Nangijala

This summer my daughter is reading Astrid Lindgren’s The Brothers Lionheart for the first time together with me. I’m revisiting this childhood favorite after nearly 25 years. Written in 1973 it’s nearly as old as me but still a magical and wonderful book to introduce to young readers.

The story tells about Karl/Kalle or Skorpan, a 10 year old sick boy (he probably has tuberculosis) and his 13 year old brother Jonatan who live with their mother in Stockholm, Sweden. Karl (or Scotty in the English translation after biscotti) knows that he is going to die one day. Jonatan tries to console him by telling him that dying is not “lying under the ground somewhere” but instead your soul in the shape of a white pigeon flies to a land called Nangijala where he no longer will be sick and where his brother will join him for adventures in a land of “campfire and storytelling”. One night a fire emerges in the building where the brothers live and Jonatan tries to rescue Karl by jumping out from the third floor. He dies in the attempt but saves his brother. Two months later Karl is visited by a white pigeon by his window sill and he takes it as a sign that Jonatan has come for him. He dies that night and finds himself outside a cottage in the Cherry Valley in Nangijala. Karl and Jonatan go on many adventures and they meet a farmer Mattis who become a father figure for them. But even in Nangijala, on the other side of the mountain in the Thorn Rose Valley the evil Tengil with his dragon Katla holds power. Jonatan and Karl join the resistance force against Tengil and Jonathan kills Katla in the end but is wounded by her fire that will slowly kill him. In a leap of faith Karl decides to carry Jonatan on his back and fly to the land of Nangilima where they will see the light.

The Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002) wrote over 100 books since her first publication in 1944, a year before she published her most famous children’s book Pippi Longstocking. Over 50 of her books have been translated into English and you can find Astrid Lindgren’s book in almost 60 languages. Other famous books are Emil from Lønneberga, Ronja The Robber’s Daughter (Ronja Rövardotter) Mio My Mio, Seacrow Island (Vi på Saltkråkan) and Madicken, most of them describing small town family life in Sweden.

The Brothers Lionheart is one of her darker novels. It deals with sickness, death, betrayal and evil and many cautious parents were questioning this at the time of its release. Some critics claimed the author romanticizes death and especially suicide. Astrid Lindgren once said she did get the inspiration for the story at a graveyard where she once saw a gravestone for two brothers. In a response to the critics she writes in a letter from 1975:

"It is clear that children had a great wish for tales and preferably these kinds of exciting tales. Right now I am swamped with letters from children - from several countries - that love the Brothers Lionheart. Never before have I received such a strong and spontaneous reaction on any book."

I was about the same age as Karl when I read this book for the very first time and a few years older than my daughter is today. I didn’t really questioning the fact that both the brothers die. What I related to was Karl’s special bond to his brother and their love for each other. Secondly I loved the land of Nangijala and the adventures and stories of bravery, betrayal, loyalty and evil in this fantasy land, the same way my daughter who is 7, now does. Parts of the story I had to explain to her after we read it, especially the beginning. But then she said, she gets it. She likes the idea that I also used to read this story when I was young.

Many of Lindgren’s books have been adapted into successful movies or TV series. Director Olle Hellbom made the movie version of Brothers Lionheart in 1977 and Astrid Lindgren herself wrote the script. Today, with the CGI effects and technology available Lindgren’s novel could’ve turned into a very good movie the same way JJ Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings were. Unfortunately the 1977 version although it won several prices and is shown regularly on Swedish television even today, did not fulfill the novel’s fantasy element. Personally I was more disappointed by the actor who portrayed Jonatan than I was about the lack of special effects. How could they have selected a 23 year old man to play the brave 13 year old boy? (Years later, through web sites and reviews I found out that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about this. It was as though a childhood “betrayal” were universally confirmed!)

Today when my daughter and I are reading the novel together, we are looking at the wonderful black and white illustrations by Ilon Wikland, an illustrator Astrid Lindgren worked together with on most of her books. We go back to the story and then look at the detailed page describing Karl’s room, the pigeon outside his window, the garden by their cottage, Jonatan and Karl, the horses, the Thorn Rose valley and the scary monster Katla. We enjoy the story and illustrations and the world it creates for us. I believe we call this the magic of fiction; yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Source: Wikipedia

Back to the Future

I was watching a movie the other day that plays with the idea of time travelling. What could really happen if you were able to turn back time? A million dollar question, right? This is one thing we humans cannot do physically so we try to imagine how it would be. What would you do? Of course it could turn out to be life-changing because you know what mistakes you’ve done and what people you lost and if you had the ability to correct those actions or to prevent someone from dying, that would be the ultimate glory. By strange coincidence though, it could turn out that you went back and made similar choices and similar mistakes and you didn’t learn from either of them. Why so?

The answer to that question is easier than you think. It’s simply our human nature or human error if you like. Science has come very far in imitating human life and changing it to our benefits. We have eradicated deadly diseases and we have evolved in making technology a part of our lives and we have been able to take pictures of planets beyond the moon. But are we really “there” yet and do we want to be “there”?

My answer to these questions is - yes, we do want to be there. We want to go even further and beyond and sometimes never come back. We do want to turn back time over and over and bring that special person back even if it is only for 1 day. We want to make other choices, better choices, different choices. We want to see different places, different worlds, different views of these worlds and how they change our lives. Through the magic of fiction we are able to do all these things in only 1 hour. In fiction, these mind-blowing time travels really changes a man's life in a few minutes or even less. Our perception of time can disappear or be altered completely.

But what if time travelling could unveil one or two moments in our lives that we don't remember? Or maybe we don't really want to change anything. In most cases I believe, our lives the way we want it will come along anyway by way of our will and our dreams and hopes. My take on this as a writer is that these thoughts exist in the realm between fiction and reality and connects these two worlds even if we don't know it. Sometimes we're so busy pondering about our problems and possibilities or lack of thereof, that we don’t even recognize life when we see it.

And there I have another theme for another blog.

Love, Definitely

Earlier this year Sandra Bullock, an A-list Hollywood actress won the Academy Award for her performance in The Blind Side, a movie about a Southern lady who adopts a black homeless kid. In real life she adopted a baby on her own and kept it secret for months. Several other A-list celebrities such as Madonna, Cheryl Crow, Katherine Heigl, Meg Ryan, Mary Louise Parker and Calistha Flockhart have adopted recently or over the past few years. Adoption, not to mention babies and pregnancy in general, did not use to be a very hot topic in Hollywood, but suddenly it has. Baby pictures, regardless if they are biological or adopted, are not worth a thousand words, more likely a million bucks. I wonder why.

Looking at my own life and my own children I am curious about this process. My son is almost 16 months old now. In general, I do feel like most other mothers at this stage. I am definitely proud of having 'survived' the first year of my son’s life, meaning gone through the first overwhelming feelings of welcoming a new little human being into our lives. Not to mention I have 'survived' those sleep deprived nights with burps and vomit and diaper changes. And yet I know this is perhaps the most precious time with my children, just watching them grow and see them develop into small human beings with so much love to give you that it’s almost impossible not to enjoy this time!

But there are feelings and thoughts that I can only share with a handful of mothers. When I was the same age as my son or maybe a little younger, I left my birth country South-Korea and travelled to Norway where I was adopted by a Norwegian family. I changed my name and identity so to speak and became a Norwegian citizen. I have no idea what I was thinking and if I was thinking at all about any of this when I was 16 months old. The good thing about babies and toddlers and small people as I like to call them, is that they are very forgiving and generous with their affections when they are loved and cared for. In that way I was lucky. I was cared for in the best possible way by a loving family in Norway. I have pictures and memories from my childhood in Norway. But I have no memories of my birth country or my birth parents. Sometimes when my daughter asks me about it, I wished I had. After all, sharing our childhood memories and stories is a part of your own children’s childhood as well.
This made me think of another incident that happened a few months ago here in United States. A 7 year old Russian adopted boy was sent on a flight as a non-accompanying minor on a transatlantic flight heading back to Moscow, Russia. His adoptive mother could not handle his aggressive personality she explained in a letter that was addressed to Russian authorities. Russia replied back by halting all pending adoptions from Russia to the U.S., putting a few hundred families in an emotional turmoil.

I don’t know why my birth parents did not want to keep me. But if my adoptive mother decided that she could no longer care for me and sent me back to South-Korea that would basically mean that as an orphan, I would be rejected twice. I do think that if this boy was given a good home, he would grow up loving his adoptive parents, and not grow up being hateful and angry at the world for rejecting him. I know I did.
I also know that giving love and being loved is not genetic. It’s not something that is inherited, it’s a gift. I know my adoptive mother loved me as much as my other Norwegian siblings and she has really worked hard through all my life to prove that. It takes courage to adopt because in some cases you don’t know if the little person you are adopting is able to love you back. Unfortunately that happened to the Russian boy and I believe it happens to some adoptees around the world as we speak. Some families try to work out these situations, others fight it and some give up. For the adoptee it’s not really a choice to be adopted and so it is also not a choice for us whether or not or family is able to take care of us.

I think it is important that celebrities set an example in these cases, and I think it is important to focus on adoption not as an alternative but as a choice. Adoption is not second-choice or second-hand. Adoption is about the same thing: Having a baby of your own. In some cases I think the media can be deceitful and making the process look easier than it is. After all, not everyone has a lot of help around as well as having access to resources about adoption. If you’re stuck in the process it’s easy to give up.

Looking at my 16 month old son and watching him smile at me as he walks his first steps I know I am going to be there for him all the way when he grows up. It’s a reassurance as a parent I embrace, at the same time as I sometimes think about my birth mother out there and what she has lost. My heart goes out to her and to all birth parents out there. It takes courage to adopt, but it takes tremendous strength and willingness to make the decision to give away your child. Luckily for most of us adoptees we are still able to be loved by our adoptive parents and pass that on to future generations to come.

Day 7: The invisible days

There’s always several days to choose from. Mommy & Me Days, work days, weekend days, busy days. But mostly there are the ordinary days. Even during vacation days we still have obligations and responsibilities. We check our e-mails and return phone calls on the road. Then there are days we dream of accomplishing. I wish I could buy that new car. I want to go out with the girls. I want to spend more time with my family. Why am I always stuck in front of the computer??

Usually, when our family prepares to travel abroad, it’s either to visit Norway where I grew up or India where my family-in-law lives. In Norway I spend most of the time with my family and even if I do feel the comfort of home and family, there is also a sense of obligation. Occasionally I get invitations to meet with friends, and usually I give a tentative answer only to decline most of them eventually. There is just never enough time. Of course, going to India is also about spending time with family. I watch my husband trying to adjust to local time while at the same time pretending he’s not tired so that he can spend as much time as possible with his mother and siblings (he has three sisters and two brothers, most of them living relatively close by). Eventually, when we reach home, all we can think about is a vacation.

In 2007, six years after we married, we decided to finally go on that vacation. A friend from Graduate school was getting married and we wanted to go for her wedding even if it meant we had to go all the way to Japan. We brought our laptop and even rented a Japanese cell phone, but felt sort of cut-off from the rest of the world. We were on an entirely different time schedule and had a whole week entirely to ourselves. Half of the time we did what we would have done back in the US; we ate breakfast, had lunch, spent time in the apartment watching TV or sleeping. We created our own schedule and habits and favorites. Looking back now, I don't remember each day and what we did and what made our visit special. But I remember just exploring this different, strange and beautiful country and making it part of our memories, and that counts for something!

Last year, in 2008, I was invited to participate in a literary seminar back in Norway. I decided to do something a little unusual (and perhaps selfish): I went to Norway on my own and spent three days alone with my parents. The last time I remember spending more than one entire day alone with them was the day I moved from Bergen, Norway about eight years ago. Fresh out of Graduate School from the University, I spent the entire week going through all my papers, notes, letters and books I had collected over the years. I threw away most of it, only keeping my diaries and my books. At the end of the week my parents arrived in their car. We spent two days cleaning my apartment and move the rest of my stuff back home. I had many times imagined how it would be to spend time with my parents in Bergen. For different reasons they had not come to visit me that often during those 9 years I lived there. I remember being grateful for their help. The next day I went to Oslo and jumped on a plane to United States. I did not know it back then, but those were probably the last days I spent in Norway with my parents for a long time.

This time around, in 2008, I arrived at the airport with only one small suitcase. My husband and daughter were going to arrive three days later with the rest of the luggage and I only brought my own belongings for the first time in years. It almost felt like that day I left Norway eight years ago. My parents picked me up and we drove for 4 hours through miles and miles of forest and passed Mjøsa (a lake in Norway) all the way to Lillehammer, the 1994 Winter Olympics host city. Now Lillehammer is hosting an annually literary seminar they call "Sigrid Undset festival" named after the Norwegian writer who once won the Nobel Price in literature. If you're a writer or journalist or both, you probably end up here sooner or later. Being there for the first time I was nervous and excited. But instead of spending time with writers and journalists and attending important discussions about literature, I spent these three days with my parents. In the big breakfast hall we were practically the only visitors there. Everyone else stayed in Lillehammer City. We went for long walks and ate dinner from the buffet at the super market. We watched TV (everyone in Norway watches news at 7.30 pm for half hour). In the evening my mother wasn’t feeling well so my father and I went to the opening ceremony hosted by Shabana Rehman (Norwegian standup comedian). The next day I gave a speech at one of the seminars and my parents were allowed to watch. Later that afternoon when the other participants went for dinner together, I left. Instead we had dinner at McDonalds because that's what my parents wanted. And again we drove through miles and miles of forest all the way home.

I haven’t thought about Japan in a long time. Neither have I mentioned or talked to my parents about our trip to Lillehammer lately. It’s funny how these moments can appear so different than you remembered them. Maybe because they are so easy to forget in our daily life? Perhaps these memories, these invisible days, just need a little bit more effort on our part, to come alive again. Hence my little exercise. Now it’s your turn …

Day 5: Don't stop till you get enough

I made a decision to write for at least half an hour every day. Blogs, diary or sketches do not count. I have to be strict because there’s too much distraction. My biggest distraction is … myself. I always try to cut corners. Left over for dinner, easy. Dropping off my daughter outside the school instead of walking with her from the parking lot into the class room, easy. Pretending to be very busy when I actually have to do something out of the ordinary, easy. Not calling someone because they might ask me to spend time with them when I don’t really have any, easy.
Yeah. Life is very difficult and we are all very busy with our lives and we don’t have time. Really. We honk at the car in front of us because they waited for like, 1 second, before they moved their car through the traffic light. We sigh when we have to wait in line at Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donut or wherever it is we buy our coffee, because someone is too slow or spend too much time counting coins. About six years ago, right after my daughter was born, I got a call from a friend whom I had not heard from in a long time. I was preoccupied at that time and promised to call him back later. Turned out, I never did. By the time I remembered that I was suppose to call him back, a certain time had already gone and I felt embarrassed. So I did what I do best sometimes: I pretended that I forgot all about it. And eventually I did forget about it, as time passed by. Five years to be exact. One day I hear the news through my husband whom, by the way never forgets a birthday or to return someone’s phone calls, that he had died. So yes, my biggest distraction to keeping promises is undoubtedly myself. Everyone knows that having a baby keeps your mind preoccupied. But it doesn’t give you an excuse for everything.

During my first maternity leave I was very busy at being a new mom. I was very anxious and of course excited too, at being a parent to my baby girl. Still, I spent at least 2-3 hours every single day writing on a manuscript. I sat on a blanket in the back yard with my laptop on my lap and my baby next to me, playing. When I went for walk I thought about my next sentences and my next chapter and when she took a nap, I spent whatever time I had to pen down those sentences and chapters.

This was 2007. It’s now 2009. I had another baby, a son who is now 7 months old. This time around, I’ve gotten lazy. Instead of doing it [e.g. writing] I’m pretending to be doing something else all the time. Life, yes. Work, sure. After-school activities, definitely. Home work [e.g not mine] is occupying all my time. I am not giving my daughter any excuse to skip home work even if it’s 6:30 am in the morning. Now if I could be as strict regarding my own writing, I should have a novel done by end of the school year!

Don’t stop till you get enough. Life only fills you up this far. Your real passions, your goal in life, your dreams, whatever it is, will take you even further if you let them.

Day 4

“Death, thou shalt die”: About literature & film

2009: I write, therefore I read. Yes, I do like to read even though not as much as I would like to. Every year I have a list of books I want to read. Sadly to say but by the end of the year I’m still working on the first or second book. For instance, last year I bought a second hand copy of Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of loss (I love that title) after I’ve borrowed it at the library and failed to finish it by the time I had to return it. I am still working on it. Another book on my reading list is The Life of Pi, which I finished half way and after reading the end (which I often do anyway regardless if the book is good or not) kind of gave up on it. During my trips to India I also bought books by Indian authors. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie is one of them. The list goes on.

2001: In the movie Wit Emma Thompson portraits Professor Vivian Bearing, a patient suffering from stage 4 terminal ovarian cancer. Being a scholar and a professor, specializing in 17^th English poetry and John Donne’s holy sonnets especially, she reacts to the news about her illness with a matter-of-fact. As her illness and treatment progress, she is trying to analyze the situation as well as she is looking back upon important situations in her past. One of these situations is a discussion, or rather a speech given by her mentor, Professor Evelyn “E.M” Ashford (Eileen Atkins) about the meaning of the Holy sonnet 10 of John Donne. Death, as John Donne intended it in the poem according to her mentor, is simply a pause, a comma. There’s a difference between a semicolon, an exclamation mark and a comma. The real meaning of these lines as John Donne intended it were simply: “And death shall be no more [comma] Death, thou shalt die.”

Literature inspires movies and movies inspire us to read literature. Literature inspires life. After all, isn’t poetry the stuff that dreams are made of? Or was it the opposite?

2000: I was working on my closing arguments in a thesis of comparative literature. I was analyzing Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, a modernist novel about life, love and death. One morning I got a call from my mother. Our beloved grandmother had passed away. I had read nearly 1200 pages of Virginia Woolf who ended her life by suicide, and I was now discussing the last chapter in The Waves. I remember thinking how untimely the death of my grandmother somehow was linked to the last chapter of the book and the conclusion of the thesis. Life, death. As I was collecting my thoughts, I jumped on a plane to Oslo. The funeral was held the next day. It was short. It wasn’t until the end of the ceremony, as the casket was about to be carried out, that I finally started crying. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally”

2007: My first novel When The Tigers Smoked (Da tigrene røykte) is finally released in Norway after years in the making. I can finally say, I write, therefore I am. Debut novels are considered as literary events in Norway. They are actually read and reviewed. Most of the debutantes are interviewed as well. Why do you write? What inspires you? For me, writing is to fill an empty space. Being an adoptee from South-Korea, I had to start with being me. What does this mean? Yes, I was abandoned. Yes, I was in orphanage. I have lived with questions about my birth parents and my birth country my whole life. This does not mean that I necessarily want to write about. So I tried to write about something else for over 10 yeas until it finally dawned upon me: This is lying. This is not me. After realizing this, it was always more difficult to write. But at the same time it felt more important.

2009: I always find it interesting to watch movies that portray writers. The best ones are witty and ironic. The bad ones are self-conscious. The worst ones are faking it. Typically they will have a writer’s block, sitting for hours in front of the computer unable to type even a short sentence. (This painful state of mind is of course shortened down to minutes). And then, life begins. Or does it really?

In Wit, the only person caring for Vivian’s Bearings health is the head nurse Susie Monahan. Here is another example of life and literature:
Vivian Bearing: I trust this will have a soporific effect.
Susie Monahan: I don't know about that, but it sure makes you sleepy.
Vivian Bearing: [laughing] Soporific means 'makes you sleepy'.

In Wit, Vivian Bearing dies alone, reciting John Donne one more time. “And death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.” Poetry does inspire life or something like it. At least I was able to read a poem today. And so I can make another list.