This is the food of paradise- 0f Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un evenouissement reveille.'



Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient. Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties.... It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.



So reads Alice B. Toklas' recipe for haschich fudge, of which she wrote "anyone could whip up on a rainy day."



There's no better read than a well-written cookbook.



The Swedish word for the day is mellanmål. It means, more or less, snack.



- by Francis S.

Happy second birthday, you old blog, you. Old as far as blogs go, I suppose.



- by Francis S.

I like to think of Sweden as a kind of tolerant utopia, but I'm forced to rethink things when neo-nazis show up and throw rocks at a bunch of homosexualists - we knew there was something wrong when the parade was held up and suddenly seven or eight police cars come whizzing by.



I guess there is no such thing as a tolerant utopia.



The Swedish word for the day is besvikelse. It means disappointment.



- by Francis S.

I think I missed my calling. I should've been a drag king. I could definitely make people believe I was a man, oh yes.



Sadly, I don't think I could quite carry it off as a woman anymore, not that I ever could. Although once, when I was 19, I did get up in drag and showed up with a friend at a Denny's restaurant in Urbana, Illinois. Another friend of mine happened to be there on a first date with a guy he had the hots for, and my other friend and I did it just to make him crazy. It was a most bizarre experience because I definitely looked like a 19-year-old college boy dressed up as a woman, and everyone stared at me and although I didn't notice it at the time, afterwards I was told that every single waitress in the joint took turns waiting on us.



The Swedish word for the day is stolthet. It means pride, and is not considered a particularly desirable thing to have, which may be why Stockholm Pride is not Stockholm Stolthet.



- by Francis S.

As Swedes debate the appropriateness of a Stockholm Gay Pride keynote speaker who happens to be a political leader from the Moderaterna (one of Sweden's right-wing parties, which would be somewhere to the left of the Democrats in the U.S.), George W. Bush is publicly saying that he believes "marriage is between a man and a woman, and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that."



I guess the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act [sic!] just doesn't do enough to keep homosexualists in their place, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that we're no longer criminals.



Isn't America great?



The Swedish word for the day is inte. It means not, more or less.



- by Francis S.

Do you want to know what it’s like being gay in Karachi, Pakistan? There are, according to Jalal, at least two bloggers of the homosexualist persuasion there, a guy called Danial and Jalal.



It sounds as if being gay and 22 and single and in the thralls of one’s family and a less-than-accepting society in Karachi is only slightly different from what things were like for me in Washington, D.C. when I was 22, in 1982. Basically, it’s just a matter of desperately wanting to be in love. At least, that’s how it sounds from what Jalal writes.



So, go give him good advice if you can.



The Swedish word for the day is stöd. It means support.



- by Francis S.

If I were of a more, um, heterosexualist bent (to coin an oxymoron), I think I would fall in love with Amy Sedaris and start stalking her. She really makes me laugh until I cry. Plus, she actually makes and sells cheeseballs and cupcakes to her neighbors. What a gal.



I'm not sure whether it was such a good idea to buy that DVD of the first season of her sitcom "Strangers with Candy", because I've can't stop watching it. Over and over. And until I saw my husband laughing at it, I would have thought it couldn't be funny to anyone who hasn't seen shows like "Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway" and "Alexander, the Other Side of Dawn."



The Swedish word for the day is besatt. It means obsessed.



- by Francis S.

Unlike Rome with only seven hills, San Francisco seems to be built on hundreds of them. And we walked up and down the best of em. Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, Nob Hill, and lots of others that surely have names that we just don't know about. The husband and I are now in excellent shape. Oh, and we had a coupla mojitos with Jane, way too briefly at the top of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.



We saw San Francisco's oldest building, we took the ferry to Tiburon, we saw some art, we even actually found a nice spot in the Castro to laze around in the sun and have a beer and then another and then lunch.



We went shopping, the husband noting that the city must be rich by the kinds of shops we saw. We bought a bunch of DVDs, and cheap t-shirts and socks.



We had lots of food: incredible breakfast, great Mexican, so-so dim sum, tasty soba noodles both hot and cold.



But, without a doubt, the high point of the whole shebang was spending an evening with Aaron and his husband. Aaron, who is a looker, and as funny and charming and vivacious and smart as his writing, and his husband just the same. The two of them brought us to a fantastic Indian restaurant (after some discussion with the cabbie) in the lower Haight. Or was it the upper Haight?



We sat upstairs and gorged ourselves and yakked.



Then, "Wow is that him?" Aaron suddenly said, under his breath, as an elegant and vaguely familiar old guy walked in and smiled at us before sitting down with a younger woman at the table behind ours.



"It is!" whispered his husband.



"Wait, no it isn't..."



But it turned out to be him after all, a fact that was confirmed when another guy showed up, nearly sending Aaron and his husband into silent fits.



"The Color Purple is about our favorite movie," Aaron's husband whispered.



"Actually, " Aaron said sotto voce, hunching over chicken tikka massala and a piece of naan bread, "this isn't the first time I've seen the, uh, younger guy at the table behind us. I was once alone in a hotel gym with him, just the two of us and no one else and he was all sweaty and wearing, well, not enough clothes. Sadly, it was not a pretty sight, no, no. He should definitely not have been wearing spandex."



We laughed.



"It's actually Harry Belafonte I'm really impressed to see," Aaron said. "He was really somebody in his day."



My own husband was unfazed by the whole celebrity sighting bit.



"You guys are crazy, " he laughed. "In Sweden, we treat famous people like everyone else."



Yeah, maybe, but it was exciting all the same to see them. Although not nearly exciting as seeing Aaron.



"Shake, shake, shake, senora," Aaron sang as we said our farewells beside a cab outside our hotel.



And now, we're back and work starts again tomorrow. My four weeks of summer vacation are over.



The Swedish word of the day is färdig. It means finished.



- by Francis S.

I feel guilty when we pop the cork on a bottle of the widow's own bubbly, and then fail to drink it all. My parents, born in the heart of the depression, taught me not to waste anything, and although I constantly let vegetables go to rot and milk turn sour, I do feel guilty about it in the end. And I feel extra guilty about champagne, in this case pulled out to celebrate the birthday of the South African publicist.



I suppose I could follow the advice of Irma Rombauer: "Not every householder has to worry about what to do with leftover champagne, but should this appalling dilemma be yours, there is no better way than this to solve it and make a light but rich sauce for fish or chicken."



What follows, of course, is The Joy of Cooking's recipe for champagne sauce. But, since the husband and I are leaving for San Francisco at the crack of ass, as my friend K. always says, and I have laundry to do, not to mention mentally preparing myself for storming the States, this is no time for sauce.



California, here we come.



The Swedish phrase for the day is klara, färdiga, gå! It means on your mark, get set, go!



- by Francis S.

There's a sweet melancholy at arriving back to the pavements of home after a week on an island filled with lazy late dinners, the sky at midnight still rosy around the edges, the cats bringing mice into the house and making the women scream and jump up on chairs even though the mice were already dead (it was like a parody, I never knew that women actually do jump up on chairs when mice appear on the scene; is it something they learn, or is it instinct?), eating a tart made from blueberries picked in the front yard, reading novels on the terrace and pausing constantly to look at the various sailboats and ferries crisscrossing their way over the sea, playing hearts and being bad winners and poor losers and taking turns entertaining the red-haired baby of the captain and his wife, the accountant.



The city was practically empty when we arrived home. Late afternoon, an overcast summer Saturday afternoon in July and everyone who could had long ago left the city for the month. But we were back, a bit dusty and sad and relieved to be at home.



It is nice to not have to sleep under mosquito netting, no matter how romantic it is to be tucked away with the husband behind white tulle like a couple of country princes in a tiny pine palace in the woods.



The Swedish word for the day is ö. It means island. Simple, huh.



- by Francis S.

When I was eight, my parents sent my brother and I to summer day camp for two weeks. Which was an utter betrayal. It was summer and I was supposed to be free to do what I wanted, but camp turned out to be far worse than school: It was like eight hours of gym, complete with the two best boys picking the teams one by one and me always second-to-last picked. They did throw in a little bit of shop and leatherworking - what someone in 1970 undoubtedly considered was a boy's version of art and music - and I remember having to eat egg-salad sandwiches for the first and the last time in my life.



I must have complained, because I didn't have to go back the next summer.



Strangely enough, in my late teens and early 20s, I became a camp counselor myself for four summers at a special education camp. I was a much better camp counselor than I had been a camper: I kept the kids moving, doing things, learning, entertained. And, it was a helluva lot more fun being a camp counselor than being a camper. I was exhausted at the end of the day, but not so exhausted that I couldn't get drunk with the other counselors after the kids left, making futile passes at the cute counselor with the dark hair (I don't think he even realized what I was doing.)



Now, I'm free again to do what I want with my summer, so we're off for five days or so to Birds Island.



The Swedish word for the day is tid. It means time.



- by Francis S.

Today was the funeral of Alma Eklund.



We didn't go. We'd already had our own going away party for her, three weeks ago this coming Monday. We'd been at Birds Island for the weekend, and as I'd sat by myself - everyone else had gone on a boat ride around the island, even the Siamese cat - I sat in my bare feet, a half-empty pitcher of white wine left on the table behind me in the sun, drooping lilacs, a listlessly fluttering tablecloth, scattered chairs and open magazines, fresh white paint in the house, the endless parliament of the birds, I could feel Alma hovering around me.



We finally left the island to go to a favorite spot of hers, and stood around with a priest reading and then the whole group singing as it began to rain in earnest, as if the whole world were weeping. Everyone came back to our apartment, to grieve and try to blame someone else.



A., the assistant director sent a thumping bouquet of flowers to the funeral today, since we didn't feel welcome somehow. We'd already said goodbye.



Requiem aeternam, et lux perpetua.



The Swedish word for the day is försvunnen. It means gone or lost.



- by Francis S.

The letter arrived in the mail yesterday. They want me to send in my passport, a document proving that I make the salary I claim I make, and to tell them how often and to where I have travelled outside Sweden since February (that would be the U.S. and Hungary).



It looks like the road to becoming a passport-carrying Swede is nearing its end. The chances look damn good that I will actually soon be a citizen of Europe and the U.S.



Good thing they're giving me until Aug. 4 to get this stuff in, since I'll be needing my passport when the husband and I go to San Francisco later this month. The U.S. isn't so nice about letting people in without proper identification. Unlike Sweden.



My friend, the American editor, once came back from a trip to Italy, and when he got to passport control in Sweden it seemed that his green card had expired. He started arguing in Swedish with the woman in the booth, but after about five minutes, switched to English.



"C'mon, I just forgot to get it renewed, you can see I have permission. What are you gonna do, call the police?" he said, wheedling the woman.



"I am the police," the woman said.



She eventually let him in, after a short lecture and a stern warning that he would probably get a fine, which he never did get.



The Swedish word for the day is uppehållstillstånd. It means residence permit, and is signified by a paper pasted into one's passport and is the equivalent of the U.S. green card.



- by Francis S.

At dinner last night with J. and my favorite Finn, and Hannes and A., the assistant director, we got to talking about baby teeth for some reason, and C. the fashion photographer launched into a story about his daughter:



"When she was losing her first baby tooth, it was just hanging by a little piece of skin and she wanted to have it yanked out," he said. "First, we attached the tooth by a thread to a stone and with all the neighbors gathered around, threw the stone off the balcony, but the thread broke and the tooth stayed. Then, we attached it by a thread to an arrow and with all the neighbors gathered around, I shot the arrow but the thread broke again. Then we attached it by a thread to the bumper of a car and with all the neighbors still gathered around, I put my foot on the gas but the thread broke a third time. Finally, we attached it by a thread to a doorknob and her little brother slammed the door shut and bang, the tooth was gone."



It seems that the fourth time is the charm, and not the third.



The Swedish word for the day is tandkräm. It means toothpaste.



- by Francis S.

First the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Bowers v. Hardwick. Now Nancy and Philo have started a one- stop- all- the- homo- news- you- could- ask- for- web- source called Queerday and it looks pretty damn fab.



Things are looking up for us poor downtrodden homosexualists.



- by Francis S.

Saffron is a favored spice in Swedish cuisine, the empress of the kitchen if for no other reason than the fact that it is ridiculously expensive. In summer it is occasionally used to flavor ice cream, which some people find disgusting, but I find a great luxury. So, today I inaugurated a four-week stint of vacation by eating saffron ice cream in a café on Nytorget with the husband, and the priest and the policeman and their baby Signe.



All hail the glory of Swedish law, which mandates a minimum of five weeks of vacation for all. Me, I actually get seven.



The Swedish phrase for the day is lugn och ro. It means peace and quiet.



- by Francis S.

Breaking news: at last, the U.S. Supreme Court knocks down sodomy laws.



It's about, er, fucking time. One small step for homosexualists, one great leap for justice.



- by Francis S.

Hannes is in town, flirting indiscriminately with men and women alike, showing off his movie-star white teeth, wearing a cool blue-jean hat and jacket, and generally being irresistible.



Oh, and he brought along his parents, J., and her boyfriend, my favorite Finn.



"It will be strange to hear Hannes' first words in Finnish," J. said. She mentioned an Estonian acquaintance of ours who lives here in Stockholm and speaks Estonian with her own 2-year-old daughter, but the daughter replies in Swedish.



I suppose it could be a little worrisome, in some small private way, when one's own child speaks another language. Will he understand the subtleties of what I say, will she be hampered somehow or torn between two languages, will he resent me or be embarrassed because I speak Finnish or Swedish or English with a strange accent and can never know it as well as he can?



The Swedish phrase for the day is rädda barnen. It means save the children.



- by Francis S.

The best thing about living two floors above a great chef is the leftovers.



"I'm down at L.'s," the husband said on the phone. "She has something good for you, a little surprise." The surprise turned out to be hot glögg stirred with a stick of cinnamon, and tiny gingerbread men topped with blue cheese and fig jam and slices of fresh fig.



L., the chef, had been filming a pilot for a television series for channel four - a cooking show, of course. They'd filmed her in her apartment preparing for a party with her own version of glögg and gingerbread. Everyone's trying to copy the success of that guy who claims to cook naked but in fact never seems to take his clothes off, dammit. Sweden does have its own increasingly popular home-grown female version of Jamie Oliver, but I think L. could do better. She's a curious mix of funny, serious and enthusiastic, and she's already done well on cooking segments of some of the morning magazine programs.



The Swedish word for the day is pepparkakor. It means gingerbread.



- by Francis S.

Every day I pass various sets of kiosks with advertisements for a local mobile telephone company that sells pre-paid cards, advertisements featuring teenagers drinking piña coladas and speaking into a phone "yes, Dad, I'm having fruit every day" or a girl slipping under the covers with a boy, saying "yes, Mom, I'm going to bed early." But the one that intrigues me most, naturally, is the one with the naked teenagers (you can see one of the guy's pubic hair!) playing miniature golf, the boy on his phone saying "yes, Mom, I'm wearing a hat."



Why wasn't there nude miniature golf when I was a teenager? Not that I probably would've been able to play, on account of my teenage tendency toward, um, priapism. Hell, I guess I would've just settled for advertisements of naked teenagers when I was 16.



Hurrah for nudity. Go, Sweden! (If you're up for a little Swedish conversation, check out what the remarkably observant and always enlightening Erik Stattin has to say about a slightly more controversial advertisement that can be seen here around town.)



The Swedish word for the day is trottoar. It comes from the French and means sidewalk.



- by Francis S.

The husband and I are doomed to yet another summer of rising early. It's because workers arrive every morning at 7 a.m. to blast and pound rocks in the courtyard of our building. It is astounding how much noise is required to lay a circular pattern of rough granite paving stones, checking and rechecking everything with sticks and metal rods and measuring tape in some undecipherable ritual devised to ensure that all the stones will fit properly in their places in the end. At least that's what I hope it's all about.



The Swedish word for the day is morgonpigg. It is an adjective that describes those annoying people who are, for some reason, all perky and chipper in the morning.



- by Francis S.

It was, and it wasn't a proper midsummer.



We took the ferry, a charming old wooden one that creaks and lets in a little water around the edges, and we sat in the corner at a table, happy to have gotten a seat since the ferry was as full as the crew will let it get.



We arrived at Birds Island, and we ate herring out on the porch under the overhanging roof, which protected us, mostly, from the drizzle. We drank vodka and Dutch gin, and we sang a few meager drinking songs appropriate for the occasion, all proper midsummer.



But we were too comfortable up at the house and having fun talking, and it was too cold and wet out in the meadow to bother to jump like little frogs around the midsummer pole out under the grey sky, or to gather seven different kinds of flowers to make midsummer wreaths to wear on our heads. And then we had dinner too late to go out and dance two-by-two on the jetty, although sometime after 1 a.m. I did bring the architect from San Francisco out to my favorite spot at the rocks at the end of the island to sit and watch the sea while the sun prepared to rise.



Late in the evening, O., the 16-year-old daughter of the fashion photographer, was trying out different ways of signing her name, as 16-year-olds sometimes do, and soon we were passing around our own signatures.



"What is that?" A., the assistant director said. They all wondered at the letters I wrote as they watched me sign my name.



"We don't use capital letters like that," said the actor, who had once played Jesus Christ on the stage. Apparently, sometime in the seventies, Swedish schools stopped teaching children how to write upper-case letters in cursive script, and now they are taught only the lower-case letters.



They made me write the entire upper-case cursive script alphabet.



"What about å, ä and ö?" the actor asked. I told him, silly, we don't have those letters in English, but he made me write them anyway.



The Swedish word for the day is handskriven. It means handwritten.



- by Francis S.

Midsummer is nearly here, the holiday that along with Christmas brackets the Swedish year, each feast day sitting solidly in its season and marking off its territory with nearly the same food: cold fish and boiled potatoes and hard alcohol. Of course, to a Swede the food is vastly different, but it all looks frighteningly similar to me, even if I have gotten to almost like herring. Almost.



"It's all downhill from here," I said to C., the fashion photographer. "After Saturday, winter is on its way."



C. laughed a weak little obligatory laugh.



We take the 11 a.m. ferry tomorrow out to Birds Island.



It's supposed to rain all day, and Saturday as well. The sun should come out on Sunday, however, about when it's time for us to leave.



The Swedish word for the day is sommarlov. It means summer vacation.



- by Francis S.

The heart of the city is the most desirable place to live in Stockholm. Which is unlike most cities in the States. Bereft of a middle-class, the typical American city is filled mostly with the poor, plus a smattering of bohemian-types with no children, a few odd rich people and a bunch of gay men. America just doesn't seem to care much about its cities, with huge chunks of urban America left to rot. So, it's nice to live in a place where people think the city is just great. I rarely cross the city lines.



But every so often, I have no choice. Such as this evening, when I had a work function which entailed venturing into the far reaches of Stockholm, a good 15 kilometers from town.



What was so disturbing was not the distance, but that the house I ended up at seemed to fit some bizarre Swedish version of the American dream of a house in the suburbs, complete with two-car garage, a lawn as carefully manicured as the fingernails of Miss America, and a flagpole with one of those long thin triangular Swedish flags.



Have I completely misread the Swedes and what they think is important?



Worse, is this what people really want, the world over, a house with a two-car garage in the suburbs?



I fear that I'm a terrible snob. I sound like a college sophomore.



The Swedish word for the day is kinkig. It means difficult to please.



- by Francis S.

One way of trying to understand the nature of a city is to reduce it to a gender: Paris is a woman, New York a man, for instance.



Stockholm is hard to place, all water and ochre buildings and opened like a heliotrope in the summer sun, but falls on the feminine side of the spectrum by my reckoning.



Now, off to catch the ferry out to the archipelago.



The Swedish word of the day is stadsbo. It means citydweller.



- by Francis S.

Yesterday evening, I went with the architect from San Francisco to see the Naked Chef give a cooking demonstration. The architect had originally gotten the tickets because his husband, the Dutchman, wanted to go. But the Dutchman was in Berlin, and my own husband was working, so it ended up just the architect and I.



The chef was, of course, neither naked nor really demonstrating. He was putting on a show, which seemed to be geared toward the vast majority of the audience: 15-year-old girls. He did cook a little bit, but he also sang, and played the drums, and flirted with the audience (strangely, he did this somehow shamelessly and shamefully at the same time), and didn't seem altogether comfortable on stage.



"What did you think?" the architect asked me as we fled the auditorium.



In typical Swedish fashion, I was circumspect in my judgement. It wasn't what I like, I told him, but it was, in its way, entertaining. And it gave both of us a terrible craving for curry. So we went to Koh Phangan where the decor is authentic Thai - all crazy bamboo and palm thatching and colored lights and the noise of crickets on a tape loop - and the chicken in paneng curry is about as satisfying as it gets.



The Swedish word for the day is kokosmjölk. It means coconut milk.



- by Francis S.

When we arrived at the jetty at Skeppsdal to go to Birds Island on Saturday, C. the fashion photographer was sitting in the little motorboat trying to get the engine to do more than just rev and die. He’d just barely made it over from the island to pick us up, but now it was hopeless and we weren’t going to get anywhere fast. So, we filled the boat with bags and packages, and he set off with the husband, the two of them taking turns rowing awkwardly in a boat not meant to be rowed, with the wrong oars and no proper place to sit.



Nearly an hour later, A. the assistant director and I at last stepped into the taxi boat to make our way to the island. We’d gone maybe a sixth of the way when we could finally see C. and the husband struggling against the shore of some other island, still far from being even halfway home.



When we arrived at the island, A. left with the neighbor in another boat to find them and tow them home.



“We saw the Finland ferry coming up and we were so scared, we just rowed and rowed toward whatever shore we could find,” the husband said afterwards. The ferry, which looks like a skyscraper floating on its side in the water, is no doubt a lethal weapon in this type of situation.



They were exhausted, but escaped with only minor blisters, bruises and scrapes.



The Swedish word for the day is hjältar. It means heroes.



- by Francis S.

Three years ago today, a group of people from Chicago, New York, Washington, Paris, Barcelona, London, Athens and various cities in Sweden gathered to watch a couple of guys get married with the blessing of a priest in the library of the Van der Nootska palace. Then they all ate and drank and made toasts and sang and danced, until the party moved on to Riche.



It's hard to believe it's already our wedding anniversary again. Boy, does tempus ever fugit.



The Swedish word for the day is tredje. It means third.



- by Francis S.

Great. Google is changing me over to the new and improved Blogger. Which means all my previous posts are gone, as well as the archives, and it published today's post twice, plus there's a great big white space at the top.



Hooray for new and improved.

Do you think that in the future we'll write our own novels, make our own movies, design our own games, and record our own songs, all for our own entertainment?



It would be a bit like going back into the past, before radio, when average human beings were inclined to create their own fun - charades and theatricals and singing at the piano - purely because there was little choice in the matter.



I ask only because my brother gave me a CD with a song that he wrote and recorded and mixed himself. A song complete with guitar and bass and drums and synthesizer and background vocals. A song about his middle child:

They're all sitting in the teacher's colored office,

Mommy sniffles at Daddy's tirade.

They're all looking over your latest test scores,

And they're wondering why you don't get better grades.



Torture me more, just keep on talking.

If I shut up we'll go home soon.

I do enough to get through this little school,

I've got stuff I'd rather do.



He's got a lotta potential.

There's nothing that he can't do.

If he would just work real hard,

he could be great one day.



I'm happy the way I am.

Just let me play my game.

Just two more minutes and I'll have a high score.

Why don't you leave me alone?



Your food's getting cold sitting on the table.

Your math homework oughta be all done by now.

Mommy calls you down to dinner once again,

She has to pull the power cord to wake you out of your trance.



I could just kill her,

She didn't let me save my game.

Three hours of my time just flushed down the drain.

I'm not even hungry,

I hate her nasty porkchops.

I've got stuff I'd rather do.



He's always known that the world will need his help.

Someday he'll be great, a hero among men.

The dream of glory burns warm in his mind,

But for now he's just trying to get through level nine...

There's more to the song, but you get the gist.



I suppose you'd have to hear the music and know my brother and my nephew in order to appreciate it all: my brother's pride and understanding and love for his 10-year-old son. But even that probably wouldn't be enough, you'd have to be me. Which is what makes the song so much more satisfying than the mass-produced kind.



I think it would be wonderful if, in the future, we wrote our own songs for our own entertainment.



The Swedish word for the day is självständig. It means self-sufficient.



- by Francis S.

I've never been one to take photographs. I tell people that I don't like to take photographs because I'd rather remember things in my head, but I do in fact enjoy looking at photographs. Maybe I'm must kidding myself. Mostly, I think I don't take photographs because I never remember to bring a camera.



But then C., the fashion photographer, sent over photos that he took in Greece. And there, in the middle of some 36 artfully shot black and white photos, was a picture of a slightly chubby middle-aged guy with grey hair, lying in lounge chair on a beach, reading. A picture of me.



O, the indignity of aging. I can't help thinking that not having a camera is a good thing. But, will the 65-year-old me, if he manages to exist, look at the picture and wonder why it seemed so bad at the time?



The Swedish phrase for the day is fruktansvärd hemskt. It means, more or less, horribly awful.



- by Francis S.

When I lay my head on the pillow at night, I think of my friend Alma. I'm disappointed in her, that she never became a renowned actress that I could brag that I knew her before she was famous. It's small of me, I know, and selfish.



Alma was probably disappointed in some measure as well, and no doubt had the same aspirations for herself; but more likely most of the time she was just trying to make it through the day and through the night.



I'm disappointed in myself. I didn't do enough for her. I never told her how much I admired and respected her.



The Swedish word for the världsberömd. It means world famous.



- by Francis S.

The days are now deliciously long, and the night never gets completely dark. Stockholm is at its balmy best, all blue sky and golden buildings and sparkling water. It's taken me four years to feel for myself the metamorphosis one undergoes when summer hits Sweden. Talk about being born again.



Sunrise: 3:46 a.m.; sunset: 9:47 p.m.



The Swedish word for the day is beslut. It means decision.



- by Francis S.

Did you know you can eat the bundles of spring-green needles that pine trees sport on the ends of their branches this time of year?



"Try them, they're kind of sour," said A., the assistant director, as we walked along the paths of Birds Island.



The needles did taste sour, and not surprisingly, a bit like rosemary. But I can't seem to find any recipes using pine needles, not that the taste was particularly inspiring. I'm surprised that if humans can figure out that olives are edible (have you ever tried to eat a raw olive?), there aren't any recipes that use pine needles, other than for tea. Somehow, I imagined that there must be a restaurant in California somewhere that serves a salad of new pine needles, but I suppose that's too ridiculous even for Californians.



However, I did find some information about flour made from the bark of pinetrees, made by Lapps no less. Eating bread made from pinebark flour doesn't conjure quite the same picture as eating pine needles, however.



The Swedish word for the day is juni. It means June, which was busting out all over Birds Island, all waxy sweet scent of apple- and cherry- and pearblossom, mixed with lily-of-the-valley, lilac and various unidentified bushes with tiny white flowers.



- by Francis S.

We walked through Vitabergsparken yesterday with the priest, the policeman and their daughter Signe, putting our ears up to a birch to better hear a woodpecker yammering away inside the hollow tree. We uprooted tiny maple saplings for the priest to take home and try to turn into bonzais.



"Have you ever flown Cambodian Airlines?" the priest asked us. Amazingly, none of us had.



"The seats aren't bolted to the floor," she said. "That's so they can move them for the sheep. There were a lot of sheep on the flight I took."



We're leaving in a couple of hours, off to Birds Island until Sunday. We are not taking Cambodian Airlines to get there.



The Swedish word for the day is träsmak. It literally means taste of wood, and is used to describe how one's butt feels after sitting on a hard surface, as in I can't sit on this hard Cambodian Airline seat anymore, my butt's getting a really good taste of wood.



- by Francis S.

It's post-Easter Christian holiday time again in this quite secular country. Tomorrow is Ascension, and most of the country is taking an extra day off on Friday and making it a four-day weekend.



We're going out on friday to Birds Island in the archipelago to help A., the assistant director, and C., the fashion photographer, paint their summer house. Apparently, we're going to have to dab every single knothole in the pine panelling with some stain-blocking paint before we get down to business. Lucky us.



The Swedish word for the day is vit. It means white.



- by Francis S.

I've gone Swedish when it comes to mobile phones, or cells as they say over in the, er, Brave New World.



My beloved ancient T28 world phone died a couple of months ago, and I was given a nasty dirty white T29 from our office IT guy as a replacement. The nasty dirty white T29 literally had a screw loose, which couldn't be screwed back in and snagged on everything. After one snag too many, I finally nagged the office IT guy enough that he told me to go get a new one. Which is a Sony Ericsson T68. I have the biggest crush on my T68, even if the husband thinks it's old-fashioned looking. He is not the least bit jealous.



When we ran into our friend I., the former back-up singer for David Byrne, I started crowing about my newfound love.



"I have the same one," she said to me. "I got it from Vodafone. It takes too long after you hang up. But you can have pictures on it that you can take with a camera attachment. When my boyfriend rings, I have it set up so that a photo of his dick shows up on the screen. Do you want to borrow the camera attachment?"



As I've said before, Swedes like taking pictures with their phones.



I'm wondering exactly what kind of picture I should have appear when the husband rings me up, and exactly how difficult it could be to explain during a meeting with a client if I forgot to turn my phone off and he rang me up.



The Swedish word for the day is snopp. It means, um, willie.



- by Francis S.

The cycle is relentless, unstoppable: death and birth. Today is the baptism of Signe, and the husband and I will stand in front of the altar at Kungsholmskyrkan and take turns with her parents, holding her while a priest recites words that have been passed down for at least a few generations. And then, after she's been sprinkled with water, I will read my own blessing over Signe, stolen from Walt Whitman's 1955 preface to Leaves of Grass:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men - go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families - re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

When I wrote to the priest, Signe's mother, that I wanted to read this as my blessing, she wrote back: "Please read it on Saturday and later help us to teach her to do all the things in the poem. It´s full of very good advice..."



I suppose it won't be easy, teaching all these things.



The Swedish word for the day is dop. It means baptism.



- by Francis S.

When I am laid in earth,

May my wrongs create

No trouble in thy breast.

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.



Dido's lament, from Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas, libretto by Nahum Tate





This morning, Thursday, May 22, my friend Alma Eklund killed herself. She was funny, childish, warm, odd, cat-like, startlingly beautiful, an actress just at the beginning of her career and so sure of herself on stage in front of the audiences at the Stadsteatern.



She could be so tenacious. But she wasn't tenacious enough in the end. None of us are, when it comes down to it.



The Swedish verb for the day is att sörja. It means to mourn.



- by Francis S.

When I was 18, my mother gave me an address book for my birthday. I've hauled it from apartments in Champaign, Illinois to Atlanta, from Chicago to New York and to some nine separate apartments and houses in Washington, D.C., finally dragging it to Barcelona and now Stockholm, not to mention countless holidays here and there. It's ragged, and some of the pages are so full I have to put new addresses under people's first names. But I'm unwilling to get a new one because I can't bear to throw away the addresses of the dead.



The man who I helped take care of who died of AIDS in the late eighties. My crazy roommate in Barcelona. My best friend's first lover. The director of the Washington Mozart Choir. My first love. All my grandparents. My uncle Ed, my uncle Gerald, my uncle Wilbur. A guy I hardly knew from film school.



Suicides, accidents, illness, old age.



It's a memorial, and a memento mori, my address book.



The Swedish word for the day is påminnelse. It means reminder.



- by Francis S.

We never made it to Ithaca.



Instead, we spent our days racing about in our little car looking for stony beaches around the island, which was nothing like those bone-dry, whitewashed and blue-doored village dotted islands of the Aegean, islands that one can imagine haven't changed much since the time of Alexander and the age of heroes and capricious gods and goddesses. Instead, Lefkas is green and mountainous and mediterranean and has spectacular and terrifying views in place of charm.



But, we did spend the early afternoon at one empty beach hemmed in by huge krasts in the water where A., the assistant director and the husband waded into the calm sea but were nearly smashed into the rocks when swells suddenly appeared from nowhere, forcing us to grab our clothes and run back up the bluff. We figured that whatever minor god ruled that beach wanted to be left alone. Maybe the age of capricious gods and goddesses hasn't yet ended, at least not on the island of Lefkas.



"It was really scary," the husband said. He and A. had been in the water for only about a minute.



We brought back huge five-liter tins of Greek olive oil, and suntans that had no trouble surviving the plane ride home.



The Swedish word for the day is stranden. It means the beach.



- by Francis S.

Tomorrow morning, we leave for the Ionian islands, off the west coast of Greece. Maybe we'll even make it to Ulysses' home:



Ithaca



When you start on your journey to Ithaca,

then pray that the road is long,

full of adventure, full of knowledge.

Do not fear the Lestrygonians

and the Cyclopes and the angry Poseidon.

You will never meet such as these on your path,

if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine

emotion touches your body and your spirit.

You will never meet the Lestrygonians,

the Cyclopes and the fierce Poseidon,

if you do not carry them within your soul,

if your soul does not raise them up before you.



Then pray that the road is long.

That the summer mornings are many,

that you will enter ports seen for the first time

with such pleasure, with such joy!

Stop at Phoenician markets,

and purchase fine merchandise,

mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,

and pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,

buy as many pleasurable perfumes as you can;

visit hosts of Egyptian cities,

to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.



Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.

To arrive there is your ultimate goal.

But do not hurry the voyage at all.

It is better to let it last for long years;

and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,

rich with all that you have gained on the way,

not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.



Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

Without her you would never have taken the road.

But she has nothing more to give you.



And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.

With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,

you must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean.



C.P. Cavafy, 1911 (translated by Rae Dalven)



Ah, Cavafy; one of the great gay poets.



The Swedish phrase for the day is när och fjärran, which would be translated as far and near although the words are transposed in translation. It happens to be the name of a travel program on Swedish television.



- by Francis S.

Today is Valborg - or more properly valborgsmässoafton, in typical Swedish fashion a holiday that starts on the eve of the actual day - which should be celebrated with bonfires and university students singing "Sköna Maj" and a bit of mild revelry. The holiday may be named for a catholic saint, but it's really just the old Viking holiday to welcome the spring, and is no doubt a lot tamer than it was 1000 years ago, when people believed in the witches that were supposedly wildly cavorting about every April 30.



The husband and I will welcome it with a bowl of soup and a bottle of wine. After a snowy weekend, spring does seem to be here, a fact worthy of celebrating, even in our meager fashion.



The Swedish word for the day is annars. It means otherwise.



by Francis S.

The husband and I have been asked to be godfathers to Signe, the nearly six-month-old daughter of the priest and policeman.



O, how I love babies. Especially Signe.



It's the most pleasing of responsibilities, to be a godfather.



The Swedish word for the day is hedrande. It means honored.



- by Francis S.

Okay, so I lied. It wasn't a skiing wedding, despite it being held in Åre. It was more like a, um, television personality wedding, although it was mostly just the bride and groom who were the television personalities. Oh yeah, and the press, despite all attempts to keep the thing secret. There was lots of press standing outside the church as I ran into the sanctuary, late as always, the last to slip into my seat in the back before groom and his best man walked up to the front of the church. There was even a helicopter with cameramen circling round the wedding party which had been brought up to the top of the mountain for aprés-ski, complete with the sun making its way down to the Norwegian mountains in the west.



The bride was strong and striking and full of laughter, the groom charming and unshaven and a bit worried about whether he liked his suit. The ceremony started 25 minutes late because someone forgot the bouquets for the bride and her maid of honor, and my husband had to run back with the father of the bride to retrieve them from the hotel.



My favorite part during the seven-hour long dinner after the ceremony was when the bride's mother (a pop legend in Sweden) sang to the priest, in her deep whisky tenor, some song about not letting love pass you by. I had earlier stood in the men's room, peeing next to the priest and he had told me he had family, which my husband laughed at when I told him.



"Huh! I'm sure he must be gay," the husband scoffed when I told him. It's not always easy to tell these things, cross-culturally, even if I am an avowed homosexualist myself.



Which is why the song the bride's mother sang was no doubt a message of sorts. I kept watching him as she sang, but I couldn't read at all what he might have been feeling, except that he was no doubt all overwhelmed by the attention and a bit full of himself, a bit scared, at officiating at such a wedding.



The first Swedish phrase for the day is helt fascinerande, which means utterly fascinating. The second Swedish phrase for the day is tusen tack, Elke, which means a thousand thanks, Elke.



- by Francis S.

We're off to Åre for a skiing wedding. Fascinating.



The Swedish word for the day is bröllop. It means wedding.



- by Francis S.

While the Guardian reports that England's young homos have decided that a (small) potbelly is sexier than a stomach with abdominal muscles as well-defined as trigonometric functions, I don't think they were talking about potbellies (even nascent ones) on 42-year-old guys with grey hair.



So I'm on a diet, just like Mig, and making the 45-minute walk to and from the office everyday.



We're going to the Ionian archipelago for a week in May with A., the assistant director and her fiancé C., the photographer, and I want to look good in bathing trunks. Er, make that decent enough.



The Swedish verb for the day is att banta. It means to diet.



- by Francis S.

Budapest has hardly changed in five years: crumbling facades, grand avenues, and those wonderful men's thermal baths, where they give you to wear a little apron that looks like a white dish towel and functions like a metaphorical figleaf. It was me, the husband and a bunch of guys lolling about in hot water and padding around showing off our pale, tanned, hairy, smooth, flabby, skinny, round or nearly non-existant butts. It was humbling, all those butts, not to mention the thought of all the other butts that had been sitting on the same stones for the past 500 years in the same exact place under the same exact shallow dome, with its tiny hexagonal windows and clear and colored glass.



"You feel so connected to history," the husband said. "It's kind of a weird feeling."



Weird, but relaxing. Just what we needed.



The Swedish verb for the day is att bada. It means, of course, to bathe.



- by Francis S.

Once upon a time, I went to Budapest to take the waters at the baths of the great Gellert Hotel. A special price for foreigners (only twice as much as for Hungarians), armies of round little women in white lab coats (even in the men's locker room), and men's thermal baths straight out of a historical porn novel set in Rome, or maybe Turkey.



It's time to go back.



Budapest, here we come for the Easter holidays.



The Swedish word for the day is påskkärringar. It is a word that doesn't have a simple translation, because it refers to the little girls (and a few little boys, I suppose) who dress up as freckle-faced witches and beg for sweets at Easter time.



- by Francis S.

Whenever I arrive in the U.S., the most shocking thing is that everyone speaks English. It feels too simple and not to be trusted, and I find myself translating everything into Swedish in my head, turning myself completely around and making myself crazy.



Which leads directly to the second most shocking thing, which is to find that I've become inarticulate, no matter that my father thinks I am the most garrulous of all his children. I used to be garrulous, now I'm just vague and not so good at explaining myself, so it takes more words to say what I think. I haven't become so European as to give up trying to let everyone know what I think about everything, a trait that is characteristic of us Americans. But it takes an awful long time to do it these days.



The third most shocking thing is that the entire first section of the Chicago Tribune is devoted to war coverage, there are all of three articles out of some hundred that cover anything besides the war. This is actually not shocking, it's to be expected, but it does take the fun out of having a real U.S. paper and the time to read it every morning. And makes me uneasy, because there are many other things going on that people should know about.



It's good to be home again, despite the sleepiness from jetlag. By home I mean, sleeping at the husband's side in Stockholm.



The Swedish name for the day is Jon Blund, who is the Swedish sandman.



- by Francis S.

And now I'm off to America for a holiday.



I hope airport security isn't too painful.



The Swedish word for the day is sticka! It means get lost or beat it.



- by Francis S.

Miguel is back and better than ever. And he's started a group ex-patriot- um, I mean expatriate blog which I am plugging shamelessly, despite the fact that I am one of the members.



- by Francis S.

The stage was tiny and the room intimate, but with an astonishing and potentially distracting view looking down toward the old town. We arrived at the last minute, by invitation of R. the popstar, who sang a couple of her latest hits in a funky arrangement for acoustic guitar and three-part harmony. It was a luxury to be in such a small space, where the singers aren't embarrassed to begin again if they make a false start, where the guy who, I was told, sometimes plays guitar for a great Swedish jazz band, tells the crowd how it feels to be able to hear each individual clap, each separate laugh (strange, he said), where it's impossible not to be charmed when the headliners for the evening - an obscure Swedish singer who told us she once had a hit song in Japan, and her boyfriend, the aforementioned guitarist - sang "There ought to be a moonlight savings time." I was enthralled by that song. I wish I could find the lyrics somewhere.



The Swedish word for the day is igår kväll. It means yesterday evening.



- by Francis S.

I've bought 100 shares of Jessica, 50 shares of Aaron, and 15 each of Nancy and Erik, yet I am worthless myself. O, the shame. I hate it when I get sucked into a new blog game.



The Swedish word for the day is aktier. It means, of course, shares.



- by Francis S.

Museums are a sop to the middle class, who aspire to having objects of great value and sophistication, but basically are dependent on the rich to donate what they don't want, or what society forces them to give up. Me, I'm as bourgeois as can be, I love museums. So, it was with anticipation that I went with the husband to look at Spanish paintings at the National Museet in Stockholm.



I was a bit disappointed at these particular riches on display - they were a bit meager, a bit repetitive. Still, there were the brutal Goya war etchings, aptly timed. But even more touching were side-by-side Velasquez portraits of an infanta and a dwarf. The princess, no more than four years old, was painted with great care and attention to the detail of the cage of a dress she was wearing, and to the velvet curtain behind her, and to the vague sorrow in her young eyes. The dwarf, however, was rather roughly painted in, his clothes dirty and his nose needing to be wiped, a forgotten plaything half-smiling back at the Spanish court painter. One would be hard pressed to choose which child was more pitiable.



The Swedish phrase for the day is parkering förbjuden. It means parking forbidden.



- by Francis S.

I'm slowly but surely working my way toward writer's block, posting less and less, writing things over and over in my head but unable to put them to paper. Or screen. It's a sad state of affairs, being reduced to writing about being unable to write. The absolute lamest of the lame, the bottom of the barrel when it comes to writing, right up there with writing about referrer logs and breakfast menus.



And yet, I refuse to give up. There are in fact things to be said about my birthday dinner last night, with the fashion photographer's children discussing the war and Swedish reluctance to make a fuss with the guy from the Goethe Institute. And today's coffee with the priest and the policeman, cooing over their 5-month-old daughter, the priest teaching my husband how to knit and telling us "this year, I'm not growing flowers on the terrace. There will be 15 kinds of grass instead."



The Swedish word for the day is tom. It means empty.



- by Francis S.

Spring has arrived, with a vengeance, or as much as a vengeance as spring can have in Sweden. It's warm, relatively speaking, and sunny, and it was glorious to take a day off yesterday and wander around the city, stopping in a konditori to have coffee and a sweet, and to have A. the assistant producer telling me that Lenin lived in Stockholm, and that he bought a worker's cap in Åhlens (or was it an overcoat from PUB?) that he wore in one of the many well-known photos of him. I feel so good, I even felt sorry for the honey bee that flew numbly into the kitchen when I opened the window last night, hearty enough to have buzzed around during the day, no doubt, but the cold night was too much for any insect, I suppose.



You'll notice I made a slight adjustment to the short autobiographical note to the left.



The Swedish word for the day is året. It means the year.



- by Francis S.

Last night A., the assistant director and her fiancé, C. the fashion photographer, were over for pad thai and afterwards we forced them to watch Pink Flamingos (to be honest, we were only going to watch a few choice bits but ended up seeing the whole thing).



The husband said "It's an art piece," but I insist it's a comedy, a Dogme film ahead of its time, outside of the realm of art. Or the realm of anything, really.



A. managed to laugh through most of it, although she couldn't watch the chicken scene or the part where Divine eats dogshit.



Afterwards, we watched the trailer for the movie, which consisted solely of interviews with people as they came out of the theater. One guy said, "John Waters has his finger on the pulse of America, and his thumb up its ass."



That quote should be in Bartlett's. And it's something to aspire to.



The Swedish word for the day is fiffig. It means ingenious.



- by Francis S.

Stockholm's pulse slows down to nearly nothing in the dark months of winter, speeding up only with the advent of the sun as the vernal equinox is passed. It's taken a couple of years, but my heart now seems to beat nicely in synchonicity with Stockholm. Which is not to say that it's nice. Going into hibernation is a numbing experience, just this side of depression.



Last night, the husband and I made one last play at staving off the sadness of winter, which I desperately hope is in its death throes, spending a night in the brightly lit kitchen, making empanadas of beef and sultanas and garlic and onion and tomato and egg, just like his mother used to make. It is a luxury to spend a late afternoon and evening preparing elaborate food, remembering that gathering and preparing food took all the time and energy of our ancestors. Remembering that we could be living just now in a hinge of time, our fingers stuck in the door of a war that could mean profound changes for us, difficult changes, ugly changes. Or mean nothing, nothing at all. Did it feel like this when the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated? One never knows until afterwards.



In lieu of certainty, we're now giving the apartment what I hope is a spring cleaning, the windows wide and the sun streaming in, unstoppable.



The Swedish word for the day is påtaglig. It means obvious.



- by Francis S.

Although there is no apparent connection to the massing of armies on Iraq's borders, it is nonetheless unsettling to see Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria all done up in camouflage garb and face paint for her military training.



Are we on the brink of a new age of anti-diplomacy, the United States against the world?



The Swedish word for the day is lumpen. It is a slang word for the compulsory military service required of Sweden's young men, and apparently its Crown Princess as well.



- by Francis S.

The church in Huddinge has little to distinguish it from hundreds of other Swedish churches: It's small, spartan, built of stone with stucco walls, 900 years old. It is a thing of simple and great beauty.



There are a few obvious later touches, such as electric chandeliers and wooden pews with panels painted to look like marble (or painted to look like they were painted to look like marble, rather than to actually look like marble). I find myself wondering, as I sit behind a chamber orchestra in the middle of a rehearsal for a performance of Bach's Magnificat at the church in Huddinge, what exactly would be most shocking to a Swede from the year 1100. Would it be the baroque trumpeter playing games on his mobile phone during the movements where he doesn't have to play the trumpet?



It is the husband's birthday today. I can't tell exactly how much he's joking when he says it feels awful to turn 34.



The Swedish word for the day is sliten. It means worn.



- by Francis S.

I've lived most of my life in cities, and I grew up in the suburbs, where the lights from the houses and offices and streetlamps obscure the stars. If I lived in the country, I could learn the night sky. I've always felt a bit sorry that I've never really seen the Milky Way as a smudge of white, never learned the constellations except Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.



But it's still not enough to tempt me.



I'm an urban kind of guy.



The Swedish verb for the day is att undvika. It means to avoid.



- by Francis S.

Oh, yeah. That guy from Textism got the Best European or African 2003 Bloggie Award.



I voted for Duncan, and then I was hoping that D. would actually win.



Oh, well. Next time. Congratulations to the guy from Textism.



- by Francis S.

If I were a real man, I would've given up English for Lent.



Unfortunately, I'm spineless, controlling and pathically devoted to my mother tongue. I'm also wallowing daily in utter shame and self-pity because after four years of living in this comfortable city not far from the arctic circle, choir rehearsal is the only place I really speak my mediocre Swedish without switching back and forth to English as soon as I feel the least bit frustrated at not being able to express exactly what I think. Is it really perfectionism - wanting to get everything right all the time and without a trace of an accent - that's doing me in?



I've turned into the thing I dreaded when I moved here: the American who doesn't bother to speak the language.



Woe is me.



You can hit me now.



The Swedish verb for the day is att sparka. It means to kick.



- by Francis S.

The evening started in L.'s apartment with a mojito - the husband and A., the assistant producer and C., the fashion photographer, and R., the r&b star, and L.'s boyfriend, and me.



It was a dinner of lamb with prunes, and couscous, and blood oranges, and almonds. And then there was lots of red wine, and everyone talking at once, agreeing and disagreeing about exactly how much manic despression is due to chemistry and how much it is due to sociology, about overpopulation and personal responsibility and sorting one's trash for recycling, about Michael Jackson and his ability or inability to influence the media, and we went round the table and gave out our middle names, those of us who have them.



"I have a great story," A., the assistant director said. "You know the actress is still playing the maid in A Doll's House. Well, the other day, during the performance while the lead actors were in the middle of their dialogue, a mobile phone rang in the audience and the guy actually answered it and everyone could hear him say: 'I'm at the theater. Mmm-hmmm. So-so...' It was all they could do not to burst out laughing, they just had to keep on playing . But afterwards, the whole cast laughed their heads off."



It's great to know that actors have a sense of humor about this kind of thing.



The Swedish verb for the day is att bli. It's a verb that doesn't translate so easily - it means to be or to become, and I misuse it often, as it's used when a change of condition is implied as far as I can tell. Att vara means to be when no change of condition is implied. I suppose there's some kind of rule about when to use which form, but mostly I learn it by listening.



- by Francis S.

From: "Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer"  

| This is Spam | Add to Address Book

To: francisxstrand@yahoo.com

Subject: Hola Francis XXX Strand

Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 22:39:58 +0100 (CET)



Hi Francis.



I love your page, I love what you write, I love you! Sorry, but thats

the truth. I am a nice guy from Albania, Tirana that couldnt help myself

from becoming obsessed with you and your website. I have to admit that

I actually went to Sweden to try to find you, not much luck.

I am in Sweden again now to star in a couple of arty

flicks. Yes I am a gay porn star, but everything I do have to have some

deeper spiritual meaning and a lot of subtext going on, I cant stand

does superficial flicks were they just f^^^ and suck, I think sex, poetry

and something to say about life is the best ingrediences for a

successfull gay flick. Dont you agree? We are starting the shoot off the first

flick at the end of next week "A fluffers confession" then two days

later we will shoot "Being Johns Malcockwitch" followed by "Bed man

walking". All three flicks are intellectual masterpieces, very well wri

tten and with something deep and profound to say about life and the

society we are living in. The intellectual viewpoints that inspired the

creation of these flicks are based upon the philosophy by Aristotle,

Karl Marx, Jesus and Jeff Koons. Yes, you have guessed it, I am a

co-writer:)What I wanted to ask you was if you would like to star in one of the

flicks. I was on my way to approach you yesterday when I was waiting

outside your office, but I thought you might get upset if I

didnt contact you before approaching you. I have stared in a flick called

"Stalking Johnny Depp", it was based on a real stalking scenario and I

learned that it wasnt a very good idea. I will come by your office

monday and maybe you can show me around stockholm and we can have lunch. I

am quite tall, I wear blue leather pants and I have a large beard. My

name is Genc Xhelaj, you can search google and find some interesting

information about me and my life.



Kisses & Hugs.



Genc Xhelaj.



Oh, M., my favorite movie producer.



I guess someone isn't keeping you busy enough in London.



The Swedish phrase for the day is att smeka, which means to caress or fondle.



- by Francis S.

It was about as fat a Tuesday as I could handle. I'm too old for Mardi Gras or Carnival, it seems, but not too old for Sweden's version of the holiday: one simply stuffs oneself with semlor, sweet buns filled with almond paste and rich cream. Which we did with A., the assistant director and C., the fashion photographer at their apartment last night. It's the one place that feels as much like home as home.



Now it's time for forty days of dourness and denial.



The Swedish word for the day is fastan. It means Lent.



- by Francis S.

I've never had to commute to work before, I've always lived a 20-minute walk from whatever office I was working at. Until now.



I'm having to re-think my love of trains. And I'm wondering why anyone would ever live farther than a 20-minute walk from work, because the years of a lifetime spent commuting are the equivalent to years spent in hell. At least if the subway is crowded. Otherwise it's a kind of vaguely malign purgatory. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to drive every day, sitting in traffic with no escape.



Maybe it's time for the husband and I to move.



I know, I'm a spoiled brat.



The Swedish word for the day is att skjutsa. It means to give a ride to.



- by Francis S.

Poor February.



When Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar and freed it from the lunar cycle, he made the months 30 or 31 days long. But there weren't enough left to give the final month of the Roman year, February, its full due and it got only 29. Later, the 30-day month of Sextillus was renamed for Augustus Caesar and became August, but in order for it to equal the splendor of Julius Caesar's month of July with its 31 days, a day was stolen from February to make up the difference, leaving it with only 28 (most of the time). I'm fascinated at how we're still ruled by the Romans.



Poor February.



The Swedish phrase for the day is ingen orsak. It means no big deal.



- by Francis S.

As I stood on the subway platform at 8:15 p.m., changing trains at Slussen, I looked up and standing in front of me was a charming man with green eyes, dark and unshaven and smiling. It was the husband, who had been on the same train as I, two cars ahead.



Funny how this small surprise was like a gift out of the blue. We left the subway at Medborgarplatsen and had dinner at Indira, which I like to think of as the McDonald's of the Farmer Street, where we live.



It was just like a date.



The Swedish verb for the day is att ropa. It means to yell.



- by Francis S.

Lord knows I'll regret noting this, but there's a web poll currently up at the website of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's largest daily newspaper, where it appears that 59 percent of those polled believe that the United States is the biggest threat to freedom in the world. Iraq comes in at 18 percent, and North Korea at 15 percent.



I guess George W. doesn't care what a little country like Sweden thinks.



I wonder how the English or the French or the Germans or Australians or Thais or South Africans or Peruvians would respond to such a poll?



The Swedish phrase for the day is det beror på.... It means that depends on....



- by Francis S.

We went with C., the fashion photographer and R., the R&B star, to see Far from Heaven, with which we were all duly impressed. The conceit of producing a 1950s film with characters forced to deal with situations that were unfilmable 50 years ago was overwhelming. All those perfect red leaves and perfect red "New Look" dresses, all that repressed emotion.



Afterwards, we watched the semifinals for Sweden's competition to select its entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, a strange phenomenon that I couldn't begin to describe to Americans, who are for the most part completely unaware of its existence. Cheesy pop music at its worst - uh, I mean, best.



I still can't decide if the juxtaposition of the two events was ironic or not.



The second Swedish word for the day is schlager. It is the kind of music sung by Sweden's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.



- by Francis S.

One of the great strengths of American culture is its optimism. Americans are, as a whole, inclined to look on the bright side of things. Unfortunately, Swedes could never be accused of such a trait. Even the language tends toward the negative - things are "not too bad" rather than "good."



Being an optimistic American, sometimes the constant looking at what has gone wrong and what could go wrong here can make me crazy.



It was a hard week at work, for some reason. I'm not looking forward to going into the office at 9 a.m. tomorrow.



The Swedish verb for the day is att våga. It means to dare.



- by Francis S.

A bunch of Swedish guys, led by Torgny Bjers, are rapidly creating a web community for Swedish bloggers (in Swedish only, of course). It's fascinating to watch it develop. If only I knew more about RSS feeds and pinging and trackback functions...



- by Francis S.

As I lean out the kitchen window, cigarette in hand, worried that if I lean too hard on the window sash it will somehow give way and I'll fall, the blue-black night sky turns the courtyard into a place of romance. During the day, it's all scraggly bushes, lonely bicycles and trash cans. But at night, the lights in the windows of the buildings surrounding the courtyard, and the silhouettes of the various cupolas and mansards and odd corners and chimney pots of the roofs charm me into thinking, ever so briefly, that I'm living in a fairy tale, and I stop worrying about falling.



The Swedish phrase for the day is stor skillnad. It means big difference.



- by Francis S.

On Saturday, the husband was the emcee for a big fashion event, and I watched him preside over the evening while I sat safely in my anonymous seat amongst 800 other people, eating risotto and drinking champagne and watching models careening up and down a runway, worried that they would trip over their impossibly high heels on account of their hair was in their eyes and they were trying so hard to look cool.



As the night wore on and more beautiful women catwalked their way in front of us, I pointed at a model and whispered to A., the assistant director, that I thought this particular model was sexy.



"Ew, no, she's not," A. said with horror.



Yeah, but look at those pouty lips, and they're real, too, I said.



"Ew. Ew!"



Yeah, right. Both of us are real experts on sexy women, I whispered to A., and she laughed out loud.



The husband, who had never done this kind of emcee thing before, was brilliant.



The Swedish word for the day is uppfattning. It means understanding or apprehension.



- by Francis S.

I'm no supporter of the U.S.'s bullying the rest of the world, or a war on Iraq, or George W. Bush, who inspires a visceral disgust in me - his voice alone sets my teeth on edge.



So I suppose I should be at Norra Bantorget right now, where stands Stockholm's contingent of the world protesting today against the undoubtedly soon-to-be-declared official war, a protest that is as much about Iraq as it is about the U.S. imposing its will on the rest of the world, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks or feels. And if I were living in America, I would be out there protesting somewhere.



But living here, it feels as if it would be disloyal, no matter how much I disagree with current U.S. policies. I guess I'm more patriotic than I ever dreamed I was, but I wonder if this is actually some form of cowardice, an unwillingness to act on my beliefs. I am, in fact, utterly confused by it.



The Swedish word of the day is mot. It is a preposition that means, among other things, against.



- by Francis S.

Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.



I Corinthians 13, v. 4-7



Yeah, yeah, it's the Bible, I know. But it's still the best description of love that I can think of.



The Swedish word of the day is, of course, kärlek, which has assuredly been the Swedish word of the day before. It means love.



- by Francis S.

What with all the war talk from George W. and nasty rhetoric about Europe being a continent of terrorism aiders and abettors, I thought I better get my Swedish citizenship application in. Not that I have to give up my U.S. citizenship, but as long as I'm here, and all it takes is filling out a four-page form, and paying 150 dollars, why not avail myself of the opportunity? Somehow, I would rest easier at night knowing I had a Swedish passport.



The Swedish word for the day is försäkring. It means insurance.



- by Francis S.

If you squint hard, and ignore all the heavy clothes you and everyone else are wearing, and the boots, and the fact that it's freezing out, trudging through the snow of an unshoveled sidewalk can almost seem like walking on a sandy beach. Or so says the South African publicist.



The Swedish word for the day is slask. It means slush, and should not be confused with the word slusk, which means a shabby fellow.



- by Francis S.

... and another great thing about Sweden: Where else could you watch a mainstream movie in which the (young and attractive) star spends half of the movie completely and utterly naked, balls to the wind? (Granted, the movie is a ripoff of Groundhog Day, after a fashion, and the acting is pretty mediocre, but hey, you can't have everything). I can't believe the husband and I didn't bother to watch this movie until long after it came out on DVD.



The question is, would this movie be rated X in the States because of the dick factor?



The Swedish word for the day is muskelknuttar, a word I had to look up in my English-Swedish dictionary because I have never heard anyone use it before. It means beefcake, although I suspect that many Swedes might actually be more likely to use the English term.



- by Francis S.

Cold-hearted bastard that I am, some events fail to move me, yet there have been moments that have changed the course of my personal history, purely due to their affect on me.



Like the time I was five, and I happened upon an art book on Michelangelo - looking at a photograph of the famous statue of David, I wanted to be David and to have David at the same time, and it made me feel all torn up inside in the most delightful way: I discovered my sexual self, and I felt in my heart that it was good.



It's not true that small children are not sexual beings, which is not to say that pedophilia isn't an awful thing.



The Swedish word for the day is känslig. It means sensitive.



- by Francis S.

Personal tics can drive a person crazy. Or they can be endearing.



I love how the husband delicately touches the tip of his right index finger to his tongue before he turns each page of, say, a script. He looks like a librarian.



I've thought of getting him a rubber fingertip, the color and texture of the balls we used on the playground when I was in the third grade.



The Swedish word for the day is spex, a longstanding personal request by Linnéa, one of two Swedish librarians with wonderful weblogs (the other is Erik). There is no neat and clean one-word translation, unfortunately - my big Norstedt's Swedish-English dictionary defines it as a student farce or burlesque - it is surely the equivalent of Harvard's Hasty Pudding Club nonsense.



- by Francis S.