OSLO, NORWAY
I got to Oslo yesterday after staying up all night in Bodo the night before. I hadn't realized how little I'd eaten in two days. Left my apartment with a weird hankering for Vietnamese food. Wandered around my new neighborhood and saw a "Lille Miss Saigon 1" w/ black and white artistic photos on the wall and a floor that looked like they never did anything to change it from its former self of being an empty retail space.
Two Vietnamese ladies, one old, one young, were whispering to each other behind the counter. I ordered a bahn mi sandwich from the young one and ate it like a heathen. Then I ordered another and ate slightly more slowly. I felt great afterwards and went for a long wander. I saw a huge waterfall going through the middle of the city where civilized rich descendants of Viking rapers were drinking a high quantities of two foot tall beers on a deck that was an impressive feat of carpentry right over the edge of the falls and out the back of a stereotypical Norwegian cottage built into the side of the little canyon. (Think red, steep and tall w/ ladders for stairs, black gabled roof, high amount of windows)
I did not dare partake in the deck life, as I could tell the atmosphere was very expensive. So I walked down the side of the little mountain trying to escape a former ballet dancer who crossed my path and stuck to it for some time. She'd lost the confidence of her little dog due to drug addiction. I felt so sad for her which is my fault, and not hers.
At the bottom of the descent I found a bar playing 70s rock and roll music by the side of a park that charged 4.50 for a pint, which is an anomaly is Oslo. There I sat on the sidewalk outside and listened to two Moroccan men angrily talk shit to each other and then bursting into hysterical laughter time after time. Also, over the course of the two hours I sat on the side walk thinking, I saw eight or nine attractive girls wearing narrow variations on an imaginatively tailored, floral printed dress and combat boots combination.
They passed by at intervals of every seven minutes or so. When I waved at them, they would each wave back the same way and make the same face presumably that I was making, and then we would each start laughing. Near the end of this repeating phenomena, I saw some soccer toughs, and decided to test if I was dreaming.
The toughs were looking at me out of the window of a shiny, bright red bus and I waved at them. They waved back. I gave them a hang loose symbol. They gave it back. We all started laughing. As the bus pulled away the last in the procession of flower printed dress with combat boots girls arrived. She looked at me then through the window at the soccer toughs on the bus pulling away. She stood next to me and waved at the soccer toughs, all of us laughing very hard. She then pointed at me and walked a way while her friend dressed in leather looked on disapproving.
Then a six foot eight inches tall, fierce faced, old man who was drunk and presumably worked at the bar limped over and picked up all the empty glasses from the Morrocan men's table where one of the jokesters had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette. The giant piled the pint glasses eight glasses high, cradling them in his right arm, holding a crumpled, burning cigarette in his left. As he limped away I said "thank you" for some reason and the mask of all the winters fell from his face and he said "thank you, thank you." He then carried the glasses back into the bar where Graham Parsons was playing and the bartender was eating a pizza and talking on the phone.
I didn't want to go, but thought it wise if I did and walked home. Once back at my apartment I listened to baseball and ate grilled cheese before falling asleep for 12 hours straight. The room was hot and the air was still.
JOURNAL
Awoke met Toby at Sorenga...
UNSTAD, LOFOTEN ISLANDS; NORWAY
The following entry contains some photographs taken on this day, followed by a transcription of my handwritten journal taken many years later. I was going to say “many moons later” originally but if you talk too much like a hippy lady you start taking too long in the grocery store. I scarcely ever go to the grocery store these days and that’s the problem with trying to make an art project like this is that these days just never are anymore. Who can keep up!?
VIEW FROM THE UNSTAD SURF CAMP LOOKING OUT OVER THE TOWN TOWARD THE SEA // IPHONE
SELF PORTRAIT ON THE TOP OF THE MOUTAIN ABOVE THE TOWN // IPHONE. TRIPOD. FISHEYE LENS.
THE SHEEP GATE NEAR THE SEA. // IPHONE.
BIKE RIDE ALONG THE ROAD THAT LEADS FROM BEACH BACK TO UNSTAD SURF CAMP.
UNSTAD SURF CAMP AND ADJACENT FARM // IPHONE
Ok…Here are some notes I transcribed from my handwritten journal on the day these photographs and video were taken. I should put some pictures of what the journals themselves look like because I like the way the sharpie handwriting looks on the drugstore Mexican school children notebooks and it should most likely be preserved for eternity but that will have to wait for another day.
10AM
I awoke and scrolled the phone. Then I walked to the camp kitchen and made a breakfast of coffee, crackers, salami, cheese, cucumber and two boiled eggs. A large, lesbian couple who were French seemed to disdain me. I didn’t like them either. They reminded me of teachers that didn’t like me in Elementary such as Ms. Keough. I then descend into a regrettable self flagellating psychological state.
!!AM
A nice Australian offered to ask Marion (who is one of the Camp’s owners) if I can trade a guitar performance for a surf board rental. (I think his name was Matty?). I was playing guitar on the front porch of my cabin. After this I made another coffee that was a bit gross with the Nescafe machine. Smoked a cigarette. Tidied room. And sat down to write but it didn’t really work. Smoked another cigarette. Then went upstairs to the deck. I watched the clear blue skies, the yellow flowers blooming in the field, the green mountain sides, and the red barn with its piled timber.
There was quite chatter in Norwegian. A couple on bicycles came up the road. The girl joked, and her voice echoed. The white Unstad Surf Camp Flag was flapping as I finally caught up on my writing. It’s not perfect but I see how engaging in artistic practice begets artistic improvement.
I think I need a nourishing meal. I’ve been eating mainly cucumbers, cheese and crackers for days now. I will see about a dinner reservation at the camp restaurant. Then maybe hike to the viking observatory peak and take some self portraits. Also I need to practice music today!
LOUD FOOTFALLS BOTHER ME
I walk quietly. This bothers the loud footfall walkers. My Aunt Elin once called me sneaky when I entered her house without her hearing. She is right. I am. I am a criminal by nature, trained since childhood to move from place to place constantly avoiding detection. I loath the sound of the footfall as it vibrates on the floor because I don’t like to be touched. I can feel the vibration through the floor and it feels like an act of aggression. I want to strike out against it. And if it is not intended as aggression, it is at the very least demonstrative of a dangerous lack of self-awareness. This should be attacked if you are a member of the wolf species.
If you go to therapy they teach you names for all your disorders. I don’t know the name for the one where you don’t like loud noises and want to attack the loud noise makers because you believe yourself to be part wolf. Then the another part, presumably the non wolf part tells you to feel badly as a criminal would. I don’t think the name for this disorder is werewolf because it does not depend upon the full moon to present itself. Psychology, like astrology always seem foolish at every hour of every day because all that’s real is blood.
4:20
A tattooed, shaved head Chef at Maude’s request gets his field guide because she sees that I am interested in the flowers. The white flowers are called Anthricus Sylvestris or Hundkäx in Swedish. The field guide was called BJÖRN URSING, FĀLTFLORA, 867 VAXTER I FARG. That means 867 plants in color.
After this I hiked to the top of the mountain. Got scared part of the way up and took photos at the top. On the way down I swam in the icey lake. Nearly had a cry at the beauty of the surroundings….the sun on the brilliant, green mountain side, standing knee deep in the cold clear water, birds flitting about in the under brush.
I picked up my bike where I’d left it at the sheep’s gate near the ocean and rode the remainder of the way back to camp. Once home I changed clothes and walked over to the dining room for dinner. Marion insisted I have the whale stew. First she brought out fresh baked bread and churned butter. Then the whale stew came out garnished with incredibly fresh sprouts of some type of garden green. It was an incredibly delicious and nourishing meal and it was nice to see Marion’s stern innkeeper face be gone, as she was proud of her work and taking care of a lost soul or whatever she saw.
After dinner I thanked her and went back to my cabin and drank two tall beers and smoked on the porch watching the sun go around the horizon. At 11:30pm, before brushing my teeth and going to bed, I practiced the following songs.
La Escondida
There is No Need to Name the Mooon
The Awakening Spirits Dream a New Day
The Wilderness is Not for Purchase
Look Up the Number
Danny Says (Ramones)
All My Loving (Beatles)
Spanish is the Loving Tongue (Bob Dylan)
Can I Sleep in Your Arms (Willie Nelson)
Muhammad Ali
Chuck Berry
Animals (needs review)
Floortje (needs review)
1AM
Bedtime.
UNSTAD, LOFOTEN ISLANDS, NORWAY
Here we have some photographs we took on this day followed by a short story (?) I wrote in my journal about what I did that day which included an internet date with a Swedish lady and also the experience of winding up in the Sauna with a large family of Norwegians who were having a contest to see who could endure the heat the longest and also what I observed to be an interesting common thread on this trip that many of the people I met found it curious that I was traveling alone.
LAKE WHERE I WENT SWIMMING WITH MOUNTAIN IN THE BACKGROUND // IPHONE
VIEW OF THE BEACH FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TRAIL UP TO THE LAKE // IPHONE
SHEEP RESTING ON A RIDGE ABOVE THE SEA // IPHONE
Here’s the story. It’s pretty good actually….
After breakfast I went on a tinder date with a Swedish woman. She was wiry and tall wearing a perfectly fitting hand knitted, traditional sweater and neatly cuffed jeans. She was on a holiday with her german shepherd. Both were camping out of an old volvo station wagon she'd driven from Sweden. Her sideways gaze and hurried hand gestures betrayed disappointment that I wasn't tall nor an on the lamb rock and roll musician which I suppose could be erroneously inferred by viewing my internet profile.
On this morning in real life I was wearing yoga pants, running shoes, and a t shirt with the emblem of that salt girl standing under an umbrella. I was skinny, well shy of her two meter height, with a wild beard and long hair matted and tangled from sleeping fitfully in a stuffy cabin. We were superficially polite to one another and took the dog for a walk to the beach and back, after which she and the dog got into the volvo and drove on for their next destination.
I felt a bit sad afterwards, and went for a bicycle ride to the south end of the cove, past the little chapel and graveyard. Upon reaching the sheep gate I ditched the bicycle and walked to a house of crumbled stone and concrete. I climbed from there over a steep stretch of green mountainside to find a beautiful lake in a bowl beneath the peaks. The water was still and clear over a boulder strewn bottom. I thought of disrobing and swimming but decided against it when I spotted two hikers ascending from the beach below.
After dinner I rode back down to the beach again to check the surf. It was flat, foggy, and stirred up by an on shore wind. I headed back to camp, and went to the sauna. Upon opening the door to what looked like an abandoned wooden train car for gnomes, steam engulfed me. When the steam was gone I saw three naked men, two naked boys, and one beautiful woman wearing a black bikini. I was wearing the same board shorts I wore every day in Mexico over the winter.
Two of the men were plump and gray. I read their vibe as kind and nostalgic. Like they drink beer by the fire out of tall ceramic mugs, with rows of neatly painted flowers, in the winter, far away from society. The third man was athletically built and had a carefully trimmed dark black beard on his face. He looked fierce and confident. The woman was his wife. The two boys were his sons.
The boys were skinny and of the age that classical sculptors like to use as models when they make statues of nymphs peeing into fountains. The fierce father was egging on his sons to defeat the other adults in an endurance contest for who can stay in the sauna the longest. The children were happy to oblige.
The fire in the stove was roaring. The room grew stiflingly hot. I sat down on the bench as far away from the others as possible. The only possible place to be this far away was directly next to the stove. The other men and children were on the same bench as me but closer to the train car door. The woman was seated alone on the far end of the opposing bench. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. After what felt like a very long time the door opened and the cold fog from the sea rushed in. The two plump men surrendered first, laughing as they wrapped towels around their bodies and exited. They were followed by the two boys and their father. The cold sea air continued to rush in as they gathered their shoes and clothes. It was a very pleasant relief.
When the door closed again, only the woman and I were left inside. She struck up a conversation with me. She was a school teacher. She told me about the Norwegian school system and then how fucked up it is that Donald Trump is president of the US. She could not believe he was elected. I contemplated offering an explanation, but was disturbed by the feeling that I'd just be repeating what I'd heard public intellectuals say on podcasts so I just listened and kept quiet.
I could tell she was quite educated, and clever. She'd read more books than I, and memorized more world history. She knew how the economy and government of her country worked. She knew precisely how much money it cost for me to get to Norway, and henceforth what socio economic class I came from. She could cross reference that price with my biblical appearance, and deduced how I must have gotten my money. She could see that I traveled alone, and being the wife of a confident alpha male, presumed me to have a nagging sexual interest in her, or alternately to be a homosexual. She wasn't sure which.
She could see that although diminutive, the physical form seated across from her couldn't have been rendered without a level of kinesthetic intelligence enjoyed by those with high proficiency in sport, and no fear of physical labors. It was not the sort of body that was cultivated in order to curry interest from men or women. It looked more like the body of a wild animal, raised out of a necessity to instill fear, or else escape. He was older. There were lines from too much sunshine on his face, but somehow he wasn't very tired at all.
She looked at him and felt like a thief in a museum. The creature had dark eyes that rarely ventured from the glow of the fire to meet her own. When she paused from speaking, and these eyes looked into her own to ask another question, she perceived a character that mismatched the unsophisticated way in which the speaker formed his words. He asked questions and rarely spoke about himself. The only information he volunteered seemed calculated to meet a quota of politeness, as if he sought to function as a dressing room mirror lit by a savvy decorator. The thought returned to her: He wound up at this age, with statistically speaking, more than enough redeemable qualities to have a partner, and yet he traveled alone. Surely there was some damage in the backstory.
This was a mystery she didn't care to pierce. He was a good listener, and whatever he felt inside, she knew he wouldn't let it become her burden. She was accustomed to being the one who listened. When the other men were in the sauna, she hadn't said a word. After the other men had left she spoke for well over an hour, maybe longer. The midnight sun shone dimly through the mist when she opened the sauna door to look outside.
"I'd better be going" she said. "Good night. Good luck."
UNSTAD, LOFOTEN ISLANDS; NORWAY
Awake at eleven in the morning feeling rough, not remembering where I am. Prepared a breakfast of boiled eggs, toast, celery, cherry tomatoes, cheese and coffee. There are young and old Norwegian couples in the community kitchen eating granola, yogurt and cheese.
After eating and doing my dishes I rode one of the camp's bicycles down the gravel road to the beach. The road winds through the small village. The village sits in a valley facing the sea, enclosed by tall, green mountains. There are no businesses here besides two competing surf shops which each offer equipment to purchase as well as lessons and rentals. There is Unstad Arctic Surf Camp where I am staying at the back end of the valley, and Lofoten Surfsenter, which is located near where the road dog legs toward the beach. The remainder of the village is made up of cottages for people, and barns for sheep to take respite in the winter.
The houses dead end into a wildflower field that no one walks through above the crescent shaped beach. Across from the field and close to the base of the mountains to the south is a fenced grave yard and a very small white chapel. The grave stones are polished and modern. They look out of place. After surveying the graveyard a little I rode to the beach to check the surf. It was nearly flat. One person was trying to surf. I rode back to the camp.
After returning the bicycle to the hitching post I walked towards reception to inquire about a bus to Henningsvær. Zach Canfield wants me to come meet him and his girlfriend there for hiking. On the way into the Cafe where reception is located an attractive young woman with red hair and flushed cheeks says something to me in Norwegian. I tell her apologetically that I only speak English. She replies "it's a cool bike" and asks me if I work here. I tell her I do not. She says she has come to surf and asks me if there waves. I tell her "no not now, but perhaps later." She says "we're camping here for the night." Her posture is measured. She looks me in the eye while speaking shyly. I am conscious of not lingering too long. We stand facing each other in the doorway. She tells me her name is Kaya. I tell her my name, and its good to meet you, and make my way to reception.
Maud tells me Henningsvær is an hour's drive but to get there without a car would be quite time consuming as the bus rarely goes. I would have to hitch. I'm feeling tired and dim, and decide that although it would be good to see Zach, I'd rather remain where I am. So I went into the community room for a while to write. There I meet an employee of the camp. She tells me her name is Laora. She is slight and youthful, with brown hair, elf ears, and a charming gap in her top two front teeth. She welcomes me to the camp.
After meeting Laora I write for a while, and then decide to go for a walk. I walk towards the sea, and out of the village. I find a trail through a pine forest and into a meadow. From there the trail runs along side a stream that falls from a cold lake closer to the top of the mountain. I pass a flock of sheep and say "Don't worry, I'm not here to eat you." They don't seem concerned. I cross the stream and reach the lake walking a long the tops of tussocks and mossy boulders.
On the way back down to the valley the clouds begin to part, and as the the sunlight fills the valley I begin to realize how remarkably I beautiful this place is. I take lots of photographs all a long the way and return back to camp hungry, and in a good mood. I have a dinner of celery, bread, cheese, canned mackerel and a square of chocolate. Then I take I bike ride up to the trailhead that leads a long the ocean to the town of Eggum to the north. After biking I have a shower and go to the sauna. There is a Norwegian couple in there. They are kind and welcoming. The man tells me of his business importing audio visual technology to Norway. He is scruffy and relaxed. The woman is extremely fit. She sits opposite myself and her husband, sharp eyed and smiling. The conversation turns to the reasons for my travels and to the political climate in the United States presently. I don't have any good answers for my sauna friends on the true nature of my purpose in traveling nor the cause of what's happening in America. I very much enjoy the talk though. As we conclude and prepare to retire to our respective cabins, the woman says to me "You made a good decision to be away right now."
I go to the showers and rinse off and then head back to the cabin to try and sleep. A light rain is falling. The sky is gray and glowing from the sun circling just above the craggy black mountain tops. It's 1 AM.
UNSTAD, NORWAY
Breakfast in Mona's kitchen. Grocery store ladies. Cab to the Hurtigruten dock. Ms Lofoten is the oldest ship in the fleet says the cab driver. Boat to Stamsund lugging box of food and guitar. Matty the Finnish / Australian picks me up at the docks in Stamsund. We drive to Unstad. Drink beer and smoke until two AM. Text with Zach Canfield who happens to be heading the Lofotens as well.
