M., the t.v. producer, left for London today. The husband is off working, so I saw M. into his cab, feeling sombre in the cold and dark afternoon. We'll see him again at New Year's since the husband decided that we'll have a grand New Year's feast at our apartment with all the best of Stockholm society - the usual crew of photographers and producers and models and actresses and cultural attachés and priests and policemen and editors. Including M., of course. But no one knows when or if he'll ever be back for good.
So I'm wallowing in my melancholy, listening to Handel's Judas Maccabeus even if today is more appropriate for listening to a Requiem, considering it was All Souls Day on Friday. (I'd even gotten a last-minute invitation from Linnéa to go see the Verdi Requiem, but I needed to see M. off instead). As I'm listening, a soprano starts singing about "pious orgies, pious airs" and I can't help laughing at the thought of pious orgies. So I get myself some ice cream, which is as close as I get to a pious orgy.
I have to resort to vanilla with chocolate sauce on account of we have no real chocolate - I belong to the chocolate camp as opposed to the vanilla camp when it comes to pious orgies.
What's your position on pious orgies?
The Swedish phrase for the day is rest bort. It means gone away.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, November 03, 2002
Thursday, October 31, 2002
There is a certain type of Stockholm restaurant that has 6- to 7-meter-high ceilings with lovely murals dimmed by decades of smoke, big windows of clear and lavender and pale green glass, and the original Jugend-style tables and chairs from circa 1910, the whole place disarmingly evocative of a bygone era. The food is invariably husmans kost - meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries, or veal hash with an egg on top and beets on the side - in other words, good old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs Swedish food that was assuredly as popular when the restaurant opened, nearly a century ago, as it is today.
Pelikan is my favorite of all these graceful old restaurants. Which is where the husband and I sat last night with A., the former model and aspiring producer and her fiancé, C., the photographer.
"They didn't give me exactly the salary I asked for, " A. told us, in between bites of potato. "But I'm going to take the job anyway."
A. is no longer an aspiring producer anymore. She has been promoted to assistant director.
Here's to you, A., the assistant director.
- by Francis S.
Pelikan is my favorite of all these graceful old restaurants. Which is where the husband and I sat last night with A., the former model and aspiring producer and her fiancé, C., the photographer.
"They didn't give me exactly the salary I asked for, " A. told us, in between bites of potato. "But I'm going to take the job anyway."
A. is no longer an aspiring producer anymore. She has been promoted to assistant director.
Here's to you, A., the assistant director.
- by Francis S.
In case you were thinking of sending me an e-mail, I thought you should know that I have a new e-mail address.
- by Francis S.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
I am a time optimist. If it's really important, I'm there on time. But if no one will be insulted or think I'm unprofessional or there's no plane to miss, I have trouble getting there exactly when I think I will.
So the husband, who had the day off, arrived armed with a lasagne and a princess tårta at the apartment of the priest and the policeman 20 minutes before I did. He was only 40 minutes late.
We are quite the horrible pair of time optimists.
By the time I'd arrived, the lasagne was half gone because the baby was fussing and hungry and her mother the priest wanted to get in her own meal before serving up another one.
After everyone was fed, the baby lay squirming against her mother's cheek, as newborn babies squirm. "Aren't her ears just so, so - I wish I could keep them in my wallet!" the priest said.
The Swedish word for the day is babybjörn. Swedes claim it's a Swedish invention - a baby carrier that allows you to strap your infant comfortably to your chest. Of course baby means baby, and björn means bear, as in the animal.
- by Francis S.
So the husband, who had the day off, arrived armed with a lasagne and a princess tårta at the apartment of the priest and the policeman 20 minutes before I did. He was only 40 minutes late.
We are quite the horrible pair of time optimists.
By the time I'd arrived, the lasagne was half gone because the baby was fussing and hungry and her mother the priest wanted to get in her own meal before serving up another one.
After everyone was fed, the baby lay squirming against her mother's cheek, as newborn babies squirm. "Aren't her ears just so, so - I wish I could keep them in my wallet!" the priest said.
The Swedish word for the day is babybjörn. Swedes claim it's a Swedish invention - a baby carrier that allows you to strap your infant comfortably to your chest. Of course baby means baby, and björn means bear, as in the animal.
- by Francis S.
Monday, October 28, 2002
Friday, October 25, 2002
Some two and half hours north of Stockholm by train stands a manor house outside an ancient iron works. If you're lucky enough to be a guest of one of Sweden's large paper mills, you'll get to stay in the house, which is owned by the mill and has been restored to within an inch of its quaint 250-year-old life, all painted ceilings and reconstructed wallpaper and Gustavian chairs painted grey-green. But not so authentic that the bathroom floors aren't heated.
If you're even luckier, you'll be taken out into the woods some 70 kilometers north, where a guide who is Sweden's version of Crocodile Dundee - shall we call him Moose Svensson? - will usher you into a frigid nursery where hundreds of thousands of tiny fir trees sit under dim lights and dripping ceilings, and your guide Mr. Svensson can pour an entire forest's worth of seeds into your open palm.
Then, the charming Mr. Svensson can drive even further into the wilderness, past a line where everything goes from being silvery with frost to being covered under a foot of snow. Deep in the woods, Mr. Svensson will hit upon real old-fashioned lumberjacks. Except these lumberjacks drive monstrous machines that clutch and saw and strip a tree in seconds, so that you can't help but feel sorry for the tree while still remaining utterly fascinated by the diabolical cleverness of it.
Then your Mr. Svensson can haul out rolls with soft cheese and chrome thermoses full of hot soup with the gamey rich taste of moose meat. And he can build a fire in the snow and make coffee that tastes like mud over the fire, and there will be a hardy nordic mosquito or two that have, to everyone's horror, survived the snow.
Then, the girls who are with you can scream, not because they've seen a bear or a moose, but rather a mouse. And you can make a silly Swedish English joke about seeing a mus, which sounds pretty much like moose, and tell it to all the girls who laugh at you. And to Mr. Svensson of course, whose eyes twinkle in a most delightful way and laughs like the best of them, as he takes you back to the mill and the train that will bring you home to the city.
The Swedish word for the day is plantskola. It literally means plant school, which brings all sorts of funny pictures to mind of little trees learning how to become the proper shade of green and grow upwards instead of sideways. However, the proper translation of the word would be nursery.
- by Francis S.
If you're even luckier, you'll be taken out into the woods some 70 kilometers north, where a guide who is Sweden's version of Crocodile Dundee - shall we call him Moose Svensson? - will usher you into a frigid nursery where hundreds of thousands of tiny fir trees sit under dim lights and dripping ceilings, and your guide Mr. Svensson can pour an entire forest's worth of seeds into your open palm.
Then, the charming Mr. Svensson can drive even further into the wilderness, past a line where everything goes from being silvery with frost to being covered under a foot of snow. Deep in the woods, Mr. Svensson will hit upon real old-fashioned lumberjacks. Except these lumberjacks drive monstrous machines that clutch and saw and strip a tree in seconds, so that you can't help but feel sorry for the tree while still remaining utterly fascinated by the diabolical cleverness of it.
Then your Mr. Svensson can haul out rolls with soft cheese and chrome thermoses full of hot soup with the gamey rich taste of moose meat. And he can build a fire in the snow and make coffee that tastes like mud over the fire, and there will be a hardy nordic mosquito or two that have, to everyone's horror, survived the snow.
Then, the girls who are with you can scream, not because they've seen a bear or a moose, but rather a mouse. And you can make a silly Swedish English joke about seeing a mus, which sounds pretty much like moose, and tell it to all the girls who laugh at you. And to Mr. Svensson of course, whose eyes twinkle in a most delightful way and laughs like the best of them, as he takes you back to the mill and the train that will bring you home to the city.
The Swedish word for the day is plantskola. It literally means plant school, which brings all sorts of funny pictures to mind of little trees learning how to become the proper shade of green and grow upwards instead of sideways. However, the proper translation of the word would be nursery.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
We sat holding our collective breath in the first balcony in the dark of the Stadsteatern, one of Stockholm's two great public theaters, waiting for the scene toward the end of the second act in A Doll's House where the poor maid gets slapped for no reason, no reason at all.
We'd been prepared by my friend the actress, who plays the maid.
Apparently, during one of the early performances, the actress who plays Nora, a renowned Swedish diva of sorts, had slapped my friend but good and hard. "That really hurt," my friend said to her afterwards. "Why did you do that?"
The diva of sorts went all apologetic. She was having a bad day, or someone was mean to her, or someone had slapped her, or something.
The next day, however, in anticipation of the slap, my friend flinched.
The diva of sorts hasn't done it again, although last night's slap looked pretty damned realistic to me.
We - M., the t.v. producer, A., the former model and aspiring producer, and a gaggle of A.'s friends who had all been schoolgirls together in gymnasium - were so happy when our friend the actress came out for her bows with the huge bouquet of flowers we'd sent to her dressing room, a bouquet far bigger and lovelier than the pathetic red stalk or two of gladiolus that the diva of sorts had.
It is, I have no doubt, the beginning of what will surely be a spectacular career.
My poor darling husband missed it all on account of he was working. And then he was too tired to join us at Café Beirut afterwards, where we stuffed ourselves on an embarrassing amount of little dishes of spicy sausages and eggplant salads and savory pastries and artichokes soaking in garlic and lemon. Then for dessert we smoked strange perfumey tobacco from a tremendous water pipe as we lolled about on silk cushions, stuffed to the tips of our ears down to the ends of our toes.
I guess I didn't last very long this round. I bought a pack of cigarettes at lunch this afternoon.
The Swedish phrase for the day is stor succé. It means great success.
- by Francis S.
We'd been prepared by my friend the actress, who plays the maid.
Apparently, during one of the early performances, the actress who plays Nora, a renowned Swedish diva of sorts, had slapped my friend but good and hard. "That really hurt," my friend said to her afterwards. "Why did you do that?"
The diva of sorts went all apologetic. She was having a bad day, or someone was mean to her, or someone had slapped her, or something.
The next day, however, in anticipation of the slap, my friend flinched.
The diva of sorts hasn't done it again, although last night's slap looked pretty damned realistic to me.
We - M., the t.v. producer, A., the former model and aspiring producer, and a gaggle of A.'s friends who had all been schoolgirls together in gymnasium - were so happy when our friend the actress came out for her bows with the huge bouquet of flowers we'd sent to her dressing room, a bouquet far bigger and lovelier than the pathetic red stalk or two of gladiolus that the diva of sorts had.
It is, I have no doubt, the beginning of what will surely be a spectacular career.
My poor darling husband missed it all on account of he was working. And then he was too tired to join us at Café Beirut afterwards, where we stuffed ourselves on an embarrassing amount of little dishes of spicy sausages and eggplant salads and savory pastries and artichokes soaking in garlic and lemon. Then for dessert we smoked strange perfumey tobacco from a tremendous water pipe as we lolled about on silk cushions, stuffed to the tips of our ears down to the ends of our toes.
I guess I didn't last very long this round. I bought a pack of cigarettes at lunch this afternoon.
The Swedish phrase for the day is stor succé. It means great success.
- by Francis S.
Monday, October 21, 2002
Sunday, October 20, 2002
The heavy arm of autumn dropped roughly on all the chestnut trees in Stockholm very early Saturday morning, before the leaves could even change color. So we walked briskly to the subway on Saturday evening through piles of chestnut leaves, still green but crisp and shining with frost. We ran into friends as we walked, making us late, later, latest. We were on our way to a birthday dinner at the apartment of the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband the South African publicist.
When we arrived, who should be sitting in the living room but the American ballerina and her husband the sailor.
Which wasn't in fact a surprise: We knew they'd be there. (But it was a suprise when at lunch with the guy from the Goethe Institute several weeks ago, he and I somehow figured out that we had a mutual friend in the American ballerina. Stockholm is such a teeny-tiny place.)
We ate all sorts of lovely courses with white truffles and cheese and tomatoes and peppers and chicken with South African spices. And we talked about sailing beautiful wooden boats from the '30s across the Baltic, eating sheeps' eyeballs, and cutting one's hair.
"It was so strange when I cut my hair," the American ballerina said. She was remembering when she retired from the dance company and she had had her long hair cut short. A symbolic act, since ballerinas apparently are supposed to have lovely long hair pulled up into a tight bun.
"It was amazing how heavy the hair was when I held it in my hand," she said. "And it was strange not to be able to roll my neck and feel it brushing my back nicely."
I wondered if she had kept the hair that had been cut off, as a souvenir.
No, she said. She'd given it to one of the Stockholm theaters or theater schools to be made into a wig or glued onto some poor actor's chin as a false beard. "Asian hair is very good, strong and easy to dye," she told us, fifth-generation Chinese American that she is. But her hair had not always been strong.
"When I was 15, my hair was too thin to pull back like a proper ballerina, so my grandmother gave me her hair," she continued. Her grandmother had apparently not given away her hair when she had had it cut. So the American ballerina had pinned the thick braid to her own hair when she danced, wound into a thick bun.
How strange and how poetic, to dance at 15 with your grandmother's hair pinned to your own, giving your grandmother a chance somehow to dance with the legs of a 15-year-old again.
The Swedish word for the day is ett hårstrå. It means a hair.
- by Francis S.
When we arrived, who should be sitting in the living room but the American ballerina and her husband the sailor.
Which wasn't in fact a surprise: We knew they'd be there. (But it was a suprise when at lunch with the guy from the Goethe Institute several weeks ago, he and I somehow figured out that we had a mutual friend in the American ballerina. Stockholm is such a teeny-tiny place.)
We ate all sorts of lovely courses with white truffles and cheese and tomatoes and peppers and chicken with South African spices. And we talked about sailing beautiful wooden boats from the '30s across the Baltic, eating sheeps' eyeballs, and cutting one's hair.
"It was so strange when I cut my hair," the American ballerina said. She was remembering when she retired from the dance company and she had had her long hair cut short. A symbolic act, since ballerinas apparently are supposed to have lovely long hair pulled up into a tight bun.
"It was amazing how heavy the hair was when I held it in my hand," she said. "And it was strange not to be able to roll my neck and feel it brushing my back nicely."
I wondered if she had kept the hair that had been cut off, as a souvenir.
No, she said. She'd given it to one of the Stockholm theaters or theater schools to be made into a wig or glued onto some poor actor's chin as a false beard. "Asian hair is very good, strong and easy to dye," she told us, fifth-generation Chinese American that she is. But her hair had not always been strong.
"When I was 15, my hair was too thin to pull back like a proper ballerina, so my grandmother gave me her hair," she continued. Her grandmother had apparently not given away her hair when she had had it cut. So the American ballerina had pinned the thick braid to her own hair when she danced, wound into a thick bun.
How strange and how poetic, to dance at 15 with your grandmother's hair pinned to your own, giving your grandmother a chance somehow to dance with the legs of a 15-year-old again.
The Swedish word for the day is ett hårstrå. It means a hair.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, October 19, 2002
M., the t.v. producer, has decided he's moving to London. He sold his production company more than a year ago, and Stockholm is too small a pond for him to get anywhere further, so he's going to try to hit the bigger time in a bigger place.
So, to soften the blow for those of us who will remain here (uh, that would be the husband and I), he's spoiling us by spending the evening with us every couple of days.
Last night, I made a lasagne and we sat and watched movies and talked.
"Jesper and I decided that all men are gay," M. said, tucking into the lasagne. "I mean, every man spends an awful lot of time touching a penis, right? So shouldn't that mean that they're gay?"
I won't go into M. and Jesper's further revelation about men and their mothers.
The Swedish verb for the day is att tvivla. It means to doubt.
- by Francis S.
So, to soften the blow for those of us who will remain here (uh, that would be the husband and I), he's spoiling us by spending the evening with us every couple of days.
Last night, I made a lasagne and we sat and watched movies and talked.
"Jesper and I decided that all men are gay," M. said, tucking into the lasagne. "I mean, every man spends an awful lot of time touching a penis, right? So shouldn't that mean that they're gay?"
I won't go into M. and Jesper's further revelation about men and their mothers.
The Swedish verb for the day is att tvivla. It means to doubt.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, October 17, 2002
As I was walking from lunch, my phone rang just as I was about to enter the building.
"Hey, what's up?"
It was my buddy, R., in town on a one-day business trip from Helsinki.
"I'm getting my haircut at 1:30," he said. "I've got to catch the train back to the airport at 4:30. How's about it?"
So he stopped by the office with a co-worker at about 3:00 and I said that we should get the hell out of there. We meandered on over toward Stureplan, popping in at the bar of the Lydmar Hotel but leaving because a band was doing a soundcheck. We eventually settled in at Sturehof, R. and his co-worker taking beers, me with a coca-cola on account of I've been sick for the past three days and my stomach is a bit tetchy.
R. wanted to pay for the coca-cola, but I gave him a 20-kronor note, telling him it was for the Hilda fund.
"I have to tell you guys," R. said. "Remember how I bought a guitar in February and then I had lessons in March? Well, my guitar broke and I brought it in and they gave me a new one. So then I spent the summer playing the one song that I know, "Proud Mary" and Jessica, the most patient girlfriend in the world, telling me maybe it would be a good idea to learn one more song, just one more. But then when we got back from two weeks in the States, we walked into the kitchen and the guitar was leaning against the wall and the part that holds the strings was completely broken off again. Well, I finally brought it back because I got it in Stockholm and I go into the store and this guy Stevie is standing there talking about how he was on tour and his guitar got all smashed up. 'Can I help you, man?' the guy behind the counter said to me. And I showed him the guitar. 'Aw - what should we do, Stevie?' the guy said. Stevie said to give me another new guitar, no questions asked, and I didn't even have a receipt."
R. was triumphant.
"I love those kind of places with a guy named Stevie and where they trust you enough that they don't even ask for a receipt!"
The Swedish word for the day is konto. It means account.
- by Francis S.
"Hey, what's up?"
It was my buddy, R., in town on a one-day business trip from Helsinki.
"I'm getting my haircut at 1:30," he said. "I've got to catch the train back to the airport at 4:30. How's about it?"
So he stopped by the office with a co-worker at about 3:00 and I said that we should get the hell out of there. We meandered on over toward Stureplan, popping in at the bar of the Lydmar Hotel but leaving because a band was doing a soundcheck. We eventually settled in at Sturehof, R. and his co-worker taking beers, me with a coca-cola on account of I've been sick for the past three days and my stomach is a bit tetchy.
R. wanted to pay for the coca-cola, but I gave him a 20-kronor note, telling him it was for the Hilda fund.
"I have to tell you guys," R. said. "Remember how I bought a guitar in February and then I had lessons in March? Well, my guitar broke and I brought it in and they gave me a new one. So then I spent the summer playing the one song that I know, "Proud Mary" and Jessica, the most patient girlfriend in the world, telling me maybe it would be a good idea to learn one more song, just one more. But then when we got back from two weeks in the States, we walked into the kitchen and the guitar was leaning against the wall and the part that holds the strings was completely broken off again. Well, I finally brought it back because I got it in Stockholm and I go into the store and this guy Stevie is standing there talking about how he was on tour and his guitar got all smashed up. 'Can I help you, man?' the guy behind the counter said to me. And I showed him the guitar. 'Aw - what should we do, Stevie?' the guy said. Stevie said to give me another new guitar, no questions asked, and I didn't even have a receipt."
R. was triumphant.
"I love those kind of places with a guy named Stevie and where they trust you enough that they don't even ask for a receipt!"
The Swedish word for the day is konto. It means account.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, October 13, 2002
When I lived in Barcelona, I had a tendency to set my life to music.
I would walk home empty-handed and a bit disappointed at 7 a.m. from a club to the heartachingly lonely sound of Mompou and his Cancion No. 5 playing mournfully (yet sweetly) in my head.
For some reason, these days I don't have the distance to accompany myself with a soundtrack. But if I did, I suppose it would be Prokofiev's "Arrival of the Guests" from Romeo and Juliet, all deep harsh strings hacking away at the air.
What's on your soundtrack these days?
The Swedish phrase for the day is fattiga riddare. It literally means poor knights, but an American would call it french toast.
- by Francis S.
I would walk home empty-handed and a bit disappointed at 7 a.m. from a club to the heartachingly lonely sound of Mompou and his Cancion No. 5 playing mournfully (yet sweetly) in my head.
For some reason, these days I don't have the distance to accompany myself with a soundtrack. But if I did, I suppose it would be Prokofiev's "Arrival of the Guests" from Romeo and Juliet, all deep harsh strings hacking away at the air.
What's on your soundtrack these days?
The Swedish phrase for the day is fattiga riddare. It literally means poor knights, but an American would call it french toast.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, October 12, 2002
After a week of work which weighed more heavily on me than any other week of work I can remember, it was all I could do yesterday to drag myself through the cold streets of Stockholm and up the five flights of stairs to the apartment where the husband was preparing an impromptu dinner party.
I didn't want to have an impromptu dinner party. I wanted to moan and bitch and lay about. I wanted to sink on the couch and wallow in the laziness that is my due, considering the circumstances. I didn't feel like chatting with anyone or listening to an evening of Swedish.
"Hello," M., the t.v. producer said in his crazy cartoon voice when I unlocked the door of our apartment and poked my head into the hall.
Somehow, I made a mental about face, and after a couple sips of cheap but tasty shiraz from Australia and a cigarette, I realized that a night with all my favorite people was in fact the perfect antidote to the emotional hangover that I had just about given in to. I was so very happy when A., the former model and aspiring producer came in - it seemed like weeks and weeks since I'd last seen her.
I ate my salad of rocket and beets, and my stew of just about every root vegetable one could imagine, and I actually enjoyed every bite even though I've never been overly fond of beets or turnips or parsnips or those strange sticky black carrot-shaped root things that the husband so loves. Especially those strange sticky black carrot-shaped root things.
I savored the figs and ice cream.
People ever so politely asked me if they should speak English and I told them to continue in Swedish, and although the wine got the better of me somewhere during dessert and I lost my focus a wee bit, all the dreadful meetings in Swedish earlier in the day were forgotten and somehow it didn't weary me at all to continue in Swedish, not even the gargly southern Skånska accent of the football player - the boyfriend of A.'s little sister.
"How do you translate kuf?" A. asked. I don't remember how we got on the subject, I only remember that A. didn't agree with the very British-sounding dictionary definition - odd customer, rum fellow - or my own interpretation - oddball, weirdo, strange guy, eccentric. "No, it's not so negative; Albert Einstein was probably a kuf."
But, at A.'s request, kuf remains the Swedish word for the day, although apparently I don't have a proper definition. Perhaps someone else does?
- by Francis S.
I didn't want to have an impromptu dinner party. I wanted to moan and bitch and lay about. I wanted to sink on the couch and wallow in the laziness that is my due, considering the circumstances. I didn't feel like chatting with anyone or listening to an evening of Swedish.
"Hello," M., the t.v. producer said in his crazy cartoon voice when I unlocked the door of our apartment and poked my head into the hall.
Somehow, I made a mental about face, and after a couple sips of cheap but tasty shiraz from Australia and a cigarette, I realized that a night with all my favorite people was in fact the perfect antidote to the emotional hangover that I had just about given in to. I was so very happy when A., the former model and aspiring producer came in - it seemed like weeks and weeks since I'd last seen her.
I ate my salad of rocket and beets, and my stew of just about every root vegetable one could imagine, and I actually enjoyed every bite even though I've never been overly fond of beets or turnips or parsnips or those strange sticky black carrot-shaped root things that the husband so loves. Especially those strange sticky black carrot-shaped root things.
I savored the figs and ice cream.
People ever so politely asked me if they should speak English and I told them to continue in Swedish, and although the wine got the better of me somewhere during dessert and I lost my focus a wee bit, all the dreadful meetings in Swedish earlier in the day were forgotten and somehow it didn't weary me at all to continue in Swedish, not even the gargly southern Skånska accent of the football player - the boyfriend of A.'s little sister.
"How do you translate kuf?" A. asked. I don't remember how we got on the subject, I only remember that A. didn't agree with the very British-sounding dictionary definition - odd customer, rum fellow - or my own interpretation - oddball, weirdo, strange guy, eccentric. "No, it's not so negative; Albert Einstein was probably a kuf."
But, at A.'s request, kuf remains the Swedish word for the day, although apparently I don't have a proper definition. Perhaps someone else does?
- by Francis S.
Monday, October 07, 2002
Sunday, October 06, 2002
They all do it. Or as Mozart preferred to put it, Così fan tutte.
At Folkoperan, what they all do is spend time in the WC. That would be in the staging of the opera I saw last night with the guys. And that would be M., the t.v. producer, the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband the South African publicist. Following the overture, the opera began with three of the footlights rising from the stage to reveal clear tubes of bubbling yellow water and the three male leads unzipping to use the shell-covered lights as urinals as they sang the opening trio, complete with realistic crotch-adjustment and droplet-shaking gestures.
It was not as cheap as it sounds.
In fact, the plot of Così fan tutte is so awful - and sexist - that the best way to redeem it is to turn it into farce as they did at Folkoperan, which somehow contrasts wonderfully with the sublime duets and trios and quartets and quintets and sextets of the opera (there are a few arias, but not many - the opera is mostly a series of shimmering ensembles).
As the guy from the Goethe Institute said, "Mozart would have loved it." As did I.
All that onstage sexual romping set the tone for much of the discussion of the rest of the evening: broad innuendo, mostly from M., who is in his element eating dinner in a crowded brasserie surrounded by a bunch of amused homosexualists. Although I'm not altogether sure what the German friends of the guy from the Goethe Institute thought of M., or of any of us for that matter, all of us talking so loudly, laughing at the stupidest things, our mouths open and showing tiny packets of snuff jammed between our teeth and upper lips.
The Swedish verb for the day is att flörta. It means to flirt.
- by Francis S.
At Folkoperan, what they all do is spend time in the WC. That would be in the staging of the opera I saw last night with the guys. And that would be M., the t.v. producer, the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband the South African publicist. Following the overture, the opera began with three of the footlights rising from the stage to reveal clear tubes of bubbling yellow water and the three male leads unzipping to use the shell-covered lights as urinals as they sang the opening trio, complete with realistic crotch-adjustment and droplet-shaking gestures.
It was not as cheap as it sounds.
In fact, the plot of Così fan tutte is so awful - and sexist - that the best way to redeem it is to turn it into farce as they did at Folkoperan, which somehow contrasts wonderfully with the sublime duets and trios and quartets and quintets and sextets of the opera (there are a few arias, but not many - the opera is mostly a series of shimmering ensembles).
As the guy from the Goethe Institute said, "Mozart would have loved it." As did I.
All that onstage sexual romping set the tone for much of the discussion of the rest of the evening: broad innuendo, mostly from M., who is in his element eating dinner in a crowded brasserie surrounded by a bunch of amused homosexualists. Although I'm not altogether sure what the German friends of the guy from the Goethe Institute thought of M., or of any of us for that matter, all of us talking so loudly, laughing at the stupidest things, our mouths open and showing tiny packets of snuff jammed between our teeth and upper lips.
The Swedish verb for the day is att flörta. It means to flirt.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, October 03, 2002
The Madman Drawn Quickly
You can see the lack of balance in his eyes, a pale blue ring around the contracted irises, the eyes of a feral dog. Then there is the endless flitting about, an effort to escape the helplessness of standing still in one place. Action and distraction are what he supposes he needs. He cannot listen, but he can talk. What he says suddenly, over and over, is that he cares, but everyone knows he's lying. His is a loud desperation, willing to take everything and everyone down with it.
The Swedish word for the day is tokig. It means crazy.
- by Francis S.
You can see the lack of balance in his eyes, a pale blue ring around the contracted irises, the eyes of a feral dog. Then there is the endless flitting about, an effort to escape the helplessness of standing still in one place. Action and distraction are what he supposes he needs. He cannot listen, but he can talk. What he says suddenly, over and over, is that he cares, but everyone knows he's lying. His is a loud desperation, willing to take everything and everyone down with it.
The Swedish word for the day is tokig. It means crazy.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
My mother and father spent the weekend at a conference for people who love and want to make things better for homosexualists like myself.
P-FLAG. Or Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, if you dislike using acronyms.
My parents received some helpful hints.
"I talked to a woman who told me that every time she gets a call from someone selling something, she asks them if their company has an anti-discrimination policy and if they give partner benefits to gay couples," my mother said. "She said that she doesn't give up either, she asks to speak for their supervisor. Isn't that great?"
She was jubilant, and I could feel her smile these thousands of miles away.
Yes, Mom. That is indeed great.
While the lovely Miss X made a request for a Swedish phrase of the day involving Ericsson and possible future layoffs, I regret that I am such a chickenshit that I don't want to incur the wrath of the company. So instead, Jacqueline, I give you jävlar, satan och helvete. The literal translation would be devils, satan and hell, but a better coloquial translation might be fuck, fuck and fuck were it not for American cultural imperialism and the fact that the Swedish word for fuck has become, well, fuck.
- by Francis S.
P-FLAG. Or Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, if you dislike using acronyms.
My parents received some helpful hints.
"I talked to a woman who told me that every time she gets a call from someone selling something, she asks them if their company has an anti-discrimination policy and if they give partner benefits to gay couples," my mother said. "She said that she doesn't give up either, she asks to speak for their supervisor. Isn't that great?"
She was jubilant, and I could feel her smile these thousands of miles away.
Yes, Mom. That is indeed great.
While the lovely Miss X made a request for a Swedish phrase of the day involving Ericsson and possible future layoffs, I regret that I am such a chickenshit that I don't want to incur the wrath of the company. So instead, Jacqueline, I give you jävlar, satan och helvete. The literal translation would be devils, satan and hell, but a better coloquial translation might be fuck, fuck and fuck were it not for American cultural imperialism and the fact that the Swedish word for fuck has become, well, fuck.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Whenever I'm back in the States, the most dismaying experience is that everyone speaks English and I can understand every single word everyone is saying and I can't help thinking most people should keep their voices down and think more before they say all those awful things they're saying because, well, everyone can understand and aren't they embarrassed?
The second most dismaying experience is going to a grocery store. The husband goes into an orgiastic ecstacy at the staggering choice of items, but I become a tower of doubt. How do I possibly choose from among 30 different kinds of strawberry jam? I go into a trancelike state and have to be dragged from the aisles to the checkout by one of my siblings or my father, the husband happily trailing behind.
However, Sweden beats American grocery stores when it comes to one item: bread.
Yeast breads and flat breads, rye breads and whole wheat breads, Danish breads and Finnish breads, sweet breads and heavy breads, dark breads and that awful white bread for toasting. And then there are the crisp breads: breakfast and whole grain and sport and bagatelle and thin, Wasa and Leksand and at least four or five other common brands.
How can I ever choose?
The Swedish phrase for the day is för sig. It means individually.
- by Francis S.
The second most dismaying experience is going to a grocery store. The husband goes into an orgiastic ecstacy at the staggering choice of items, but I become a tower of doubt. How do I possibly choose from among 30 different kinds of strawberry jam? I go into a trancelike state and have to be dragged from the aisles to the checkout by one of my siblings or my father, the husband happily trailing behind.
However, Sweden beats American grocery stores when it comes to one item: bread.
Yeast breads and flat breads, rye breads and whole wheat breads, Danish breads and Finnish breads, sweet breads and heavy breads, dark breads and that awful white bread for toasting. And then there are the crisp breads: breakfast and whole grain and sport and bagatelle and thin, Wasa and Leksand and at least four or five other common brands.
How can I ever choose?
The Swedish phrase for the day is för sig. It means individually.
- by Francis S.
Friday, September 27, 2002
I have a very low tolerance for anything that gives off even the slightest hint of a new age stink. I am skeptical, and I don't plan on changing any time soon. So, I worry that the husband drinks a shot glass of foul-tasting aloe vera juice every morning. This kind of homeopathic remedy for nothing in particular makes me worry that in fact it's probably damaging the husband's liver or something. A little research eventually assuaged my fears that it could be somehow harmful, but did nothing for my native skepticism.
So it is with some surprise that I found myself this evening lying on a rubber mat with the husband at my feet and our neighbor, L., the chef, to my right, listening to a yoga instructor melodiously instruct us in various yoga exercises, the Sanskrit names of which I can't remember for the life of me.
It's harder to be skeptical in Swedish, I've found. Plus, who am I to argue with thousands of years of Indian culture?
It felt great, but I still have my doubts about clean versus dirty sweat, kidneys heating up and poisons being leached from the body, and the existence of two spiral thingamajigs that circle the backbone.
It's the breathing and concentration that do it for me.
The Swedish word for the day is rimligt. It means reasonable.
- by Francis S.
So it is with some surprise that I found myself this evening lying on a rubber mat with the husband at my feet and our neighbor, L., the chef, to my right, listening to a yoga instructor melodiously instruct us in various yoga exercises, the Sanskrit names of which I can't remember for the life of me.
It's harder to be skeptical in Swedish, I've found. Plus, who am I to argue with thousands of years of Indian culture?
It felt great, but I still have my doubts about clean versus dirty sweat, kidneys heating up and poisons being leached from the body, and the existence of two spiral thingamajigs that circle the backbone.
It's the breathing and concentration that do it for me.
The Swedish word for the day is rimligt. It means reasonable.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, September 26, 2002
I've only ever read one short story of hers - "A Dream of Winter" - and I've looked and looked for her book Dusty Answer but have never succeeded in finding it. Rosamund Lehmann, how could they let you languish like this?
But wait, I've spoken too soon. It seems Virago Press has kept her in print...
The Swedish phrase for the day is för mycket jobb. It means too much work. I'm so tired.
- by Francis S.
But wait, I've spoken too soon. It seems Virago Press has kept her in print...
The Swedish phrase for the day is för mycket jobb. It means too much work. I'm so tired.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Cleanliness is next to godliness. Or so my mother has trained me. Which means that when I come home and smell that the husband has just mopped the floors with some kind of Swedish soap that smells just like the Murphy's oil soap my mother used to use, my sense of well-being is instantly lifted.
The smell of Murphy's oil soap doesn't have quite the impact on me that Proust's famous madeleine dipped in lime twig tisane had on him. But then my life isn't quite as lapidary as Proust's was.
The Swedish phrase for the day is påminnelse. It means reminder.
- by Francis S.
The smell of Murphy's oil soap doesn't have quite the impact on me that Proust's famous madeleine dipped in lime twig tisane had on him. But then my life isn't quite as lapidary as Proust's was.
The Swedish phrase for the day is påminnelse. It means reminder.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Saturday, September 21, 2002
The rasta record shop on Farmer Street below our apartment is open later than any other shop on the street. Sometimes there's a decided, uh, ganja smell, and occasionally the music is loud, but the fact is, the owner is best of all the shopowners on the street at keeping the sidewalk clean. And whenever I see him I say "hej" or "tja" and he always says "bless."
I like being blessed. A little prayer for me from the owner of the rasta record shop.
The Swedish word for the day is gräs. It means grass, in both senses of the English word.
- by Francis S.
I like being blessed. A little prayer for me from the owner of the rasta record shop.
The Swedish word for the day is gräs. It means grass, in both senses of the English word.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, September 19, 2002
"...the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells..."
The first wristwatch I owned was given to me on my 8th birthday. I lost it within three weeks.
It wasn't until I was 26 and working at my first real job that I bought one myself - my second wristwatch. Since then, I feel as if I couldn't possibly live without one. As I suppose the majority of the people I know feel.
And so it is curious that I love the tolling of the bells in the neighborhood, instinctively counting each knell to see what time it is. The bells I can hear from my window here are rather hollow and unmelodious, although not nearly as hollow and ancient-sounding as the bells I used to hear from my apartment in Barcelona. In Washington, the bells I could hear from my house pealed with quite pure tones - they were no doubt much younger than the bells here in Stockholm or the bells in Barcelona, and rang as if they were much too proud of themselves.
Isn't it marvelous that we continue to mark the hours of the day with an angelus, though we hardly need to anymore?
The Swedish word for the day is klocka. Interestingly enough, it means both bell and clock.
- by Francis S.
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells..."
The first wristwatch I owned was given to me on my 8th birthday. I lost it within three weeks.
It wasn't until I was 26 and working at my first real job that I bought one myself - my second wristwatch. Since then, I feel as if I couldn't possibly live without one. As I suppose the majority of the people I know feel.
And so it is curious that I love the tolling of the bells in the neighborhood, instinctively counting each knell to see what time it is. The bells I can hear from my window here are rather hollow and unmelodious, although not nearly as hollow and ancient-sounding as the bells I used to hear from my apartment in Barcelona. In Washington, the bells I could hear from my house pealed with quite pure tones - they were no doubt much younger than the bells here in Stockholm or the bells in Barcelona, and rang as if they were much too proud of themselves.
Isn't it marvelous that we continue to mark the hours of the day with an angelus, though we hardly need to anymore?
The Swedish word for the day is klocka. Interestingly enough, it means both bell and clock.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Interviewing someone you know for a feature profile is so much easier than interviewing a stranger. You know all the right questions to ask to make for an interesting story:
"Is it true that when you interviewed for your second job and you were asked if you would sleep with the cooks, you said 'only at Christmas parties...' And you still didn't get the job?"
My neighbor L., the chef, would have to answer "yes" to the above question.
Of course I've already figured out how to work her new pink refrigerator into the lead of the story.
The Swedish verb for the day is att svara. It means to answer.
- by Francis S.
"Is it true that when you interviewed for your second job and you were asked if you would sleep with the cooks, you said 'only at Christmas parties...' And you still didn't get the job?"
My neighbor L., the chef, would have to answer "yes" to the above question.
Of course I've already figured out how to work her new pink refrigerator into the lead of the story.
The Swedish verb for the day is att svara. It means to answer.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Swedes, in characteristic modest fashion, are too quick to say that Stockholm isn't really a big city. In my book, if it has a subway, it's a big city. And like Tinka, I belong in the city. I am a city boy. Which is not surprising, given my status as a homosexual. It's more comfortable for us homo types in a city, in general terms.
But though I grew up in the suburbs, I've nearly aways wanted to live in a city, even if when I was eight, that meant thinking that it would be fun to have an apartment uptown in the business district of the Chicago suburb I grew up in.
Now the husband, he has always lived in Stockholm, in the very apartment we live in now. He is suddenly making noises about buying a great big house in the country somewhere. I don't know how serious he is, but he says that he doesn't know what it's like to live outside the city and he thinks he might like it.
I have my doubts.
"I guess you never talked about this before you got married," said A., the former model and aspiring producer.
Why do I love the city so much and what is it that makes someone a city person anyway?
The Swedish word for the day is, of course, storstad. It means metropolis.
- by Francis S.
But though I grew up in the suburbs, I've nearly aways wanted to live in a city, even if when I was eight, that meant thinking that it would be fun to have an apartment uptown in the business district of the Chicago suburb I grew up in.
Now the husband, he has always lived in Stockholm, in the very apartment we live in now. He is suddenly making noises about buying a great big house in the country somewhere. I don't know how serious he is, but he says that he doesn't know what it's like to live outside the city and he thinks he might like it.
I have my doubts.
"I guess you never talked about this before you got married," said A., the former model and aspiring producer.
Why do I love the city so much and what is it that makes someone a city person anyway?
The Swedish word for the day is, of course, storstad. It means metropolis.
- by Francis S.
Monday, September 16, 2002
I voted yesterday for the social democrats.
It's funny how powerful one feels voting. Powerful and responsible. Powerful and responsible and in my case, worried that I could be voting for some idiot, considering that I was not familiar with a single name on the ballots that I cast. My only excuse for not knowing is that Swedes are kind of peculiar about politics. It's not considered a terribly polite topic of conversation, I'm told, and supposedly there are many a husband and wife who have never revealed to one another how each voted. This political closed-mouthedness is not characteristic of my friends, who have freely told me who they've voted for. Which doesn't mean that I really understand the politics here. All I know is that the social democrats have been in power - aside from the public's one-term flirtation with the Moderaterna - since the Great Depression, and that isn't a good thing. And it feels a bit like following the herd to vote for the social democrats, and that isn't a good thing. And the whole political spectrum is yards to the left of U.S. politics, which makes it hard to figure out what exactly everyone stands for, and that isn't a good thing either, for me.
It's just plain hard for us poor Americans, with only two parties to choose from, to understand parliamentary politics and coalition governments and a system with seven different political parties.
Yet, as far as I can figure, the social democrats - not the Left Party (former communists) and not the Green Party, and definitely not the Christian Democrats, or the Center Party or the People's Party or, of course, the Moderates - most closely represent the things I believe in, and the way I think things should be run. I don't believe in privitization, I believe in a social welfare state, and most of all I think the social democrats, for all their faults, have built up quite a society with the backing of the Swedish population.
And that's as much politics as I'm able to manage, after voting for the first time in this country that I have adopted. Or more rightly, has adopted me.
The Swedish word for the day is rött. It means red.
- by Francis S.
It's funny how powerful one feels voting. Powerful and responsible. Powerful and responsible and in my case, worried that I could be voting for some idiot, considering that I was not familiar with a single name on the ballots that I cast. My only excuse for not knowing is that Swedes are kind of peculiar about politics. It's not considered a terribly polite topic of conversation, I'm told, and supposedly there are many a husband and wife who have never revealed to one another how each voted. This political closed-mouthedness is not characteristic of my friends, who have freely told me who they've voted for. Which doesn't mean that I really understand the politics here. All I know is that the social democrats have been in power - aside from the public's one-term flirtation with the Moderaterna - since the Great Depression, and that isn't a good thing. And it feels a bit like following the herd to vote for the social democrats, and that isn't a good thing. And the whole political spectrum is yards to the left of U.S. politics, which makes it hard to figure out what exactly everyone stands for, and that isn't a good thing either, for me.
It's just plain hard for us poor Americans, with only two parties to choose from, to understand parliamentary politics and coalition governments and a system with seven different political parties.
Yet, as far as I can figure, the social democrats - not the Left Party (former communists) and not the Green Party, and definitely not the Christian Democrats, or the Center Party or the People's Party or, of course, the Moderates - most closely represent the things I believe in, and the way I think things should be run. I don't believe in privitization, I believe in a social welfare state, and most of all I think the social democrats, for all their faults, have built up quite a society with the backing of the Swedish population.
And that's as much politics as I'm able to manage, after voting for the first time in this country that I have adopted. Or more rightly, has adopted me.
The Swedish word for the day is rött. It means red.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Autumn has arrived at last, nearly a month behind schedule, bringing rain and chill and a general mustiness. Time to break out the candles and the soup.
Much more than Spring, Autumn represents starting over for me: unsharpened pencils, notebooks filled with hundreds of blank sheets of paper and lots of promise, crayons smelling like wax.
It's time to buy new clothes - courderoy trousers and striped shirts and wool sweaters, and a pair of brown shoes.
The Swedish word for the day is årstiderna. It means the seasons.
- by Francis S.
Much more than Spring, Autumn represents starting over for me: unsharpened pencils, notebooks filled with hundreds of blank sheets of paper and lots of promise, crayons smelling like wax.
It's time to buy new clothes - courderoy trousers and striped shirts and wool sweaters, and a pair of brown shoes.
The Swedish word for the day is årstiderna. It means the seasons.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Dinner last night was below what I consider acceptable standards from a cook: The lamb chops were overcooked, the risotto was flavorless with too little parmesan cheese in it, the focaccia was pale and the figs were a bit mealy. I guess I need to brush up on my culinary skills. Of course no one complained, but I was a bit disappointed, especially considering the guests.
It was a dinner for the parents of A., the former model and aspiring producer.
"I've only been in New York once," said A.'s mother toward the end of the evening. "We were there for two hours, so we got in a cab and we just thought of a street and then said 'take us to Fifth Avenue.' But the cabdriver said 'where on Fifth Avenue?' and so we thought some and then said 'Bloomingdales!' But the cabdriver said 'which one on Fifth Avenue?' and we said 'any one!'" and she laughed.
"So he drove us to Bloomingdales and we got out and went in the big set of doors. There we had to go up a wide set of steps and at the top we stopped in our tracks and just stood there with dropped jaws in front of the ladies selling cosmetics. 'Can I help you?' someone asked. We just stood and pointed at the Dior perfume counter and the huge photo that was the first thing you saw when you came into the store. 'That's my daughter!' I said."
That is indeed your daughter, I thought. As beautiful as she is clever and kind, but no matter how big the photo, she is never bigger than life.
The Swedish word the day is syfte. It means purpose.
- by Francis S.
It was a dinner for the parents of A., the former model and aspiring producer.
"I've only been in New York once," said A.'s mother toward the end of the evening. "We were there for two hours, so we got in a cab and we just thought of a street and then said 'take us to Fifth Avenue.' But the cabdriver said 'where on Fifth Avenue?' and so we thought some and then said 'Bloomingdales!' But the cabdriver said 'which one on Fifth Avenue?' and we said 'any one!'" and she laughed.
"So he drove us to Bloomingdales and we got out and went in the big set of doors. There we had to go up a wide set of steps and at the top we stopped in our tracks and just stood there with dropped jaws in front of the ladies selling cosmetics. 'Can I help you?' someone asked. We just stood and pointed at the Dior perfume counter and the huge photo that was the first thing you saw when you came into the store. 'That's my daughter!' I said."
That is indeed your daughter, I thought. As beautiful as she is clever and kind, but no matter how big the photo, she is never bigger than life.
The Swedish word the day is syfte. It means purpose.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
We rode to the wedding in Dalarna with the heiress. Her Norwegian boyfriend drove the car. The heiress, who happened to be the sister of the groom and a person we had never met before, has that dark-blonde vulnerability frequently mistaken for brittleness in heiresses. There is nothing light about her, save for her lithe frame and pure skin: She is a person to be taken seriously and very much of her class. But she was very attentive, and I found her tremendously engaging and took a great liking to her.
"You're doing fine," she told me, laughing as I danced with her cheek to cheek, me all bumbling and stiff and square and not remembering a single second of the dancing classes I had to take when I was thirteen.
I never managed to dance with the bride's sister, who was just as lithe and blonde and vulnerable, but melancholy and impatient and tender, her English spoken with a pleasing vague Irish burr learned from the estranged father of her 7-year-old son. The night before the wedding, she had been so petulant and worried whether her tightly wound and pinned hair would be sufficiently curly the next day, demanding attention as if she were a bit jealous of the bride, even if it weren't the case. But at the reception itself, as we drank rum and galliano with lime, I saw that she was in a kind of heaven, a respite from whatever she didn't like about the rest of her life, and she just about purred as if she were a cat.
As for the bride herself, her hair bedecked with tiny roses and cascading down her bare back, she was in her element, all charm and coyness and ravishing beauty, pulling at her train as if she wore one every day of her life.
Me, I felt a bit out of place among all the football players and financiers, seated several chairs away from the husband, who was flirting madly with the heiress as only a homosexualist can. The whole thing wasn't terribly ostentatious by American standards, aside from the setting (Dalhalla) and the details (a fleet of fabulous old cars hauling us from hotel to church to reception, elegantly printed invitations and programs and menus that all resembled top-notch advertising, a 2:30 a.m. fireworks display that would rival the fourth of July displays of my childhood.)
But for Sweden, it was about as far as one can go without breaking the boundaries of good taste. A great success by all accounts.
I'm still recovering.
The Swedish word of the day is seg. It means weary.
- by Francis S.
"You're doing fine," she told me, laughing as I danced with her cheek to cheek, me all bumbling and stiff and square and not remembering a single second of the dancing classes I had to take when I was thirteen.
I never managed to dance with the bride's sister, who was just as lithe and blonde and vulnerable, but melancholy and impatient and tender, her English spoken with a pleasing vague Irish burr learned from the estranged father of her 7-year-old son. The night before the wedding, she had been so petulant and worried whether her tightly wound and pinned hair would be sufficiently curly the next day, demanding attention as if she were a bit jealous of the bride, even if it weren't the case. But at the reception itself, as we drank rum and galliano with lime, I saw that she was in a kind of heaven, a respite from whatever she didn't like about the rest of her life, and she just about purred as if she were a cat.
As for the bride herself, her hair bedecked with tiny roses and cascading down her bare back, she was in her element, all charm and coyness and ravishing beauty, pulling at her train as if she wore one every day of her life.
Me, I felt a bit out of place among all the football players and financiers, seated several chairs away from the husband, who was flirting madly with the heiress as only a homosexualist can. The whole thing wasn't terribly ostentatious by American standards, aside from the setting (Dalhalla) and the details (a fleet of fabulous old cars hauling us from hotel to church to reception, elegantly printed invitations and programs and menus that all resembled top-notch advertising, a 2:30 a.m. fireworks display that would rival the fourth of July displays of my childhood.)
But for Sweden, it was about as far as one can go without breaking the boundaries of good taste. A great success by all accounts.
I'm still recovering.
The Swedish word of the day is seg. It means weary.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Tomorrow we're off to another wedding, this one in the heart of the country, the veritable Ur-Sweden known as Dalarna. The dales of Sweden, all little wooden houses painted red with white trim, miniature farms with only one cow, one pig and a chicken or two. And on Saturday afternoon, a bunch of guys in tuxedos - smoking they call them here in Sweden - and girls in designer gowns.
Me, I hate tuxedos. I used to have to wear one when I was a waiter on Capitol Hill. It brings back memories of smarmy brown-nosing congressional aides who took pleasure in pushing waiters around to curry favor with their bosses: "Make sure the congressman's bread is hot enough to melt the butter." There was a particular congressman from Tennessee, Rep. Boner (his actual name)...
The Swedish word for the day is val. It means election.
- by Francis S.
Me, I hate tuxedos. I used to have to wear one when I was a waiter on Capitol Hill. It brings back memories of smarmy brown-nosing congressional aides who took pleasure in pushing waiters around to curry favor with their bosses: "Make sure the congressman's bread is hot enough to melt the butter." There was a particular congressman from Tennessee, Rep. Boner (his actual name)...
The Swedish word for the day is val. It means election.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, September 04, 2002
Francis found a certain charm in Edu's half-belief in something most Americans would call magic, superstition, the powers of a curandera. Americans were fond of believing in things, but they were at heart a nation of rationalists who discounted the non-scientific. They pursued any number of fads, but such fads were invariably backed up by what they thought of as science, albeit all too often a spurious science. Americans felt they understood certain inexplicables, and ignored the rest. UFOs with an aura of science they believed in, ghosts they didn't. And so Francis was enchanted when Edu told him, after the floor in the dining room had been cleaned with ammonia, "I shouldn't have cleaned the floor, I felt a bad spirit there, in the corner. Something bad happened there, I know," and then he washed it with vinegar, which his grandmother had taught him would exorcise ghosts. Francis didn't not believe such things, it was just outside of his experience, and contributed to his feeling that Spaniards - or more accurately Argentinians - were curiously sophisticated and childlike at the same time. He wanted desperately to believe in ghosts, but he had been too mired in America for it to really work. Ghosts only lived outside the United States, he knew they would disappear once he got back home.
from a Barcelona diary, 1998
The Swedish word for the day is trolleri. It means magic.
- by Francis S.
from a Barcelona diary, 1998
The Swedish word for the day is trolleri. It means magic.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Swedes are great world travelers. It is in fact dangerous to say nasty things in Swedish to your husband about the American tourists sitting at the table next to you in a sleazy bar in Krabi, Thailand, because the chances are all too high that the table on your other side, the table you haven't been paying any attention to, is occupied by Swedes.
(The above is not a true story. But it could be, it could be!)
Which means that if I compare myself to Swedes, I am unduly proud of my own world travelling.
That would be 22 countries (excluding airport layovers) - Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and of course, the U.S.
Plus I can't forget, for all of us Americans, 38 of the 50 states of the U.S. - Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The Swedish phrase for the day is var har ni rest? Which would mean where have you travelled?
- by Francis S.
(The above is not a true story. But it could be, it could be!)
Which means that if I compare myself to Swedes, I am unduly proud of my own world travelling.
That would be 22 countries (excluding airport layovers) - Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and of course, the U.S.
Plus I can't forget, for all of us Americans, 38 of the 50 states of the U.S. - Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The Swedish phrase for the day is var har ni rest? Which would mean where have you travelled?
- by Francis S.
Monday, September 02, 2002
If I were someone who likes to jump on the, uh, meme bandwagon, I could write 100 things about myself. Or I could write four truths and one lie.
Instead, just because I think he's a superb diarist, I am going to be a Peter copycat and write nine things that aren't true about me, along with one that is. Meaning you have to guess which one is the truth. So here you go:
1. Although I've tried, I've never managed to finish the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I seem to about the only person who thought the movie was considerably less than wonderful.
2. I don't like calf's liver with bacon and onions, and I don't like liver paté, but strangely enough I don't mind chicken livers. Fried in enough butter, that is.
3. I saw the Ramones play at the University of Illinois in 1980. It hurt my ears.
4. I don't own a television. It corrupts your mind and makes you fat.
5. Despite being terribly scared of heights, I like carnival rides that go fiercely around and around, making me dizzy.
6. If I could change one thing about my physical self, it would be to not have grey hair. But wait - what am I saying. I could dye it, couldn't I? The idea of dyeing it sounds just too fussy to me.
7. Although I had both my ears pierced, I let the holes close up when I moved to Sweden. I don't look good in earrings.
8. My first car was a white 1975 Chevy Nova hatchback that had been my mother's car. I gave it to my younger brother a year later because it was a piece of shit.
9. Although I lived in Washington, D.C. for 15 years, I never once went into the Capitol building. Shame, shame, shame.
10. When I was five, we moved to New Jersey and although it was the end of June, the first thing I did was run and look up the chimney of our new house and ask my mother "Do you think Santa Claus can fit down there?"
So, which will it be? Don't be shy.
The Swedish word for the day is val. It means choice. And whale. Your, uh, choice.
- by Francis S.
Instead, just because I think he's a superb diarist, I am going to be a Peter copycat and write nine things that aren't true about me, along with one that is. Meaning you have to guess which one is the truth. So here you go:
1. Although I've tried, I've never managed to finish the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I seem to about the only person who thought the movie was considerably less than wonderful.
2. I don't like calf's liver with bacon and onions, and I don't like liver paté, but strangely enough I don't mind chicken livers. Fried in enough butter, that is.
3. I saw the Ramones play at the University of Illinois in 1980. It hurt my ears.
4. I don't own a television. It corrupts your mind and makes you fat.
5. Despite being terribly scared of heights, I like carnival rides that go fiercely around and around, making me dizzy.
6. If I could change one thing about my physical self, it would be to not have grey hair. But wait - what am I saying. I could dye it, couldn't I? The idea of dyeing it sounds just too fussy to me.
7. Although I had both my ears pierced, I let the holes close up when I moved to Sweden. I don't look good in earrings.
8. My first car was a white 1975 Chevy Nova hatchback that had been my mother's car. I gave it to my younger brother a year later because it was a piece of shit.
9. Although I lived in Washington, D.C. for 15 years, I never once went into the Capitol building. Shame, shame, shame.
10. When I was five, we moved to New Jersey and although it was the end of June, the first thing I did was run and look up the chimney of our new house and ask my mother "Do you think Santa Claus can fit down there?"
So, which will it be? Don't be shy.
The Swedish word for the day is val. It means choice. And whale. Your, uh, choice.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, September 01, 2002
It hasn't rained in Stockholm for weeks and weeks. Lovely, if freakish weather. Me, I don't mind snow or sub-zero nights or humid days or merciless sun; but rain, no matter how necessary it is, I have never liked.
But Swedes are used to rain; they don't mind it a bit. And obviously they miss it when it fails to appear.
So, when the skies over the Birds' Island clouded over yesterday afternoon, and drops were unleashed followed quickly by a torrent, A. the former model and aspiring producer and her step-daughter O. ran out in the rain, holding hands and dancing on the rocks round about their summer house, soaked to the skin.
When the husband and I got back to the city, however, it was obvious that no rain had fallen to wash away the uncharacteristic stickiness of the streets of Stockholm. One can hardly believe that by rights it should be autumn in Sweden by now.
The Swedish word for the day is vädret. It means the weather.
- by Francis S.
But Swedes are used to rain; they don't mind it a bit. And obviously they miss it when it fails to appear.
So, when the skies over the Birds' Island clouded over yesterday afternoon, and drops were unleashed followed quickly by a torrent, A. the former model and aspiring producer and her step-daughter O. ran out in the rain, holding hands and dancing on the rocks round about their summer house, soaked to the skin.
When the husband and I got back to the city, however, it was obvious that no rain had fallen to wash away the uncharacteristic stickiness of the streets of Stockholm. One can hardly believe that by rights it should be autumn in Sweden by now.
The Swedish word for the day is vädret. It means the weather.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, August 29, 2002
The phone rang. It was M., the t.v. producer, calling from the street.
"Hallo," he said in the cartoon voice he always uses when he calls me on the phone. It's you, I said. I asked him if he was close, if he'd like to come up.
"Sure," he said.
Three minutes later, the bell rang.
We sprawled out on the sofas in the living room, me on one and him on the other. I yammered away about my job and soon the husband was calling from his meeting, giving M. instructions over the phone to order chicken butter massala from Indira, (the McDonald's of Farmer Street, or at least that's how I think of it, only the food is much better) and he would pick it up on his way home, to open a bottle of wine to let it breathe, to set the table.
"Uh-huh," M. said. "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
He got off the phone.
"So this is what it's like, huh, " he said, laughing. "Does he talk to you like that all the time? You guys sound so, so married. He makes me laugh. He sounds so much like, like a husband."
Well, yes. He is a husband. My husband.
The chicken butter massala was delicious.
The Swedish phrase for the day is smaklig måltid. Waiters always say it when they serve your food - it means something like enjoy your meal.
- by Francis S.
"Hallo," he said in the cartoon voice he always uses when he calls me on the phone. It's you, I said. I asked him if he was close, if he'd like to come up.
"Sure," he said.
Three minutes later, the bell rang.
We sprawled out on the sofas in the living room, me on one and him on the other. I yammered away about my job and soon the husband was calling from his meeting, giving M. instructions over the phone to order chicken butter massala from Indira, (the McDonald's of Farmer Street, or at least that's how I think of it, only the food is much better) and he would pick it up on his way home, to open a bottle of wine to let it breathe, to set the table.
"Uh-huh," M. said. "Uh-huh, uh-huh."
He got off the phone.
"So this is what it's like, huh, " he said, laughing. "Does he talk to you like that all the time? You guys sound so, so married. He makes me laugh. He sounds so much like, like a husband."
Well, yes. He is a husband. My husband.
The chicken butter massala was delicious.
The Swedish phrase for the day is smaklig måltid. Waiters always say it when they serve your food - it means something like enjoy your meal.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, August 27, 2002
I never managed to say how absolutely remarkable it is that a woman, seven-months pregnant and herself a priest of the Church of Sweden, can be married to her boyfriend by another priest - who happens to be a lesbian - in the Church of Sweden, with no one batting an eye. People would be absolutely apoplectic in America over such a scene. It's exactly this kind of thing that makes Sweden a most remarkable country.
And I did get to meet Jonas Gardell, author of one of the four books in Swedish I have read. I gushed, fanlike, in my American way. He, a bit elfin and blinking madly like a rabbit, said "I thought you were Anders' brother."
Oh, no, I said, I'm much too old to be Anders' brother.
"One is never too old to be Anders' brother," he cackled.
And that was witty repartee.
The Swedish word for the day is snack. It means small talk.
- by Francis S.
And I did get to meet Jonas Gardell, author of one of the four books in Swedish I have read. I gushed, fanlike, in my American way. He, a bit elfin and blinking madly like a rabbit, said "I thought you were Anders' brother."
Oh, no, I said, I'm much too old to be Anders' brother.
"One is never too old to be Anders' brother," he cackled.
And that was witty repartee.
The Swedish word for the day is snack. It means small talk.
- by Francis S.
Monday, August 26, 2002
In the east of Stockholm lies a green island, Djurgården, the site of the grand residences of ambassadors, a zoo and an amusement park. Next to the amusement park stands a quaint little white church that began life as a schoolhouse in 1820.
On Sunday, the policeman and the priest were married in the quaint little white church on Djurgården. Wrapped in grey silk and with purple sweet william in her hair, looking a bit shaky and serious and lovely and very much seven-months pregnant, the priest stood in front of the altar with the policeman. So tall and blond and handsome, the policeman barely got his vows out, his voice cracking and hardly under control. An accordian played a bit mournfully, and a clarinet joined, and then a woman sang, not quite sweetly but deeply and pleasingly, of halves becoming wholes and of love. Everyone watched and listened in the swelter of an unseasonably warm Sunday in August, and the women cried.
Me, I cried too. How awful it is to get so sentimental as I grow old.
Then, the psalms sung and the gospel read, we followed the bride and groom out of the church and posed for pictures on the stairs outside, and finally wended our way in twos and threes to the heart of the island to eat dinner in a garden, Rosendals trädgård.
In the midst of bowery green allees and beds of sunflowers and cosmos, we sat in a glass house, eating endive and wax beans and potatoes dredged in rosemary, all from the garden. We laughed and were entranced by the brides' sisters, and listened to speeches and sang songs and toasted the bride and groom with glass after glass of red wine.
In between the toasts and the speeches, the charming woman to my right told me she was a singer. But wasn't it awfully difficult making a living as a musician, I asked.
"Yes, I suppose it is. I guess we're just lucky, my boyfriend and I," she said. And as we continued to talk and she revealed bits and pieces of her life, it dawned on me that there I was again, talking to some nominally famous Swedish person whom I'd never heard of before and hoping that I hadn't made a fool of myself, that this particular famous person was finding me naively amusing and not an ignorant American oaf.
After she offered me a cigarillo, and after someone put on a recording of "Pomp and Circumstance" while we stood on our chairs throwing streamers and honking on noisemakers and singing at the top of our lungs from pieces of paper with crazy words of praise and humiliation to the bride and groom, the singer told me I had such a nice voice, that I should be in a choir.
What could I do but blush?
In the end, the husband and I ran to catch the midnight ferry back to Södermalm and our apartment on the Farmer Street. The ferry keeper waved us on board, telling us we could pay another day, and as the boat chugged over the smooth black waters of the Baltic under a moon newly snipped after a day or two of being full, the husband and I told each other we would never live anywhere else on this fair earth.
The Swedish word for the day is välsignad. It means blessed.
- by Francis S.
On Sunday, the policeman and the priest were married in the quaint little white church on Djurgården. Wrapped in grey silk and with purple sweet william in her hair, looking a bit shaky and serious and lovely and very much seven-months pregnant, the priest stood in front of the altar with the policeman. So tall and blond and handsome, the policeman barely got his vows out, his voice cracking and hardly under control. An accordian played a bit mournfully, and a clarinet joined, and then a woman sang, not quite sweetly but deeply and pleasingly, of halves becoming wholes and of love. Everyone watched and listened in the swelter of an unseasonably warm Sunday in August, and the women cried.
Me, I cried too. How awful it is to get so sentimental as I grow old.
Then, the psalms sung and the gospel read, we followed the bride and groom out of the church and posed for pictures on the stairs outside, and finally wended our way in twos and threes to the heart of the island to eat dinner in a garden, Rosendals trädgård.
In the midst of bowery green allees and beds of sunflowers and cosmos, we sat in a glass house, eating endive and wax beans and potatoes dredged in rosemary, all from the garden. We laughed and were entranced by the brides' sisters, and listened to speeches and sang songs and toasted the bride and groom with glass after glass of red wine.
In between the toasts and the speeches, the charming woman to my right told me she was a singer. But wasn't it awfully difficult making a living as a musician, I asked.
"Yes, I suppose it is. I guess we're just lucky, my boyfriend and I," she said. And as we continued to talk and she revealed bits and pieces of her life, it dawned on me that there I was again, talking to some nominally famous Swedish person whom I'd never heard of before and hoping that I hadn't made a fool of myself, that this particular famous person was finding me naively amusing and not an ignorant American oaf.
After she offered me a cigarillo, and after someone put on a recording of "Pomp and Circumstance" while we stood on our chairs throwing streamers and honking on noisemakers and singing at the top of our lungs from pieces of paper with crazy words of praise and humiliation to the bride and groom, the singer told me I had such a nice voice, that I should be in a choir.
What could I do but blush?
In the end, the husband and I ran to catch the midnight ferry back to Södermalm and our apartment on the Farmer Street. The ferry keeper waved us on board, telling us we could pay another day, and as the boat chugged over the smooth black waters of the Baltic under a moon newly snipped after a day or two of being full, the husband and I told each other we would never live anywhere else on this fair earth.
The Swedish word for the day is välsignad. It means blessed.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, August 24, 2002
My earliest memory that I know is my memory and not merely something manufactured from photographs or stories recounted by my sister or my parents, is a dream.
I was sleeping feverishly - I'm quite sure I was sick at the time - and I dreamt I was outside playing in a sandbox under a tree (I loved that sandbox; I used to eat the sand I remember, or rather I might be remembering it or I might just be remembering the many times my parents have said that I liked to eat it).
Suddenly, the tree wasn't a tree, but a big green leafy dragon. I ran inside, successfully eluding the monster and went up with my brother to our bedroom in the attic of the little box of a house we lived in then. Suddenly, everything was covered in purple spots, including my white pajamas, and there were jolly and benign little cackling witches everywhere. And instead of a light switch, there was a black telephone mounted on the wall. Which I deemed a huge luxury, being that in 1965, nearly everyone had only one phone, including us.
What is your earliest memory?
The Swedish word for the day is pojke. It means boy.
- by Francis S.
I was sleeping feverishly - I'm quite sure I was sick at the time - and I dreamt I was outside playing in a sandbox under a tree (I loved that sandbox; I used to eat the sand I remember, or rather I might be remembering it or I might just be remembering the many times my parents have said that I liked to eat it).
Suddenly, the tree wasn't a tree, but a big green leafy dragon. I ran inside, successfully eluding the monster and went up with my brother to our bedroom in the attic of the little box of a house we lived in then. Suddenly, everything was covered in purple spots, including my white pajamas, and there were jolly and benign little cackling witches everywhere. And instead of a light switch, there was a black telephone mounted on the wall. Which I deemed a huge luxury, being that in 1965, nearly everyone had only one phone, including us.
What is your earliest memory?
The Swedish word for the day is pojke. It means boy.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, August 22, 2002
When we stepped into the movie theater, instead of sitting in the seats designated on our tickets, we sat close to the seats designated on our tickets. There were only three other people in the theater, so what difference could it make?
Soon enough, there were 10 more people, and then fifteen. And of course the girl in the ticket booth had chosen to cram everyone into three rows. Before we knew it, around us hovered a group of twenty-somethings all confused and knocking into each other's knees. An angry Danish boy glared at us, and my friend Å. had to explain in a guilty voice and a heavy Jönköping accent that, in fact, we weren't in the proper seats. The Dane grumbled a bit, and Å. grumbled a bit, but eventually everyone managed to settle down a bit indignantly in their wrong seats, and the movie began.
The idea of having reserved seats at a movie theater is a bit odd for us Americans. I suppose we don't have reserved seats because it's undemocratic or something. And we certainly don't have different prices for different seats, depending on where one is seated. Something that is not done in Sweden either, although it makes sense to me.
But why on earth did the girl in the ticket booth have to put everyone all up in each other's personal space like that?
"They only have to clean up three rows that way," Å. said.
So I was so tempted to leave my empty popcorn box and paper cup on the floor in front of my seat. But I was brainwashed by the pre-movie clip of the movie usher in full movie-usher regalia with a big old white guy over his knees, spanking him for not cleaning up after himself in the theater. I cleaned up after myself.
I am, indeed, such a good Swede.
The Swedish phrase for the day is personutveckling. It means personal development.
- by Francis S.
Soon enough, there were 10 more people, and then fifteen. And of course the girl in the ticket booth had chosen to cram everyone into three rows. Before we knew it, around us hovered a group of twenty-somethings all confused and knocking into each other's knees. An angry Danish boy glared at us, and my friend Å. had to explain in a guilty voice and a heavy Jönköping accent that, in fact, we weren't in the proper seats. The Dane grumbled a bit, and Å. grumbled a bit, but eventually everyone managed to settle down a bit indignantly in their wrong seats, and the movie began.
The idea of having reserved seats at a movie theater is a bit odd for us Americans. I suppose we don't have reserved seats because it's undemocratic or something. And we certainly don't have different prices for different seats, depending on where one is seated. Something that is not done in Sweden either, although it makes sense to me.
But why on earth did the girl in the ticket booth have to put everyone all up in each other's personal space like that?
"They only have to clean up three rows that way," Å. said.
So I was so tempted to leave my empty popcorn box and paper cup on the floor in front of my seat. But I was brainwashed by the pre-movie clip of the movie usher in full movie-usher regalia with a big old white guy over his knees, spanking him for not cleaning up after himself in the theater. I cleaned up after myself.
I am, indeed, such a good Swede.
The Swedish phrase for the day is personutveckling. It means personal development.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
The future wears clothes made of tight-fitting and synthetic materials, right? At least it usually looks that way in movies. Strangely enough, as far as I can tell, the future will look like what it looked like thirty years previously. That is if history is any judge. It scares me a little, makes me laugh a little, that all the clothes that everyone wore in 1971 when I was ten - hip-hugging bell-bottomed trousers, marimekko dresses in loud prints, bluejean skirts and peasant blouses with shag haircuts - are in fashion again. And have been for the last couple of years, in fact. I remember well how ridiculous we found those clothes by the time I graduated from high school in 1979.
Are we condemned to repeat the past out of nostalgia, or lack of imagination? What goes around, comes around - but is it a curse, or just the natural order of things?
Unfortunately, clothes, unlike whores and buildings, do not become respectable with age, they just go out of fashion. Fast, but not forever.
The Swedish word for the day is kläder. It means clothes.
- by Francis S.
Are we condemned to repeat the past out of nostalgia, or lack of imagination? What goes around, comes around - but is it a curse, or just the natural order of things?
Unfortunately, clothes, unlike whores and buildings, do not become respectable with age, they just go out of fashion. Fast, but not forever.
The Swedish word for the day is kläder. It means clothes.
- by Francis S.
Monday, August 19, 2002
The height of civilization is not Einstein's theory of relativity or Mozart's operas, not riistafel or the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh or even The Simpsons.
The height of civilization is sitting for hours and hours in a café on a warm summer's day in a European capitol, say, Helsinki, and watching the people go by on the elegant tree-lined Esplanade, sipping cafe latte and eating rhubarb cake slowly with a spoon.
Amazingly enough, all the romantic notions I had as a 16-year-old American living in the suburbs of Chicago are absolutely true when it comes to sitting in a café on a summer's day.
As for Helsinki, there is a small grandness to it, a green-ness, a great charm and a faint Russian flavor. My favorite Finn and the lovely and pregnant J. walked me round and through the city, pausing and peering in at libraries and churches and markets and theaters, and I was duly impressed. We drank pear cider and on Saturday afternoon stood in a sea of runners, waiting for a friend who was taking part in the Helsinki marathon. We worried that we had missed him somehow, and we listened to the four or five 7-year-old boys next to us having a grand time, high-fiving any runner willing to slap their hands, and very tunefully singing a song of their own composition:
They were still singing it even as we left once we'd found our friend and given him congratulatory hugs and handshakes and sent him on the rest of his 27-kilometer way.
There are of course lesser heights to civilization, some of them nearly on a par with sitting in a café near the Esplanade. For example, an obtuse conversation with a nearly falling-down-drunk chef at the weekend's party (I'm not sure what exactly the topic was, but it was important), the ride on the streetcar to Temppeliakio (I am in love with all forms of train travel; alternatively, I rather loathe buses); even the hamburgers at Hesburger Carrols, Finland's homegrown answer to McDonald's.
My favorite Finn and the lovely and pregnant J. sure know how to make a guy feel at home.
The Swedish word for the day is Helsingfors. Which is the Swedish name for Helsinki.
- by Francis S.
The height of civilization is sitting for hours and hours in a café on a warm summer's day in a European capitol, say, Helsinki, and watching the people go by on the elegant tree-lined Esplanade, sipping cafe latte and eating rhubarb cake slowly with a spoon.
Amazingly enough, all the romantic notions I had as a 16-year-old American living in the suburbs of Chicago are absolutely true when it comes to sitting in a café on a summer's day.
As for Helsinki, there is a small grandness to it, a green-ness, a great charm and a faint Russian flavor. My favorite Finn and the lovely and pregnant J. walked me round and through the city, pausing and peering in at libraries and churches and markets and theaters, and I was duly impressed. We drank pear cider and on Saturday afternoon stood in a sea of runners, waiting for a friend who was taking part in the Helsinki marathon. We worried that we had missed him somehow, and we listened to the four or five 7-year-old boys next to us having a grand time, high-fiving any runner willing to slap their hands, and very tunefully singing a song of their own composition:
- Parhaita ootte, kultamitalin saatte,
Parhaita ootte, kultapokaalin saatte
(You are the best, you'll get a gold medal,
You are the best, you'll get a golden trophy)
They were still singing it even as we left once we'd found our friend and given him congratulatory hugs and handshakes and sent him on the rest of his 27-kilometer way.
There are of course lesser heights to civilization, some of them nearly on a par with sitting in a café near the Esplanade. For example, an obtuse conversation with a nearly falling-down-drunk chef at the weekend's party (I'm not sure what exactly the topic was, but it was important), the ride on the streetcar to Temppeliakio (I am in love with all forms of train travel; alternatively, I rather loathe buses); even the hamburgers at Hesburger Carrols, Finland's homegrown answer to McDonald's.
My favorite Finn and the lovely and pregnant J. sure know how to make a guy feel at home.
The Swedish word for the day is Helsingfors. Which is the Swedish name for Helsinki.
- by Francis S.
Friday, August 16, 2002
And now off to Helsinki for the weekend to visit my favorite Finn.
The Swedish word for the day is, um, finnjävel. It's a rather unkind word for a Finnish man, meaning something along the lines of Finn devil.
- by Francis S.
The Swedish word for the day is, um, finnjävel. It's a rather unkind word for a Finnish man, meaning something along the lines of Finn devil.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Eduardo.
All about him, all about Edu.
First, he is small.
This might explain a good deal, making up for his size as he does by the extraordinary amount of space he seems to occupy... is it because he moves so much? So restlessly, endlessly cutting his way neatly through the apartment like a little sailboat tacking across the sea. He appears so efficient as he mops the floor with fierce sopping strokes, back and forth and back and forth. And yet, he is not efficient, the cleaning and rearranging of the apartment, moving plants from one balcony to the sink and then the other balcony for instance, is more of a ritual, a kind of purifying eucharist. (He is in fact inefficient with his cleaning, with his time, his money, his energy.) But the movement only explains in part, the space he occupies. The rest is all emotion.
His hands. The nails are chewed to the quick, the skin rough and dry, the fingers small as the rest of him. His hands are, I'm sure, older than the rest of him, so much a part of him but with their own peculiar life, a pair of well-trained swallows doing and not doing his bidding. The singularity of those hands, like as not, with a cigarette, an inch of ash at the tip, tucked carelessly between any two adjacent fingers or thumb, it doesn't seem to matter which two. I laugh, just thinking of it, at how he claps his hands together like a very little boy, his fingers splayed, palms bouncing.
His eyes, not blue, and not green or brown but somewhere midst the three colors, are rimmed in short, very black lashes that, like any good picture frame, are pleasing in and of themselves while calling attention to the art they encircle. Edu's eyes seem to be the source of all his happiness and woe, taking in what is given and sending it fiercely back out, honed and polished and sometimes ugly, but always steeped in that great overwhelming emotion.
His teeth are white and perfect except for one missing incisor, his nose small and slightly hooked, a distinguished Italianate nose from his father's side of the family. His dark hair is cut close to his scalp.
His limbs, those skinny arms and legs of his, are just as tough as they look. Edu has a certain physical strength, he can lug an ungainly and ugly easy chair up the seven flights of stairs to his apartment, and, after Pepa the cat has pissed in the same chair one too many times and nothing will remove the smell, well, he can lug the chair back down the seven flights and onto the street, where he found it in the first place.
But these are mere physicalities. It would take a book to capture him to the full.
(from a Barcelona journal, 1998)
Eduardo Destrí
b. May 19, 1960 - Buenos Aires
d. August 9, 2002 - Barcelona
I am heartsick.
- by Francis S.
All about him, all about Edu.
First, he is small.
This might explain a good deal, making up for his size as he does by the extraordinary amount of space he seems to occupy... is it because he moves so much? So restlessly, endlessly cutting his way neatly through the apartment like a little sailboat tacking across the sea. He appears so efficient as he mops the floor with fierce sopping strokes, back and forth and back and forth. And yet, he is not efficient, the cleaning and rearranging of the apartment, moving plants from one balcony to the sink and then the other balcony for instance, is more of a ritual, a kind of purifying eucharist. (He is in fact inefficient with his cleaning, with his time, his money, his energy.) But the movement only explains in part, the space he occupies. The rest is all emotion.
His hands. The nails are chewed to the quick, the skin rough and dry, the fingers small as the rest of him. His hands are, I'm sure, older than the rest of him, so much a part of him but with their own peculiar life, a pair of well-trained swallows doing and not doing his bidding. The singularity of those hands, like as not, with a cigarette, an inch of ash at the tip, tucked carelessly between any two adjacent fingers or thumb, it doesn't seem to matter which two. I laugh, just thinking of it, at how he claps his hands together like a very little boy, his fingers splayed, palms bouncing.
His eyes, not blue, and not green or brown but somewhere midst the three colors, are rimmed in short, very black lashes that, like any good picture frame, are pleasing in and of themselves while calling attention to the art they encircle. Edu's eyes seem to be the source of all his happiness and woe, taking in what is given and sending it fiercely back out, honed and polished and sometimes ugly, but always steeped in that great overwhelming emotion.
His teeth are white and perfect except for one missing incisor, his nose small and slightly hooked, a distinguished Italianate nose from his father's side of the family. His dark hair is cut close to his scalp.
His limbs, those skinny arms and legs of his, are just as tough as they look. Edu has a certain physical strength, he can lug an ungainly and ugly easy chair up the seven flights of stairs to his apartment, and, after Pepa the cat has pissed in the same chair one too many times and nothing will remove the smell, well, he can lug the chair back down the seven flights and onto the street, where he found it in the first place.
But these are mere physicalities. It would take a book to capture him to the full.
(from a Barcelona journal, 1998)
Eduardo Destrí
b. May 19, 1960 - Buenos Aires
d. August 9, 2002 - Barcelona
I am heartsick.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Sunday, 11:21 a.m. - began reading En Komikers Uppväxt (A Comedian's Growth).
Monday, 1:37 a.m. - finished reading En Komikers Uppväxt.
A new milestone: reading Swedish novels as if they were a bag of cheese doodles after a day without lunch. Not unlike my English reading habits.
The one sentence review: It's a bit funny, a bit poetic, a bit sad, a bit sentimental, a bit melodramatic and I liked it.
And maybe I'll get to meet the author, Jonas Gardell, at the wedding of the priest and the policeman. The husband says he might be there on account of he's a friend of the priest.
The Swedish phrase for the day is ost bågar. It's kind of fun to translate this in my mind into cheese boogers, but in fact it means cheese doodles.
- by Francis S.
Monday, 1:37 a.m. - finished reading En Komikers Uppväxt.
A new milestone: reading Swedish novels as if they were a bag of cheese doodles after a day without lunch. Not unlike my English reading habits.
The one sentence review: It's a bit funny, a bit poetic, a bit sad, a bit sentimental, a bit melodramatic and I liked it.
And maybe I'll get to meet the author, Jonas Gardell, at the wedding of the priest and the policeman. The husband says he might be there on account of he's a friend of the priest.
The Swedish phrase for the day is ost bågar. It's kind of fun to translate this in my mind into cheese boogers, but in fact it means cheese doodles.
- by Francis S.
Monday, August 12, 2002
It's time to come out of the closet.
The fact is, I'm insecure. You see, the husband's ex has moved back to Sweden after some six years in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He's bringing his American boyfriend along with him. Both of them are so tan and handsome and fit. And when I met my husband, I was tan and thin and fit and, well, four years younger. Now I'm pasty-white, have less hair in places that should have more, and more hair in places that should have less, and I could stand to lose a good 10 pounds. Or at least tone up the extra 10 pounds that I have.
I'm not jealous or worried, honest. I just wish I had taken the time to shape up so that the husband's ex couldn't possibly think that I'm "a nice enough guy alright, but he's gotten kind of flabby - they may be happy together but at least I've kept my looks..."
Is it true that marriage means one inevitably loses ones' shape?
The Swedish word for the day is viktväktarna®. It means weight watchers®.
- by Francis S.
The fact is, I'm insecure. You see, the husband's ex has moved back to Sweden after some six years in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He's bringing his American boyfriend along with him. Both of them are so tan and handsome and fit. And when I met my husband, I was tan and thin and fit and, well, four years younger. Now I'm pasty-white, have less hair in places that should have more, and more hair in places that should have less, and I could stand to lose a good 10 pounds. Or at least tone up the extra 10 pounds that I have.
I'm not jealous or worried, honest. I just wish I had taken the time to shape up so that the husband's ex couldn't possibly think that I'm "a nice enough guy alright, but he's gotten kind of flabby - they may be happy together but at least I've kept my looks..."
Is it true that marriage means one inevitably loses ones' shape?
The Swedish word for the day is viktväktarna®. It means weight watchers®.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, August 11, 2002
We've all looked at our blog families.
Now it's time to look at our blog neighborhoods (hats off to John O'Keefe for the link.)
Now, if only I can figure out what it means exactly.
- by Francis S.
Now it's time to look at our blog neighborhoods (hats off to John O'Keefe for the link.)
Now, if only I can figure out what it means exactly.
- by Francis S.
As we sat in our dining room with the neighbors, the remains of dinner on our plates, fireworks broke out in another part of the city.
The fireworks weren't supposed to start until 10:30, said L., the chef. According to my calculations, someone had started them a good seven minutes early, which is so like the Swedes.
We half-watched them as we smoked strange Turkish tobacco with a waterpipe, the fireworks crackling and popping and fizzing and booming in the reflection of the window of an apartment across the courtyard. It was a peculiar sideways view, looking through the frame of our window into the reflection of the fireworks, framed by another window.
What were they celebrating, I wondered.
No one knew. Not even L., though she had known there were supposed to be fireworks.
"We met each other four years ago today," L. said, referring to her and her boyfriend, P. the guitarist. "Or was it the 8th?"
Ah, I said, so the fireworks are for you two it seems.
Yes, indeed. So we smoked more Turkish tobacco and put old Madonna CDs on the stereo and turned up the volume and danced madly on the bare wood floors.
The Swedish word for the day is fyrverkeri. It means fireworks.
- by Francis S.
The fireworks weren't supposed to start until 10:30, said L., the chef. According to my calculations, someone had started them a good seven minutes early, which is so like the Swedes.
We half-watched them as we smoked strange Turkish tobacco with a waterpipe, the fireworks crackling and popping and fizzing and booming in the reflection of the window of an apartment across the courtyard. It was a peculiar sideways view, looking through the frame of our window into the reflection of the fireworks, framed by another window.
What were they celebrating, I wondered.
No one knew. Not even L., though she had known there were supposed to be fireworks.
"We met each other four years ago today," L. said, referring to her and her boyfriend, P. the guitarist. "Or was it the 8th?"
Ah, I said, so the fireworks are for you two it seems.
Yes, indeed. So we smoked more Turkish tobacco and put old Madonna CDs on the stereo and turned up the volume and danced madly on the bare wood floors.
The Swedish word for the day is fyrverkeri. It means fireworks.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, August 10, 2002
At dinner last night out in the stinking rich suburbs of Stockholm with the guy from the Goethe Institute and his husband, the South African publicist, we somehow got cajoled into gossiping.
"Everyone loves gossip, you can't believe anyone who says they don't," the South African publicist said. And he's right, of course. He gleefully, guiltily said that not only does he love gossip, he is completely unable to keep it to himself, mentioning an incident with a politician, tailored shirts, and someone else's boyfriend.
My own husband is actually full of first-hand celebrity gossip; he's quite respectful of privacy and rarely mentions any of it to anyone, including me. And yet, among other things, when asked by the publicist he answered that so-and-so t.v. personality is not gay, which disappointed our hosts. But the disappointment was immediately quelled when it was revealed that at least so-and-so t.v. personality has a big dick.
"Wait, but if he's not gay, how do you know that?" asked the publicist.
The husband replied that the information came from trusted and reliable female, uh, sources.
"You know, " said the publicist, "if it's such a burden carrying these celebrity secrets around, you should just tell me. I'm from South Africa and I don't even know who any of these people are and who am I going to tell?"
Who says homosexualists are shallow and interested in only one thing?
We were, in fact, utterly charmed by the two of them.
The Swedish word for the day is skvaller. It means, naturally, gossip.
- by Francis S.
"Everyone loves gossip, you can't believe anyone who says they don't," the South African publicist said. And he's right, of course. He gleefully, guiltily said that not only does he love gossip, he is completely unable to keep it to himself, mentioning an incident with a politician, tailored shirts, and someone else's boyfriend.
My own husband is actually full of first-hand celebrity gossip; he's quite respectful of privacy and rarely mentions any of it to anyone, including me. And yet, among other things, when asked by the publicist he answered that so-and-so t.v. personality is not gay, which disappointed our hosts. But the disappointment was immediately quelled when it was revealed that at least so-and-so t.v. personality has a big dick.
"Wait, but if he's not gay, how do you know that?" asked the publicist.
The husband replied that the information came from trusted and reliable female, uh, sources.
"You know, " said the publicist, "if it's such a burden carrying these celebrity secrets around, you should just tell me. I'm from South Africa and I don't even know who any of these people are and who am I going to tell?"
Who says homosexualists are shallow and interested in only one thing?
We were, in fact, utterly charmed by the two of them.
The Swedish word for the day is skvaller. It means, naturally, gossip.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, August 08, 2002
I bet my family beats your family. If we're talking numbers, that is.
You see my parents both grew up on farms in Iowa, not 15 miles from one another, born at a time - 1934 - when it still made sense for farmers to grow their own farmhands. And so my mother has three sisters and six brothers. And my father has three sisters and six brothers. Which makes 18 aunts and uncles who are blood relations.
Then, each of these aunts and uncles got married at some point, which means that I have 36 aunts and uncles. Well, had 36 aunts and uncles; the number is dwindling, sadly, inevitably. And then each of my aunts' and uncles' families consists of an average of 4.27 children. Which means I have 77 first cousins. There are cousins who are opera singers, cousins who are preachers, cousins who are mayors and cousins who are garbage men. There are cousins who home-school their children (and shouldn't!) and cousins who are ex-cons. There is even at least one cousin who is a fellow avowed homosexualist (he's had kind of a tough time of it, though, poor guy.)
As for the next generation, I couldn't begin to count. We're talking more students than attended my junior high school. We're talking the population of a small town. Hundreds and hundreds. And we're not even Catholic.
I'd make a crack about whether this fecundity has any relation to improper use of prophylactics and low intelligence quotients, but I've recently learned that my parents read these pages and I don't want to offend anyone.
The Swedish word for the day is kaniner. It means rabbits.
- by Francis S.
You see my parents both grew up on farms in Iowa, not 15 miles from one another, born at a time - 1934 - when it still made sense for farmers to grow their own farmhands. And so my mother has three sisters and six brothers. And my father has three sisters and six brothers. Which makes 18 aunts and uncles who are blood relations.
Then, each of these aunts and uncles got married at some point, which means that I have 36 aunts and uncles. Well, had 36 aunts and uncles; the number is dwindling, sadly, inevitably. And then each of my aunts' and uncles' families consists of an average of 4.27 children. Which means I have 77 first cousins. There are cousins who are opera singers, cousins who are preachers, cousins who are mayors and cousins who are garbage men. There are cousins who home-school their children (and shouldn't!) and cousins who are ex-cons. There is even at least one cousin who is a fellow avowed homosexualist (he's had kind of a tough time of it, though, poor guy.)
As for the next generation, I couldn't begin to count. We're talking more students than attended my junior high school. We're talking the population of a small town. Hundreds and hundreds. And we're not even Catholic.
I'd make a crack about whether this fecundity has any relation to improper use of prophylactics and low intelligence quotients, but I've recently learned that my parents read these pages and I don't want to offend anyone.
The Swedish word for the day is kaniner. It means rabbits.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, August 07, 2002
Grownup girly-boy that I am, there are still places stinking of testosterone that send fear neurons bouncing from synapse to synapse throughout my body. Places like barbershops with red and white twirling barberpoles. Or the locksmith and model railway shop that used to be on 14th just above P Street in Washington.
The problem with these places is that I suddenly revert back to being nine years old, and I can't help thinking that I am a pathetic excuse for a male and that I will be the last one picked for the team (or if we're going to judge by history, second-to-last). I worry that I will be found out, somehow. So, I loathe these places. My soul cannot be convinced that no one is going to refuse to give me a haircut, or a new set of keys, because I don't pass the male test. Whatever that may be.
Are there equivalent estrogen- and progesterone-laden locations that have the same effect on you female-types?
The Swedish word for the day is manlig. It means masculine.
- by Francis S.
The problem with these places is that I suddenly revert back to being nine years old, and I can't help thinking that I am a pathetic excuse for a male and that I will be the last one picked for the team (or if we're going to judge by history, second-to-last). I worry that I will be found out, somehow. So, I loathe these places. My soul cannot be convinced that no one is going to refuse to give me a haircut, or a new set of keys, because I don't pass the male test. Whatever that may be.
Are there equivalent estrogen- and progesterone-laden locations that have the same effect on you female-types?
The Swedish word for the day is manlig. It means masculine.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, August 06, 2002
Sunday, August 04, 2002
Happy birthday, dear diary, you demanding old thing.
Considering the day, I suppose it's only appropriate to acknowledge its geneology and give credit to the parent who inspired it, that pithy and fascinating potential pornstar who is Jonno, sadly now on hiatus.
The Swedish phrase for the day is ett år gammal. It means one year old.
- by Francis S.
Considering the day, I suppose it's only appropriate to acknowledge its geneology and give credit to the parent who inspired it, that pithy and fascinating potential pornstar who is Jonno, sadly now on hiatus.
The Swedish phrase for the day is ett år gammal. It means one year old.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, August 03, 2002
This is a good year for mushrooms. Not that I know from personal experience. I've never actually hunted for mushrooms. It sounds so Hansel- and Gretel-ish. So Baba Yaga-ish. So very Brothers Grimm. And while I would dearly love to hunt mushrooms in a dim forest somewhere, I haven't, but at least I'm reaping the benefits of someone who has.
The husband is standing over the sink with a brush and big bowl of golden chanterelles that a friend gave him, gently ridding them of the remnants of the dirt they grew in.
Wait, no, now he's cooking them in butter.
The smell would be intoxicating, if we weren't still recovering from being intoxicated last night. The husband's marvelous agent invited us to dine at Pontus by the Sea. One definitely doesn't eat at Pontus by the Sea, one dines. And has bottle after bottle of very expensive champagne, apparently. And talks about how it wasn't long ago - ten years - that one could still find apartments in Stockholm where one's toilet was in a separate building out back. And smokes cigarettes even though one hasn't had a cigarette in weeks and weeks. And then when the last lamb chop is stripped clean and the final drop of espresso drunk and the last remnant of cherry tart scraped from the plate, one takes more bottles of champagne and glasses and drunkenly plays boule, the grand old buildings of the old town on one side, and on the other the waters of Stockholm harbor, black under a sickle moon. I don't remember who won.
It turns out that chanterelles cooked with onions in butter are quite good for a hangover.
The Swedish word for the day is, of course, kantareller, which means chanterelles.
- by Francis S.
The husband is standing over the sink with a brush and big bowl of golden chanterelles that a friend gave him, gently ridding them of the remnants of the dirt they grew in.
Wait, no, now he's cooking them in butter.
The smell would be intoxicating, if we weren't still recovering from being intoxicated last night. The husband's marvelous agent invited us to dine at Pontus by the Sea. One definitely doesn't eat at Pontus by the Sea, one dines. And has bottle after bottle of very expensive champagne, apparently. And talks about how it wasn't long ago - ten years - that one could still find apartments in Stockholm where one's toilet was in a separate building out back. And smokes cigarettes even though one hasn't had a cigarette in weeks and weeks. And then when the last lamb chop is stripped clean and the final drop of espresso drunk and the last remnant of cherry tart scraped from the plate, one takes more bottles of champagne and glasses and drunkenly plays boule, the grand old buildings of the old town on one side, and on the other the waters of Stockholm harbor, black under a sickle moon. I don't remember who won.
It turns out that chanterelles cooked with onions in butter are quite good for a hangover.
The Swedish word for the day is, of course, kantareller, which means chanterelles.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, August 01, 2002
I had lunch earlier this week with the guy from the Goethe Institute, one of my fellow students from the Swedish class I took earlier in the summer. He told me that he doesn't understand the Swedes.
"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "
They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.
"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."
I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.
The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.
- by Francis S.
"I've lived in South Africa, in Romania, in the States," he said. "I could basically figure them all out. But the Swedes - "
They are an enigma to him. He said he can't figure out what makes them tick.
"Some guy, a Swede, said to me once that Sweden is what America would be like if it were socialist," the guy from the Goethe Institute said. "Now that made sense to me somehow."
I didn't tell him that while George W. Bush would never admit it, the U.S. is in fact rather socialist around the edges. Still, the idea of Sweden as a socialist version of America makes sense to me, too.
The Swedish word for the day is skär. It means pink.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, July 31, 2002
I live on the Farmer Street. That would be Bondegatan in Swedish.
I've always found the name charming, if a bit mundane.
Here in Stockholm, the names of streets, roads, avenues, alleys, lanes and hills seem to have practical and historical origins.
There are Kungsgatan and Drottninggatan, the King's Street and Queen Street - for some reason, the possessive -s- is only there for the king, implying that while he owns his own street, the poor queen doesn't own hers. Odd, that.
There is Narvavägen - The Narva Road - which I assume is named after a famous 18th century battle in the once-Swedish city of Narva, which is now in Estonia.
There are Linnégatan and Birger Jarlsgatan and Morten Trotzigsgränd, one named after the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, one named for a medieval Swedish ruler, and one named for - uh, I have no idea who Morten Trotzig was, I only know it is the smallest street in Stockholm, basically a narrow set of steps leading from one street to another.
There are Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan - the West and East Long Streets - both of them in the old town, the names really just a description of what were assuredly the longest streets of Stockholm some 700 years ago when the city was young.
There is Lidingövägen, the street that leads from the city of Stockholm to the bridge that takes one to the island of Lidingö.
There is Fredrikshovsgatan, a short street that runs next to the sight of a former royal palace that was called Fredrikshovs Castle.
And there is my favorite, Tystagatan, the Quiet Street.
History, honor, direction, description.
I'd love to see a map that explains why all the streets are named what they are named.
Who gets to choose, huh?
The Swedish phrase for the day is Vem är rädd för Virginia Woolf? It means, of course, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- by Francis S.
I've always found the name charming, if a bit mundane.
Here in Stockholm, the names of streets, roads, avenues, alleys, lanes and hills seem to have practical and historical origins.
There are Kungsgatan and Drottninggatan, the King's Street and Queen Street - for some reason, the possessive -s- is only there for the king, implying that while he owns his own street, the poor queen doesn't own hers. Odd, that.
There is Narvavägen - The Narva Road - which I assume is named after a famous 18th century battle in the once-Swedish city of Narva, which is now in Estonia.
There are Linnégatan and Birger Jarlsgatan and Morten Trotzigsgränd, one named after the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné, one named for a medieval Swedish ruler, and one named for - uh, I have no idea who Morten Trotzig was, I only know it is the smallest street in Stockholm, basically a narrow set of steps leading from one street to another.
There are Västerlånggatan and Österlånggatan - the West and East Long Streets - both of them in the old town, the names really just a description of what were assuredly the longest streets of Stockholm some 700 years ago when the city was young.
There is Lidingövägen, the street that leads from the city of Stockholm to the bridge that takes one to the island of Lidingö.
There is Fredrikshovsgatan, a short street that runs next to the sight of a former royal palace that was called Fredrikshovs Castle.
And there is my favorite, Tystagatan, the Quiet Street.
History, honor, direction, description.
I'd love to see a map that explains why all the streets are named what they are named.
Who gets to choose, huh?
The Swedish phrase for the day is Vem är rädd för Virginia Woolf? It means, of course, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
- by Francis S.
More recommendations from the tasty links to the left:
Want to know about rocks? Yami knows about rocks. But what's best about Yami is not her rock knowledge, but rather her hilariously warped yet somehow logical take on life.
Thinking about becoming a single mother? I'm not sure whether or not Miss Lauren would advise it. Yes or no, take her advice. She's awfully wise for one so young.
Looking to improve your knowledge of pop music trivia? Mike's knowledge is encyclopedic. I kid you not. But wait, there's more. You also get plenty of juicy and well-written personal details at absolutely no extra cost!
Interested in life in the other New York? Read what April has to say about life in Buffalo with her sweetheart and a veritable bestiary of animals.
Want to talk libraries? Want to talk Swedish libraries? Linnea and Erik (he's in Swedish only) actually don't talk so much about libraries, but they are both as eloquent and thought-provoking as one would expect a librarian to be.
Ever wondered if there were Chinese-West Indians? There are. And some of them, like Patrick for instance, write with great insight and warmth on birth, death and everything in between.
- by Francis S.
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
"Isn't it nice to lose the socks?" said my neighbor P., the guitarist. Er, that's how I'd translate what he said, more or less.
And I agree, it is nice to lose the socks. One of the glories of summer is to be able to wear sandals and even more minimal variations on sandals; it would be even nicer if I could go barefoot completely. I think I've never gotten over the barefoot halcyon summers when I was 9 and 10 and 11 years old, when my parents shipped me off to my Uncle Wilbur's farm in Iowa for a couple of weeks.
I would get up with my cousins as soon as the sun was up, then we would run outside wearing only the flimsiest pairs of shorts, slipping our bare feet into galoshes to do our chores: gathering eggs and feeding the chickens and dumping silage in a trough for the cows. Then we would kick off the rubber boots until the late afternoon, when chores had to be done again. Kicking off those boots was the mark of complete and utter freedom. We didn't even bother to put shoes on when we decided for no good reason to go running through freshly cut fields of dirt clods and hay stubble that hurt like hell, shouting, "ow, ow, ow, ow!" as we ran.
I suppose the city streets are even more hazardous to my feet than those fields were, so there's no question of trying to go barefoot now. Besides, I don't think my feet are tough enough anymore.
The Swedish verb for the day is att springa. It means to run.
- by Francis S.
And I agree, it is nice to lose the socks. One of the glories of summer is to be able to wear sandals and even more minimal variations on sandals; it would be even nicer if I could go barefoot completely. I think I've never gotten over the barefoot halcyon summers when I was 9 and 10 and 11 years old, when my parents shipped me off to my Uncle Wilbur's farm in Iowa for a couple of weeks.
I would get up with my cousins as soon as the sun was up, then we would run outside wearing only the flimsiest pairs of shorts, slipping our bare feet into galoshes to do our chores: gathering eggs and feeding the chickens and dumping silage in a trough for the cows. Then we would kick off the rubber boots until the late afternoon, when chores had to be done again. Kicking off those boots was the mark of complete and utter freedom. We didn't even bother to put shoes on when we decided for no good reason to go running through freshly cut fields of dirt clods and hay stubble that hurt like hell, shouting, "ow, ow, ow, ow!" as we ran.
I suppose the city streets are even more hazardous to my feet than those fields were, so there's no question of trying to go barefoot now. Besides, I don't think my feet are tough enough anymore.
The Swedish verb for the day is att springa. It means to run.
- by Francis S.
Monday, July 29, 2002
The Swedish summer is over. Everyone is back from their four- and five-week vacations. It's time to buckle down and ignore the fact that the sky is bluebell-blue without a cloud in sight. Time for three meetings a day. Time to speak Swedish with all and sundry.
C'mon Francis, you can do it. Stop being a little chickenshit. Quit your worrying that you're mixing up your en- and ett-words. Quit trying to remember förstod is pronounced as if it were spelled förstog. Quit correcting yourself when you use the wrong adjectival endings, when you put the inte in the wrong place, when you use ska instead of kommer att.
Just speak.
The Swedish word for the day is liksom. It means, like, like.
- by Francis S.
C'mon Francis, you can do it. Stop being a little chickenshit. Quit your worrying that you're mixing up your en- and ett-words. Quit trying to remember förstod is pronounced as if it were spelled förstog. Quit correcting yourself when you use the wrong adjectival endings, when you put the inte in the wrong place, when you use ska instead of kommer att.
Just speak.
The Swedish word for the day is liksom. It means, like, like.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, July 27, 2002
Finding books in English is little trouble in Stockholm - Hedengren's has a great selection, and NK, the big expensive department store, ("kompaniet," as all the little old blue-haired Östermalm matrons call it) has an English Bookshop that is excellent. So while the husband was gone a week ago, I took the opportunity of browsing leisurely for a couple of hours, and ended up buying Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.
Now, the Mitford girls were one weird contradictory bunch. Diana still likes to say when interviewed that what everyone forgets about the Nazis is that Hitler had exquisite manners (thanks, Simon and Alex, for the link); Jessica, who happened to have been communist, wrote scathing books about America, on the, er, mortuary industry for example.
But Nancy, she wrote about what it was like to be a member of the English upper class between the wars. There is no denying that Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love possess a certain precious charm. The characters, most of whom are based quite explicitly on her own family, are a zany lot with some interesting priorities. Most remarkable is a hero who happens to be a, well, screaming queen; he even actually wins it all in the extraordinarily pixilated ending of Love in a Cold Climate. What is a bit dissimulating, however, is the way she imputes Nazi sympathies not to her own fictional family, but rather to villainous rich in-laws who have the misfortune to have a German surname.
Of course it is a bit hard to pick out what might and might not be irony from the distance of more than five decades since the books were written. So in the end, I'm not sure what to make of it all.
The Swedish word for the day is märkligt. It means peculiar.
- by Francis S.
Now, the Mitford girls were one weird contradictory bunch. Diana still likes to say when interviewed that what everyone forgets about the Nazis is that Hitler had exquisite manners (thanks, Simon and Alex, for the link); Jessica, who happened to have been communist, wrote scathing books about America, on the, er, mortuary industry for example.
But Nancy, she wrote about what it was like to be a member of the English upper class between the wars. There is no denying that Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love possess a certain precious charm. The characters, most of whom are based quite explicitly on her own family, are a zany lot with some interesting priorities. Most remarkable is a hero who happens to be a, well, screaming queen; he even actually wins it all in the extraordinarily pixilated ending of Love in a Cold Climate. What is a bit dissimulating, however, is the way she imputes Nazi sympathies not to her own fictional family, but rather to villainous rich in-laws who have the misfortune to have a German surname.
Of course it is a bit hard to pick out what might and might not be irony from the distance of more than five decades since the books were written. So in the end, I'm not sure what to make of it all.
The Swedish word for the day is märkligt. It means peculiar.
- by Francis S.
Thursday, July 25, 2002
As the world's stockmarkets took a nasty spill, we spent the evening dancing on a volcano, not knowing things were crashing down around us outside.
Well, not dancing exactly, more like having a dinner party on a volcano. A dinner party thrown together at the last minute in honor of two guys from America whom I'd never met before, friends of a great friend of mine who lives in Chicago. The Americans, naturally, provided the news from America; we provided the food, the rioja and the Spanish eau de vie brought by the husband from Spain, and most importantly, the charming Swedish guests.
A., the former model and aspiring producer, ravishing in her little black shawl and impossibly thin spiky heels, told us about the time the animal talker came and talked to the family dog. "Dogs can make jokes," the animal talker had said. "They're very funny sometimes."
We sang silly Swedish drinking toasts.
The Americans were stuck reluctantly defending America. Which is a good thing for us Americans because we rarely have to do it to non-Americans. It toughens us up.
M., the t.v. producer, drank so many whisky glasses of neat white tequila that he couldn't stop talking way too coherently about Israel and Palestine and the power of positive propaganda. He also graciously taught the Americans - including me - a useful Swedish verb that does not translate squarely into tight English, although the concept is simple enough: att olla. It means to touch objects with the tip of one's dick.
Isn't Swedish great?
- by Francis S.
Well, not dancing exactly, more like having a dinner party on a volcano. A dinner party thrown together at the last minute in honor of two guys from America whom I'd never met before, friends of a great friend of mine who lives in Chicago. The Americans, naturally, provided the news from America; we provided the food, the rioja and the Spanish eau de vie brought by the husband from Spain, and most importantly, the charming Swedish guests.
A., the former model and aspiring producer, ravishing in her little black shawl and impossibly thin spiky heels, told us about the time the animal talker came and talked to the family dog. "Dogs can make jokes," the animal talker had said. "They're very funny sometimes."
We sang silly Swedish drinking toasts.
The Americans were stuck reluctantly defending America. Which is a good thing for us Americans because we rarely have to do it to non-Americans. It toughens us up.
M., the t.v. producer, drank so many whisky glasses of neat white tequila that he couldn't stop talking way too coherently about Israel and Palestine and the power of positive propaganda. He also graciously taught the Americans - including me - a useful Swedish verb that does not translate squarely into tight English, although the concept is simple enough: att olla. It means to touch objects with the tip of one's dick.
Isn't Swedish great?
- by Francis S.
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Holy mackerel, there's a group of Christian guys who want to shut Landover Baptist down.
I guess the old equation is true: orthodoxy = no sense of humor whatsoever.
However, it is not true that orthodoxy = no sense of rhyme or meter.
Bad poetry is, apparently, the sign of a pretend Christian.
(Thanks for pointing me in the general direction, yami.)
- by Francis S.
I guess the old equation is true: orthodoxy = no sense of humor whatsoever.
However, it is not true that orthodoxy = no sense of rhyme or meter.
Bad poetry is, apparently, the sign of a pretend Christian.
(Thanks for pointing me in the general direction, yami.)
- by Francis S.
More reading recommendations culled from the list of links at the left:
You want to know about Crown Princess Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée? Des can tell you. Don't ask me how a straight English guy knows all the latest dish on Sweden's most eligible bachelorette, find out for yourself by reading his amusing reflections.
You want to know about the California State Legislation process? Aaron has firsthand experience. But it's his tender, angry, funny and poetic jousting with life in general that never fails to impress me.
You want to hear about the ultimate in long-distance relationships? Forget the pathetic and defunct "Damn the Pacific." Those two have nothing on Ash and Fraser, who will never ask you for money because, well, they have jobs.
You wanna talk accordians? Joey, itinerant Accordian Guy, knows all about life in the accordian fast lane. The accordian fast lane being club life in Toronto. But don't let his nice bad boy persona fool you. He is domestic enough to have white sofas at home.
- by Francis S.
- by Francis S.
The tongue is such an unwieldy organ.
Yeah, it does some useful things. I'm a big proponent of licking, for instance. When appropriate, of course. And tastebuds are quite useful, although they don't really function well without an olfactory component, so they deserve only so much credit.
But the tongue seems to have its own little counterbrain that works in direct opposition to the Big Brain. And my tongue's single-minded little brain is driving me absolutely crazy because it keeps telling my tongue to press against the spot where the permanent retainer used to be, the one that had been in place for nearly 25 years but got accidentally ripped out in an ugly dental-floss accident yesterday.
I wish I could find the override function.
The Swedish word for the day is tandkött. It means gums.
- by Francis S.
Yeah, it does some useful things. I'm a big proponent of licking, for instance. When appropriate, of course. And tastebuds are quite useful, although they don't really function well without an olfactory component, so they deserve only so much credit.
But the tongue seems to have its own little counterbrain that works in direct opposition to the Big Brain. And my tongue's single-minded little brain is driving me absolutely crazy because it keeps telling my tongue to press against the spot where the permanent retainer used to be, the one that had been in place for nearly 25 years but got accidentally ripped out in an ugly dental-floss accident yesterday.
I wish I could find the override function.
The Swedish word for the day is tandkött. It means gums.
- by Francis S.
Monday, July 22, 2002
My version of the Trojan War in 100 words.
So, could you, would you reduce a classic epic tale to 100 words? And which one would it be?
The Swedish word for the day is novell. It means short story.
- by Francis S.
- Two stories about Helen
1. They all thought she was just a common whore when she showed up in the bed of the farmer’s son. Then it turned out she was worth something on account of she’d run away from money, real money. So they said the farmer’s son wasn’t so stupid after all. But it didn’t stop them from spitting on her whenever she passed.
2. “My mother screamed when I was born,” says the ancient blind woman sitting alone in the orchard. "I hatched from a lavender egg."
She tells herself, “I was an ugly child,” and she can’t remember why she is lying.
copyright 2002 Francis Strand - just a little reminder!
So, could you, would you reduce a classic epic tale to 100 words? And which one would it be?
The Swedish word for the day is novell. It means short story.
- by Francis S.
Sunday, July 21, 2002
At long last, the husband comes home today. He's been gone for 10 days. It feels like a century. I can hardly stand waiting until his plane arrives at 9 p.m. this evening.
It's time for a deep-cleaning frenzy around the apartment.
But first, let me start with something I've been meaning to do forever and the first in a series, I guarantee it. That is, recommendations to some of the links on the left side of this page:
You want to talk literary criticism, social criticism, movies? You must read Tinka. The only blogger I've met in person. She's sharp, witty, intensely interested in language and speech, of a literary bent, able to nimbly switch gears. And so's her writing.
You want to know what's really happening in America? The best source is undoubtedly Nancy of the "World of Jill Matrix." Überdyke extraordinaire, I get way too much of my scary news of America from her. Oh, and she's really funny, too.
You want to know about Moscow? Read now what Fiona has to say about living with a babushka, because Fiona's going back to Scotland soon. She must surely be droll, dry and madcap if her writing is any indication. I bet she can talk a mile a minute.
You wanna know clothes? Try Jacqueline X. Or is that Miss X? Her take on life is short but sweet, and occasionally a bit obsessed with finding the right size 11 mules.
You want to hear a good yarn from an old sailor? Bill is your man. He's full of the past, present and future.
You want to know how to make Welsh cakes? Want to know what Welsh cakes are? Duncan has the recipe. And a lot of other interesting observations about life.
You interested in becoming a father? Do you like comics that feature a hero with some 20 legs who spends a lot of time in a Doblo? Want to hear what another expatriate - other than me - thinks about America? Read Miguel, whose writing is touching and hilarious.
You obviously are interested in what an Anglo thinks about living in Sweden. But what about a Swede living in England? Simon has only just begun, but I know I'm curious as to what he'll be saying about us wacky English speakers over time.
More to come.
The Swedish verb for the day is att läsa. It means to read or to study.
- by Francis S.
It's time for a deep-cleaning frenzy around the apartment.
But first, let me start with something I've been meaning to do forever and the first in a series, I guarantee it. That is, recommendations to some of the links on the left side of this page:
More to come.
The Swedish verb for the day is att läsa. It means to read or to study.
- by Francis S.
Saturday, July 20, 2002
I should've known he wouldn't be able to resist.
R., my good buddy and proud father to be, has started his own weblog to record the anticipation of the birth of his child. Woo-hoo!
So now I can keep up on a daily basis with his emotional highs and highers as he waits to welcome a new little human being into the world.
Thanks, R.
The Swedish word for the day is Hilda. It is a name rather infrequently given to Swedish girls when they are born.
- by Francis S.
R., my good buddy and proud father to be, has started his own weblog to record the anticipation of the birth of his child. Woo-hoo!
So now I can keep up on a daily basis with his emotional highs and highers as he waits to welcome a new little human being into the world.
Thanks, R.
The Swedish word for the day is Hilda. It is a name rather infrequently given to Swedish girls when they are born.
- by Francis S.
Friday, July 19, 2002
A wasps' nest is a curious thing. It can't rightly be called beautiful, there's too much menace and fear associated with it for beauty. And yet it can have a papery round perfection to it.
Wasps, on the other hand, can only be given grudging respect, except perhaps if one is an entomologist. Especially as August draws near and wasps become increasingly aggressive. Which is why C., the fashion photographer, decided it was time to remove the nest that wasps had built in the eaves of his summer house.
He started rather cavalierly with merely a jacket and long trousers, poking a little here and there as he exposed the nest to daylight. But the mad buzzing was enough to make him reconsider.
And so we fitted him out, Tweedle-dum fashion: first with a stocking cap; then on top of the cap, one of those wire-mesh hemispheres that serve as an airy cover to keep flies off of the last two uneaten pieces of rhubarb pie still left in the pie pan; then we pulled down a mosquito net from one of the bedrooms and put that over the wire-mesh pie protector so the yards of netting hung to the ground.
With his long legs and the high cheekbones of his handsome face hidden behind the netting so that only his huge hands poked out, he looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan version of a Chinese potentate. We tied the long trailing ends of the netting around his waist, and then taped his gloves to his sleeves with duct tape.
Looking now more like a comically maniacal and slapdash beekeeper, C. was ready to do battle with the wasps, tree-pruner in hand.
In the end, it was impossible in that get-up, and he got the thing into a bag with only the jacket and gloves for protection, with the help of another summer guest.
As he walked me down to the jetty where the ferry back to Stockholm stops, we laughed that he was wary that the wasps might somehow follow him even though he knew they would not.
"I wonder how long the ones that weren't in the nest will fly around before they figure out that it's gone?" he asked.
It was nearly enough to make me feel sorry for the wasps.
The Swedish word for the day is of course geting, which means wasp.
- by Francis S.
Wasps, on the other hand, can only be given grudging respect, except perhaps if one is an entomologist. Especially as August draws near and wasps become increasingly aggressive. Which is why C., the fashion photographer, decided it was time to remove the nest that wasps had built in the eaves of his summer house.
He started rather cavalierly with merely a jacket and long trousers, poking a little here and there as he exposed the nest to daylight. But the mad buzzing was enough to make him reconsider.
And so we fitted him out, Tweedle-dum fashion: first with a stocking cap; then on top of the cap, one of those wire-mesh hemispheres that serve as an airy cover to keep flies off of the last two uneaten pieces of rhubarb pie still left in the pie pan; then we pulled down a mosquito net from one of the bedrooms and put that over the wire-mesh pie protector so the yards of netting hung to the ground.
With his long legs and the high cheekbones of his handsome face hidden behind the netting so that only his huge hands poked out, he looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan version of a Chinese potentate. We tied the long trailing ends of the netting around his waist, and then taped his gloves to his sleeves with duct tape.
Looking now more like a comically maniacal and slapdash beekeeper, C. was ready to do battle with the wasps, tree-pruner in hand.
In the end, it was impossible in that get-up, and he got the thing into a bag with only the jacket and gloves for protection, with the help of another summer guest.
As he walked me down to the jetty where the ferry back to Stockholm stops, we laughed that he was wary that the wasps might somehow follow him even though he knew they would not.
"I wonder how long the ones that weren't in the nest will fly around before they figure out that it's gone?" he asked.
It was nearly enough to make me feel sorry for the wasps.
The Swedish word for the day is of course geting, which means wasp.
- by Francis S.
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
And now off to the archipelago for a couple days of sea and sun with A., the former model and aspiring producer, and C., the fashion photographer, at their summer home on Birds Island. And of course the boys will be there. It's amazing how quickly one gets used to having cats around. The two cats were here only three days, and I still keep thinking they're still here, ready to follow me around the apartment or come walking into a room for no reason whatsoever looking at me with great expectation in their eyes, or start wildly racing around in the middle of the night on a racecourse that just happens to include my poor naked butt, over and over.
- by Francis S.
- by Francis S.
My tastes in music are catholic. Or rather, Catholic. As in Fauré's "Cantique de Jean Racine," Duruflé's "Four Motets" or the Bach "Magnificat." I really only like music that most of the world describes as classical - although in fact it's not just classical music I like, it's everything from plainchant to polyphony to baroque to romantic and onwards.
But, the first record I ever bought was a 45 of Chaka Khan with her group Rufus singing "Tell me something good."
I was ten. And now at 41, I've finally seen Chaka Khan sing her tough old heart out, on the waterfront of Stockholm harbor. Her voice could still no doubt split granite, despite all the booze and heroin.
Tell me something good - tell me, tell me, tell me,
tell me that you like it, oh yeah.
Oh yeah, I liked it. You are still the shit, Chaka Khan.
The Swedish phrase for the day is värsta brud. It means foxy chick. More or less.
- by Francis S.
But, the first record I ever bought was a 45 of Chaka Khan with her group Rufus singing "Tell me something good."
I was ten. And now at 41, I've finally seen Chaka Khan sing her tough old heart out, on the waterfront of Stockholm harbor. Her voice could still no doubt split granite, despite all the booze and heroin.
Tell me something good - tell me, tell me, tell me,
tell me that you like it, oh yeah.
Oh yeah, I liked it. You are still the shit, Chaka Khan.
The Swedish phrase for the day is värsta brud. It means foxy chick. More or less.
- by Francis S.
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