1. 'The Mysteries of Harris Burdick' by Chris van Allsburg. A gift from wonderful Heidi and Hildo, who are here in Norway for Kjeld's wedding on Saturday. It's quite possibly the most beautiful book I've ever seen. If you don't know it, as I didn't, it consists of 15 amazing, mysterious illustrations, which each comes with a title, and one sentence. The rest, you make up yourself.
It is, basically, a book of writing prompts, and a felt my brain jumping and seething like a tea kettle just by leafing through the large, gorgeous pages. My favourite is the same as Heidi's, and the one you see here, entitled 'The seven chairs'. The first sentence goes 'The fifth one ended up in France'.
Wait! Stop! Don't race ahead! You were telling the story, weren't you?
2. The synchronized couple. They were having a coffee with their morning newspapers at a sidewalk café. Both were cool in the Grünerløkka way, you know, young, leather jackets, scarves, flats, indie music sort of emanating from their bent necks, even if they sat there in complete silence.
While I walked by, they didn't talk, or look at each other, or even acknowledge that the other one was there in any way. But they were mirror images, moving in perfect harmony, sipping their coffee in unison, squinting at the papers just so, turning the page at exactly the same time. Like a ballet.
In front of the table, there was a tiny stroller, which I presume contained an equally tiny infant, and for all I know, he or she was also silently reading the paper and sipping coffee down there, completely in step.
3. About 20 big hugs from Balthazar, five or six love winks from Pims, some fancy kicks from Gameboy and my Pan in adequate amounts. Almost.
4. Flawless caramel cocoa from the little cocoa shop on Birkelunden. So good!
7 comments:
Do you remember the time we sat by the window at Påfyll and suddenly, magically people with red jeans and black leather jackets seemed to unknowingly convene on the other side of the street?
And then Stian looked down at his black leather jacket and red jeans and felt an urge to just run over and join them...
That was weird.
That was a treasure :)
Hi Tone, I just read your site after reading the comment you left on mine... 8 weeks off was alot - my company was only required to give me 6 weeks - can you imagine! I am originally from UK - and we get 9 months off and family income benefits and free milk for first year etc... trust me i miss it...
And Battlestar Gallactica - fabulous show - we just had the finale episode here - not sure how I feel about it still - and we just started watching the online show Caprica. And also the original Battlestar got broken out in DVD for some viewing pleasure - and I have to admit hilarity - one scene of Starbuck is filmed with him standing behing a shirtless chubby man with the hairest back EVER!!!
Nice to meet you!
Lorna
it seems I hardly ever leave any comments here, Tone, but I read every post, and I love them all.
you are the best.
Lovely picture. The top one. Gothic cathedrals are just about the Best. Buildings. Ever. I love the way they are stretching upwards towards the sky, even though I do not believe that heaven is what the cathedrals' preachers claim it is. And I love the fact that Man, feeble and poorly equipped, can build cathedrals. Cathedrals are meant to celebrate a deity, but I think they are celebrations of human abilities and dreams.
Glad you liked the book. I got that warm fuzzy feeling welling up inside me as I watched your face as you turned from page to page. It's always hard to know what kind of a gift to get someone you don't really know all that well, but when I saw your response to it, I knew I'd knocked one out of the park, as they say in baseball. I have a couple more in mind to send you once his GameBoyness arrives. I think you'll love them, too. :)
Out of the park, yes :)
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