Remember when it rained......

When I was down and oh my soul so weary
when trouble came, my heart so heavy
then I was still, waited here in silence until you came and sat a while with me.....

A Clan's men

Me and poet, musician, wit, polemicist—Bill Holm, definitely belong to the same tribe, no doubt. I met and listened to him this Sunday morning reading from his new book "Windows of Brimnes", and thought to myself how lucky I am to have a man like him in my literary back yard just a few miles south of Lost Lake where I now live. We chatted, looked each other over like long lost tribes men, and my spirit stood next to a man I have long wanted to meet.

Bill Holm, Robert Bly, Ingemar Bergman and Lars Olaf Ingmar Persson, Torsten Liden, Olof Palme and Thor Heyerdahl are and where men, that I hold enormous, everlasting respect and admiration for.
I needed them to show me both the good way, and the undesired dangerous trail. The trail I still needed to explore on occasions as a young naive man, the trail that lead me down into the ashes of a broken future, put upon me by well meaning and loving parents. I admit, I crawled around in those ashes for quiet a while looking for any speck of hope in a seemingly impenetrable darkness of anger, pain, self-absorption and hopeless despair.
At what point that distant flickering light broke the dungeoning darkness I cannot say. Little by little, and day by day I started to breathe fresh open air, the grey skies above me started to take on a blue hue again, the love of life was once again instilled in my heart, and as I looked around I found myself back to where I started, at the time when I got lost.

My window, does not face the open endless Northern Atlantic ocean as in Bill Holm's book "Windows of Brimnes". My window looks out over East Lost Lake. A smaller lake in the mid west corner of Minnesota. A state I found myself glad to leave behind in 1993 , when I passed through here on my bicycle, lightly packed with tent and sleeping bag, daring rain and hail for 9 days straight. And those Minnesot'n county roads, cracked and manhandled by the previous winters permafrost....never again will I come back here, I told myself with assured conviction.....and so, here I am back in Minnesota, living on Lost Lake. A suitable home for me, it seems, looking out over a frozen and silent lake, feeling the stillness stirring. Now, knowing hopefully better than ever the danger of professing my absolute convictions, knowing nothing is forever, nothing stays the same and that love for all creatures in nature, blended with forgiveness, humility and gratitude is hard earned, requiring daily practice and undivided mindful attention.

Bill talked about god this morning, and related a story from 1929, where Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings".
That sounded like something I could relate to remembering how many times I have cried out in despair for my childhood God, maybe a new God, any "dang" God to deliver me out of a never ending darkness....only to find that I myself had to start crawling toward some light - imagined or real, eventually finding many helping hands dragging me the last part of the way out of lostness , out into homeness. Loving, friendly and compassionate hands that had been there all along, waiting patiently, with no misgivings......orderly harmony, yes indeed.

My name is Jon-Anders Persson, son of Lars Olaf Ingmar Persson. I live on Lost Lake, West Lost Lake, and I am often lost and mystified, but free in spirit.
Who is Baruch de Spinoza that Einstein referred to??.., that is for tomorrow or maybe later this week..maybe?!! Did I say Baruch de Spinoza or Barak de Spinoza ? Barak..Baruch...could Baruch and Barak be the same name I wonder ??

Me the Viking

Florance , my mother-in-law, aka the Evil-One, aka Mother-Superior, took this picture of me while we visited Kringen, Sons of Norway Lodge in Fargo, North Dakota.
I feel that this is the image I most like about myself. The quintessential Viking rouge - ruthless, compassionate, self-mutilating, wife-loving, dedicated, stubborn, mystified and an incurable horn-d...(..romantic), holding my helmet in a steady and self-assured grip, sitting at the end of the table in my Norden Lodge.
It is a dream of course, but a good dream, quiet a vivid dream at times, and I am convinced had I lived (maybe I did..) during that time, I would without a doubt have sailed to distant shores, to plunder, have sex with women I did not know, drinking mjöd until I puked and past out, eventually returning to my seahorse and be gone the next morning....ahh, what a life it must have been and what a dream it is :-)

Homesick

Seems to me most of us Scandinavians that have made the Atlantic crossing to this large and beautiful land, still have moments of severe home sickness. In Sweden we call it "Lapp-Sjuka". Not a very nice word per se, but we all know what it means.
I found this picture this morning doing some uploading from the digital camera and it got me....the picture to the right is just one of those typical summer pictures from my home in Sweden. And it stirs my spirit, and the melancholy that enters my soul feels in an odd way calming and satisfying...
As I venture into that space I also start thinking about my friends back home , like BUX (aka Anders Bohm) and his g-friend Lisa. Here they are cruising around and making faces (well BUX is, in typical BUX style)...love those guys and I miss them tooooo, or Bjorn and Lena and their kids, and Niklas of course, Ulla and Christer...I remember me and Niklas getting stuck out on the river a wonderful Swedish summer long ago, Vera and Eskil (his parents) all worried and distraught as we finally got ourselves back to the summer cabin ...hmmm, those memories. Last picture of the combined Svanholm - Roting family members taking a communal bath....those Swede's..jeezzzz, hey Stigge don't think I forgot you, you're a real bud, buddy !!!