Parkveien /

The buildings here are a painting – too fancy to be hung up in my home. Brushed in watercolour, one can’t help but leer – see life unfold: warm blankets caress leather-crusted couches, tungsten flickering, condensation like a mirror, the tap leaking, dancing in silence. I wonder if I’m sexy enough to be here – dressed in a khaki-coloured pea coat with an equally ugly khaki scarf purchased at H&M. My neck was cold while the rest of my body, wrapped tightly in a week’s worth of clothes, stayed stubbornly warm. The shop girl disapproved of my outfit – didn’t say have a good day or thanks! – perhaps she could tell I didn’t speak Norwegian – perhaps she didn’t care because I’m not sexy enough. The way people are here – trudging through snow in well-matched clothes (never clashing) – is distinctly sexy. Romantic, aloof, earth-shatteringly functional. The air between them – swishing shopping bags, awkwardness, and indifference – is sharp, perfumed by the latest fad: coffee with coconut milk, androgynous perfume, tobacco that tastes like violet. They don’t take me seriously – eating a 100-kroner hot dog at a place called Joker. I thought the eggs I bought yesterday came boiled, but when I unboxed them at the hostel, they bled into my palm, thick yellow pooling onto my walking shoes, specifically bought for Oslo – out of season, of course.

Parkveien is blanketed by snow but joggers/horses/dogs still tip-tap up the hill past the marshmallow children and patchwork parents arguing about their little bundles – whatever. Footprints hooves etc lead to the Royal Palace where people take pictures of the guards, who hold guns and march in a line. It is an extraordinarily yellow building – suffers from jaundice and opulent decay. My khaki outfit makes me look like one of the baby birch trees, screaming from the ground, gasping for air. If I stand still for long enough, a heron will shelter under me and make a nest with the bundle of sticks pissed on by a poodle wearing a puffa jacket. The cardamom bun after hot dog pølse (same as pulse) cost me ten Australian dollars. It’s no bigger than a clenched fist or a slack jaw. Man on a bench asks for money – I need a friend. No cash, so I offer him my bun. It’s still warm, now the size of an angry ball of paper. Takes it and feeds it to the bowling ball pigeons who warble for more. I nearly slip in the snow after questioning my next step. He catches me.

/ Nasjonalmuseet

There is a Rothko exhibition screaming limited time only, advertised like a traveling circus. Everyone is lonely here, all so silent, pacing around the gallery in a whisper pretending not to exist. I stand close – not enough so they can feel my breath – just so I can sense blood rush. Rothko threw himself onto the canvas in brutal blocks. Try to find him behind the primary colours – is there a shape of a man in the slash of orange or a trace of agony blotched in blue? I try to find myself in paintings about death, colonial Norway, post-modern dissections of animals, a teasing nymph on a pedestal. The people – like muses –  are impossible to decipher, as a gull flies by the high windows. A woman in red says, excuse me – the security guard wakes up from a nap – my shoe makes a high-pitched squeak on the polished floorboards – a young girl mistakes me for her mother. It must seem so sophisticated to be here on a Wednesday, unburdened by work, education, or worldly connections – but today is half-priced entry. Heat hyperventilates through the gift store – buy a postcard and a yoghurt drink to save for later.

Ski /

I wanted to go to a manor with barnyard animals and people in costumes, to feel skin, or childhood nostalgia. The bus does a loop around Oslo’s main island, stopping at a place called Ski. The bus driver waves me on – sit in the sun to count the shedding maple leaves tossed from the sky – a family fusses, I can’t understand what they’re saying, and it’s strangely comforting. Bus traces around the exoskeleton of the city – buildings rise and fall like vertebrae. A plane paints the white sky – barely any cars, cyclists and pedestrians avoid disaster – the tram ambles around the late morning – coffee shops, second-hand books and clothes, muslin-wrapped promises, rotting snow (like cavities), the sucked cough-drop sun. Past the shipping yard, containers ready to embark – rows of plain colours as if designed by Rothko himself. A beluga whale named Hvaldimir (after Vladimir) (after Putin) was spotted here a couple of years ago. He worked his way across the border and saw the Northern Lights and a discarded packet of chips. Water doesn’t feel any paranoia, only pleasure, carried Hvaldimir in its womb before he was shot in the head. Thought he was a Russian spy or something. Near Ski, the winding archipelago outstretches its arms to embrace the shore – abandoned yachts, buoys, creaming soda waves, circle of gulls fighting against sneezing winds. The family on the bus is still uneasy, the dutiful mother unwraps a chocolate bar for her flock – a man stares hungrily at her alabaster fingers, glittering with emeralds and silver. Drops me off in the snow along with the rest of the morning – people glide around the vanilla mountains in their alpine best. My phone has lost signal, the animal farm is now a wasted dream. I follow my feet instead of a map, hoping for godly intervention, my face lost in the lush jungle of cheap green polyester. A river (or ravine?) has frozen over. No signs of a manor – or skin or nostalgia. Just a convenience store, old cigarettes, a half-eaten banana mummified by frost. A swan glides across the river unable to land, its neck hooked ungraciously like an anchor. The clay-coloured ducks follow it as if it were Venus – honks at them – they should know their place in the pecking order. In the snow, next to my feet, they beg for warmth and validation. I reach out to touch them, but they waddle away. 

/ Olaf Ryes plass Grünnerløkka 

This is where Munch painted the lovers dancing – ancient history before iPhones with zoom lenses and Apotek’s selling overpriced antihistamines and prophylactics. Open my frozen-over yoghurt drink  –tastes like blueberry snow. Sometimes life brings such pleasures! The sweet slush crunches against my teeth as people make their way across Olaf Ryes plass in various states of busyness (sauntering, pacing, sprinting for the bus). All so gorgeously apple-cheeked – good enough to eat. Tomorrow – like the wandering albatross perched on top of the bored concrete statue of a man forbidden to smile – I will make my way home. Then Oslo will become a magazine I bought at the airport, postcards at the bottom of my backpack, the cold sore brewing on my lip, the pink salmon and crisp bread I treated myself to when I wanted to feel alive. The chilling wind piercing through my cheap clothes. A woman carrying her shopping across the ice, a fresh baguette tumbling just out of her reach. The kind gentleman selling scorched acorns to nobody. My footsteps vanishing in the small slit of sun.

Sauna – across the river /

Before departure and after the yoghurt drink, I visit the sauna– a box of wood floating on the frozen sea. The lights of the marina twitch impatiently and wait for the stars. Remove all of my clothes and shove them in a paper bag. In my underwear – because who thought to bring bathers (the functional Norwegians did) – but I am just another body, no need to notice me. The air is so thick you can eat it, swallow it in thick, honeyed gulps. Delightful to be surrounded so intimately with those who, outside, are bankers, corporate lawyers, bicycle couriers, mothers, widows, or just passing through. Be enveloped by them, lean against a knee, brush against a shoulder so tenderly – I wonder if my bones would remember. Warm yourself before hitting the glass shards of the North Sea. I wonder how far I could sink before somebody noticed – or if Hvaldimir would have been better off lonely. Ripping through the black surface someone pulls me back onto the wooden deck. It’s not good to spend too long in the water plunging, thinking etc. Take a warm shower, pull on clothes and the sauna body detaches. Not even a wave goodbye? Sentimentality isn’t for Norwegians – clamber on a bike or e-scooter, take the next tram to dinner, walk home in silence, stoic until bedtime. Near the Deichman and bronze tiger, whose head has become dull with pats from pedestrians, I try to take a photo. But it disappears with my clumsy fingers and unhelpful wanting. Like the rest of the day, it becomes gloriously lost at sea.