Word of the Week: Munchkinitude

Now, comrades, let’s take a moment to see if you can break the cultural code in the picture above. Point out at least three (3) religious symbols. Find one (1) reference to a 20^th century political phenomenon [clue: originally an army accessory]. Name no less than two (2) works by the writer on the wall. Here’s a difficult one: in the background there is a postcard with a famous painting by a Norwegian painter. What is the name of his most famous painting? And yes, there’s a bonus for recognizing what university is written on my work-out sweater… But no, really there is no bonus.

Thursday evening I [note to the attentive reader: not ‘me’] and my Critical Companion spent together studying German. As my Critical Companion is from a department of her own, she told me she distinguishes me in my department based on two distinct traits: a) the clicking of my heels; and b) my munchkinitude. Thus I learned not only a bunch of new German glosses this week, but also a new English word: munchkinitude.

Since I came back to California, I’ve been getting up at 6:20 every morning to devour two cups of coffee and execute a little work-out routine that I designed to fight my knee pain. I didn’t mention it publicly, i.e. in the format of a blog post, but by the end of last year I was increasingly concerned as severe aches had afflicted my knees after all the running. My friend fröken A. in Stockholm told me that it might be because I had not strengthened my chore enough, i.e. allowed for abs and back muscles to decay while legs become more toned and joints more sore. Therefore I work out a little while every morning before heading to the university and a German for Graduate Students each day at 8 a.m. I didn’t think it would actually work. But it has and it does. My knees still hurt sometimes, but nothing even close to how bad or how often it was before. So what else have I been up to since we last spoke, except for overdosing on caffeine in the crack of dawn while trying to make the body stronger? Not much. Last Sunday at church I sat next to a Norwegian woman I had never met before and after the service I asked her what she’s doing in the Bay Area and she said: “I’m a visiting scholar at Berkeley”. “Cool,” I said, “what department are you in?” “Scandinavian,” she answered almost obviously. “Wow,” was my reaction, “that’s on the same floor as my department!” On Wednesday we went to Free Speech Café and bought lunch to bring with us and eat while sitting outside in the 20 something Celsius degrees and sunshine. We talked about things in general and it was very pleasant. I showed her around campus a bit and felt like something of a Berkeley veteran, though that is an overstatement and yet it felt good to not be the new kid on the block this time. After all, this is my second semester here.

While giving her a tour of the campus, I bumped into Sartre. I hadn’t seen Sartre since… sometime in November? We engaged in a somewhat strained exchange of texts toward the second half of December during which he argued that we never “talked” while I maintained I was busy with “papers”. Sartre looked as good as always, perhaps even slightly fitter than the last time I saw him – yet he was always ripped – plus his tousled dark locks were definitely longer this time around. Would it sound silly if I confess that I really, really wanted Sartre right there and right then? Like a little kid screams for the biggest lollipop in the candy store the second she sees it, even though she eventually realizes – and everybody has already warned her – it is bad for her and will ruin her teeth and perhaps leave her nauseated in the end? I introduced Sartre to the visiting scholar, then I coolly remarked: “It would be nice to catch up and ‘talk’ sometime”. He smiled: “You know my number, all you got to do is call and we’ll ‘talk’ anytime”. I laughed: “I have so many good stories to tell you!” On Wednesday I really thought that I would call up Sartre sometime this week; I figured that we could do what we always do: first have tea while he asks me to tell him all of my stories and I do and he listens to them, then we go to his place where we consume alcohol, after which we get tipsy and he gives me his all and makes me feel like the world’s most beautiful woman until it’s midnight at which point I call a cab and we call it a night. What’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what every woman needs? A Sartre of her very own? Even though you can never call your Sartre ‘boyfriend’ or entertain illusions of entering into a ‘serious’ relationship with a Sartre, sometimes having Sartre is better than having an emotionally committed man by your side.

I and my Critical Companion have been spending much time together lately. During week one of semester second, we started taking a German class together. Then I dropped one of the two German classes I was taking and she was in that one. Nevertheless, she is a part of my [read: our] department now, thus we are rarely separated. We have decided that together we will write an introduction to literary theory and call it “I like this: A Guide for the Unattentive, Unprepared, and – Preferably – Naïve Reader”. So as not to embarrass our real university, we will pose as two male scholars from the Albanian Academy in Albany, CA. We will of course also have pseudonyms: I will be Jusefus Lundbladicus, Department of Slavic Madness, and she will be Maarti Renodshvili, Department of Comparative Lunacy. I know, I know – inside jokes seize to be amusing as soon as transported to the outside. Even though I can’t linger on it at the moment, I do believe that making fun of yourself and your profession is not solely a way of undermining any serious dialogue of the matters at stake. On the contrary, it is my conviction that only through this kind of dark humor can we in the humanities pin-point our so called crisis, embrace it and confront what is actually at stake. There is indeed no profound need for literary scholarship in order for the rest of the world to go on functioning. Or is it? Why do we read literature? Why should people learn about literature? What’s the use of having read the so-called ‘classics’? And who decides what gets to be in ‘canon’ anyway? Is it not all simply a closed circle around an elitist group whose favorite expression is ‘binary opposition’ but only in the sense that “where there’s inclusion, there is also exclusion, so deal with it”? My point of view – the reason why I love the university world so much – has for a long time been that “if you don’t like what I’m teaching you, then get out of here” for I do not understand why anyone should ever do anything he or she does not want to do. Some might argue “but then taxes would never get paid!”, and that is a valid comment. Thus I am currently in the process of reevaluating my previous sentiments. For if it is my dream – and it is indeed my dream – to teach literature, which is what I love the most, to young people, and to teach it in such a way that it also becomes their love, then I should probably make more of an effort than simply leave the door open for the already initiated but give erroneous directions to class for the ignorant? Maybe there is more of a challenge in providing access to literature for those who thought it was not for them than to rehash Tolstoy with the privileged few over-achievers who can only think of how to become the next Bakhtin.

When all is said and done, I am not done with grad school yet. For where else in the world can someone like me – with a dash of OCD and some serious baggage – flourish but here?

“The Art of Dating in America[n]”

So here it is: a new article by Linnéa J Lundblad in the Världens gång section of Göteborgs-Posten. Big thanks to my homegirl Annie who scanned the whole thing and pasted the two parts (it was THAT big!) into one and e-mailed it to me. Yes, this is my first article in Swedish press from United States of America. Click on the picture to get it large enough so the print is readable.

No, I don’t like my new byline picture – of course I think I look fat [I wouldn’t be a girl if I didn’t, right?] – at the time when the photographer asked me to strike this pose, I kept thinking “oh God don’t let them make me look this… perky” in the back of my head. I’d want to look cute and sweet, but with a subtle sexiness about me. This picture screams “I’m a grad student and I can’t get laid” – which is basically what this text is about… hum. Enough said, I suppose.

Do you live in Sweden? Or do you read Swedish? Do you want to help keep me in business – every crown I earn with these monthly articles is going to my trip to Russia this summer – then I suggest you send a letter to my editor at Göteborgs-Posten and tell him how awesome you think am I and how much you’re looking forward to the next one! The next one [which I have not yet written] will be published on the 12th of February. His e-mail is VarldensGang@gp.se and vg@gp.se. Since he was the one who let this byline picture reach the eyes of all inhabitants of my home town, I suggest you spam him with your love for me to both addresses. You might even throw in a smooth suggestion that they choose a new picture…

I pitched this series of articles like “Sex & the City” except with graduate students – and in California. Plus it is about a real girl, unlike the very unreal Carrie. Thus I am currently hunting for my “Mr. Big” to cultivate a long, intense and crucially complicated relationship with…

Women who work with Meta

I like this. And for those of you who have yet to visit my bed, meet the two men I currently share it with: Han Solo [zebra] and Henrik [mouse].

My grouchy behavior documented earlier here on the blog [auchtung! that’s metablogging] may have been nothing else but a signal that what I dread the most in life had simply gone on for too long – yes, that’s right, that’s what I can’t stand – the break. I deal poorly with breaks of any kind. Remember, I was the girl who [when interviewed on TV in Yekat last June about what it feels like to leave Ural State University] said: “I can’t even imagine that there will come a morning in my life when I won’t go to Ural State”. I live within the university; thus, almost naturally as it were, outside – and without – the university I begin to question my life. At the end of each semester I, like all my comrades, do feel the need to have a rest and go do something else for a while – or read something else, like a Nobel Prize winner – but after a while my brain automatically reacts to boredom by producing something. When I was younger I would always be writing a novel in my free time; as I grow older I appreciate how my love for literature as a child saved me from teenage pregnancy, STDs and assorted drug addictions. Now that I doubt this epic genre, and have switched to short stories, thus it is simply normal that the occasional existential questioning should sneak in between these minor creations. But now the semester has begun and I am feeling much better. I think the second semester of grad school will be more demanding than the first, but also probably more rewarding. And if it isn’t, then there’s always a bottle the aspiring renowned scholar and current recognized drunk can turn to for support.

In the beloved series so famously called “Josefina Randomly Reads Nobel Prize Winners”, the turn has come to Albert Camus who was awarded the prize in 1957. You may recognize my plan – or perhaps it is more of a project – to read all Nobel Prize winners in literature from a previous post in which I proudly proclaimed to have begun Selma Lagerlöf’s “Gösta Berlings saga”. It breaks my heart to inform you, comrades, that this book about the delightful drunk and former priest Gösta was left by me on some flight last week. Thus I had no other choice but to proceed with what unread Nobel Prize winner I could find on my bookshelf. I found “The Stranger” by Mr. Camus: it is a book about a man in Algiers. It is divided into two parts. The first part starts out with his mother dying. From there he goes on to form two relationships: the first with his neighbor who has a dysfunctional relationship with a kept woman and the other with a woman he enjoys to press his body against. He and this woman go swimming together. Then his neighbor hits his woman and gets into problems with Arabs. The hero shoots one of these Arabs on a beach and is then sent to prison. The second part starts with a description of prison in Algiers. Reading it last night, I got very excited. Having read, researched, written scholarly articles and a dissertation dealing with prison culture and prison represented in literature, mainly in Russia, I thought to myself: “Now I will find out all sorts of things about what prisons are like in Algiers!” To say the least, I was disappointed. I had expected some sort of complex inauguration ritual to take place when the hero enters into his cell for the first time. Yet nothing happens. We are then informed that the cell is filled with Arabs. Will they throw themselves onto him? Chew him into pieces? Kill him? No. No. No, and apparently not even an option as the books goes on for at least another 50 pages. In general, Mr. Camus’ description of prison is cursory. It leaves the sophisticated reader with a suspicion that perhaps it was not Mr. Camus’ intention to provide detailed data on penitentiaries in Algiers in the middle of the 20th century?

Most likely, Mr. Camus intended to show something entirely else, namely, the absurdness of human existence. If you find yourself imprisoned in Algiers, do by all means ask relatives to send you a copy of “The Stranger”. However, it is not suggested as a guide book, but should be viewed solely as a piece of entertaining and thought-provoking fiction. The same goes for when you’re being charged with a felony in Czech Republic; in such times it is impractical to turn to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” for practical advice. Though an inspirational piece of fiction, Leo Tolstoy’s “War & Peace” is not a manual for how to defeat France.

Where am I going with all of this? I would like to arrive in a place where I can make the point – though many times before I myself have doubted and far too fast claimed the opposite – that literature is not life. What goes on in literature has nothing to do with life. What happens in literature should not be applied straight onto life, though it is often done. Literature is an interpretative representation; a representation of something rather than the something itself. A representation is always selective, thus if you try to figure out how to get out of an unhappy marriage and run off with a poor but brilliant writer instead, you can’t pick Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” for anything but diverting stimulus. It will not teach you to live, it may, however, teach you how to read. It might seem like a tautological task – literature teaches you to read more literature – but sometimes the journey is really the destination. Trying to apply selective representations to actual human existence happens not only to prose and poetry, but to all sorts of arts. Sometimes in today’s culture – which promotes over-consumption of works of art as much as it does that of material products – I feel that we have lost the divide between the real and the fictional. In today’s society most people have no problem adapting [and adopting] what they have seen, heard, read – all of it produced for purposes of entertainment – in situations in their own, very real, lives. As a result we have acquired deflation not only in the worth of our money, but of our emotions as well… I could of course elaborate on this subject until my head falls off, but for now I’d only like to add that “The Stranger” by Mr. Camus is a good book. It is fairly short [my edition has only 123 pages], yet instead of quantity it offers quality: condensed scenes and emotions. The dialogue is scarce, yet so much is being said. The language is almost funny. And we all know that’s the best humor: when you want to laugh but stop yourself right before you even smile for you realize this isn’t fun, this is absurd.

For those of you who didn’t notice, carefully chosen sections from my passage about Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” were written mimicking the specific discourse used in the novel itself. Have you ever wondered what meta is? That is meta.

Dagens i-lands problem:

“I am the intellectual equal of everyone else here,” said Bridget Jones. I have a bookcase in my closet, I say. The four files on lowest shelves contain only print-outs from my first semester of grad school. Impressive, huh, comrades?

One of the fastest growing problems in developed countries of today is the need for alco-locks on e-mail services. If Berkeley’s Calmail had an alco-lock, then I would not have made such an ass of myself yesterday. At the time – and increasingly more so once my Critical Companion showed up in the evening with a bottle of Jameson in her hand – it seemed like a good idea to write an e-mail to the professor who had given me a B+. The first draft was soon deleted by my Critical Companion – thank God – who after this helped me articulate my opinion in a more neutral way so as not to cause the professor having to call an ambulance and/or the police with the pitiful info that “there’s a grad student threatening to kill herself because of a B+”. This would have resulted in me becoming the laughing stock not only of my department, but of people on the outside. Overreacting? Me? You think? The professor soon sent me a helpful, respectful and – now I get it – very instructive answer. It explained everything and today I cannot but agree with what were obvious shortcomings. Unfortunately, last night the e-mail failed to catch me X amounts of whiskey shots earlier… I was stupid enough to write back immediately. At the time it seemed like it was the right thing to do. In retrospect, I realize that I was out of line and that it is likely the professor failed to comprehend not only my desperate desolation, but even the exact identity of my person. It must have seemed unclear who the hell I was to address the professor in this tone of voice anyway. A reality check is always helpful: I should be reminded more often that I am not the sun that everyone else’s life revolves around. This my second letter has yet to be answered. I hope and wish it never gets an answer. I pray it is forgotten. It is time for me to face the truth and pick up the pieces and clean up the mess I made. This week I must confront the professor face to face, say that I am sorry and ask for forgiveness. I will point out that I have written a letter to Calmail suggesting they add an alco-lock to it, and that if they turn down my request, then I promise to finally deal with my drinking problem.

Yesterday after church I spent approximately four hours walking around San Francisco. I was looking for the Russian bookstore [it took me a very long time to get there, but eventually I did]. As I was walking, in my head I kept composing angry, upset, tear-soaked letters about my decision to discontinue my engagement at this university. Needless to say, my inability to accept any other grade than an A is not something I acquired over night; this deficiency goes back to my childhood and certain traumatic memories of how my parents would always tell me “we need to talk” and then ask me “how I was really feeling” whenever I got a B on a class. So as not to have to suffer through personal shame and my parents’ blame, I pushed myself in the classes that mattered and kept quiet about all grades that weren’t A’s. Throughout my school years, I had one steady C – in physical education. I remember I was teased about that grade at home constantly. Even though I had almost all straight A’s when I graduated, at my graduation reception my father made sure to loudly point out the one class I had got a C in: physical education. I suppose that my overreaction to this B+ is because subconsciously I am terrified that this piece of unfortunate information can and will be used against me in the future. During my walk yesterday, I had feverish visions of how I receive my Ph.D. and then someone close to me stands up in front of everyone and says: “But how about that B+ in her first semester?” At this point either a bucket of blood pours down on me from above or every single person there picks up an egg and together they start to egg me – one person and one egg at a time, until I am completely soaked.

Anyway, once I got back to Berkeley the bus was almost 30 minutes late. This I saw as a sign I should not spend the evening on my own. So I called up my Critical Companion. That’s how she came to stand outside my door an hour later with a bottle of whiskey in her hand, ready to take my hand and walk me through this agony step by step. It would not surprise me if some of my readers think that my Critical Companion sounds too good to be true, for also I cannot fathom what I did right in life to deserve such a great friend. She’s my side-kick – and she even said so herself! In general, I have certainly been blessed with the best friends anyone could ever ask for. Both A. and K. commented with great warmth and subtle concern on my last despicable post; Katya even sent me a long letter in which she told me in the sternest tone of voice to SNAP OUT OF IT. И будет с меня!

When was the turning point then? It surely wasn’t last night; I kept crying throughout the night and getting up several times to turn on my computer and start composing new pathetic e-mails which I deleted as soon as I had finished them and – thank God – didn’t send even one of them. But at that point I sure could have used an alco-lock on my laptop as well… The turning point wasn’t during the day either; as I ran myself dizzy and sweaty to the point of grotesque up in the hills, I kept choking on my most self-indulgent resentment. Then in the evening I went to the department as I needed to print out some documents. On my way to the Slavic library, I decided to check my mail box. Waiting for me in it all this time was my paper on Kuzmin’s “The Trout that Breaks the Ice”. I read the comments left by the professor. I was baffled. I knew it must have been well received as I got an A- on the class, but I had no idea how impressed the professor had been with the paper itself. I was taken aback. Here I had been thinking for days that I was the biggest let-down this department had ever experienced, while it turns out that it might not be the truth at all. My second paper was well-structured, well-argued and interesting to read. I sat down in silent solitude in the Slavic library and contemplated the reality of my situation for a while. I was that close to calling it quits, packing my bags, selling all my Russian books and applying to a program at a university in Sweden that would give me a degree as a teacher of Swedish as a foreign language. I was about to give up my dream. And because of what? Because it was difficult for me to admit to having spent more time last semester flirting in the corridor than reading in the library.

They say that the first step to recovery is realizing you have a problem. I fully acknowledge that I did not give graduate school my all during my first semester. I can’t blame it on the fact that really, I decided to leave Russian for mainly two reasons: a) financial ones; and b) personal ones. In Russia I could not get any university to pay for my education and in Russia I could not find a man. Well, as it turns out I cannot find one in the USA either. If that’s not solid foundation for an immediate redirection of one’s energy, then I don’t know what is.

Back in Berkeley

Striking a pose outside of IKEA in Emeryville yesterday. Do note the palm trees in the background and yes, that’s right – it was this sunny and almost 20 degrees Celsius on January 14th!

During my first semester as a graduate student – coincidentally, this was also my first months of living in the US of A – I acquired a new guilty pleasure. I started following “The Biggest Loser”. Few things make me laugh and cry and think about the condition of humanity as watching “The Biggest Loser”. In my opinion, this program is not simply about weight loss; it is much more than a show about how a bunch of morbidly obese people work out and eat right for a few months together. This is a show about figuring out who we are – sometimes, more about who we have become – and what really matters in life. The people on the show are fighting spirits, humble souls, kick-ass personalities who have once and for all decided that ‘enough is enough’ and made the brave decision to act with confidence. They inspire me [and, I know, millions with me], as well as do the trainers Bob and Jillian. After watching an episode of “The Biggest Loser”, I always feel so empowered, like also I can take on everything that’s difficult in my life, any obstacle or challenge that may be thrown in my way. When I watch this show, I don’t really do it to learn how to lose weight or work out right – though I have been known to often repeat Jillian’s words of wisdom to myself while running up in the Berkeley hills – but to feel every emotion possible for a human being. The show is brilliant; it is drenched in tears, filled with laughter, and overflowing with love, acceptance and a profound respect for humanity. When I watch “The Biggest Loser” I think to myself: well, we people might have gone far off track in the past, but now we’re getting back to moving in the right direction. If I was overweight, I would sign up for this show. Without a doubt. In a way I even think it is unfair that the show is only for overweight people; everyone – people of all sizes – could use a journey of self-discovery like that.

Tonight I finished watching the second episode of the new season; that kind of unconditional inspiration was exactly what I needed after a day like this. A couple of hours ago I might have elaborated further on the source of my distress, but right now I feel that the only thing left for me to do is to accept. This morning I finally received an e-mail informing me of the grade for last semester’s class on Russian Romanticism. Yeah, I got a B+ on my final paper, and a B+ on the course. This is not like the B that I got on my midterm paper for the same class; this grade is going in my records. My very first B ever… At first I wanted to do all sorts of crazy things, starting with writing the professor an angry letter and ending with dropping out of graduate school altogether. I don’t think I deserve a B+ on this course. I don’t think my final paper deserves that grade either. My professor M. in Sweden read it, loved it, said it is “clearly an A” and even suggested I try to publish it in the future. Needless to say, I will not publish a paper that did not make the cut for at least an A-. But the thing is, what I think in this regard doesn’t matter. At all. At the end of the day, I had a very different reading of Lermontov’s novel than the professor had and there’s little that can be done about that. Like my Critical Companion told me, at the moment we’re still figuring things out, and even though it is boring and might not be what you want to do, it might be better to write what the professor agrees with rather than bringing your very own original vision to the table.

Though I’m not sure I want to study at a university, in a program, in a department where reproduction of the professor’s views of rehashing preapproved opinions is the only way to get a good grade?

Surely, I have some figuring out left to do. I’m not proud of myself for failing this class. But, like my Critical Companion said, “The time for shame, hesitation, disappointment and misery… they’re all gone, long gone” [direct quote from private correspondence]. I think the wonderful people on “The Biggest Loser” would agree with her. When I went on a run this morning – in lovely sunshine and around 20 C – I almost choked on my tears several times, while cursing poor judgment and stubborn mind and inadequate choices under my breath. But come on! One day I must start distinguishing between me the person and me the accomplishments. And there’s no time like the present, right? My friend M. in Stockholm – she is filled with wisdom and after all these years of knowing me, she has an uncanny ability to point out all of my weaknesses in a second – told me last weekend that most of my issues come from a desire for confirmation from the outside. I’m constantly looking for someone or something else to tell me I’m “okay” [this blog being an excellent example of the same], to reassure me that I’m not a failure, that I’m worthy of love, respect and acceptance. Unless I perform – publish articles, make money, get straight A’s, stay in shape, have great hair, sleep with desirable men – I don’t exist. And when that’s how you’re feeling about yourself, when that’s the scale on which you weigh in every day, getting a B+ is like losing a part of your body; bit by bit, I start to disappear…

Indeed, there’s no time like the present. I have to arrive in a place inside where I am not what I do, but who I am. On Tuesday, while still in Sweden, I had a meeting with my editor at Göteborgs Posten. In an e-mail the day before I pitched an idea for future articles from California by me; which I, if not mistaken, promised to do if things didn’t work out romantically with the bearded dude. Yes, that’s right – from now on I will publish hilarious op-eds – “funny because they’re true”, let me assure you, comrades – once a month in the above-mentioned paper. He had even booked time with a photographer to make a photo shoot for my new byline picture; I’ve had the same one since January 2007 in which I am 21 years old and wearing a beret. It was definitely time for a change. As I thought he had joked about the whole photo shoot thing – I mean, come on, I’ve never had a photo shoot before in my life so why in the world would I expect to get one now? – I wasn’t wearing anything special, felt puffy in general and the whole day afterwards I kept thinking to myself “oh my God, in my new byline picture I will look fat”, especially considering the fact that he suggested we make it a ‘full-body one’ [whatever that means?]. Then I accepted the possibility of ‘looking fat’ and started thinking “oh my God, now everyone in West Sweden will get to read about my messed-up personal life”. Because that’s what I am going to write op-eds about from now on: about my international experiences with men. In my first article I make a slight reference to Russian literature, but I’m not sure I can keep it up throughout. Why am I doing this? The answer is simple: for money. And perhaps because I missed writing in Swedish and seeing it in print. When I got on that first flight from Gothenburg to Amsterdam on Thursday morning, the plane was filled with solemn business men and I thought to myself in alarm: “Oh my God, in a year from now they’ll all recognize me as Berkeley’s ‘slut-in-residence’…” Clearly, I should listen more to my Critical Companion. The time for shame is long gone. Now is the time to take responsibility for one’s actions, to face their consequences and stand up for choices/mistakes made.

Days like this I wish Jillian from “The Biggest Loser” would take me on as well… She’d tell me to stop being a baby: admit the past, embrace the future and keep fighting – because I am no quitter. She’d have me repeat the phrase “I’m not going to quit” over and over while doing push-ups. Until I’d scream with frustration and from the physical energy of feeling oneself overcoming pain and agony and disappointment. That would be lovely!

On the 11 hour [it turned out it wasn’t 12 hours] flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco I kept thinking to myself “oh my God, why am I putting myself through this?”. California is too far away and Sweden is too far away and man, do I hate flying. But once I got off the plane I was so blissfully happy that I answered the border police’s question “You go to Berkeley?” with “No, I go to Stanford, but don’t tell anyone”. To this he commented: “But your sweatshirt says Berkeley?” I nodded: “It is only camouflage”. “But all of your documents state… Berkeley?” I shook my head: “It is all a big mistake”. Then he laughed: “Next time, young lady, you might not get as lucky as to get a border police with a sense of humor”. I nodded. I know; this was actually the first time I was that lucky.

At the end of the day everything I do, I must do for myself. Not for a grade, not for anyone else, but for me. And start practicing not caring about what anyone else thinks. I suspect regular publications of comical scenes from my private life in the Swedish press will be just the right stuff to practice on.

Stockholm i mitt hjärta

This past weekend was spent visiting my native country’s capital – Stockholm.

Among other ‘places not to be missed’ I visited Hedengrens Bookstore on Saturday…

…after having breakfast with the delightful Sofia of this excellent blog. I gave her a bag with selections from the Russian canon about which she wrote the following.

And this one is for Katya.

On Friday afternoon I took the train to Stockholm, even though Mother laughed at me for not catching a flight instead. Yet I did this because I love riding the train – despite advised by my fellow Swedes not to depend ever on SJ – especially when given the rare opportunity to travel through some of Sweden’s astounding rural sceneries during this white winter. The weekend in Stockholm was intense and pleasurable. On Friday evening I shared a dinner with my good friend S., a fellow graduate student albeit in another field [national economics], in another university [Stockholm University] as well as in her second year. On Saturday morning I ate the above-mentioned breakfast with Sofia, which was lovely. Afterwards I headed to a long lunch with my Swedish professor M., which was equally lovely. As always we talked about everything, and despite sporadic moments of ‘over-sharing’ on my behalf, I think it was yet another example of ‘good times’. Then I wandered around Gamla stan alone for an hour before meeting up with my dear old friend M. [of this blog] and she treated me to a warming cup of champagne tea before we caught the subway to her new apartment. Once there she cooked a wonderful dinner at which we were joined by S. – the aforementioned graduate student – and L. The four of us studied Russian language together in Saint Petersburg during the fall semester of 2004, and thus have known each other for quite some time by now. It was a great dinner and I don’t think I’ve laughed as much yet this year. On Sunday M., I and two of her friends went first to the Nobel Museum and secondly to lunch. On Sunday afternoon I got on the train back to Gothenburg, reading Selma Lagerlöf’s “Gösta Berlings saga”.

For some time now I have been planning to a) read all Swedish Nobel Prize winners in literature; and b) read all female Nobel Prize winners in literature. Thus by starting with Selma Lagerlöf I’m making progress in both categories simultaneously.

And only after visiting Stockholm does it feel like I’ve actually been home.

“A Difficult Age”

Galterö, January 4th 2011.

“A Difficult Age”

a short story

January 2011

by L. J. Lundblad

«Просто трудный возраст – смятая постель,

Ну а плакать лучше в дождь – или в метель»

[“It is just a difficult age – crumbled sheets,

Well, it's better to cry in the rain – or in a snowstorm”]

- from a Russian pop song

I think it’s a myth. It is a myth that those born by the sea will always search for the sea, and that we will always return to the sea. I was born by the sea, grew up by the sea, yet after leaving it at the age of 18, I never once lived in a city by the sea. I lived in Prague, in Minsk, in Berlin, and I lived in Chicago. I never came back to the sea.

I think that we who grew up by the sea, we who learned how to swim before we could bike, I think we carry the sea with us. The sea is inside.

Perhaps the reason why I didn’t return to the sea of my childhood, to the island where I had been born and raised, is because there was nothing left there for me to return to. To come back we must first leave, and, secondly (perhaps the most important), leave something behind. When I went, it was not my choice not to. Simply – I did not possess anything of the kind. I was the last to leave.

It was always my conviction that a person who knew the sea as a small child, who had felt the cold waves against one’s skin already as an infant and known the scent of dried salt in one’s hair, would be recognized by it as an adult. The sea does not forget. It is all memory. I don’t know what kept me away all these years. Perhaps I was afraid to be right?

My name is Anna. He used to laugh and say that Anna is a name for the woman I’ll become, not for the girl I was. He called me Anja.

When I knew him I was 13 years old. Today I have turned 28. During the past fifteen years I rarely thought of him. At times the tiniest detail might trigger the memory, whatever it may be: when someone asks me where I’m from, for example. And – though seldom – they beg me to paint a picture of what my hometown is like; for some reason the colors of Gothenburg remind me of him: grey, blue, and a pale yellow, like the low winter sun or the color of last year’s grass…

He said my appearance encompassed all of the nature belonging to the winter archipelago: in my grey coat, with my blue eyes and my hair the color of last year’s grass.

It is surprising how few people know what that last color actually looks like…

I was informed of his death in a prosaic manner: a letter arrived in the mail. The envelope was addressed to me in the role of a graduate student at the University of Chicago. Its formal contents stated me as the sole heir to the entire state of a late Mr. Tyko Taube. I failed to comprehend. Who was this Tyko Taube? A distant relative? But I lacked even close ones? The address of the house I had inherited brought back an ocean of images, voices, scents: Brännö…

It had been a late afternoon in November. As a child I often went for long walks on my own – I don’t remember myself having any friends, maybe I did, but they didn’t make this recollection – and this afternoon was particularly cold. It was the beginning of one of my life’s coldest winters. I would walk all the way across Brännö, all the way to the neighboring island of Galterö, and to the very edge of it.

That afternoon I spotted a man standing there on one of the remotest cliffs. He seemed to be in his 50’s; his skin was pale and his hair dark brown. There was a heavy wind; a storm was on its way and I could smell the approaching rain hanging in the heavy air above. He was wearing a dark green rain cloak – the same color as the unruly waters beneath him. He was pouring something out of a round, golden container – out and into the sea. The win caught a hold of what looked like fine sand and spread it all over the waves. Several minutes passed before he saw me.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said, “it is illegal”.

“What is? To throw sand to the waves?” I asked, while steadily making my way toward him.

“To spread your son’s ashes in the ocean,” he said, “without permission.”

“What you’re doing is a secret?”

He nodded.

We stood in silence and watched the sea together. It started to rain. He looked at me and told me that his son had died of AIDS. He stated that his son had been 23 years old. I didn’t know what AIDS was then. He explained it to me as we walked together over the grey cliffs in the pouring rain.

We met out on Galterö the following Saturday afternoon. And the one after that, and the next one – until we spent every Saturday afternoon together walking and talking on Galterö. The island was nearly deserted during this season. I don’t remember the individual times as separate occasions. In my memory the entire winter when I was 13 years old is one long Saturday afternoon spent with Tyko.

Tyko Taube. Who knew it would be fifteen years before I learned his last name?

Tyko Taube’s legal representative – his lawyer, in other words – picks me up at the airport around lunch one day in January. He introduces himself quite formally as Eric Andersson, even though I knew his name well after almost a month of correspondence by mail. Eric Andersson doesn’t ask why I, presumably a native of this city, have no one else to pick me up at the airport. Eric Andersson doesn’t ask when was the last time I was home.

There was no last time when I was home. The last time I was here was the day I left – ten years ago.

“It was about three years ago that Tyko asked me to come over one evening and revise his last will. It was around the same time that he sold his flat in the city and decided to move out to the island permanently,” Eric explains as the journey back travels forward. “Ever since I have wondered who this ‘Anja Ek’ is, this mysterious woman which he made the sole heir of his entire estate. ‘An illegitimate child?’ I asked. Tyko laughed. ‘A lover?’ He laughed again. ‘A close friend’, he said, ‘from a long time ago’. Then I asked him how the two of you had become such close friends, but he refused to tell me more. Anna, I wasn’t solely in charge of Tyko’s legal matters. I consider myself to have been ‘a close friend’ of his as well. And one evening when he invited me over for dinner, my eye caught a hold of one of the framed pictures placed on the grand piano in the hallway. Earlier there were many frames on it, but with the years fewer and fewer remained. I suppose he couldn’t live every day among faces from the past… One picture caught my eye. It was of a young girl, maybe twelve years old, she was sitting on a rock covered in snow right by the sea, smiling and looking into the camera with brave eyes. I didn’t recognize her. I asked Tyko about it. And he said: ‘There you have her. My Anja’”.

Suddenly I flinch: “There were never any pictures taken. I do not remember any camera, or photographs for that matter…”

“How old were you at the time?”

“Thirteen.”

“Maybe you don’t remember everything, or even everything as it were?”

I close my eyes. Somewhere in the back of my mind an image comes to life. Somewhere in my head I can see him running after me as I turn around, and somewhere among my own thoughts I hear distant laughter; it is us. He is laughing and so am I. He is chasing after me. Over the cliffs, jumping on the rocks, stirring up snow as he goes. It is a cold day in December with clear skies and a bright sun behind him. It hurts my eyes to look at it. We’re playing Cold War; the island of Galterö was – and still is – filled with abandoned military bunkers, war equipment and the like, thus perfect for games of this kind. He would be Soviet Union and I’d play United States of America. He knew the rules of the game much better than I did; when I’d make mistakes and, for example, take China as an ally, then he would correct me and shout: “Japan! You colonize Japan, Anja!”

Nobody heard us. Nobody saw us. It was an unusually cold winter that year. Nobody knew that we were playing a game in which a father who had lost his child found a daughter who had never known her parents. Or that it was a game made by a grandfather for the granddaughter he was never blessed with – and who in return never knew what she missed… Yet most of the time we were but two human beings. A man and a woman. Who were throwing make-belief hand grenades at each other. Once the sea began to really freeze, we pretended this small island was Berlin and divided it between us by way of making a wall out of snow balls. Then we acted out our own versions of all the most famous plots in world literature, including “Romeo & Juliet”…

Eric Andersson parks his car and now we continue our journey by ferry.

To the island.

“Tyko bought the house when he was 28 years old; it was meant as an engagement gift to his future wife. It is beautiful property. The house is situated right by the waterfront. It has a grand view of the ocean and includes extensive land in a secluded area of the island. The house itself is quite large and features many well-decorated rooms. It was recently completely renovated when he moved out here three years after his retirement as a professor of political science at Gothenburg University. It was some three years ago,” Eric pauses and looks at me. “This came as a chock to everyone who knew him. Except for that one winter after the death of his son that he spent out here, he never visited the place. He kept it locked up and even told me on several occasions he intended to sell it. Yet he never did.” There is another silence. “He got married in the church on the island when he was 29, and the couple had their twins a year later. While the children were small the family spent every summer in the house. His daughter drowned out there when she was 10. His wife died trying to save her. After that he closed up the house and never returned. Until after the death of his son.”

“I didn’t know”, I whisper.

“You didn’t know he lost his family?”

“I didn’t know he had a daughter.”

We only went for walks every Saturday afternoon. There was nothing else. We parted outside the island’s only grocery store and went our separate ways.

One day in March he asked me to come with him. He wanted me to keep him company as he went to feed his friend’s cat in this person’s house. Even though it went against our previous – however silent – agreement, I said yes. He took me to one of those enormous, extravagant houses, located right by the waterfront, built as much on the cliffs as into them; the exclusive and elegant architecture designed to make it look like a natural part of the landscape. And he allowed me to enter into that house. He left me alone in the hallway with white walls and a tall ceiling, where I waited for him while he fed the cat. I remember how large even this hallway seemed to me. I remember the black grand piano that stood there. I remember how I walked up to it, because I wanted to take a closer look at the black and white photographs in the frames that were standing on it. I recognized several versions of his face among the strangers.

When he came back he found me standing there. With my eyes fixed on his wedding picture.

“This is your home,” I remember myself saying without looking at him. “You live here.”

“You could live here too,” was all he said. “I could adopt you. I know you’re an orphan.”

In my version of the memory, this is the moment when I turn around and walk out the door. In my version of this memory, this is its final scene. Perhaps anything that might have followed has been forgotten. And perhaps what came next I choose not to remember. Just like I chose to forget the photograph he took of me.

Now I walk into his house and it is the first thing I see: a framed picture of myself standing on his grand piano. And for some reason, the sight of me there makes me warm inside. Maybe because I never had anyone else in my life who could keep a framed picture in their home of the 13 year old me?

“You’ve been here before I see,” Eric Andersson says, watching me walk in.

“I have only been here once.”

He seems surprised. “Now this house is yours. It and a large amount of money distributed mainly in different funds and stocks. A fair amount of it is also readily available in savings and checking accounts. All I need is your signature right here”.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Andersson, but I can’t accept this.”

And a peculiar smile appears on his lips: “Tyko thought you might refuse. That’s why he asked me to prepare another contract. If you sign this instead, the entire estate will be donated to an organization which distributes scholarships to orphans.”

I smile and shake my head. “I’ll sign the first one, if you please.”

“Of course,” he says, handing me pen and paper.

I sign the paper and then give it back to lawyer Eric Andersson: “And now all of this belongs to me?”

“Yes.”

“Then you may leave,” I nod politely and Eric Andersson begin to take his leave. But before he leaves, I stop him on the threshold: “How did he die?”

“A heart attack. Out on the balcony. He was standing there one evening in December, smoking a cigarette… When suddenly… The cigarette fell in the snow. Luckily, or else it might have burned down the whole house.”

Once alone, I walk out on the balcony. It is dark outside; it is a dark evening in January. Even though I can’t see the sea, other than the moon’s reflection on the waves, I can hear it. And I can smell its salt in the crisp air. But most importantly, I sense that we are not strangers. We remember; we recognize each other.

For the first time in my life I own something. A connection to the sea, to a man, and to the little girl he loved… And as I remember how he used to say “You’ll grow up to be one of those gorgeous women who won’t look at or even talk to a man like me”, I smile, I laugh, I cry.

For we had both been right.

Pusselbitarna

About my father’s ‘trailer-trash-Christmas-lights’, his girlfriend jokes: “I bet people pass by going ‘Some people shouldn’t be allowed to own houses in the archipelago!’”.

Today my precious friend K. and I went to the movies; I hadn’t been to the movies in Sweden since August 2008 when I saw “Mamma Mia!”. Tonight K. and I spent the rest of our Sunday post-church time together on something entirely else: “Svinalängorna”, a Swedish movie based on a Swedish novel. Predominantly I wanted to watch this film because it stars Lisbeth Salander – ehm, excuse me while I go fondle my copy of Stieg’s trilogy – Noomi Rapace in the leading role. The movie belongs to the Swedish genre celebrated as ‘feel-bad movies’ [as opposed to the more traditional ‘feel-good movies’ commonly produced by Hollywood] and I recommend it. Toward the end of it my face was drenched in tears; the rest of the audience was loudly sniveling away as well. Before the movie K. and I went to McDonald’s – for lack of anything more appealing in the vicinity – and shared in a random exchange of personal information with each other. Such only occur when in dialogue with a really close friend. After the movie I explained to K. this idea for a short story that came to me a couple of weeks ago. Someday it could be a short story; currently it is but a memory. A memory that arrived without asking – not as a result of active recollection – it simply came to be that one afternoon as I was running in the Berkeley hills a person from my past appeared accidentally among other thoughts – that’s what free association will do to you – and forced me to ask myself: “I wonder if he’s alive today?” After telling the memory to K., I suggested: “In this book about Brodsky that I got for Christmas, he says something like that you only start living once you have begun to evaluate your past, that without going back in your mind, without an examination of that which has been, you cannot exist in the now. The future never belongs to us, thus it is impossible for it to tell us anything about ourselves.” What Brodsky meant – I’m almost certain, comrades – is that the only source we have for knowledge about the world, about God, about ourselves – and it is in order to know these things that we were put on this Earth in the first place – is the past. On this note K. reflected: “When we remember, it is as if we were gathering pieces to our own puzzle”.

The memory is made up of a total of four scenes lacking any firm chronologic – as any study on the mnemonic aspect of poetics will tell you this is not unusual – but taking place in a Gothenburg that’s always grey as in late fall, rainy like any day of early spring, featuring grass still green like it sometimes was even in the depth of winter during my childhood. It must have taken place sometime between late September and early April the year I was 13 years old. The memory reveals not only how unrestricted my childhood was – I was allowed to come and go as I pleased and rarely was I asked any questions – but also how varied the methods with which I fought boredom were. Sometimes I wonder if I were born bored… Surely it is what has defined me most and made me stand out in several crowds over the years; sometimes I wonder if my boredom might be connected to my inability to partake in anything organized cooperatively and/or on an unintellectual level? Anyway, perhaps more interesting are my flights from boredom – like when my Critical Companion at Berkeley was so impressed with me having written my first novel at 17 and I coolly commented: “Well, I was bored” – like when I was 13 and made friends with an older man. I do not remember his name; for almost half of my life I had not given him a single thought. I do not know how old he was; as I was 13, it must have seemed to me he was ‘ancient’, though this could hardly have been the truth. Perhaps he was in his late 50’s, or early 60’s. In the memory’s first scene we share a chance meeting. At 13, I was not predisposed to engaging in conversations with unfamiliar, older men. Yet somehow his words convinced me that talking with him would not be a waste of time, rather an experience worthwhile. I remember that he was an intellectual; we spoke mainly about literature [I had decided to become a writer already when I was 10 – may the Lord have mercy on ‘special’ children like that!] and even though he knew all the Roman poets and all of Greek mythology by heart and was perhaps as much as forty years older than me, he never once diminished my limited knowledge of the world. Instead he listened. Now I think maybe he was an academic, maybe a professor of Ancient literature at the university; at 13, however, I didn’t know there existed such a world as ‘the university world’. In the memory’s second scene he calls me at my house – I don’t know why I gave him my number, but I did – and I answer. Even though we met more than a couple of times for coffee at this particular café downtown, I have only one memory of answering the phone and hearing his voice. In the memory’s third scene we’re sitting in this café and for some strange reason I remember exactly what I’m wearing; that is how I can approximately locate the memory’s linear placement in my life. I don’t remember what he looked like. In the memory’s fourth and final scene, he takes me to the apartment of his ‘friend’ to feed this person’s cat. I remember that he leaves me alone for a while when he does something else, giving me time to walk through the rooms – the apartment was quite large – and suddenly I come across black and white photographs on some mantelpiece. I recognize his face on several of the photos, including the wedding picture with a strange, young woman…

After that I could never see him again. I don’t know how I thought this through; I do not know how – or even if – I explained to him the foundation for my quick conclusion of our friendship. At the time I was only 13, yet somewhere I already understood that whatever wound it was he tried to heal through me, I did not possess the instruments necessary. Thus I had to leave, taking with me a piece I would have to live almost twice as long before I could fit it into the puzzle that is myself…

In the short story, of course, the basic plot must be further developed; it will obviously need to be different. Yet the main question our meeting posed will remain: Who are we in relation to each other? When he forced me to question who he was, he simultaneously pushed me toward a realization of who I was myself: a child. Still a child; ready to intellectually enjoy the company of a man; but not ready to emotionally carry the weight of a man. Perhaps we are only what we have meant to other people. Perhaps those who have known us – and those who still know us, remember us, value us – are the greatest pieces in our puzzle. After the movie tonight, I took my friend K. with me to see if that café downtown still remains today. It does. And I agree with what K. said when we found it, that we can never know if we remember everything correctly; often will we doubt that what our recollections contain is what really happened – and yet we have no choice but to make peace with the probability of biased remembrance. For without reflection, without evaluation, without interpretation – in the light of what came next – a memory is nothing.

Like a piece of the puzzle on its own is pointless.

The picture becomes clear only once made up of many pieces, of the relation between these pieces – like our essence is illuminated through the multitude of ways we relate it to others. My meeting with this man at 13 has since been reflected in similar meetings with intellectual men some generations my senior – and the most important of all is to learn how to regret nothing.

Toasting in 2011

Have you ever wondered, dear comrades, how to make my signature drink “Aurora” [in Swedish “Norrsken”; in Russian «Северное сияние»]? Thus – and in honor of our brand spankin’ new 2011 – your favorite ‘recognized drunk’ takes you through the motions:

1. Pour the vodka. Make sure it’s 40% – astonishingly many of the vodkas sold in my home and native land encompass merely 37,5%. That’s just wrong.

2. Fill the rest of the glass with champagne – don’t waste your most lavish kind, rather employ something cheap, sugary and fizzy in this role.

3. The ‘traditional’ version does not enclose this third ‘surprise’ moment. We’re not even sure what it was we mixed in this year… All we do discern is that the cherished cocktail had the same effect as last year – the same effect as every year, James – after it everything became a maze and nobody remembers anything…

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!