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Out for a Walk -- Near Bergen
I pause at the blooms. A wall of firs frames my gaze. Now I'm stuck in "pause." |
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Optima dies . . . prima fugit.
The public bus is an AWD Mercedes, all the better to skim the rippled elevations surrounding Bergen. My stop, abruptly, is here, a quick jaunt away from the unpastoral exurb where I rent. So again I have arrived at the route's lowest point, at harbor's edge, the promontory's base, above which the campus rises. I all but dislocate a shoulder, clawing for support, as the unanswerable brakes enforce their appointed halt. Now for the stairway, terraced stones of uneven rise, of grimed rock smoothed by a century's rains, snows, sleets, and thrusting feet. I've passed this spot a score of times, scarcely stopping to snag a look. Today can hardly differ; I am to teach My Ántonia--starting in barely a pair of minutes. Still I must take it in, a meme of Rome in boreal Bergen, not quite as far as furthest Thule. Much resists the transfer, but nonetheless, some lesser river god, sequestered within a Roman arch, here gurgles out a steady stream of clear water--viewless and plashless. For just a flash, I fail to note that the slabs are concrete, not Torano marble. |
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Not to worry, Kylling Kluk.
It is not that the sky will not fall and kill us all. The sky already fell--earlier today, many days before--whenever the sun bathes in this nameless pond, dragging along a sheaf of sheens absconded during the quick descent-- the blanch of adjacent façades, arboreal green, the dun of a trunk, the sky's signature azure, even some flashes of stellar silver. |
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The church looms aloft; a lone bird
flies in the face of Father Time, barks out, "Innocence!"--though long since, we have pursued our sins. |
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The pavement's slick; don't slip!
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This gold will stay, long after
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Unlike Actaeon or Pentheus,
I did not approach unpermitted, rapt as I watched--a cryptic scene. A woman is written on. A self is unpeeled, flashed onto a mirror; an alter-self might adhere, thanks to a slogan, an image inscribed, configured dot by dot on unresistant, painèd flesh. Funky tongues of black flame, a faux tiger pelt are bounda- ries and count a silent cadence. |
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Whether Lady Gaga or Edgar Degas
or a run-of-the mill flaneur freshly landed at Gardermoen, one'll likely like this Oslo milliner's shop. Hats and such, swirled of every tint, all for clientele of every hue--so the mannequins say, display their skin of coal, medium black, light gray--arrivals from every land, come to Oslo for a chapeau of white or green or mauve or orange shifting to red, or simple stark black--for a start. And don't forget the chemises, scarves, and tees. I'd like to join in, top my pate with an orchid hat--cream set off with crimson--or a giggling foolscap-- scarlet mixed with tangerine. How trans I would look! Why worry when all here are trans anyway: northbound travelers who crossed many oceans, ladykins of sundry race? Icons, goddesses are they--gloomed Melancholy sinking into some deeper thought, ebonied Night ever on twilight's cusp. I'll don a floral hat, doff my man's mien. |
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Jean played Grieg while I auditioned
with Ginastera. My command of technique outdid hers. Why she won--I'll never know. And surely not as I look into Grieg's studio above the fjord, a footpath projecting backwards in the large glass pane through which I peer. Within, there's barely room for an upright piano, much less a full orchestra. As my friend Wendy is wont to say, facing such circum- stances, "I just don't see that." |
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The ferry traverses the strait with a steady, limping gait
and sways so slightly, side to side--that old oceanic waltz. We near the middle of the run, a stretch of sea where a fearful, plunging trough might lurk below. But cragged islets wink near dull horizons, auger a placid landfall. So the lounge is jammed, no one looking for scenery, some in a tune-out helped along by beer or other booze. We connect at this juncture only with a prior life. A vacationing executive devours a report as if for a Wall Street meeting in the morning. A haggard couple in their middle years would digest the irrelevance of this voyage, intended as a bridge out of a slump. We are drowsy or doze off. No one dreams. |
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At the Ballstad Dry-Dock
Hardly had I thought, here beside Ballstad harbor, that I’d find myself smack in the middle of an artist’s studio. Whose? Whatever the case, I see an installation in progress: bland wooden beams are piled in a nondescript heap, awaiting recruitment into some grand design–or they can lie as is, complete icon of today’s flattened art. To the right I view a finished sculpture, no additional touch of the sculptor’s hand or tools required: a married pair of barrels stand sedate, barrel Junior between them at their base. The infant’s already a tiny man with an agenda– a play tool protruding from his gullet! And what’s more, I am in awe of the abstract mural spanning the wall of that shed, testifying to brushes–beyond number– painted out at end of day. So who’s this artist who returns tugs, trawlers, frigates --slick with fulgent fresh paint-- to their trips atop chilling surfs? |
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I set out southward from Svolvaer
as a wind was rising. A storm was nearing, but not so quickly that I could not drive to Å, at least to Reine, if only I kept my goal in mind, if only I did not fear the road--and could get the upper hand while driving a near wreck of a rented car. The light fresh snow splattering the windshield hardly held me back. But last night's mush on the E-10 lodged around the tires, dragged me to a halt. The mess required removal every quarter hour. Soon I was again glancing down the highway--a wispèd coil whimpering in the whitish distance. Three hours passed, equal time spent on stopping and driving. I had not reached Reine; I should forget about Å. At last arrived at Flakstad strand, I would press no further, would turn toward Svolvaer as day dimmed. But then the Flakstad headland grabbed my gaze embarking into the green grey gulf. Not since I had watched the red cliff at Cassis did I stare with such a visual fix. And so I stood, not knowing whether Reine or Å was near or far. Another car pulled up just then, stopped near mine. Three people climbed out--a woman, two men. We had earlier met in a Svolvaer bar. They were out of work, had lost their jobs, were zeroing out their savings on an arctic jaunt. We conversed as wind pushed, and debris whirled around. They knew nothing of the mounting storm. The trio resumed their southward drive, toward Reine, toward Å. |
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Bodø
I inched forward at the back of the queue at the dock, boarding the fast boat about to sweep us out of Svolvaer and deposit us on Norway's mainland. "Where are you going to go?" she asked, a blondish woman, kindly and aging. The lineations of her bosom and visage were dulled by the years--all but washed away. "Where am I going to go? Bow Dough!" I answered, sensing I was murdering the Norwegian tongue. "Oh you mean: Booduh!" So she exclaimed, tilting my tongue in the right direction as the express ferry departed the quay, angled past the jetty, then skimmed the cold Lofoten gulf, its waters a deep arctic blue. I stood on deck, just aft the warm main cabin, leaning on its solid door, looking at all I had left behind. I must snap a shot! . . . first must stand near the stern, beyond the hulking shadow the cabin cast. But into the clear light my eye and camera craved, I exited, too, the windless nook just aft the cabin. Blasted from behind, I was about to ride the wind, then rammed a foot forward, bending my torso toward the deck, staving off immersion in the roiled surf. |
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Whale Tale
"Pardon my prow," said the ship to the shore. "It's of no con- sequence to me," replied shore to ship. "So many prowling keels have here taken rest, hulls fire red or dull grey, pausing on this green knoll's breast. Just as long as you aren't bringing along one more black body, a corpse dragged from ocean depths, a sea-goer more akin to the men who forged you from tempered steel plate-- more akin, I say--to humankind than to land's green breast, sea's liquid salt, or ship's solemn angles. Let's stick with the bloodless black swath at hull's base--no slain whale dragged from your hollow hold. Let them-- raucous devourers of Tromsø cuisine--eat cake." |
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Consider this door,
no longer openable in Bergen's Bryggen, It's blocked by a stairway leading to a bar or brothel unvisited for who knows how long-- green moss enlivening aged timbers. An oxidized hinge links stanchion and mottled panels, paintless here, bespeckled there, punctured with nails somewhere else. Rarely're decades so nicely mapped and tallied. |
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I tacked on true tunnel vision as I drove
through the Nappstraumen Tunnel. Not a lesson learned in one run-- say from Leknes to Nusfjord-- but passing through and back again. So the going out is the passing in, the end where the beginning is. For some channel of the mind runs beneath the Nappstraum current, arctic flow with cod and whale overhead. A voiceless wail seeps out as one throttles forward. A return to a roofless road is beyond the curve. But you'll never believe that while a deep anaerobic slot is all you see, the mind's cunt or colon, while spangled lights and sterile ribs belt out a silent staccato. All the while, anxious rubber hums, about to burst. But in any case, that key caveat is ever kept in mind-- never cross the center line. |
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. . the floods stood still as an heap,
the depths congealed together in the heart of the Sea. (Exodus 15:8, Geneva Bible) It is the height of summer--just past the solstice-- here on a ledge along the Nusfjord road, above the Storvaten. Yet there's merely a glimmer of Amun Re around here. Nor would you wish to incur eyestrain if on the lookout for any solar deity. Who would care if it's a northern native or a transient drifting up from the south? Dim is the luminance, yet diaphanous as well. Tales of ancient actions, so long ago dispersed, are tallied here, if only one could read them. Magma spewed upward--a bubbling chaos not worth the name of matter. Igneous rock came out of the cooling, but not free to stay that way as ordinary stone. Forces known, some only guessed at, pressed upon it, morphed it to stolid, darkened charnockite. The came the sculpting glaciations, bending layers of terrain as a physician's fingers push downward on your belly. A lake is scooped out; a diverse detritus--pebbles, rocks, gravel wrenched off from the heights-- has settled along the water's borders. All of this far prior to when Jörð, finally given a chance, could give a veil, a tissue of green. And from water's edge to summit, from left to right--so it's said--, this headland's a massive dusky shoe,dropped by a giantess who ambled by on her way to swim, fully nude, in the Nusfjord bay. |
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I was stuck with a lemon of a rental car, going eastward toward Åndalsnes. Wheels waffled, the steering shimmied; I was tired. Mist churned into fog, then yielded patches of clear sky while the blacktop coiled, rose, and fell in silent cadence. Mountains loomed or were quilted in clouds. I edged onto a diagonaling lane to glimpse a stretch of landscape that half- way greened in the chill summer, was half- way curtained behind snow and thick- ening vapors. But the lane was not a lane, only a thin tongue of ground edged by a ditch filled with brown sedge. I quickly braked, but not before my quirky vehicle could hang over a hidden drop of unknown depth. I feared an overturn, exited while the car quavered. Yet short was the crisis, brief the peril. For a passing motorist saw my plight, came to help, seeming to know such mishaps as mine. He may have told his name, where he lived--but neither of us knew a word of the other's tongue. The task was swiftly done. A downward push on the hood, a turn of the steering wheel, a spurt of acceleration-- the car was on the shoulder. I wish to hike across that blooming field, aim for that deepened line delimiting a middle zone of foliage. Yet the field lacks ground beneath, is a sponge of moss and grasses that downward sink, though not giving way as I step. I look without hurry at the tripartite demesne--the slightest of slopes tilting toward a brook or trench, a foliaged rise (vernal if not summery) reaching out to dusky elevations-- forbidding, frigid--that winter failed to forget. Yet in that gloomed purview, a snow-lozenge immaculately gleams between greyed mists and massed charcoal rock. The varied zones call out in blended disjunction as I regard them and while I am a vanishing point to them. |
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An unbegun conversation unfolds.
Words will fly and flow; some may reach their goal. As a stone thrown into the fjord, others may sink unheard, uncomprehended, or unbelieved. The conversants have long lived here-- or will arrive one minute, depart the next. In love with one another or not, they are surely philogaiacs--lovers of the earth, taking in a tonic from grass cut and uncut, from blooms yellow, white, and magenta, from clouds grizzled or faintly glowing, from timber and tin, from paint and builder's stone-- all of it cured and aged by winds friendly or hostile, by long sunlight intolerant of night, by long darkness that hates light. So join me at the table; speak words few in number or many--or refrain. You may want to maintain the silence that calls and calls--an empty refrain. |
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