SALUTATIONS

My room in Tromsø faces directly at 50 meters the statue of Roald Amundsen. This I didn't plan. I've had the man on my mind for a while now, but I sure as hell didn't think that I was going to have him almost stare into my room. I feel relieved that he's in a profile posture also facing the Arctic Cathedral, so I can hide from his gaze. So what's the first thing to do? Salute, of course, ask for a blessing or something. I go down from the 5th floor, go over to him, and say: “Roald, my man, God bless you. You were cool.” I feel that I'm in sync with him. On disappearing. He also did it. I say to him: “Roald, do you want to know a secret?” He does. “Up here in the Arctic I'm waiting for a revolution, for the apocalypse, or the end of the world. I'm waiting for the authorities to inform me: we're sorry to inform you that we have a state of emergency, and you cannot leave the country.” I imagine myself not even blinking and saying: “I understand, sirs, you need to do your jobs. I understand perfectly. You'll get no hassle from me. Thank you.” With my back turned, I head for the farm with 300 Alaskan huskies. No state of exception can keep me from flying over the Norwegian ice. “Moosh, ho! Furry brothers, we are not going back!”

UPGRADING

At the airport Radisson Hotel in Oslo today, I get upgraded from standard to business class. I don't ask why, and the receptionist doesn't explain. I payed for the room with golden points that I collect on a golden card. I tell myself that if it's not because I'm a good customer, then it's because of my fur. The receptionist took a long look at my YSL white lamb and decided that I could use a voluminous white tub to match it. After years of traveling I've discovered that while the meaning of upgrading can have shifting signifiers, there's one constant: the bath tub. You always get one. And it's always huge. Fair enough. After getting installed in a very nice room, 5 minutes later I hit the train to go up the mountain. I want to eat good fish and see Oslo from atop. The head waitress at the restaurant – a five star thing, with a chef who knows what he's doing – also takes a good look at my white Yves. I order a dry martini, cod tatar accompanied by row and egg as a starter, and cod in the oven on a bed of saffron rice and spinach as the main dish. I want a glass of red Portuguese wine. It's seldom that I drink white wine with fish, or with anything else for that matter. As far as I'm concerned white wine is overrated, unless it's a very good Pinot Gris or champagne. The waitress returns to her initial long look and decides to upgrade. She tells me: “I have something better for you. We had a wine tasting last night so I want you to try some the remains of an exquisite bottle.” A Piemonte Experimentum 2008, barrique 2 of 8. Fair enough. I'm used to special treatment. I'm also used to shitty treatment, but these days I find myself becoming more and more intolerant of it, so I'm very appreciative of professionals who know what's what. After she leaves I try the wine, have a look over Oslo and start crying. Christ, and I'm not even a sentimental type. Never have been. So, what am I crying about? It occurs to me that there are at least a few million of people in the world who will never get to know the meaning of upgrading. So, bloody hell, I feel privileged. The wine had a slim cerise rind around the glass, and in the middle, by Jove, hell was in it, a black red hell with a lot of gravitas. My nose fell into the glass ever so hopelessly. Some hell is quite divine. Dinner was exquisite. The chef complimented properly. And the wine – the wine, yes, I almost bought a bottle. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what the damaging price for one such was, but the waitress, giving me the look for the third time, and being a professional, just said: “You know what, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Leave it at that.” Oh, what an echo, I felt. These days I find myself telling myself that some things are best left at that. Back at the hotel I go for a mean sauna. I can take 55 min in a heated to 95 celsius room, interrupted by 3 icy showers. I'm ready for Tromsø tomorrow.

ENCHARGED

Today the sun hit the horizon in Tromsø. My whole body vibrated as if itself hit by a major electrical discharge. First I thought that it's my students. I'll have a whole bunch of them for orals next week, and I was ready to put my feeling of being zapped on account of my infallible internal radar picking on the rising curve of the students' adrenaline before the exams. At such events, we charge each other, though as I'm the examiner, this side of the table, I have more fun. When it goes well it's a win/win situation. Just before Christmas I had 14 students for orals and 12 of them scored 12, the highest grade here. The other two got the next best. The coordinator of the semester wanted to know what my secret is, giving many top grades every time. I told him that I make an effort to be present. “Which means what exactly?” he wanted to know. “Which means that I pose clever questions that make not me but the students look brilliant.” “Ah,” he said, “of course,” in a conceding tone, and then continued: “that's the art, but how do you know what students can take?" “Your presence tells you,” I said, finishing off with the Simpsonian interjection, and also implying that he wasn't too quick in his head: “D'oh!” We both laughed. He has a good sense of humor and can laugh at himself in a genuine manner without taking offense.

But it wasn't the students. The fact that my head got mentally hit by electrical discharges, rather had to do with the fact that I had just finished ordering my ticket to the Arctic. As soon as my final exam will be done next Friday, I'll be off to Tromsø – with a short stint in Oslo for the good fish at Frognerseteren. The idea of the light and the smell this time a year up there drives me nuts. In fact, this madness also made me think of the very first 'real' job I applied for after my doctoral studies, a professorship in Alaska. I never got the job. The faculty hired a tall man with a beard. An eco-critic. God only knows, I tried hard to convince them that I know stuff about eco-criticism and the North, but they said, upon reviewing my application: “nope, Shakespeare is not American, Heraclitus is an old fart, the German idealists are hopeless, theory is not eco-criticism, feminism is a French thing not a Nordic thing, and all that philosophy, by Jove, that's just nonsense. “But how about the silence,” I wanted to say, “you know, the total silence in the Arctic.” They said: “nope, never heard of it. That's a romantic idea.” I ended up wondering today how the tall guy is doing in Anchorage.

So, Tromsø, here I come. Bless me, as I bless you. The sun got over the horizon today, but if you want to see it peep through the center of the city, you have to wait until next week, when I'll be there. Right now, the mountains are in the way. The mountains are always in the way. And thank God for that. Thinking in the dark has never bothered me. Especially not when the magnetic field is so near, and when it duels with the first sun ray. It makes me bold. It makes me want to say to the ones who were astonished 8 years ago at my desire to go North that obviously adopting such a bewildered attitude is just not very smart, for the smartest question is really this one: why doesn't the whole world want to live in the Arctic? Why don't I?

IN VINO VERITAS

Today my sister reminds me that if I need things to vibrate – anything at all – especially when I get desperate, all I need to do is remember mother. When mother was talking about crystal glasses, that is. She had a thing for them. As a young girl, she had some. Then communism hit Romania. Her family lost not only land but also most of the crystal. From then on it went down the drain. By the time my sister and I came along in the late 60s, there was no more crystal in the house. She tried her best, but she didn’t have the right connections. At some point, two of her nieces got their hands on some crystal, and mother got excited. One of the girls had a job in a department store, which was as close one came to the possibility to touch the damn thing as one could imagine. But in Ceausescu’s Romania every time there was a delivery, mother’s name slipped from the crystal-list. ‘Where are my glasses?,’ she would ask my cousin. ‘Gone,’ she would say, ‘so quickly that I couldn’t even get to the list under the counter. ‘Damn,’ mother would say. She ended up cursing the system and her hard-working niece. The system fell in the 90s and the niece got her glasses smashed when she moved to another place. All of them. Mother felt avenged. In any event, she used to think that most of the people she knew were made by the system incurably stupid. Including her nieces; when it came to valuing their possessions. The crystal, that is. Most of the crystal mother came close to used to be locked safely in a display-window. She would get red in her face when she visited the family, and when they insisted on pulling a horrified face when mother would make the glasses vibrate with her fingers. ‘Careful, auntie, careful,’ the snobs would cry. ‘They’ll break.’ They would then hurry to fetch some ordinary glasses and make mother drink whatever liquids were available from them. Mother would get high blood-pressure, and it was up to my sister and me to rescue her from the world’s stupidity, and from dying. Yes, it’s a good thing that I now live in Denmark. I have the best crystal glasses in the world. They are so beautiful and fantastically crafted that my sister and I literally forget to eat in their presence, in the face of listening to a whole symphony of sounds that make the whole house vibrate more than the bells of the biggest cathedral in the land. Today we toasted for mother, who was turning in her grave. From pleasure, of course. We more than made up for what she was missing. In the glasses.

THE TROMSONIAN

For Roald Amundsen

Rachmaninov’s third concerto has come to Troms. “The Snow Queen will be attending,” the whispers go. On the stage, the Polar Explorer takes a deep bow. He squints at her majesty’s white dress and yellow cape. She sends him an electrifying look that zig-zags his pupils. “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he responds telepathically. She starts laughing so hard that the entire front-row vibrates with renewed energy. It’s a good thing that she has all the seats reserved for herself, so that no one else can catch her face in embarrassing astonishment. How is this possible? You can’t do the fat notes with slim fingers. It’s just not possible. But he’s stubborn. He did after all conquer the North Pole. I’ll show her. A deep breath replaces the scepticism. Disbeliefs are shattered to splinters. Bonds are sealed. Faith confirmed. Daisies are placed over the winner’s eyes. The cold mouth turns red when a finger is stuck in it. The ghost-dog goes “wuf,” accompanying the final smooch. The crowd empties its pockets of pink snow flakes. Polarities converge in the hoods.