The Birds of Oslo

It is not my imagination; there are a multitude of birds in the city of Oslo now. This must reflect the abundance of trees and bushes—plantings that have been prioritized during the past decade’s period of urban renewal that Oslo has undergone. Sparrows, starlings, magpies, blackbirds, pigeons, doves, thrushes, crows, swallows, seagulls, mallard ducks and Canada geese—to name just a few. Not only is the city lovelier after extensive urban renewal, it is livelier in the natural sense. I can lie in bed with my eyes closed, and for a few seconds, imagine that I am not living in a city at all—because we awake to the sound of parent and baby magpies calling to each other in the tree outside our bedroom window. Sometimes when it is quiet in the evenings, you can hear the gulls and the doves calling and chirping to one another, each with their own distinctive sounds. Or when I walk along Kirkeveien road to the tram station at Ullevål Hospital in the morning, I watch the birds forage for insects and worms in the newly-mown grass of the fields that surround the hospital. They’re plucky creatures and they have a lot to teach us, if we only pay attention. The seagulls have discovered the Akerselva River, and they can be seen flying in and around the apartment developments along the river as well as hanging out on the islands of the inner Oslo fjord. Sometimes they’ve landed on the balcony outside our kitchen window, and the noise they make can be deafening. The other day we saw three of them in the road near where we live; someone had tossed a bag of half-eaten chicken onto the road. They were greedily scavenging what remained; my husband commented on the fact that they eat the remains of other birds. In one sense, we can be thankful for their scavenging traits, because they clean up the sea and now even the land. Mallards and geese live along the water, whether it is the Akerselva or the fjord. A pigeon flew into our dining room last week; the weather has been so warm and nice that all the windows in our house are open most of the time. It didn’t seem to be too scared; it flew to the top of the hutch and then out again. It was one of the ‘tagged’ pigeons—those with a small metal band around one leg. I read online that this tagging may be part of an initiative by the Norwegian Bird Association to track the movements of pigeons around the city and the Oslo area in general.

I don’t know much about the different kinds of birds, but am beginning to be inspired to learn more about them. I’d also like to get better at photographing them, but that’s going to be quite tricky. I’m on the internet a lot to search for photos of thrushes and thrashers and other birds that I know really so little about. I found this website for those of you who might be interested in learning about what birds there are to be found in Oslo; there are quite a few, which was pleasant and interesting news to me: http://avibase.bsc-eoc.org/checklist.jsp?region=noos&list=clements

Hanging out

My cactus plants, one of which I call 'cactus man'. Kind of cute, with his head slightly tilted and his lopsided arms hanging out on the edge of the pot. Interesting to watch them grow and sprout arms. Three of the four plants in this pot are clones from one plant. They do well in the warmth of the summer sunshine, like we all do.

My new poem---Beyond this world there lies another

Beyond this world there lies another

Beyond this world there lies another

Peopled by shades that walk among the trees

Elysian Fields the beckoning meadows

The gathering dark the gentle breeze

Stand as in a trance, entranced

On the shore Charon awaits

With his humble ferryboat

Lights upon the water dance

The trip across the river Styx

Who waits upon the shore afar?

For those aboard to disembark

Stumbling blindly in the dark

Who guards the gates of Hades

Cerberus with his three heads

A devilish trinity of sorts

To gather in the souls that dread

Once the ferry crosses over

To the shore of no return

Once the gates behind souls close

Open others at key’s turn

Entry to the netherworld

Place of light, hole of dark

Fate of souls whose lives unraveled

Eternal rest the disembarked

--------------------------------

copyright 2014

Paula M. De Angelis

Quotes about Life

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live like it's heaven on earth.   

― William W. Purkey

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

― Oscar Wilde

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

― Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

― Albert Einstein

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

― Allen Saunders

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

― George Bernard Shaw

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

― Mark Twain

If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there.

― George Harrison

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

― Virginia Woolf

Get busy living or get busy dying.

― Stephen King, Different Seasons

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

― Søren Kierkegaard

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Moments of peace

Everyone has their own idea of what heaven might be like. Mine is a sunny warm summer day, with all the windows in my home open, a soft breeze blowing, and sunlight streaming in from all angles. I’m standing in the kitchen, my favorite room in the house, puttering about, as I love to do. No cares, no worries, completely relaxed. I love that state of mind. Maybe working on a recipe, or re-potting a few of my plants. Or leaning on the sill of an open window, looking out onto the world below and about me. Listening to the birds, talking to the pigeons on the balcony, or watching the yellow jackets as they fly in for a visit and then out again. If our cat was still alive, she would have hopped up onto the sill and joined me, and we would have been looking out at the world together. A little slice of heaven—a world of sunshine and peace, a natural world, peopled by animals, birds, nature, living things. It’s what my heart seeks return to when I’ve managed to move myself far away from it, or when I’ve let the many negative distractions in the world move me away from it. 

The priest at mass tonight talked about the necessity of moving ourselves ‘up’ and away from the dark cellar of depressing or sensational news stories that the media bombards us with, because it is the only way to find inner stillness and peace, both of which are needed for prayer. It’s hard to pray when your mind is full of anxiety and uneasiness, when your mind is stuck in the dark cellar. To leave the cellar means getting up and turning off the TV, or not starting the day by sitting down to breakfast with a newspaper full of depressing news stories. I don’t want to shut out the world, nor do I want to ignore social injustices and moral outrages. I simply want to choose how to let them into my heart and soul and how I want to deal with them. I don’t want to be lectured to or informed by the media that this is what I should be paying attention to, or else. I have realized that I cannot tackle all the injustices in the world; I’ve got to start small and accept that I will make a small difference. Mother Teresa also said something similar to that. You need to start at home or with the situations around you. Otherwise you will end up feeling depressed and defeated because you are not able to make the world into a better place. And that defeated feeling helps no one. So I am thankful for the little moments of heaven that are allowed me in this life. They restore my faith in my ability to make a difference in this world, however small it is.   

Quotes about Guests

If it were not for guests all houses would be graves. --Khalil Gibran

You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is in my power to honour you. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Every house where love abides And friendship is a guest, Is surely home, and home, sweet home For there the heart can rest. --Henry van Dyke

Visitor's footfalls are like medicine; they heal the sick. --African Proverb

The ornaments of your home are the people who smile upon entering time and time again. --Maralee McKee

Any celebration meal to which guests are invited, be they family or friends, should be an occasion for generous hospitality.  --Julian Baggini

If you are a host to your guest, be a host to his dog also. --Russian Proverb

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.  --Tom Peters

Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them.  --Fannie Hurst

One more poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Pilgrim

This is a road

One walks alone;

Narrow the track

And overgrown.

Dark is the way

And hard to find,

When the last village

Drops behind.

Never a footfall

Light to show

Fellow traveler--

Yet I know

Someone before

Has trudged his load

In the same footsteps--

This is a road. 

A beautiful poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh--The Man and the Child

The Man and the Child

It is the man in us who works;

Who earns his daily bread and anxious scans

The evening skies to know tomorrow's plans;

It is the man who hurries as he walks;

Finds courage in a crowd, shouts as he talks;

Who shuts his eyes and burrows through his task;

Who doubts his neighbor and who wears a mask;

Who moves in armor and who hides his tears.

It is the man in us who fears.

It is the child in us who plays;

Who sees no happiness beyond today's;

Who sings for joy; who wonders, and who weeps;

It is the child in us at night who sleeps.

It is the child who silent turns his face,

Open and maskless, naked of defense,

Simple with trust, distilled of all pretense,

To sudden beauty in another's face----

It is the child in us who loves.

The Amazing Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the American author and poet, who was married to Charles Lindbergh, the famous American aviator. Their life together is the stuff of legend—traveling in their own small plane around the world, the kidnapping and murder of their infant son, living in Europe to escape the subsequent media circus, their celebrity status in the USA—all detailed in the individual biographies written about each of them.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh dreamed of and attained a successful literary career in the course of her long life; she lived to be 94 years old and was a poet and author of a number of books. She also learned to fly and accompanied her famous husband on many of his flights as his co-pilot. She was likely unaware of his extramarital affairs with several German women that resulted in a number of children. If she did know, she took her secret with her in death, and coped in life in the way that she knew best--she pursued her writing. This is what she wrote about writing: 

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil……. I am convinced that you must write as if no one were ever going to see it. Write it all, as personally and specifically as you can, as deeply and honestly as you can. … In fact, I think it is the only true way to reach the universal, through the knot-hole of the personal. So do, do go ahead and write it as it boils up: the hot lava from the unconscious. Don’t stop to observe, criticize, or be ‘ironic.’ Just write it, like a letter, without rereading. Later, one can decide what to do.”

--From "Against Wind and Tide: Letters and Journals, 1947-1986", by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2012, Pantheon) 

But it is her wonderful book--Gift from the Sea (published in 1955)--that captured me with its wisdom, inspiration and simplicity. I first read it when I was seventeen and it made a huge impression on me. She wrote about women’s lives and responsibilities and how they often conflicted with the desire to lead an independent life and to pursue a literary career. She wrote the following:

“To be a woman is to have interests and duties, raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essentially circular. We must be open to all points of the compass: husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider's web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes. How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need, and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living. How desirable and how distant is the ideal of the contemplative, artist, or saint -- the inner inviolable core, the single eye.

With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls -- woman's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer. I have only clues, shells from the sea. The bare beauty of the channeled whelk tells me that one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible, I cannot shed my responsibilities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life. I can at least practice for these two weeks the simplification of outward life, as a beginning”.

-- From ''Gift From the Sea''  (1955, Pantheon)

Essence

My new poem, Essence, part of the new collection of poems that I am working on.  

The flowing river does what it does best

Flows

Over rocks and stones

Rushes and roars

Over waterfalls on its way to the sea

Sprays

A delicate rainbow mist

Gem-like droplets hanging in the air

Iridescent

Like sparkling confetti tossed skyward by a child

Hovers then descends

Wanders

Through this ancient city

Weaves

Past buildings it once knew as something else

Factories and watermills

Provides

A peopled river town

History that came to pass and went

Disappears

Flowing onward toward oblivion

Flowing river

Until the day it does and is

No longer………..

copyright 2014

Paula M De Angelis

Good morning from sunny Oslo

I'm posting this photo today because the weather forecast for the week ahead is the opposite of what you see in the photo. Rain is predicted for nearly every day this coming week, along with colder temperatures. In other words, this coming week is the spring weather we should have had in late March. However, in late March and most of April, it was almost as though early summer had arrived, with temperatures in the 60s and 70s. I hope this chilly and rainy spell doesn't last long. But at least I'll have this photo to remind me of the way it was.......

Akrobaten and Oslo S

I was in the neighborhood of the Oslo S train station in the late afternoon. The area south of the station facing the fjord was fairly deserted today, just a few people walking around. No surprise--today is May 1st--Europe's Labor Day. It's a national holiday and most people spend it with friends or family. When I walked back toward the city center proper, there were a lot of people sitting outside in the outdoor cafes or waiting for trams and buses.

I had arranged to meet a few people at the pedestrian bridge called Akrobaten (Acrobat), but we must have gotten our wires crossed so it didn't happen. But it wasn't a lost photography opportunity.  I took advantage of the beautiful weather and the lack of people to snap some shots and to walk across Akrobaten that connects Grønland with Bjørvika. Enjoy......

standing on Acrobat bridge (Akrobaten)

entrance to the Acrobat bridge 

the photographer reflected in the glass of Akrobaten

looking upward--office buildings in Bjørvika

Oslo city buildings reflected in the glass of Akrobaten

Akrobatens nearest neighbor bridge--Nordenga bridge--for cars and pedestrians

whoosh--there goes the Train to the Plane (Flytoget) on its way to Oslo Airport

April news and updates

I was asked to write a short article in English for the Norwegian magazine Our Amazing Norway, which is a magazine written by expats for expats. It published its first issue in 2011. The topic I was asked to write about, interestingly enough (some of my friends might say ironically enough) was ‘figuring out the Norwegian workplace’, something I’ve written extensively about in this blog. Of course I haven’t figured out the Norwegian workplace completely nor have I figured out what Norwegian bosses want. It’s well nigh impossible to come to a complete understanding of either, firstly because there is no such thing as perfect knowledge, secondly—workplaces are different depending on whether you find yourself in the public or private sector, and that would be true in any country. But I was able to give some comments, ideas and tips about how to deal with a new workplace and a new boss in a foreign country.

The magazine itself deals with the daily lives of expats who find themselves in Norway, in a foreign country with very few guideposts on how to survive here if you are a newcomer. You’ve got to be tough and to figure most things out on your own—that was my experience when I moved here over twenty years ago. I wish this kind of magazine had been around when I first came to Norway; perhaps some of my ‘trials and tribulations’ would have been less in number, or less intense in degree, had I been able to read about how others tackled their new workplaces and a new country. The founder and publisher of Our Amazing Norway is Marius Slavinskas, himself an expat, originally from Lithuania. He’s lived in Norway for eighteen years and is married to another expat, an American from California. So we all have something in common—our expat experiences—and those are definitely worth sharing. We ‘speak the same language’, so to speak.  

Our Amazing Norway is published twice a year; my article will appear in the June issue. Check out the magazine online: http://www.ouramazingnorway.com/. They’re also on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ouramazingnorway. I’m so looking forward to the upcoming issue and to seeing my article there. I’ll let you know when the article is published; you will be able to purchase the issue if you so choose or perhaps you’d like to subscribe to the magazine.

I have other news that involves my photography, but I’ll save that for another post, after I find out a bit more of what type of project might be involved.

And finally, I am well into my novel about being an expat and my memories of growing up in Tarrytown and New York. I realized the other day that I finally understand the reason for my extensive photographic documentation of most aspects of my life and that of my family and friends since my early teen years. I was waiting for the day when I would write a novel about my life as an expat from New York. Many of those photos will find their way into my book, along with the stories that accompany them. I’ll update you about the novel’s progress from time to time.

Something about this song I really like.......

'And you know, we're on each other's team'........

Kind of says it all--what's important in life. Nice to be reminded once in a while.





Here are the lyrics to TEAM, written by Lorde and Joel Little:

Wait 'til you’re announced
We’ve not yet lost all our graces
The hounds will stay in chains
Look upon Your Greatness and she'll send the call out
(Send the call out [15x])

Call all the ladies out
They’re in their finery
A hundred jewels on throats
A hundred jewels between teeth
Now bring my boys in
Their skin in craters like the moon
The moon we love like a brother, while he glows through the room

Dancin' around the lies we tell
Dancin' around big eyes as well
Even the comatose they don't dance and tell

[Chorus]
We live in cities you'll never see on screen
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things
Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams
And you know, we're on each other's team

I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air, so there
So all the cups got broke shards beneath our feet but it wasn't my fault
And everyone's competing for a love they won't receive
'Cause what this palace wants is release

[Chorus]
We live in cities you'll never see on screen
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things
Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams
And you know, we're on each other's team

I’m kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air
So there
I’m kinda older than I was when I revelled without a care
So there

[Chorus]
We live in cities you'll never see on screen
Not very pretty, but we sure know how to run things
Living in ruins of a palace within my dreams
And you know, we're on each other's team
We're on each other's team
And you know, we're on each other's team
We're on each other's team
And you know, and you know, and you know

Quotes about Light and Darkness

A Happy Easter to you all!

• I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. ― Jesus Christ
• The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God. ― Thomas Merton
• It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness. ― Peter Benenson
• Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness. ― Anne Frank
• When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow. ― Ursula K. Le Guin
• How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world. ― William Shakespeare
• It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. ― Arthur Conan Doyle
• Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.  ― Martin Luther King Jr.
• We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are. ― J.K. Rowling
• Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win. ― Steve Maraboli
• Love is not consolation. It is light. ― Simone Weil
• Light, Light, The visible reminder of Invisible Light. ― T.S. Eliot
• You have to find what sparks a light in you so that you in your own way can illuminate the world. ― Oprah Winfrey
• Most of us are imprisoned by something. We're living in darkness until something flips on the switch. ― Wynonna Judd
• But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.  ― Rick Yancey
• Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred... ― Yehuda Berg
• Anxiously you ask, 'Is there a way to safety? Can someone guide me? Is there an escape from threatened destruction?' The answer is a resounding yes! I counsel you: Look to the lighthouse of the Lord. There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost but what its beacon light can rescue. It beckons through the storms of life. It calls, 'This way to safety; this way to home. ― Thomas S. Monson