liminal spaces

i've long been attracted to the notion of liminality--the condition of being on a threshold or at the beginning of a process. with it there is also that sense of being in between. i've been suspended in a liminal space for nearly ten years now...living outside the country of my birth--i feel less and less that i belong in the u.s. and actively resist entirely belonging in denmark. while it can be a lonely feeling, mostly i feel it with a sense of expectant anticipation. i go through life always feeling that something is on the verge of happening. the same with being between jobs...you let go of the last one and look expectantly towards the next one. you hover on the threshold, not knowing what's ahead, but know that it must be better. it's tied for me to my ingrained presbyterian upbringing's notion of free will/destiny. although i must actively seek the next thing, at the same time, i am guided towards it by a firm hand (whose hand that is, i am not sure, but i strangely trust in the guidance). it remains hazy and unclear as of yet, but i feel in the (now) calm core of my soul that it is a brighter, better place. i feel also that it will become clear and then i'll be on the threshold of whatever is beyond. it's not really so bad, this liminal space which i inhabit.

a change of seasons

it seems somehow both sorrowful and fitting to attend a funeral here in the liminal space of almost-spring. spring is only just starting to happen, but there is still evidence everywhere of last season. spring hangs in the liminal space between, waiting to fully burst forth, but being chased back by winds that are still a bit too cold and the rattle of last year's dried leaves.

it seems especially sad to die right on the verge of spring, to not see the lambs frolic in the green fields, to not see the magnolia unfold its delicate blooms, to only have seen the earliest snowdrops and bluebells, but to miss out on the tulips and the daffodils. but seasons come and seasons go and life has its seasons as well.

so to leave the here and now at this time and go to whatever might be next is perhaps fitting. the beautiful flowers of yesteryear making way for the new, fresh buds and blooms of tomorrow. a life well lived moving to the next level, leaving behind sorrow for those who are left here in the liminal space. but to have lived well and been kind and good-hearted and thoughtful to those who miss her now. to leave behind the pain of a cruel illness and move into the rebirth of green, the sunlight of a flower-strewn spring, seems somehow the best ending one can hope for. to have loved and been loved, to have laughed, to shed tears and have tears shed for you, to leave something behind, a mark on the world--in the form of children and grandchildren and a home that really feels like home...it's what we're all striving for in our own way. it's an achievement of the highest order.

and although the sun set on a life well-lived today, the sorrow is all ours, those left behind, who will miss her laughter, her kindness, her positive spirit, staying up late drinking one more glass of red wine, fresh soft-boiled eggs from her hens for breakfast, her fantastic dinners, those little fjord shrimp that sabin, at age 3, trotted back into the kitchen again and again, saying "mere, mere" until magda laughed with delight at how much such a little girl could eat. we're left with the good memories and an empty spot in our lives.

here at the change of seasons, a reminder that life is as cyclical and predictable as they are, even in their unpredictability.

writing my way back to myself

i feel that facebook is sucking the life out of me. it steals my time, it steals my sleep, it bores me, it infuriates me, it exposes me to horrible things (like that live on-air shooting of the poor t.v. reporter in virginia) that i wish i hadn't seen (see also all coverage of donald trump). it makes me feel passive aggressive. it keeps me indoors when i should be outdoors. it never lets me be alone with my thoughts. it stops me from writing here in this space (which my sanity misses very much). or seeking inspiration about things to write about here. in short, i think it's really bad for me. and yet i go back again and again. out of habit. for the social interaction with friends who are far away, for the laughs, for the cat videos and the buzzfeed quizzes and the oatmeal and humans of new york. 

and not writing often enough in this space leaves my brain and perhaps even my soul, feeling congested. it's not only facebook, but also the constant holding pattern i feel i've been in for the whole of this year. eternally waiting to see what might be next. i used to love the liminal space, for what i perceived as the vastness of the possibilities contained within it. but these days, it gives me a kind of powerless feeling, a paralysis. i am unable to fill the waiting with much of anything productive (i pin prolifically on pinterest, but don't make anything). and it seems that all of the gargantuan efforts that i put forward towards moving out of the liminal space are stymied again and again and i am forced back into the waiting position. and i'll admit i feel a bit lost, like i'm wandering in the labyrinth of the liminal space and i can't find my way - neither to the center, nor out again. and it's an uncomfortable place to be. 

which all sounds pretty morbid, i realize. i don't think i knew how morbid i actually felt until the words came out here onto the page (hence that congested feeling). and i do get through my days feeling reasonably happy - finding joy in a visit from an inspiring friend, picking vegetables from the garden for dinner, taking photos of minifigs, finding vintage burberry items for the child on eBay, watching battlestar galactica (again, again) with husband. it's not a joyless life, by any means. but i would like to have some of the spark back, the spark that feels so dim in the midst of all of this waiting. i don't feel it's gone out, but it could definitely use a breath of fresh air to fan it into a stronger, bright, warm flame again. 

maybe finally writing again here will help. that and some time away from facebook. 

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great article in rolling stone on the republican clown car.

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if you need a laugh, this guy from mashable who dressed like prince george for a week will do it.

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dang. harper lee's lawyer is definitely of the shadier sort.

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feeling stressed? here's a cat purr generator for those times when your cat isn't handy.

in the liminal space

in a little over 24 hours, this will be the view! despite all of the traveling i've done over the years, i still get the good kind of butterflies when on the verge of a trip - i love the energy of an airport, filled with people who are going somewhere. people are generally in a good mood, either happy to be heading off on a trip or happy to be home again. there's an excitement in the air. sabin and i are headed for the US tomorrow afternoon. first, we have the sad occasion of my mother's funeral and then we have a long road trip to phoenix with a couple of stops to see friends along the way. although the funeral is somber event, i am looking forward to the closure i'm sure it will bring. we are planning music that mom would love and going to give her a good send-off. our bags are packed and we're ready to go. husband is taking us to the airport tomorrow, but before that, he's going to a job interview for an exciting position he really wants. i just did a video interview for a position that i'd really like to have. so, here on the verge of all this travel, it feels like so many great possibilities are opening up. it really feels like the beginning of a new chapter, even as we close the chapter on my mother's life. it's that liminal space - where everything feels fairly quivering with possibility - and the feeling is heightened by impending travel. it's been too long since i felt this way. it's nice.

pure potentiality

as i embarked on this trip, i had the notion that when the time came to head home, i would no longer be in the liminal space, i would be able to see the paths ahead and know quite clearly which one to choose. that hasn't happened. after a week in singapore, i have the same questions for myself:

1. can i live in disneyland, even if it does have embassies? and even if it's safe and clean? and there's no chewing gum in sight, so that means i won't find it stuck to the carpet like i do at home?
2. is this place that giant mall i've been dreaming of?
3. is it worth the risks? being part of a new venture is extremely appealing and i do feel that i believe very much in the project and that i could contribute significantly to its success, but will we be happy living here?

over this week, as the waters have remained murky, i've been discussing it all with husband on the phone. my impression is that he has grown keener on the idea as the week has progressed and he's actively planning where to store some of our things (all that driftwood we've collected), gleefully scheming about what to throw out and looking into the tax implications. 

i think i hoped for a bolt of lightning to strike and give me the feeling that i just KNEW what the right answer was. i've pondered a little bit how i tend to make decisions. pretty much, i take in the facts, mull it over (usually for a couple of minutes, tops) and then make a decision based on gut feeling. but my gut seems to be silent in all of this. perhaps it's in a sushi-induced coma. it's not telling me anything one way or the other. where are all of those voices that are usually chattering away in my head? how am i supposed to decide when none of the usual factors are there?

part of it is because things didn't get any clearer this week. i still don't know the terms. i still don't know the terms of the other possibilities that are on the horizon (and one more came up this week in a totally random phone call, so that muddies the waters a bit as well). and that's surely why i'm not coming to any answer. 

so, husband and i continue to speculate as to how it will all turn out, like a CNN broadcast, in the middle of a potential story that might not even be a story, while waiting for the facts to roll in. and we continue in the liminal space. suspended in a state of pure potentiality.

in the meantime, if you want to see something totally weird that i saw today, go here.

on the threshold

most of us take doors for granted. we pass through doorways tens of times each day, without reflection. the door is, however, a powerful feature of human mentality and life-practice. it controls access, provides a sense of security and privacy, and marks the boundary between differentiated spaces. the doorway is also the architectural element allowing passage from one space to the next. crossing the threshold means abandoning one space and entering another, a bodily practice recognized both in ritual and language as a transition between social roles or situations. doors and thresholds are thus closely linked with rites de passage, the word "liminality" itself stemming from Latin limen, "threshold." this does not imply that each and every crossing of a threshold constitutes a liminal ritual, but rather that passing through a doorway is an embodied, everyday experience prompting numerous social and metaphorical implications.

--marianne hem eriksen, university of oslo

in architecture, society, and ritual in viking age scandinavia

doors, dwellings, and domestic space

this week of waiting for the results of the election has me, once again, thinking about liminal space. we're (hopefully) on the threshold of something new - a return to normalcy (if that's possible) after the utter insanity of the trump years. and i'm looking forward to stepping through that door. 

but i fear that the door won't completely shut on these years because the fact is that there are a significant amount of people who actually agreed with the way he was running things and they voted for him a second time. they're apparently totally ok with the 97 million cases of corona and 235,000 deaths. they're ok with kids in cages and more than 500 children who can't be reunited with their parents due to the incompetence and cruelty of the trump administration. they're ok with a president who grabs women by the pussy. and who has spent $142,000,000 in taxpayer money golfing. and they're ok with leaving the paris climate accord and the iran nuclear agreement. and they're ok with the more than 20,000 lies. and the self-dealing and the nepotism. and the cozying up to dictators. and the humiliation on the world stage. and did i mention the lies? and the narcissism and the petulance and the twitter. there's just. so. much. i'm exhausted from it. and embarrassed by it. and tired of the way it's weakened my very foundation and made me ashamed to be american.

and i'm at my wits' end - with relatives and friends who support the monster. and it feels like some doors may need to close there. but on the other hand, that doesn't necessarily seem like the answer either. but they don't get a pass. they have to own what their choice means - that women lose the freedom to choose over their own bodies, and good friends who are legally married may have those marriages nullified by the conservative supreme court justices trump and his cronies in the senate rushed through. that people will lose their health insurance. that they don't mind children being put in cages. children in cage. just think about that. it's ok because your stocks did well? really?

but back to doors and thresholds. i think we are really standing on a threshold here. we just faced a choice between empathy and caring for our fellow humans and more division and further erosion of democratic ideals. and only by the slimmest of margins does it appear that we chose our fellow humans. what does that say? in this moment, while the whole world balances on the precipice with a global pandemic, that the choice wasn't clearer than that is astonishing. 

i hope we stride confidently through the door with our hearts open. i'll admit mine is pretty closed right now to those who have supported the spray-tanned narcissist and it will take a bit of work on my part to open it a little bit. and right now, i don't really know how that's going to happen.

i could work in my pyjamas every day

while i wasn't completely alone today, there was sunshine and time for a solitary walk. i also helped husband move a load of wood and getting out in the fresh air and stretching my limbs, doing something physical helped - i so often forget to reside in my body as well as my mind. aside from some hours of work (which, since i was home, i could do in my pyjamas), no one really expected anything of me. that, and the pyjamas, were very welcome. i found a little bit of time to read some more long read pieces that i'd been saving. like this one, which, like yesterday's, is also about home. and this one about anna akhmatova. what are you doing to find peace and comfort in this liminal space between christmas & new year's?

we're on the other side!

you guys! we're on the other side - of the solstice and of the busy blur that is christmas - well into that fallow week between christmas and the new year. the days all blur together, though i did work on tuesday. was that only yesterday? it's that time when you look back on the year that's passed and look ahead to the coming year. 

so far, i've fallen for an ad for a free year of the balance app, so i just did a 3 minute meditation. or rather, i started it and then remembered that the header of the pages i published earlier was wrong in the way it came in from translation and so i ran to the computer and fixed it and republished during the 3 minutes. so much for meditating. at least the app is free for a year! and here's to starting somewhere. 

we're all feeling a bit under the weather. i think it's the grey, dreary, rainy weather, plus excesses of food and drink, late night card games and not enough rest or time alone. sabs and i just took some nyquil and we're headed for bed early because tomorrow we've got a  a long agenda. husband's picking up a spinning bike, then we're visiting a museum and doing a bit of shopping in aarhus before sabs meets her friends from boarding school for dinner. we'll go to dinner and maybe a movie ourselves while we wait for her. 

she's headed back to her life in sunny arizona very early on the 31st. she'll make it in time to ring in the new year with friends. her visit felt short, but it doesn't seem so bad, because she's coming home again in march for spring break with a couple of friends, so it's not that far off. we're finding the impending visit motivating, as we want to have the new bathroom and a bedroom ready for them. 

i know that on sunday, i'll feel like this in-between liminal week went way too fast, but for now, i'm just taking as it comes. and watching way too much real housewives of beverly hills on hayu...speaking of other instagram ads i've fallen for in recent days (49kr for 3 months of hayu - real housewives all the time!).

year in review: 2010

it wasn't for nothing that i did a 365 photo project in 2010. i realized rather early on in the project that it was more about memory than about taking dazzling daily photos. tho' i also wanted to improve my photos and the constructive criticism in the blog camp 365 group helped a great deal with that. what i truly love is looking back on the photos and seeing all that happened over the past year. and it seems that it was indeed an eventful one - full of changes - of house, job, scenery, lifestyle - all of it chosen, tho' not all of it easy. so i used my mosaics to take a stroll down memory lane.

january 2010

january was cold and unusually snowy.  sabin turned 9. the last blog camp was held in the blue room, since the house was for sale and new jobs were already on the horizon for both husband and me. riding lessons were cold, but we persevered. i began weaving lessons, which made me feel like i'd found a place to rest my soul. i enthusiastically began a daily art journal. i noticed already in january that the 365 project made me so much more aware of my immediate surroundings - as i wandered the house, camera in hand, looking for interesting objects and light, i found myself really noticing where i was and enjoying it so much more. and i hit 1000 posts right here on MPC. (35 blog posts)

february 2010

february saw an awful lot of creativity happening in the blue room. we shopped for old farm houses on the other side of the country. i continued my daily art journal. i bought a loom. we celebrated husband's birthday and our 11th anniversary. i kept rather faithfully to my avowed desire not to buy anything unnecessary in 2010. and i started making clarity birds. (31 blog posts)

march 2010

in march the house-hunting began in earnest. my weaving class ended. i got new multi-strength contacts since i'm getting old.  i knitted my first scarf and started a second one and spring began to appear in earnest, which was much appreciated after the snowy winter we had.  but mostly, march felt a bit like being in the liminal space...waiting in between for one thing to end and another to begin. (36 blog posts)

april 2010

in april i started my new job. it was a pretty good start, since it began with three holidays. and i can tell you from the safe vantage point of retrospect, it went downhill from there. i actually wrote a fairly funny post about the whole stress of moving (sadly, it may have been the last time i was funny). we said goodbye to living in the house we'd lived in for nearly a decade. my daily art journal practice fell completely by the wayside and despite my best intentions, i never did get back to it.  but it wasn't all negative in april - we did shop for a horse. (22 blog posts)

may 2010

may saw our official moving date. we went nearly two weeks without internet at home (oh the horror). sabin started at her new school and husband started his new job. i got acquainted with the new house and i shared both inside and outside of it. we discovered rhubarb in our garden and i invented my cocktail of the year - the rhubarb gin fizz. we also discovered a wonderful little viking harbor museum about an hour away from us. and i even indulged in a bit of creativity (funny, looking back, i thought that had pretty much stopped when we left our old house). our horse arrived! (25 blog posts)

june 2010

at the beginning of june, i had no voice whatsoever after coughing for a week straight. some people thought that was just fine. with my camera, i chased light and lilypads and rain.  i celebrated the summer solstice with a list. i was already pretty miserable in my job, but didn't really know what to do about it. i attempted to crochet granny squares, but can't say i was very successful, maybe because i didn't really keep it up. we headed to the US for our holiday - our first trip there in three and a half years! and an impromptu blog camp in minnesota. (26 blog posts)

july 2010

in july, my own blogging mojo at a low, i did interviews of you, my readers. i sent out individual questions and posted the interviews. but i also antiqued in the US - which makes me very, very happy, tho' it does make it hard to get the suitcases closed. there was the blog camp of the zombie flies (thank you farmer guy for spraying the field across the road with pig poo at the height of fly season and exactly when i was having guests). my favorite professor from the university of iowa died after a long and full life. and we finally sold our house. (21 blog posts)

august 2010

august was mostly about the interviews that i started in july (there was a rather overwhelming response to that idea). it rained so much our broadband cable drowned.  i began obsessively painting feathers on stones in a desperate grasp at finding balance in my life, which felt pretty unbalanced and unhappy during that rainy month. i wrote a pretty controversial post about the changes i saw in the US after three years away. and i met someone who was very enthusiastic about the wind and that helped. (41 blog posts)

september 2010

september largely lacked flow, but there were moments of it and i was grateful for those. i had a wonderful weekend in berlin with five amazing ladies and it restored me. i visited a magical place that was achingly beautiful in its decay. i updated my "my girl" post because i was feeling out of touch with myself. looking back at this month, a million signs were there and i didn't read them. i guess for whatever reason, i wasn't ready to read them, tho' frankly, if they'd been flashing in neon, they couldn't have been clearer. i met a fantastic artist and was enchanted by her work. and i saw those fairytale mushrooms - amanitas - for the first time in person. (25 blog posts)

october 2010

october found me pondering life lessons and the blogosphere. i confessed that it wasn't really going that well on the whole "not buying stuff in 2010." we visited frilandsmuseet in copenhagen. and hosted a halloween party for 28 4th graders - all of which showed up 30 minutes EARLY, much to my dismay! i had a four-day bout of the flu, but the fever seemed to give me some clear thinking. and i sewed some clothes for sabin. (29 blog posts)

november 2010

in november, i despaired about our old, crappy house. i acquired a beautiful new macbook air (further underlining how badly that whole "not buying stuff" thing was going). i was fortunate enough to get to travel to manila twice in november. both trips were really a high point of my year, especially the second one, as sabin came along. and november ended on a very good note, with a great conversation that i badly needed at that moment with a very wise person who i love and respect. (23 blog posts)

december 2010

december was covered with the most beautiful snow and there were sunny days that gave us magical light. i started making things again. i participated in reverb10 - an exercise in reflecting and manifesting what's next. i finished my 365 project - taking a picture every day of 2010. most of important of all, i found my way back to myself - as is reflected in the increased number of posts, both here and on domestic sensualist. december felt like waking from a long slumber, a new beginning and i can't wait to see what 2011 brings. (44 blog posts)

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and after taking a picture every day in 2010, we had to have a new group for 2011 - postcards to blog camp - because we didn't want to lose the sense of community we found on flickr. if you'd like to contribute an occasional photo that you're proud of, but don't want to take a photo every day, come and join us!

five hours in bangkok

i'm not sure what to do with myself for 5 hours in bangkok, the song was about one night...but i've managed to find a cushy thai business lounge and a wireless connection and i am looking pretty damn good here with my mac, despite the fact that i didn't bring a comb and so my hair is a little, ahem, shall we say, tousled, from the night flight. it is a testament to the awesomeness of my haircut that it more or less looks ok anyway. thank you, maria from glasgow, you hairdressing goddess!

as i look around at the HPs and dells and even an acer in my vicinity in the lounge, i feel very happy to have invested in the mac. perhaps even a little bit superior. ok, more than a little bit, but i did say that i was shallow.

so, what does one do in an airport with so much time to kill? there's shopping. i've already looked around at a countless array of thai relaxation products (i restrained, tho' i was briefly tempted by an eye mask) and small stuffed elephants (also restrained).  i was literally the first one off my plane (i love sitting in row 1). this new airport in bangkok is looking more finished than the last time i was here (i last came through on the second or third day it was open). it is big and really very nice. but it could use a few more entertainment venues for people with long layovers--they could take a lesson from kuala lumpur where there's a cinema.

there's a spa here in the lounge and after a bit, i'm going to go and get a shoulder massage. or should i go for feet and legs? hmm, so many choices. it's good to be gold.

here there is less of the skin crawling feeling i had at the gate in copenhagen. the people here are  obviously business people. back there, it was obvious that most of the back of the back of the plane was going to be filled with sex tourists. you know when you see a slightly greasy-looking man with a mullet and a white sport coat the reason he's headed for thailand. yuck. makes me very happy that i'm just passing through. it seems to me that undercurrent is always present in thailand. the scent of seamy exploitation. gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

onto happier topics...people watching. there is a cluster of lovely thai girls in beautiful long silk skirts in a rich purple and lighter purple suit-style jackets tending the lounge. they are smiling shyly at the passengers passing through and chattering in an animated way to one another. isn't there something romantic about a language you don't understand that makes it seem as if people are having a really important conversation? i wonder what they're talking about...

my week ahead is on my mind, the anticipation of what it will bring. there's something delicious about anticipating the unknown. i always want to capture the feeling and not have that transition from unknown to known happen too quickly, which is strange because i'm otherwise an extremely impatient person. i feel the same way when reading a great book...i both want to skip to the end and to savor it and not have it come too quickly. i want to know now what the week will bring at the same time as i want time to slow down so it doesn't come too fast. oh wonderful, agonizing anticipation. whatever it brings, it will undoubtedly be interesting. it's fitting that i sit here in the liminal space that is an airport, feeling that i'm on the brink of something irresistible, new and exciting.

so i've been thinking...

~ everyone should go to the beach at least once a month, just to clear their heads.

~ about whether you can eat the seaweed found on our northerly beaches.

~ and if so, which kind?

~ about the great wars of the last century (i'm reading ken follett's fall of giants, which is set in WWI) and the residues they have left behind.

~ about the need for an editor. and perhaps also a translator. or maybe just some english lessons. unless they really did want people to line up their dogs...

~ that sometimes the best course of action on a sink full of dirty dishes is to pour a glass of wine, turn out the light and go settle into the big chair with a good book. after all, those dishes aren't going anywhere.

~ leaving one square of toilet paper on an otherwise empty roll does not excuse you from changing it.

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what are you thinking about in this liminal week, while we wait for the new year?

from where i sit...

is it just me or is there a faulty planetary alignment going on this week? something's just off. i'm not sleeping well. and i just feel, well...blah. i'm reading a book that i hate and yet i persevere. what's strange is that i have surrounded myself with inspiration all week and actually feel very inspired on an intellectual level. my inspiration notebook is filled with notes and scribblings, and i'm constantly running to scribble another sketch or thought in it, but when it comes to sitting down and actually DOING any of them, it falls down for me. i can't really get up off the couch or out from in front of the computer. i'm all input and no output. what is it about this week? i can't put my finger on it.

in a way i'm in a holding pattern. i signed a contract for a new job last week and it starts next week. so this week has been the in between week. i should have been eager to get all kinds of things done (like all those half-finished sewing projects i've got going) , but strangely, i just feel i'm waiting. and it's not that good liminal space kind of waiting that i love and have waxed philosophical about on numerous occasions. it's just a really non-productive kind of waiting wherein i have retreated into giant sloth mode:

and i was feeling rather badly about it until i read this. it seems that leonardo davinci was a great procrastinator. he filled tons of notebooks with ideas, but executed very few of them in actuality. it's really only an ingrained weberian protestant capitalist thing that makes us think that procrastination is bad. in fact, procrastination gives you time to work things out in your mind. perhaps all this thinking about the artworks that i've sketched out will make them better in the long run. i mean, who wants to be mediocre? and there are times when productivity breeds mediocrity. as the article says, davinci understood the fleeting nature of the imagination...it's important to get your ideas down while they're there. working them out comes later. to quote the article, "if there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted--the things we truly want to do."

therefore, i procrastinate in order to get in touch with my innermost creative self. so there.

a couple of little rants about the rubbish service culture in denmark

christmas is over and we're in the liminal space, waiting for the year to end and the new one to begin. i went to bed with wet hair and woke up with what my mother would call a fright wig. and somehow, it's all making me feel rather ranty.

rant #1: post danmark

in the week before christmas, i received a ransom letter from post danmark, saying they were holding a christmas package hostage until i (as receiver of a package i had not yet seen) sent more information about the contents. they assigned the package a number and said it contained, "støvler, tæj, mm" from the USA and that it weighed 4 kilos. they did not say who sent it, nor was i able, even after asking google translate for help, to figure out what "tæj" was. so, i guessed that it was the christmas parcel from my sister and that they boots were the doc martens she got sabin for her present. so, i asked her for the receipt and sent it dutifully (pun intended) to post danmark.

i heard nothing. and more nothing. for a week.

so today i called and asked how it was going. they claimed to have sent me a letter (probably via post danmark, so its chances of reaching me are slim) saying i hadn't provided documentation for the other items - the mystery "tæj" and the equally mysterious "mm," which is the danish equivalent of "etc." since i am the receiver of the package, i have not yet seen the items which are in it, therefore, it's hard for me to document them unless you specify what the hell they are. why isn't this just common sense for post danmark?

the nice lady on the phone today could see that this was a problem. so she took my number and they are supposed to get back to me today. meanwhile, their own limit of 14 days is quickly passing and even tho' i've been in touch (twice now, once in writing and once on the phone), they will likely send the package back to my sister before it's all finished. and then she can resend it and we can start all over again.

oh, the joys of customer service in denmark.

rant #2: bus #214, licence plate TD 92845, tide bus company, driving for sydtrafik in denmark

a few days before school was out, it was a dark and foggy morning. i was right behind the bus as i dropped sabin off at school. he was in quite a hurry and gunned it away down the little side street by the school. there were two small boys on their bicycles, wobbily making their way out to the big street, where they waited to cross. the bus was right beside them and wanted to turn right. there was quite a lot of traffic and, i may have mentioned, it was very foggy and still very dark. so the boys were cautiously waiting to be sure they could cross the road with their bicycles. well, mr. important bus driver decided to help them in their decision to cross the road by beginning to honk his big, giant bus horn at them. they were wobbly and unsure anyway and the honk nearly scared them off their bikes. it did, however, also scare them into action, and he saved the 30 extra seconds it would have taken to wait for them to cross on their initiative, but decided to try to make it up for it by gunning it and roaring off down the street.

i was so taken aback, that i noted the license number of the bus and came home and wrote to tide, the company running those buses, asking them to tell their driver to be a little kinder to children in traffic near a school. they wrote back telling me that since i wasn't involved, they were going to ignore my message.

yup. danish service culture at its best.

rant #3: the hunt for the christmas turkey

danes eat pork roast and duck for christmas. turkey is unusual, but not impossible to source. most grocery stores have a frozen bird in their freezer case. ten days before christmas, i checked my local store and found their frozen turkeys were the size of large chickens (4200 grams was the largest - that's about 8 pounds). so i went over to the butcher counter and asked if they could get me a larger bird. the guy dismissed me with a snort, rolling his eyes at me, saying if i wanted a turkey, i should have ordered it 3 months ago. very helpful and service-minded. (that was the sarcasm font, by the way.) and way to go, super brugsen in give (i've got more examples of your lack of service mindedness, but i'll save them for another post).

so i began checking all of the other grocery stores and butchers in my area, driving to several other towns in the process. all to no avail, there were no turkeys of reasonable size available, frozen or fresh. then a friend sent me a link to a butcher in vejle (why didn't i think of that), which claimed to have a turkey that would serve 10 people left. i called them and asked if it was true. they said they had one bird left and mentioned to me that it was already stuffed with a mixture of minced pork and cream, but it was a fresh turkey, not horrendously expensive (at 440 kroner/$80) and i was desperate, so i ordered it.

and on christmas, i took it out and put it in the pan, thinking it looked a little strange, but i chalked that up to the pork stuffing and put it in the oven. while it was cooking, it smelled much more like pork than turkey, but i could live with that. then, the weirdest thing happened. i asked my sister-in-law, who is a trained butcher, to do the honors and carve it. and she discovered that except for legs and wings, it had been completely deboned! a boneless turkey for christmas. i find it a little funny that the butcher didn't think to mention that little fact to me. and how can i make soup now with no turkey carcass?

that said, it was delicious and moist. i had been a little worried that since it was stuffed, i couldn't brine it and make it tender, but the pork did the trick as well. and that pork stuffing was also delicious. and without the bones, it was much easier to slice, but i still find it rather weird and won't be repeating it.

and now, i feel amazingly better, having gotten that out of my system. thank you for reading!

imagining a painting

today i start a painting course. like with oil paints and turpentine and canvases. already, i am imagining what i will do. i said aloud yesterday that i was imagining a multi-media canvas. due to my known deep and abiding love for iPods, those who heard this immediately imagined that i would fix one or more iPods to a canvas, paint them bright pink and make sure there was a way to plug it all in. i hadn't really thought about that, but they may be onto something there...no, instead, i have hazy pictures in my head (they haven't jelled yet) of bits of driftwood, knitted or felt decoration and beads on the canvas together with vibrant, lively colors. there are textures and combinations of the natural and the manufactured. the painting somehow addresses the question of memory which so occupies me at the moment.

there's something so exciting and anticipatory about holding pictures in your brain of soon-to-be-born creative endeavors...i am almost loathe to try to wrestle them to the canvas, as then that feeling of anticipation will dissipate and i will undoubtedly on some level experience disappointment. for while it is still in imagination, anything is possible, and once it's there on the canvas, it's solidified. yet, at the same time, i can't wait to get started. i'm in the liminal space once again, on the threshhold of something and full of anticipation to see how it turns out...

at the change of seasons

at these transitional points of year, as summer turns to autumn and autumn fades towards winter, i always get introspective. last year, that introspection led me to change jobs in order to have more time for the things that matter. now, i find myself reflecting on what i've done with that time i gave myself. maybe it's because i felt like i haven't been utilizing it well for the past week. i have a bunch (seven, to be exact) of different articles in progress and feel more or less stuck on all of them.  it's been great to be working mostly at home for almost a year now, but is it time for something new? would i be more productive if i went to an office every day again? i guess what i'm interested in is why i'm so stuck at the moment.

i think it started a few weeks ago when we had husband's old management group over for dinner on a tuesday night. because i'm working at home, i was, of course, home all day, so i was able to prepare the dinner (a big mess of fajitas) and dessert (a pavlova and some creamy, rich chocolate cups). my sister was here, but she had a lunch appointment, so she didn't come home to help 'til late afternoon.

when everyone arrived, i was wearing an apron over my little black j. peterman dress (dang, it's on sale now!). after all, i didn't want a bunch of fajita juice all over it. while husband took everyone outside to show them around the new place and for welcome drinks, monica and i finished up the dinner. we ate the dinner and according to plan, everyone raved over the food. i messed up the pavlova, because i don't really know my oven so well yet, so it was a bit crispy on the bottom [read: burned] and i foolishly didn't actually notice that 'til i had already served it to everyone. so, i joked and told them to avoid eating the very bottom. all very relaxed.

one of the group was a woman in my age group, who is in charge of payroll at husband's work (not a small company, so this is a significant position). she voiced political opinions that were more than a bit disturbing (anti-immigrant with an immigrant in the room!). she also joked the entire evening about firing people, mostly to her male colleagues, indicating to me that she felt a need to show she was as tough as the boys. she made comments that made me think that she thought i was a hausfrau (one of my worst fears). but later, when i thought about the apron, i guess i could understand her perception. in short, she totally rubbed me the wrong way in her white french-cuffed tailored blouse.

i suppose in a way, it made me feel a bit insecure. the thought that i could be perceived as a hausfrau almost as horrifying as anything i could imagine. i felt a strange compulsion to prove myself as a career woman and kept making reference to my previous employer (the other big company in denmark), as a means of proving my own testosterone levels. and afterwards, i felt bad about the whole thing. how pathetic that i felt the need to prove myself to some twat [pronounce this in your head as hugh grant would pronounce it and it will sound as i mean it to sound] who i will never meet again and who i could honestly care less about? why did i waste a single moment of angst or regret on this person who so clearly doesn't matter one iota in my life?

did she dig up something deeper in me? some feeling of dissatisfaction within myself? is it time for me to move on to whatever is next, rather than holding here in the liminal space? am i really holding? or is it just that i can't accept how actually totally awesome my situation is? i have the privilege of mostly working at home, so i'm here to take my daughter to school and pick her up. i sit all day at my gorgeous iMac and i write about things that fascinate me (when i can write, which i currently cannot, which is part of the problem) and then i travel to wonderful places, meet great people who stimulate me intellectually and professionally, eat fantastic food and stay in awesome hotels. are you serious, what's not to be satisfied about?

so, why am i feeling restless? why can't i just enjoy the here and now? why do i get all tied up in knots and restrict my own ability to finish the things i'm working on? is it just the changing of seasons? or is it something more? and how do i get to the bottom of it?

too much

one bright spot in today.
an A+ from my high school english teacher
she probably doesn't know about my lack of caps on this blog.
the barrel she's talking about is here.

i know i've written fondly before of the liminal space, but i have to say that right now, it pretty much sucks. waiting is never easy, especially when you're waiting to know whether you're bought or sold. or just confined to the scrap heap as the case may be.

on top of it, i learned today that a beloved aunt, who has always been this amazing, steadfast presence of goodness, kindness and general interest in life at the center of our rather chaotic, otherwise presenting a pretty good image of having been raised by wolves family, has cancer and is declining treatment. i can appreciate her decision because she has had a long and amazing life and i can completely appreciate that she doesn't want an undignified ending. but it all seems a little bit unfair in light of losing dad so recently and not being over that (will i ever be over that? i don't think so.).

but really, how much more can we take? and by we, i mean me. it's just too much.

* * *

oh dear, sarah palin is back at it again.

what she's doing to the language and politics in general is a criminal act.

* * *

thoughts on what changes when you move abroad.

cognitive dissonance

ok, so i write in library books. so sue me.

i recently read william gibson's book of collected essays, distrust that particular flavor. they represent his non-fiction that's appeared in various magazines (wired, rolling stone, nytimes magazine) and other places over the years. it gave me so much food for thought that i immediately reread it. many thoughts and reactions are tumbling in my head and i still haven't synthesized them all.

but in the meantime, i wanted to share some of my favorite bits (it's my blog and i can use it as my memory if i want to):

"...there's often something in a good translation that can't quite be captured in the original."

"If you are fifteen or so, today I suspect that you inhabit a sort of endless digital Now, a state of atemporality enabled by our increasingly efficient communal prosthetic memory. I also suspect that you don't know it, because, an anthropologists tell us, one cannot know one's own culture."

"...every future is someone else's past, every present someone else's future. Upon arriving in the capital-F Future, we discover it, invariably, to be the lower-case now."

"...imaginary futures are always, regardless of what the authors might think, about the day in which they're written."

"I found the material of the actual twenty-first century richer, stranger, more multiplex, than any imaginary twenty-first century could ever have been."

"A book exists at the intersection of the author's subconscious and the reader's response."

"It was entirely a matter of taking dictation from some part of my unconscious that rarely checks in this directly. I wish that that happened more frequently, but I'll take what I can get."

talking about the digital age:
"All of us, creators or audience, have participated in the change so far. It's been something many of us haven't yet gotten a handle on. We are too much of it to see it. It may be that we never do get a handle on it, as the general rate of technological innovation shows no indication of slowing."

"Emergent technology is, by its very nature, out of control, and leads to unpredictable outcomes."

on Singapore, which he, like me (and i swear i had no idea, tho' he did publish the piece in Wired in 1993) characterizes it as Disneyland with the Death Penalty:
"Singapore's airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to possess no more resolution than some early VPL world."

great turns of phrase:
cognitive dissonance
democratizaton of connoisseurship
terminal documents

on collecting:
"The idea of the Collectible is everywhere today, and sometimes strikes me as some desperate instinctive reconfiguring of the postindustrial flow, some basic mammalian response to the bewildering flood of sheer stuff we produce."

"eBay is simply the only thing I've found on the Web that keeps me coming back. It is, for me anyway, the first "real" virtual place." (he wrote this in 1999.)

on Tokyo:
"If you believe, as I do, that all cultural change is essentially technology-driven, you pay attention to Japan."

"Something about dreams, about the interface between the private and the consensual. You can do that here, in Tokyo: be a teenage girl on the street in a bondage-nurse outfit. You can dream in public. And the reason you can do it is that this is one of the safest cities in the world, and a special zone, Harajuku, has already been set aside for you."

on the media:
"Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society."

"This outcome may be an inevitable result of the migration to cyberspace of everything that we do with information."

"This is something I would bring to the attention of every diplomat, politician, and corporate leader: The future, eventually, will find out you. The future, wielding unimaginable tools of transparency, will have its way with you. In the end, you will be seen to have done that which you did."

"A world of informational transparency will necessarily be one of the deliriously multiple viewpoints, shot through with misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories and a quotidian degree of madness. We may be able to see what's going on more quickly, but that doesn't mean we'll agree about it any more readily."

"Dystopias are no more real than utopias. None of us ever really inhabits either - except, in the case of dystopias, in the relative and ordinarily tragic sense of life in some extremely unfortunate place."

"If you wish to know an era, study its more lucid nightmares."

On Greg Gerard's Phantom Shanghai:
"Liminal. Images at the threshold. Of the threshold. The dividing line. Something slicing across accretions of cultural memory like Buñuel's razor."

on history:
"History, I was learning, there at the start of the 1960s, never stops happening."
my own scrawl in response to this (because you know i wrote in this library book):
"...it just seems like it does when you're in the midst of it."

"...history, though initially discovered in whatever soggy trunk or in whatever caliber, is a species of speculative fiction itself, prone to changing interpretation and further discoveries."

on whether we'll have chips in our heads:
"There is another argument against the need to implant computing devices, be they glass or goo. It's a very simple one, so simply that some have difficulty grasping it. It has to do with a certain archaic disctinction we still tend to make, a distinction between computing and 'the world.' Between, if you like, the virtual and the real...I very much doubt that our grandchildren will understand the distinction between that which is a computer and that which isn't."

"So, it won't, I don't think, be a matter of computers crawling buglike down into the most intimate chasms of our being, but of humanity crawling buglike out into the dappled light and shadow of the presence of that which we will have created, which we are creating now, and which seems to me to already be in process of re-creating us."

perhaps this is why we like reality t.v.:
"We sit here, watching video of places a few blocks away, and feel--pleasurably--less real."

on the real cyborg:
"...as I watched Dr. Satan on that wooden television in 1952. I was becoming a part of something, in the act of watching that screen. We all were. We are today. The human species was already in the process of growing itself an extended communal nervous system, and was doing things with it that had previously been impossible: viewing things at a distance, viewing things that had happened in the past, watching dead men talk and hearing their words. What had been absolute limits of the experiential world had in a very real and literal way been profoundly and amazingly altered, extended, changed...And the real marvel of this was how utterly we took it all for granted."

"The world's cyborg was an extended human nervous system: film, radio, broadcast television, and a shift in perception so profound that I believe we've yet to understand it."

"We are implicit, here, all of us, in a vast physical construct of artificially linked nervous sytems. Invisible. We cannot touch it. We are it. We are already the Borg."

"There's my cybernetic organism: the Internet. If you accept that 'physical' isn't only the things we can touch, it's the largest man-made object on the planet....And we who participate in it are physically a part of it."

So much food for thought here, don't you think? in any case, it seems we're already in the matrix.

i love airports

i know it sounds strange, but i love airports. i love the energy they have. here in the nordic countries, it has to do with their architecture--high to the ceilings, light, airy, use of beautiful natural woods together with steel and glass constructions. the architecture of the airport lends to the atmosphere. when it's high to the ceiling and light and bright, it feels like anything is possible. an energetic, happy expectation fills the air.

people are either headed out on a holiday or a business trip that's full of possibility. or they're arriving home after a trip, happy to be home. so, generally, people in airports exude a positive, expectant energy. it has also to do with liminality (that favorite topic of mine which i haven't visited in awhile). an airport is a purely liminal space--on the border between what was and what is yet to come. everyone is full of the potential for change--to be changed by the sights seen on a holiday, to be changed by the next business deal, to be changed by the new people they encounter and the experiences they will have. they are on the threshold, in transition. maybe that's what i love about an airport. its liminality.

it's lucky i love them, because i seem to spend quite a lot of time there.

empty chairs and empty tables

do rooms retain memories of the things they've seen? could you hear what they've heard if you just listened carefully enough? do they feel sorrow? pride? anger? neglect? do they miss the voices? do they hear them at all? or are they just there in all of their beingness. or are they nothing? empty. space. waiting. liminal.

happy monday!

reasons why this is a great monday!

1. i filed the paperwork to start my own business today! it feels so exciting. so liberating. so liminal! on the threshhold of something new and exciting.
2. i just got a new cut and fabulous color!
3. i have all kinds of gorge-i-o-us scrapping papers and supplies on their way (think tinkering ink and love, elsie...ooh, ooh, i can't wait!!!)
4. monica's coming back today (with prezzies!) from spain.
5. i'm making a delicious pot of The Soup.
6. i've got yael naim's new soul playing on repeat on the iPod through the henry kloss. i will only stop once i reach 600 times!
7. the sun is shining. at least i think that's what the big bright fireball in the sky is...it has been awhile since we've seen it.
8. it's almost time to go pick up sabin from school/sfo.