On Sunday, we went to a small party for the release of a music video, with A., the TV producer and C., the fashion photographer and the sea captain and the children's book author.

I'm mostly a classical music kind of guy, but the video really tickled my fancy, it's so silly and little-kiddly.

And that's not the only way I'm going all pop culture. Like, uh, I'm following in my 13-year-old nephew's footsteps and I got me a myspace space. Even though as far as I can see, myspace is even more about just being popular than blogs are. And the layouts of myspace spaces give me a headache. And it's just extra work because I have another bloody blog there, as if I weren't being totally derelict in keeping this blog up. I don't really see the point of myspace, exactly.

Feh.

I suspect that going all pop culture isn't what it's cracked up to be.

The Swedish phrase for the day is aj, mina ögon!. It means ouch, my eyes!

- by Francis S.

Last week, a woman was discovered to be keeping 11 swans in her 30-square-meter apartment in Stockholm. The neighbors had called to complain about the smell, and the police broke in to find what first appeared to be two swans and eventually turned out to be 11. The swans seemed to be in relatively good health, although several had been rather severely injured long ago. The woman just liked swans, apparently, despite their reputation for being vicious and strong.

The question all Stockholmers – well, at least all the editors in my section of the office – have been asking themselves, is: How the hell did she capture 11 swans and get them in her apartment without anyone noticing? Or without getting bitten? And what would you say if you encountered your 67-year-old widowed neighbor in the elevator with a snapping, sopping swan?

Tonight, we're going to Dansens Hus to see the Cullberg Ballet in a 40th anniversary performance. The company is perhaps most famous for its performances of Swan Lake, with both men and women as awkward muscular swans, and a few Oedipal moments that seem to be the signature of choreographer Mats Ek.

I wonder if someone would consider choreography for a Swan Apartment ballet for the Cullberg? I would pay good money to see that.

The Swedish word for the day is svanfångster. This word doesn't translate very well, I would use the phrase bagged swans, although apparently it refers more literally to a catch, in the fishing sense of the word. And no doubt someone will comment giving me a precise and obscure Swedish word that means "bagged swans," but hey, I'm doing the best I can.

- by Francis S.

Shields said gays across the U.S. should connect with their congressman. He noted the Williams Institute’s finding that each congressional district now has at least 6,500 gay residents.

from an article in the Washington Blade online

At least 6,500 seems like a pretty sizeable number to me.

Interestingly, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by Gary Gates at the Williams Institute, conservative little New Hampshire, at 6.6 percent has the highest proportion of gays and lesbians of any state.

The Swedish word for the day is befolkning. It means population.

- by Francis S.

Stockholm has, at long last, been covered in snow for nearly a week, and the cold is hopefully killing all kinds of nasty bugs and viruses and bacteria that would otherwise plague us. I have a great fondness for snow and its power for making everything fresh again. Snow is no doubt comforting to me just because I grew up with lots of it. Maybe that's why I love Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale so very much, a book that gives winter its romantic due.

Strangely, in a peculiar literary mapping game I just hit upon, Robertson Davies appears to be the closest author to Mark Helprin, according to the taste of readers. Not two authors that I would ever put together. But then, I've never read anything else by Mark Helprin, and I have no idea who I would put him next to.

Now that was a forced transition if there ever was one.

The Swedish word for the day is klantigt. It means clumsy.

- by Francis S.

The thing about Stockholm is that people really know how to dress stylishly. And the thing about Stockholm is that men and women alike are thin and handsome and clothes fit them well, so they wear well-fitted clothes (well-fitted clothes were something the husband and I couldn't seem to find when we went shopping after Christmas in Chicago: all the clothes were so boxy and oversized, making me think that Chicagoans are either box-shaped and oversized, or fitted clothes are just not the fashion there.)

But the thing about Stockholm is that everyone dresses alike, which means right now it seems the streets are filled with men wearing tightly fitted trench-coats and trench-style coats, double-breasted with great big lapels, and very tight trousers with slightly pointy leather boots with very soft and flat soles.

It's a very mod look, and I like it. But with everyone wearing it, it's like a uniform. And I hate the idea of everyone looking alike, no matter how good the look is.

But what to do. Do you give in and wear it?

The Swedish word for the day is likadant. It means the same.

- by Francis S.

When I arrived for my massage, I was surprised to see the popstar waiting for my husband, who appeared shortly after I arrived, pouring himself down the stairs, all flippy-floppy after his massage, his face creased with lines from lying face down, his eyes smeary as if he'd been asleep. Later, after my own massage, all three of us left together, the husband and I to take the bus and the popstar heading to the subway.

"This is my year of low consumption," she said. "I'm going to consume less all year. Take the car as little as possible."

As she headed down the subway at Östermalmstorg, I thought to myself that only in Stockholm could someone like her take the subway for a year and not worry about being harrassed by fans every train ride she took.

As for me, this is going to be my year of consuming broccoli. And getting more exercise.

The Swedish word for the day is löfte. It means promise or resolution, in the sense of a New Year's resolution.

- by Francis S.

As we returned from Christmas in the Midwest, on the plane from Chicago to Stockholm I suddenly noticed that it was Dec. 29 (Central European Time, it was still only Dec. 28 in Illinois). Which meant that it was eight years to the day since I'd moved to Sweden. Strange to be on a plane again and remembering it all: my worldly possessions travelling separately in a container somewhere between Washington, DC and Stockholm, the excitement I felt, (I wasn't even scared, which astonishes me), the nearly overwhelming lust and love for the man who would become my husband, who was waiting for me at Arlanda airport. I had arrived some five hours later than expected, since my flight from Reyjavik to Stockholm had been cancelled and I had to go through Copenhagen instead, making it three flights in all to get here. I remember talking at Keflavik airport in Iceland to an American woman who had lived in Sweden fro 15 years, which seemed like forever.

At New Year's, the mother of the popstar asked me: "Will you die here?"

And then she smiled, embarrassed a little that she had put it that way.

My favorite Finn, who was part of the conversation, hummed a bit of the Swedish national anthem, which ends with the phrase "I want to live and die in the North."

I could only answer, well, yes, probably.

It's strange to think I will never leave, but it becomes less and less likely that I will abandon Sweden as the years pass.

And fifteen years seems like no time at all anymore.

Still stranger is to think of growing old and dying here. Will the husband and I end up in an old people's home, together or separately? Will I revert to English in my dotage? Who will come to visit me? And who will put flowers on my grave?

The Swedish word for the day is alltid. It means always.

- by Francis S.

Here we bring new water
From the well so clear,
For to worship God with
This happy new year.

Sing levy dew, sing levy dew,
The water and the wine;
The seven bright gold wires
And bugles that do shine.

Sing rein to Fair Maid,
With gold upon her toe -
Open you the West Door,
And turn the Old Year go.

Sing rein to Fair Maid,
With gold upon her chin -
Open you the East Door,
And let the new year in.

Sing levy dew, sing levy dew,
The water and the wine;
The seven bright gold wires
And bugles that do shine.

A New Year's Carol, traditional

Goodbye to 2006.

The Swedish word for the day is fest. It means party.

- by Francis S.

Peer pressure combined with the Calvinist version of guilt - "God frowns on a man who shirks his duty" - have an unfortunate effect on me. Just tag me for a meme, and I can't sleep at night if I fail to respond.

So, the somewhat mysteriously named "xoom" has pushed my buttons, asking me to write five things you don't know about me. I'm not sure I can really take this to the limit, since by this point everyone from my parents to random unknown people at my office read this, which means it's pretty hard to come up with things that no person who reads this doesn't know about me. So I'll stick to things that, as far as I can remember, I've never mentioned in the five plus years I've been rambling on in this particular corner of the digital world.

1. I don't like beets. I try to like them, I even eat them pretty much whenever they're put on the table. But the consistency is like biting into layers of boiled crayons. And the color should be pleasing, but it's not.

2. I am the biggest baby about someone sticking me to get blood. Whenever I have to have a blood test, I need to lie down because if I don't, I am in serious danger of fainting. I've fainted three times when I was sitting up and actually almost fainted once when I was lying down. The nurse had to peel the paper off my back when I finally sat up from the examining table, because I'd sweat so much.

3. I haven't voted in the last two U.S. presidential elections. I have a good excuse, though. I'm registered in the District of Columbia, so it doesn't make a bit of difference, since Washington is like 90 percent Democratic, so the electoral college votes always go to the Democrats. And I don't even have a representative in either houses of Congress, so why should I bother? On top of that, Congress is always being nasty and manipulative, using the poor District of Columbia as an ideological punching bag, forcing the city to spend money to change subway maps to reflect that National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport (don't get me going on that one), or messing with D.C.'s handgun ban, for example. Still, this is all just an excuse and even if my vote makes no difference, I feel guilty about this (see note above). But not so guilty that I've bothered to get an absentee ballot.

4. If I had been born a girl, my parents would have named me Mary Ann. And they're not even Catholic. Go figure.

5. My husband keeps bugging me to renew my Swedish ID, which is expired but I use anyway. For some reason I keep putting this off. I don't even know why. It makes him so crazy he won't even talk about it.

I've never been very into passing on chain letters, so the buck is going to stop here on this one. Sorry, xoom.

The Swedish word for the day is fem. It means five.

- by Francis S.

Hallå? I said into the phone. I was calling A., the TV producer, but every time I called, I kept getting connected to some place with lots of French people talking in the background. Just what I needed as I was trying desperately to keep up with Christmas, which seems to be leaving me breathless this year with all the venison dinners, madrigal concerts, rock concerts, glöggs, Lucia processions, and shopping that have taken over my life in the past two weeks.

Five minutes later, A. called.

"Did you just try to call me and get connected to a French bakery?" she asked me.

Well, yeah, I guess that's what it was, I told her.

She laughed an evil little laugh. "I have my phone set up to forward to a bakery in Paris when it's someone I don't know," she said.

But you know me, I said, indignant.

"I just couldn't get to my phone fast enough," she said. "Isn't it funny?"

It's kind of mean, I told her.

"I know," she said, ignoring the fact that I was speaking in my sourest voice. "I have this side to me that sometimes I can't believe I have," she said. And she laughed that evil laugh again, forcing me to laugh with her. Because, well, it is kind of funny.

The Swedish phrase for the day is jag skulle vilja prata med.... It is a most formal way to begin a phone call if you don't know who you are talking to, and means I would like to speak with.... The appropriate way to answer the phone - unlike in the U.S., where one simply says "hello" - is to simply state your fullname, or even just your surname. I think my favorite way of answering the phone is the way the Italians do it, with a "pronto."

- by Francis S.

We stood outside Kungsholm's church in the dark in our overcoats - although the weather was unseasonably warm, it wasn't so warm that we didn't need overcoats. Then a man with a grey beard handed out torches to us, even to the little boys - although not to the littlest - and we lit them, and the priest began the procession through the streets to Saint Erik's chapel. We straggled along singing, and a few people stopped to look at us, but mostly we walked the eight blocks with little notice. It's amazing how Swedes will pay little attention to a curiously medieval-looking band of children and adults carrying torches and singing as they walk along the street at 5:30 p.m. on the first Sunday of Advent. (The whole Swedish Christmas-time obsession with burning lights is actually suspiciously pagan, if you ask me.)

When we got to the chapel, it was full to overflowing. Which was no surprise, considering there were 11 little boys singing in the choir, each little boy with parents and grandparents and brothers or sisters or cousins or what have you who had come to see the service. And they sang sweetly, although according to the husband they didn't all pay strict attention, and of course at least one little boy was singing about a fifth below the other little boys, and there was only one mishap when one of the little boys knocked his head against the altar and after several minutes the priest noticed that he was bleeding and his mother took him out. But we kept on valiantly - the priest referred to us men as "aspiring choir boys" - and eventually the little boy with the banged head reappeared, seemingly none the worse for the wear (little boys are pretty tough creatures).

The whole thing was quite informal, the sermon simple, the readings familiar, the candle-lighting brief and we the choir sang and sang and sang, all the favorite Swedish advent songs, with a single scoop of Vivaldi and a double scoop of Bach on top.

For someone like me, steeped in religion from childhood, it was altogether quite an appropriate First Sunday of Advent, which it seems, is second only to Lucia in terms of favorite Swedish Christmas rituals, Christmas services themselves being held way too early on Christmas morning for most people to bother with in this secular country.

The Swedish word for the day is ankomst. It means arrival.

- by Francis S.

Are you superstitious? I'm not terribly superstitious, but I do have a few little quirks that amount to superstition. Like with the rip-off-a-page calendar sitting on the desk next to the computer I am writing this on, for which I feel it is tempting fate to rip off a page before I've actually completed the day, as if it could contribute somehow to an untimely death. My untimely death, mainly. I suppose I should be more worried about being killed from all the cholesterol in the food I ate yesterday - we celebrated our Thanksgiving yesterday, cooking all day to feed 16 people with the whole nine yards, turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and cranberries and pumpkin pie and pecan pie and 72 homemade rolls. I'm still full.

The Swedish word for the day is vidskeplig. It means superstitious.

- by Francis S.

Isn't it great that despite the fact that individual states are passing nasty anti-gay marriage referendums left and right, and the Catholic church is reiterating the usual garbage about homosexuals having a disorder, gay people are creating a hodge-podge of families in sometimes rather creative ways in the US? It's a regular gay baby boom. I know that my own nieces and nephews in both Chicago and Minneapolis refer quite casually to hanging out at the homes of friends who have two moms.

You can even feel it here in little Sweden, where our goddaughter goes to daycare with at least one kid who has two mommies, and one of her sometime playmates not only has two mommies, but two daddies (a classic case of a creative family group).

According to a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine, the 2000 US census showed that some 22 percent of gay men are raising a child under 18 at home, and for lesbians it's 34 percent. That's pretty amazing.

What I wonder is how much people realize that all these children are hurt at least as much as their parents are by anti-gay marriage laws, and far worse, by laws that forbid any recognition of gay relationships.

I wonder how many kids it's going to take to tip the balance?

The Swedish word for the day is elak. It means mean or cruel.

- by Francis S.

How is it possible that a city that lies at a latitude of 59° 17' N could be unprepared for snow? Sure, we'd had a long summer that drifted into a mild autumn, and the leaves were still mostly green and few had fallen. But still, it was the first of November, and the meteorologists had been predicting snow since the weekend, so I failed to understand how so many buses could have crashed, the roads could have been at a standstill, the trains could have been shut down and the subway could have been all gummed up. I didn't really care, though, looking down at the traffic in Odenplan from our warm-as-toast apartment, playing Bach fugues on the piano in perfect accompaniment to the wildly blowing snow.

Winter is here, and it's only November 2nd.

The Swedish word for the day is krock. It means crash.

- by Francis S.

Did you play with dolls when you were a little kid? I did. I was given a baby doll, which I never liked much, when I was probably two and my sister had gotten a big plastic doll the size of a toddler with long hair and little dresses and plastic shoes, a doll that I really wanted for myself and that a little rubber baby doll was little consolation for not having. I'm pretty sure that it was at this point suspicions were first planted in my mother's mind that I was not your usual little boy. Although I did like matchbox cars, too. I just liked dolls better.

Flash forward to 43 years later, to the husband and I in a store buying birthday presents for our goddaughter, the only child of our good friends the priest and the policeman. She was four on Wednesday, and one of her numerous birthday parties was yesterday. We got her glitter crayon things (they were actually more like big lipsticks) and glitter magic markers and horse stickers. And then we went to the store with children's clothes next to my office building, the store with the bright pink little workboots in the window.

Naturally, all those little clothes were irresistable. The husband and I can never go in a place like that and just buy one thing, we end up getting whole ensembles (and I don't think the husband is one of those guys who ever played with dolls when he was a child, he was a manly little boy I suspect, even if he's Mr. Fashion Guy now). It's like getting even for my sister having the fun doll with the clothes and me having the baby doll with diapers and a blanket.

Our goddaughter now has a fall coat with matching gloves, hat and scarf, along with a pair of matching little pink workboots. I was worried that she wouldn't like everything because it was brown and pink - another friend of mine's six-year-old daughter refused to wear a dress that was brown with pink polka dots, because "it's not pink!" - but after the guests had gone, and the five of us had eaten a spaghetti dinner, our goddaughter put on a brief fashion show with all her new clothes.

The question remains, are we becoming a bad influence on her?

The Swedish word for the day is rosa. It means pink.

by Francis S.

It was Francis' first husband's therapist who pinpointed exactly what it was that gave Francis his edge, that had helped him survive his childhood with all his fears, his lack of appropriately boyish attributes, his being called names, his timidity, his overall goody-goodiness.

"A narcissistic agenda of entitlement," was what the therapist had said to Francis' first husband, who had duly reported it back to Francis, as if it would change Francis for the better.

Francis found the use of the adjective "narcissistic" an exaggeration, but he freely admitted that from an early age, he had been endowed with a strong sense that the things he considered life's necessities were his for the asking.

Want to know more? You'll just have to buy the book Boys to Men, a collection of coming of age stories edited by Ted Gideonse and Rob Williams that happens to include an essay called "Five Stories about Francis."

The Swedish word for the day is barndom. It means childhood.

- by Francis S.

A couple of weeks ago Sweden voted in a center-right government (for you Americans, center-right in Sweden means to the left of the Democrats). As part of the regime change, they've put in new people at the top, naturally, including a new Minister for Culture (can you imagine having a Minister for Culture in the U.S.? What would such a person do?). Unfortunately, Cecilia Stegö Chilò, the new Minister for Culture, hasn't made a very good impression - critics seem to think that her background working at a conservative think tank means she doesn't have much experience with cultural issues such as art, theatre, music - and it recently came out that she hasn't paid her TV license fee for 16 years (can you imagine having a TV license fee in the U.S.?), which at a minimum means she's a scofflaw.

"They asked her what books she has on her nightstand, and she said she has five but then she couldn't name any of them," the husband told me.

Could you name the books on your nightstand?

I actually had to go look and confirm: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist (which I just finished and liked immensely but wouldn't recommend to anyone); Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (I should just toss the book, every time I try to read it I realize I can stand neither the style nor the subject), What Love Means to You People by NancyKay Shapiro. I had forgotten two books that have been sitting there forever: The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald and The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, neither of which have turned out to be my cup of tea.

But the sixth book, which I did remember, and which is my cup of tea but for some reason I keep letting it get superseded by other books, is My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

And now he's won the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's time to pick it up again and finish - it really is fantastical and charming and fascinating and dark all at once.

The Swedish word for the day is läsare. It means reader.

- by Francis S.

How did I not know that Annie Liebovitz and Susan Sontag were a couple? Where the hell have I been? At this rate, I'm on my way to losing my homosexualist credentials!

(I think I'm going to have to buy Annie Liebovitz' book, A Photographer's Life 1990-2005.)

The Swedish word for the day is avslöjande. It means revelation.

- by Francis S.

One of the bad things about living in a minor European capital is that movies usually arrive months after they open in the States. Like The Squid and the Whale, which came out more than half a year after it was released in the U.S. Of course, it has been playing here for four months and we didn't get around to seeing it until last week. The reward for waiting so long was that we ended up being the only people in the theater, so we stretched out, bought extra candy and felt free to chatter throughout the movie, which improves the viewing experience, believe me. And it was a good movie, but would have been a great one if Jeff Daniels had given us a small bone of sympathy, something to make us feel even just a fleeting moment's empathy and sorrow for his character. Still, Jesse Eisenberg playing his teen-aged son was superb.

But not all is bad when it comes to movies in Stockholm. For one thing, when you buy your tickets you get assigned seats. But the biggest advantage Stockholm has over New York when it comes to movies is that we get Almodóvar first. From the first seconds of any of his movies - the overwrought music and the jarring titles - I'm hooked like I am with no other director. I want to take the next flight to Madrid. I want to eat peppers chopped by Penelope Cruz, I want to hold hands with Rossy De Palma, I want to lick Fele Martinez' neck.

Volver didn't disappoint. The usual vivid colors, strong women and extreme situations that somehow seem normal, horrible deeds that are humanized, all reminiscent of 1950s melodrama but with an underlying toughness coupled to tenderness that can be found in no other movies. And shots like the overhead view of a mourning niece being noisily kissed by a swarm of village women with fans, everyone in black. And the glorious Carmen Maura was back again, even though she once said she would never work with Almodóvar again.

Still, as A. the TV producer said, it wasn't as complex or compelling as his previous film. "I don't want to go out and see it again right away like I did with Bad Education," she said.

I feel ungrateful complaining though, as if it weren't brilliant anyway.

The Swedish verb for the day is att återvända which is how they've translated the title of the film into Swedish. It means to return.

- by Francis S.

Ballet, like opera, is an aquired taste. I've never cared much for classical ballet, it's too rigid and prissy for me. Modern dance is more easily digestible. Not easier to understand, just a lot more fun to watch. So it was on Thursday when we went to see Sweden's great modern dance company, Cullberg Baletten. Two pieces, one playful and one political, full of life and always eye-catching, if a bit inscrutable. Well, not really the political one; it was a little heavy on the message, but mostly managed to still be interesting rather than being weighed down by the didactic.

Still, what struck me most as we sat there was that seven years ago, when I moved here, the husband knew about half of the dance company. But a few have left, and most have reached the age of 40 and retired. Really, I was amazed by how young the dancers were. And then I thought how I still consider myself young and with my creative life ahead of me.

Hell, I'm 45.

What have I been thinking?

Still, I suppose in order to keep going, everyone must feel that they have lots of life, or at least worthwhile time, ahead of them.

The Swedish word for the day is konst. It means art.

- by Francis S.