Happy Birthday

Our beloved Serina was 25 a week ago. We usually celebrate a birthday for 24 hours. Opening presents at midnight. No wonder Serina was a bit tired for breakfast. The menu was red gel, strawberry dipped in chocolate and Californian Rose wine.

 

With her birthday crown she looked exactly ten years old.

 

Red lipstick after breakfast nap. Isn't she lovely? She's also painted the scenery of the narrow roads to Sauda standing to the left.

 Birthday child posing with a glimpse in her eye. "I'm finally old enough to wear my glasses in a string", she mocked.

 A penny for your thoughts. Maybe the bitter sweet poem by Irish  William Butler Yeats?

When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
  
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

Photo  © 2012 by Magical Mystical Teacher

JOY OF FALL

I don't even know the name of this tree. We didn't plant the garden originally.
When we talk of "the tree" this is what we are referring to. A four season beauty.

Summing up summer

 
Alone

When the mind is barren

When joy is no more

And memories sit inside

By empty, forgotten nests, -

When sorrow by longing grows

And pleads and kneels

When chance of fear meets

Which sinks all down

Into dark depths of weeping and woe

And breaks the last trembling bridge

Then stay with me, then stay with me,

Then pray for me, then pray for me

For faith, faith, faith!

Norwegian author Olav Aukrust 

Translated by Serina Ljung 

Life has been a rough ride this summer, mostly due to illness among everybody in my little universe, my close five finger family. 

When the nights are long and the pillow feels like a stone, too many sad thoughts are building nest in my head. I asked Serina to translate one of my many favorite poems. The picture is from our garden. I've made feet of stone on thrift wood, one for my mother and one for Serina.

Land of Elves

Ten days ago (oh, how time flies)several cousins and our spouses gathered at the school where our parents went a lifetime ago. We had a gathering 16 years ago, and later on have only met occasionally. The last years we have mostly met in funerals. It was actually in a funeral a month ago it was decided we needed to meet and have a good time together. Great success.

Gunnar and I decided to stay at a seasort hotel for one more night. As so often we went out to catch the magic of the sundown by the sea.
Arne Garborg, my mother's favorite poet , has described the sundown like no one else.

"From sea a land of elves arise,
with peaks and moors" the first stanza goes.
That is why the scenery in which my mother grew up is called Land of Elves.

Magical Mystery Teacher is hosting Ruby Tuesday 2 together with Gemma Wiseman

It Is That One Dream

 It is that one dream

It is that one dream we all hold

That something wonderful will come,

Needs to come along?

That the time will come

That the heart will open

That doors will open

That the mountain will open

That springs will spring

That the dream will open

That we one morning will glide

right into a bay we did not know.

The poem is written by one of my favorite poets, Olav H. Hauge and on my request translated into English by Serina Ljung.

Pictures from the island at Ferkingstad beach.

 

REGIFTING

I cannot say I entirely buy all stuff Gibran has written. This poem has, however, been important to me since I first read it in the early seventies.

On Children
Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Vaugely I was

The art of letting go

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson


Gunnar took these photos of one my toughest partings. July 23rd 2011.
The day after the right wing terrorist, whose name I will not bother to mention, robbed Norway for its innocence and turned our world upside down.
We were to meet with our daughter to watch a Shakespeare play in wonderful Rosendal. Our two day vacation. Serina had a summer job in TV2, Bergen. She was among the first to know. I forbade them to turn on the telly, if we were going to see the play afterwards. I simply could not do both. We only knew about the bombing then. I was hysteric about it. The news would reach us soon enough. We needed each other now.
While I was in complete denial, the murderer went around shooting young, defenseless teenagers through their head.

The next day the joyful summer village was totally silent. People whispered. I didn't want to part. I offered to go with her. I by and by understood my daughter was turning into an adult before my very eyes.

P.S. Like Emily Dickinson I know of Immortality.

I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.

Emily Dickinson

Pictures shot by Gunnar Jacobsen.

Magical Mystery Teacher is hosting Ruby Tuesday 2 together with Gemma Wiseman