Feeling at Home

I have never felt deja vu anywhere in Norway. Ever. I don’t want to become all cosmic and strange on this issue. I guess I am just making an observation. It is like being engrossed in a project so long that you can’t remember the last time you went to the bathroom- except I can't remember my last deja vu. It doesn’t really matter- it isn't like loosing my sense of smell or sight, but it is something that makes me curious.

No short anecdote begins with ”when I was young,” but when I was a kid, we lived in a neighborhood with mature trees in a post-war house until I was six. It was a Mayberry neighborhood in a Mayberry small town. I remember a vaguely global awareness as I would dig holes in the front yard in an attempt to tunnel to China. I remember warm sunny summer days lying in the grass, staring at the clouds as they made animal shapes. I had a fascination with the contrails left by planes, high and tiny 6 miles above me. I wondered where they were going, where they were coming from. I lived in fly-over land- smack dab in the middle of the continent, as far away from an ocean as anywhere on the planet. I loved life in that neighborhood. Perhaps it had something to do with my age. Five or six years old was a wonderful time. There is virtually no stress from school, peers, parents, or life. The social issues of school start young, but five or six was clear sailing.

We moved across town to a new subdivision. We lived on the edge of town, on Sixth street- which was also practically downtown. It is one of the many paradoxes of small town living. The new neighborhood was reputed to be one of the last tobacco fields in Iowa. At any rate, there were no trees in our new neighborhood for a number of years. We lived on a corner lot with nothing around us- a house on the prairie.

I attended a private university that was founded in 1881 or something like that. It had a campus full of oak trees, and old vine covered buildings (except for the new, air-conditioned buildings of the business and law schools). I felt very at home, until I graduated- at which point I had no use for living there anymore. After school I moved to Minneapolis. Again, I felt very at home. Where Manhattan has canyons of tall buildings and corridors of row houses, Minneapolis is a summer network of tree-lined tunnels. From the air it almost looks like a forest. Eventually we purchased a house in southwest, which was another Mayberry neighborhood with huge old trees.

Everything up to this point was Midwest living at its finest. Harsh winters and hot humid summers in a region no foreign tourist dare venture. Within this familiar environment, my life was full of déjà vu moments. Perhaps the sameness of everything promotes such feeling. No matter where in the US, there are the same stores and restaurants, the same cable channels, the same songs on the radio. In the Midwest, there are few geographical markers to break things up. Cities are mostly just huge sprawling grids of roads and new buildings on a flat plain. If I closed my eyes late at night on a hot summer night, I could easily envision the land before it was encroached upon by the sort of humans who preferred to build permanent structures.

Living here is sometimes strange. I am sitting on the sofa we had in Minneapolis, with our two cars lounging about, watching a commercial for the Pink Panther movie- sitting in a little bubble of American entertainment. Next a commercial for the new Jonas Fjeld CD and 4 megabit broadband connections, followed by a Norwegian Loreal commercial, then some artsy commercial for Nokia cell phones. As soon as I step outside, I realize I am on a huge hill, overlooking a fjord with mountains in the background. Geography is much more in my face. This clearly isn’t Minnesota. This house is built into solid rock. I fully experience gravity when returning home from the bus stop. It is like a science fiction movie where someone slips into a paralell universe that isn’t quite the same. Certain bits and pieces are jarringly out of place.

Back to déjà vu - I don’t believe it means anything “real” in the sense of having any precognition or that I have experienced something before in a previous lifetime, but still, it is an oddly comforting feeling. It makes a place feel more familiar than it really is. I seriously wonder how long it will be until I experience a genuine moment here. I know this is the right place for me to be. Of course, another thing to consider is that it could easily be as foreign for me to live in Florida, or Texas, or the Southwest- perhaps more foreign? And I miss huge old trees more than anything right now. There are a few pine trees in view across the street, but none in this yard. I told Lise before we moved that I wanted a house with big old trees. This means we can probably never live on a treeless island, but I won’t rule out a summer home.

I leave for Germany Wednesday for 8 or 9 days. I don’t think I’ll be able to survive that long on a 20kg baggage weight limit. I hear that their TV is dubbed and we won’t have internet at our hotel. I am guessing that home will feel more like home than ever after this trip.