tupac shakur never not dead...

While wandering the streets of Abram-Mis, Murmansk, I couldn't help but notice the assortment of rap-related writing on the walls. Here are my favorites:

Notes:

I'm not sure what the double negative does to the message in the first picture, but I think it means that they really like Tupac Shakur. I particularly like the quaintness of picture number two. It's like someone is softly whispering "cop killer." The last two pictures were taken at the bus stop. The only bus stop in town.

dima, are you down there?

When I lived in Alta I had a friend from Murmansk named Dima. He was my height - maybe a little shorter - and had a haircut that I called "helmet head." He didn't know that, though. As I was driving through the serenely Soviet streets of Murmansk this weekend - passing grey concrete building after grey concrete building - I wondered if maybe he was in one of them. Maybe he got an engineering degree and got married and had a kid. I even opened up a phonebook thinking that I might be able to determine how to spell Polykov in Russian.
Nope.
I had an urge while standing on top of a hill overlooking the segmented city to shout out "DIMA!? ARE YOU DOWN THERE?" But my shout would have gotten drowned out by the clanks and booms and groans of the shipyard below once it made it to the bottom. It was the industrial soundtrack to the industrial city - and it beat everything.
I didn't find Dima this weekend. But I am able to picture him as a kid. Running down the stairs of his building, throwing rocks at metal barrels and walls, bounding over railroad tracks and hiding behind smoke stacks. I think he was a happy kid.

murmurs in murmansk

I'm going here.

"fear" by martin auer

(translated by Kim Martin Metzger)

Why
is that guy
looking at me like that?
Is he afraid of me?

Why
is that guy
afraid of me?
Does he think that I want to hurt him?

Why
does he think
that I want to hurt him?
I never hurt anyone!

I never hurt anyone,
unless he wants to hurt me!

So if that guy thinks that I want to hurt him,
then only because he knows:
I hurt everybody
who hurts me.

So: he must want to hurt me!

So I guess I'll go right over there and bash him in the mouth,
so that he can't hurt me.

Ouch!

His fist was quicker than mine!
Now here I am on the ground.
But didn't I tell you right away
that he wanted to hurt me.

data entry and the unaccompanied cello (the beat of the suite)

5, 5, 4, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 1, 3, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5...

If I listen to music with words, then I want to sing along - which means all the numbers get messed up. Bach is a good solution to this problem because I can say the numbers along to the beat. And mundane data entry suddenly becomes real dramatic. Sometimes when I get to the end of a page and it coincides with the end of a movement I throw my hands up into the air like I'm conducting my computer. I guess it's pretty nerdy, but when you get glasses at the age of two, you pretty much just have to deal with the fact that you are a nerd. Albeit a super cool nerd.

killing the blues

Scott and I had our first "gig" last night. We were the first act in the first Hugin's Report of the year - (it's a weekly student showcase/open mic type-thing.) Scott played guitar and harmonica while I sang John Prine's Killing the Blues. This was a particularly fitting song choice because I bought Shawn Colvin's cd - where she covers Killing the Blues - while I was in Tromsø for the film fest in 2000 with my media class from Alta Videregående. I walked around this town listening to that cd the whole week and I still can't listen to any of those songs without thinking about Tromsø in January. We did a pretty nice job last night, I think. Next up: Homeboy Bob Dylan.

sunny thursday

The sun is out today, which makes me wonder why I am in. Oh yeah. Unwritten obligations to books and papers. A Danish carpenter tells me that he senses this fall will be sunnier than last fall. I'm not sure what to believe, but I can think of many less trustworthy people than Danes or carpenters. Like politicians, or people who work at ad agencies, or Canadians, or actors, or people who work at the office for foreigners, or dudes in the mafia. So since today is sunny, and since that is already more sunny days than we had last fall, I'm gonna bet it all on the Danish carpenter.

guest speakers

2004 Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai and Mayor Akiba of Hiroshima - in unrelated trips - both visited Tromsø during the last few days. It's great to be privy to such lectures and I appreciate the learning opprtunity. Wangari Maathai is a wonderful speaker - good with metaphors and clearly passionate about the environment. After hearing her speak the other day I find myself questioning the way we categorize "issues" - like "environmental issues" and "issues of human rights" and that tricky old "poverty issue." These "issues" are not independent from one another. They become "issues" because of one another and of course an environmentalist should win the Nobel Peace Prize. The degradation of the global environment will likely lead to the greatest conflict of them all: the mass extinction of human kind. Now there's a conflict.
And it would be lovely if everyone agreed that nuclear weapons should be abolished. But not everyone does and I'm not sure how (or if) we can get everyone to think so. There are people in auditoriums and lecture halls around the world applauding and giving standing ovations - "no to atomic bombs" and "save the environment" - but when they go home the most important thing they can think of is making sure the dog hasn't taken a dump on the carpet. I really enjoy guest speakers. But now someone please tell me what to do.

a fantastic brazilian surprise on bus number 20

I was walking down the aisle of a nearly full bus 20, looking for a spot to sit, when I heard someone say my name.
"Rachel?"
I looked to the guy sitting in the seat I was standing next to. He was very familiar.
"Hey!" I said.
Where do I know this face from? He's an international student from last year. Or...?
"Do you remember who I am?" he asked.
And as soon as he asked that question I had put two and two together...all this took about seven seconds.
"Thiago! Geez! What...how...God, it's great to see you!"

Thiago was an AFS student from Brazil living in Tromsø when I lived in Alta....almost seven years ago now. We were really good friends and kept in touch for a year or so after we went back home. But as life goes on and email addresses change, all of us AFSers lost touch with one another. But the thing about groups of AFS students is that they become such close friends under such strange circumstances that you never really forget about those people. When I came home this summer I was looking at all my old photos from my AFS year and I wondered what all of them are doing now. Many of them remain a mystery, but not Thiago. He is studying at the University of Tromsø (and living with his AFS host family) for a semester - or maybe longer - and then plans on starting a three year program here next year or the year after. I was thrilled to see him and I look forward to rekindling a friendship that I thought was just a wonderful part of my past. We also decided while sitting together on the bus that we would try to get in touch with some of our old AFS friends and invite them to Tromsø this fall or winter. Who knows...maybe they'll show up one day, too.

welcome back. practice tonight.

I had no more than stepped foot off the plane in Oslo and turned on my phone when that familiar beeping noise quickly whisked me back into reality from the "zombie-like, been on a plane for 11 hours and have two more hours to go" state I was in. Beep beep beep. "New text message," my phone was telling me. Now, I am always happy to get text messages, but I was not in the mood for one that asked me if I was ready for choir practice that night. Uhm, no, not really. I'd like to take a nap...or better yet, just go to bed. But alas, I couldn't go to choir, take a nap, OR go to bed. I had a party to go to!

Welcome back to Tromsø!

I told my director that I wouldn't make it to practice (which we will have tonight, instead) and I boarded the plane to the Arctic. Someone please remind me not to book Norwegian Airlines for the last leg of a long and tiring, four-plane transatlantic journey EVER again. There is absolutely no leg room and my left knee cap was already ready to fall off when I landed in Belgium. I was so crabby during the last flight that I started acting like a four year old. I actually sighed out loud and made little groaning sounds as I violently lashed from side to side while trying to ease pressure from one butt cheek onto the other. I really was all huffy puffy the way little kids are when they are crabby and need to take a nap. But as soon as the plane began circling the island for landing, I smiled and knew that I was gonna have a good year.

Like I said, I had a party to go to. I got to the apartment, hung out with Hanne and Vibeke, ate a little dinner (my first meal since Chicago), and took a shower. Mmmmm, good to be clean. Then Hanne and I walked to Driv to see our classmates and to meet the new class of MPCT students. This was very exciting. Most of my classmates are back in town, and the new class seems most excellent...many good people with varying backgrounds and experiences. We got free dinner and wine and then went to Blue Monday at Blå Rock afterwards. I think I was going on approximately 36 hours without solid sleep, but I simply can't turn down a Mack at Blå Rock.

Today I visited my favorite place. A place that has been the subject of a previous post (see June 14 to experience the rage.) Ahhhh yes, the beloved Utlendingskontoret (the office for foreigners.) After waiting in line for an hour, they yanked me around yet again with regards to my residence permit. There is simply nothing more frustrating than being told something, reaffirming that that something is indeed true before leaving because YOU KNOW that they are running a sketchy show over there, assuming that they will keep their end of the deal, and then listening to them change their mind while you stand there helplessly and humiliated. I KNEW THEY WERE GONNA DO THIS, which is probably the worst part. I'd love to include a bunch of swear words in this post, but my mom told me that swearing as an inappropriate way to express myself in my onjo. She's right, but the utlendingskontoret is seriously a gigantic piece of *&!@.

Well, enough of that. I have a plan, and I think it will work.
As for right now, I'm gonna finish up a little work, go home, make dinner, and then it's off to choir. And if Stig gets on my case for forgetting my music over the summer, I think it might just push me to tears. Either tears or swearing...whichever comes out first.

Snakkes!

enrique iglesias

My grandparent's birds were having a total squawk attack...until Enrique Iglesias came on the radio. They particularily like soft pop and easy listening music.