NO. 100

Today is my blog post number one hundred since I started sometime in the middle of January. The feeling I have today reminds me a bit of the way I felt when I'd finished my hundredth poem in my friend Grete's Poetry Challenge which lasted for three months from September till December. After my last poem I felt satisfied, accomplished and not least - a tiny bit empty. I can definitely say now that this daily challenge opened up something in me and spurred me on to more creativity. The obvious next step was to start a blog.

My last poem in Grete's poetry challenge

I simply can't keep quiet! It's the story of my life - I've always had opinions, views and thoughts that I must express and share. But I do think I'm a good listener too. (Hmmm.... you'd have to ask others about that though). An interesting side to this is that I also have the gift of sociable smalltalk, always making sure I include others in party conversations.

Photographing AND challenging Norway's former Prime Minister Per Borten with my feminist views, Kuwait 1974. Party conversation? 

My daughters have this very funny analysis of me - here in the words of Julie: "You can say ANYTHING to our Mum, and I mean ANYTHING - you can swear at her, show her obscene gestures and call her all kinds of names, but she's totally resistant to every foul word and expression - except one: SHUT UP. If you say that to her she loses it completely."

This is true. I simply can't bear to be told to shut up. It's the most degrading thing anyone can say to me. My friend Grete's conclusion to this is interesting: "Being told to shut up is probably your ultimate letdown. It's probably a figure of speech for the person who tells you that, but you take it literally - which you don't do with other verbal abuse. You have an overhanging need to express yourself and to be HEARD."

I want to be heard. YES, I do. But my blog is definitely for myself as well. I love you all for reading it, but I can't really even contemplate that - the mind boggles at the very thought of the way I expose myself to everyone, to people I already know and to many that I don't.

This is a deeply moving book - read it if you haven't already! It documents American writer Daniel Mendelsohn's search for six of his family members who disappeared during World War II. I saw him interviewed about it here in Oslo some years ago, with his brother - and the story of his search is not only the Holocaust one, but also one of his own life and sibling relationships. BUT - and this is my point here and now - he conveys vividly what story-telling is all about. He sat at his grandfather Abraham's feet and listened attentively to the tales of his family all through his childhood years, and this is what led him to the most important search of his life - which was to transform him forever.

Story-telling, he says, is not the actual story in itself  - it's the detours, the digressions, the sidetracks, the associations, the details, the embroidering. This is what makes a story interesting! If there's a point to it - well, it will emerge in the end. The road there is what compels the listeners, what nails them, what draws them to the story. Some have this talent - some don't. But I know that of any entertainment available to me, most of all I love listening to people's stories.

So thank you, all of you, for listening to one hundred of mine.

One hundred more coming up!

Even I can enjoy a quiet time in the woods...