to her love for Nino, who is nothing but a shallow womanizer like his father--an intellectual pretender. Nothing I write here can really do justice to either the books or the series; they have to be experienced in order to understand the depth of the emotional lives of two Italian women who each considered the other to be the more brilliant friend. But it was Elena who wrote the books, and who considered Lila to be her brilliant friend. Lila was fiercely intelligent, even brilliant, but her talents were thwarted from a very young age by an unsupportive and abusive father and by the subsequent mistakes she made as she grew up. Watching the series, you realize how important it is that children get a supportive and loving start in life and the chance to amount to something. Without that, their lives are often stunted and damaged. Elena's father gave her that chance despite the patriarchal rigidity of their generation, Lila's father did not.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Fjord Oslo Light Show
We went to see the Fjord Oslo Light Show (FJORD OSLO) this past Saturday evening, along with many others. Aker Brygge and Tjuvholmen were crowded with young and old people alike, all wanting to see the cool light installations placed strategically along the harbor area.
I'm glad I got a chance to see it. It's a great use of the darkness that descends upon this country at this time of year. The darkness is very dark, if you get my drift, and the lights light up the darkness in a wonderful and comforting way. Plus there's something fun about being together with other people, all of whom want to see the same thing. It was a chilly night, but we found our way to a nearby Italian restaurant afterward where we could warm up and eat a good dinner.
Here are some photos that I took. I'll post some videos in my next post.
Reflections on the two greatest commandments
Sunday, November 3, 2024
Sunday, October 27, 2024
The four important F's
My friend Cindy, who is a retired minister, sends me different spiritual and inspirational reflections as she comes across them and thinks I might like them. She sent me this little piece of wisdom a few weeks ago that I've shared further with other friends. It's essentially a statement of what is important in life, lest we forget at times.
FAITH, FAMILY, FRIENDS, FITNESS
Basically all the things we need to have a good life, not a good materialistic life, but a good spiritual life. Again, no judgment as far as materialism goes, but when we have all we need in that department and still feel unfulfilled, why is that? It's what Matthew Kelly calls 'the want beyond the want'. We want more than a materialistically-comfortable life. We want a family that we love and that loves us, likewise good friends whom we love and who love us. And then there is our faith in God, which underlies all of the other things. Our faith shows us the importance of real love for others, and for ourselves. Our bodies should reflect self-care, not in an obsessive way, but in a respectful way. Don't abuse, overuse, or overdo anything that could harm the body. Physical fitness goes hand in hand with mental and spiritual fitness. It's a good place to start to get in touch with what we really want. God gives us all we need to get started. We simply have to pay attention to the call, to get outdoors, to walk, to appreciate the beauty of nature, to do something that gives us balance and peace. We have to have faith that we are important to others and to God. We are.
Autumn wanderings in Oslo
It's been a mild autumn so far, with temperatures in the 50s, and that's fine with me. Anything to stave off the arrival of the winter season. After last winter, I'm dreading the arrival of this year's winter. Not that winter is a bad thing in and of itself, but it brings with it a whole host of problems that Oslo doesn't seem to tackle very well--unshoveled snowy sidewalks, icy sidewalks, icy side streets, etc. That means being stuck inside more than being outdoors. I'd opt for a mild rainy winter at this point just to avoid all those problems.
I'm pretty much finished prepping the garden for winter, so that leaves more time during the day for walks around the city. I was out walking a few days ago on a lovely sunny day, and I took some photos on my walking tour. And today my husband and I walked up along the Akerselva river through Myraløkka park, and then down again where we stopped for waffles and coffee at Hønse Lovisas house. A beautiful fall day in Oslo! Here are some photos of Oslo in the autumn. Enjoy!
my garden in autumn |
St. Hanshaugen Park |
St. Hanshaugen Park |
St. Hanshaugen Park |
Myraløkka park |
Myraløkka |
Waffles and coffee at Hønse Lovisas house |
Ila church in Ila Park |
Sunday, October 20, 2024
Spot on, as always
Stephan Pastis never ceases to amaze. For those of you who dread the upcoming election, this one's for you.....
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Matthew Kelly's mission is to get us back on track
I just finished Matthew Kelly's The Three Ordinary Voices of God, and can heartily recommend it. It is an inspirational short book that focuses on learning to listen to the voices through which God communicates with us. Those voices are our needs, talents, and desires. Kelly's main point is that we live in a noise-filled society that distracts us at every turn. Just think social media, news, materialism, emphasis on worldly success, the newest gadgets--the list is long. All of them encourage us to ignore the important voices that want our attention. In a non-judgmental way, Kelly prods us to pay attention before it is too late. His fear (for himself and for us) is that we will mis-live our lives and not become the 'best versions of ourselves'. That we will waste our lives on non-essential things rather than the essential things. We can only become the best versions of ourselves if we 'let go and let God', if we ask God to show us what he wants for our lives. His appeal to readers at the end of the book is to 'come to the quiet', because it is only then that we can hear and pay attention to the voices of God and discover the 'want beyond the want' (we are never really satisfied when we get what we think we want), which is God. His words resonate with me and many others because he knows how difficult it is to pay attention to the voices of God (our needs, talents, and desires) in a society that is constantly distracting us and pulling us in all directions. It is his opinion that most people don't know what they want and don't know who they are or what they're made for. He's on a mission to wake us up and get us back on track. He doesn't want us to waste our lives. Because in his view, society as it is now will drag us down and prevent us from moving toward God.
I was reminded of Mary Oliver's poem The Summer Day; the last two lines ask 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' Indeed--a very good question. Mary Oliver was acutely aware of the natural life around her; she paid attention to it and to her needs, talents and desires. She wrote “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work". Not unlike what Matthew Kelly says. However, unlike Kelly, she was not part of an organized religion (Kelly is a committed Catholic), but she had a special relationship with God.
My question is--how can one go through life and not pay attention? There is so much to pay attention to. We live in a marvelous world that can inspire and energize us. Even if you are not a person of faith, you can seek silence and watch and listen to the world around you. It has so much to teach us. I never tire of learning, and I think will serve me well as I move into my later years. I can sit silently in my garden and watch the sparrows approach me tentatively, hoping for a handout (they usually get one). During hot dry summers, I've learned that the sparrows and bees will line up on the bird bath in order to drink water. Who knew? Who knew that sparrows like to bathe communally? These are just a few small observations about the natural life I see in my garden. I find God in my garden because I have hours of quiet in order to do so. What about the dearest people in my life, without whom I would not be who I am today? I love them, and it would not occur to me to ignore them. I thank God everyday for them. I am still working on becoming an essentialist, on cutting away all that is non-essential in my life. I know it is and will always be a work in progress. We are not perfect and will never reach perfection on this earth. But books like Kelly's remind us that it's possible to change, to turn our lives around. Sometimes in order to effect change, we just need to change a small thing each day. For example, make a little time for silence. Go to the quiet. It's a good place to start.
Heather Nova - Aquamarine
And another one from the same compilation. Easy listening..... Aquamarine Aquamarine All that glitters lies beneath Deep blue, Shallow gree...