The last time
I stood face to face with my painting THE ENCHANTED FOREST,
was in the summer of 1978,
when I was about to leave my home at LILLA STRÖMGATAN 3
in NYKÖPING, SWEDEN,
to fly a SAS 747 to KENNEDY AIRPORT out on LONG ISLAND
with my CRESCENT road bike in the luggage,
and stay for a while with my friend BOB GOLDMAN
at 226 E 89th ST on MANHATTAN,
preparing for an intended cycling trip
from NEW YORK CITY to SAN FRANCISCO,
inspired by such journeys undertaken
during the BICENTENNIAL of the UNITED STATES two years earlier

I rashly entrusted the apartment to a young acquaintance,
on the condition he'd later pay back the rent that had been used up,
while my (then) old friend SUNE,
who lived upstairs in the same old 19th century house
in the lush central part of the town, near the river
(on a demolition contract with the construction company DIÖS),
continuously paid said rent via the authorization he had received from me
to access my bank funds in SWEDEN.

My employer, SSAB STEEL in OXELÖSUND,
had granted me a three-month leave of absence
from my job as a sheet metal grinder at THE ROLLING MILL,
for the cycling trip

THE ENCHANTED FOREST was hung
on the door between the bedroom and the so-called COLD ROOM,
which in days of yore had been the living room

In the fall of 1956 I was seven years old,
starting school in the large, imposing,
slightly intimidating D-SCHOOL in OXELÖSUND,
where we pupils had undergone a “maturity test”
earlier in the year, with some simple cognitive and motor tests,
but which was soon after, the same fall, replaced
by the much smaller and more modern single-story school
GÄRDESSKOLAN, with MISS BERG

THE HUNGARIAN CRISIS was ongoing,
and I was a scared child,
fearing that war would strike SWEDEN,
but my fifteen-year-older brother ROLF
managed to convince me of the strength of SWEDISH DEFENSE,
and I looked with confidence at the J29s
from the F11 AIR FORCE BASE,
howling over the SÖDRA MALMGATAN sky,
though I still kept trailing behind MAMA VIOLA,
who worked part-time cleaning dining rooms
in OXELÖSUND PORT,
while PAPA HELGE, who actually was a skilled farmhand
and animal caretaker,
had moved with us from THE KVISÄTTER FARM
in BJÖRKVIK
to the coastal town of OXELÖSUND
and the job at CENTRIFUGALRÖR industrial pipe factory,
where we only stayed until spring 1957,
before moving to another farm;
JOGERSTA NERGÅRD in TUNA PARISH,
where most of my formative childhood played out
with BIGGLES & ELVIS and glider literature,
while attending TUNA CHURCH SCHOOL,
first with kind MISS MÄRTA CARNELIUS
in what remained of FIRST GRADE and the full GRADE TWO,
and then from GRADE THREE
with hot-tempered MISS ELSA CARLSSON
(whom I liked nonetheless)

(TUNA CHURCH SCHOOL was by no means “church-related”,
but simply located near TUNA CHURCH)

A few months into my first school term,
I, along with all other first-graders in OXELÖSUND,
participated in a painting competition
with the theme “THE ENCHANTED FOREST”

Most kids painted beautiful, dense, lush spruce forests,
but I created a ghostly, nightmarish, sparse deadwood forest,
in which the trees were creatures with arms reaching,
and the world was a burnt-out post-war ruin,
where an adult and a child stood forlorn and sooty

My version of THE ENCHANTED FOREST
earned me FIRST PRIZE, a board game
and a picture in the local newspaper

To me it feels like an eternity between THE AWARD CEREMONY
in the fall of 1956
and the day I stepped away from THE ENCHANTED FOREST
at LILLA STRÖMGATAN 3 in the summer of 1978

The cycling journey out west from NEW YORK CITY -
after a week or ten days at BOB GOLDMANs on MANHATTAN,
(first down PARK AVENUE, and then from BATTERY PARK
on THE STATEN ISLAND FERRY, the wind blowing in my hair
as I stood on deck, holding my orange racing bike from SWEDEN) -
ended after a couple of months with marriage
to 24-year-old JUDITH MARIAN SPANGENTHAL,
who came from a JEWISH family in BALTIMORE,
at THE RECORDS BUILDING in DALLAS, TEXAS,
where a JUSTICE OF THE PEACE had us wedded in a cellar
for 10 bucks,
a stone's throw from where JFK was assassinated fifteen years earlier

My leave of absence from SSAB STEEL in OXELÖSUND
kept being extended,
and SUNE kindly continued managing my Swedish finances
on LILLA STRÖMGATAN,
while I got a job at THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS
AND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION,
popularly known as THE TEXAS HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT

JUDY & I left TEXAS in JUNE 1, 1979,
and arrived in NYKÖPING from THE USA via CENTRAL EUROPE
a year after my departure

MAMA and my old friend HANS ÅKE RUNELL had,
through joint efforts, cleaned the apartment
on LILLA STRÖMGATAN 3 after the young man,
who had caused quite a bit of damage
and then refused the rent repayment so stubbornly,
that a demand through a lawyer was required to get him,
or rather his poor mother, to pay the sum

THE ENCHANTED FOREST was missing,
never to be seen again

It had probably ended up in the trash
on the initiative of the young man

Even a print by artist INGVIL STILLE
had been thrown out in the woodshed,
where it was discovered by HANS ÅKE RUNELL

I didn't have the heart to demand the work back,
which INGVIL hade presented me with
after the general overhaul I provided her with
in my bed at LILLA STRÖMGATAN 3 one night in 1977

I saw the work later on the wall at RUNELL's home
at TISTAD CASTLE,
but he pretended not to notice that I noticed,
and I pretended not to notice that he noticed that I noticed

If RUNELL had not saved STILLE's print
from the woodshed,
it would have been lost anyway

He earned it

Now that HANS ÅKE is dead since 2017,
one can only hope that his heirs understand the value
of INGVIL STILLE's art

When JUDY and I showed up on LILLA STRÖMGATAN
in JUNE 1979, the end was near for the building,
which was later demolished in 1980

JUDY and I lived a few months in the dear old house,
before we moved to another old, but much more modern house,
in the neighbouring block along ÖSTRA TRÄDGÅRDSGATAN,
owned by the MAYOR of KATRINEHOLM,
where we lived until we made an (unsuccessful) attempt
to re-establish ourselves in THE STATES in MARCH 1980

At some point during my brief decade
on LILLA STRÖMGATAN 3, probably in 1976 or 1977,
I photographed THE ENCHANTED FOREST
with my newly purchased EAST GERMAN PRAKTICA,
and after scanning the negatives a few years ago,
I had one of them printed out the other day, in January 2024,
at ANNA's urging,
and pinned up next to the bed in the bedroom upstairs
here at ANNA's FARM outside the small village of NIEMISEL
in NORRBOTTEN,
where I now have reason to meditate every evening and morning
on the 7-year-old boy I was and the 75-year-old senior
I am now, and the journey here,
which also gave me the incentive to entrust such a meditation
to paper
and publish it here!