– A boy running in a park while his dad was trying to get him interested in a stick
– A shop window full of inflatable cushions
– A big man speaking Russian and frying hamburgers in a huge lump of butter
– A big bottle of beer
– A man on rollerblades who first almost crashed into a lady and who, a minute later, almost crashed into a car
– An orthodox Jew with a walkman and red trainers
– A girl giving away samples of a new brand of chewing gum, who said it was free today only
– A man sitting with a notice which said that he didn’t have any money and that he was HIV-positive
– A girl who came into a shop and asked the man behind the counter how he was doing
– A lady in sunglasses sitting in a cafe telling her friend that she’d been talking to a man until four o’clock in the morning and that it was a relationship she had faith in
– A restaurant owner standing in the street swinging a golf club while we were eating dinner
– A very long car that had tinted, black windows so nobody could look inside
– A Chinese porno magazine where the cover girl was holding a hand over her nipples
1-800-PARKS
When I wake up, Obi has pulled all my little bananas off the kitchen counter. They’re all over the floor. I shake my head and say Obi, Obi. David still hasn’t been here. He should have come two days ago.
Someone will have to walk Obi. I have to walk Obi. I put on my new Nike shoes. Now Obi and I are going out. It’s raining.
By the entrance to the park there is a sign with a phone number you can call if you have a Parks-related problem. In a way, Obi is such a problem. I take down the phone number: 1-800-Parks. If David doesn’t pick Obi up by the end of the day, I’m going to call it.
A man with a dog calls from afar asking whether Obi is a he or a she. It is obvious that his dog is a she and that it is in heat. It’s running loose as well. I shout back saying that I don’t know. The man looks at me shaking his head. He thinks I’m weird.
Now I meet another man with a dog. He knows Obi, he says. He says Obi has a high metabolism, and that I should feed Obi more often than he feeds his dog. It is a meaningless piece of information. He doesn’t say anything about how often he feeds his dog. But he tells me that Obi is a he.
I have only brought one bag, so when Obi sits down to crap for a second time, he makes me embarrassed. He’s crapping on the pavement. When he is done, we cross the street and pretend nothing happened.
Shame on you, I say to Obi. Bad dog.
Walking a dog in the streets of New York is absurd. But it gives me perspective. Lots of it. I’m so far away from home. In a big city. All the people. And I am only one. The only thing I can be sure of at any given time is what I am thinking myself. I have no idea what the others are thinking. Do they think space is big and dangerous? I do. What do they believe in? I think nobody ought to be alone. That one should be with someone. With friends. With the person one loves. I think it is important to love. I think it’s the most important thing.
While my brother’s preparing breakfast, I write a postcard to Lise.
This is what I am writing:
Hi Lise,
New York is so big. I get a bit of the same feeling as I do with space. That I am exempt from responsibility. That there is nothing I can do except to try and have a good time. I am walking a dog named Obi. We live in an apartment with a doorman. He has a uniform and says how are you today, mister, and I say fine. My brother doesn’t want me to talk about time or space. I look forward to seeing you. I haven’t hammered since I last saw you. I think the most important thing is to love.
When I return from posting the card, Obi is gone. David has been to fetch him. I don’t have to call 1-800-Parks.
I ask my brother what David said, but he tells me that David hardly said a thing. He just apologised for being two days late and then he asked if the little bananas were real ones.
In America they don’t know if fruit lying on the floor is real or plastic.
While we eat, my brother asks me what I think.
About what? I say.
About all of it, he says.
I tell him about the perspective I just experienced, and that I think New York is a little like space and that the most important thing is to love.
My brother nods. He asks me whether I have ever considered thinking less.
I tell him I consider it all the time, but that it’s not that easy.
My brother says I should spend more time doing things that can only be experienced.
Like what, for instance? I say.
Play, he says. And he says that today I must let him decide.
I ask him what he is deciding.
He is deciding that we’ll be doing little thinking and lots of laughing.
Fine by me, I say.
The Library
We are sitting in the New York Public Library. My brother decided that we’d go here. It’s a great library. Big. Lots of people. And guards making sure those leaving haven’t stolen any books. I am looking at periodicals. In an issue of Time I see a picture of a gas cloud somewhere in the universe. The picture is taken by a satellite and the caption explains that the gas cloud is several trillion kilometres tall. This is the way it’s supposed to be.
My brother is sitting at the other end of the room, facing a computer. I can see he is laughing to himself. He waves me over. Directly opposite my brother a hobo sits reading. All his bags are standing on the floor. Probably fifteen bags. And his clothes are just rags. But he is reading in a book called Economic Science.
The woman in the elevator in the hotel in Oslo was right when she said the world is more complex than I think. But my brother isn’t that complex. He is sitting there searching for authors who have Norwegian taboo words for names. Now he’s typing a very bad word. He laughs and laughs. I think it’s a bit silly. But when the result comes up, I start laughing, too. It is terribly childish, but quite gratifying. I get sucked into it. And while I laugh, I am looking around hoping nobody realises what we’re up to.
We sit there for a long while. Maybe an hour. It is a magnificent experience. I haven’t laughed this hard in ages. The fun often lies in the gap between the authors’ names and the serious nature of what they’ve written. But sometimes I find it satisfying just to see the words appear on the screen. I feel we’re playing a trick on someone. My brother and I are outdoing each other in coming up with words. Some of them are pretty bad.
Here is some of what we find:
After a while my brother gets up to go and buy some chocolate. I tell him I’ll be there in a minute. I tell him there are a few words I want to check. Maybe I’ve got a guilty conscience since we’ve just been having fun at other people’s expense for so long.
I do a search with some words that are more agreeable. It’s not quite as fun, but I feel I am creating a sort of balance.
This is what I find:
We walk on in the big city. The morning has been a great success. While we were sitting in the library, I hardly had a single thought. I just laughed. I tell my brother he is good at deciding.
Now we’re standing in front of the Empire State Building. It’s still raining, so we walk past without going up in the elevator. I look at the building. It is enormous. I can’t see the top. But I know time passes a little faster up there. I tell my brother, but he thinks it’s rubbish.
The Park
This city makes it easy to think about big things. I am thinking about Paul’s book. It confuses me. The only question that really counts, must be this one: are things getting better or are they getting worse? That goes for me, and it goes for all human beings, animals, and for the whole world. And all this stuff about what’s going to happen in a billion billion years really just doesn’t concern me. I suddenly realise. It might be egotistical, but I am more concerned about what’s going to happen while I am alive than about wha
t’s going to happen afterwards. Thinking about this is an enormous liberation. The thought comes to me while my brother and I are throwing frisbee in Central Park. We’ve been throwing for a long while. We keep moving further and further apart. My brother has bought a very good frisbee. It’s heavy and stable. Sometimes I feel I could throw it as far as infinity. Now I’m throwing. Now my brother’s catching. Now my brother’s throwing. Now I’m catching.
It’s been several minutes since either of us dropped the frisbee on the ground. My brother is very involved. He runs as fast as he can. He’s jumping and throwing himself all over the place. His eagerness is affecting me. I am thinking I will never stop throwing things. I am thinking that I believe in cleansing the soul through fun and games.
Dumber
It is evening and my body is tired from all the playing and walking. I am really pooped.
Like I used to be when we got home from skiing trips when I was little. And I’ve got a blister from the frisbee. It’s on the outside of the right index finger. In a while I will pop a hole in the blister, clean it and put a Donald Duck plaster on it. There are lots of Donald Duck plasters in the bathroom cupboard.
My brother asks me if I am happy with my day and I say yes. I tell him I want to play more tomorrow. He smiles at me and says there’s a good boy. He says I must wean myself from all the scary thoughts. Forget all that stuff about space, he says.
Now he is serving me Japanese take-away and turning on the TV. Today it’s about a boy who used to be skinny when he was in high school. The girls didn’t think he was particularly cool and when he asked the prettiest girl in class to a party, she said no.
Now a few years have passed, and the boy has become totally different. He has a moustache and muscles. He is running around on stage showing off his big biceps. The audience is cheering. And he has a girlfriend who is prettier than the prettiest girl in class used to be. And the girl who was the prettiest girl in class is also coming on stage. Now she’s sorry. The show is about the fact that looks don’t count as much as what we’re like inside.
I think Americans are a little dumber than I am. My brother thinks so, too. I’m sure Dad does as well.
This is what I have seen today:
– A black man calling his bike bitch
– A shop where they sold fire-fighter equipment
– A painting by Dali where some clocks were hanging as though they had melted
– Two men wearing yarmulkas running out of an ambulance
– Five black youths walking in the park, each with a tape recorder on his shoulder. They were talking to each other, but none of them could have heard anything but the music
– A skyscraper that hadn’t been finished
– A little boy smoking drugs in a park
– A shop that had so many periodicals I had to give up
– An older, unshaven man and a rather young woman who sat leaning against each other on a bench, sleeping
– A bike shop with my favourite bike
– A skinny old man with his tie over his shoulder shouting loudly at a car jumping a red light
– A woman assistant in a jeans shop who didn’t have anything to do
– A policeman on a bike, with a gun
– A black man drumming on empty paint tins, a bread bin and an oven griddle. He was incredibly good and I gave him money
– A man who drank coffee while walking down the street
– A man giving an address in Paris to a girl he didn’t know
– A fitness centre where people were jogging on treadmills while watching four TV screens
– A bouquet of roses lying all over the street
– A garbage bin full of chopped-off pig’s and cow’s feet
– A little girl throwing a ball against a wall, while her dad stood behind her saying she was good
– A woman who got cross when she discovered she had made me a vanilla ice cream, when what I had asked for was a chocolate ice cream
Close
I feel I am on a high. For the first time in a very long while I have a feeling that anything can happen. This morning I woke up thinking everything could happen, that things would just come to me, and that they would be good. I haven’t felt this way since I was little. It could be this city that’s doing it. It could also be my brother. For a while I thought he wasn’t quite as friendly as I am. Now I don’t think so any more.
He is a good guy. He wishes me well. We’ve spent a lot of quality time together these last few days.
We’ve been throwing frisbee and running on the grass. We’ve talked about what things were like when we were little, and arrived at the fact that they were different. Things were simple, big, but above all different. And sometimes things were better than they are now, and other times they were worse. My brother thinks claiming that everything used to be better is a dead-end street. But different is a word he enjoys. And last night I got him to hammer.
We switched the TV off and sat talking. About girls. My brother has been a bit vague about girls for a while now. He both wants and doesn’t want them. I tell him he can’t do that. He can’t both have a girl and not have her. Not at the same time. At least not unless she is willing to both have and not have him.
He told me about the last girl he went out with. It looked as though they were going to go all the way. But then my brother changed his mind and ruined it all. And the worst thing is that he never quite understood why he did it. It was just a feeling. He thought things might be better with another girl. It was OK as it was, but it might be even better. With someone else. Then he walked out. And now he regrets it. Every day.
After he had said that, he became all quiet and sat there for a long time just shaking his head. I felt sorry for him. I fetched the hammer-and-peg and placed it carefully on the table in front of him. Then I gave him the hammer, and when he took it and gave me a puzzled look, I nodded slowly. Then he started hammering. In a quiet and uncomplicated rhythm he knocked all the pegs down and turned the board over several times. Neither of us said anything. I felt we were really close while he was hammering.
The Owl and the Pussycat
Today we are walking by ourselves a little. My brother on his side and I on mine. We’re going to meet later on, but both of us felt that it could be good to be alone for a while.
I am sitting on a bench looking at all the people. It’s good for me to see so many other people who are not me. That there are so many others. I feel affection for them. Most of them are doing the best they can. I am also doing the best I can.
I see quite a few who aren’t so well off. People who are poor or sad. We ought to be nicer to each other. Not just in America. People all over the world ought to be nicer to each other. Now I am getting up to start talking to people who walk by. Many of them ignore me, but some talk back. I ask them what means something to them.
Some say love.
Some say friends.
Some say my family.
One says music.
One says cars.
One says money, but I can tell he’s a sarcastic twit.
One says girls.
Two say boys.
Several say both friends and family.
Some say they don’t know.
I also ask whether they think it will all be all right in the end. Several of them just shake their head at my question, but of those who reply, half of them say yes and the other half no. I wonder whether this is representative of the remaining population.
I buy a milk shake and slurp down the contents while I walk. My new shoes are super. Nikes are super. This city is full of product names. Partly because there are so many billboards, but also because many companies have offices here.
Now I am walking past the Rolex building. I ask the doorman if it is possible to go inside and look at watches, but he says the only thing they’ve got in there is a workshop. It must be an enormous workshop. But he treats me politely. Maybe I look like I could afford a Rolex.
> Now that I have become aware of them, I see billboards everywhere. It’s very strange, but I am emotionally attached to the following companies and products, and some of them I have come to love outright:
– Nike
– Levi’s
– Volvo
– Snapple
– Ray Ban
– Brio
– Nikon
– Sony
– Findus
– Cannondale
– Rolex
– REMA 1000
– Carhart
– Colgate
– BBC
– Berghaus
– Universal Pictures
– NRK
– Urtekram
– Farris
– Statoil
– Apple Macintosh
– SAS
– Sørlandschips
– Absolut Vodka
– Atomic
– Fjällräven
– Solo
– Bang & Olufsen
– Europcar
– Stüssy
– Massey Ferguson
It’s not just about advertising. Several of these companies make products I’ve never seen advertised. I associate them with something good without having any idea why. Some sympathies I have inherited, naturally. REMA 1000 for example. Dad loves REMA 1000. He buys everything there. Even his sleeping bag. But Statoil and Massey Ferguson? I have no idea where I got them from. Either their marketing is so clever that it creates a false idea that I am coming up with it myself, or my personality is more open to certain product names than it is to others. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it is easier to choose once and for all than to be confused every time you buy something new. I’ll probably never buy a tractor, but if I do, it’s going to be a Massey Ferguson. That’s just the way it is.