Sweethaven-sagen -- my novel in Danish

Just arrived from the printers – the Danish translation of Sweet Haven. Forlaget Hjulet changed the title to Sweethaven-sagen – The Sweethaven Case, putting the focus on the investigative and legal side of the story. The original two-word English title was a play on the fictional setting of the book – a place (school, actually) called Sweethaven. But it wouldn’t have made much sense to translate the title literally into Danish, and risk losing the intended irony (as readers will discover, there is nothing sweet about the place, and neither is it a haven).

So three boxes filled with copies of the book are stacked by the dining table. It’s a storied table, in more ways than one: a pantheon of writers and artists have sat down to dinner here (including two Nobel prize winners). Not my guests, but my husband’s, and his father’s and grandfather’s before him. It was at this dining table that, in the winter of 2004, I sat down and wrote the first line of a new project: “You see, I didn’t love her,” not knowing what the hell I was doing, who the “you” was supposed to be (the reader, as it turned out), without a clear idea of the narrator and for that matter, the “her.” I was under pressure to produce some 25 manuscript pages for my first meeting with the mentor assigned me as recipient of the David T.K. Wong fellowship; back in my apartment at the University of East Anglia in Norwich was a folder full of scribblings, the bones of a novel that despite all my perseverance remained inert and dry. So there I was, in Måløv, Denmark, seeking refuge from what was supposed to be my writer’s refuge in England, at the dining table in the home of the man who was to become my husband. He was in Bolivia; I was alone with my thoughts; the fellowship to England was supposed to be the greatest thing in my literary career, marking the gaining of freedom and the chance, at long last, to write what I pleased. But the only voice in my head was of a confused and dismayed woman, telling her story in the present, and looking back to her own turning point, the start of a new and bitter life.

As it turned out, the book I subsequently wrote begins, more or less, with that very first line. “You see, I didn’t love you. If there’d only been a way to send you back, keep you from pushing your insistent way into the world. What were you in such a hurry for? Go away, Naia. Shrivel. Shrink back into a wet, pulsing mass, into what you were in the first unknowing hours after I made you; go back to the beginning, membrane by membrane, protein by protein, until you are one with my tissues again, until you are no more.”

And in Danish, the opening paragraphs:

“Forstår du, jeg elskede dig ikke. Hvis der bare havde været en måde at sende dig tilbage på, en måde der kunne standse din insisterende banen dig vej ind i verden. Hvorfor havde du så travlt? Forsvind, Naia. Krymp. Skrump ind til en våd, pulserende masse … til det du var i de første uvidende timer efter at jeg lavede dig; vend tilbage til begyndelsen, membran for membran, protein for protein, indtil du igen er ét med mit væv, indtil du ikke længere er til.

           “Jeg tænker ofte på dig, på den nat du blev født. Jeg kan ikke forstå hvordan disse minder kommer så klart til mig – så vidt jeg ved, var jeg fuldstændig væk: lå fladt på ryggen, bedøvet, bønfaldende om at blive befriet for skabningen i min krop. 72 kg, med midterpartiet svulmet op som en stor gærboble, benene i fodbøjler, kønnet barberet. De krænkede hårsække er kommet til syne som blege knopper … en kusse som kyllinge­skind, som noget på en køddisk.

            “Ude af mig selv hæver jeg mig op og bemærker en læges gummi-behandskede hænder, de kvalmende grønne vægge beklædt med fliser som værn mod overraskende springvand af blod. Dybe, brølende lyde gjalder gennem fødestuen og gangene udenfor med deres slidte træbænke – tomme, for det er længe efter midnat på dette hospital, der er opført af amerikanske missionærer tilbage i 1930’erne, derpå fløj efter fløj smækket op på trækonstruktionen efter 2. verdenskrig, med raslende spøgelser overalt. Jeg er selv som et spøgelse … frigjort, svævende lytter jeg til mine skrig af fødselskval.

           “Dit hoved dukker op mellem mine spredte ben. Du bryder igennem mit køns skærm og lader din fine krop glide ud – allerede en atlet ved fødslen – og i dit lillebitte ansigt er der et glimt af skønheden du vil bevare, selvom du er trykket sammen, uden sol, og for første gang lærer luften at kende. Du er rød over det hele – et godt tegn; det betyder at din hud, når den er tørret af for blod og slim, vil blive bleg, i modsætning til min. Lægen løfter dig op i anklerne. Du svinger. Dine sorte, perleagtige øjne synes at opfatte hele verden med ét blik. Åh, jeg kan se livet i deres dyb." 

My courses at Studieskolen so far

Here's a list of the open courses I've taught at Studieskolen since 2017. I've been working there longer, actually, since 2014, at one point handling an elementary Filipino course along with Writing courses at C1 level. And since 2015, I've been teaching short Business English courses tailored to the needs of the various companies that approach Studieskolen's Business department.

Elementary Conversation (A2)

English Conversation and Grammar (B1)

TOEFL Crash Course (B2)

English Speaking and Writing (B2)

Cambridge Institute Business Weekly (B2)

Conversation and Writing (B2)

Conversation and Writing for Fluency (B2-C1)

English Conversation and Grammar (B2)

Academic Writing (C1)

Advanced Conversation (C1)

Cambridge English Proficiency (C2)

Cambridge English Advanced C1 (exam preparation)

Except for the Cambridge English Proficiency course, none of them really afford the opportunity to bring literary writing, or indeed, into the classroom. But this Fall (2019) I've been lucky enough to be facilitating a book club, a bit of an experimental offering, which I hope will be repeated.

Last month, we discussed Michelle Obama's Becoming, and two weeks from now, it'll be Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. 

Studieskolen summer party

The faculty at Studieskolen pose on the rooftop of the school building in the heart of Copenhagen, June 2019. In the background is the dome of Frederik's Church (Marmorkirken) and in the distance, a wind farm out on the waters of the Øresund.

Poppy heaven

'Tis the season for the humble poppy, and so I've made these quick pastel paintings for the pleasure of working with those gorgeous carmines and vermilions.

I used industrial sand paper, which I found in A2 format at our local Jem og Fix. It was a bright hazard-warning yellow that I wasn't particularly fond of. I tend to avoid the color yellow when I paint, so this enabled me to incorporate something I've always been wary of into my color scheme.

For reference, I used the flowers in our own garden. The photo of the scene below, of a field with the grass mown to one side to form a path, was taken on a trip to the north of Fyn (Funnen) over the Ascension Day weekend.  These are small paintings, about the size of postcards.

Lakambini (Bing) Sitoy currently teaches English at Studieskolen and Cambridge Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has published three books of fiction (Filles de Sweethaven, Jungle Planet and Mens Rea). She holds an MA from Roskilde University, Denmark, in the fields of English Studies and Cultural Encounters, both under the Department of Culture and Identity. She paints in pastel in her spare time. Bing was a semi-finalist in the Man Asian Prize (2008), has received numerous prizes in the Philippines (Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards, a National Book Award, prizes sponsored by magazines). As a journalist, Sitoy was a lifestyle and cultural section editor for various papers, and was a columnist and section editor for the Manila Times. She received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom in 2003. She holds dual Danish and Philippine citizenship.

Follow bing_sitoy on Instagram.

Over the Alps

I spent my birthday in Pompeii, visiting the ruins there and making the short drive to nearby Herculaneum. The day before, we were in Pæstum to visit the old Greek temple complex before taking the winding Amalfi coastal road and turning east over the mountains back to Pompeii.


But the story of those trips will have to come another time. Here instead are some photos I took, using my phone camera, during the flight back from Naples to Frankfurt the following day.

It wasn't the first time I had flown over the Alps, but previously they had been shrouded in clouds, or it had been after dark, or I hadn't gotten a window seat. My first view of the Alps, however, was in 2009, on a clear day with the sun shining with much greater intensity than it is in these photos. It struck the peaks and turned them into a pure glimmering white. I had never seen such beauty in my life. Alas, my camera was nestled in my check-in bag. But life gives you a do-over, so now I have these images as well.

The fair-haired boy

The project of making small pastel studies of people’s faces continues. The latest are these three, of the same subject, who I will call DB, short for Danish boy. My references were old photographs, blurry, the face literally thumbnail-sized, taken when he was three and a half years old (right), about five (above) and about 10. I wanted to capture the essence of his features at those different moments in the narrative of his life.  

For the first two drawings, I used my trusty Jaxell soft pastels (the square ones in the 72-color set), which I often employ for sketching or practice, and used rough paper (karduspapir) from Stelling. For the third (the boy at age 10), I thought something more permanent would be in order, namely Rembrandt soft pastels on brown pastel paper. 

All three were drawn freehand, which gave me a solid feeling of achievement.

I love the sun-drenched look of the last picture, the light falling on the boy’s bare shoulders, the cast shadows with a bit of red in them. The lopsided smile. 💕- Bing

Jump-starting my drawing skills

I’d been so occupied with teaching English and working at an online networking company for children that I’d found little time for my visual art. Throughout my teens, 20s and early 30s I’d been an enthusiastic sketcher and pastellist, working primarily with pen-and-ink, pencil and oil pastels, eventually graduating to soft pastels, the more difficult medium. I’d been affiliated with Manila’s Saturday Group, which was founded by the painter Malang, an organization of veteran artists from whom I learned so much just by watching them work. I’d drawn illustrations for the lifestyle/literature sections of various newspapers where I’d been an editor.  

But with the move to Denmark, there was a new language to study, a master’s degree to complete, and then the business of chalking up a minimum number of work hours a week as a requirement for permanent residency.

Whenever I travel, I make it a point to pick up some small, useful souvenir – a bottle of perfume, a lipstick. In Assisi last year I entered a stationery shop and found a clutch of pretty notebooks with marble-patterned covers, and I just had to have one. On the train rides between one city and the next I would take it out and make a quick sketch, from memory, of what I’d just seen from the window. Or I just sat absorbing everything – seeing the pattern of light on the trunks of trees, the dark spires of a row of cypress in a distant field.  

A few months later, in Thessaloniki, I found myself at a stationary store, the kind that sells notebooks in packs of five for school kids. On one of the shelves was a box of soft pastels, the cheap kind, in garish primary colors. I had a full set of oil pastels from Caran d’Ache, but no soft ones at the time. My hand hovered longingly over the brilliant sticks of red, blue and green, then I remembered the mess they would make (on snowy white restaurant linen!) and pragmatically chose a set of watercolor pencils. 

It was on that trip to Greece that I started to work with color again. It started with tiny, diffident renditions of the view from restaurant balconies as we waited for our food: mountains and store fronts and boats that took an eternity to complete. My drawing skills were shot, I thought, but I kept at it, perhaps out of a perverse need to torture myself. The more I drew, the easier it became, and the more I wanted.  It took quite a few more hours of practicing, but I did eventually regain the ground I’d lost.

- 💕 Bing

***

The soft pastel above, completed December 2018, is based on a photo I took of the Grand Canal in Venice, from the Rialto Bridge, in March 2009. Below is a sketch of the Parthenon over breakfast from the top floor of our hotel, 2018.