Out of the blue,
all important encounters at the crossroads,
so brightly lit and contoured in retrospect;
at the time of travelling seldom accounted for,
so seldom appreciated as crucial then and there,
in the storm of daily events,
only receiving their full worth under the magnifying glass
of hindsight

Out of the blue,
Sune walking down Main Street
at the quick pace of his steady gait,
his black hair shining in the sun of June 1965
passing me at the Critique
- some scattered wooden benches under the foliages
by the main church of Shitville, overlooking the street -
on his way down to Gösta's Café on Baker Street
with Tidsignal; the communist weekly
tucked under his arm,
soon to start up my life of letters and music,
out of the blue

Out of the blue,
the young woman behind me
in line for coffee
at the Greyhound half hour rest stop
in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, March 1977,
me heading for New York City and Sweden
after a futile try for an interview with Bob Dylan
at his place in Malibu;
she traveling from her parents in Baltimore
to her room in Pittsburgh,
but in 16 months becoming my wedded wife
in Dallas, Texas; Judith Marian;
for the longest time the only connection
between us my address in ink on a Breezewood napkin...
Out of the blue...

Out of the blue,
Sture on Main Street in Shitville
a May evening in 1967,
returning up to Sweden from Paris,
deciding to stay in a Shitville ladies' public toilet
a few months
until establishing himself more comfortably,
changing his name to Emanuel,
influencing me into worldwide adventures
with his grand example of a practical, pragmatic
and bold way of taking on the world,
in a Kerouac / Snyder kind of atmosphere,
soon enough rising out of his lady toilet impasse
to his position as a nurse anaesthetist in Saudi Arabia,
The United States and Sweden,
three consecutive wives to his credit;
an incredibly valued all-time friend of mine,
in everyday contact on the web
still in 2023,
my only live common life thread
all the way back to the Sixties,
out of the blue

Out of the blue
on a Koyaanisqatsi day of fall 1985,
that beautiful woman in the train compartment
with all the hallmarks of any male's female fantasy
straight out of a distant world of goddesses,
forever completely unapproachable;
her face shining like a sci-fi sun,
her anatomy speaking to every nerve in my existence
on that 60 mile ride from Stockholm to Shitville,
my Red Wing boots from Widforss tapping nervously,
while, unbeknownst to both of us,
she was to become ripe
with a red-headed Emily Dickinson daughter
full of sentences,
out of the blue

Out of the blue,
that Karelian cluster of inspiration
befalling me from behind
on a union ride to Helsinki aboard Viking Saga
on 6th December 1984;
novelist Sirkka Sinikka,
after one hot Ghostbuster dance in the Gulf of Finland,
which, swirling the last possibilities off the 3 AM dance floor,
inevitably lead to my cabin and a thorough erotic overhaul,
followed back to back
by a whispering exchange about poet Pentti Saarikoski
and the Valamo monastery,
while the other passenger - a fellow union man -
pretended hard to be asleep as morning broke
when we sailed past the Suomenlinna sea fortress,
into Helsinki Harbour,
commencing a year of intense love & literature
at Orioninkatu in the capital
as well as at the Porkala hut by Lake Saimaa,
out of the blue

Out of the blue,
that irresistible song on the radio
in the bus
that brought the class back from a school trip
down to Hamburg, Germany, in May 1965;
Bob Dylan performing Mr Tambourine Man
right as the bus rolled off the ferry at the Danish port of Rødby,
my sixteen years focusing like light through a burning glass
on what came out of the radio up in the front of the bus,
the first time I heard the bard from Hibbing,
soon to become one of the most powerful energies
of my life,
out of the blue

Out of the blue,
Anna rising out of the shadows
inside the Nallo hut in the most alpine part
of Swedish Lapland in August 2009,
asking me questions about certain hikes,
only to be impolitely prompted by me
to read the hiking stories I'd published on my Internet site
Sonoloco,
but standing there again in front of me at the same spot
in the Nallo hut a year later, without any intermediate contact,
reluctantly allowing me to photograph her,
while our acquaintance deepened some the next day,
when we joined forces on a hike up to the Unna Räita cabin,
where we had dinner,
before she left to go back down to Stuor Reaiddavaggi Valley
and on up the Sielmavaggi Valley towards the Tjäktja hut,
a few months later penning me a letter,
and late in December 2010 sending me a mountain story
that she'd just written about her hike of that year,
that had lead to our second rendezvous,
written with such style and grace and depth,
that I fell in love with her right then between the lines read,
which I told her,
and all these years on, I'm writing this on her horse farm,
way up in Northbothnia,
where I'm her Wildman, she my Wildwife,
and where I've taken thousands of photographs of her -
and though it did take some short story writing et cetera
in the beginning,
it sort of was something, anyway, that hit
out of the blue

Out of the blue,
Viola stepped out of a movie theater in Björnlunda, Sweden,
a summer Saturday evening of 1926, just 15 years old,
spotted by Helge, a farmhand of 22,
at the time dressed in a military uniform,
joining Viola home; stopping to chat for a while
at the porch before they parted,
not to meet again until a few years later
at Ullsta Farm in Gåsinge,
resulting in marriage at 9 December 1933,
making my own arrival onto the planet
as a latecomer in Viola's & Helge's string of children
possible,
taking The Last Train To Clarksville
one day in May 1948 to enter the biosphere in February 1949,
out of the blue


[add-ons can be expected to this]