One Door Closes, Another One Opens

After the turbulence of last year, I made the decision that 2011 was going to look very different than 2010. And so far I can report that 2011 is turning out to be different than 2010. I am trying to live each day to its fullest (even though I am tired in the evenings these days and end up falling asleep on the couch instead of finishing off a project or two). I am trying to walk away from incendiary situations, trying to keep a lid on my anger and my irritation, trying to take good care of myself in all ways, trying to be happy and trying to be cheerful for others. I’m trying to be nicer to my husband instead of taking my irritation with workplace situations out on him (but I require the same from him, just to have the equal balance—we’re both trying). I am trying not to get dragged down by hopeless work situations, even though it would be easy to hit the bottom again from time to time. I have extricated myself from useless and time-consuming activities, from trying to change the world with people who haven’t the foggiest idea about what that means or what’s involved. I am trying not to cast whatever pearls I own before swine. I am trying to let go and let God as the saying goes, trying to not wall myself off when sad times hit, trying to reach out to others who are going through tough times, trying to remember that life is short and that every minute counts. When you remember that life is short, you live life in a more aware manner. Not everything that happens has crucial importance for your life; some things just happen, the world is sometimes unfair, people are sometimes frustrating and rude, but better times do come. They do. Doors close, opportunities disappear, but new doors open and new opportunities appear. My mother always used to say this. It appears that she was right about a lot of things, but I didn’t give her the credit she was due when I was younger, when I thought I knew best. Ah, the arrogance of youth.   

The key point is that I am trying, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. I realize that I have taken failure so seriously, when in fact failure is a part of life. It balances out success—the yang to the yin. I cannot believe sometimes that I didn’t learn this lesson sooner. I mean really, who am I to think that I would be spared, when people a whole lot smarter and better at things than me have failed? Failing means to have taken a risk, so I can comfort myself with that. Better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. I have written about this in an earlier post, but it is true. Trying is what is important, whether or not success is the result. And by success I don’t necessarily mean achieving wealth and fame (although they are of course nice). It is enough with personal satisfaction and happiness, with the knowledge that one has achieved something that one has set out to do. That is immensely satisfying.

I send out small hopes and prayers into the universe on a daily basis. I won’t say what they are, but they are not selfish prayers. I hope and pray for others as much as I do for myself. I believe in the power of positive thoughts and hope that the prayers will be answered. We just never really know quite how they will be answered. But life and the universe have a way of providing opportunities and answers. I see that now. One of my little prayers has been answered recently--I got a few answers to some questions that have been causing my soul some amount of searching. A new small door has opened. I am entering it and have decided to follow the path that lies beyond the door. I’ll be writing more about that path as time goes on.  

Oslo's Botanical Garden

I thought I would write a short post today about the Botanical Garden in Oslo http://www.nhm.uio.no/english/visiting-nhm/botanical-garden/.  I was there the other night to join an organized tour of the Rock Garden (Fjellhagen), which is a collection of mountain plants from all over the world. The flowering season for these plants peaks in May and June. The tour was led by one of the gardeners who works at the Garden; he was very knowledgeable and could tell us a lot about the different plants we were looking at. After the tour, I walked around the Garden for quite a while, taking pictures and just breathing in the serenity and beauty of the place. I have been to the Garden once or twice before, but that was a long time ago when I first moved to Oslo. I enjoy visiting the Botanical Gardens in the different cities I have traveled to—London, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Amsterdam, and many others, including the Botanical Garden in the Bronx (when I lived there in the 1980s). I was talking to my friend Jean the other night and we decided to re-visit the Bronx Botanical Garden in the summer when I visit NY. It was always an enjoyable time to walk around there. Botanical gardens generally are peaceful oases in the middle of bustling cities, no matter where I’ve been, and each time I visit a garden I think how nice it would be to work there.

So the other night in Oslo, I enjoyed my Garden walk. It was a beautiful evening, the sun was shining, the air was warm, and it was a perfect evening to be outdoors. I am posting some photos I took on my walk around the Garden. Enjoy!

In dreams

Sleeping then waking

Falling into consciousness from a place conscious place

Of distance, far removed from all familiar things

Passing cars life on crowded city streets

Searching for something cannot find

Something solid does not change with time

Glided on wings there were none

Lifted up above the ground but close enough

Feel hands below ankle-grasping pull back

Muffled cries

Wanderer of corridors empty houses

Vast and beautiful inviting

Paused upper floor look out

Down upon earth below

Green field alive life trees flowers

Distant river sunlight plays on water

Birds flying overhead music only they can hear

Things of beauty made in dreams

Things of evil too--inner soul

Muffled cries anguish time passing

Bargain hunting devil eternal life abyss

Tunnel end light search caverns

Water dripping under below house

Subterranean depths paths lead somewhere

Walking sunlit silence silkiness coat of many colors

In time before ahead and now

Dreaming waking walking flying

Hands below hands above looking down looking up

Sunlit heaven angel wings devil hands hold back

Holding down dragging under caverns below

Water dripping muffled cries the souls lost paths

Multitudes of voices wilderness crying

copyright 2010 Paula M. De Angelis

One year ago

May 12th 2011 marks one year since I started this blog—a happy anniversary to be sure. I have often commented throughout this past year that this blog is a labor of love, and it remains so. I enjoy writing it, and even though there are times when it seems as though I’ve hit a dry spell, ideas and thoughts come flooding back after a few days. The experience of hitting the dry spells followed by the creative periods or vice versa has been a good reminder about the importance of patience and of learning to live one day at a time. It has also been a reminder not to worry too much about the actual process of writing. I actually knew this from before, because I have been writing poetry for years, and can attest to the fact that inspiration ebbs and flows like the tides, and sometimes does seem to come out of nowhere. But of course I know that there are a lot of things always going on in my subconscious, and that ideas and thoughts can suddenly bubble up to the surface of my consciousness, and then it’s up to me to grab them and to make something of them. It is a challenge these days, amid all the stress at work, to grab a hold of as many ideas as possible. Because one thing is certain, ideas come and go, but when they go, it is almost impossible to get them back in the form in which they first appeared. You lose the specific angle, the edge, the tone of the idea or thought you wished to present. It is frustrating when that happens, and is why I carry a notebook with me so that I can jot down ideas as they arise.

On May 12^th of last year, I attended a Town Hall meeting at the Hotel Bristol in downtown Oslo arranged by the American Embassy. It was the myriad of feelings resulting from that meeting that led to the desire to write a blog, to share my thoughts and feelings about being a New Yorker (and an American) in Oslo. I have realized that writing this blog has helped me reclaim my identity as an American. It is easy to lose one’s identity in a foreign country. You speak, write and read another language that is not your own. You must communicate with others in a language that is not your own. You risk misinterpreting what others mean because you do not understand the nuances in this new language. You risk saying things in the wrong way so that others misinterpret you.  In the beginning, it is challenging and fun to live behind the mask of a new culture and language; it can become exhausting to do so and ultimately unnecessary. No one in this country is expecting me to be Norwegian; it is my own impossible expectations that I had to fit into this culture that have made me tired at times. I am sure if I had been easier on myself that I would be less tired now. I would not have fit in any better, but I would have more energy!

A lot has happened during this past year. Perhaps the saddest event was the death of my friend and colleague, the American woman who attended the Town Hall meeting with me. We always enjoyed doing such things together as Americans in Oslo. It is only now that I am beginning to understand how much I miss her. And I see that my workplace misses her too. People are part of our lives, and then they are not. The contrast is blinding at times, like intense sunlight. Another reminder to ‘see’ the people who are in our lives—to not take them for granted.

I watched a very good film recently on TCM—The Straight Story. I recommend it highly. It is the moving story of an old man who sets out on a journey to visit his estranged brother whom he has not seen or talked to in ten years. It is based on the true-life story of Alvin Straight who traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his brother Lyle who had recently suffered a stroke. What makes the trip unique is that he makes the journey on a tractor, and travels through parts of the USA that seem to have been untouched by the passage of time. He meets truly friendly people along the way—who help him when his tractor breaks down and who share small parts of their lives with him. The film is made all the more touching by the fact that the actor who played Alvin--Richard Farnsworth--was terminally ill with cancer when he made the film. He committed suicide about a year after the film was released. His physical problems in the film were in fact real—he had problems walking and was in a lot of pain. His film ‘journey’ was his last journey—his confrontation with his own aging and mortality. It must have been incredibly difficult for him to make the film, and yet he did. You can see all of the different emotions he must have been experiencing so clearly in his face. There are very few films that make me really cry, that touch a really deep part of me—this was one of them. Watching it was yet another reminder about how the movement toward forgiveness of self and of others is one of the most difficult journeys we make in this life. It is the most important journey of all. 

Experimenting in the public eye

I performed an experiment of sorts this past week, with interesting results. I wasn’t at the lab bench working with cells or with different methods to study them. I was standing in front of a roomful of people, all of whom were there to listen to a PhD candidate whom I was actively questioning about his thesis work. What no one knows is that I had decided to model the style of my ‘opposition’, as it’s called in Norway, after the style of a Swedish scientist whose recent opposition a few weeks ago had resulted in satisfied customers all around. What I had been most curious about was whether his style had been acceptable because he was male and non-Norwegian, or because it was genuinely a careful and thorough way of questioning a candidate without terrifying or intimidating him or her. During this man’s opposition, I sat in the audience and copied down all of his questions to the PhD candidate who happened to be a woman. I counted how many questions this man asked in the space of seventy-five minutes and calculated how much time the candidate used to answer him. I decided to ask questions of a similar nature when it was my turn to be an opponent for a male PhD candidate. I was curious as to whether this style of questioning on my part would be just as acceptable as it had been for the male opponent. I can happily report that it was. This style of questioning works and is gender-independent. It does not intimidate the PhD candidates, and it relaxes the opponents so that they don’t feel pressure to perform unnecessarily in public on a day that should belong to the PhD candidate and not to the opponent.

I have seen too many public PhD defenses where the opponents ‘shone’ like the sun, and the candidate was just caught in one of the rays. I have seen defenses where both the opponent and the candidate were completely mismatched, so that the entire defense was painful to watch and an exercise in pulling teeth getting the candidate to answer any questions whatsoever. I have seen good defenses also—where the candidate actually challenged the opponent and then a discussion was underway. I’ve seen so many different outcomes of PhD defenses. I recommend the type of questioning that I and the Swedish scientist used; it leads to a good outcome and the public (mostly consisting of colleagues, family members and friends) are far more likely to remember the day as a good day instead of a day where the candidate made a fool of himself or was unfairly criticized or was unduly nervous. I don’t know if I’ll be an opponent again, but I recommend the non-intimidating but engaging way of questioning as a way of producing the desired outcome—a grateful PhD candidate, satisfied supervisors, and a happy audience.

I wish Norway would get rid of the public PhD defense. It is rather outdated and I don’t think it is necessary anymore given the continual reduction in the requirements for fulfilling the PhD degree that have been taking place over the past few years. It is exceedingly difficult to find willing candidates to sit on a PhD committee, given the current requirements that the committee has to be gender-balanced. I hope the country goes the way of many other countries, where the PhD defense takes place behind closed doors with a committee (that can consist of a PhD candidate’s own faculty members) who ask the candidate questions for a few hours and then the whole thing is over. In this way, it could be ensured that the candidate is not overly nervous such that he or she doesn’t answer any questions at all. I’m hoping that day is coming, but as with all things in Norway, it will take an inordinate amount of time to come to the decision to change this way of doing things. I hope that this time I will be pleasantly surprised and that change will happen much faster than usual.  

Reality check

You’ve got to wonder why it was so important that Schwarzenegger decided that he had to tell his wife that he had an out-of-wedlock child with his mistress exactly now, in 2011, years after the fact. If anything interests me about this case, it is that. What’s the hurry? So my guess is something’s up. There’s a reason he felt pressured into coming clean. I don’t know what that is, but my guesses are as follows: there are more out-of-wedlock children than we know about, and they’ve grown up and are interested in whom dad is, and maybe they found out that dad is a high-profile person, and they’re not going to keep quiet about it. And really, why should they? They would have every right to have contact with their biological father. That’s only human. Secrets will ‘out’. That’s the nature of secrets. Sometimes they come out after a person dies, but other times they come out while a person is still alive to cause problems for that person. Another possibility is that Arnold wanted ‘out’—of his marriage and the secrecy surrounding his life. Maybe he needed to get away from what he viewed as a restrictive life. Maybe he is having a slightly delayed mid-life crisis. Or maybe he doesn’t really care anymore about much of anything, which would be most sad for his children, since they don’t deserve the fallout. Or maybe he calculated the whole thing—I mean, he’s been a governor but he can never be president since he wasn’t born in the USA. So he has nowhere else to go politically and then who would really care about his personal life and secrets? But I’m putting my money on a new woman in Arnold’s life. Given the egoist that he is, I’m betting that there is a woman we don’t know about yet waiting in the wings for him to ‘get free’ and then when he is there will be the requisite number of months mourning the ‘dead marriage’ and then it will suddenly be announced that he has found happiness again after a long period of remorse and self-incrimination. That he has forgiven himself and moved on. And of course the press and media will eat it up, since Americans like to forgive their movie ‘heroes’ after they’ve first nailed them to the cross and whipped them until they’re bloody and begging for sympathy. I don’t think Arnold will beg, but I think he has factored in a certain amount of unpleasantness ahead (how many days and months he has to suffer through) until he is ‘redeemed’ in the American public eye. His fate is not the fate of Jesse James who betrayed Sandra Bullock. Jesse James was and is a nobody who found some fame with Bullock; his ‘coming clean’ did nothing for him and just made him look more like the bottom feeder that he is. His fate won’t be that of Mel Gibson or Charlie Sheen either—both of whom self-imploded with their bizarre comments and dealings. Schwarzenegger has had a high-profile Hollywood career that he is now putting on hold to deal with his family problems. It’s the polite way of saying that he will resume his career once the furor has died down. He is an egoist, pure and simple. Arnold comes first and always has. The only thing I’m waiting for is to hear the name of the new woman in his life who loves the ‘real Arnie’, who knows the real Arnie and who accepts the real Arnie—so that we can watch him sail off into the sunset with the woman of his dreams. Sounds like a real Hollywood ending to me.

Sexcapades

This past week the news has been dominated by sex scandals—some of them of an (alleged) illegal criminal nature and some of them not. What they have in common is that the men involved in all cases risked their marriages, personal lives and reputations to live out their different sexual fantasies. Again, I have to ask the question, what were these men thinking? But I know I won’t get a satisfactory answer. Or I’ll get the standard wisecrack answer—they weren’t—it was their second brain that was doing the thinking.

This time it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who ‘took full responsibility’ and stepped up to the proverbial plate to inform us about his extramarital affair with one of his household staff members and the resulting love child. The news was apparently kept secret even from his wife Maria Schriver, who when she heard it from him apparently a few months ago, promptly moved out of the house. They are currently separated and will likely divorce. When I first heard the news I thought, yet another male politician who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Really, what is the world coming to, I ask you? One politician after another caught up in the arms of sleaze—affairs with household staff/servants (Schwarzenegger and a few of our country’s founding fathers), dabblings with prostitutes (Eliot Spitzer), oral sex with congressional pages and sex with nightclub singers (Bill Clinton), adultery with women sneaked into the White House (John F. Kennedy), adultery with an Argentinian girlfriend (Mark Sanford) and adultery with other (healthy younger) women while their wives struggled with cancer (Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and a few other men I know of who are not politicians). The latter especially is distressing to read about if you own an iota of empathy, because you know that the news that your husband is fooling around or having children with another woman while you battle cancer cannot be anything other than immensely stressful precisely at the time when you need little to no added extra stress. And how sad to leave this life knowing that your husband was a ‘rotter’ as my mother would have called these types of men. What a thing to forgive, and can you really? What a betrayal—the ultimate betrayal. Even if you did live, could you trust a man again? Again I find it hard to believe that men can behave this way. Of course I know that there are two sides to every story. If I didn’t write that here I’d be reminded of it by some well-meaning person. And I agree, there are two sides to every story. But it’s hard to find equivalently awful stories about female politicians who behave in this way toward their husbands. I’d like to know about them, I really would.

I have been witness to some strange male (and female) relationship behavior during the past thirty years, so I know that bad behavior does happen. I know of married men who traveled under assumed names to meet their lovers so that their wives wouldn’t find out, I know of men who were on message boards and internet dating sites passing themselves off as single when in fact they were married, I know of men who were fooling around with their current wives while their soon-to-be ex-wives were succumbing to cancer, I know of men who strung women along for years telling them that they would marry them and then dropping them the minute they found the woman they ‘wanted to marry’. I know of swinging couples and wife-swappers; of men who lied to women about being ‘separated’ in order to get a woman to sleep with them. I know of men who travel on business who pick up prostitutes and call girls when they are in another city. I know of married men who offered to be sperm donors for single women and whose wives would probably not have appreciated the offers had they known about them.  I also know of women (married and single) who have contacted the wives of the men they have decided to seduce, to tell the wives that they and the husbands are very attracted to each other and that if the husband hadn’t been married they would be together. I know of women who pursue married men on social network sites, by email, and via text messages. I know of women who worked for men who told them at the outset that they’d like to be their mistresses, who ended up being so, and who ended up marrying them after causing hell for the wives involved. In Norway alone, infidelity in marriage occurs in one of two marriages according to what I hear from other people and from news reports; I have no way of knowing whether this is true, since most people would never talk about this honestly. In turn, I know of wives who fought back and told some of these women off and told their husbands off at the same time. I know of some women who divorced the louts they were living with. I know of some wives who really fought back—when their husbands went to live with the other women and the scorned wives made their lives a living hell. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You bet. And maybe it’s good that it is that way at least in some cases. But sometimes I believe in divorce as the solution to painful hellish lives. I’ve seen a number of abusive and depressing marriages during my growing up—drunken men who hit women, eternal flirters and skirt-chasers who were never happy with the women they had at home, or men who always had to have the last word—who controlled their wives and families with an iron fist. And this took place/takes place in Westernized society. So every time people say to me that women have it so much better in our neck of the world, I remind them of this, and then we come down a few notches on the ‘everything is great for women in our society’ scale.

Which brings me to the men and women I know who are unsung heroes in my book. The men and women who have stayed married through thick and thin without cheating, without abuse, without carping. Who start each day with a smile and who never cease to amaze me with their cheerfulness and helpful spirits. Who are loyal and kind to their spouses and children. Who have probably been tempted to leave a few times in their lives, but didn’t, because they put the happiness and needs of their spouses and families ahead of their own. Who stuck by spouses in times of sickness—the true test of love. I’ve seen what sickness in one or the other partner can do to relationships, so I know it’s not easy. Loyalty is underrated in our society these days. But it is what makes marriages and friendships last. Without it, there can’t really be much trust. You have to be able to see into the future and ‘know’ with your gut that the person you share your life with will be there for you when you are sick, when you need help, and vice versa. No one said it would be easy. Maybe you’d like to run at the first sign of trouble. But maybe you didn’t; maybe you wrestled with your doubt and anxiety and temptation and stayed put. These are the people who impress me. You don’t need to climb Mt. Everest or practice extreme sports or any of those things to impress me. ‘That don’t impress me much’, as Shania Twain sang a few years ago. What does impress me is longevity and the ability to be positive and cheerful in a marriage. I’m not saying that all people should stay together for an entire lifetime; I’ve already argued for divorce as a solution to hellish relationships. But if after some years of being together, an otherwise decent marriage loses a bit of its luster and temptation comes one’s way, maybe one should take a closer look at what one has before tossing it away for a sexcapade. It is possible to stay faithful, and I know couples married for forty or more years who have been faithful to one another. They say so, they are still in love with their spouses, and they are my heroes. 

Sexual predators

Two stories about (alleged) sexual predators in the news this past week—one a very high-profile ‘money’ man (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) whose putative crash and burn story will preoccupy writers and psychologists for years to come; the other a rather odd story of a man who advertised for a live-in housekeeper over the internet (I believe it was through craigslist—an already questionable site), whose main intent was to find himself a sex slave that he could imprison and control. It’s strange that both stories appeared almost at the same time, and yet, knowing the vagaries of the universe, not so strange. I puzzle though over both these stories. What were these men thinking, to paraphrase Jay Leno’s question to Hugh Grant after he was literally caught with his pants down with a prostitute. I mean really, what were they thinking? That they would never get caught, just because they hadn’t been caught up to this point? Does that type of cockiness make you stupid? It doesn’t matter though what they thought ultimately, because I’m glad if two of the many sexual predators out there were taken off the streets. And high-profile sexual predators who believe that their power and clout will help them escape have some rude surprises in store for them. It seems as though the USA is fairly intent these days on punishing convicted rapists to the fullest extent of the law. It seems that way anyhow from what I read in the news. And that’s good, I say, because Europe, or at least Scandinavia where I live, does not punish rapists severely. Prison sentences for rape average three to four years from what I have seen from the outcome of rape cases that come to court. And from what I can see of the Third World where women have little to no status anyway, raping women seems to be something men can get away with a lot of the time, with all of the nasty repercussions for women that men never seem to suffer. Rape has been used as a weapon in the civil war in Congo, rape is apparently rampant in Haiti, and so on. And I need only think of the story about the CBS News correspondent Lara Logan who was brutally raped while covering the resignation of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. And then I think-- if there is a God, I want him/her/it to smite these men down. That’s the prayer I send out into the universe. “I hope God is coming, and I hope she is pissed”—in whatever form it needs to take. Just let women and the good men be protected from whatever comes.

We will always have men who need to control women, who view women as beneath them and who need to exercise physical and sexual power over them. I don’t understand the psychology of these men nor do I really care to. I just want the world to change. I want respect for women, justice for women, equal rights for women, fair play for women. Everywhere. Because it is only in a world where women are respected that we will find the peace that we are looking for as global citizens. I cannot believe in the prospect of world peace until women around the world enjoy the same rights as men in every country—the right to an education, to a job, to free choice as to whether they will marry and raise a family, free choice as to whom they wish to marry, free choice to divorce, to travel, to amass wealth, to have an opinion—in short, all the rights that men take for granted. And men take them for granted. The fact that they can take them for granted endows them with a self-confidence and a swagger that most women I know don’t have and will never have, because if they behaved in the same way they’d be told to can the behavior or to keep their mouths shut or to stop acting so high-and-mighty. When all societies raise their boys and girls to look forward to enjoying exactly the same rights, then I’ll say that we’ve evolved as human beings. Until that time comes, I will continue to respond to the rhetoric about how the world has changed and about how far women have come with my own individual free-choice adult thoughts and voice—so much hot air, so many empty promises. There is a time for smiting, and that time is coming. 

Another poem by Maya Angelou

Just a beautiful and piercing poem................


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind

and floats downstream till the current ends

and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage

can seldom see through his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

A poem by Maya Angelou

I'm discovering some new poets and rediscovering some old ones. I'm in a poetry mood this week. A lot going on at work, and my brain needs to focus on deeper thoughts and rhymes and new ways of thinking. I will post another one by Maya Angelou today as well. 

Alone

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

A poem by J.R.R. Tolkien

All that is Gold does not Glitter

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king. 

A poem by Langston Hughes

Dreams Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

Collective egoism

In some recent conversations with a good friend, I coined the expression ’collective egoism’ to describe a particular mentality that has become prevalent in nouveau riche Norwegian culture, in our opinion at least. Before I describe how I would define the term, I will say that I googled the expression earlier today, and sure enough, it has been coined before and described extensively. No matter. I will define it in my way. We were talking about our workplace (as usual) and it struck us both that there is incredible pressure on all of us (as scientists) now to get grant money, fame and glory for ourselves for the greater glory of our workplace—to succeed, to be the best, to reach the top. When you try to remind certain workplace leaders that some people are in fact smarter, more creative or more talented than others (always have been, always will be) and that these people will always get more grant money, power and success, you get told that, no, if you only do so-and-so, you can be just as good as the others. You can of course catch up, match them, and achieve their worldly successes. You don’t really have to compete with them, because if you only knew their secrets, which are of course penetrable, well, you could be just like them. I don’t know if they really believe their own rhetoric. If they do, it is yet another example of the Scandinavian socialist mentality at work. I want to like this mentality, I really do, but I don’t. I resent any mentality that tells me that all people can be the same, that all people have the same opportunities, talents, and means to make it in this world. It is patently untrue. It does not matter if the same opportunities are presented to for example, twenty high school students. Each of those twenty students has different talents, smarts, and capabilities. None of them will respond similarly to the same challenge. And why should they, and how can they? It is the differences in people that make a society tick—make it varied and interesting and multi-cultural and all the things we want it to be. Do we really want a society where all people are equally-talented—whether they be musicians, scientists, writers, actors, or medical doctors? Do we really want to teach our children that if you show talent as a musician that could also be a writer even if you show no natural talent in this regard? This sounds quite delusional to me. It also presupposes that there is a script that one can follow to become successful. If you just conform and do this, follow that, take that course, work that shift, you too can achieve the same pinnacle of success in your chosen field, just like all your colleagues. I don’t know where these ideas came from, but they don’t work. The more pressure that is placed upon us to be similar, the more different we end up—because the differences between people are impossible to suppress and because human nature will want to reveal and express those differences.

But it is the huge pressure to achieve materialistic success that has gotten me thinking about collective egoism. There is tremendous pressure in this country to own your own home, to have the best possible interior design and architecture, to own a cottage by the sea, possibly a cottage in the mountains, two or more cars, several TVs, to be able to travel abroad several times a year, buy expensive clothes and shoes, go to the theater and the opera—the list goes on and on. Suffice it to say that the pressure is more subtle than overt, but for each year that passes, this society becomes richer and the pressure mounts. Is this what happens in a rich society? Again we are faced with the same mentality—collective egoism—the acquisition of money and material goods for ourselves, ultimately for the greater good of our society. We have become a nation of collective egoists. Equal opportunity greed. I see it in the commercials on TV for kitchen renovations. It seems as though everyone is renovating their kitchen (or being encouraged to do so) these days in order to have a state-of-the-art, modern kitchen, and this is pushed and supported by the media, such that those who do not have the means to obtain this kind of kitchen (younger couples for example) end up on the outside looking in. But not for long. Now there are commercials advertising how this or that company can provide you with the kitchen that the ‘others’ have for a fourth of the price. Not only are we presented with the suggestion that it should be so (that everyone should have the same type of kitchen), but we are also told what kind of kitchen qualifies to be the best. This may be all well and good, but does everyone need this kind of kitchen? And what happened to the idea of working toward the goal of acquiring a new kitchen in a few years, of saving money to make that dream happen if you are a young couple starting out? The one important aspect of collective egoism is the ‘I have to have it now’ aspect. It is boring to have to wait for anything that one wants. Ultimately, it is all about ‘show’—that you ‘get’ a particular look that is ‘cool’. The exterior matters more than the interior. In other words, even if you never really use your kitchen to cook, it still looks top-notch and that’s what is important. The same could apply to widescreen TVs or broadband. Each person in society shall have the same as everyone else in society—the same wealth, the same goods, the same access to those goods, etc. But again, this is a fallacy. There are rich people in socialist-democratic societies just like in other societies who have wealth that others could only dream about—it may be inherited or hard-earned. But it makes them different from the rest of us, and to spend one’s life in pursuit of this kind of wealth just to make it to the same level as these people seems quite pointless to me. I’d rather pursue my own talents and interests, as these are what make me happy and an individual. That is important to me.

Some wise words about mothers

·         A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.  ~Peter De Vries

·         The phrase "working mother" is redundant.  ~Jane Sellman

·         The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new.  ~Rajneesh

·         I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me.  They have clung to me all my life.  ~Abraham Lincoln

·         Sweater, n.:  garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.  ~Ambrose Bierce

·         Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness.  It's the men who are discriminated against.  They can't bear children.  And no one's likely to do anything about that.  ~Golda Meir

·         The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.  ~Honoré de Balzac

·         All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does.  That's his.  ~Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

·         Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
~William Shakespeare

·         When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts.  A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.  ~Sophia Loren,Women and Beauty

·         Women are aristocrats, and it is always the mother who makes us feel that we belong to the better sort.  ~John Lancaster Spalding

·         Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials.  ~Meryl Streep

·         I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine - she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         [A] mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.  ~Emily Dickinson

·         A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.  ~Washington Irving

Mother's Day

Mother’s Day in the USA is this coming Sunday, May 8^th. Someone on Facebook has come up with the idea to post a picture of your mother as your profile picture until Monday May 9^th. Normally I don’t participate in very many Facebook ‘events’, but this one struck a chord and I posted a wedding picture of my mother. I think it’s a good idea and a nice way to honor our mothers on Mother’s Day.

My father passed away in 1985, and my mother in 2001. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of them both. My parents were quite strict when we were young, so it took some doing on my part to really get to know them as people and as friends, but I had managed to do that by the time I entered my twenties. I remember being afraid of my mother when I was a child; she had her rules and ways of doing things, and you did not want her to get angry at you if you broke the rules or ignored her wishes. But she was also the type of mother who had milk and cookies ready for us each day after school, and the door to our house was always open to our friends. She liked our friends. Several of my friends to this day will still comment on how kind my parents were to them when they were growing up, especially when there were problems or emergencies. That is always nice to hear, because I remember them that way too. And when we finished each school year, they would take us and our friends out for ice cream sodas at the local Howard Johnson restaurant. Those are nice memories.  

After my father died, my mother and I became close friends. It was a friendship that was defined in large part by her personality, likes and dislikes—she was a quiet person by nature, reserved rather than extroverted, friendly, curious but not nosy, kind, hospitable, not a big talker, and not a gossip. She was a doer and we enjoyed doing a lot of different things together--going out shopping, walking, exploring new towns, driving around just to drive around and take in the local sights, and going to the theater or ballet in Manhattan. She was born in Brooklyn but moved to Tarrytown when she married my father. She ended up loving Tarrytown and was a member of the Tarrytown Historical Society. One of the things I miss most about her is her incredible holiday spirit. It was infectious, the energy she had around the holidays, especially Christmas. She loved everything about Advent and Christmas and could not wait to start Christmas shopping. She pushed for getting the tree up and decorated each year. She loved buying gifts for others and was generous in that way to a fault. She thought very little about herself and I always remember worrying about that as I was growing up. It always seemed to me that she should pay more attention than she did to her own wishes and dreams. But she didn’t. When she got old, she had very few wishes; the few that she had were easy to fulfill—we would go shopping in White Plains and then eat lunch at the local diner. We always ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a dill pickle and cole slaw on the side, followed by coffee or tea.  She was a real tea drinker—she loved her tea. Sometimes during the summer, she wanted to go to Friendly’s in Pleasantville to get an ice cream sundae, and that was always fun, getting in the car and driving around the Tarrytown Lakes and talking about the changes in the town and the area on our way to Pleasantville. When I visited her on my annual trips to New York from 1990 onward, I would stay with her and we would enjoy our movie nights—watching videos of some of the old films that she liked, like Adam’s Rib, Meet Me in St. Louis, Home Alone, White Christmas, and others. I find it both comforting and sad to watch those films now, because they always remind me of her. It is funny what we remember about our parents; my father was a great reader and I remember my talks with him about the books he/we had read, or about the business world and his work experiences, or about faith and the church. With my mother, our conversations were more oriented toward school, the teachers, the women in the neighborhood who were her friends, local events, and the like. She spoke very little about her youth, but as she got older, I tried to absorb the little information she did share, so that I could get some idea about her mother and father, both of whom died before she married and had her own children. She always spoke well of her father; he seemed to have really loved and respected her mother. I do know that her mother went blind when she got older and that my mother lived with her and took care of her; I understand now that my grandmother probably had glaucoma and that there was no treatment for it at that time, with resultant blindness. She was also close to her brother, but did not see much of him or her sister after she married. But that seemed to be more common in those days; women married and had families; husbands and children became their priorities. This was prior to the feminist movement. But my mother did not really have many tales to tell about her growing up, and we always wondered why she was so secretive about her youth. It always made us that much more curious, but she did not spill the beans no matter how much we questioned her about her childhood. With my father, it was quite different. He was quite willing to share his childhood and teenage experiences with us. I feel that I got to know my father in a way that I never quite managed with my mother.

A few years ago I took it upon myself to make a family album for myself and my sister and brother. When my mother died, my sister and I went through her belongings and found many old black and white photos and the corresponding negatives. I spent some years sorting through them all, arranging them chronologically. I scanned the good photos and made a digital photo book that came out surprisingly well, especially the photo reproduction of my parents’ wedding reception at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn. It is amazing to see all their family members and friends gathered in one place—a perfect photo in such regard. I have spent a lot of time poring over that one photo, trying to identify each person at the reception. This leads me back to the photo of my mother that I posted on Facebook; it is her wedding photo and she looks beautiful and happy. It is a reminder to me once again that my mother was a young woman with hopes and dreams of her own, and that she looked forward to her marriage and her future in the same way as every other bride. Not everything worked out as she would have liked, that I know. It never does. My father’s illnesses were something that neither of them could have predicted would assume such a large place in their lives. Yet my mother stayed energetic and positive until the end, something which also makes me admire her since I doubt that I would have had half her energy and positive outlook faced with similar situations. So on this Mother’s Day, I honor her memory by writing about her. She has influenced me in so many ways, and I am forever grateful for having had the time to spend with her as she got older. I only wish it had been more in the few years before she passed. But she never complained about my living in Norway, and I remember that she told me that she planned to come to stay with me in Oslo a few weeks before she died. I would have loved that. 

Everyone loves a wedding

Prince William married Kate Middleton this past Friday, April 29th, at Westminster Abbey in London. The event was viewed worldwide and it was estimated that one million Britons lined the streets from the church to Buckingham Palace so as to catch a glimpse of the royal couple as they made their way to Buckingham Palace where they shared not only one but two kisses. The bride looked beautiful; it was her day, her wedding dress was lovely, elegant and stylish (like she is) and Prince William looked handsome and proper. The bride’s sister also looked very pretty; her dress was lovely and she looked as though she was very happy for her sister. Prince Charles and Camilla, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, and Prince Harry all played their roles well and all looked to be enjoying the day. But the day belonged to the married couple as well it should. They seem to love and respect each other. One can only hope that their marriage will not go the way of previous royal marriages in Britain—Diana and Charles, Andrew and Fergie, and so on. There are no guarantees in the fishbowl of public life that awaits them.

I am not going to review British history or the history of the monarchy. It doesn’t interest me all that much and frankly, I am not a monarchist. I can honestly say that at the same time that I enjoyed watching parts of this royal wedding as well as other royal weddings, for example, those that have taken place in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in the past decade or so. Each of these countries has a monarchy, and during the past decade, the children of the reigning monarchs have gotten married and produced heirs. Some of them have also divorced and remarried. There have been scandals in Scandinavia just like there have been in England, albeit much less in-your-face than those in Britain. The difference is that in Scandinavia, there is much less pomp and propriety in the royalty compared to the English royalty, and that takes the pressure off the royals to a degree. Most official happenings are more ‘toned-down’ in Scandinavia generally. For example, the Norwegian prince Haakon married a commoner who for all intents and purposes was quite a lost soul before she fell in love with him. Her life had taken some odd twists and turns before she turned her life around by marrying him. Their wedding, and the reception that followed it, was televised. There were a number of poignant moments—in the church, at the reception—you saw and felt the bride’s gratitude and joy at having been given the chance to have a new life. The media were asked not to delve into or to publish anything about her previous life, save for the fact that she was a single mother of a young son. It would have been unimaginable to have tried to do the same in Britain. The British media would have had a field day dissecting her earlier life every which way which might have resulted in their not marrying. And so it goes. It was perhaps a bit shocking for the Norwegian people to first accept the idea of a single mother as the future queen. But they did and it is no longer referred to or talked about. In Denmark, one of the princes has gotten divorced and remarried; his ex-wife has also remarried. The reason for the split? His constant need to party and to frequent the local bars, flirting with any and all women in sight. He does not seem to be doing this to his second wife, but God only knows, really. We don’t hear about it all until it explodes, and that seems to be the way things are done in Scandinavia. All the bad behavior and improprieties are swept under the carpet until there is no more room and then there is no more possibility to hide or to pretend that everything is fine.

I remember watching parts of the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981; I was on vacation in Montreal (Canada) at the time and caught some of the wedding on the TV in the hotel where I was staying. Their wedding made a small impression on me, but what made a larger impression was the circus that came afterward—years of married life probed and dissected at all angles. Diana photographed at all angles, everywhere she went. She went from being a shy unassuming nineteen year-old to being a fashionista and superstar---a celebrity who outshined her more staid husband in every way. She was a beautiful young woman who radiated empathy and compassion and insecurity; she made you feel for her, whether it was sorry for her or just simply liking her for whom she was. She grew into her role as princess; no one seemed to help her or seemed to care that she was floundering. Least of all Charles, who took up his affair with his first love, Camilla, shortly after the births of his sons. Diana did not take kindly to the idea of his having a mistress, and was vocal about it. She did not accept her role as the suffering wife in silence. What always strikes me is that she was so completely naïve about the fact that many of the British royals had affairs, so that it is that much more touching that she actually believed in love and fidelity when she married. Charles may have loved her initially, but he had been denied his right to marry the woman (Camilla) he loved because she was not a virgin, so he did what was expected of him in the public eye but lived his life as he saw fit. We learned all this via the countless TV and newspaper stories that bombarded us at all turns. As Diana’s popularity grew, Charles’ diminished, and that could not have been good for their marriage. But one can imagine Diana’s sense of betrayal, her anger, her sadness, and her inability to accept her role as betrayed wife. She was probably told countless numbers of times to just ‘accept’ her fate, that men were like this, that there was nothing to do about it, to raise her children and to keep her mouth shut. Her inability to accept her fate as well as her desire to punish Charles led to the soap opera that their lives became. But it is exactly that soap opera that changed the British monarchy, to the point where William could marry Kate, a woman he had known for ten years and with whom he had already lived. If Diana’s death changed anything, it created possibilities where there were none before. I remember when Diana died in August 1997; I was glued to the TV along with the millions of other people who sat and watched what transpired in a kind of shock. It didn’t seem possible that someone so beautiful and kind could die so young. And yet she did. I was in Oxford England to attend a scientific conference in September that same year, and it was unbelievable to wander the streets and come to the town center and see the thousands of floral bouquets that people were still placing at public monuments in memory of her. It was incredibly moving to witness. What strikes me when I think of Diana is that she took the energy that she had once given to her marriage and transferred it to her charitable causes. She did not crawl into a cave and wither after her divorce. She remained the important public figure she was. So that somehow, you went from feeling sorry for her to feeling happy for her; she had transformed her life, from sadness to joy. She had her children who loved her and she them.  She was on the verge of starting her new life when she was cut down. It gave her legendary status.

So when I watched the wedding of William and Kate, I was reminded of all the earlier royal weddings to which we have been witness. Reminded of all the promises to love until ‘death do us part’, to love each other ‘in sickness and in health’. It is easy to say those words when you are young and in love, quite another thing to live them and to honor those vows when sickness and hard times hit. Few people are around to provide TV coverage, support, medals or applause for that. A wedding is not a marriage, and no matter how fairytale the wedding, there is no guarantee that the marriage will be likewise. I am glad that my country is not a monarchy; glad that we do not have to spend inordinate sums as taxpayers to help support an outdated system. While the monarchy is interesting from a historical perspective, it does not fascinate in the present. When I look at monarchies, all I see are fallible human beings, often trapped in lives that are conservative and emotionally-stifling. I don’t see the point of monarchies anymore. And if one looks briefly back into history, or if one reads British novels, it is not hard to see that the royalty and the wealthy lived incredibly privileged lives, whereas the poor and middle class, who were taxed to support them, did not. This aspect is also less extreme in Scandinavia; the royalty live well but the standard of living otherwise for the ‘commoners’ is quite high. The question then becomes—what role does the monarchy play these days? What is its function and why is it important to keep a monarchy? I know how I would answer, but I am the ‘rude’ American who is not steeped in centuries of history. It is one thing to watch the royal weddings and scandals on TV and to comment on wedding dresses, hats and the like, quite another to assess the impact of the monarchy on modern society. It has been said that they are good for tourism and charitable causes, and if so, that is a good thing. But still I believe a discussion of their true worth is warranted, especially in England. 

Little pearls of wisdom

I am recommending this article 'Don't get emotionally mugged' written by Martha Beck which showed up on Oprah.com on April 28th of this year. It had a lot of interesting things to say to me and I don't hesitate to recommend it! 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/04/28/stay.good.mood.o/index.html?iref=obinsite

I also recommend another article by the same writer: 'The Cure for self-consciousness' that also can be found on Oprah.com  http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Martha-Becks-Cure-for-Self-Consciousness/1 and which was originally published in Oprah magazine in July 2007.  

There are a lot of self-help books, magazines, articles, shows, and advice out there. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is a huge job, but well-worth it when you find some quality advice. These two articles ‘speak’ to me because the author seems to be genuinely interested in making life better for her readers, and because you get the feeling that she’s been there, done that and learned from it. And what she learned was valuable enough to share, and since she’s a good writer, she can communicate it well. And anything that can make our lives better or change our attitudes for the better is something I want to share with you.

Enjoy………..