Getting closer to Anna's farm

Mail boxes for five homes along this street that has no name

and daily indications for the day events, meetings and duties

This is Anna’s Farm.

It groups 4 beautiful two-story red houses and a grey hut.

Red and grey small pebbles cover the drive way.

 

Joon Gardens

Good Morning Joon Gardens

Firsts image of Anna and Kjettil’s village

On the way to Anna's farm...

Getting closer

Toujours en chemin

Une aire de repos comme il y en a beaucoup sur le chemin

Une lumière voilée,

Beaucoup d’arbres hauts et verts, parfois dorés,

Des bancs de pierre qui rappellent les jardins japonais

Pas de passants

De rares automobilistes

Un silence qui bruit des sons de la nature.

Peu d’échanges entre nous.

Silence et solitude.

Et si on s'approche un peu plus, on voit que les bancs de pierre
sont en fait recouverts d'épaisses lattes de bois, polies et lisses...

Je m’approche et je m’assois

Le temps d’une petite mise au point

Assez pour se détendre et s’étonner

Vous aussi

Vous ne perdrez rien à vous asseoir

Le temps de reprendre souffle

Ici le vent est tranquille.

Il pleuvait ce jour-là

J’ai enlevé mes chaussures et chaussé les bottes d’Anna

Elles sont vertes, un peu grandes et m’arrivent

Jusqu’aux genoux

Ou presque. 

Ce ne sont pas celles de la photo.

Celles-là étaient simplement là, offertes à mon regard,

Elles m’ont retenue…

Avec les bottes vertes,

Je dois pouvoir remettre mes pas dans ceux d’Anna

Eviter les flaques et les crevasses, le vide aussi

Trouver mon chemin

Et mieux comprendre la voie à suivre

Peut-être…

P. S. Je ne suis pas parvenue à insérer la photo de chaussures que j'ai prise à Joon Gardens
J'essaierai demain. Il est tard ce soir...

Every thing is fine

Going to see Anna, Kjettil and their farm

On the road between Øyer and Hedby in Sweden

A large round stone in a wooded space off the road

You can rest if you’re tired, or stretch,

Or just walk and look around,

It’s going to be a long trip

For Hedby and Joon Gardens are 500 kilometers away or so

It will take us around 5 hours to get there

Although Øyvind is an excellent driver, and fast

As we discovered when we hit the highway.

A big tree in bloom by the roadside,

Beautiful and unusual in its movement

I cannot tell its kind or its name,

It could be a cranberry tree.

Because its trunk is growing outside the woods, bent over the road,

You could think it is broken or weak

It’s not.

It’s so wooded around it’s kind of trying to escape being crowded,

Trying to get more space and sun

Its flowers are beautiful and young.

Its leaves are deep green

I like to think it’s greeting passers-by.

nouvel essai

Je ne sais ce qui s'est passé, mais je n'arrive plus à écrire ce que j'ai l'intention d'écrire. A chaque tentative, je me retrouve avec un texte qui n'est pas le mien, des mots jaillis de je ne sais où sans que j'y ai même pensé. J'ai un peu investigué les icones et je crois que cette fois-ci, je suis parvenue à me faire entendre... Je vais vérifier de ce pas et si c'est bon, je pourrais recommencer à composer mes textes; un peu comme une nouvelle partition de musique sur un instrument que je découvre.

Leaving Øyer and heading to Sweden

Leaving Øyer in Norway…

Behind the map of the Øyer commune, you can see the glass door to the Church headquarters and administrative offices for the whole county. They occupy all the ground floor.
Øyvind is in charge there, together with other priests. He is based in Øyer and the bishop to whom he must report on his activities is a woman bishop...

The area where the building is standing is surrounded by woods and forests and an enchanting variety of wild plants and flowers.   

It's an overwhelming and beautiful environment, very serene and peaceful.
I don't know if I already mentioned it previously, Øyvind is a Lutheran priest (hence his clerical position),

For most Norwegians are originally Lutherans, and Øyer is his base.
But that's not his only quality or what mainly defines him, far from that... For he is so committed to freedom, justice and political liberation causes in general, that most his friends call him usually the "red priest".
Michel does as well, out of fondness and pure mischief also...

Summer 2012 in hectic confused Beirut

Summer 2012 in hectic confused Beirut 

Feeling free and brave and adventurous

It’s a sort of respite in the shady vista I carry nowadays,

A break of a kind

It allows other feelings and desires

A breathing space I intend to deeply enjoy

I'll forget about what's eating me

I know I can do it totally...

I’ll go north one more time

Together with Michel

Oslo, Lillehammer, Øyer indeed,

To share with Øyvind and our Norwegian friends

Then Sweden also, I know very little about Sweden

Dalarna, Falun, Djura, Hedby in Djura and Joon Gardens in Hedby

Finally

All these words don't give way to any image in my mind

Not yet...

We’ll also visit Anna and her farm

Joon Anna, as the villagers say

In the village of Hedby…
But first, we'll go to Oslo
To the Literature House
Where we'll have a seminar
About the Arab Spring and its repercussions on the Palestinian cause
Many Arab and Nordic academicians will also be there
Michel will have to give three lectures in three different academic and political settings.
We'll probably have to steal some days off and leave Norway in order to meet Anna in Sweden.

The Literature House in Oslo.

It's a very big house that occupies a large angle of an avenue whose name I forgot...
During the summer,  or when the weather allows it, an outside cafeteria at the top of wide stairs leads to a large coffee-shop and a bookshop on the ground floor;
A large reception space, administrative offices and a library on the 1st floor;
A big conference room on the 2nd floor where we held meetings and debates during three days. 

When you stand in front of the Literature Hose, there is a beautiful park where you can walk and sit and read or write. It's lovely, full of hidden spots and surprises, almost magic.  

Both photos below have been taken when I was leaving the Literature House.

Purchasing a Gabbeh rug...

I bought a tribal Persian rug recently that is said to be a Gabbeh.

Gabbeh is a persian word which means something raw or natural, uncut or "in the rough". 

It doesn't refer to a specific tribe or province in Iran; it is however made by nomadic tribes.

Traditionally, the knotting and weaving of nomadic carpets are generally a woman's domain and area of expertise.  

Gabbeh are almost exclusively knotted for personal use, and they usually express the woman's spirit  and personal interpretations of  life as well as her vision of the occasion it meets, or the specific moment the making of the Gabbeh is celebrating. 

Below is the picture of the Gabbeh I purchased and gave to Anna. 

I wrote a note to bring it closer and named it : One color and an infinity of shades.

When Aya decided to weave the Gabbeh for her sister Sana, 

she knew she didn't have much time left and that she really had to be fast. 

Winter was already there. 

Days were shorter and the sky was getting low, turning to ashes. 

Soon, the light would fly away, together with the wind and the migrating birds. 

And by then, surely the men would be back with the goats  the horses, the dogs, and their non-stop needs...

How was she going to be done with so little time left?

Aya hurried to the cellar. D Day was so very close.
She gathered the wool that had been hanging there to dry for three moons.

White, blue, green, two shades of yellow, some deep red an also a bunch of brown wool. 

Did she have a design, a pattern in mind?
I wonder...
In fact, she only had to let her imagination and her fingers run...
Although she didn't exactly plan for it, Aya created a rug made out of 18 separated geometrical spaces, squares and rectangles of different dimensions,

connected together and never fusing into each other

forming a whole with no predictable ending

although it did stop with a smooth multilayer knot

hinting to an infinity of colors, shades, lines and stripes,

all of them striving for unity and harmony.
Good luck Sana, may your days be warm and colorful in your new life...

Pensée impromptue

Je me disais, Mime,
que c'est dans le vide créé par l'absence que l'écrit surgit,
qui se fraye un chemin et prend forme.
Que c'est sa seule chance d'exister.
Et que le silence généré par la conscience de l'absence
était ainsi source de ce qui allait suivre.
De ce flux de paroles et de gestes que l'irrémédiable libère
Qu'il en était ainsi et que c'était juste.
Car la vie fait bien les choses.
Qui n'efface jamais rien de ce qui fut.