Some kind of End

I have decided to close the Bookshelf. It may seem sudden, but it has been brewing in me for a while. I suppose what happens is that life changes all the time, bit by bit, and all of a sudden the weight shifts and you have a whole new balance. It can feel like that one last piece that makes it slide is the very special catalyst, but I´m not so sure. I think it can be anything, as much as it is everything.

Alice Seely: "Bad Hairday", brooch.

Actually, Bookshelf-Viktoria has lately begun to feel a bit like a character in a novel. I know the subtitle of the blog is "Life is just another story", so that would be apt, but it´s uncomfortable and limiting more than anything else. And I´m not sure I believe it anymore. Perhaps I have reached a stage where I have developed what Keats called "negative capability". The blog started as an on-line version of my reading diary, which was an expression of my need to record, analyse, process, and order. I guess I don´t really feel the need for all that any more. Perhaps it´s to do with having to face illness and death in the family. Perhaps I am just ready to fokus whole-heartedly on creating, rather than watch others create. I never did see myself as a critic anyway. I feel a strong new energy bubbling up inside, almost anarchic in nature; I will run with that and see where it takes me.

I will continue to post on the Photoalbum while I ponder what to do; I will probably use more words than I have so far. Maybe I will develop that blog into something that fits me better, or create something completely different. I don´t know yet. Whatever I do, I will post information about it here and on the Photoalbum, so if you are a subscriber, you will be informed.

It has been 3½ great years with the Bookshelf, and I have had a lot of fun with it. I´m sure I will miss it, and I´m glad I´m quitting while it´s still something I feel good about. I am very greatful to everyone who has read, commented, emailed, and pushed me forward with their encouragement.

Thank you all.

Lover´s Ritual

On some of our travels we came across this tradition: to attach a padlock with the lover´s names inscribed to a bridge, as a prayer for eternal love. I hope it works!

Lucerne, November 2013.

Norwegian Wood, part VI - the movie

My Norwegian Wood project should be over - I had given it three weeks, after all. But it took a heck of a long time to get my hands on the film. First I turned to the local rental place. They had it, according to their database, but as they were remodeling the shop, it was going to take them a week to get it from the storage it was in while the carpenters were at work. Fine. I returned a week and a half later, and they couldn´t find the film, though they insisted they had it. "Call me when you find it," I said, leaving my number, and they said sure. No call. A week later I called on them again, and no, they hadn´t yet unpacked all the films. "Call me when you find it," I said to this other person, who promised dearly to, and left my number again. No call. I gather they don´t really care if I ever come back, and guess what? I will not.

So, lucky me, I found an old rental copy on Ebay. I think it was less than thirty crowns, postage and all. When I tried to watch it, the disc was empty. By now it seemed the universe was against me, but I decided to persist and ordered it from amazon. By the time I got it, Christmas was almost upon us and I put off watching it some more.

Today I found it in a pile of things to do, and watched it - finally. It is written and directed by Tran Anh Hung (who is Vietnamese, not Japanese), based on the novel by Haruki Murakami, which is one of the best novels I ever read, probably, in hindsight. I haven´t heard of any of the actors, but then I watch precious little film these days, and even less Japanese film, so I wouldn´t have expected to. They all did a very good job, though.

Of course, one can not expect a film based on a book to be anything like it, that would be silly. Still, one can not help comparing. The film has that same still mood, but it´s also very silent, where the characters in the book are all very talkative. Except perhaps Watanabe himself, but someone has to listen. The film focuses very much on the love story, and the characters I enjoyed the most are nearly completely written out, or so much changed that it´s hard to get a grip on them. I was particularly miffed to see salt-of-the-Earth, funny Reiko turned into a fragile, shy, and boring failed housewife.

The film also, naturally, felt very much more Japanese than the book, which I thought could have been set in Stockholm, if you had just changed the names of the characters. And one thing you can do so much better in film is communicate emotion. The book didn´t make me cry, as I recall, but I cried floods when I saw the film; it´s visually very powerful when Watanabe sits with his broken heart in front of the raging sea.

I´m not sure I would have read the book if I had seen the film first. Good thing I didn´t. And I´m not sure I can recommend the film whole-heartedly. I´m glad I saw it, though. Thing is, I don´t really know what I would have made of it if I hadn´t read the book first. The husband thinks he saw a film about hormonal, troubled teenagers, and says he enjoyed Tran´s understated way of telling the story, which he finds "un-American". (I suppose that the Hollywood way of making movies has provided us with the template by which we judge others.) I guess that´s what I would have thought, too.

Hedgehog in the Park

Every year, an ice sculpture/slide is erected in Stadsparken (the town park) opposite Stadshotellet (the town hotel), always in the shape of some animal. This year, they decided on a hedgehog and of course I had to have a look at it.

When I came, three guys were still working on the slide, it looked like they were shaping the ice with a power saw. During the few minutes I stopped and took my photos, four others did the same. It really is a popular feature and I hope many kids will enjoy it!

One Munro a Week

Last week I got started with my one New Year´s Resolution: to read one of Alice Munro´s short stories every week. Yep, that´s how great I think she is. I started with the collection "The Moons of Jupiter" from 1982 and the first story, "Chaddeleys and Flemings". It´s actually in two parts: "The Connection" and "The Stone in the Field", the first focused on the storyteller´s distaff side and the other on the male line of the family.

The Chaddeleys are represented by the mother´s cousins, four unmarried women, who all come visiting when the storyteller is still a little girl. This visit then becomes part of the family mythology, beginning with a grandfather from England who, everyone admits, was a bit of a posh and haughty jerk, but still someone whom everyone is rather proud of, speculating in what fancy origins he might have had before he fell upon hard times (he seems to have been a bit of a slacker, taking early retirement as soon as his children could support him).

When the storyteller is grownup and has a family of her own, one of the cousins come visiting, and we get a slightly different perspective on the childhood visit.

I was married to Richard then. 

She doesn´t have to write more than that to say that the marriage is bad. The theme of this story is, to me anyway, how strong the desire to magnify one´s own importance can be, and how tempting it is to set aside normal decency and step on others to elevate oneself.

The other story is about the father´s family, the Flemings, which also consists of a group of unmarried women, the aunts, who live in an old farmhouse in the country, completely cut out from the modern world and impossible to communicate with. Their silence provokes the idea that they have secrets, and there is speculation that an Austrian immigrant who died on their property had been one of the sister´s lover. But as the storyteller grows older she starts doubting:

Now I no longer believe that people´s secrets are defined and communicable, or their feelings full-blown and easy to recognize. 

A few days after I finish the story, I also realize that these two families, united by the marriage of the storyteller´s parents, represent the mentality of two kinds of immigrants to Canada: the adventurers, or those who wanted possibilities they weren´t allowed in the old country because of their place in a more rigid society; and those who left their homeland because the only option was to starve to death.

Munro was in 1982 already so skilled at those dense sentences that express so much.

...my mother drove. That made the whole expedition feel uncertain, the weight wrongly distributed. 

Yes, there is enough on these few pages for another author to write two novels. And those of my friends who didn´t much enjoy her latest collection, "Dear Life", I think would enjoy this better, as it is more of a traditional story.

Winter Chill

Real winter is finally upon us and it´s minus 28 degrees Celsius outside today. I read in the papers that it´s the polar vortex that shifted and the coldspell that was over North America is now over us. Isn´t it usually over us? Feels like it... It´s Sunday, so we are staying indoors. The sky has that frosty pink tint.

Inspiring Music!

Still watching the concert in Royal Albert Hall. Flags are waving in the audience while everyone sings "Land of Hope and Glory". We see the German and the Swedish flags in there. It seems, in the Royal Albert Hall, every country on earth is part of the British Commonwealth!

I´d be waving too if I were there. In fact, the husband is waving next to me...

Oh, and the conductor and solist are Americans. Marin Alsop! First woman to conduct the Proms!

From 2012: