After Christmas, I turn 38

I'm going to disclose an abominable secret - I don't like Christmas. I do feel guilty about it. I don't have an urge to decorate my home with pretty red candles, Advent wreaths, mistletoe, bake all kinds of pretty Christmas cakes... I think my heart is totally dead to it.
I was growing up in a communist country, and we always had school on Christmas. I only got to decorate the tree on my birthday - 3 days later. And if you bought Christmas decorations it didn't say Christmas decorations on the box - it said "New Year's decorations". Needless to say I was not brought up a Christian (but that's another story - the one about the hidden Catholic values I only now understand were indeed strongly implemented).
My partner of last three years, husband for the last year gets so sad every Christmas now that he spends it with me. It breaks my heart to see him cry. He's Norwegian and was brought up with those great Christmas things like pepper cakes, Julenissen, (Norwegian for Santa), ribs for dinner (I am a vegetarian)... Then I'm eaten by guilt for destroying his Christmas.
Then, I turn 38 tomorrow. But that's another post.

A sentimental journey

About a year ago I flew to Bergen via Dubrovnik. That is the sunset I photographed while landing in Dubrovnik (no sunsets in Bergen in late October, rain as always). Anyway it was too late for a sunset. I had this fantastic idea I was going to visit Odd, whom I had married the month before. So I turned up at my boss's office and asked for days off (every time I have to ask people for favours, loans, anything, I feel like I'd rather not be there - it's not me asking, it's just those terrible circumstances that are totally beyond my control). So I got leave on Tuesday, and was on the plane on Saturday, to spend a precious week with my husband.
A year later, I'm still here in my hometown in Croatia as Norwegian immigration laws don't allow people from outside EU to live with their spouses until being granted the residence permit. And mine still hasn't been granted. We've been married for 13 months.
We're still travelling both ways, and we have no home we call our own. He stays with me here or I stay with him there.
There are days when I don't have doubts about what's to come. On other days like today I am apprehensive, having second thoughts about moving to a country which has a law that says newlyweds are not allowed to live together for some time (at least not there).
But there must be some higher purpose in that. It's just me, complaining about the horrible circumstances which are forever messing my life.
I don't like myself complaining - what's the use? Like I'm letting some officials actually create where I live? Never.

Beauty everywhere

World is beautiful today - can't put my finger on what exactly it is. Well, it's Friday, I mustn't forget the weekend has officially started. I keep playing Verden er Vakker (World is beautiful) by Bjørn Eidsvåg from
last fm
Can't get enough of his voice, and the poetry of the lyrics touches me deeply inside. Norwegian has become such a magical language for me now. It's been so long since I was learning English and developed a passion for it. I thought it was to be once in a lifetime passion, but what did I know then, at 17? I couldn't know I was going to fall in love with a Norwegian and eventually, with his language.
Autumn used to be depressing when I was younger. Not anymore. Now I drink the beauty of the last warm days and the last of the sunshine to the fullest.
I gave up my part time job at university and can't say I'm sorry. Now there are more days when I just take things easy like today. I miss the students sometimes, I met so many brilliant young people there.
It is a beautiful world I live in and I am grateful for all the small things that surround me. And also for the people around me. I'm blessed to have a wonderful daughter. And a husband. I grew up thinking the only people who should always be there for you are your parents. And I still like to think so, and would like my daughter to grow up knowing I'll always be there for her. Wherever she goes or for how long, I hope she always comes back to me. I hope I'll pass no judgments upon her.
I hope there will be many days like this. I love you all, Nera, Odd, mum, dad, gran, my dearest friends, all you little birds eating seeds on my balcony on cold mornings...

Longing for the past

Tveitevannet
Originally uploaded by Biggo

I am a melancholic person. That is probably why I still go back to this place in my mind. I don't live there anymore, and still the place goes on having a life of its own within my mind.
I used to live quite near this place in Bergen 3 years ago. Went on long walks almost daily, feeding the ducks, getting wet since it is always raining in Bergen. Got bitten by a duck disappointed (angry?) there was no more bread to give out.
I think I was happy there.
Sometimes I wonder if this revisiting of the places that belong to the past removes me from the present. Is it life lived to the fullest, or just longing for some other time? And is there always life somewhere else for me, some other place? Do I, besides what is good look for more, not knowing the good thing in my life?
It would never occur to me to blog a picture from what surrounds me, from the now. In the longing to live my life behind me, I either long for the past or wait for the future which is yet to come.

Waiting

On Oslo - Bergen train
Originally uploaded by Agnes Dorotea

I sit here in my living room and wait. Somehow this is how I feel - in a kind of a limbo. The photograph taken by Nera, my lovely daughter, a year ago from the train stands for the beauty of the place where I'm going. These are the last months of my life that I spend in the country where I was born. I admit I fought this idea of moving to Norway - after living and studying there and realizing that my new relationship was going to take me there, but eventually I grew to like the idea.
Now it is like I am no longer here, and not yet there. The sunny autumn days pass by, my mind is not here, I already live another life which hasn't started yet. I visualise the rooms where I am going to spend the days, the sea I'll be looking at, go on walks in my mind to places I haven't been to yet.

Beauty anyhow

"She had gone up into the tower alone and left them blackberrying in the sun"...
comes from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. I've spent a whole year of my life with that book, writing a thesis on it. It has grown on me. The thesis was finished more than 2 years ago, and I look for meanings and I still sometimes interpret life through Mrs. Dalloway. It could be our journey is not over yet.
I've been thinking about blackberrying in the sun intensely for the last 3 weeks since the blackberry season has just finished. My parents, my husband and I went on a small trip up the mountain and on our way down my mum and dad decided they wanted to go and pick blackberries, while we stayed behind and simply sat in the shade. Then it came to me that we have literally left them blackberrying in the sun. I kept repeating the line to Odd, my husband, and it sounded silly.
But blackberrying in the sun seems to be an image carrying the idea of drinking life to its fullest. Still, some of us choose to sit in the shade. Or go up the tower alone.