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                            Drifting

In Norrland, the edge of the forest is not so much an edge but a sweeping comma, the way two mirrors make an infinite array of smaller mirrors when held facing each other, until somehow propelled by a mysterious curve out of sight. What lies on the other side of this curve though? Is it nothingness, or more of the same, or something so banally repetitive that our minds haven’t been programmed to understand the reality of it? In Swedish there is a word that has no English translation, describing a feeling of just-rightness that walks the razors edge between mediocrity and perfection. To be lagom is not to have too little, just as it is not to have too much. It is not be content, nor is it to be restless. The Japanese, whose aesthetic and visceral desire for moderation is not so different from Sweden, call it ‘choudo.’ Rather you just are, because in the northern woods especially, human being-ness is a sort of special stasis between unforgiving nature, an over-forgiving state, and that vaguely unsettling knowledge that you are smart and pretty and comfortable and probably don’t have much to do with any of if.

The train rounded the last curve past Riksgransen, the one that passed the little blue sign unceremoniously welcoming you to Norway, ‘N O R G E’ outlined in little stubborn white letters spaced too impatiently apart. I knew it was going to rain. It was September and the edge of winter already seemed to color the even gray palette of the hills. I called them hills since after the Rockies they never seemed quite to awe, to stretch in the same timeless way they did in the Nevada desert or the Colorado alpine. In about 40 minutes they would be mountains though, pure unadulterated, unquestionable mountains, which shot 1500 meters straight out of the North Sea and didn’t give a fuck whether it was raining or not. Edvin would be waiting for me at the train station as usual, the van stocked with everything you needed for climbing, for sitting around in the van on rain days, or for careening around the tightest, narrowest corners you’d ever seen on route to some new peak or wall or fjord. I bought a coffee from the little restaurant car, which was never as nice or cozy or filled with strange accents of the visiting fjellturister in their comical hiking pants and ‘I climbed Kebnekaise, Sweden’s Highest Point’ T-shirts. The coffee was strong and acidic and hot, and I loved the way each sip hurt, the way it forced my growing apathy for the rain and the north and my ‘situation’ into some distant place. Some Germans crowded around my window, conversing seriously (don’t they always seen serious?) and snapping rabid photos of the approaching fjord and a hundred-odd meter waterfall which spilled heedlessly off the high tundra of the border country into the sea. Then again, after enduring 1200-odd kilometers of mind-numbing flat forest, lakes and swamp (they almost always flew from Germany to Stockholm and got on the train there…) I could hardly fault them for their excitement.

 The car was nearly empty except for the German tourists and a pointlessly pretty girl sitting across the aisle from me. She was probably in her early 20’s, from Narvik no doubt, and seemed terminally bored by both the passing landscape and the other passengers. She didn’t look like the type who had just gone to Lulea to do some shopping and see some friends. She was tall, at least 180 cm. by the looks of it even sitting down, with cornflower hair that cascaded into neglected ribbons over her smooth pale face and bright hazel eyes. I pictured her in Stockholm, the way we all looked both haggard and determined not to look haggard after the 17 hour-ish train trip somehow not affecting her; her face like a million pieces of broken glass sparkling in some Sodermalm disco at 4 in the morning. I knew what it was like; the disconnecting of urbanism versus northern-ism, the mixing aesthetics of snowclad peaks, every one a Matterhorn in training, and empty snus cans and loitering teenagers in Adidas sweats outside an ICA store. The feeling of return, of change unchangeable; that this was just your way of life and nothing could ever really change that. Sometimes when you make eyes with someone it is violent; you want to intimidate them, to communicate the incommunicable signals of insecurity wrapped in silence. Sometimes it is sad; your eyes and your purposefully gentle body language say that you are another victim, another faceless someone trying to get by in the world, and if you have some love to give, you might as well share it. Sometimes it is nothing, and this is the scariest, and perhaps the truest- when you can look directly at someone and only see the wall behind, the fading floral embellishments of some budget-brand train wallpaper from the 1980’s lit by that immutable gray of northern Scandinavia. We shared a little post-modern eyefuck, not in any way that was sexual or uncomfortable or even unpleasant, just the fact that we were both around the same age and probably made of the same predicament and might as well have a little mutually acknowledgment of that before we got to Narvik. I liked Narvik on the whole; it was new and ugly and existed explicitly to ship iron ore pellets from the LKAB mines to wherever they might be wanted, but even so there was something respectable about the place and the stubborn people that lived there. Edvin said he much preferred Tromso, but I knew that had a lot to do with his ice climbing and ski touring obsession, and the fact that the severity of 70 degrees north is softened somewhat by 30,000 university students, a new one of which always seemed to be around his arm. I told myself I didn’t need the attention of the girl across the aisle, but of course I did. I’d grown tired of trying to make things work with Stefan, trying to iron out all the wrinkles of my character without being allowed to point out any of his. I suppose this wasn’t entirely true, but Stockholm was a long ways away, and since he’d moved from Toronto it seemed it had always been less about me and more about him anyways. Sometimes thinking about ending a relationship is like death- you know it has to happen, that it is going to happen, and that in a surreal way you sort of want it to happen. I still loved him, but my love was tired, stretched, wrapped around the bony protestations of my own mid-20’s narcissism. Climbing was a sort of catharsis, though of course it was also the fulfillment of the sort of selfishness I knew had led me to this place to begin with. The train slowed around a tunnel and I felt the tracks switch beneath us as an LKAB train sped by on the main line from Narvik. The iron trains always took priority, of course- Norrland was a sensible place bound by industry and natural resources, and two lost young people in the bistro car weren’t quantifiable by these means.

‘You work for the mines?’, the girl across the aisle from me turned and said. It wasn’t so much a question as a statement, the question mark dangling off some sort of strange Northern self-confidence.

‘How did you know?’, I fumbled, suddenly self conscious of how my Swedish sounded; never mind the mirroredness at these lattitudes.

‘I saw you get on in Gallivare’, she said matter of a factly, looking more out the window than me. ‘Besides, you don’t look like a local, and that’s the only reason anyone would go there otherwise.’

‘You mean you wouldn’t do it for the month of darkness, the biblically terrible mosquitos, or the Soviet Union-style apartment blocks?

‘Shut up.’ A smile creased her lips, and I got the feeling she wasn’t a ‘local’ either. Not that there was anything wrong with being so… in these days of internet identity, of faceless globalism and the sort of busy-ness that really just hides emptiness, I often wished I was a ‘local.’ At least they belonged.

‘So what are you going to Narvik for then?’, she prodded.

‘Rock climbing trip… I have some time off work and a friend in Tromso I’m meeting up with; we’ll be in Lofoten for a week…’ I trailed off, lost in my own reinforcement of motivations speaking these words to someone besides Edvin or myself meant.

‘Ahh, Lofoten, you know it really is the most beautiful place in the world.’ For once I felt her words held no guardedness or irony. ‘I grew up in Svolvaer’, she continued.’ ‘My father actually works with the LKAB port here in Narvik, so I have no idea why were moved all the way out there, other than it is pretty and he hated his job…’ ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this’, she followed after a pause.

‘I’m a geologist for LKAB in Malmberget actually’, I followed, feeling I needed to spill my own irrelevant details to this half-stranger. The only relevant thing was that it was 16:30, Narvik was 20 kilometers away, it was pissing gray spiteful rain, and Edvin would probably be late. I also considered that these days I didn’t care too much that I liked boys more than girls, someone close to me in any shape or form was better than the endless comma of pine trees that followed my sight like the edge of one’s eyelids.

‘I figured so, them or Boliden, you didn’t seem like an engineer’, she said matter-of-factly.

‘Thanks.’ I was certainly not an engineer and despite their many varied and wonderful qualities I was fine not being mistaken for one. My father was an engineer in the fullest, most geometric sense of the word, and it always reminded me of how the world seemed sometimes to only be made or square pegs and round holes. 

‘Fika?’, she said, switching the subject and flashing that wonderfully self conscious smile. ‘Sure’, I answered, we could do the ubiquitous Nordic coffee break ritual, despite my third cup’s acid slowly worming its way through my stomach. It was funny; we reputedly consumed more coffee per capita in Sweden than anywhere else in the world, but it never struck me as very good coffee. The old man working the snack booth didn’t charge us, merely smiling our way and pushing the 50 kronor bill back in my hand. I suppose I’d given him enough of my coffee allowance in the past 4 hours anyways.

‘I was in Umea visiting some friends…’, she continued. ‘Really, well if you’d gone any further south I would have suggested flying, the night train is terrible’, I offered. I hated my forwardness; flirting that wasn’t, because in the north the minute you talked to a girl, hell perhaps a boy too of a certain age and look, you might as well be asking them ‘your place or mine.’ I remembered thought that I had a boyfriend, or rather a guy who was way too into the sort of scarily Non-Swedish Norrland privateness to ever be out to anybody about our after work trysts.

‘Umea is nice… I have some friends from there too’, I said, but she cut me off before I could continue.

‘No it isn’t… fuck, I think even Tromso is better. At least we have mountains there.’ She knew I agreed because I’d told her I was a climber, I thought, and I smiled despite my stubbornness at becoming engaged with someone. The train had rounded the final stubby gray headland to our south and was now slowly pulling into Narvik, where the gray mist seemed to be finally pushing off to the south, and little sad tendrils of blue cloud wrapped around the industrial edges of the city.

‘So you a DJ or something?’, she pushed, once again reading my mind it felt like. True, I did almost always have my expensive oversize studio headphones on and some screwy DJ software blinking away on my laptop when I was on the train, but I didn’t think she’d even noticed me before. ‘Um, no… yes… yah, I guess I play music a little sometimes’, I fumbled. She probably also knew in her scary Viking intuition how obsessed I was, how many nights I stayed up crafting the perfect mix or feeling the waxy edges of rare vinyl I’d paid a fortune for from New York or Chicago as it settled into my turntables, the imaginary basement house party in my head pushing off tomorrow’s workday. ‘I like house music too’, she ventured… ‘What artists do you like?’ ‘I mean, like a few…’ she added embarrassedly a few minutes later, and seeing a crease in her Viking armor made me happy somewhat. I said nothing but handed her my ipod and watched her face glow and contort for the next few minutes as she scanned the artist list. ‘Wow, I didn’t think anyone had heard of them, especially up here!’, she gushed, and I suddenly wished the LKAB train had cost us another half hour. ‘Yeah, it helps keep me sane in Gallivare I guess’, I admitted.

‘Where’s your accent from?’, she prodded, and I blushed.

‘I grew up mostly in Toronto… my father is Canadian and my mom is Swedish.’

‘I’ve heard Canada’s not so different from around here…’

‘Yah, well besides the millions of people and speaking English part… if you’re around Toronto at least’, I quipped, and instantly thought I’d been too snide.

‘Yah, but I bet those fuckers don’t have Tørrfisk or Mørketid…’ she shot back, and we both laughed.

‘Well, if you’re up north, then you can eat all the shitty dried fish in the polar night that you want…’

The train had reached the station and the German tourists seemed in a state of mild euphoria, chattering excitedly and stomping down the aisle towards the opening doors, baggage in hand.

‘Say, do you want to go for a walk or something?’, she asked quietly, more to the fading floral wallpaper which covered the inside of the train in some sort of sad socialist realism. 

'It's raining, can we go somewhere inside?', I proposed meekly.

'Sure, well, you know I have a boyfriend...'

'So do I.'

'Oh reallyyyyy?', she said in mock surprise. I thought I detected a little acidity, the way bad Swedish mellanrost coffee sticks to the insides if your mouth. 

'I knew that.'

'No you didn't.'

'Well, I had a hunch at least.'

'Fair enough.'

'So you meet him in Gallivare or something? That seems highly unlikely.'

I laughed despite myself. I wanted to dislike her, to tell her I'd just get some overpriced pizza at Nico's and sip on an 80-Kronor beer while I waited for Edvin to materialize out of the sad drizzle in his van, but I couldn't.

Narvik was so much like Gallivare in some ways; caught in its own strange location, the necessity of industry and the pointlessness of the mountains, how grand and perfect they were despite our constant human shortcomings. 

'Yes, I did meet him in Gallivare actually. He works in the mine as well.'

'Of course.' 

After a pause: 'Does he snus?' I shot her a reproachful look.

'Don't act like you haven't tried it.'

'I used to, back in gymnasiet days.'

'What a Rebel...'

'Fuck you, we all do it.'

'I never have.'

'Well I wish I had a gold star to give you.'

More laughter. We were walking now down towards the LKAB port; the rain had lifted and tiny slivers of waxy light wound their way down into the depths of the fjord as if all the souls of dead Vikings and World War II soldiers and ships that never made it were reflecting off the steely slopes above us.

'You miss home?', she asked me as we rounded a dull cobblestone corner towards one of those nebulous Turkish-owned pizza and kebab places that might offer us a little warmth and cheap dinner. 

'What is home?', I asked her. The words weren't angry or empty or meant to be misleading, I just said what I felt.

'Yah, I get that.'

'So this snus-ing miner closet case, he pretty cute at least?'

'Yes... that's about 90% of our relationship.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's better than nothing.'

She pointed to a looming crane, a steel and glass spider humming with crude precision over a container ship bearing mysterious Arabic lettering. 

'My Father's up there.'

'On a Sunday?'

'He does inspections of those things; used to operate one when I was little...I got to ride in it once', she said, and I caught a whiff of nostalgia.

'So can we go say hi and take it for a spin then?'

'haha..', she said drily, but the self-conscious smile was still there. 'What kind of pizza do you want?'

'Anchovies and mushrooms.'

'Gross.' A pause. 'That's my favorite.'I prodded her as we laughed.

I felt suddenly outside myself, like someone standing in front of a mirror and wondering how they look to everyone else who sees all of them at the same time. I just wanted confirmation, a second opinion that everything was going to be OK; OK with Anton the snus-ing closet case and I, OK with the looming winter and darkness, OK with this girl who's name I didn't even know, I just realized. 

'Erik', I said, holding out my hand awkwardly. 

'Astrid', she said, failing to skip a beat.

Match and set.

We ate the pizza the way I was used to doing; big drooping slices folded in half and consumed in ungracious bites, the opposite of the mannered way Swedes cut their pizza into little square bites with a fork and knife in public places. Even in this lagom place and possibly lagom moment in my least favorite month of September, everything felt purposeful. My ancient Nokia buzzed in my pocket and a message from Edvin lit the cracked screen: 'Be there in 30. Fucking bridge construction, almost snowing in Tromso, this university girl is too much trouble, sunshine Thursday and we are getting BACK on Vestpillaren!' Ah, Vestpillaren. 500 meters of beautiful granite climbing on the sea. 

I didn't need to decipher the rest of his typically cryptic rambling once I knew this. I'd climbed it once before; the giant clean sweep of granite rising in parallel exclamation points, the sea resting below in deep turquoise chasms... it made every rainy workday, every sad drive around a town of rusting ICA shopping carts and rusting dreams worthwhile. 

'What's up, is your buddy finally here to whisk you away into the rain and isolation?'

I sensed a hint of resentment, or maybe just her cryptic irony which I found so simultaneously repelling and attractive.

'Yes, well, 30 minutes, so he claims, but it will probably be more like an hour.'

'You ever feel like we are all just rushing towards nothing?'

'Who's rushing?'

'You know what I mean, like our manic busy-ness is just covering up how insignificant most of life, work, whatever is.'

I thought of how many times this idea, or truth rather, had passed through my head in the past few months. I guess we were cut from the same cloth after all.

'You want the last slice?'

She picked it up wordlessly and took an apprehensive bite, like committing to something you know you have to commit to all along.

'I guess I just feel like if I keep stumbling, or working, or climbing, or whatever, that something big will happen, either all at once or in pieces that build into something big.'

'You mean, like fate?'

'I hate that word.'

She smiled.

'Well, what do you think we are?'

'Sure', I answered, smiling despite myself.

The next thing I knew she'd taken my hand and we were walking in the steely drizzle up some sad socialist street towards the water. A woman in a headscarf and flowing dress chased after several children, her motions both guarded and confident, as if to say 'I am not of this place, but neither are you.' None of us were really. Even the Vikings, those tireless pillagers and rapists and worshippers of strange gods were not really meant for here, they merely passed through, and now their children persisted on dried fish and red roof houses and Iphone 3G downloads. 

We turned a corner and she walked me up the steps of a characterless red building and turned a brass key into the door. Her apartment was spartan but surprisingly personable; any accoutrements seemed both careless and precisely chosen. I looked at my watch for a second, and I saw her turn away towards the window, her expression like the surface of the North Sea when a storm has passed and the chop is just beginning to settle. 

'He's an hour late, I can blow him off for 30 minutes.'

She said nothing, just stood facing the window, her back reflecting the gray light into something brighter and cut by angles instead of the round nothingness of the mountains and the water outside. 

'I suppose I should make coffee now', she said evenly, not so much to me as the window and Narvik beyond it.

We ground the beans, heated the water and filled the French press together in strangely syncronized motions, the awkwardness of proximity to a near stranger in their home somehow nullified by the Nordic coffee ritual.

I was struck suddenly by how pretty and bold and completely not self-important she was. 

I glanced furtively at my watch once more while the coffee brewed. 5:15. I swear it had been 5:20 the last time I looked. It did feel like time pooled here; it drained downwards from the high glaciers and empty tundra of the Tornetrask and Abisko and collected in static corners of apartment buildings and train stations.

'So you have a boyfriend in Umeå then?', I asked thoughtlessly. Not that it mattered.

'No better than yours', she replied, doing the very Nordic thing of sitting directly across from someone at a small slab of Ikea-esque wood and steel waiting for coffee to brew and acknowledging them only through glances from an iphone screen.

'I'll be in Svolvaer this Friday, you wanna kick it or something?', she said to the Iphone. It blinked a static white, in seeming recognition. 

'Yah, sure, well, I don't know where we will be; Edvin has been talking about climbing Vågakallen that day...'

Her eyes lit in recognition of the name. It really was that kind of mountain.

'It might be raining though..', I said reflectively.

'I hope it does.'

I pushed her arm with the my hand, my fingers curled in the noncommittal way they do when you want to disguise the nervousness of touching someone who probably wants to be touched but still seem offhanded about the whole business.
My phone buzzed wearily in my pocket. Edvin.
'Where the fuck are you!?'
'Sorry, got some pizza, headed back to station now' I stabbed into the phone in my classic one-finger style. The almost wet glass of the screen against the rough callouses of my finger felt nearly sexual.
I stood and she stayed sitting for a minute, lost in doing something minute and concentrated, which took me a moment to process. She was writing a note. With pen and a scrap of yellow paper. The gesture seemed almost obscene with our iphones in clear view of it all.
She stood, stuffed the note into my pocket, and we hugged in a way that was cursory yet kin-like. I nodded, for no apparent reason, and turned towards the door. The time now seemed to read 5:10. Bizarre. I glanced out the window one last time and saw the woman in the headscarf who had been chasing the two young children earlier was walking on the street just below us, but she walked backwards, the children moving in a similarly reversed way. I shook my head slightly. Too little sleep.
'See you Friday', she said as we decoupled, her smile somehow backwards as well.
'Maybe', I said smiling myself, and backed out of the door into the end of the world.