On going a long way to Nowhere.
My mind takes a brief respite from the bitter wind buffeting me from across the North Sea.
For a moment I’m back in Oslo, exactly a year ago and I’m stood on the top of a fourteen storey high apartment block in which I’ve been residing for the last few days.
My visits to the rooftop have become some kind of ritual, I come up every morning just before first light and slowly drink a mug of the strong Italian coffee that can be purchased in the cafe below, the baristas know me now and let me take my mug across the road and up to the roof without question, and I return it a few hours later as I disappear back into the city to explore.
The apartments in question are like an index of different travellers, some of the floors seem residential and some of them seem to be dormitories crawling with people eager to move on, everyone lives out of backpacks here though and however bleak the clinical white interior is the view from the rooftop is spectacular.
Rising up from the middle of Grünerløkka you can see all the way to a partially obscured Oslofjord to the South and the severe industrial beauty of Oslo sprawling out from the apex, rising up on either side along the twin crests that seem to offer no protection from the frigid winds that relentlessly careen through the streets here.
Despite having a population that exceeds 600,000 Oslo still has an air of isolation about it. I’m sure that the open ended last minute flight I took out here, to a place where nobody knew me, somewhere far enough I could escape the particularly painful breakup that was going on back home plays into the feeling of isolation, but the steel/concrete industrial skyline and bitter weather give Oslo a grey atmosphere perfect for contemplation.
It was a fortunate choice of escape.
I take another sip from the coffee, pushing the fleeting thoughts of home from my mind and looking out aimlessly over the top of my mug at a skyline punctuated by cranes and the jagged points of half completed buildings, steel skeletons still on show against the grey clouds.
Sometimes you find other people up here, early on, drinking coffee and staring aimlessly at the dormant city while the sun rises with thoughts swirling up with the steam to a place just out of reach.
No more than a few words are ever exchanged, which also plays into the isolation of this place although the best place to meet friends in a city of strangers probably isn’t on a rooftop at 5am in the morning.
Even so I felt some kind of a connection with those lost morning people, whether they were inhabitants of the residential floors just drinking their coffee before work, or travellers nursing a night of excess was never clear to me, but I felt that everyone up there had thoughts to let loose on the tendrils of smoke and steam.
*Click*
The shutter of my DSLR snaps closed, pulling me back across the ocean to reality. An image of a lighthouse lit entirely by stars and an arcing grass line following the coast, motion blurred by the wind and captured by the long exposure appears on the screen. I put my cigarette down next to the tin mug and pivot the camera gingerly on the sea wall to face West, lowering my face down to it to frame a view out across the bay of glowing city lights rising into the sky.
*Click*
Another thirty second exposure begins as I press the remote shutter in my pocket. I take a sip of coffee and retrieve my cigarette, looking at the distant lights and wondering if there are rooftops like Oslo over there in the distance, maybe someone like me looking right back.
I hear a rustle behind me and Dan emerges from the darkness, wading through the waist deep grass towards me, thumbing the controls of his camera.
“Are you done out here?”
The shutter clicks.
Coffee Steams.
Far away rooftops light up the screen, nothing more than a glow and a wisp on the horizon.
“I’m done out here.”
I throw the last of the coffee over the sea wall, collecting my camera and trudge alongside Dan in the straw like grass to find somewhere to lay a sleeping bag down for the night.
Walking with a wind on my back that blew all the way across from Norway and carries a familiar shiver and maybe its just my imagination but the faint smell of coffee too, I think about isolation, I think about those who run to it, about the version of myself who ran away, I think of early mornings and seeing the sun rise over the rim of a mug, I think of severe beauty and of the people you find on rooftops sometimes.
Mostly though I think of how glad I am to have come all the way out here to bring something back, and not to leave something behind.
