POST-SCRIPTUM

OK. Why Norway, some of you insist. Because nowhere else does it smell like it. And because it touches me. That's all. If you want more philosophy, sure, we can always invent a new concept, or point to the ones who were invented by others who knew what they were doing. It is the easiest thing in the world. Today, as I had pieces of lamb rack, I thought, sure, I believe in the essence of lamb. I believe in the essence of good olive oil. All these things smell good and taste good, especially in their simplest form. Of, course, as some smart physicists pointed out, in our endeavor to achieve simplicity we should not simplify too much - we don't want to end up as mere essentialists. So, the lamb, sure thing, in itself, it is a marvel, but with the exact amount of salt and oil on it, it is a miracle. As far as Norway is concerned, Norway is a marvel in itself, but with me in it, it is a goddamn miracle. The inference that you can all make now, and be my guest, is this one: Norway makes me confess that I love myself. Some writers think that confessing that is a mistake, yet some others think that there's no such thing as making mistakes; if anything, we make choices. So, I choose Norway, for a stint now, and forever later. As for others, and other things that I choose? Now that's the art. To make it simple, but not that simple. Meanwhile, let me quote a master, who knew what she wanted, who knew how to make it simple, but who also knew that every matter of simplicity is in fact rather complex (without this awareness, I'm afraid that we would all be turning into the likes of such right wing politicians who, by trying to keep it simple are all ready to invade the Caribbean islands, where they can think things over, think the Danish values over - and I'm not even kidding.) So, here's Gertrude Stein, making a whole lot more sense, while I take some time to deliberate on whether I should welcome myself home or not:

"One must never confess to oneself that one loves oneself. The secret of this confession is the life principle of the one true and eternal love. The first kiss in this understanding is the principle of philosophy - the origin of a new world - the beginning of absolute chronology - the completion of an infinitely growing bond with the self. Who would not like a philosophy whose germ is a first kiss?" (Lectures in America, 58-59)

ACTA NORVEGICA

My last days in Norway will be spent communing with the sheep, goats, and ghosts. There is a lot of strength that can be gathered from the contemplation of what the inarticulate can say. After visiting the local bygdetun today, an old gathering of wooden houses and church dating back to the 17th century, I rather enjoyed the 80 bleating sheep right outside the community. As soon as I approached them, they all jumped on their four and started singing in a choir. Even the completely atonal ones got totally into it. That was quite marvellous and exquisite, especially since I detected that what the sheep were performing was a quote from the English satirist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm: “Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.” Indeed, I nodded at the sheep, and they nodded back making sounds louder and louder. People claim that this never happens to them, have sheep come to them, and compete for attention. Why it always happens to me, I cannot explain, but then so it goes with some of life’s mysteries. Ultimately it is the mystery of it all that enables us to engage in performing acts of literature, acts of religion, acts of love. Figuring it all out, as it were, is also commanded by the first rule of epistemic creativity, namely the demand that epistemic cognition, contingent on creativity, is interactive. Where writers and readers are concerned, it is often the case that a reader reads not with view to understanding the author – unless one reads an autobiography, and even then – but to acquire knowledge about himself or herself. A writer writes for pleasure not politics. If a writer’s pleasure can become a reader’s truth, then something is achieved. What this something consists of, I leave it to you to decipher and decide. If you can’t, go to Norway. Or don’t go to Norway.

So, this rather ad hoc Norway log stops here. Thank you all for the great comments (many through Facebook) and for soliciting pictures. More updates on Norway will come soon enough, if not from Oslo and what else they serve at the Caribbean restaurant, then definitely from Tromsø in winter.

ADDICTION

I’m pretty good at handling the mountain plateau. But today it was different. After having a sublime vaffel med rømme at Haukeliseter, and realizing that I had to leave already, I got rebellious, as I got jealous of the workers there who got to stay. “Why do I allow Norway to torture me like this?”, I asked myself. I wait a whole year to return here. When it gets really bad, I cruise up to Oslo for a weekend, or fly to Tromsø in the arctic. I’m obsessed with Norway. I have a full time job only so that I can afford Norway. I always want to come back every year. It’s been now nine years in a row that I return. I’m in love with Norway. I’m her slave. I behave like her mistress. I want to say “no” to Norway, but I can’t. Every year I ask her humbly to allow me to enter her. To penetrate her. I’m very virile and potent for Norway. Full of energy. In fact, if I were the Norwegian government I would use me. I would ask me to divine for new oil, or diamonds, or anything, really. For, I’m convinced that Norway’s magnetic fields intersect with mine at exquisite points. But Norway won’t allow me to say “no” to her, because she always says “yes” to me, every time, before time. What do I do? By the time I got to Gaustatoppen, a special thought, away from Norway interceded. It interfered with my de-negations and desires. This thought was very powerful. It hit me hard. Very hard. It took my breath away. And I lost it. I lost it….

REDEMPTIVE REALIZATION

Today I’ve entered the jewellery shop in Kviteseid. Unsolicited, the shop keeper brought me his collection of diamonds. (What was it that I said two days ago? Judging by my clothes I wasn’t interested in billig skidt (crap)). I looked at his 50 rings, and I pointed out 3 of them. The first was exquisite at 8000 kr; the second had very good design at 6000, but the diamond was too small so it drowned in it; the third was frivolous, but great fun at 4000. I told him that the rest were run of the mill. He asked: “do you really think so?” “Yes,” I said, “I’m positive.” I told him that if I had more money and no conscious, I would buy the first ring on the spot. Although he said nothing, I could tell that he was sorry he couldn't sell me his ring. Sorry for me. So I said instead: “let me look at your zircon rings.” I bought one, and everybody was happy.

On the way back to the cabin, passing by the magnificent Nisser lake, I intonated along with Emmylou Harris on her song Here I Am. I’ve always liked this song. It’s very optimistic, but it has a deep tone and is full of contradictions. “I’m standing by the river / I will be standing here forever,” she sings, and then laments that although she has always been the lover of the one she’s waiting for, in the blood of his heart, she’s waiting for him as if he were beside her, not iniside her, as she is inside him. I can’t quite make out how her hope ties in with her eternal standing as well as the intensity of the emotion. Love at standstill? What’s that? But I don’t want to pose this question, and thus play the metaphysic – again. I have to realize my plan to finish a review of Brian Rotman’s book, Becoming Beside Ourselves. – Why can’t lovers be standing in the middle of the river, why are they always beside themselves, instead of becoming one? – Enough – with being all over the place – the hour of pragmatism is here. Ashbery reminds me: “A talent for self-realization / will get you only as far as the vacant lot / next to the lumber yard.” Damn. The woods. The trees. I knew it. – I should have bought that ring. Tomorrow I’ll hit the big Hardangervidda. There’s enough glistening vastness there, even for the ones beyond redemption.

(For the song at the bottom, if it won't play in Internet Explorer, it will in Mozilla; enjoy!)

KENOTIC PLATEAU

Between heavy thunder and two rain showers I climbed up to the Venelifjellet plateau. This is always quite a sublime enterprise. The plateau combines focus with vastness. First you concentrate on your body mass, as you climb steadily for two hours. Then it all expires in the face of what you see. You empty yourself of yourself. In Gnostic interpretations of kenosis this amounts to a process of emptying yourself of your light. The fact that the divine possesses omniscient and omnipotent luminosity, which however has to be withdrawn from if humans are to ‘see’ anything, is a fascinating paradox. What happens is almost a reversal of the demand: “let there be light” into: “let there be logic.” Perhaps the Greeks were on to something after all. Yet, while standing on the plateau, I must say that I rather enjoyed the idea that the higher up you go, the more you experience absolute openness. The experience of this openness requires not digging, by formulating arguments and charting what lies at the bottom, however beautiful that may be, but doting on your sense of space. It is the space of the other that you pull towards you, as incarnated divinity has done, which makes climbing worth the while. On top, you can thus say: I watch you within me.

DAS WANDERN

Some people want to know whether I always wear earrings and lipstick while wandering through the Norwegian woods. Yes. I do. Today I had my diamond and emerald chandelier earrings on. I always put on the jewellery that matches the weather, and as today the clouds surrounded monochromatically the mountains while sailing in the 100 year-old boat, Fram, I thought that it would be appropriate to go crystal. In terms of clothes and makeup I had my Chanel lipstick on – that’s all – Prada black jeans, Bubetti black boots, a beautiful cashmere shirt from Maharishi, and a woollen sweater from Petit Sophisticates. Underneath: cheap white cotton panties from the supermarket Bilka, and an expensive bra from Prima Dona (the classical type, not the lace crap). When the sun is shining I go for all Italian. Like yesterday. Pants from Napapijri, which I bought some 5 years ago, here in Norway, and white linen from Mottivi. Well, the trekking boots are German: my favourite from Birkenstock.

Now, some would say, what’s with the fuss? Or the snobbism? And who the hell is going to see all this in the middle of nowhere? For once, the fuss is all about quality – and I’m no even that original there. The Scots formulated it already. “I’m too poor to afford cheap crap.” So quality never has anything to do with fussing. I’m still wearing my Bubetti boots, which, yes, did cost me a small fortune when I bought them, but still look rather smashing after 12 years of intense wear. So, they were worth the investment. Secondly, there’s always someone you run into: yourself. Like, when you reflect yourself into the perfectly mirroring water and realize that your Cordoba earrings make it look all the more beautiful, you feel good about yourself. You feel good about having learnt that having an acute sense of distinction makes more difference than merely claiming that you yourself, through your acts, make a difference. I believe in objects. Some objects. They keep us sane when we want to go: wow, I must have been Norwegian in another life time, or at least half Norwegian! On the other hand, as the mountain sent back crystal vibrations through my ears today, I also thought that being half crazy, instead of half of the other thing, is all right. Good style perspires, and has transcending power. The Norwegians, who are mainly a bunch of peasants and for the most part can’t tell the difference between silk and polyester, when they see you strutting your designer stuff, think twice before passing judgement on you as soon as they hear that you come from Romania, originally. They don’t see so quickly a country full of poverty and orphaned children anymore. They see an individual rich bitch, whom they are more than willing to serve. “Follow the money” works every time, even out in the wilderness. Thus, we connect, with whatever, if not through diamonds, then through wool. Black and white and red at the collar, like the Norwegian national garment.

LORDS OF LIMIT

Today I’ve walked myself into exhaustion. 12 km up the wilderness. I thought of limits, and where mine were. Could they be conquered? Of course, it didn’t take me more than a fraction of a second to realize what a stupid idea the idea of conquering limit is – though most people believe in such things. If someone climbs the Everest, it’s being reported on as a case of conquering limit. Yes, people don’t have much imagination. Except for poets. W.H. Auden talks about “life’s limiting defect” – death. In his poem, “The Watchers” he addresses the constellation Gemini: “O Lords of Limit training dark and light / And setting a tabu `twixt left and right.” We are guided by mystery, yet all that which begins in mystery ends in philosophy. We should all do more math. Geoffrey Hill wrote an entire book of criticism using Auden’s line as a title: The Lords of Limit (1984), in which he discusses mainly the Renaissance and Restoration writers. With good reason. The poets and playwrights of those days knew more math than the contemporary ones, which means that they qualified for the title of lords of limit by default. They calculated the political implication of metaphor - for cosmology and domestic affairs. Apart from using Auden’s line as a title, Hill also uses it as an epigraph. So, where the politics of limit is concerned, the mere thinking about it is twice as good. So, what am I saying, sun-struck as I am, and feeling delirious? That we are not only watchers of passionate convergence to limit, if and when we care to think about it, but we are also seekers: we pose questions while we watch. Here's one. Not a personal one, as right now, I want to keep that to myself, but one that the poet/critic poses. Hill uses Iris Murdoch’s insight to accompany his Auden epigraph: “It is always a significant question to ask about any philosopher: what is he afraid of?” (On God and Good) When things intersect, they intersect, and that’s all there’s to it. I am not a Lord of Limit, but of Watching.

CAVEAT

For Truls Mørk

My time to move to Norway has not come yet. But today I lent my body to Schubert. Schubert, who always wanted to be a woman. I said: “Schubert, my love, take my body and your soul to Norway. Away from gate-keepers, peer-reviewers, false-prophets, schmucks, rationalists, and literalists. There you can be the woman you want be. And no one will notice. There will be no one.” Schubert said yes. To thank me, he wrote the adagio for me. To evacuate my death.

ALTARS

After making the proper birthday wishes to my friend, the genius mathematician – or rather, should I say, improper, insofar as he is the only one who can understand all that gobbledygook regarding absolutes, infinites, and the like – at least in the forum where I left the message – he pledged his eternal devotion to me. Yes, he was even willing to write a new Faust story, he claimed, and then concluded with these lines: “Divine Camelia, there is only one real infinity, and, oh, how unique is the aleph that serves it!” Indeed. And that is not even gobbledygook. As I was cruising through Fjona later today, a rather special place, while Leonard Cohen was singing: “I knelt there at the Delta, at the Alpha and the Omega… it don’t matter how you worship, as long as you’re down on your knees” I liked the thought that the sheep and goats understood a little of what such a line means. Every herd I passed started bleating in a choir, at unison, and looking straight into my eyes. Yes, they were worshipping me, I fancied, and I liked it. This kind of intertwined singing was almost synchronic with me singing Handel’s Halleluia yesterday at the posh Dalen Hotel. They were playing the piece at the restaurant – only in Norway – and I joined in. There was no one else around – only in Norway. And He shall reign for ever and ever. The waiter came along and asked, "so you like it here?" King of kings forever and ever - I didn't stop, but then I said: “the best”. Forever and ever and ever and ever, Hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah hallelujah. He was beaming and bowing. We all worship. Worshipping is a civil duty. The best part, however, consists in knowing how to choose your gods. Here’s a poem by a favourite poet, who also knows a thing or two about sounds and saints.

Monumentality and bidding:
words
neither yours nor mine but like his music.
Stalwart and tender by turns, the fugues
and larghettos: staid, bürgerlich,
up to the wide gaunt leaps of invention.
Repetition of theme a reaffirming,
like figures in harmony with their right consorts,
with the world also, broadly understood;
each of itself a Treatise of Civil Power,
every phrase instinct with deliberation
both upon power and towards civility.
At the rehearsing, always I think of you
and fancy: with what concordance I
would thus steadily regale and regard her,
though to speak truth you are ever in my mind;
such is Eros, such Philia, their composure
these arias, predetermined, of our choice.”

— Geoffrey Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power, ‘Handel’.

TELEPORTATION

Yes, the thought for today? Nothing original. Except for teleportation. I wrote a silly update on Facebook: “somebody shoot me, or chain me to Norway,” which resulted in a torrent of comments, and consequently culminated with my suggestion that all those who get the mountain thing should teleport themselves over here. Some claimed to have had their subscription expired, others started speaking in tongues. My good friend Horia, a genius mathematician who is known to be very prolific and fluent in all sorts of symbolic languages went for French. He was ready. “J’arrive” he said, “avec un fusil dans quelques minutes.” Beh, I’m still waiting. But I did get the Chablis with cheddar discovery that he made earlier today. Yes, the mathematicians can also be struck by culinary genius. What else? Yes, while watching the mists of Avalon sink into the lake, I thought I understood the thing with infinity. It overwhelmed me. First it irritated the shit out of me, making me think what would have happened to Cantor if he had read some Derrida and the poststructuralists. But then, the goddamned “and yet, what if he was right” interfered again. So, I figured, infinity is actually even greater than everything. Goddamned semantics. How can you deconstruct the goddamned infinity? And then, what else? Yes, this thought you will like. While jumping on the balloon, I got this vision: me in Wittgenstein’s hut. Some things I’m certain of. I’m certain of Norway with me in it – teleported or not.

PLAY

I’m watching some 5 eight-year-old kids jumping on the trampoline and taking some wild swims into the stone potholes, Jettegrytene, a miraculous place that has the smoothest deep stone formations filled with water into which you can dive. I don’t remember playing like that. When I was 8, if I played, I played chess, or pretended to be Kafka’s and Nietzsche’s ghost writer. This phase was over by the time I was 10 and got into the musketeers. But the first two loves have not been forgotten. I keep returning to them. The other game I was good at when I was 8 was judging. Every time a new person came to visit, upon his departure, my mother wanted to know what I really thought. I would give either a thumb up or a thumb down. Mother thought that my judgement was infallible. She also thought that it was pretty good for an eight-year-old to spot the rotten kinds, when everybody else would otherwise be infatuated. Those close to us were incredulous at my childish analysis, but when I would always be proven correct, glorification came. But I didn’t care. I had other things on my mind. Now I forget what.

My best friend wrote me a comment on my last post in this string of Norway visual logs. He wrote: “Crucifixion? Good.” But I know where this comes from. He has just eloped with my sister, who lives her life according to The Life of Brian, so he has no choice but to follow. Especially now that he has a chance, to follow, that is. Finally. He has been waiting 8 years for her to make up her mind and come to Denmark. Eight years! I never thought such resilience was possible. Especially since during all that time they had not been communicating. But there you have it. He just decided 8 years ago that he loved her, and as far as he was concerned, that was all he needed to know. Of course, my sister also knew. That he was waiting. This knowledge made her close her eyes to reality but not to her memory. So, now, by a strange reversal, memory became reality. By Jove, some people are strange! Who do we sacrifice ourselves for, and what? Apart from crucifixion, I’m thinking of this: “who” and “what,” taking my cue from Derrida. In his later thinking he was troubled by the significance of these words. He said that, finally, when it all comes down to it, after a long life of philosophising, what he would really have liked to know about philosophers is “what” they really thought, and “who” they had sex with. Indeed. How much do we know about whom Plato was banging, not to mention “what” he stole from Socrates and others? I’m thinking about what kind of action waiting is, or reading Nietzsche when you’re eight, or watching meteorites fall from the sky. Are our desires incalculably pointless? Or is there more? Tomorrow I’ll go jumping on an inflated balloon. I’m curious to see what ideas I’ll get.

LIMIT

For Sophus Lie

Through the mists of Avalon, all for you, I go from doing backbends in the old cemetery to supplicating, also on my back, and also for you. Where goes the limit? The one to waiting? The one to knowledge? I take another cherry. A grotesquely big one. This is a bloody affair. My fingers get stained. But I lick them with such passion and speed. With my eyes closed, and mouth full of the red stuff, I suspend the ground between my youthful body, a gift of nature, and my white hair, a work of art. Eating shifts what tilts the dominant pendulum. All for you, but whether thus or thus? Between ontology and epistemology my gut opens itself like a gorge to give a façade to the limit. I have become a wall through which you pierced a nail. I hang my questions on it. You wail and wait.