The Journey to Oslo

"The king's sharp sword lies clean and bright, Our brave king is to Russia gone -- Prepared in foreign lands to fight: Braver than he on earth there's none; Our ravens croak to have their fill, His sharp sword will carve many feasts. The wolf howls from the distant hill. To wolf and raven in the East."

Quick trip to Oslo for no better reason than I was tipped off to an impossibly cheap ticket. It costs more to take a train to Walla Walla. Research has shown I'll need every dime I saved, though. It's an expensive city where the locals are fish-rich and ski-crazy.

A strange time to go away -- a lot going on on the home-front, a new play in production, new programs developing at work -- but that's the way the aurora borealises. Gives the choreographer time with the cast and some of my directs new responsibilities in the office.

An old-school cabbie played saxophone music so loudly, he had to shout over it. "Why you leaving a cold place to go to a colder place? You're doing it backwards, man! Take my advice, when we get to the airport, trade in your ticket for one going to the beach."

Simple flight. A yoga person was in my seat, but she did the right thing and moved. This happens more and more lately, folks just taking the seat they want on the plane, like it's a bus.

Now In front of me, she told her life story to the guys in the row she belonged in.

The flight was laying over in Reykjavik, and that's where most folks were going. It's the new Hawaii. She asked the two tall bearded dudes if they were from Iceland. "No," one of them said, "But we used to own it."

That meant they'd be going on with me to Norway where King Harald Fairhair once ruled over distant Iceland with an iron comb.

She said the trip was supposed to be with her boyfriend, but he cheated on her, so she's going without him "To see the Northern Lights on Valentines Day alone." If I lived in Los Angeles, I'd have sold this script by now.

I didn't sleep. Read for eight hours. Finished a book called The Feud about a long, public fight Edmund Wilson had with Nabokov about how weird the latter's translation of Eugene Onegin was.  Also a long New Yorker article about fighting in Mosul and a massive book of interviews with people living in modern-day Ukraine.

Never would have finished that at home, but tore through it on the flight. That's the real reason for these trips, time to read without distraction. I got a lot out of that book from reading it on one greedy gulp (and I pictured the city of Lviv where I was last year).

Very beautiful to fly in low and drift slowly over Iceland. The sea lit by the moon, lighthouses flashing on the rocks, a lone car in the distance on a quiet road.

The connecting flight had a mechanical problem and we were delayed a few hours. Dozed. The sign on the door of the plane read - "Your plane is named Hekla. Hekla is a volcano in Iceland."

Ok. Hey, Hekla, get your shit together. I want to go to Norway.

Easy flight once we got going. I ate yogurt called Skyr, which is not pronounced skeer or skyre, but somehow both ways at once.

We were above the clouds in the sun, then dove suddenly into impenetrable grey. And then.... the landscape. A blast of white with streaks of green. A stormy Christmas collaboration of JMW Turner with his friends Currier and Ives.  

Arrived a few hours late, which queered the meeting time with the apartment I'm renting. The airport was like a glorious spa, though, wood-paneled and calming with soft music, so it was a pretty tranquil place to orient and reschedule the key pickup.

Ah, the pleasures of Scandinavian design.

Waited for the train to Oslo S, the city center, and watched a pretty hilarious English family try to control Wild Henry, the youngest of them. There were six of them of three generations, and all very nicely dressed and reserved... but for Wild Henry who kept tearing off his wool "Leicester City" hat and running away. His hair made him look like the feral boy from The Road Warrior.

The shuttle arrived and it was a simple ride into a very fine city. Wild Henry begged for snacks from a vending machine. The salt licorice and "Cheez Doodles" were very expensive for what they were, though. "It's two pound!" said his mother. "We get sixteen bags for that price at home!"

"They're not shy here, are they?" said Grandpa.

"And you're meant to have grapes, anyway, Henry. You're meant to have grapes."

"Gripes!" the boy shouted, "It's gripes I like best!"

Hearts burst from my eyes in a smeared crackle of candy-colored Northern Lights

Then I was in Oslo. Giant tiger sculptures, broad avenues surrounded by gracefully curving roads for trams, snow and glass. Street art everywhere, and I am going to have a great little walk in the morning. I expect it to be sunny.  Because I'm a dreamer.

Kind of a cockup getting into the place. The long delay meant a neighbor would have to let me in. She took a long time, and I was letting myself get upset...but when she at last appeared in the stairwell, I saw she was on crutches and her foot in a boot. It must have been agony for her to come down to get me.

I thanked her and told her all the beautiful things I never could to Wild Henry.


And then I wrapt myself in sleeping silks and slept. In the morning! A diner!