Beloved Vagabond

 "Beloved Vagabond" was a book I loved, I don't remember the name of the author or very much about the contents, only that the main character the Vagabond, was always travelling, like a nomad and slept where he could, earned money where he could, playing music and doing tricks and was loved by all, he also met some fascinating characters on his journeys. I did love all that in my teens, and even decided to become a Beloved Vagabond myself, was it not for the constant bother of being attracted by the opposite sex that took over all else in the everydayness of existence. How dominated we are by the worryings of such, it seemed a relief to be married at 22 years, and not have to look around for the same, now, I felt one could develop the other sides of ones psyche.

 

At the Art College there came a woman who at 80 years was as full of creative energy as any of us young things, she would charge in to the pottery and set up a frame of metal, at least 4ft long, slap on great chunks of clay and create a bird with a gargoyle-like head that left us all gasping and envious. There we were pernicketing at our little bits of clay and she could do it bigger and better than us in a few minutes. This woman said, "First, never get married, then don't start travelling until you are 60 yrs.old then go all over the world, everyone you meet will want to help you." She had done this. 

 

She was on the border between Burma and China, or some such place when in the middle of the night a strapping young man entered her chamber, urgently he said " You must leave here immediately as its far too dangerous to be in this place for the night" she heeded him, got dressed, gathered the small amount of luggage she had and went with this total stranger, he helped her over the border to a safer place and then having been thanked by her, he left. 

 

So one can imagine with such tales to tell we were all agog and in total admiration of this energetic 80 yr.old her wavy grey long hair held up in a loose bun and jogging shoes on her feet. She was a kind of Beloved Vagabond who by chance chose to visit our college for a year to do some potting, mostly sculptures and small beautiful butter mould tiles. 

 

I have a one track mind, but the walls of the track are so beautiful that if I leave it my mind, my subconscious, my feelings, my very feet lead me back to its haven of wonder. 

 

I glance out at bang, bang, bang of pop music blaring out of passing fast car's windows wide open; at the seriously concerned village gossips talking interminably about the latest drama in the news; the TV spelling it all out in words and pictures, splurging the bloody details across the screen to impress us, to make us suffer too; the professors discussing who shall come out with the next academic idea where nearly every idea has already been flogged to death and back again; the man who wants more out of life, drugged in one way or another, smoke or hash, sucking the very core of his own addiction into his mind and body to pollute all natures natural expressions and end up exhausted flesh. 

    

The ambitious artists who know-it-all, even did when they were fresh out of art school,"that colour is best there" - not even thinking - not crossing their minds that they are speaking to an artist too, one who is a colour specialist but they don't take the trouble to find out; the old ladies sitting, maybe not knowing it, in a row, their heads nodding at the flies and the net curtains, the crocheted doilies and the pot plant; the lonely bachelor who has never dared, all his life to speak directly to a girl, his upstairs room left exactly as his parents had it before they died. 

    

Another old bachelor, living in the tiniest room in the old grey unpainted Swiss style faded wooden house, who listens and bets on the horses each week, refuses to have his photograph taken, who hides under his bed when the thunder claps, his sitting/dining room with its huge tree half in half out entertaining the non present guests of twenty oak beautifully carved Swedish chairs, never to see the light of day as the curtains are permanently drawn.

 

Another bachelor who has kept the milk cartons all his life with the excuse that they start the log fire each morning, but they make a skyscraper-like pile up to the ceiling in his drawing room, where the old, long ago stocked fridge stands with its putrid meat clinging to a shelf, the row of Wellington's used and useful? The brush on a hook on the wall, a sheet of paper pinned to the wall to protect it! The little balls of dirty string saved for the moment they are needed which never arrives, the grey edged mug and plate that live exactly there in the cupboard, the old bread and rancid butter, the brandy bottle with at least 2 inches of sediment in the bottom! (I took some as I didn't want to appear impolite-I also ate the yellow rancid butter and old bread, the piece de résistance was the plum jam that had become wel WOW it was the best I have ever tasted!). 

 

The old couple of bachelors that, alarmed by my entrance, nobody usually visiting their hut (home, farm), smartly dressed, they backed to the walls when I advanced, only the little dog wagged its tail and welcomed me, later they hail me in the street; the spinster woman who has a bad reputation, hush, hush, and who comes up at Christmas time and deliberately, in front of my very eyes, cuts off the prominent branch of a huge fir tree in my drive, with a look of devilment on her face, little knowing that in reality the tree is not on my territory, surprised and disappointed that all I do is wish her a Merry Christmas - that took the wind out of her sails!

    

The village tall dark man who lives with his mother, where they have the very old kitchen range and wooden implements, with whom no one ever talks as he is so "morsk", grim, fierce (it says in the dictionary), and who goes round the village peering in at the windows to the consternation of all concerned (I did talk to him and he was quite civil);

 

The woman who knows the births and deaths, names and health history, places, marriages oh the lot, so detailed its alarming and who cooks the "eplekake" the whole village admires, whose husband drives all the villagers about for free in his well polished very old Volvo and talks with a Toten dialect, not form around here. 

    

The woman above the shop with her many cats and dogs, not one of which she will part as she becomes unable to look after them properly; the four, one died, three bachelors living way up the valley in the old school house by the river, who mark out their individual territory on the well scrubbed dining table, not allowing any of the others things to violate their space, nor any tools, each having their own version, be used by each other or loaned out to anybody. 

 

The well educated farm owner at the top of the valley, his children with the  hyper high IQ's, with many huts for rent, strawberries fields, sheep, dogs, donkeys, chickens and all the lot, who is given the honour of making the speech to the village on Constitution day, 17th May, patriotic and literary, and who has an office with numerable piles of yellowing edged pages in A4 size, the Oxford Concise and others in his book-lined walls, the only space being the swivel chair waiting for him to do some important farm and cultural work and who has gatherings of visitors for seminars where they run out in the fields naked and discover their natural...........?

 

The Salvation Army woman who had a sailor husband who hated his own country and preferred talking American to Norwegian, whose only saving thought was his story about the little boy who, on hearing he was leaving, said  "I have nothing to give you, but I do have this and it is all I have" whereupon he handed the Sailor his tiny little bundle of pale blue yarn, and the sailor answered "This I shall cherish all my life," and he did as his wife still has the little ball of wool, she whose voice is like a loud speaker at full volume all the time, but she is very kind and has a good view of life. 

    

Then there are those who interest me particularly, the Hardanger fela fiddle player with her illustrator husband and teacher mother-in-law, who loves poetry, and the son who dances and plays the fiddle too, beautifully; the family whose mother is the sweetest person I know and in whose home I can enter and do the washing up without asking to, and who answered at my request of what time would normally suit you for me to visit, "I would be hard pressed to find a time that wouldn't suit, for you." How honoured and loved I felt. Her husband a prominent Norwegian artist specialising in woodcuts and religious paintings. His brother who owns the hotel/guesthouse and runs it with his charming wife and children who also aid him with his teaching of painting at his Summer school. Also a prominent artist. 

 

The whole family are bound up in art in some way or other, the Grandfather of the house now reduced to packing his case to go home, a place no longer in existence, he is found wandering in the wrong direction in the middle of the night and driven home by some neighbours, he also gave me a concert with a Beethoven sonata in the middle of the night, roused from sleep I listened and wondered, he played so well, in the morning I said "I enjoyed your concert last night" and he replied "What concert?" And denied that he had done anything of the sort, he told tales to me at least a hundred times over as I listened and nodded patiently for hours, he also said that the trees were waving every now and then. 

   

Or the two teachers, the wife finding she was pregnant with their third child noticed that her slightly greying hair turned brown again, so went and had yet  another making a family of six in all; there are surely more and more whom I know a little of but I have no specially interesting remarks to make about them. One who was born impeded in speech and with a lazy leg who does his own bank account and runs a tractor, ploughing snow in Winter, chopping wood in Summer and has a happy mien, how terrible it must be for one to, perhaps, have a completely normal mind but when he tries to say anything it comes out as a b-b-burble that only the initiated can understand.

    

There have been others sadly dead, or moved away to other parts of the country. 

 

All that came from the start with the Beloved Vagabond, don't you love those words? There are some old ladies in Flatdal that are so rewarding to visit and who love to be visited as it adds a little something else to their otherwise rather monotonous day giving them that, is a reward in itself, I once thought of myself a bit like a visiting nurse, helping here and there and sitting through unending tales or yarns about all sorts for hours, as I didn't feel I should go so quickly when they obviously found it a welcome entertainment to have me there. I too could benefit in most cases hearing the local dialect so often that I now understand most of it. I was also wanting company as I lived in Flatdal that time for five years alone. 

   

Yes I live in another world. And I own a house, albeit one that could do with a lot more maintenance than I give it, but as long as the roof is intact and the gutters work well, they are new, or were, then there's not much to worry about, as I do not have to save for my non existent offspring, and the roof will see me out!!  Fancy owning a house, its unbelievable, specially on my almost non existent income when I bought it, they would never have lent me the money today I don't think. 

 

But I managed and was none the worse for having so little to live on, people eat and "drink" too much anyway. I always had a wee penny somewhere for the odd bottle of wine. One must have something to celebrate existence with occasionally. Oh there came a lump of the moss that covers the roof, I used to brush it off, balancing on a wooden home made ladder, but those have collapsed on me too, so now the moss is an "insulator"- albeit a spongy one!

    

I did lag the loft all on my own and laughed so much doing it, they say one doesn't laugh on one's own but I did, it was so comic hitting wasps nests and beams, near passing out, dressed in leather jacket, rain trousers, rubber gloves, goggles, helmet, it would have done for a comedy of some sort; all the time not standing in between the beams of the floor, balancing and laughing till I had to stop. The roll rolled out before I could stop it all along the roof and the bread knife carved it into fitting sections. Now it is double lagged up there as I had too much "stuff", fiber-glass, hence the clothes.

This was from a letter to a certain person in 2008. Ann of Norway.