On Valentine's Day

It might be "funy", but what struck me with this piece of art (spotted at the Valentine Exhibit at a local gallery. "Local" being a vague term, since it's nowhere close to me. But it was very much local where it was located. Funy that) was that the artist was very talented. I do find it slightly ironical that while I was able to take a picture, the piece really was "unphotographable", as my meager shot really can't do the simple brilliance of the artwork any justice. Is it my favourite work of art? Well, it certainly was my favourite at the exhibit in question. So if you find yourself nearby a local gallery, why don't you have a look? It might be the right one. And it might make you smile with your heart.

Happy Valentine's Day!


Also, make sure to visit www.the-burrow.org today, regardless of whether you have a funy or funny valentine - or none at all. The Burrow and guests have put together a collection of drabbles inspired in some way or other by love, but not merely romantic love. Because, to once again refer to The English Patient (it's been a theme lately, sorry...), what word takes on more different meanings when an adjective is placed in front of it than love?


"Love? Romantic love, platonic love, filial love---? Quite different things, surely?" ~ Katharine Clifton


So please stop by for your fix of [insert adjective] love. At least one new drabble will be up all through February.

On colour

I recently read Oliver Sacks' The Island of the Colorblind, where he describes two journeys to islands in the Pacific Ocean - some of which has a unusual rate of people genetically disposed to develop achromatopsia, colourblindness. Like Sacks I wonder what it would be like to never having seen colour. It is one thing being colourblind in the sense that you cannot distinguish a red ball in the middle of a green lawn (a condition relatively common, especially among men), even if this can cause enough problems (watch Little Miss Sunshine if you need further proof). But having absolutely no perception of colour, that your entire world consists of shades of black and white and grey, is unfathomable to me (though if you want a glimpse of what the world looks like through the eyes of someone who knows, you should check out the incredibly talented Meghan Sims). It sounds oddly like living in an old movie. However, I learned from the book that it is slightly less glamorous than that, since people with this condition also tend to have other problems with their vision, as well as the social implications it might have "being different".

It might seem like a strange jump to go from this to the current Burrow feature, which is a tribute to colours.  We have picked pictures relating to a colour and organized them in a specter, where one drabble unlocks every day for the month of October. Even if someone with achromatopsia would only see the pictures in shades of grey, or even blurry shades of grey, however, they might enjoy the drabbles which in one way or another are tied to the colour it's representing. No one can describe colours in words, perhaps, but we're never afraid to take on a challenge in the Burrow.

So, whether your colour vision is perfect or not, I urge you to visit www.the-burrow.org this month and throughout November to get an idea how we see the world through colours.

On H2O

Frozen Water by C.C. 

You drink it. You bathe in it. You wash your clothes in it. You splash in puddles of it. You squeal in delight when it is splattered onto you. You can’t live without it.
Neither can anyone else.

Water is the most important of all our resources. No wonder wars have been fought over it. No wonder scarcity of water continues to threated the survival and make life difficult for millions of people worldwide. No wonder he who controls the water, has the power.
 
Drink a glass of water today. Consider yourself lucky to be able to do just that.



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Today is Blog Action Day 2010, first brought to my attention by Astrid at Asterisk That Thought. The goal is for bloggers all around the globe to unite in posting over a common theme, to create debate and discussion around important issues. This year's subject is water. To participate in spreading the word about one of the major global issues today, simply blog about it. Or sign the petition. Or both.

On mug shots*

I was going to write a "I don't really have anything to write about today"-post, but then I realized that I do have something to write about. See, I think there are still one or two of you out there who don't know I am nuts. It is time to change that. I hereby present you my collection of coffee mugs:

The Twins. These were actually given to me by two different people on different occasions. My giraffability is well-known!

The Secretive. It's got a LID!!! How awesome is that?

The Pretty Giraffe. No caption needed.

The Silly Giraffe. Still no caption needed...

The GIANTS. It might not be apparent from the picture, but these two are about twice as large as the rest of my mugs.

The Welsh. This one I got from my friend Tara when we met for the first time in person, two years ago.

Tara's mug has more than one side to it, of course ;)

There. If I haven't convinced you I am nuts by now ("Hey, I post pictures of my cat. Why can't she post pictures of her mugs?"), I'll probably never succeed. There are a few that didn't make it into this blog because I don't have them nearby (one of my current favourites - "Fruits and Nuts in History" - lives at the university). Maybe I can make a "On mugs part two" post sometime in the future?

The only lucid thing I wanted to include in today's post will have to come at the end of my insanity. Please make sure to check out this week's drabble challenge over at the Burrow Blog. Unless you're reading this unreasonably late, there is still time to let the creative juices flow and write down a 100 word long story for us. Who knows, YOU might be our next winner! (I promise there will be no commemorative aming the prizes...)

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*For those who are confused because this post used to have another title, I feel I should clarify. I changed it after my blog buddy Boonsong made a most excellent comment (see comment section below) that made me realize I had not exhausted the title potential of this post. Amends have now been made.

On X

As regular followers will know, I am participating in the Burrow's "A-Z Drabble Feature" this month. We're reaching the end of the month, and today will be my last slot.

Mathematics

They had nothing in common except her. Xavier was a piano playing barrister with a taste for French wines. Xander, the ship captain, had four gold teeth and a pet monkey. Xenon was a beast on the rugby field, but otherwise a mellow fellow.

When asked how it could be that all her former boyfriends had names starting with X, Yvonne smiled mysteriously. It was between her and her x-men that a tattoo on her lower back predicted that X+Y=Z. She had always wanted a baby girl named Zoë. All she needed to solve the equation was to find X.

The above image is made by Peter Valberg, and it can be accessed in Wikimedia Commons. For the record I don't love math, but I acknowledge its importance...

On O

I have no idea what took them so long.


It is all perfectly logical. I stop where I start, but I do not actually stop or start at all. I am an endless cycle, rotating without moving from a fixed axis. The special qualities vested in me as a result of this are hardly extraordinary. My advantages are obvious, and the fact that human beings did not notice before does not bode well for mankind. Man's invention of the wheel is nothing but centuries of lack of discovery of the circle.

I have no idea what took them so long.





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Image: Ur wheel, 2500 BC. Available in Wikimedia Commons.

A drabble is an extremely short piece of fiction, told in exactly one hundred words. For more drabbles, see http://www.the-burrow.org/, where we display a new drabble each day this month.

On H

The Burrow is doing more than novel writing this month. We have also put together a drabble feature where we each day present a new letter, inspired by the A-Z blog challenge that travelled the blogosphere (though not this blog - I was not organized enough for that back then) in April. The idea for the blog challenge was to write about something starting with the letter of the day. Those of you who are apt at math will notice that an alphabet with 26 letters does not add up with a month with 30 days (and it still doesn't if you add the Norwegian quirky letters: æ, ø and å - though we don't). However, if you skip Sundays, a 26 letter alphabet fits just perfectly. We have actually included Sundays in the feature, but they don't have a designated letter... (You will just have to take a look to see what I am talking about)

Anyway, today is the letter H, and the drabble is written by yours truly. Rather than sticking with the original format of writing about a topic starting with the designated letter, however, we have chosen to play around with alitteration, specific qualities of the individual letters and so on. In total, the Burrow's June feature offers 30 drabbles ranging from sweet to edgy to just plain old weird (yeah, those would be mine).

Please have a look, and don't hesitate to tell us what you think! http://www.the-burrow.org/

On scrambled eggs (not really)

I’m fighting a(nother!) cold and I’ve got a lot of my mind (including a troublesome drabble I am trying to write for the June 2010 Burrow feature which we are launching tomorrow – you should check it out [tomorrow, on June 1st that is] on www.the-burrow.org,) so this will be a short post. It’s unavoidable to mention one of the other things on my mind since the Burrow also launches another event tomorrow – it’s the GO! date for the BuNoWriMo. If you haven’t joined yet, you should check it out (the logo in the top right corner of this page will take you directly there). We are currently at 90 members – that means 90 people who will help YOU write a novel in June (if you let us) – and there is room for plenty more!


What I really wanted to post today, though, is something that has to do with my Saturday post. I won’t give you a full review of the Eurovision show (because, let’s face it, the artistic highlights were few), but there is one thing from the show I wanted to share.

The pause act in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest was surprisingly good, it was different than it usually is (actually, it was different than anything I’ve ever seen). Watching this live made me remember what people can do when they get together and work towards a mutual goal, and this is also an example of a happening that would not have been possible without the help of modern technology. The music starts about 50 seconds in, and I highly recommend watching at least a couple of minutes to get an idea what is really going on here (actually, just watch the whole thing. It’s really cool!).




One final comment on Eurovision and I swear I won’t mention it again for a year… Did you know that if you google “men in silver hotpants” in Australia my blog comes up as one of the top hits? I know this because a considerable of the hits I had over the weekend came from Aussies looking for the good stuff in really short shorts…

On Santa Lucia

I'm a day late. Saint Lucy's day was yesterday. On the 13th of December each year, this day is celebrated - mainly in Italy and in Scandinavia. The fact that this day is celebrated in Scandinavia is strange, actually. If  religious at all, most Scandinavians are Lutherans. We don't really do saints. But Lucy/Lucia - an Italian martyr who lived in the late third and early fourth centuries - is for some reason one of the few we commemorate. I don't think many Norwegians (I can't speak for the Swedes and Danes) know specifically why we celebrate Saint Lucy's day (I had to google it, and I'm not all that much wiser - it had to do with torture and religion, and frankly, I get enough of both in my thesis...). Regardless of this, however, we have very specific traditions in connection with December 13th.

There are processions with young girls in white gowns, holding candles and singing "Santa Lucia" (the Neapolitan song with Norwegian lyrics). There is a special type of pastry baked and served on this day only (lussekatt). Often, the processions are in schools, kindergartens, or they visit nursing homes or churches. Yesterday they even had one walking down Karl Johan, the main street here in Oslo (the street that a few nights earlier was absolutely packed with all the people waiting outside Obama's hotel hoping to catch a glimpse of him and Michelle).

I didn't celebrate Santa Lucia this year. I had an eventful weekend otherwise, and though I would have liked to make lussekatter it didn't fit into my schedule this time. Maybe next year I can make up for it. I did, however, think about Saint Lucy's day when we were planning The Burrow's Advent Calendar. Yesterday's entry was my tribute to the Scandinavian celebration of Saint Lucy's day. One day late, I present the drabble also here:

There are many rules when participating in the traditional Santa Lucia procession:

Walk straight, one step at the time, following the beat of the choir singing "Santa Lucia."
Keep your head up, don't look down, but don't step on the long, white gown you are wearing.
Hold your candle straight, and make sure it doesn't drip on the floor or set something on fire.
Smile.
Look serene.
Most important of all: don't cast envious glances at the queen of the procession, who is wearing the crown of lights, while you are merely wearing a silver garland tied around your head.

To see the image accompanying this drabble, please visit http://www.the-burrow.org/. There you can find a drabble a day counting down to Christmas Eve.

On cats

Actually, that should be Cats with a capital C, because I just came back from seeing the show (at the theatre Chat Noir, ironically). However, now that I already typed it that way, let me ease you into the topic first.


Cats, Felis catus, is, according to Wikipedia “a small carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and its ability to hunt vermin and household pests”. True as this may be, it mentions nothing about the fact that cats also occasionally values the human for its companionship, though I doubt the cat thinks much of us as useful in terms of hunting vermin or household pests (unless you count dogs – which a cat naturally would do – a human might be useful to keep the dog away when the cat needs ALL of the couch for itself).

I’ve never had a cat. Not really. But there have been a number of cats that have had me.

For some reason, I seem to attract them. When I grew up, stray cats would frequently follow me home, and then stay for days – often settling themselves underneath my bedroom window (though never any of the other windows – always mine) where they would cry until I woke up and took pity on them. Several times, we’ve been able to reconnect a runaway cat with its owner because the cat adopted me as a sufficient substitute until their regular human got their act together and tracked them down. Then there was the cats that really were stray – one of them a tiny kitten which till today it kills me to think about, because I have no idea what happened to it (we found the mother dead not long after, so its prospects weren’t all that good).

When I first moved to the US, I was intrigued by the fact that “my family” owned two dogs and two cats. For someone who has never had pets, but always liked animals, this was a nice, new experience. These cats, Tina and Precious, were both extremely shy, but after a while, Tina realized that I would do what the other family members rarely did – pet her for hours and hours. Thus, she started to approach me, whenever I watched TV. She would meow until I gave her attention – which either meant that I made room for her to jump into the couch or lifted her up. Then she would lie there, looking all bored, like she was doing this since it apparently meant so much to me… I miss my cats (and the dogs too. Oh, and the people).

Another cat I’ve recently encountered is “Simon’s Cat”. Check it out on youtube if you haven’t already. I first met Simon’s cat in its book, though, which is out just in time to make a brilliant Christmas present to any cat lovers in your family. Reading this books also means I’ve completed the first of my nine required ones by December 31st.

And, finally, “Cats”, the show. Oslo has had a number of great musical productions the last few years. Either that, or the city has always had them, but I just didn’t notice until recently… Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen “Singin’in the Rain”, “Les Misérables” and now “Cats”. In addition there is still “Mamma Mia” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” I have yet to see. They have all been translated into Norwegian, which for the most part I think have been done splendidly (and this is coming from the “I hate translations”-gal). Also, the cast have been very good – how anyone can dance like that and still sing is beyond me! One fun fact – a former school mate of mine was in several of these productions (and tonight’s “Cats” as well). It’s even more impressive when you know he comes from the same little hometown as me, and he is as old as I am, and now he’s a professional singer/dancer in these big productions.

His performance, and that of the other cast members of tonight’s show, was as professional and marvelous as ever, and it never ceased to impress me how catlike they were at all time – even during intermission, when they were moving about among the audience, letting people pet them. “Cats” is a little strange compared to other musicals, though, seeing as it’s so low on plot. Basically, it’s just a string of sing/dance acts to portray different cat personalities. As long as you don’t expect a complex story (though frankly, if you do, musicals are probably not your genre anyway), it’s all right.

Finally, I'd like to share another drabble. It's from a past project of the Burrow, and there are 9 other drabbles accompanying the same picture (of a sleeping kitty), so if you like cats, I highly recommend paying our website a visit (there are of course also non-cat drabbles there, in case you're allergic or something).

Monday morning; but we are at the cabin, so it is not a Monday like any normal Monday. It is a Hunting Monday. Unless it is a Rainy Monday, in which case it is a Sleeping Monday.
All day long I lie here, listening to my humans walking about, talking, making coffee, washing in their strange fashion - outside, with soap and ice cold water, as the cabin has no plumbing. Why go through all that trouble?

I stretch and look through the window. Sleeping Monday it is.
Tomorrow is Tuesday. Maybe a Hunting Tuesday? Unless it is a Rainy Tuesday.

On Kongsvinger

Did you know Bob Dylan also paints? Even if you did, did you know that he once painted my hometown, Kongsvinger?


The latter is a stretch, but he really is a painter. Last year, my writer’s group, the Burrow, cooperated with Castle Galleries, a UK gallery chain, writing drabbles that were displayed along with artworks in their Cardiff branch. One of the drabbles I wrote corresponded with one of Dylan’s paintings currently displayed in the gallery. It felt like I was doing something rather silly, seeing as Dylan is one of the last century’s great poets, and I did not feel like comparing myself with him, to say the least. However, one of his images reminded me strongly of a place I have very conflicting feelings about.

Kongsvinger is the city I left thinking it was the ugliest place on earth, knowing that every now and then it’s the exact opposite.

It’s more a town than a city, really. We keep calling it city because it got its city status more than 150 years ago. At the time, what determined whether a place was a city or not was whether or not it could be called handelsstad [commercial city]. Kongsvinger had a railway; Kongeveien [the king’s road] – the main road between Oslo and Stockholm – (an important road at a time when the two countries shared a king) went through it; and it had a fortress. It was a potentially important city, with its close proximity to both the capital in Norway, Oslo, and to the Swedish border.

However, progress didn’t go well with Kongsvinger. First of all, the peaceful end of the union with Sweden in 1905 meant that the military capacities of the fortress no longer had any function. There remained military activity at the fortress until around the turn of the millennium, but in reality the fortress lost its importance after 1905. They didn’t even attempt to fend off any Germans from behind the grand old stone walls in 1940.

The railway gradually lost its status too. Once an important stop at the Oslo-Stockholm route, Kongsvinger became another blurry dot at the railway reduction map at the end of the 20th century. The old slogan “There’s always a train” became the parody “There’s never a train”. No one goes to Stockholm by train anymore. Flights are faster and more convenient, and with time, they became cheaper too. Eventually, there were no trains.

Few passes Kongsvinger on their way to Stockholm these days. Those trying to find the old Kongeveien will see that it’s been reduced to a bicycle path, and you can go faster by car via other border passes. Kongsvinger doesn’t benefit much from its proximity to the Swedish border either. Sweden’s price level is cheaper than Norway’s, and thus it draws customers from the border towns. All in all, it can be difficult to find reasons to stop in a town like Kongsvinger.

But then there are certain days. Right now, the yellow lights from the old railway station are reflected into the river, slowly drifting by. The headlights of passing cars light up the strange mix of old wooden buildings and 1960s-disasters, but the darkness disguises the architectural calamities fairly well. The fortress majestically rests on the top of a hill, still looking impressive in the soft light of the city underneath. It may not be much, but at least it’s not all bad. And, after years in Oslo and with temporary stays in other parts of the world, Kongsvinger still is home.


Below is Dylan’s painting, “Train Tracks”, and my accompanying drabble.

This was a town founded when railroads were the mark of civilization.
It was to be an official stop on the main line to the rest of the world; where you left the train for ten minutes to stretch your legs, have a cigarette, look around.
The last stop before the border, the final chance to turn. But as the world turned, it surpassed this town.
A railway station did not make you the centre of the world, soon it did not even make you a stop on the way to the world.

Not even the train stops these days.

On Halloween season

My writer’s group, the Burrow, has a website where we have specialized in drabbles. Drabbles are 100 word long (short) pieces of fiction, and we like to accompany them with appropriate pictures. We’ve had a good, long summer break, but now we’re back, celebrating the fact that Halloween season really is all of October. The drabble below, along with others, can be found at http://www.the-burrow.org/ this entire month. While you’re there, you might want to check out our archive as well, where some of our earlier projects can be found.

'Twas a dark, stormy night. Delete. Setting the mood for a story was harder than he remembered. It was as though he didn't have it in him anymore. Maybe he should give up horror stories entirely and write romance?
With the cessation of the typewriter's steady clicks, the door creaked open. A girl entered.
"Daddy?" A pair of puppy eyes stared at him.
"Yes, darling?"
"Read me a bedtime ftory?"
There was no resisting those puppy eyes she was squeezing in her hand.
"Of course," he said, reattaching his head.
"I promise it'll be a scary one."
She smiled happily.