In Broken English

- You said before that you’ve always been able to tell a story, but that you had to learn how to write. Please explain how you went about learning.
- I went to the poets. I read poetry, I listened to it on tape, I read it out loud. I tuned my ear to the music of language. Then I read my own prose out loud and could hear whether it cut the mustard.

Author Janet Fitch (who wrote White Oleander) is being interviewd about her writing.

It’s 5.30 in the morning and I can’t sleep. I woke up half an hour ago and decided there was no use staying in bed. So I stepped up and made coffe and started to read som blogs insteads. In Emmas blog I stumbeled on this test which I had to try - and found out I’m…

You’re Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you’ve had your mind opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser, you have to ask yourself what’s real and what’s the picture of illusion. Little is coming to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that it’s starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.
Which book are you?

I have to admit I haven’t read Alice in Wonderland, although it is considered a classical. Maybe I should do that now? By the way, I’m hoping to get accepted at an summer college class in English, starting in three weeks from now! It focuses on grammar and translation and should be a good thing for me in order to improve my language skills.

I just finnished reading The bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I can just say one thing - this is a wonderful book about love and please read it! Oops, that was two things. Anyway, I’m so happy I finally did read it, it has been put away in my book shelve for years without me paying any attention to it. Until a couple of days ago.

Apart from being a wonderful story about love, the book got me thinking about some things:

Infidelity When do you cross the line? Is it okey inviting a man for dinner when you’re husband is not home? Is infidelity only the-going-to-bed part?

Love Is it worth giving up the love of your life becuase you are afraid the village gossip would break down the family if you create a scandal by running away from home?

Honesty After her death, Francesca writes a letter to her both children Carolyn and Michael, explaining about the love affair she had with Robert Kincaid all those years ago and how much it meant to her. She also explains that without meeting him, having those wonderful 4 days together, maybe she wouldn’t have been able to stay with them on the farm for such a long time. A affair that keeps the marriage together, what a contradiction. She askes them to understand this and to accept Robert as a part of their family. She ends her letter like this:

Robert Kincaid taught me what it was like being a woman in away that few women, maybe none, will ever experience. He was fine and warm, and he deserves, certainly, your respect and maybe your love. I hope you can give him both of those. In his own way, through me, he was good to you.

As a child I think I would have some difficulties understanding why my mother’s lover should have a place in the family. But maybe that is possible? Then it definately deserves recognition. It’s a way of looking at the family and its consisting parts that reminds me of the German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger’s theories.

Hellinger looks upon the family as a system and all persons within this system have to be recognised. If someone for some reason is shut out, this influences the whole system and most probably someone else will try and take that persons place. In this case, maybe Michael or Carolyn would feel their mothers lost love and somehow, without knowing, trying to compensate her. This leads to a disturbance in the system. Hellinger also includes former lovers. If a person was a big part of your life, he or she too deserve a place in the family.

After the first chock, maybe reading the letter Francesca left is a relief to her children. Now they finally get to know a part of her she shut them out of when she was alive. And Carolyn gets an explaination to the strange fight about the pinkt dress they had when she was a teenager.

More blogs on The bridges of Madison County:
Ingrid got an assignment to write a reader response about book.
Priyanka Kumar identifies herself with Robert Kincaid.
Catwomen mixes a review of the movie and the book.

“Everybody has an online identity whether they know it or not, and a blog is the single best way to control it,” she says. “You’re going to be Googled. No one hires anyone or buys anything these days without going online first and doing research.”

says Debbie Weil, a corporate blogging consultant in Washington and the author of The Corporate Blogging Book in an interview in Wall Street Journal. I find this statement interesting, usually this is the advice given to companies or organisations in trouble. “It’s better that you speak to the media and give your side of the story, otherwise they will only speak to your opponants and print their version”.

So in order to get a job nowdaws, you need a blog to prove your competent enough. But watch out, recently a guy in Sweden didn’t get a job because his presumtive employer found his girlfriend’s blog where she wrote “I hope he doesn’t get the job in Norrköping because I don’t want to move there”. He found out when the company returned his application and attached to it was a printout from the blog with this sentence underlined. Read the article from Siftidningen in Swedish here.

Conclusion: blogs can help but also be a hindrance in getting your dream job!

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Shogun by James Clavell
Flashman by George McDonald Fraser

Instead of travelling around with their caravan this year, my parents decided to put it at a caravan site for the whole summer. They also bought a large tent which they’ve attached to the caravan, so they have enough room for everything. This makes it’s more of a summer house than a caravan actually We went to visit them this weekend to check everyting out. The caravan site is in Varberg, on the west coast of Sweden and located just next to the sea. It takes about 3 minutes to walk down to the beach from where they live. Which we of course did although it’s far too cold to go swimming yet. I really long for the summer! Maybe you can tell from the photo above, I just had to take my shoes off and try how cold or warm the water was…

I finally made some improvements to this blog. I have had a bad conscience for a long time beacuse it looks so boring but today I did some minor changes and it already feels alot better I put a photo on top and changed some of the colors. I like the green tint but I am not quite sure about the blue yet. It feels very baby blue…

I took my bike and went for a tour today. The city was calm and quiet, not much traffic at all. I ended up in Sibbarp, sat down on a rock and watched the Öresund bridge and people walking by. Enjoyed the sun. Longing for the summer. Read my book: The bridges of Madison County.

Is it possible to be creative in a language that is not your mother tounge?

Thanks to Elin, I found a course called Creative Writing at Malmö högskola. I applied of course, since this is a subject that interests me alot. When I lived in Innsbruck in Austria and tried to learn German, I took a similar class which included one writing assignment every week. Although this course wasn’t compulsory, I took it very seriously and spend more time writing then doing grammar and other boring stuff. Now I want to try the same thing with English!

Unfortenately, the class doesn’t start until August so yesterday I went to the library to get some inspiration. I found Write from the heart - Unleashing the Power of Your Creativity.

Writing in English or German is like walking around without glasses for me.
I’m not totally helpless.
I usually manage to get to where I want.
After making a couple of wrong turns…
I envy those with better skills, but I realise they haven’t gotten there without hard work.
So I guess I have to start somewhere… why not right here, right now?

One might think I abandoned this blog but that is not true. Blogging in English is hard work for a Swede like me and in the last 14-15 months or so I just didn’t find any inspiration… To prove that this is a viable blog I will now report from my visit to Copenhagen last week! I went there with a friend of mine and we took the train from Malmö. It was a hot and sunny day so we both made sure to bring bottles of water with us. After arriving to Køpenhavns Hovedbanegård (the Central Station that is) we first went to the Tourist Center to find some maps over the city. I happen to love maps and also hate to get lost - a good combination for a tourist. We decided to follow a D-I-Y tour that we found in one of the leaflets and started walking.

In front of Church of Our Lady I found this beautiful statue. I’m not sure what it shows but I like the people seem to come out of the stone and how the sun reflects on the figures.

In Rosenborg Castle Garden we took a short break in the shadows of a tree. Becasue of the great weather in the last couple of weeks the grass in the park was no longer green. The Castle itself is from the beginning of the 17th century and reallly looks like a castle from the fairytales.

We kept on walking and after a while we reached Nyboder, a collection of small yellow houses build 1631-41, originally to house the crews of the royal navy and, according to the leaflet, which they still do today. The houses were co cute! I took several photos and I can definately see myself living in one of them.

Then finally, we reached the goal of our long, long walk through the city: The Little Mermaid! She was smaller then I expected and it was actually difficult to take her photo without getting 300 other tourists on the same picture

Then we started walking along the water back to the central part of of the city. After a refreshing beer at the City Hall Square we took the train back to Malmö. We had a great day and I will definately return to discover more of Copenhagen. Meanwhile I put some more pictures on my Flickr-account.