Dita Parker

Saturday, July 31, 2010

L words

It was my birthday this week, and, like on most birthdays, I take stock of the past year. So I'm sitting here eating blueberry...quark? bonny clabber? whatever it is, it's delish, thinking good and bad, thinking about L words. 

Loss, longing, lust, love, levity; the stuff fantasies, nightmares and dreamscapes are made of, fictional or factual. Powerful engines, driving influences, maddening, exhilarating, consuming, confusing. L words my year was made of. Now aren't they all.

My Fresita-infused, sleep-deprived, L word infected mind is also thinking about giving Dita the gift of Facebook. It was, after all, her birthday, too. Yeah, she's still not frolicking in that hay, but I'm starting to feel a little silly/superior/Silurian. Thinking I have neither the time nor the inclination is one way of saying I don't want to. I really don't, which really stems from my natural aversion to things I'm told I absolutely have to do, which is a really juvenile rebellion and some rather empty rage against the man and his machine. 

I've fed the habit, dug up every author I could find and hung on their every word substantiating my aversion; made the Himalayas out of a hillock. But they are writers in a position where they can well do without, who can feel superior all they want. It won't affect their work or visibility one way or the other. Is Dita one of those storytellers? Hmm, no. Would it affect her work or would she benefit from it? There's only one way to find out.

So tomorrow then! Or Monday, perhaps. You know, party's over, birthday week gone, bubbly gone, blueberry blubber gone. L words sorted out. But are they ever?

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Northern exposure

As in, a week in the life of a southern girl from the north, or, moments of pleasure:

Strawberries straight from the field, blueberries from the forest.

(Speaking of which...a concise yet accurate description of the landscape as seen through the windshield of a car in which said southern girl was trapped for ten hours, and ten more driving home: trees, fields, a lake, a town, trees, fields, a lake, a smaller town, trees, fields, a lake, an even smaller town. Get the picture? So much better experienced up close and personal. Friendly locals with unintelligible dialects, golden dunes of rye and barley, tourmaline cathedrals of pines, birches and spruces, alders and junipers.)

Sprints down the pier, bombs in the lake.

Fresh salmon, herring and "new potatoes," i.e. of the newly harvested early variety.

The balmy heat and steam of a smoke sauna.

"Mom, why do I have a nose?" "Mom, why do men have nipples?" "Mom, why is the sky blue? Or water?"

That hammock big enough for two.

Days without shoes.

And then: a pair of red ones. "Honey, you have shoes." "Not these, I don't."

Muse, live. "Love is our resiiistaance..." Oh yes oh yes oh yes.

The music of Gemma Ray, Imogen Heap and that Kate Bush album I thought I'd lost I found.

A writing problem I solved without actively thinking about it.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

It's oh so quiet

It is. And über hot and humid, which spells home and paradise for me, my Southern home; not your typical Scandinavian midsummer. One of my summer sons was born on a very long and dry one, another on a cold and rainy one. You could hardly tell where spring ended and fall began. Such is the weather up here in the northernmost North. Unpredictable.

One thing's for sure. Come visit any major town around midsummer and run into other visitors wondering where everyone is and if maybe Chernobyl blew up all over again and only the locals have been evacuated. An exaggeration maybe, but only a slight one. Visit a suburb and get a definite feel of a fallout heading your way. 

July, or the three to four weeks following the Solstice are The weeks to go on vacation up here. And off people go, for several weeks at a time. Summer cottages, trips abroad, visiting relatives far and wide, tours of the country, Europe, America. We haven't seen most of our neighbors for a while now. You can throw late night garden parties without much bothering anyone. If you can get anyone to attend since no one's home.

I love going downtown in the summer. Everyone's smiling. No one in a hurry. The ever-efficient northerners don't freeze in their tracks in the winter. The cold doesn't stop them from functioning. Give 'em a heatwave and watch them go in slow motion. Finally. But good lucking getting in touch with the head honcho of anything or even meeting friends anywhere. Gone, baby, gone.

As if it weren't quiet enough, we're driving ten hours toward the middle of the country and disappearing into the woods for a week on an estate with a long history by a lake with no name. Definitely out of my usual fare, out of my comfort zone even, and a staple Scandinavian holiday.

And if you never hear from me again, the mosquitoes won the war on mosquitoes. 

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Nude and improved

Disneyland, or World, he couldn't decide, so maybe it's all over the place, ooh, that would mean Disneyland Paris, too, just around the corner, is not just for kids anymore, if it ever was. 

To ramp and vamp it up, there's a new adult ride, courtesy of Ellora's Cave, my alma mater of erotica, as seen in The Huffington Post.