It is to Weep…

I thought I had said all I had to say in this space, but a holiday trip I have just completed, and other concurrent experiences, provided me with energy for what I offer below.

The first experience was to find a book in the Copenhagen central railway station, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, by R.F. Kuang.

It is a complex book, a fantasy involving the magic of translated words placed in juxtaposition on bars of silver. The setting of the fantasy presents a history of the slavery, oppressions and indignities visited upon subject peoples of the British Empire in the mid-19th Century, and upon the common people of Great Britain. Despite its large size, I finished the book before we reached our destination, Garda, Italy.

The book reminded me of the raw truths one learns as one ages; that the powerful are prone to act as gods and to treat others as lesser beings, even to torture and kill them with impunity. This ‘truth’ has been well formulated by Lord Acton:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. (Source)

With this book and these thoughts operating in the back of my noggin, I was nonetheless open to the pleasant experiences Eva and I reasonably expected from our nine-day holiday, including four days travel by train from and returning to Stockholm by a company that offers group tours.

The first full day of the tour was dedicated to a bus trip to Verona, an ancient Roman town with an amphitheater at the central plaza. Also in the plaza was this monument over which I paused and pondered for several minutes:

I translate this as “To the martyrs of the Nazi extermination camps”.

This encounter receded to my mental background as the tour continued, through many enticements to spend and eat, to visit other ancient monuments and places.

At the noon lunch break, we found ourselves seated with a couple we had become friendly with and engaged in a lengthy, intimate conversation, sharing life experiences including personal tragedies. We paused at one point to quietly weep. We then recited our blessings, noting that many other lives in the world had suffered and were suffering more greatly and continuously than we have suffered.

On the final day Eva and I wandered up the mountainous hill, at the foot of which our hotel perched, just to enjoy the exercise and the ambience of old, largely well-kept houses that overlook the large Lake Garda. We had been told by others to seek out ‘The Madonna’ as we ascended the steep path. We found her and learned that she was erected just after WWII to honor the fallen civilians and soldiers of the town of Garda.

Threatened by fire and sword in the Second World War, by virtue of a solemn vow, Garda, faithful to its promise, erects this sacred marble as a symbol of its faith and compassion so that the only Mother of the suffering humanity from above may watchfully protect and bless all her living and all her dead. (Translated)

 

I wept again.

This pleasant, peaceful, lakeside town, surrounded by dolomite mountains with vast vineyards sweeping through nearby valleys and up mountainsides, had its peaceful lives  interrupted and discarded by the ambitions of great men.

And it continues, throughout the world…

—

Ecclesiastes 4      

The Evil of Oppression

1 Again I looked, and I considered all the oppression taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; the power lay in the hands of their oppressors, and there was no comforter.

2 So I admired the dead, who had already died, above the living, who are still alive.

3 But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.

https://biblehub.com/ecclesiastes/

Life after life

[This is reposted from Hilarie Cutler’s Just Hilarie]

Amongst my parent’s generation, there were a few men who, though they had reached the age when they could retire, they didn’t. Their wives had retired already, if they had worked, but not these few men. Their workplace was still willing to have them even though they might have passed their best before date. I assume they must have liked their jobs enough to keep working even when they didn’t need to. My parents retired as soon as they were old enough to do so, leaving behind them jobs that were just jobs and looked forward to doing something that they really wanted to do. But my parent’s friend continued working and kept on traveling to his job every day. If you asked him why he continued to take the hour and a half bus ride in to the city from the retirement community he had recently moved to, leaving behind wife and new friends, he would stare at you with a look on his face of incomprehension. Finally, he said, in a very quiet tone of voice, “If I retire, I am afraid that I will die.” He wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He was serious. He was sure that if he should stop working, the next day or week or month after his retirement party, he would die…of something. He eventually did retire. He and his wife got to spend more time with their kids and grandchildren. They traveled a bit together. They spent time at the clubhouse of their retirement community. And eventually in the fullness of time, his wife died and soon after so did he.

I have worked since I was about 17 – nothing serious until I was about 25, when I got my first job in the field that I had studied in college. Since then I have managed to support myself as an Art Director, Illustrator, Production manager, Board artist, Speaker support slide maker, Website designer, Powerpoint designer, magazine designer and in general, whatever one can do in the commercial art field. I have never needed the typing skills my mother insisted I acquire to help put food on my table – which is a good thing since my typing skills are really not all that much to write home about.

But all that professional working life is now 7 years behind me…and I am definitely retired. Am I dead yet?

I am not completely without things to do. I have 2 pro bono clients for whom I volunteer my skills and knowledge. I basically work for free now. But I get a pension, so I’m OK.

One of these groups, a Writers Festival, thinks I’m great. They love what I do for them. They are fun to work with. The project is something I am also interested in. I feel like I am doing a good job for them. But that little nagging voice that always lives in the back of my head says, “Of course they like you. You are free.” But the important thing is mostly they listen to my suggestions and often do what I suggest. That satisfies my control freak tendencies. So I’m OK.

The other group is a Jewish group working to bring Reform Judaism to Stockholm. It is a group that I have been involved with since before I retired – almost 2 decades, actually – a long time. I feel I know most of those people well. We have been on on the same board of directors together for so long that many of them have become friends. There are a lot of tasks on that board that I can not do. No one in their right mind would ask me to take the meeting minutes – the mishmash of swenglish would be illegible. Neither would I be useful to do anything in regards to religious tasks for my knowledge of such things is extremely superficial, a la carte and personal. To be the contact with the greater Jewish community is also something I would not be well suited to due to my poor comprehension of how Swedish society works and my latent phone fear. My only real usefulness lies in my years of work experience as a graphic designer. So that is what I have been on the board – a graphic designer. I designed their logo, I designed the now very out of date website and made a new one in WordPress. I make whatever graphics they need for promoting the group. And I try to maintain the look of the brand. These are things I know how to do. These are things I have experience in doing. With this group I feel like I am doing something important. So I’m OK.

Unlike my parent’s friend, my concern about my post-working life – and my fear – is metaphorical. I am still walking around. I am still breathing. I am not worried – at least not too much, that I will imminently drop dead any minute now. But…am I still alive? Do I still have worth? Does what I know have any value? And why aren’t people doing what I tell them?

Hilarie’s Strawberries

In the summers, I have been spending most of my time at our country house with my husband. We have filled our planters with topsoil and I have bought plants to grow there. There are 3 requirements I insist on for any plants I might bring home: The plant has to be an almost indestructible perennial and need very little care from me, the plant has to have flowers, and finally if it has a wonderful scent that’s great. I have planted two small lilac bushes, 3 mock orange bushes, a flowering bush called Ölandstok in Swedish and two strawberry plants.  I also planted 3 clematis plants to climb up the wall behind the planters. So far none of my plants have died yet and this year one of the lilac bushes had wonderful, scented flowers and my strawberry plant had strawberries. I spend a lot of time looking at these plants. This seems to be my new thing-to-do. It seems to pacify my anxiety about what I am doing with my post-work life. For the moment at least.

I guess with my two pro bono “jobs” and my green, planted friends, I have found my life after my life. I hope, as I work to keep all of these things alive, they will also keep me alive.

“The Advantage of getting old…

… is having no future.”

Carl-Göran Ekerwald

This quotation, translated from the Swedish, is from an article in Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish daily newspaper. Journalist Christian Dyresjö interviewed writer Carl-Göran Ekerwald upon his having published The Advantage of Getting Old, the most recent of many volumes of writing in the 100 years of Ekerwald’s life.

Dyresö elicited many observations about life and death from Ekerwald, some of which I show here (the full article, in Swedish, can be read under this link: https://www.dn.se/kultur/carl-goran-ekerwald-fordelen-med-att-bli-gammal-ar-att-inte-ha-nagon-framtid/ ).

“I am prepared to quit at any time. Now that we’re here talking would be perfectly fine. When the thunder passes, I sit out here and hold my chest up to the sky and say ‘Here, come lightning’…”

Ekerwald lives in a village near Knivsta, between Stockholm, and Uppsala to the north. His home “is a red one-story cottage with white knots and a balcony. In the house next door, one of the grandchildren has moved in with his family. Two of the great-grandchildren often play in the shared garden, which Ekerwald overlooks from the balcony. On the other side of the road lives his daughter.”

Some excerpts, quotations, from the article:

• The advantage of getting old is that every day is a treasure. Without obligations, without coercion. A life in complete freedom.
• (I have a writer friend who) believes that all Swedes who died would be reborn in India, “to learn how to know”. When the day comes, we can meet him in the non-being. I don’t know, I’m not worried, I’ll allow myself to be amazed and see what happens.
• Some die when they sit and shit so it’s dangerous if you exert yourself too violently. But it will come as it will. I accept it. It will be a liberation.

Since the publication of his first work in 1959, Elden och Fågelungen, Ekerwald has published one book per year, on average: novels about small-town life, poems about love and relationships, biographies of Goethe, Nietzsche and Shakespeare, as well as a number of articles and translations. He counts as one of his greatest achievements his introductions in the “Persian Anthology”, a collection of Eric Hermelin’s translations of Persian poetry (1976).

Ekerwald says that God does not exist. “If God existed, we would have killed him long ago–man is like that” Yet, he says that the Bible is one his favorite books, along with the Koran (Quran). He quotes Augustinus, thus: “He who does not know God knows him best,” and names the medieval Persian poet Rumi as his “spiritual food.”

His advice to aspiring writers: “Don’t try too hard or plan too much. If you set goals, there is a big risk you will not be satisfied when you reach them. Avoid vain pursuit.

Ekerwald was married to Anna Westerberg for 69 years. In her last ten years Anna was affected by ‘Alzheimer’s.’ Ekerwald thinks is inappropriate to call dementia a ‘disease’. “It’s a completely natural human condition, like a flower that withers. The withered state is also a state. We should have a greater understanding that we have different forms of life. Being ‘normal’ is a way of life; getting old is another way of life, not a disease. You can be healthy even if demented.”

“Life itself is a contradiction… all that is going on is remarkable, instructive, difficult to understand. You can’t see any intention or meaning… we must consider ourselves as plants, as animals, and that’s all.”

In his latest book, mentioned at the top, Ekerwald tells us what the life of a future 100-year-old looks like. “I’m ready to quit at any time. When we sit here and talk would be perfectly fine.”

—

Permissions were obtained from the Culture Editor of Dagens Nyheter and from journalist Christian Dyresjö, the interviewer. Photo by Thomas Karlson (edited)

 

 

A perspective from the second generation of an immigrant family

As I sit in comfort, in a condominium apartment overlooking an arm of the large lake Mälaren which empties in the Baltic Sea at Stockholm, I count my blessings. I soon will have completed eighty-six years of living, am in good health, and have a small but sufficient degree of financial security. I love and am loved. This includes friends as well as family.

I attended university in the USA and continue to pursue an extensive informal education. I have books, recorded music, a few objects of art, mementos of my travels, photographs. I attend local musical concerts, visit museums and parks. I correspond with people thousands of miles from me, some of whom I haven’t seen in decades, some I’ve never met in person.

Over one hundred years ago three of my grandparents left Greece to settle in San Francisco, California. They could not even dream of having the riches which I enjoy by virtue of their grit, determination, family solidarity, and some luck on my part.

I came to Sweden twenty years ago as an immigrant from the United States, but under different circumstances which drove my grandparents to leave their homeland. I traveled comfortably, under no duress, to be with the woman I love.

I see parallels, nonetheless.

These parallels reside in the immigrants now coming in great numbers to Sweden and other European countries from the Middle East, North Africa, and other regions of the continents of Africa and Asia.

The conditions which drove my grandparents to leave Greece were poverty, lack of opportunity, political instability, and war always on the horizon.

These are also the conditions driving many of the current immigrants to Sweden with the addition, in some instances, of ethnic and religious conflict, actual war, drought, and the threat of famine.

Are there lessons in my family’s experience to help current immigrants to Sweden to imagine and work toward a future for their grandchildren, a future similar to that which I enjoy?

I don’t like to give advice, nor am I prone to preach. With trepidation, therefore, I say only these things in response to my own question:

An immigrant may feel like he or she is treated like a second-class citizen. In some cases this may be so, but mostly perception this will arise from mutual ignorance and misunderstandings about cultural differences. We need to talk with each other.

In order to talk with each other, we need to speak the same language, the local language. One of the blessings I have in Sweden is that English is almost an official second language. I am marginally adept at spoken Swedish (my hearing is significantly impaired). This has not inhibited me from having Swedish friends and successfully navigating the environment.

I am a citizen of the USA and also of Sweden. I feel American (West Coast variety), am learning to feel Swedish, and do feel Greek by virtue of my family’s origins. None of these is mutually exclusive; rather, I perceive them as enriching.

Due to past migrations, there are Swedes who are also Chilean, who are also Serbian (a neighbor-friend), who are also Russian (a former Soviet/Russian diplomat lives in my neighborhood), who are Bulgarian (a dear friend), and so on.

Although an immigrant loses much that is left behind in one’s homeland, he or she loses nothing by becoming Swedish, and will gain a larger perspective of the world we share.

Welcome, fellow immigrants, and Swedes.