Them Carefree Brooklyn Days

The other day I bought canned pumpkin and made pumpkin pancakes with half of it. I knew exactly what to do with the rest of it: Bake my favorite pumpkin muffins that happen to be vegan! You can find the recipe here.

Years ago, I lived in Brooklyn. Actually first, I lived in Manhattan, on Bleecker Street, in a one bedroom apartment, which I shared with a model and a dancer. I cried in the taxi the day I moved from Manhattan. I sat in the backseat with my belongings in a suitcase and two plastic trash bags and cried and cried.

“You all right there, Miss?” asked the cabdriver as we crossed Brooklyn Bridge.

I turned and looked at all Manhattan’s twinkling lights through the window.

“No, I’m not,” I whispered.

A small part of me was dying.

Over the next 13 years, I lived in four different apartments in Brooklyn: Three of them in Greenpoint and one, the last one, in Williamsburg. They all had this in common: Filth, roaches, and mice.

And yet, I fell in love with Brooklyn. I would still take Brooklyn any day over Manhattan. Brooklyn has attitude. Manhattan has only cash. Big cash-fat Manhattan. Unfortunately, friends tell me Brooklyn too is going in that direction.

My husband Fernando sometimes sighs:

“Remember the carefree days in Brooklyn?”

What he means is: Remember when we were young and beautiful and could spend all our money on restaurants, books, movies, and the theater?

Back then Bedford Avenue was lined with no-frills mom-and-pop stores and you got a cup of coffee for 75 cents. There wasn’t a commercial café in sight. I ate my Edith Piaf sandwich in peace in the back garden of the L-Café.

We knew that the best Mexican food, the authentic, real stuff, could be found in the back of a dingy store. Cooked and served by stout Mexican women with hairnets, while Spanish music was playing on the radio. We drank cheap Jarritos soda.

We browsed the shelves with second hand books at Spoonbill & Sugartown where you sometimes had to shoo away one of the two big, fat cats, which sprawled the book tables. I bought Colette’s Retreat From Love for $2.50

Fernando, Friday nights we splurged on fancy dinners at Sea, way before Sarah Jessica Parker and TV got to it.

We took turns reading chapters of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum.

One summer day we fell asleep on a blanket in McCarren Park and slept for hours. I got sun burnt, but you got a nice tan.

Saturdays we strolled over Williamsburg Bridge into the city where you bought me my favorite licorice candy on Rivington Street.

I bought a never-once-used Calvin Klein coat at the Salvation Army in the corner of North 7^th and Bedford for $10, because the manager had never heard the name “Calvin Klein” before.

Sometimes we took the less glamorous Driggs Avenue home.

“Man Ray lived here,” I told you. “And Henry Miller.”

And you squeezed my hand.

Brooklyn is where we first became cat owners.

Brooklyn is where we took our infant son (born at Beth Israel Medical Center on 1^st Avenue and 16^th Street in the City). I was terrified you hadn’t fastened the newly purchased infant car seat correctly in the yellow cab. You checked it and checked it and checked it again while I – clumsily – held our 2-day old son, brand new little star in our private universe, in my arms. He wore his bear outfit, his homecoming suit. Over us the November sky arched gray and rainy.

Then carefully, gingerly, the cabdriver took us downtown and home, home to Brooklyn.

Sweet, wonderful Brooklyn.

The Emin

Last year, around Thanksgiving or so, I made these delicious pumpkin-chocolate chip pancakes found here. Today, I bought some canned pumpkin (which is thankfully sold even when it’s not pumpkin season) and made the pancakes again, this time omitting the chocolate chips. I also made the cinnamon syrup. Here’s a recipe for it.

 When I was in college, a friend of mine, Eszter, and I went to a lecture by the Emin Foundation. Eszter, who was Hungarian, was into all esoteric things, and the Emin Foundation was one of those mysterious New Age movements that sprung up everywhere back then. I was sort of clueless but thought “why not?” The flyer promised three free lectures (or maybe they were called lessons, I don’t remember) after which you had to either stop coming or become a paid member.

There were two men heading the Emin Foundation in Lund, Sweden, where I lived then. The leader of the two was a British man named Lance. Lance was tall and slender with a longish face and a light brown beard. I especially remember his hands, which were also long and had monkeylike, sensitive fingers.

The other man was a shorter, dark young man who was always smiling as if he knew something you didn’t. Which I guess he did. His name was Constantine. Both Lance and Constantine wore black pants and full, white, fluid shirts, like the ones Cossack dancers wear. Lance and Constantine weren’t their real names. Once you became a proper member of Emin, you were given (or could pick) a new name.

Only English was spoken.

There was something spooky and forbidding about the whole thing, which I guess is why we were drawn to it. The lecture-lessons were held in a deserted part of the public library, a bit too clinical for mystic stuff to take place, which it nevertheless did. I don’t remember much, but I remember we always sat in a circle. Lance either talked or conducted experiments, while Constantine stood aside smiling. One such experiment was called “the aura”.

Lance showed us photographs of ancient Egyptian art and asked us to look closer at the heads of the people in these pictures. Most of them had some sort headgear, strange structures, or just a huge, red circle on their heads. I hadn’t thought about that before, though obviously I had seen pictures of Egyptian art.

“These are not hats,” Lance explained. “These are auras. The Egyptians could see them clearly, which is why they were manifested in their art. We’ve since lost the ability to clearly see the aura of a person, the way the Egyptians did. Yet, it is still there, and it has many different colors. For instance, what color do you think the aura of an angry person has?”

“Red,” some smarty-pants piped up.

“Exactly,” nodded Lance. “And from there we get the word ‘hatred’, which is a combination of the words ‘hat’ and ‘red’. A red hat, or aura. Hatred.”

Next, he had us all line up in front of an empty wall. And sure enough, as I watched the others parade in front of that wall, I saw a faint sort of light emit from their heads. I suppose “shadow” would be the word. I left that lecture-lesson filled with awe, and proceeded to tell everyone I knew about the root of the word “hatred”.

“I saw it myself,” I whispered, baffled at the non-believers who just shook their heads at my naiveté.

The next time, Lance had an even better trick up his Cossack-sleeve. This time he was going to demonstrate his heat.

“Heat radiates from our bodies,” he explained. “And if you practice, you’ll be able to conduct that heat through various body parts.”

Since we had no clue what he was talking about, Lance asked us to stand up and hold out our palms. Then he went around and above every open palm he held his slender magician fingers. One after the other, everybody quickly withdrew their hands as if they’d been burnt by fire. Some even yelped “Ouch!”

I decided that I wouldn’t fall for this particular trick. I would not withdraw my hand and I would not scream. But when it was my turn and Lance stood in front of me and held his fingers over my palm, I felt a burn as if from a laser beam, and just like the others I pulled back my hand quickly.

I never went back for my third and last free lesson-lecture. I am not sure why. Eszter did though. She became a real member of the Emin. She even got to pick her new name: Spring.

Whales, Fires, Public Restrooms & Other Fears

Quinoa and kale breakfast, topped with a poached egg. This recipe comes from Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good cookbook, which I rather like. It’s simple and tasty, and perfect for those times when you have leftover quinoa (but good enough to make with fresh quinoa too). You can find the recipe here. Have a good weekend and see you again on Monday!

My son, who is seven-and-a-half, has exhibited a lot of fears lately. He’s afraid of the mother of another kid, because she once screamed out loud, he’s afraid of police officers, he’s afraid of going into the kitchen alone at night.

The other day I asked my husband:
“What’s up with all these fears? I was never afraid as a kid!”

As if my son’s fears surely had been passed down from my husband’s side of the family, not mine. I tend to think of myself as pretty fearless, but a deeper examination of my own childhood and youth, revealed quite a few fears, some of which were almost compulsive in nature and a few of which lasted until I was a grown-up.

Two major fears are connected to this one summer, when I was 8 or 9. First, it was this whale, which had gotten lost and was “stuck” in the shallow strait located between the island of Öland and the town of Kalmar on the mainland, where we lived. Because of this whale, I refused to put my foot in the sea all summer for fear my foot would touch the back of this great big Leviathan. I imagined the feel of it: Slimy, bumpy, and worst of all alive.

That same summer there was a fire in a nearby school. Everyone talked about it and I couldn’t sleep at night, imagining our house, too, might burn down.

“Our house is made of stone,” said my mother. “Stone houses rarely burn.”

Yet in my dreams I saw firefighters and police and a curious crowd of people poking in the remains of our house and our furniture all covered in heaps of black ash. And our bodies, blackened and burnt, found amidst it all.

Traveling alone was another fear. I was terrified of being alone on a train in my younger teens. I was afraid of having to change trains, actually my heart started to race every time the conductor announced that Alvesta Station was next. Alvesta was a busy railway junction, with tracks and platforms forming a difficult, snaky grid. I always knew the platform from which my next train would leave, but one little hick-up, one small delay, could easily change track 3b to track 5a and that would produce an hitherto unknown terror in my heart.

Public restrooms were also extremely scary. It began with the restrooms at school, where the older students held court and terrorized those who were younger. And the public restrooms were even worse! Who knew what one would find in there? I always opened the doors to the stalls very quickly. I imagined half-naked; half-dead bodies slumped in there, in a sea of urine. The stalls back then were always covered in vulgar graffiti and veiled in a nasty stench. I always wondered who in this world could stay in there long enough to write and draw all those things.

I still try to avoid public restrooms. The good thing is, that in New York City there’s a whole bunch of really nice ones: The ones in Bryant Park are the best, followed by the ones in the lobby of the Renaissance hotel at Times Square. Most Barnes and Noble restrooms are OK. I’m not as picky as when I was younger, but if you are in New York and you are picky, there’s a book out there for you.

In the Kitchen

Easy breakfast stuff: Chia pudding (mix 1 cup coconut milk and ¼ cup chia seeds and let sit in the fridge overnight) topped with cherries.

I used to abhor the kitchen and all that took place in it. When I was a kid in Sweden, cooking classes were mandatory. I couldn’t stand them. All of us kids had to bike to another school for these classes, because the one we went to didn’t have any kitchens in which to work. After a year, I still didn’t know the route to this other school, that’s how much I loathed those cooking lessons.

Cooking and all that, which takes place in a kitchen represented female submission to me back then. I never saw any men cooking. No man in my family ever cooked anything, not even a pot of coffee. It was women who cooked, and women who cleaned up after the cooking, and women who did the dishes, and women who dried the dishes and put them back in the cupboards. As a result, the kitchen reeked of resentment.

Frequently, the meals tasted of anger. A teacher I once had, said you could taste when a meal was prepared with anger, and it’s true. Food was thrown upon a plate, which in turn was thrown upon a table, and someone threw the apron on the counter and shouted:

“Dinner is served!”

My mother was a great cook. She still is. She claims her mother, my maternal grandmother, was better. I don’t know. I preferred my mother’s cooking (except for my grandmother’s pancakes). I never knew my paternal grandmother or her cooking abilities. She died when I was a baby, but members of our family still remember her lemon meringue pie with fondness. Being a good cook was (and maybe still is?) important to a woman. It meant she took care of her family. If you couldn’t cook, your family would starve and die. My grandmother worried about this:
“How are you going to live?”
To which I’d roll my eyes. I was going to have this really grand, adventurous life, I was going to be too busy to cook for others. I imagined I’d live on bread and Jarlsberg cheese.

I figured that if I never learnt how to cook, I would somehow, as if by miracle, avoid the trap I saw other women caught in: Cooking and cleaning until they were blue in the face. It was the same with typing. We also had to take lessons in touch-typing, but that they could not force me to. I was going to be nobody’s secretary. I swore I wouldn’t learn how to type and I didn’t. At least not then. I didn’t learn how to touch-type until years later, as a journalist student, when I was shamed into it.

It was baking, which brought me into the kitchen finally. I am not sure why, but I suspect I wanted to copy a friend’s brownies. They must have turned out well, because soon I baked all the time. Baking was somehow different from cooking; it was a bit of a luxury, not really a necessity like preparing a meal. I became a fanatic. I didn’t make cookies or pies or cakes or anything, I just made bready stuff, bread and buns and that sort of thing. Baking meant getting a dough to rise, and I became an expert. Our fridge was filled with stuff. Especially just before an exam. Baking soothes me; I love the feel of the dough.

Once I got over the trauma of those cooking classes, I found I could actually cook. What a revelation! I used to always shake my head and say:
“I’m sorry, I can’t cook for the life of me!”

But that’s not really true. I will probably never become a Cordon Bleu cook, but I am not that bad. Since I don’t have a big family, and since my son and I are alone most evenings I don’t have to prepare huge dinners all the time. This means, that when I do make them, it’s a pleasure. Over the weekends, my husband and I often cook together and it’s a lot of fun. And I’m teaching my son the secrets to making a good dough.

The kitchen doesn’t have to be a horrible place after all.

Kierkegaard and the Nuns

I had a lot of apples that weren’t of the best quality, so I decided to make a crumble. However, I wanted a crumble that was less crumbly and more pie-like. This recipe was perfect! Preheat oven to 435F. Using my fingertips, I mixed ¾ cup flour and 1/3-cup oats with ½ cup sugar and 125 g butter cut in pieces. In a separate bowl, I mixed 5 peeled and sliced apples with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 2 teaspoons sugar. I put the apple slices in a pie form and topped it with the flour/oats/sugar mixture. I let it bake in the oven for about 22 minutes.

One day a man sees a sign in a store window. The sign reads: “Got clean laundry? We press it for you!” Happily the man runs home, collects all his clean shirts and heads back to the store. But when he hands over the bundle, he’s being told that the store does not press anything at all, in fact this is a store that sells signs, and that particular sign is for sale.

This is a story, or an aphorism really, that was written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). It is meant to shine light on the disappointment we feel when we assume something is a certain way, and then discover it is not. (Although to me, the story is also a warning about the false promises often showcased in display windows.)

Kierkegaard is a philosopher for the fearless. He preaches the gospel of the individual and the power that rests within the individual (as opposed to the cowardly crowd). It is daunting, Kierkegaard argued, to live our lives as individuals. It is easier to adapt to the crowd than to form our own individual heart. We therefore tend to buy ready-made truths that sound and look good at first, but do we ever bother to look deeper into them? And if we did, would we like what we saw?

“Most people lead far too sheltered lives, and for that reason they get to know (the divine) so little. They have permanent positions, they never put in their utmost effort,” Kierkegaard wrote in his diary.

The other day, a friend and I visited a convent in Connecticut. The convent is located in a mansion, which in turn is ensconced in absolute peace and quiet by the water. It is a magnificent place, surrounded by green lawns. It is also a place where you hear things. You may not hear the sort of things you want to hear, but perhaps the sort of things you need to hear. One of the things Mother Superior, a beautiful petite Indian woman, said was:

“It’s not so important to be always the winner. Sometimes it’s good to be the loser.”

Kierkegaard held up a warning finger against the loud talk of the crowd, urging us instead to glean something from the individual who quietly communes with himself. In his diary he wrote:

“One can very well eat lettuce before its heart has been formed; still, the delicate crispness of the heart and its lovely frizz are something altogether different from the leaves. It is the same in the world of the spirit. Being too busy has this result: that an individual very, very rarely is permitted to form a heart; on the other hand, the thinker, the poet, or the religious personality who actually has formed his heart, will never be popular, not because he is difficult, but because it demands quiet and prolonged working with oneself and intimate knowledge of oneself as well as a certain isolation.”

When I came back home from the convent, I thought about Kierkegaard and all the glitter promised by the signs in all the window displays, and how easily it is to fall for it, be it a Louis Vuitton handbag or Converse sneakers. And I thought again about what Mother Superior had said about being a loser, and I wondered if I would even notice such as truth if it were to hang in a shop window.

A Perfect Day For Playing Sick

The perfect banana bread served in a suribachi along with black coffee. When my son was a baby, I baked banana bread all the time, using a variety of different recipes. I baked them so often, I had to give them away. We always brought some with us when we went to the pediatric clinic for check-ups. They call this the “Best Ever Banana Bread”, and I think I agree. I changed it a bit by using chopped walnuts instead of pecans. 

 My friend Sandra calls it “having a duvet day”. I call it playing sick. I’m referring to those days when you can’t for the life of you get out of bed, even though you aren’t really sick or anything.

A few years ago, I had so many days like these and so close to each other, I seriously thought perhaps I’d just stay in bed for the rest of my life, you know, like Miss Rollings in the film True Stories? But then I had to get up, because the baby got hungry.

It’s funny really, that it took me so long to figure out how to make the most of a perfect playing sick day. In reality you need only two things: A good enough excuse and a good, trusted ally. Then you need to work on whatever guilt you may feel. Let’s actually take that last piece before we move on. Seriously, don’t we all deserve a free day every now and then? A free days that isn’t exactly planned? Of course we do! We’re pretending to be sick, we’re not committing a crime, we’re not spying or housing terrorists. No need to feel guilty.

For many years I used my mom as my ally in this, and that wasn’t good because my mom is too honest and law-abiding. She wavered and she waffled and that made me feel unsure, and then the whole “playing sick” project collapsed. An ally’s job is to give you permission to stay at home. And that permission has to be given without an ounce of hesitation. Magdalena is a good friend and an excellent ally, because when you call her and sound helpless and sort-of-but-not-quite-sick, she doesn’t dither. Right away she says:
“Honey, you need to stay in bed! No arguments! Call in sick right now, and then go straight to bed. You heard me.”

If that doesn’t kill you sense of guilt, then I don’t know what does.

Once permission from a trusted ally has been granted, you need to find an appropriate reason for staying in bed when you call the office. Obviously you need to avoid the use of serious diseases. You also need to avoid diseases that Karma can use against you later: A friend of a friend once called in sick saying she had the stomach flu and diarrhea, when in reality she was in bed watching crap TV and eating Cheetos. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a week later she really did get the stomach bug and diarrhea. See? I have found that the more vague you are about your symptoms the better. I will go so far as to say feel free to invent some allergy, but make sure you use the Latin name for it when you call in.

Since most “playing sick” days are not planned in advance, it’s vital that your kitchen is always stuffed with goodies just in case. I don’t know what your preferences are when it comes to staying in bed all day, but I prefer to munch on green grapes and fruit yoghurt and my fridge is always stacked with both. I don’t watch TV, but I have a pile of Agatha Christie books and old New Yorker magazines waiting for this type of day.

When you’ve done all the footwork (found an ally, come up with a good reason, and stocked your fridge), then you just wait…  The perfect day for playing sick will come, and when it does, do me a favor and enjoy it!

Alice in Wonderland II

Cherry smoothie. Cherries are packed with antioxidants, and when paired with almond milk and a few drops of vanilla, you’d almost think you’re having an ice cream! For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a thing for Alice In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. Years ago, I found this book, which is a fine partner to Carroll’s books about Alice. It's well-written and richly illustrated and will give you a sense of who Carroll and Alice Lidell (the real Alice) were.

Once upon a time there was a girl who was quite bright but quite bored and one spring day when she had nothing else to do, she saw a rabbit hole and decided to jump. It wasn’t her first rabbit hole and it wasn’t the first time she jumped. You could say she had an affinity for jumping down rabbit holes.

The first time she jumped down one she discovered Alain Robbe-Grillet and crème du menthe.

This time she discovered a wonderland right up her alley: Stranger than strange yet seductively familiar and all wrapped up in humidity and heat. In other words, far too exciting to pass on. It had a name: Texas.

Here women wore hose even on the hottest day of the year (“hose” was a new word, she had thought they were called “stockings”), and those women were loud and had “pancake” make up and sprayed their hair into stiff platinum clouds. Men wore tight jeans tucked into Western boots, said “Howdy, ma’am” and tilted their cowboy hats. Cars weren’t just vehicles to take you places, they were destinations in and by themselves, refrigerated little things, well not so little really. They were temporary dwellings in which you flowed down the highway. Highways, highways everywhere. And take-out restaurants so you didn’t even have to get out of your car.

She learnt about so many things. Such as spray-on hair for the balding and clap on-clap off lights for the old. She saw roaches for the first time, and raccoons, and even an armadillo.

Is it any wonder she got sucked in?

Everything was bigger in Texas. And louder. Big and loud and proud Texas. When she asked for an ice cream, she got a whole truckload of it, “Texas style”, wheeled up in front of her and served complete with chocolate sauce (or “fudge”, another new word), sprinkles (not to be confused with “sprinklers”), vanilla wafers, whipped cream (sprayed on in the same fashion as the spray-on hair) Maraschino cherries, and five sliced bananas.

She spent hours walking up and down the air-conditioned aisles of the supermarkets. She’d never seen so much stuff, so much food in her life. The white bread in Texas was spongy and bouncy like a rubber ball. She once threw it on the floor to see if it would bounce back at her. She began wondering what they put into their food. Everything came in plastic.

And then she got depressed. Everything is bigger in Texas, so also her depression. Suddenly there were days when she didn’t feel like getting out of her bed (with its ruffled, mauve bed skirt) and into her car (a liver paste-colored old Chevrolet). Days when she didn’t feel like walking up and down the grocery aisles. Days when she didn’t feel like doing much at all.

She tried treating her depression with a variety of techniques, and found that the Houston Symphony was the best answer. She sat through concert after concert. And afterwards she’d peruse used bookstores in search for something to ferry her over a night of insomnia. 

Then one day a friend invited her to come visit New York. She left Texas on a Delta Airlines flight. When the plane landed at LaGuardia a rainy, gray day, she overheard someone say in that nasal twang of the East coast:
“There are no endings, Sweetheart, just a string of beginnings”

And that sentence, and New York itself, became a brand new start.

The Hanged Man

Lingonberry muffins. I don’t have access to lingon here in the U.S., but I thought I might use canned lingonberries for muffins, and the recipe turned out good enough. If you want to make them and like your muffins on the sweeter side, I suggest adding a couple of tablespoons of sugar.

I mixed 2 cups flour with 3 teaspoons baking powder and ½ teaspoon salt in a bowl. In another bowl I mixed one egg, 1 cup milk, and two tablespoons melted and cooled butter. I poured the wet ingredients into a well in the dry, stirring lightly. Then I added 1 cup of Felix lingonberries. I baked them (12) in 420F for about 25 minutes.

Last week, I was given a tarot reading as a “reward” for an online book review I’d written some time ago. Although I’m pretty familiar with the tarot deck and the meaning of the different cards, I’d never before had a professional reading. It was more exciting than I’d expected it to be, and I thought about it for quite some time afterwards.

One of the cards that came up in the spread was the Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man in tarot can indicate a lot: A temporary pause in life, a need for patience, uncertainty, deep thought, and meditation for instance.

But the Hanged Man also invites you to look at things from another perspective (in his own case this perspective is upside down). So I decided to look at some things in a new or at least different way.

Maybe we all have areas in life in which we tend to get stuck for some reason or other. Perhaps because we secretly like it that way, or maybe because we’re too lazy to change or we might not even realize we’re stuck until we get unstuck by accident (or luck).

My sticking points are some undesirable patterns in my relationships with my son (the screaming duels I get lured into when he refuses to do his homework), my husband (when I become a sarcastic nag because he leaves the kitchen in a mess), and, most importantly I think, the relationship I have with myself.

I don’t know if it’s possible to get a view of one’s self that’s not skewed. I can feel myself swinging like a pendulum from one extreme (thinking I’m actually very good at something) to another (believing myself to be completely and incurably stupid). Rarely do I think of myself in an even, lukewarm way. Most of the time, I am actually quite mean to myself, and when confronting a mirror the words I say to myself would definitely be filed as verbal abuse if hurled to another person.

And I don’t think I’m alone. I think we often tend to be overly harsh with ourselves.

Isn’t it time that we cut ourselves some slack? I don’t mean kicking up our legs with a glass of wine because “we deserve it”, I mean being proud of what we’ve accomplished. Last night my son did a drawing of a castle, and he was so openly and unabashedly proud of it. It was a good drawing and I told him so.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” I said. “You worked very hard on that drawing. Look how many different colors you used and see all those little details.”

I wonder at what point we’re considered too old for that sort of encouragement. Because it stops at some point, doesn’t it? Suddenly we’re deemed too adult to need it. Or we get paid, and that payment is the encouragement. But however nice and welcome money is, it’s not the same as a pat on the back along with a few words.

I think therefore that it’s important that we give this kind of encouragement to ourselves. We all have gifts and talents that we’re using on a daily basis. And I suspect we are aware of them, even though we might be too embarrassed to admit it.

So here it is, the advice of the Hanged Man this Friday: Be proud of your accomplishments, of all the things you’ve done! Don’t be so quick to see what’s “wrong” with you and rush out to “fix it”, embrace the good stuff. There’s plenty if you look for it, sometimes you just have to shift your perspective a little bit. Have a great weekend everybody and see you again on Monday.

The Hanged Man from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, invites you to look at things from another perspective.

The Transfiguration of Aunt Irène

I'm all for cheese. Cheese, if you ask me, can be eaten any time of the day. Above my son's favorite: A ripe brie on dark grain bread with yellow peppers, tomatoes, and chia seeds.

Some people die suddenly. Others fade away slowly. 

Aunt Irène didn’t really die at all.

Not in the proper sense of the word anyway. Of course the doctor declared her dead when her heart stopped beating. But as Aunt Irène herself would’ve said:
“What’s a heart? Nothing but a muscle. A clenched fist of a muscle.”

And wasn’t she somehow more than that?

Aunt Irène was one of the most different persons I’ve ever met. I don’t know what word to use to describe her but “different”. She looked different, for sure, but she was different too. I suppose one could call her “crazy”. She laughed loudly in church and had to be ushered out, she peed in flowerpots on the days when she didn’t feel like leaving her room, and she loved dead men. All of that I’ve written about. At the same time, she was a most generous woman. She was curious and always wanted to learn new things. She was kind, fascinating, and fun to be around.

When she died, we all had this feeling – this sensation – that she didn’t actually die but merely transformed into something else.

My adopted French family lived in a very small town called Toul in the north-eastern region of France. It’s not a very exciting town. It’s a sleepy place. A day would be dull as dull can be when suddenly Aunt Irène would decide to take a walk in her peacock-colored frock and her purple heels and her turban. You’d see her, a most glorious vision, coming out of the pâtisserie on Rue Docteur Chapuis heading for the fountain at Place des Trois Évêchés. And the sun hit the rooftops just so, and the sky was lavender and pink. And suddenly it would be dull no more.

It was the summer of peaches. An abundance of peaches everywhere. There was always a bucket full of them in the garden by the hammock. Maman had washed them; we’d just reach down and grab one. They were mostly red and so ripe they threatened to come apart by the slightest touch. The juice from those peaches splashed everywhere, on our hands, on the hammock, and on our clothes. We laughed at that. And I said:
“How come in French the word for peach is the same as the word for fishing?”

But I can’t remember if anyone explained it to me.

And Aunt Irène threatened to come apart also and nobody could explain her either.

In the park there were nine muses, nine sculptures, and Aunt Irène liked best Terpsichore, the muse of dance. There was also a reedy little pond, into which the little children threw pebbles. And behind the hawthorn hedges a bench, hidden from view. We sat there, enveloped in the scent of the hawthorn. Lazy days. And we talked about horoscopes and fortunes and futures. Aunt Irène said the two big sloping lines from between my thumb and the rest of my fingers down to my wrist were separated, which showed independence. And Edith, her real niece and my friend, looked at her own palm and saw how in hers, those lines were interlaced. Quick as a weasel, Aunt Irène swat Edith’s hand away.

“Never compare hands!”

It was a bad omen in Egypt.

It was in this park we sat, Edith and I, long after I put the gemstones by Aunt Irène’s grave when everything was quiet as if over and done with.

“It’s bizarre,” said Edith.

Then we were silent and there was a chill in the air.

“Do you believe in a parallel universe?” she asked me.

But before I could answer, a green bird swooped down in a flash, landing on the hedges. It was very green, an unlikely green, like lime, a tropical bird that had escaped its cage. We held our breath as if breathing would scare it away. But it didn’t leave. We walked up close to the hedge where it sat. Still it did not leave. When we were close we saw that it looked at us and cocked its head in understanding. Its round black eye had a human quality to it and there was like a crown of light around its head. And that light had an aura of humanness about it.

“Aunt Irène?” Edith whispered under her breath.

And off it flew, the tropical bird, making an arch in the air like a green promise or a question answered.

Müsli

This morning's Bircher müsli brings back memories from my childhood.

I can remember the first time I went into an American grocery store. One of those giant ones. It was in Houston, Texas in the mid 1990’s and to say that I was bewildered is to put it mildly. I especially remember the cereal and shampoo sections, because to me they seemed so incredible excessive. Over the top Texas style. I mean, how many different shampoos can you possibly come up with? How many varieties of breakfast cereal?

In Sweden back then there were maybe five different breakfast cereals, and I only liked one: Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I liked soggy corn flakes. I would deliberately leave my corn flakes in a bowl of milk until they had turned into a soggy mush.

Before my Houston grocery store experience, I’d never seen cereals with pieces of chocolate in them. Or candy. To me it seemed almost indecent. Candy for breakfast? At home when I grew up that would have been pretty much illegal. But here it was, out in the open, and rows upon rows of the stuff to boot.

After I had gone through every single American breakfast cereal, I found myself longing for the breakfasts of my childhood, which can be summed up in one word: Müsli. I could find no müsli in Houston, not even when I looked for it under its Americanized heading “muesli”. Not back then. There was granola, of course. And it was good. It was crunchy. And there was a big selection of it: Naked granola, honey granola, very berry granola, tropical granola, protein granola… But I wanted müsli.

When I grew up there were two müsli brands I was addicted to. One was Doktor Ritter’s, which was quite expensive and had to be purchased in special health stores. This made it a rare player in our kitchen. The second one was cheaper and thus more frequent in our home, and it was called Eterna. I ate Doktor Ritter’s müsli or Eterna with milk in the morning for breakfast, and when I came home from school I would make myself another bowl while I pored over my Asterix comics.

So what’s the difference between granola and müsli?

Well, like granola, müsli is made with grains, fruit, and nuts. Unlike granola, however, müsli is not baked nor toasted and has no additional sugar. It’s raw. While Dr. James Caleb Jackson in Dansville, New York, developed granola in the late 19^th century, a Swiss physician named Maximilian Bircher-Benner, created müsli specifically for the patients in his hospital around the year 1900.

Yesterday I was just going to buy my favorite müsli here in the States, when I remembered a recipe for Bircher müsli that I hadn’t yet tried. It’s probably a bit modernized because it involves chia seeds, but it nevertheless turned out very tasty and müsli-like. The portion was rather huge; I had to share it with my son. This is how I made it:

Ingredients to overnight Bircher müsli

1 cup rolled oats (not instant and not steel cut)

2 Tablespoons chia seeds

11/4-cup milk (I used almond/coconut)

a dash of vanilla extract

dried fruit

I mixed all ingredients (except the fruit) in a small bowl, covered it and put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning before serving, I stirred and added a few prunes. A real Bircher müsli, I think would also include nuts, but I had none at hand. I think almonds and hazelnuts would be great.

Agnes in Eslöv

The dreamiest of breakfasts when you're feeling a bit low. Brown rice porridge pretty much drenched in maple syrup and topped with almond flakes. So good! 

When I was in my late teens, I worked one summer as a “nurse’s aid” in a nursing home in Eslöv, which is a very small town outside Lund, where I lived.

Being a “nurse’s aid” meant I helped the nurses and spent time with the patients, all of whom were elderly and most of whom suffered from some kind of dementia.

This is how I met Agnes.

Agnes was in her late 90’s then, sweet and spry. It was obvious that she had once been an attractive woman, but now her thin, white hair stood out like a weak halo around her head, and her cheeks had lost their color. Her inky blue eyes were mischievous. She would wait for me to arrive in the mornings, standing in the doorway to her room, picking a little at some button on her dress.

“There you are,” she would say and motion for me to come inside.

I loved to talk with Agnes. At first, I didn’t quite grasp how serious her dementia was, so when she asked for a girdle (“because there are so many handsome men out there in the corridor”), I went out to the storage room and looked for one among the adult diapers, the pillowcases and the wipes.

“Where do you keep the girdles?” I asked. “Agnes needs one.”

The nurses nearly collapsed in laughter.

Agnes had a son – I can’t remember his name now – whom she often spoke about. She told me how well he did at school and how she had made a little skating outfit for him, for when she took him skating on the pond. The skating outfit was a dark blue with lighter blue stripes. She told me how they’d go have hot cocoa afterwards. I pictured a little blond boy with cheeks like red apples. And I pictured Agnes, a much-younger and very beautiful Agnes sipping hot chocolate in some café. I imagined Agnes in some fashionable winter coat and a stylish hat.

Agnes shared her room with a woman named Martina, who was almost completely deaf. Martina, or Tina as we called her, sat in an armchair all day long, with an empty smile on her face.

“I tell Tina she has to exercise,” said the ever-energetic Agnes. “I tell her ‘Jump a little up and down in bed, Tina’ but she won’t listen to me.”

I felt sorry for Tina where she sat in her own little world. Once I leaned forward and said loudly:
“What a lovely dress you have on today, Tina!”

She nodded absentmindedly. I doubt she had heard me. Agnes, however, had. Later that evening, when I had already gone home, Agnes got hold of a pair of scissors and cut Tina’s lovely dress to shreds.

There was also Water, an old man who surrounded himself with vintage photos in black oval frames and antique furniture that smelled faintly of wood polish. Walter always sat on his bed straight as an arrow.

“May I kiss you?” he’d whisper to me. “May I kiss you?”

He was a bit hard of hearing, Walter, so I nearly had to scream back at him:
“I DON’T THINK THAT’S A VERY GOOD IDEA BECAUSE I’M ENGAGED TO BE MARRIED SOON!”

The trick was to get him to talk about his youth. I loved hearing his stories, because Walter had been a tap dancer on Broadway back in the day, and he had once danced with Fred Astaire!

As summer progressed, I got more and more involved in the lives of these people. Agnes’ birthday was in August, and I gave her a pin with two bluebirds holding in between them a silvery ribbon. She was so young somehow, I felt as if we were friends. A few days later, the phone rang at home. It was Agnes’ son, who wanted to thank me for being so sweet to his mother. They’d like to meet me, him and his wife, and they happened to be down south right now. A meeting was arranged. I don’t know, but something died inside of me when Agnes’ son came towards me with a little bouquet of flowers, an outstretched hand and a formal smile. Agnes’ son was a retired lawyer. He was balding but youthfully tan from a recent trip to Tuscany. He wore a short-sleeved red Polo shirt and khakis. I don’t remember the wife at all. I don’t remember what anyone said. I just remember thinking that this then, was what had become of Agnes’ little boy in the homemade blue skating outfit.

Spring & Summer

Super juice for breakfast with green apples and kale. And Pär Lagerkvist, a most wonderful Swedish author. In the past, when I still considered myself very much Swedish and worked hard at spreading Swedish culture wherever I went, I would almost always bring a book by Pär Lagerkvist as a gift to whomever I visited. In Poland, I found a bookstore that carried his most popular titles, and they were so cheap I bought twenty of them, and handed them out whenever I could. Pär Lagerkvist (1891-1974) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951. He wrote poems and plays as well as novels. His novels are short and easy to read and most importantly, unforgettable. Above Barabbas, but there’s also The Dwarf and The Sibyl. All of them short, easy reads.

This past winter was particularly hard and long here on the East Coast, and spring seems slow to emerge. Though we’ve had a few beautiful days, of the kind when you can discard your jacket for a couple of hours, spring still hasn’t really arrived.

In New York, spring is a dreamy season because it is so short. Sandwiched between a cruel, cold winter and an intense, hot, and sweaty summer, spring is a couple of weeks of perfect weather. In Sweden a spring jacket is a necessity. Here, I find myself rarely using one. You literally go from a winter coat to no coat at all.

I clearly remember the arrival of one spring back in Sweden. I was a college student and I had this job cleaning a shoe store. Sundays, I’d take my dog with me and walk over to the store, clean it, and then walk back home again. This particular Sunday was as lazy as usual, the town streets sleepy and empty and me and my dog were the only ones out. There was still a bit of snow on the sidewalks, but the air was high, the sky baby blue and the sun clear and strong. Then suddenly, I heard the chirping of birds! It is magical really, how delicately spring announces its arrival. Bird song. After you hear the first birds of spring, doesn’t life somehow feel different? A little bit of bird song and you feel like skipping.

I first visited New York with my mom when I was in my late teens. It was in July and it was so hot I could barely stand it. I thought I’d faint standing in line for the ferry out to see the Statue of Liberty. And actually, a few summers later, I did faint: In the street in front of the Roosevelt Hotel on 45^th Street. From heat syncope. It took years for me to get used to the heat and humidity of summer here. But last summer, when I’d been away from New York for a year, the heat was one of the things I most looked forward to. I have no problem with it anymore; I now like my summers sizzling hot.

The one season that I cannot bear is winter. I guess I’ve had my share of winters. As if Swedish winters weren’t enough, I also experienced winter in Greenland, and I doubt it can get much worse than that. I won’t go into a lengthy description of it. Only this: By the water in Nuuk – which is the capital of Greenland – stands a statue of Hans Egede, its founder. This is the saddest, most dejected statue I’ve seen in my life. Not so much for how it looks, but for what it looks out over: Endless, icy seas with no hope for warmth whatsoever. No hope at all. It was a dark and dreary November day, the day I saw that statue. The skies were brutally black and gunmetal gray and merged seamlessly with the roaring, angry water, which was of the exact same color. The winter wind ripped and tore at my coat, my scarf, and my hair sticking out from under my hat. You couldn’t speak for that wind tore your words too. And there, on a little mound, stood the steadfast Hans Egede with his cane looking out over the water, and I knew exactly what he was thinking:
“Oh, if only spring would come soon!”

Hans Egede, the founder of Greenland's capital Nuuk, stands on a mound overlooking the Labrador Sea. When I saw this statue, there were no beautiful northern lights behind it; instead angry, dark waters in front. Image courtesy of Profil-Rejser.