Backpacking in Oslo or Backpacking Oslo
“My Hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.”
--John Krakauer, Into thin Air
1. A Character Sketch
Delicate tendrils of smoke waft up from a slow-burning cigarette and diffuse into the morning sunshine. Hot black coffee steaming aroma out of a tiny white cup. Outdoor café. A spiral notebook and a fountain pen:
Full of passion and artistic frenzy, he married young. After a few years, his wife began to see his passion as immature, a prolonged adolescence. They fought. Soon, they were divorced. She was sad, but free; he was devastated: a victim of his own unquenchable passions.
Later, he found another girl who was drawn to his passion like the first. She was quite a few years younger than he, with no thoughts of a life of comfortable mediocrity to cloud her passion. They married spontaneously in a roadside chapel in Nevada.
After a few years, the girl came to see him as a self-centred jerk and divorced him. She was sad, but free; he was devastated and confused: what happened to her passion?
The cycle repeated itself until he was forty-five and married a twenty year-old girl. People disapproved of the age difference and said it would never last: just another one of his perverted flings with a young girl. But it did last. Across a generation he finally found someone who shared his passion for life and love with the same undying intensity.
When he was young, they called him a passionate artist: an idealist. When he was old they called him an eccentric old freak, a pervert. The sentence: public condemnation. The crime: undying passion.
After he died, his work was “discovered” and his genius proclaimed. His work was studied, his life was dissected, and his psyche discussed in universities; he influenced generations of young idealists, some of whom actually understood his passion.
2. Another Idealist
Though he considered himself a writer, he had not really written much in the past couple of years, aside from a few poems and some haiku. He didn’t know why his creative faucet had been turned off, but he didn’t really mind either. “Why write about life when you can live it?” He asked, in defence of his literary lassitude. (Quite a change from someone who, in a fit of artistic passion once exclaimed, “My mission on this earth is to record the intensity of life!” ¾ how cliché, anyway.)
In truth, he did go through a creatively dark period when he had the sudden epiphany that, despite the centuries of trying to turn the masses on to life, authors have collectively failed to make much of a dent in the consciousness of the common man: people choose to live in ignorance. If the literary heavyweights had failed to convince the masses of the ecstasy of awareness, what kind of impact could he expect to make?
But this was no longer an excuse. The plea to the public was secondary, he realised, to an even greater issue: life! Who cares if every young writer has the same ambition? It is not the ambition to record life as you see it that is cheesy; it is the feeble attempt to imitate your literary heroes that is garbage: imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also the most pathetic method of self-expression. Too many writers repeat themselves endlessly using a voice that is not their own, though they may have convinced themselves otherwise. In any case, he now realised that he did, in fact, have his own voice. It had changed a lot since his first attempts at writing many years ago; and more recently, it had been silent: patiently waiting, observing, maturing. He finally realised that there was no reason for him to write: he was a writer, and he had no choice.
3. A consequence
I have known for a long time that I am a writer. Not that I actually write much; nor am I driven to write. I have no demons to excise; I do not wake up in the middle of the night consumed with an idea that must be expressed. For me, being a writer is simply a consequence of being alive.
I don’t know who first made the unfortunate assumption that to be a writer one must write. I do remember Rilke, in Letters to a Young Poet, proclaiming that if one is not driven to write, one is not a writer and thus should not waste one’s time writing. Somehow I think this view of the writer is unfortunately over-simplified. Certainly, the written word is the most obvious embodiment of a writer, but being a writer neither begins nor ends in language.
How did the ideas of production and material worth come to taint the existential experience of being a writer?
Language without
words.
Thoughts without ideas.
Passion without pain.
Use the
dictionary if you like,
or just skip over the words you don’t understand;
learn about the author’s personal life,
or ignore it;
sympathise, empathise, open your eyes.
Don’t
worry, there is nothing to miss:
if you don’t see it, it is not there.
I don’t
mean to confuse you,
but I have no choice;
there are as many ways to understand
a writer’s work as there are readers to read.
Sometimes not
every word is chosen:
don’t let footnotes get in the way of a good time.
There is no such
thing as writer’s block:
It is not necessary to write to be a writer.
4. An Underlying Message
When I was in university, I became a literary snob. If there was no underlying message or poetry of perfection, what was the point? I idolized James Joyce, Kafka, Gide, and dreamed of how people might someday devote as much attention to the intricacies of my work. It wouldn’t even matter if the world found out about my genius during my lifetime, the thought of the need for footnotes and research to fully comprehend my intentions really tweaked my intellectual nipples. So I wrote. I was driven to write. I wrote all the time: written fragments and poems began to appear in my schoolbooks, on old envelopes, and on my hand.
[Where the hell is that hand poem anyway?]
I indulged in various forms of debauchery, believing that I would somehow be a better writer by torturing, destroying and transcending my self. I had come to believe that the inspiration manifest in the tortured mind produced the best work.
The modernist sense of alienation was, to me, nothing to fear; but rather the deeper the rift between the Self and the Other, the greater the sense of societal alienation, the more profound the insight to be gained. Unfortunately the insight gained from this type of behaviour is only a half-truth.
An appropriate fantasy to this effect would most likely be to picture yourself telling some snobby smoky pseudo-intellectual café cats dressed all in black right down to the coffee that Sartre was not a genius because he smoked too much and drank too much coffee but rather despite it. “Whatever,” they retort cleverly. “Exactly,” you reply with a gleam in your eye, assuming you happen to indulge in such behaviour.
5. Urban Ravine – Where?
A partly melted plastic chair by the creek. The right rear leg is only three-quarters the length it was when the chair popped out of a large injection mould at some relatively unheard of plastics factory with rich owners and cheap labour mostly in the form of immigrants who would otherwise find it impossible to get a job with their lack of English skills.
This chair by the creek, a product of mass production and Victorian-era labour conditions, produced here in Canada, was most likely part of someone’s lawn furniture collection before some teenagers with over-inflated egos emancipated themselves from the yoke of capitalism and suburban mediocrity, liberating the chair from the lawns and lemonade
The battle scars on my chair pay witness to the hard-fought struggle between the children and the powers that be. How did this 20th century feat of engineering come to rest broken and burned by this fast running spring creek?
Leaning the chair against a tall pine, it has no trouble holding me up in a comfortable position while I reflect on my youth and listen to this creek in an urban ravine.
“Hey, wait a minute! I though we were in Oslo.”
“Of course we’re not in Oslo you idiot!”
“But maybe we are!”
“But maybe we are.”
There is absolutely no reason for those quotation marks. After all, who exactly is talking here? I mean you have the narrator, but then who the hell is the other guy?
Maybe he’s talking to himself. Maybe he is engaging in a mental dialectic with the quotation marks helping the less astute reader to more easily pick up on his meaning.
Hey, that’s insulting.
No, not at all. Remember what I said about those quotation marks?
6. Angst
Existential angst is an important quality shared by all artists. It is the most elementary expression of the conscious mind. Becoming aware of my own mind, how could I not lie in my third grade bed darkness and wonder how I could really be sure that the world outside my room still existed, that the laughter I heard from the basement was really my father’s and not some kind of recording being played for my benefit? All these questions that come with a fledgling awareness ravaged my young mind from that day on. We suddenly had to get rid of my new baby brother Kevin, I dreamt, by setting him in some kind of basket and sending him down a river. I woke up and went crying hysterically to my mother who reassured me that nothing bad was going to happen to Kevin. I never really realised the full significance of the method of Kevin’s death sentence until much later and now I assume that this event occurred around Easter 1981 when Kevin would have been six or seven months old and I was turning seven that summer and I had been allowed to stay up past my bed time to see the beginning of the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and the rest of the gang. If you don’t want to use the footnotes or, if there are no footnotes, and you really don’t feel like taking the time to figure out this imagery, I understand: sometimes the best thing is to just go with the flow and ignore what you don’t understand and forget what you think you might have missed. In the interest of more fluid reading, I will just come out and say how fascinating it is to look back on the evolution of my young mind with such clarity and see the effect of strong religious imagery presented in a spectacular visual format especially when you’re six and you’re up past your bedtime.
7. Urban Ravine – Here.
Carrot cake with cream cheese icing. Lush green ferns on the floor of the ravine under a deciduous canopy. The old dry riverbed running parallel to the new but not young creek passing by before me, standing waves created by underwater rocks give the impression of permanent form amid the endless transience of the flowing water. The old creek bed still sees some use as the mossless rocks and clear pools of still water will attest, most likely during periods of heavy rain and perhaps spring thaw.
A cold wind blows and the afternoon light bounces through fluttering leaves and off of rocks, trees, ferns, and me, creating an effect oddly similar to a disco ball at a high school senior prom with some exotic theme necessitating decorations ranging from potted palm trees to kiddie pools and water hoses.
8. Hyperactive
I suppose it is no surprise that language has always fascinated me. Often, I used to think in sentences, with punctuation. I’m not kidding period space space. I would not only think the punctuation, but I would also narrate my current situation in the past tense. It got so that once I started doing it I couldn’t get myself to stop, it just had to go away on it’s own. It became really annoying and I started to feel like it was keeping me from living as fully in the present as I would like. That last sentence expresses an understanding that has evolved over the course of the past six years, or at least that’s about how far back I can trace my awareness of this thinking pattern.
One of my first attempts at poetry expresses the stifling quality of too much thinking.
[Where the hell is that thought poem, anyway?]
People don’t often understand when I say that it is hard to be so intelligent. It would be so easy to just brush me off as needlessly conceited but it is obviously not untrue to say that I am of above average intelligence. Why is it that, when one becomes aware of one’s own intellectual capacity, one is either expected to exploit it or shut up? Unfortunately the intellectual is the god incarnate of our modern science-worshipping society and to confront the world of academia with the imperfection of this ideal of understanding, based on one’s own experience, is of no worth without secondary literature. Where did that beautiful method of truth by experience go? I don’t tell many people that I am aware of my intelligence anymore. Too many people could unnecessarily get the wrong idea. Truth be told, I did used to be slightly conceited but when you are a smart kid who realises that you can outwit your parents during a rational fit of teenage rebellion, contempt finds fertile soil. Fortunately I have met a number of people who are now close to me in my heart who have helped me to understand that misconception is the foundation for all arguments. Language while an excellent tool for the awakening of understanding, is no substitute for experience; and at its heart lies the great misconception that just because we speak a common language, we can make ourselves understood.
I remember when I was in sixth grade; my teacher wrote on my report card that I needed to work on my dictionary skills. My problem was and still is that, as I flip through the dictionary on my way to a new word, other words jump out at me and I have to stop and find out what they mean. My favourite word when I was in eighth grade was, “inexorable.” These days I enjoy words like “obstreperous” and “lyssophobia.”
Nuances of
meaning
that cloud even
the most concise statements
are opium for my
hyperactive mind.
9. Urban ravine – Too much good is great.
A passing cloud covers the sun and the wind feels suddenly more brisk. I pick my jacket off the forest floor and put it on in time for the disco ball sun to reappear; knowing that this is a cool spring day with occasional cloudy periods, I feel that I have been sitting still long enough to warrant putting on my jacket anyway.
Taking a leak behind my tree, I get a better view and my notion that the dry creek is somehow older is confirmed. The dry creek actually holds a more direct line through the ravine and does in fact re-join with the new creek about ten meters down from my outdoor urinal. In all, the dry stretch seems to be about thirty meters long. It is obvious that the new creek is a natural diversion around an obstruction of driftwood and rocks. Perhaps if there is a big enough storm, this natural dam will be broken up and washed away, thus setting my little creek back on it’s original course.
This is a nice spot to sit and smoke and read the opening chapters of Dharma Bums and wonder at the complexity and depth of Kerouac’s characters right from the first page. I think it is time for another joint and my last piece of carrot cake with cream cheese icing.
Normally I don’t listen to my Walkman in the forest, but I don’t usually crunch these delicious French aniseed candies either. Phish. Fluffhead.
The thing that sets an urban ravine apart from a ravine far removed from large settlements of humans is that it is full of humanity. It is a strange coexistence between plastic and dirt, tin foil and twigs, old bits of cloth and Styrofoam, moss rocks and thigh-high ferns, a highly abused plastic chair and a tall old pine.
OK, time for carrot cake with cream cheese icing and lick the icing bowl clean with my finger. Bouncing Round the Room.
10. Spreading Out – Conscious Disorder
I was looking at my cozy mess and wondering if perhaps I had some kind of hobo bag-man tendencies as I pulled some of my essentials from my plastic shopping bag of stuff. Upon further reflection, recalling how much I enjoyed not only spreading my shit out in an empty shelter on the Appalachian Trail but living out of my backpack in general. Something about carrying everything you need and perhaps a non-essential item such as a book is a phrase I just can’t complete without a five-page run-on sentence and it is an experience that has left a deep impression on the way I live my daily life. Ignoring completely any metaphysical diatribes, practically speaking, though I now live a relatively regular city life, I am still a hiker. Not a backpacker, a hiker. I wonder if anyone will give me shit for that one? Most likely.
Whenever you place distinctions on things, pass value judgements of any kind, you are bound to offend someone. In fact, why do I feel the need to differentiate between a backpacker and a hiker anyway? Is it because I feel that there really is some difference between the two, some subtle nuance of language that I, as a writer, am looking to exploit? Or do I myself have some pre-conceived notion of the difference between a backpacker and a hiker? Some kind of hard-core hiker snobbism? Well, I don’t think it is worth the trouble. There is no difference really; nevertheless, I think I’ve made my point.
Whenever I leave my home in the basement apartment of this big house in a lovely suburban neighbourhood to ride the 14 km in to town or some similar distance to get to the rowing club or my friend Håkon’s house or one of his baseball games with Erlend and Terje, Eddie, Leif, and many other people who I don’t know very well but somehow enjoy, I take with me at least a daypack or saddlebag containing various plastic bags, each with a specific function; for example: a bag for general stuff like books, Walkman, gum, extra batteries, computer disks, a padlock, etc.; a bag for any relatives that happen to be visiting at the moment containing whatever they feel is necessary to bring along; a bag for extra clothes in case I get sweaty or cold; and perhaps a jacket or sweater loose in the main compartment along with my bike lock. If it is sunny I will be wearing my wonderful Oakley sunglasses with a slightly amber tint; if it is not, they will be in their special case inside either the front pocket of my daypack along with my keys and bike lights, or if I am using saddlebags, inside the plastic bag designated for stuff. Japhy Rider pops into my head. Sometimes I wonder if I should just start using the special waterproof stuff sacks Heidi and I got on our thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail but then I decide that it would be best to save them for the Pacific Crest Trail, a long term concept that will most likely to come to fruition in the next few years, and besides we have too many plastic grocery bags despite our best intentions (sometimes my backpack is just to full of stuff!) so I may as well use them up. Sometimes I use the nice bags anyway, their really quite rugged and I wonder if I will be alive to see them wear out.
When I get somewhere I am going to stay for a while I like to spread out my stuff, unpack my bag. To the untrained eye, it could look messy but really it is all carefully orchestrated. Like now for instance: I am sitting on the foam mattress on the floor in our bedroom that is my half of our bed propped up by three pillows. There is a pillow on my lap supporting this laptop and to each side of me potentially useful or enjoyable things are casually but consciously strewn within easy reach. To my left: a glass of water, a teacup and teapot on a tea warmer, some cookies, a gift from my brother Jeff. To my right, my plastic bag of stuff half emptied onto Heidi’s mattress beside me, Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, some reading material, and my notebook.
Then I realised that not everybody likes to spread out and create a mess like I do. Some people like order. Indeed, I do enjoy order and a clean environment as much as anyone, but I am always drawn to mess. If I want it to be neat and clean, I must constantly clean up. Somehow I just can’t manage to keep it clean. I cannot resist the cosiness of a casual mess. I don’t really think that my messiness indicates any kind of tendency other than my own particular predilection for conscious disorder.
11. Setting
The only consistency of time and place in this novel is the one you create yourself while you read. Everything happens in the only time there is: now. Everything happens in the only place there is: here. As I write these words, time stands still. They are my present.
“Even narrative prose in the past tense,” he wrote using the third-person singular narrative form in conjunction with quoted dialogue, “Every memory occurs in the present.”
12. Spread out in front of the TV
If I had one of those new WAP telephones they’re marketing to people in my age group I could listen to FM radio through my phone instead of carrying around both that heavy mini-disc player I bought last fall and a phone! What could be more practical or convenient? I can use my phone to read email, order a pizza quickly and easily without talking to a human, look at certain Internet pages in the tiny LED screen, and listen to the radio! Not to mention all the normal cell phone functions of course.
Woody Allen, Goldie Hawn, and Allan Alda on TV. I’ve seen the movie before but I kind of want to watch it anyway. Actually I want to kind of watch it. In other words I intend to allow myself the liberty of casual viewing attention. Though film is most obviously a visual medium, that quality constitutes only half of the medium of these new-fangled talkies. When I was a movie snob in my fourth year of university, however, it was a necessary element in a good film. Good movie dialogue is like a great novel, or a poem or an essay. It is a form of it’s own just as a play or a sonnet is a form of literature.
Fortunately, my movie snobbism has now melted away. I say fortunately because, after all, how could I imply that film dialogue could be worthy of the distinction of literature if I did not allow that film dialogue could be properly discussed without mention of the visual aspects of the director’s final creation? And if this is true, then the opposite must also be true. The visual aspects of a film can be enjoyable and worthy of discussion without mention of the plot or dialogue. I am happy to be able to enjoy pretty much all films now but I still enjoy myself most when both the visual and the verbal come together to create a work of art that transcends all of its many parts.
13. Early morning coffee
After my first cup of coffee, with the remaining brew keeping warm under two fleece jackets on the coffee table, I go for a short walk outside, through the garden and the small grove of trees which separates this house from the town house complex beyond, just to enjoy the morning air and listen to the rustle of the birch leaves and the occasional car passing on this otherwise empty two-lane highway running behind the houses, separating suburbia from the small farms on the edge of the forest. Perceiving my senses, I clear my slightly clogged nostrils with short blasts of air through the nasal passages, taking a moment to clear my throat and hork out a loogie, listening to birds, wind, machines, morning. I have slightly cold fingers; there is more hot coffee in the pot at home.
14. Ritual
I would walk over to my old portable disc-man, which was set up on the small colour TV and connected to small speakers without an amplifier, put on Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. As the tinny strains of acoustic guitar began filling the silence of my Lilliputian living-room, I would walk over to the small pine dresser, which also served as an end-table to our futon and also a stand for a reasonably good reading lamp, and pull my stash out of the top drawer and set it on the metal umbrella table with a plastic table cloth because the former tenants had somehow broken the fine marble table, which is now mostly behind the large wall unit filled with dishes and books. I would make my way around the room, lighting the three to five candles mounted in empty wine bottles and then, as the warm candlelight glow gave the stark white apartment walls a golden hue, taking my place at the umbrella table, I would begin the care-intensive process of making the perfect joint. They were perfect every time.
I have been attracted to rituals for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, going to Church with my parents was a wonderful treat. At first, along with all of the other children, I would have to leave the sanctuary just before the sermon and go down to Sunday School in the basement where we would get the dumbed-down version of our religion. But I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me stay up in the church instead of going down to the obscenely boring Sunday School. Sometimes, they let me.
Our minister was an academic theologian with a Ph.D. and a penchant for the evangelical. I think he was a little over-powering for many of our modest parishioners, but I just loved to hear him preach his sermons. At this time, our little United Church of Canada was still rather dignified and solemn. People dressed in their Sunday best, children were not permitted to take communion before their confirmation, there was never any clapping for any reason, the minister wore robes that were appropriate for that particular time of the Christian year and went up to the higher pulpit above the altar below the large bare cross on the white stucco wall to preach his sermon. He had pages of notes and he was an excellent speaker.
Occasionally, if my parents were not going to Church for one reason or another, I would ask to be able to go alone. They were enthusiastically receptive to the prospect of their young son getting all dressed up in his Sunday best and walking the half-hour walk to the church. Then I would tell them: “But I only want to go if I can sit upstairs the whole time.” They would look at each other with a look of half-amusement, half-amazement, and tell me that was fine. When I got to Church and walked up to the sanctuary doors where the two of the congregation members who had volunteered to be ushers were standing and declare that my parents had given me permission to remain upstairs in the sanctuary for the entire service.
In those days I was very attracted to the Catholic Church. It seemed so solemn and proper and filled with ritual that it enraptured my soul. You even got to kneel in a catholic church! That was before I came to understand the oppressive weight of Catholic dogma that is inseparable from the beautiful rituals I loved.
Most of my favourite Things are heavily influenced by ritual. Coffee, Tea, Dishes, Meditation; it is a diverse list, and it’s root is firmly planted in the infinite void of perfect perception. All rituals are really only refinements of basic human habits. In ritualising a habit, awareness of action increases.
15. A conversation
“Yet the method of drinking tea at this stage was primitive in the extreme. The leaves were steamed, crushed in a mortar, made into a cake, and boiled together with rice, ginger, salt, orange peel, spices, milk, and sometimes with onions! The custom obtains at the present day among the Tibetans and various Mongolian tribes, who make curious syrup of these ingredients. The use of lemon slices by the Russians, who learned to take tea from the Chinese caravansaries, points to the survival of the ancient method.”
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Okakura, Kakuzo, 1862-1913
The book of tea / Kakuzo Okakura.
— 1st Shambhala ed.
p. cm. —Shambhala pocket classics
ISBN 0-87773-918-8 (alk. Paper)
1. Japanese tea ceremony I. Title. II. Series.
GT2910.06 1993 92-50737
394.1’5—dc20 Cip
“I don’t want no funky soup!” laughed Håkon.
16. Late morning tea with lemon
I try to remain focused in the present as much as possible, no expectations for the future. Certainly it is possible to have hopes and dreams without expectations, but it is very difficult. To dream idly of the future while living fully in the present is looked upon as frivolous and irresponsible buy those whose minds are full of conjecture and expectation. Certainly it is necessary to plan ahead for this or that, it is the reality of the world we live in, and I am not a hermit. My point is this: I wonder how much of the lack of direction in my life is a justifiable, healthy form of no-expectation and how much of it is a reactionary form of apathy, a self-inflicted stagnation of which the original intent is simply to be as obstinate as possible to my pragmatic and very responsible parents.
16. Subway Tea
“One child stamp-card,” I said, speaking Norwegian to the man in the ticket-booth at Stortinget station after having waited a hilariously long time for the girl in front of me who had been inquiring about the correct route to her destination. She would have to transfer to a bus at some point, and the busses only ran every 30 minutes in that area so what train should she take in order to make the best connection? Well that was a question that required the consultation of several different timetables and it took some time.
“It’s not for you, is it?” asked the ticket-booth man through the microphone from behind the Plexiglas when it was finally my turn.
“No, it’s for my bike,” I answered, sending my 200 Kr. bill around on the metal turntable embedded in the counter between us.
“Oh, well, I was going to say that you didn’t look so young,” he chuckled as he tore off a card from the book of stamp-cards to his left, “Are you American?”
“No, I’m Canadian.”
“Really, there aren’t many of you guys around here,” said this clean-shaven ticket-booth man with a neatly trimmed brown goatee and a glimmer in his eyes, holding my stamp-card in his hands.
“No, I don’t suppose there are.”
“Do you happen to know Toronto very well,” asked my ticket-booth man, still holding my ticket in his hands and making eye contact eagerly.
“Well, I come from just outside of Toronto, actually,” I answered wondering where this was leading and thinking of Håkon standing 10 meters away to my left, holding my bicycle and waiting for me to get my subway ticket so we could go home on a rainy Sunday evening in late June after an enjoyable afternoon of Frisbee in a beautiful green field which served as our stage in this natural amphitheatre high on a hill in Sagene, overlooking Akerselva, just north of Grünerløkka.
“Have you ever heard of Toronto Airport Vineyard Church?” asked the man with the sparkling eyes shining through the ticket-booth Plexiglas as if a cold wind were blowing through tall birches and the afternoon light was bouncing through fluttering leaves and off of rocks, trees, ferns, and me, creating an effect similar to the late afternoon sun glinting off the waves of Lake Huron just off the Bruce Peninsula.
“Well, I know Toronto Airport,” I said ridiculously. Aware of the potential for a long conversation which could cause Håkon to miss his buss from Majorstua and me to miss my subway home, I looked at this crazy ticket-booth man and, sincerely interested in the direction our brief encounter was apparently taking, asked him why.
“Well a few years ago…[look up the details of the manifestation of God at Toronto Airport Vineyard Church a few years ago that caused world wide interest because he knew them all and I’ll tell you, it sure was interesting; there is some pretty good stuff on the Internet]…” explained my fellow Bodhisattva from the petals of his Plexiglas lotus.
“That is fascinating,” I said, completely letting go of any notion of time; the only thing I was doing in this subway station was talking with a Man who had something he wanted to tell me.
“Yes well, it was very important for Christians — and to me too, I myself being a Christian — and even people from my church here in Oslo went to Canada to experience the power of this Manifestation and bring back some of It’s strength to our congregation but eventually the church was kicked out of the organised denomination to which it belonged because it began focusing too much on the manifestation and not enough on God.”
“Wow, that’s too bad,” I said, feeling a deep sense of wonder for this Man and his Faith, “What was the name of that church again?”
“Toronto Airport Vineyard Church,” said the ticket-booth man as he slid the stamp-card and my change under the heavy metal roller that keeps tickets and paper money secure on the little metal turntable where all transactions take place at this cosy little subway hut.
“Toronto Airport Vineyard Church,” I repeated, taking my stamp-card and change from under the spring-loaded metal roller, “That’s very interesting. Thank you very much.”
“Happy to be of service,” he responded using a Norwegian expression that could be translated several different ways.
“Good-bye,” I said with enthusiasm, ready to laugh with joy, as I turned back toward Håkon.
“Good-bye,” said my smiling Buddha turning to help the next customer.
17. A passing sensation
I had the day off work today. It was the second day in a row that I didn’t have to go into work. I felt restless, I felt like being intoxicated.
18. Oh, you mouthy little kid!
Interesting that I choose to write such short chapters. Perhaps I am trying to express the modernist concepts of separation and alienation through fragmentation, but then again, probably not. Maybe I want to develop a staccato effect or lack of cohesion that will make me seem artsy and intellectual. Maybe I am evoking the three-second attention span of my generation; maybe I am catering to it. I suppose there could be some who claim that it is a sign of my unrefined writing skills.
Whatever the case, it must be by choice because, as those who know me can attest, I can go on longer than Bugs Bunny after being told to shaddup by Mugsy the Gangster.
19. Sweep
It is a cool winter morning, and I am sitting at a little green desk by the window, looking out over distant trees, a streetlight, another house, a small garden, and the freshly swept pathway.
This morning, I got up with Heidi slightly before seven. She had to work today at the DNT, while I am fortunate enough to have a free day. After she left this morning, I finished my coffee while rolling a joint and reading email. Then, I pulled on some socks and neatly tucked in the bottoms of my fabulous new green-plaid pyjamas that I got for Christmas. I took off my cozy old oversized cotton robe and put on my jeans, taking great care to tuck in my long pyjama-shirt and ensure an enjoyable clothing experience. I didn’t have to worry about a toque because I had already been wearing an enjoyable little fleece hat due to the refreshingly cool temperature of our apartment, but I put a little extra clothing on my upper body than necessary for the current weather conditions: a Lowe Alpine Polartec Windbloc fleece, and the 2-ply Gore-tex jacket I got at Mountain Equipment Co-op almost three years-ago now before Heidi and I hiked the Appalachian Trail. Like I said, I wanted to ensure an enjoyable clothing experience.
Just as I was getting on my shoes and stuffing my Thinsulate-lined Raggwool gloves into my jacket pockets, I heard the woman who owns this house, in which we rent a ground-floor apartment, out in our common entrance hall. I decided to avoid this potential moment of interaction in order to preserve the subversive nature of my current plan. This became my theme for the rest of the time I was outside.
After she got back from what I had correctly assumed to be nothing more than a short trip outside to do any number of small household tasks like getting the paper, taking out the garbage, or a quick trip to the garage, by means of the obvious fact that she had not locked the outer door, I waited perhaps 20 seconds for her to be safely upstairs and popped outside into the brisk minus two air and a slight but sharp wind. I was dressed perfectly. As I locked the outer door, my hands became the focus of my awareness for the first of many times – instants – on this slightly overcast, slowly brightening morning.
I walked down the brick path, covered in slightly trampled snow from yesterday. There was a snowfall of approximately 2mm of light, powdery snow yesterday which has now had the opportunity to be walked upon several times by several people and a dog; it is now beginning to pack up in spots. I had my bare hands in my pockets along with my keys, mittens, a lighter, and a beautifully rolled joint in the slightly conical form as perfected by my Frisbee teacher Håkon.
It is now Rust Never Sleeps playing through my Winamp Mp3 player. How long did it take you to read what I just wrote?
I walked down the stairs and out on to the short gravel driveway and about 100 meters up the road before I took my hands out of my pockets. I transferred my cookie into my left hand and cradled it softly for a moment before bringing it to my lips and cupping my hands around my lighter, the cold air stinging my hands. I puffed once to be sure it was lit, took a deep inhale, and walked up the street. As I rounded the corner by the mailbox stand, the wind hit me a little harder and I slowed my pace. I am not on my way anywhere.
I stop in the lee of a Volkswagen minibus and enjoy my cookie standing at a satisfying distance from both the mailbox stand and the nearest streetlight a little further down on the other side of the street. I am no longer passing the joint back and forth between my hands on every drag, opting for a more long term strategy whereby one hand gets to warm up longer until the other, joint-holding, hand freezes more. This strategy is a good one, I find for practising awareness. I let go of the freezing hand and carry on with my living. Thoughts and silence flow through my mind in an endless stream, uninhibited. When the thought of my really fucking cold had comes back through, I take action by switching joint-holding hands and thrusting my frozen hand into my jacket pocket, nestling my loose but closed fist inside my wool mitten. It was really quite effective, and my cold hands did not detract from my experience
I am smoking quickly, but not hastily. There are no other people on this dark suburban street and I have a clear view of the corner. I am standing at such an angle that the other end of this long straight street is also in perfect view through the windshield and back window of the minibus with a small turn of my head. Really, I am facing some houses and pine trees. This is a perfect place in which to enjoy an early morning joint in quiet, peaceful surroundings without having to think about been noticed by my landlords. If, one of them comes out for a run and seems to be turning the corner by the mailboxes and heading in my direction, I can easily hide the joint and walk nonchalantly back toward home as if I were on my way back from somewhere. People with an obvious purpose are much less suspicious than those whose motives seem obscure.
After a few minutes of enjoying various suburban vistas, my hands having found the perfect compromise between freezing and less freezing using the long-term plan for the betterment of the social welfare of my hands, a woman in a three-quarter-length coat appeared at the other end of the road. There is no way that this could have been anyone from my household, or even the neighbour with whom we share the short gravel driveway, but I casually took a puff of the joint and walked nonchalantly back toward the corner, intending not to go back down to the house, but rather up the street and behind a bush where I would have an easy time seeing if the woman came all the way down the long, flat street. From my more elevated and concealed position behind a few bushes, I would have no trouble seeing whether she turned up the street in my direction, confirming my initial assessment of her status as harmless bystander, or down toward the house, somehow a potentially more dangerous person who might give me away.
There is now silence. Well, suburban silence anyway. After Rust Never Sleeps, I decided not to put on more music for the time being. How long has it taken me to write about what I lived in less than twenty minutes?
The woman was a bystander, she turned up the street in my direction, and I immediately started heading down in her direction. By the time she saw me, I would be walking nonchalantly along, my cigarette between the first two fingers of my outside hand, the other hand casually inserted into my jeans pocket. Just some guy out for a walk and a smoke – a smoke, by the way can be considered a purpose in itself to justify walking around aimlessly as long as the smoke is the right kind, and the walking is not too aimless.
I passed the woman as she turned the corner and walked up toward the bushes behind which I had been standing. As I rounded the corner, I saw that one of the garage doors belonging to the neighbours in the house directly below ours was open. All four doors of this massive wooden structure – a monument to moderate suburban luxury – had been closed when I left. I only had a few drags left so I walked slowly but purposefully down to the mailbox area and positioned myself in a way not unlike that which I just described, involving bushes, a lookout from a higher elevation, and an off-centre line-of-sight directly to the target area. My head was pretty much in plain view of the garage door, but if you are focused on your potential danger and are able to remain absolutely calm, stillness and silence go a long way when you intend to remain concealed right up to the end of this rather subdued, weak-premised, spy game.
Just as I was about done my joint, my neighbour’s car slowly pulled out of the garage. I began my purposeful walk home, filled with earnest and nonchalance. I waved my neighbour with one bare hand while holding the joint butt concealed in the palm of the other. He smiled and waved back a short wave of acknowledgement as his car rolled by. In seconds, he was out of sight and I put out the butt in a small bit of snow by the side of the road, rolled up the small cardboard filter and flicked it away, feeling a little guilty for littering but not wanting to through this smelly little paper ball into a garbage where it could be discovered and potentially linked to me. In the name of the integrity of my secret silent mission, I rationalized.
I put on my mittens and quickened my pace slightly. Heading up the stairs and walkway toward the house, I foresaw the possibility of a need to remove my outer upper lair at some time in the near future. My mission was swinging into full action now. I chose not to remove the jacket right away in an attempt to pre-empt a disruption later on, I decided that it wasn’t really very hard work and my comfort level would most likely be best served with a slightly warmer body than a slightly cooler body. I walked up to the front door and grabbed the old broken push broom beside the front step. The handle is broken and I have to lean over more than normal to sweep the walkway. Really, this is perfect.
I take care to bend properly so that I can most effectively sweep with maximum efficiency and efficacy and minimum effort. I love to clear snow!
I come back inside, strip off the outer layers back down to my pyjamas, put my robe back on, slip into my sandals and put on the kettle for some Genmaicha. I sit down at the computer, start playing American beauty, look out the window and, with cold hhands, start writing this down.
It is a cool winter morning, and I am sitting at a little green desk by the window, looking out over distant trees, a streetlight, another house, a small garden, and the freshly swept pathway.
Remember what I said about the consistency of time and place in this novel. How much have you read? Where are you now? And if I decide to alter and edit this manuscript before you get to read it, do I have to go back and change my references to time and place? Of course not, I’m the author; besides, that’s your job!!! I can go back through the same sentences many times
an interruption
haiku jumps out of the page
cold fingers typing
and the flow is never ruined. There is no flow here. If you are looking for flow in these words, you are looking in the wrong place. Go outside and sweep the walkway.