looking for delights

it's delights week over at the grown-ups' table (a 30-day drawing challenge on wendy macnaughton's wonderful substack). and after a slow commute home (the roads are still terrible out there - especially around aarhus, they don't appear to have even attempted to clear them), frustrations borne of what i can only characterize as xenophobia and sexism, and a bit of lingering sadness over those dashed christmas expectations, it all adds up to a strong need for some delight this evening.

before i turn to drawing something from nature (probably another cactus), i thought i'd just look though my recent photos to find some traces of delight. as you can tell from my last few posts, i have found the recent snow to be utterly delightful to go for a walk in (though driving in it has been less fun). 

i am quite delighted by the little lamp i found in a secondhand store for only 50kr. it fits beside the bed upstairs and its plain white shade was the perfect canvas for painting a few cactus to match the mural on the bedroom wall. it's such a delight to sleep in this lovely room every night. 

another delight is this new cup by my favorite ceramics artist that i got for christmas. i swear coffee tastes better from the right cup.

and i'm feeling better already, just thinking about delight. so one last one for today - travis the kitten is so helpful with my daily drawings. i'll see if he's up for helping me draw something from nature. maybe i'm no longer feeling prickly, so i'm now thinking snowdrops - when the snow thaws in the next couple of days, they just might be poking through and in the meantime, i'll draw the memory of them. 

what's delighting you today?

the color of my soul

husband's bestie has sold his place and is moving away at the end of the month. he's a truly lovely person, a retired pilot, and i will miss him because he's been a staple dinner guest at our house for over a decade, but husband will miss him even more. in fact, i'm a little worried about husband without him. a young couple has bought his place and the wife is apparently a fellow american. husband has briefly met them, but i haven't. they won't be the same, but if i've learned one thing, it's that things don't stay the same and you have to be open to what comes next. 

i've been reading a lot of new substacks of late and many are focused on the new years resolution genre. i guess it's just that time of year. a surprising number of them quote rumi. kind of weird how appropriated his work has been by the gratitude/self-help set. i can't decide if it's good that it pushes it to a wider audience or if it somehow cheapens it. maybe it's a bit of both. but anyway susan cain asks in the new year's edition of the quiet life, what color is your soul now? what color do you want it to be? which she doesn't attribute to rumi (though she does quote him in the stack), but marcus aurelius, "your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."

affected by the time of year, i think my soul is currently that wintery nordic greyish blue. it's not a terrible color for your soul to be. it's peaceful and quiet, if a little cold. it seems a little lighter and more tending towards the blue than the grey after yesterday's scream in the forest. it feels in tune with the slight slowly returning after the solstice. i think the color i want it to be is a sunny, bright yellow. and that will surely come with summer and the buzzing yellow of the canola fields. and it will no doubt pass through that brilliant light green of the first beech leaves as they unfurl in the spring on the way there. our souls aren't just one color, but the whole spectrum and that color can change with the season or even from day to day or minute to minute. but susan is right, that it's worth thinking about what you're feeding your soul. and currently, i want to feed mine light. 

go and scream in a forest

got together with a good friend today and we both spent more than an hour talking about recent frustrations and energy-stealing situations and those damn christmas expectations and selfish, ungrateful people. after we got it out, we decided that what we needed to do was go for a walk in the forest and have a healthy little scream. or two. or ten. or enough that i now have a bit of a sore throat. but damn, do i feel better. while it doesn't make that selfish, ungrateful young person less selfish or ungrateful, it did ease the burden of it for me significantly. so, if you're near a forest, get out there and have a good scream. oh, and do look up while you're there. i guarantee you'll thank me. and even more importantly, you'll thank yourself.

currently snowing

i love that nordic blue winter light. it's been snowing all day and is expected to continue into tomorrow. it was raining when we went to bed, so there's a layer of ice under the snow on all the trees and it's heavy! glad i don't have to drive anywhere today!

the isolation journals five lists

on this rainy, grey first day of january, i was catching up on my substack feed, waiting for it to clear up a bit so that i can go for a walk. i read suleika jouoad's isolation journals sunday prompt on the five lists and it seemed like a good activity to indulge in while i wait for a break in the rain. it's always nice to do a bit of reflecting on the first day of a fresh, new year. 

1. what in the last year are you proud of?

the first thing that springs to mind is the podcast i'm creating at work. it's something that i always wanted to do and while it's not perfect, i have learned so much along the way and i got to have a lot of great conversations with a lot of interesting people. i have really grown professionally making this work. and it wasn't the only great project i was part of at work. we also worked with a top agency to make some really great short videos that tell some emotional stories that all take place in a kitchen - it was a completely different and new kind of content for us as a company and i'm really proud to have been part of pushing us in that direction. 

i'm really proud of my brave, beautiful child and how hard she works at school and how she's managed to surround herself with good friends and how she bravely makes her way through the world, 9 time zones away from us. she's a wonderful young woman and i'm so proud of her. 

and lastly, i'm proud of my weight loss. yes, i have used the help that wegovy gives me, and i have zero shame for that. i am healthier, my cholesterol numbers are down and i just feel about a thousand times better. plus, i also look so much better and i realize that matters more to me than i imagined it would. i have definitely been hiding underneath over-sized, drab clothing choices for some years now and it feels so good to not need to do that anymore. i can actually find items on the sale rack in size medium and even small and they fit me! and damn, it makes me happy and proud.

2. what did this year leave you yearning for?

i have struggled this year to restart a social life after the corona years. it seems overwhelming to invite people over like we used to. we would have spontaneous game nights and do dinner together with friends, and now we almost never do that. it doesn't help that the main friends we did that with moved a bit further away. and after that and corona, we just drifted apart. but i find myself yearning for more time with friends and good conversations and evenings filled with good food and laughter. we had a few of those over the past year, but not nearly enough.

3. what's causing you anxiety?

i think money is always a source of anxiety. one could always do with more of it. it's not really that we lack, per se, but we could do things faster and complete more of the house projects if we had a bit more. i shouldn't complain, as we do have two good incomes in our household, i guess i wish that i had less anxiety about it.

naturally, the state of the world causes a lot of anxiety and in light of that, it feels a little meaningless to be worried about money. but world issues feel so huge and insurmountable, that maybe it's easier to look at one's own life and try to grab onto an anxiety that's closer to home. 

i'm pretty apprehensive about the election in november, but if i let myself fully stare that one in the face, i'll completely destroy what's left of my back teeth after the first trump administration, since that anxiety manifests as clenching my jaw in my sleep to the point where i wake up with a swollen cheek.

4. what resources, skills and practices can you rely on in the next year?

this one feels the most like setting new year's resolutions and i'm finding it a little difficult. i suppose the main resource that i rely on in general is my fearlessness in just jumping into things with both feet. i also, despite my advancing age, love to learn new things and stay up-to-date on trends and technology, and try out all the new things that are popping up all the time - ai, tiktok, blue sky, etc. i don't know really know whether these are resources or skills that i possess, but it's what comes to mind. staying curious is probably the best thing i can do to keep growing and developing.

as for the practice that i can rely on, it's my dogged determination to take a photo every day. i've been doing it since may 2008 and i don't intend to stop now. and if i can keep that commitment for such a long time, i can surely keep other commitments - like dry january, and taking a walk or jog every day, finding a regular yoga class to attend, inviting people over once a month, learning to knit, reading a book instead of endlessly scrolling on my phone...

5. what are your wildest, most harebrained ideas and dreams?

i would love to have a small podcast production company, making limited series podcasts for companies, to help them tell their stories. it would be a great way to keep getting to talk to interesting people and learn new things. 

one day, i want to have a little café right here in the countryside. this one has been in the back of my mind for some years. it would only have a few seats and maybe limited opening hours, but it would be a destination worth seeking out. everything in the café would also be for sale - it would be furnished with antiques and the serving dishes/cups/plates would be cool ceramics from local artists and you would be able to buy anything that struck your fancy.

i'd also like to make the old part of the house into a couple of rooms that we could put up on airbnb, so i could get back some of the feeling i used to have when we had couchsurfers on a regular basis. meeting interesting people and sharing our space, especially our outdoor spaces, with them. 

i want to do another art project/exhibition together with my friend christina. and just generally develop my creative practice. maybe something with pinhole photography?

i'm sure there are other things, but these are the ones that come to mind. it was nice to spend an hour or so pondering these questions. let me know if you do it too. 

and here's hoping 2024 will be a good year for all of us.

2023 :: a year in pictures

 

january

it seems like january wasn't all that memorable. working from home, a visit to mosegaard museum, frost and snow, lego flowers, the light slowly returning. 

february

lots of work stuff - spent a bit of time in copenhagen. enjoyed signs of spring. still couldn't stop making more avocado plants, which was my corona obsession. ate some good food. did some creative stuff. started planning the garden. 

march

sabin and her friends came for spring break, which was so much fun. went to a coiled basket class, made some yummy cupcakes for my birthday and a fancy charcuterie board for our little creative group's annual meeting. 

april

started spending time in the garden and even harvested the first herbs for a salad, as well as the first ruby stalks for rhubarb that i forced under some black buckets. bought some hoka running shoes, hoping it might make me run. spoiler alert: it didn't. billy the cat came by for his annual visit. he stayed around for several months. 

may

recorded the first episodes of my podcast for work (look for it where you listen - it's called the sociable kitchen). may is always when the canola fields are at their peak and i am here for it. it was also lilac time, which is my favorite time of year. may is also when i started taking wegovy. alas, i didn't do a may selfie, so we'll have to compare the ones that follow with the previous months.

june

june was eventful - a trip to berlin with a friend to visit some old friends of hers, husband ran a half ironman, i spent time in the studio in aarhus and fell in love - it's such a great atmosphere! we started to enjoy the garden. and i got new ducks. we also got a pig, though it was over at our friends' place. 

july

summer was here and that meant berries - strawberry ice cream, black currant jam. my grove of avocado trees thriving in the kitchen window. a visit to an old friend to record a podcast episode. turning my woven rug that weirdly disintegrated from useful object into art. and a new fully electric car for me. 

august

sabin came home and we painted a cactus mural in our bedroom. we went on adventures and ate blts. husband also made the most amazing covered terrace and i did my part by making big cushions for the lounge area. husband helped build a shelter. and milkshake, my white running duck, laid her first egg! mazzie had kittens, despite being a kitten herself. 

september

i started to really feel and see the effects of the wegovy and shedding those extra pounds started to make me feel better. had a pretty traumatic encounter with someone from my creative group, and was much more able to handle it - maybe due to feeling healthier. made loads of cordial and jam with all the yummy things from the garden. dyed some dresses in the indigo dye pot. and visited the danish design museum in copenhagen as research for my work podcast. 

october

spoke at a conference in amsterdam, went to the taylor swift film with work friends, moved into our new bedroom, enjoyed the kittens, went to a book release party and spent a bit of time at trapholt in connection with a new project. i also learned a new thing - pinhole photography. harvested the squash from the garden and went mushroom hunting. 

november

the child was a bit stressed and came home spontaneously for thanksgiving. it was great to see her and help her relax a bit. we painted ceramics together, ate sushi and celebrated thanksgiving with good friends. and we laughed and laughed that evening, which was great for everyone. husband and i went to copenhagen twice because we got the date of our family get-together wrong, but made the best of it by exploring the new park beside the opera. made plans to weave rugs for the bedroom on my friend's loom.

december

down 15 kilos (33 pounds) since starting wegovy and starting to need some new wardrobe items. it makes me so happy. decided to up my gift-wrapping game and made a zillion ornaments with hama beads. it was so relaxing! wore something sparkly every work day of december. it has been a year of ups and downs, but despite the questionable expectations of christmas, it is ending on a good note and overall, while not that eventful, it lands in the positive column. 

christmas is fraught with expectations

christmas has come and gone. everyone has just departed and i'm relishing a little bit of time to myself, on the couch, watching harry potter. as usual, christmas had its fraught moments. moments of irritation - like when we thought some of the guests would be here at 2 p.m. and they didn't actually leave copenhagen (to drive three hours) until then. or when two of the young people showed up a day early because they wanted to borrow my car to go their christmas eve engagement and no one had communicated this to me or asked me if i thought it was ok. (knowing how one of them drives, it was decidedly not ok.) 

then the child got mad at me because i'm on wegovy. it has made her feel self-conscious about her own weight, which was never my intention. she's beautiful and perfect in my eyes, and i definitely don't think she needs to lose any weight. but the world is a weird place and maybe it's messed all of us up. i have in my head that i want to weigh what my driver's license says i do (i got it in 1995 and it says 135 pounds), which might be madness (and is about 20 pounds from where i am right now, after losing 30 pounds since may). it made the child think i am on my way to having an eating disorder. i'm not sure it's quite that, but maybe she's right that i need to rethink that goal. and be happy with feeling better here and now.

husband's first grandchild was here and he's a busy little guy of 15 months. it made me realize how not childproof our home is, but we were able to keep the kitchen cupboards closed and keep the most breakable items out of reach. it struck me how repetitive everything with small kids is. he spent ages handing LEGO pieces to his parents, then throwing them on the floor and then wanting up and then down again and then up again and down again. i think our brains are kind to us, as i don't recall the monotonous boredom of having a small child myself, but surely it was the same. thankfully as parents we don't see it that way. but i am glad it's not me today.

it's hard enough when they're grown. i got everyone LEGO this year - usually, we buy new games, but now we have so many, it's hard to pick new ones, so i decided that everyone was getting a nice LEGO set. there are so many cool sets these days for adults and who doesn't like LEGO? i chose carefully, really trying to pick ones that fit - a bouquet for the middle daughter and the cool LEGO ideas insect set in the picture above for her boyfriend. they eagerly got to work building them and i thought i had done a good job. but when it came time to pack up their things and take them home, i heard a lot of whispering and only the flowers were packed up to take home. apparently they didn't want the insects (as cool as they are) sitting around their new apartment. i didn't hear that with my own ears, it was told to me second hand. i'll have to remember next year that LEGO just isn't good enough. i'm honestly trying not to feel badly about it, but i'm not there yet. 

we attach so many expectations to christmas. i carefully selected the gift and i feel hurt that it was deemed too inferior to be taken home. and if i'm honest, it's more than that. i'm also hurt that the girls brought a present for their sister and their dad, but nothing for me. not even a token small thing. i go out of my way for them and get nothing in return. and while it's not about things, it's about the thought that goes into selecting a gift and apparently i'm not worthy of any such thought.  and i'm really trying not to care, but honestly, i do care. and i am hurt. and it's those damn expectations every time. but how can we not have them? and how to get past them? and how to not care.

i realize it all sounds quite petty in light of all the horrible things going on in the world. but there you have it. we are always so inside ourselves, it can be hard to look up. 

mood: bleak

i'm sick. i haven't been sick like this in a long time. it started yesterday when i was driving with a colleague to copenhagen. i suddenly knew i was going to throw up and luckily he pulled over quickly. then despite attending a workshop, i continued to throw up the rest of the day. by the time we drove home, i was getting achy all over and i'm sure i had a low grade fever. miserable. i went to bed immediately with a kitten and tiktok and slept for 10 hours. so far today, no throwing up, but the thought of food still turns my stomach. i have kept a cup of tea down, so that's something. 

so i'm hanging out in bed with travis, my comfort kitten, candles burning and my laptop on my lap. and i'm thinking about all the madness in the world. in the early days of this blog, i would have been on the barricades, writing about it. the incomprehensible slaughter of innocent women and children in gaza, the way the war in ukraine drags on, but seems to have been forgotten in the face of the horrors being committed by israel and hamas. the criminal trump's increasingly fascist behavior and his likelihood of being the nominee. i just don't know what to say. or do. i feel rather helpless in the face of it all. 

here i am, tucked up in my cozy, warm bed, fretting about some stupid bureaucracy imposed on our little creative group by the local bank and recovering from the flu while the world rages out there. and i can't help but berate myself for it, wondering if it's similar to how ordinary germans just sat back and let hitler do all he did. did they feel as helpless and wrapped up in their own pettiness? 

sacred space

i've lived in denmark for nearly 25 years and weirdly have never previously gone inside the marble church, which is the church right by amailenborg, where the royal family lives. i'm not sure how that happened. but we were in copenhagen on the weekend and i finally took the time. 

while i'm not a religious person, there is something about spaces like this. we stepped from the cold, crisp autumn air into the warmth and the hush. quite a few people were there, but everyone was silent and respectful and it felt like a special place. with its towering dome, and a kind of heavy gravity in the air, it felt like a sacred space. if there is something to that whole god thing, it's a space like that that s/he'd show up.

what does it mean?

"memory is a kind of ceaseless remodeling." - this is from that harper's piece on memory. i kept reading and kept thinking about it. 

and then old friend of the blog, malorie, wrote a lovely piece on the weirdness of the pandemic time on her substack. her thoughts are far more eloquent than mine. but i thought it might be time to start to figure out what i think about it and what it did to me.

to be honest, we didn't have it that bad. we already live in the countryside, away from people. i took more walks than normal - i discovered a new path around our lake after ten years of living here. it was actually quite nice. even though i started a new job just as the pandemic started, even that worked out very well, though i wondered in the beginning if it would. 

where things have changed is on the social front. i find it hard to restart a social life. we used to have people over for dinner regularly. these days, we hardly ever do so. we are having some people over for friendsgiving this weekend. it's a smaller group than it has been some years. husband and i discussed the guest list and we just couldn't get our heads around a bigger group. so we'll be 8. i used to not blink at 20. i think this difference is one of the consequences of corona time. 

but i don't know what else is. it feels so hard to judge something when you don't have enough distance to it. and when it feels like everyone has forgotten it. i don't hear anything about it at all here in denmark. they haven't even recommended a booster shot this year for the new variants. and i haven't even had it. at least not that i know of. it's kind of like everyone has forgotten. but i suspect our bodies and our psyches haven't forgotten. but what it means? i have no idea. what do you think it means?

i'm making a podcast at work

you guys, i'm making a podcast at work. it's about danish design. and it totally fulfills my desire, at this stage of my life, to just make cool shit. you can find it on spotify and apple podcasts and probably also where ever you listen to podcasts. i'd love to know what you think, so please listen! 

protective energy

most amazing experience today. we had an open house in our atelier at the top of the library. the purpose was to show the community the kinds of things we do in our little creative group and hopefully gain some new members. i hadn't seen a certain member since the day she screamed at me and drove off. i didn't see her come in and only realized she was there when i heard her voice behind me. i said, "hello, nice to see you," as i walked past. but i'll admit i felt nervous about her being there. she awkwardly stammered back a hello. 

i went downstairs with my good friend and told her that i felt nervous. she said, you have to protect yourself with some good energy before you go back upstairs. she tried to guide me to do it. she told me to picture a calming blue light, starting at my head and enveloping me. i closed my eyes and tried. the only light that would come was orange. then she stood in front of me, warmed her hands and raised them above my head. as soon as her hands were there, the light turned from orange to a rich, dark blue. then she proceeded to draw a line of protection around me. i could feel prickles of energy, though she didn't touch me. i got all goosebumps. and i really could see that rich, blue light enveloping me. then she gave me a big hug and told me she loved me. it was amazing and though i know it sounds completely woo woo, i really felt protected. 

back upstairs, my nemesis sat near me and i could feel waves of bad energy coming from her. and i swear i could almost see my protective energy field pushing them away, protecting me from them. i found myself smiling and feeling calm and happy. it was mind-blowing. and it felt absolutely amazing. 

she left early. maybe she could feel her bad energy being pushed back at her. i still feel sorry for her. she's still clearly in a bad place and it hasn't gotten better. i really hope she gets some help.

i think everyone left in a good mood, feeling great for having being creative together for a few hours. we definitely need to do more of these sessions. 

it's mushroom season!

i love these magical amanita muscaria. i thought they were the stuff of legend until i moved to denmark. i also thought there weren't going to be any this year, they're here a bit later than usual. chalk it up to climate change. that last one looks like it might need to visit the doctor. 

i also found some edible mushrooms - porcini and puffballs. dried the porcini in my dehydrator overnight and added the puffballs to some kale from the garden for dinner last night.