How much suffering can fall on one man's lot?

Tonight I got a phone call from my other country.

A terrible accident had happened today and a man
I estimate being around forty, married, with three children,
from my old village, is dead.
It is a catastrophy for the whole family,
but my thoughts go to his father-in-law.

His father-in-law, now close to seventy,
has during his life buried
his brother who fell in the war
his eighteen year old son who died in a car accident
his fourteen year old granddaughter who was murdered in a terrorist action
and will now bury his son-in-law.

How much suffering can fall on one man's lot?

The Sea

"I have seen the sea when it is stormy and wild;
when it is quiet and serene;
when it is dark and moody.
And in all its moods,
I see myself."

( M. Buxbaum )

Thank you Jerry for the quote, and thank you Barak and Cheryl for the photo.

Apples along the fjords

It must have been September the year I was
seven years old.
Our family was going by car to one of the fjords
in Western Norway to pick fruit
- primarily apples and pears.
The fjords often have the surrounding
mountains raising nearly straight
from the water, but there are also some strips
of land where people live, have small farms,
or make a living from fishing.
These days I imagine many live from tourism.
Some of the farms are/were based on fruit orchards.

When I was a child, sometimes these fruit growers
would come to our village and the families
would buy so and so many boxes
of apples, pears and plums.

But you could also cross the mountains,
descend into the fjord regions and pick
your own fruit and pay according to
how much you had picked.

Considering the travel and the time involved
getting there, I imagine it was the experience
of having picked your own fruit my parents
were out for.

It had rained, the earth was wet and muddy,
and I remember sliding barefoot from one terrace
to the other, helping pick the apples.

The smell of the fresh earth and the ripe apples.
The taste of those apples.
The feeling of mud between my toes.
Those are the things still fresh in my memory,
so many years later.

Photographers: Cheryl and/or Barak

Blueberries, Raspberries - so good!

Wild raspberrries, ville bringebær in Norwegian,
are delicious!
I come from what is probably
a long line of berry pickers
(my mother still loves to pick),
but for me the enjoyment is in eating,
not in the picking itself.

These raspberries, sold at the market in Bergen,
have been grown in a garden.
They also taste great, but not as intense
as the wild variety.

Norwegian blueberries, blåbær in Norwegian,
are not like the bigger American blueberries,
but smaller and they grow in the forest.

When I was a child, pancakes with
blueberry jam on Thursdays,
was one of the highlights of the week.

Photographers: Cheryl and/or Barak

Dance Me to the End of Love

Being fairly new to YouTube, I found the
following music video to Leonard Cohen's
song Dance Me to the End of Love very special.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_PIadFsvDk

Perhaps because I myself do not dance.
Perhaps when I watched those elderly couples
I admired the fact that they had managed to dance
through a long life together.

Blurred vision Aug 28th 2008

I know I cannot see very well at this point,
but it hit me more clearly when the eye doctor
who examined me today for the upcoming
operation asked:
"Did you drive here with your car?
Because if you did, I can tell you I will forbid
you to drive back to Moss with such poor vision."

Step One for Getting Rid of Blurred Vision

Yesterday I phoned my eye doctor and asked
to move my Sept 3rd appointment to Aug 27th.
Luckily he had a cancellation and I got to
the eye doctor one week earlier. Good!

So today he checked my eyes and told me
I could have an operation to get rid of my cataract.
I paid him 280 Norwegian kroner for the visit
(my part of the deal, I don't know how much
the government's part is.)

Time is important for me - the earlier,
the better - so he told me of some of the clinics
where they may have shorter waiting lists.
Because I can choose where to have
the operation.

I then hurried home to make phone calls
to different clinics, and was lucky to get
an appointment for tomorrow afternoon
at one place.
Not for the operation - that may take a
month or so - but for the pre-operation
check-up.

I felt so relieved, because in addition
to having everything blurred, my eyes
also hurt.
Imagine waking up with tired eyes....

So tomorrow will be another
important day for checking out
the Norwegian health system.

So far, so good.

Praying

Late one evening a poor farmer on his way
back home from the market found himself
without his prayer book.

The wheel of his cart had come off right
in the middle of the woods and it distressed
him that this day should pass without his
having said his prayers.

So this is the prayer he made:
"I have done something very foolish, Lord.
I came away from home this morning
without my prayer book and my memory is such
that I cannot recite a single prayer without it.
So this is what I am going to do: I shall
recite the alphabet five times very slowly
and you, to whom all prayers are known,
can put the letters together to form
the prayers I can't remember."

And the Lord said to his angels, "Of all the
prayers I have heard today, this one was
undoubtedly the best because it came
from a heart that was simple and sincere."

(A Hasidic Tale)

Blurred vision Aug 24th 2008

http://www.innovativevision.co.uk/images/1_ottotipo_blur.jpg

September 3rd will be an important day for me.
Half a year ago an eye specialist told me he would like to check my eyes in September. He said - I think - that I had the beginning of cataract.

My Norwegian grandmother had that too, so at the time I just took it as a fact - it was one of those flaws I had inherited. No big deal.

During this summer my eye sight has really deteriorated.
A pile of books next to my bed testifies to that - it is too tiring or even impossible to read.
I made the letters on my computer bigger.
My eyes are already tired when I get to work in the morning.

This image I found on the internet probably shows what I see at the moment.

If it is indeed cataract, I am told that in a simple procedure the clouded lenses are replaced and that I may not even need to use glasses after that.

If it is indeed cataract, the next question is how long it will take here in Norway to get this simple procedure done.

I will find out, sooner or later.

Hopefully, sooner. :-)

A Letter in a Bottle

The other day, on a family picnic to the beach,

a bottle floating fairly close to the shore, caught my eye.
A letter in a bottle?
Climbing out to check, it turned out the plastic bottle

was just an empty bottle.
But walking carefully through the seaweeds on the beach

I spotted another plastic bottle,

and this one had - incredibly - a letter in it!

My first ever letter in a bottle!

I opened up the bottle and read, in Norwegian, the following:

Hello!
I am a boy 8 years old and my name is Jonas.

I live on a farm and have a pony named Charli

and a bunny named Kaare.

I play football and like terrain bicycling.
I hope to get an answer.
If you want to get to know me, send an email to ........
Jonas

According to the handwriting it looked like Jomas' mother

or probably sister wrote the letter.
When was the letter written? It had no date!
How long had it travelled before ending up on this beach?

It did not say where Jonas lived.

Perhaps across the fjord, right outside Moss?

I sent a short email two days ago,

but I have not received an answer yet.

Will my first letter coming in a bottle on the sea,

stay a mystery letter?

PS. In the old times, such letters were sent in glass bottles.

The plastic bottles give the letters a better chance of being found, I think.

PS # 2 Suddenly, out of the blue, on September 3rd, a surprise email arrived:
Jonas lives on the Horten side of the Oslo Fjord, and he had probably sent the bottle a few days before I found it.
Conclusion: Getting a letter in a bottle was a very enjoyable experience!