stitching together a lovely, messy, chaotic life

nearly a month after my disappointment at not getting hold of a kit that would enable me to participate in the dataspejlet community art project at trapholt museum, i was at a friend's house for a board meeting. i saw that she had a kit and i told her how sad i was that i missed out on getting one. i snapped a picture of it there on her side table, but that sense of sadness and being on the outside of something i wanted to be part of welled up in me again and i found it almost too painful to look at. i even thought the colors she had gotten were great and would have been so much fun to work with. she told me that her neighbor also had one and she would ask her if she was going to use it. i went away a little bit hopeful, but still mostly resigned to not getting one.

then, a week or so later, my friend sent me a message, telling me she'd left me something up in our creative group's workshop at the library. i crossed my fingers that i knew what it was and i was delighted to find that she gave me her own kit. i breathed a sign of relief. 

oddly, i didn't start stitching on it right away. i got out my data files and chose the words i wanted to work with and i drew a sketch on some graph paper that husband had lying around on his desk. and then, i went around pondering it in the back of my head for a couple of weeks. i'm one who always works best close to a looming deadline. and i wasn't doing nothing - i was pinning stitch inspiration on pinterest and thinking about how i wanted to express the words i'd chosen. i was also keeping an eye on the #dataspejlet hashtag on instagram, but not a lot of posts were being shared and i didn't want to have to open the dreaded facebook to go see what people were posting in the group. plus, i figured it was best to do it my way anyway, without too much inspiration/influence from others.

but during our long weekend, i finally got stitching. it was beautiful out in the garden, on the pillow-covered bench between the greenhouses. i started with the circle representing husband. it has a circle within it that represents sabin. 

i chose the golden mustard color for husband and pink for sabin - my colors were those, plus purple. i probably would have chosen other colors if i were choosing myself, but these were what i had to work with and i do like them. i decided to  completely fill those two circles with stitches, because they represent the two people who complete me. 

the next circles that i worked on were the overlapping ones representing time/reality and cats - funny that those overlapped, but i think the time/reality comes from posts i did about reading murakami and of course, cats figure heavily on my facebook page. i chose to leave more "air" in those circles, not filling them out completely with stitches and there, where they overlapped, i used both colors, plus i added the third color, to show that the interesting part is where my preoccupations overlap. 

and then i turned to the similarly overlapping circles representing ships and LEGO. i filled those out with little + signs (i should note that we were only allowed to use stitches that go horizonal or vertical, no side-ways or curves or french knots or fancy stuff). and i stitched three hearts in the space where they overlapped, to signify how much i do love both. they are both from my work life, but both have become something of who i am.

i really enjoyed sitting in the sunshine, stitching. when i needed a break, i'd get up and pull a few weeds or water the plants or plant a few seeds. and i picked myself a small bouquet of fragrant lilacs, my favorite flower, to have at hand while i stitched. i sat in the sun with my big sun hat on and enjoyed the meditative stitching, seeing where it would take me and what thoughts it would provoke.

i didn't get it all finished on the weekend, so monday after work, i started my second to last circle. this is the one where i chose a group of words from the data, as they all seemed related and harmonious together. they were: story, fabulous, beautiful, sunshine, awesome. and reality was in that circle as well. i think it's my favorite circle - the three colors complementing one another best. it was also one i stitched most intuitively, letting the colors tell me where they wanted to be and how many stitches and the length. it simply felt freer than the others, which felt careful and deliberate. i liked this one best.

it was getting a bit dark by the time i finished, but i took a picture anyway. i'm pleased with the result. and then on tuesday, i had only one circle left to do. the bad one. 

we were given white thread to use for stitching those bits that we wished weren't there or which we didn't want anyone to see. for me, that circle came down in the left lower quadrant, far from the other circles, which was good, as i hate to have this word touching any of the positive words. and the word for that circle was trump. i used couching, i think wanting to keep that embarrassing evil clown under control, limiting him and tying him down. that stitch came to me naturally and intuitively as well. funny how those last two circles were the most intuitive, like i had to have warmed up to the stitching before i could let myself go.

and i thought a lot about stitching outside the circles and i can see now that others have done so - stitching connections between them and such. and i thought i wanted to do that as well. but as i began - trying to make a joyful spray of stitches surround my favorite circle at the top - they came out awkward and not at all how i envisioned them, so i picked them up. i think it would have worked if i could have used french knots, but alas, they weren't allowed. so, i decided i was content to only show what the data showed and keep the rest of my lovely, chaotic, messy, awesome life for myself.

i'm so happy i got to participate after all and i'm very grateful to my friend for giving me her kit. it meant a lot and the meditative stitching time was just what i needed during a very busy time at work. i can't wait to see how my work will fit into the larger work that astrid skibsted puts together at trapholt this autumn.  it will inevitably be a dialogue with the many other embroiderers and the whole will be so much greater than the individual parts and yet they will be beautiful and unique on their own. and i'll bet it will be harmonious and lovely, messy and chaotic, just like all the lives that went into the data that went into all those stitches. and we will all belong exactly where we are in the work. 

this awesome, beautiful, fabulous life

i submitted my dataspejlet work to trapholt electronically today, so now, i only have to drop it off. i still need to write a post about how i got my hands on a kit, but i'll do that next. 

they have a form to fill out where you can write a 1000 character description of your work. that's a crazy small amount for all the thought and hours that went into it. here's what mine said:

i loathe facebook, but have been there for many years, so it made sense to use it for my dataspejl. interestingly, the data did rather accurately reveal what's important to me - husband (yes, i call him that, like it's his name) and daughter, their circles overlapping, very fittingly. the next circles, all very close in size represent other things i love - like cats and ships and LEGO. my #2 circle featured words like "time" and "reality," which surely come from reading and posting about Murakami books. i chose to do one circle in white, as the frequent word there is one i'd like to forget - trump. it's also an outlier on my grid - away from the others, which seems right. but to end on a happy note, the circle where i used all three colors in a crazy quilt sort of pattern was full of words like "story," "fabulous," "beautiful," "sunshine," "awesome" and again, "reality," - leading me to my title and to the realization that yes, my colorful, loud, messy life is rather fabulous.

submitted this process photo - as i thoroughly enjoyed sitting in the sunshine in the garden, stitching away last weekend.

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you also had to fill out which words you chose to work with and mine were:

husband, sabin (which i submitted as daughter, for the sake of anonymity), cats, ships, LEGO, time, reality, story, fabulous, beautiful, sunshine, awesome and yes, trump. 

so weird to boil my life down to 8 circles and a dozen or so words. it seems so paltry and yet still, it did capture something. i tried stitching outside the circles a bit, to indicate that my life is much more than just those 8 confined and sometimes overlapping circles, but took it away again, because it felt like it didn't capture it. instead, i chose to go with the snapshot those 8 circles offer and keep for myself the messy chaos of the rest of this awesome, beautiful, fabulous life. 

searching for a sense of community

i took a little stroll into the past this morning. the bloggy past. i visited a bunch of old haunts, from char's ramblings to truth cycles to c is for capetown to the emma tree and the eleventh and beyond. all were, in some fashion, more or less dormant. we knew that about char, of course, since she died all too young back in 2011. but what happened to the rest of us? what happened to our community? some of us moved over to facebook and are still friends there. but it's arguably not the same as it was back in the blogging heyday. i used to write daily, sometimes multiple times, but now i'm only here a couple of times a month, when i want to figure out what i think about something. what changed? jobs? kids? did life accelerate somehow? was it the rise of the smart phone (who wants to type a whole blog post on that little keyboard)? or did facebook, instagram and twitter just kill our blogging vibe? but i realized that i miss that old sense of community. that's just not the same on facebook.

there is a kind of community on facebook and i have recently observed the intersection of one part of that community with actual, in-real-life community. watching it from afar has been at turns nauseating and heartwarming. i haven't really known how to feel about it. i've felt like a voyeur, since it was tangential to my own community, so it's felt like an invasion of privacy on my part to read the regular updates. but on the other hand, it was shared publicly, so i wasn't really spying. but it has felt like spying. and not only did i spy, i judged. at times harshly. there was a lot of god stuff and i have a hard time with that. but then, something softened in me. i can see people of all ages, from high school girls to grandparents, pouring out good thoughts of healing and support and honestly, it suddenly melted my heart. people demonstrably caring about other people, what's not to like? there's so much awfulness in the world right now, and i can't believe i almost missed this situation as an antidote to it. when i let myself, i can see that it's a genuine sense of community.

but at the same time, i can't bring myself to participate in it. so i sit across an ocean and voyeuristically read the posts, but don't contribute anything to the conversation. and there are a couple of reasons for that. one is the god thing - i cannot see how you can possibly praise god up and down for his mercy in the girl's recovery and not blame him that she fell ill in the first place - the logic just doesn't add up for me. the other is that i don't really know these people, tho' they are from my hometown, so i would feel like an intruder if i participated in the conversation. i have a classmate who i can see is part of the conversation and she's for all practical purposes, as far away as i am, but she feels she can contribute to the community in a way that i cannot. or will not. because i also admit that it's a choice on my part. she's just making a different choice than i am. and that's ok. it's perhaps a community i'm no longer part of, especially after my father died and with the decline of my mother and seeing how all the friends she had have fallen away as she has deteriorated. it's hard to keep a positive view of the place when it seems like it was all a facade and not real when the going gets tough.

i don't really know where it all leaves me, and i'm not done pondering it or looking for answers as to how to live this life we have landed in. a colleague recommended a russian philosopher that i had strangely not heard of before - p.d. ouspensky. i got his work from 1917 - in search of the miraculous - and i've been reading it today. perhaps it will provide me with a new way of viewing the world, even tho' the world in which he wrote was so far from our technology-flooded world today. but perhaps humans aren't all that different.

triggered

just when you think you're completely healed and over your year in lego, something happens that opens up the baggage and you're right back, smack in the middle of how terrible it felt. it turns out that feeling rejected and like i don't belong triggers that awful feeling in me again.  yesterday, i posted one of these ducky swim ring photos in the toy photographers group on g+ as a contribution to their inspiring hashtag - #nofigurefriday. i posted it and then left to go pick up the child. when i got back, i refreshed the toy photographers page to see if anyone had commented and to see what others were posting.

weirdly, my post was nowhere to be found on the page. i refreshed again and scrolled down and down, thinking perhaps g+ stacks the posts strangely by column. there were other new posts there that had come after mine, but no sign of mine. my heart actually began to pound and i could hear the blood in my ears and i flushed in embarrassment - had my post been deleted because it wasn't good enough? did i put it in the wrong category? i had selected "photo challenge" because of the hashtag, but what if that was wrong? were they really that strict? had i been too silent for too long, so i was no longer welcome to contribute? what was going on?

notice in all of those thoughts, i immediately felt that i must have been inferior and deserved to have my photo deleted. it didn't make me angry, it made me very sad and it made me feel like i didn't belong. i posted a comment, asking what happened to my original post and people jumped in, giving me helpful advice about how to share in the group, as if i were tech-challenged. that didn't help me feel any better.

later, i got a report that it was some kind of issue with g+ and that a lot of posts weren't showing. but that somehow didn't make me feel better either. i still feel wary and hurt and have a nagging feeling that i don't really belong in that "community." i wonder if it will fade with time, or if my lego wounds are so deep, they'll never really scar over.

still not over it

a week ago, i was in paris for the first time. believe it or not, i'd never been. it was a bit like how long it took me to visit new york. maybe i just don't do big, famous western cities. rome is still on the list as well. it was a quick visit, for work, so i didn't get to wander around that much, tho' i did walk down to the eiffel tower on my first night there, and we were shooting a night video here, at the place de la concorde and i got a few shots.  i'd like to go back to paris and visit museums and stroll around a bit more at a more leisurely pace, but i know already now that i'm not a paris person. it didn't make my molecules hum in alignment like say moscow or london do. you walk around there, feeling the history and you can understand a little bit why the french don't realize that they're not a significant player on the world stage anymore. there is a grandeur and a beauty that must be quite unsurpassed, but i didn't fall in love. 

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i found myself still weepy today over the election. i heard tales of the nastiness of one of my cousins, who delighted in spreading white nationalist bigotry around a post-thanksgiving gathering yesterday. and reading about the recount that will happen in wisconsin thanks to jill stein (who knew we would thank her for anything?), and the slim chances it has in keeping that monster from the white house. and encountering issues myself over sailing on a freight ship to the uk on my american passport makes me more resolved than ever to seek danish citizenship. the day after the election, i downloaded the forms, now i just need to get them filled out and jump the last of the necessary hoops. 

i attended a cultural café today at the library, held by some of the good souls in my community, to welcome the refugee families who are in town. i met a lovely and brave young woman from syria and she and her children would like to have one of our kittens when they (the kittens) are old enough. those kittens bring me a lot of joy and it would be wonderful if they also brought joy to a family who has fled from war. that gives me happy tears. but i also had sad tears in my eyes as a couple of these sweet families told me a tale of a mentally unbalanced young woman in the community who is harassing them, loudly shouting racist statements at their children as they walk to school and accosting the families on the street and in the local grocery stores, publicly screaming at them to go back where they came from. she's a person with problems of her own, but it's so distressing to hear. and the police have been contacted, but unfortunately can't do anything about her unless she actually physically attacks them. as if the verbal attacks aren't bad in and of themselves. it seems these days, such people think they can spread their racism and bigotry without consequence. and it seems that they actually can. 

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if any of you have any recommendations for fiction or non-fiction on the topic of alzheimer's,
i would be most grateful to hear them.

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winter is coming, make your own tonic syrups.

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a very interesting map to ponder.

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how to get just the figs you want from the new batman movie set.

a month-long project comes to a successful close

yesterday, we wrapped up a group project, decorating the wall in our new library's minibib - the library for the littlest kids (age 0-6). seven of us in total worked on the project over the month of september. the brief was to take inspiration in the children's books illustrated by swedish illustrator helena davidsson neppelberg. her simple style, filled with bright colors and flat illustrations with no shadows or contours is perfect for a children's library. but, we also decided that we wanted it to feel very contemporary, so the figures would have a street art quality - where although we didn't use templates, we wanted them to look like they were done from templates and if there was color, it would be one single color or at most two. we wanted whimsy and without violating any copyrights, to create imagery that the children would recognize. i think, in the end, we achieved this, but it was an interesting process.

reining in 7 different creative people and keeping them on track is no easy task. each of us wanted to leave our mark and sneak in our own unique style somehow. it presented some challenges along the way. again and again, we discussed the brief and all agreed and again and again, people went ahead and did their own thing.

it was inevitable that some of those things didn't work in relation to the brief. and it was inevitable that they had to be done over. and because of the nature of women and how hard we are on one another (why do we do that?), we didn't always talk about it constructively. but we kept coming back to the brief and what our "customer," the library, wanted and needed the wall to be. and in the end, it worked out.

there are touches of everyone's personalities. and there are plenty of fun and sweet details for the children to discover. the silhouette of a little girl on the far side will be lifted by papier maché balloons (once they dry and can be attached) and the steps, which husband beautifully constructed, will have a whimsical papier maché dinosaur fixed upon them, to discourage climbing and keep them a bit safer than they are now (we had visions of those tiny ones crawling up and falling off the sides). we hope the children will enjoy it for years to come.

taking the time

we've had an unseasonably cool spring. but at last the beech leaves have sprung forth. there is no color of green quite like it. i pulled over today on my way home and took a little walk in the woods, to soak it all in. some days, when you're feeling down and everything seems like too much and you have a dull headache, you need to do that. to indulge in the moment. to take the time. to breathe. to soak it all in. to let go of it all and just be.

while i was making dinner, i watched the first two parts of a documentary on loneliness that DR has made. the last episode will be broadcast this evening and i saw an ad for it yesterday and realized that a person who i know is one of the lonely people. well, i actually, i don't know her, i've just seen her around. when i got involved in my community culture house, she was there at that first meeting as well and wanted to be involved. but somehow, she didn't make it onto the board. i've seen her since a few times, also in connection with the culture house - she bought some cool chairs when we had the big sale before we emptied the building, so i know that we'd have that in common. but still, tho' i chatted with her about the chairs, we didn't really take it any further or become friends. and now there she is, on a program where she is standing forward and admitting that she's lonely. that some days the only people she talks to are at the grocery store. and it fills me with sadness. everyone wants to make a human connection, but somehow, we are so full of ourselves and our own lives that we don't do it. especially here in denmark, where there are few of the casual conversations you can fall into if you're waiting for a bus or in the checkout line if you're in the US. and that lack of interaction has consequences. like a woman being so lonely that she's willing to go on television and say so. right here in the happiest place on earth. (that last sentence is in the sarcasm font.)

and it feels a bit like all of the walks in a beautiful, bright green spring forest won't make it better. we need to do more. we need to really see one another. acknowledge one another. interact. be more open. talk to each other. say hello to our neighbors. drink a cup of coffee. chat. take the time.

wonderful wonder woman

in our second of a series of salons i've been co-creating at our local library, the theme was wonder woman. but not only the comic book character wonder woman, but the wonder woman in us all. this year is the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in denmark, so we brought in that aspect as well. we didn't get the vote in the US for another 5 years! afterwards, i looked up when women got the vote in countries around the world and there are some pretty surprising facts on that list. like that switzerland, which i would have thought was a pretty progressive place, didn't allow women to vote until 1971! appalling! and turkey gave women the vote in 1934, but france didn't follow suit for another 10 years in 1944. also appalling.

we prepared two rounds of questions for the tables to discuss. my thought was to start it off a bit lighthearted in the spirit of wonder woman and ask people what they thought their super power was. or what they would want it to be if they could have one. the age range at my table went from a bit younger than me (early 40s) to 60s, so approximately a 20 year span. and i quickly realized that aside from one (my partner in the arrangement), they actually didn't know what was meant by a super power. and they definitely didn't take the question in the lighthearted way it was intended.

i came to find out that they actually had no idea who wonder woman was at all! they weren't familiar with the cartoon, nor the fabulous series from the 70s starring lynda carter that so defined how i jumped out of the swingset for a good portion of my childhood. so, they looked a little blankly at my superman socks and wonder woman converse. they just didn't get it. and i have to say that it made me feel so sorry for them! but then, it hit me that they felt sorry for me for knowing about a comic book heroine. it was just another example of those shallow americans and their lack of culture.

they obviously didn't know that jill lepore (a harvard scholar, no less), recently wrote a history of wonder woman and the story behind her debut in 1940 as well as her place in feminist history. they didn't know that the book just beat out 132 other contenders to win the american history book prize. wonder woman is huge and awesome and a feminist icon. she is not merely a cartoon character, she is so much more. she is strong and brave, a real amazonian princess. and it was funny, because several people mentioned that they wished they could be more like those amazon women of legend. they just didn't seem to realize that wonder woman was the best known one of all!

next time, i'll not assume that everyone is on the same page and prepare a bit more explanation so that we all start on equal footing, or at least that we understand where we're all coming from.

in all, tho', a very interesting evening anyway.

moving (literally and metaphorically): a salon evening

on tuesday evening, i co-hosted a salon evening for the first time. it was in cooperation with our little local group of creatives - called creagive - and our local library, so it involved some of my favorite people. the theme was "moving" (at flytte (sig) in danish). we chose this theme because we recently had to move out of our local kulturhus so it can be renovated into a new library and creative space, so moving referred both to physically moving, but we also talked a lot about things which have moved us in a more metaphorical sense over the years.

how it went was that when people arrived, they got a little glass of fernet branca and a name tag with a symbol and a color on it. we had jazz playing and the locale was lit primarily with candle light and we had even burned a bit of lavender incense, in order to set the scene. the tables were set with various fun dips and snacks and a bowl of edamame. we wanted people to expand their horizons and move their boundaries a little bit, so we chose foods that they may not have tried (like edamame) and in combinations that they may not have tried - so dipping carrots in pesto and bread sticks in ajvar. the fernet branca was a bit too much of a leap for some and they immediately asked for a glass of wine instead. we allowed that and didn't push them.

on the tables, we had a little sticker that matched the different symbols we had chosen (a martini glass, a tree, a house and a heart), so that you went to the table that had your symbol in the first round. this way, people wouldn't just sit with the people they came with, but would mix and mingle a bit. 17 people came, so we had three groups of 4 and one group of 5. for the second round, we switched places and you had to go to the table that matched the color from your name tag. this way, we mixed things up a bit.

we had prepared some conversation-starting questions for each of the rounds - 5 for each and we gave a half an hour for each session. both times, we extended by 5-10 minutes, because people weren't done discussing. as we had pitched it as an art salon, we linked some of our discussion questions to art. the first round questions were: "which artist has moved you the most?" "which place did you most recently move from?" "how many times have you moved in your life?" "which country would you like to move to?" and "how old were you when you moved away from home?"

to warm everyone up for the questions, two of us told short stories related to moving. i told the story of the time i touched matisse's goldfish painting at the pushkin museum in moscow. there was, in those days (20 years ago!), no security and there was also no glass on the painting, so i touched the actual surface of the paint that matisse himself brushed to canvas. it was a defining moment for me in relation to art - and the first time i felt a personal relationship with an artwork. my co-host told a tale of moving rather spontaneously to paris to work and study painting in her youth. she found an art teacher through an ad and was ushered into a funny little apartment by a funny little man and ended up studying with him for a long time. our stories and our questions really opened everyone up and we had a lively discussion, people remembering their first apartments away from home or all of the places they had lived along the way. it was actually quite difficult to stop the discussion and take a break before the second round.

our second round started with a wonderful poem that at the base of it was about being human and fickle and never satisfied and ever searching for spirituality and love and companionship. the poet herself presented it and it set a fantastic stage for the second round where we had come up with some deeper questions: "what advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?" "what moves you most? travel? people? thoughts? work? experiences?" "what stops you from moving?" "what was the first artwork that meant something to you?" and we had a selection of different artworks, from danish artist kvium to picasso to malevich, which we asked, "does this work move you?" what was interesting was, at least with the groups i was with, the first round, which i had seen as easier, more superficial questions, was much livelier and people were more engaged and actually dug a bit deeper than it seemed with the second round. but it was also perhaps the group dynamic of the second round. it was also great, but it didn't feel as deep. that was interesting because we thought the second round questions were deeper and more philosophical.

we will be doing another salon in february. in celebration of 100 years of danish women having the vote, we have given it a wonder woman theme (i might have had something to do with that). we want to discuss the pressures on women today to be wonder woman - having the perfect career, children, home and life. are we all wonder woman? or should we be? and who expects it of us? what are our super powers? these questions and more will be discussed next time.

in which the post ends up quite different than what she envisioned when she sat down to write it

i didn't begin blogging to find a community. i began blogging to find my way back to myself after leaving a job which was very hectic and busy and hardly left me time to pee, let alone be creative. i began blogging to get back in touch with writing, which i had always loved and tap back into my creative side. and frankly, to keep find regain my sanity. as i always say, blogging is cheaper than therapy.

little by little, i did find a community of like-minded (or perhaps like-humored) souls and after blogger named my little musings a blog of note in april 2009, a community found me. many of those who found me are still among my friends today, even tho' most have stopped blogging and we have our virtual social life over on facebook (that bothers me a bit, to turn so many of my social interactions over to them, but that's the stuff of another post). in a few weeks, i'm going to be getting together with some of them, several for the first time, tho' we feel like old friends.

blogging has given me so much...a place to work out what i think about both the deep and the trivial, an interest (and a practice) in photography, loads of laughter, regular catharsis and probably most of all, a place to store my memories. i wouldn't want to be without it, even tho' i feel like the secrets i'm surrounded by at work these days get in my way and hold me back from writing. i think it's because they cramp my sense of immediacy and that has been rather a hallmark of this blog, whether it was impassioned rants about encounters in the grocery store with solipsistic danes or the latest apple product to cross our doorstep or the progress on the quilt i'm making. the great majority of the photos i've used here were taken minutes before i posted them. i guess i'm just an immediate sort of person, which i think is different than living in the moment (but that's, again, the stuff of a different blog post).

because this blog post is about finding that virtual community (or at least it was when i started out).  i have the privilege of investigating various online communities these days. ones centered around a certain little plastic brick. and they are as fascinating and varied as the sets themselves. some are focused on the bitty small details of the bricks (when a certain grey color was discontinued is still lamented by a certain segment of fans even years later). some are focused on a particular theme - trains, space, star wars, pirates and yes, minifigs.

i've found several communities of people who pretty much appear to photograph nothing but minifigs, at least if you believe their instagram feeds (maybe they have entirely separate instagram accounts for food pictures and cat pictures, i don't know). my own instagram account is a mish-mash of, again, whatever is immediate to me. i take the "insta" part of instagram very seriously. i don't take photos with my big girl camera and spend hours editing them before posting them to instagram. i pretty much post whatever tickles my fancy at a given moment, in that moment, joking that we don't really know it happened unless we've instagrammed it. i'm not saying i don't appreciate the beautiful, atmospheric, well-curated feeds, i'm just saying it's not how i operate.

and this has made me think about my own minifig photos. for the most part, i take them in a single setting...in the nice light in the windowsill of our living room, on an old-fashioned scale. for me, my photos of them are less a small story staged in a small scene (unless i use them to tell a story here), than they are a catalog of which minifigs i have. after i photograph them there, i'm actually even able to give them away if they happen to suit someone who comes by (because everyone needs a yeti with a popsicle at some point). but aside from enabling causing some of my existing bloggy friends to also begin madly collecting the little guys, i haven't sought community through my minifigs. but via my research and flickr and instagram and even google+ (these minifig peeps are using g+, which makes them awesome in my book), i am slowly finding a community there as well. people say the internet is isolating, but i've not seen much evidence for that.

i should be where people are not

i need to be where people are not. i'm on the verge of a cold, achy and crabby and a bit foggy in the head. everything and everyone is very irritating, the internet, facebook, my family, the needy cat, the less needy cat, the totally independent cat, a crazy woman who knits with yarn she's stuffed up her lady parts (i could go on but i'd like to give you a moment with that image in your head)...

my energy is sapped by the sunday market. tho' our space is limited and we only had space for a dozen sellers, so much work went into it - setting up (i was not only selling my wares, but i also was one of the organizers), making things, preparing, doing everything i could to make sure the other sellers would be happy with their spots. we had ads in the local paper two weeks in a row and still, very few people came and those who came, weren't really in a buying mood. i think everyone sold some of their work, but i think everyone also wished they had sold more. and while not all of it was my taste, the quality was high. lots of christmasy floral arrangements involving candles and bits of greenery, but homemade goodies as well.

but the most energy-sapping aspect wasn't not selling as much as i might have liked, but it was a general bad atmosphere. we managed to get it a little bit on track in the afternoon thanks to some spotify christmas music lists, but it was a long few hours before i managed to lure husband out of the woods (literally, he was out working on the trees that fell over in a storm last summer) and have him deliver the iPod HiFi to me. and i can't put my finger on what it was...too many people with the same type of items was a factor, and they spent the first hour or so sitting and glaring at one another. the lack of music was a factor, as was the lack of crowds. people didn't feel comfortable going around, looking, when there weren't very many people and everyone could hear everything they said. danes are generally shy with people they don't know and so those who came hurried around, looking, eyes averted, not wanting to talk to the sellers if they didn't know one another.

a number of people admitted out loud that they weren't going to buy anything, but were just gathering ideas so they could make things themselves. yes, really. out loud. i mean, we all think that, but to say it outright to the people who worked hard to make their wares seems a little mean. or at the very least, thoughtless. but it was that kind of day and that kind of atmosphere.

worst of all is the lack of cooperation within our little community. we tried to schedule the market to coincide with the arrival of santa and the lighting of the christmas tree on the square (which is organized by the local commerce association). when we scheduled the market, they were on the same day and then, funnily enough, the local commerce association changed the date to the day before. they did something similar with our market late last summer and tho' i'm certain it was more a lack of communication than malice, it does begin to feel a bit like the latter. would it really kill them to communicate and coordinate?

so my energy is gone. i don't want to be a pessimist or give up on organizing these types of activities (for the sense of community, even more than commerce), but it is disheartening. tho' i'm normally full of ideas for the next steps and what to learn from such experiences, i'll admit this time i'm all tapped out.

maybe a person shouldn't try to over analyze with a cold coming on...

* * *

and speaking of craft and community,

why do the craft sessions have to be so far from my hemisphere?

are you awake?

i went with a friend to an amazing event called salon allison park at the mungo park theatre in kolding. the fabulous young women who work at the theatre got together and decided that in their busy lives, they were missing conversations that weren't of a professional or practical nature. they were missing comparing notes with other women on things of everyday concern, so they decided to stage an event, largely for women (tho' men were welcome too), to talk about the everyday.  

but let me back up a second. the theatre where the event took place (tho' it wasn't a play) is named for mungo park, who was a scottish explorer of the african continent. allison was his wife, so the girls found it appropriate to name the salon after her. 

i'll admit i had visions of a salon in the french sense - a setting for highly intellectual and philosophical discussions. when we first started, i was feeling a little resentful that because we were a large group of women (and just a handful of brave men), we were reduced to speaking of everyday topics rather than philosophy. my misgivings fell quickly away as we began.

the evening was well-planned. when you came in, you were given a sticker on which to write your name and the answer to a question that was on the back. you weren't allowed to tell anyone what your question was at that point. my question was "what are you good at today?" and i answered "laughing." the question proved to be the method by which we found the first table we should join. we had to go around, reading everyone else's name tags and trying to find those who likely had the same question as ourselves. we were pretty spot on at our table.

then, once we settled in and a bit of bubbly was poured, one of the young women who arranged the evening told a poignant little story of her everyday. she's a freelance theatre director and a graduate student. she lives a chaotic life, without much of a regular schedule. she works long hours and has trouble, like many of us, knowing the difference between work time and time off. with all of our devices and connectivity, we are on all the time. she was expecting her first child and was longing for a life like the one of her childhood, where they lived the same place, picked apples from the same trees and had a regular schedule. she had baked several hundred lovely little homemade tarts with apple and seasonal berries for the evening, as well as tiny delicious meringue kisses and little surprise "lunch packages." it was a beautiful way to share her dream of an everyday.

then it was our turn. there was a little stack of cards on the table, with question prompts about our everyday lives to get us talking. at our table, we were a little hesitant at first, but were soon talking about ex-husbands and lives turned upside down and meaningful jobs and time with children and grandchildren and sick husbands and choices made along the way. we were disappointed when the signal came for the next phase to begin.

the next phase was a quick round, where we were in pairs and each of us had a stack of questions, where we had to answer whether we engaged in an activity out of desire or duty. they were questions like do you say i love you? do you pay taxes? do you celebrate birthdays? do you make dinner? do you laugh at jokes? do you work?

then came the third round, where we came together in a new group, based on a little symbol up in the corner of our name tags. the broad theme of this final round was dreams. there was a stack of ten questions. the first one was are you awake? the second: do you dream? and we started talking about our dreams and our nightmares. and around the time we got to the fifth or sixth question, do you live someone else's dream?, we realized we were discussing the wrong kind of dreams. it was dreams of the hopes and variety. but honestly, i loved the first part of the conversation best, where we talked about the dreams we dream when we're asleep.

there was a great energy in the room. a happy, lively hum of voices. people laughed and were open and seemed delighted to share with strangers. it was decidedly undanish. but it proved that even danes crave interaction with new people and want to share their stories and hear other people's stories. it was very danish that it was all very formalized and it required a whole lot of question prompts to get people started. but once they started, whoa! it really was like a floodgate of bottled up sharing was opened. 

if we could get everyone talking about everyday things in line at the grocery store or on the train as well, denmark would be transformed and we might even start to be able to see on people's faces why they come out on top of those happy lists year after year. 

* * *

the most beautiful thing you'll see all day. and maybe even all week. possibly even all year.

it's that beautiful.

spoken word

spoken word by tanya davis.

i need to find a way to get more spoken word into my life.
there's going to be a salon evening, focused on women at mungo park in kolding.
i'm hoping it's a place to start.
interestingly, it's not on their website, only in an email newsletter i get.
somehow i like that. it makes it feel like it's especially for me.

* * *

happy weekend, one and all.

exposed!

what a weekend! i stepped over my own boundaries, overcame my own fears, bonded with new people and became closer to some who were already friends, learned that nobody has a perfect body and began work on what is, for me, a major piece of autobiographical art. it was the weekend of the torso project.

probably the best part was selecting the headlines i wanted to swathe myself in.

i've come to feel rather not particularly american after nigh on 15 years of living outside the country of my birth.  but there are still moments when i am deeply, culturally bound by my heritage - like at the thought of standing topless and (gasp!) braless and allowing someone who i just met to cover me in plaster. i actually had nightmares about it two nights before it happened. a streak of deep conservatism surfaces within me and i'll admit feeling some measure of resentment for it, even while i am utterly helpless against it. but i took a deep breath and swallowed my fears (after expressing them and laughing quite a lot about them (for which i am grateful to those who helped me do that)).

between the future and the past - could it be more appropriate?

but when it came down to it and women around the room (24 of them), working in pairs, shed their tops and stood there in all of their real glory, it was actually quite ok. and despite having someone else drape strips of plaster on my entire upper body (the kind casts are made of when you have a broken arm), it was both intimate and not. because it was also a chemical process (plaster gets warm as it hardens), and a logistical puzzle - placing the strips so they clung to one another and built the next layer. it began to harden quickly and felt more like a suit of armor than something particularly intimate (which perhaps also bears reflection).

travel-related on the inside - political on the outside.

in the end, standing there exposed and as real as it gets was quite ok. and it was an amazing experience - intimate and fun and full of laughter and expressions of fears and creativity and excitement. and my goodness, what an experience it was. to be lived and felt and shared.

i covered the inside with travel-related headlines and bits of news stories - as i am formed by travel, perhaps most of all. the outside is quite political, but also contains inside jokes - like a cartoon about facebook drawn by my friend political cartoonist jens hage - who loves breasts and who i stuck right there on my own breast, in a kind of gesture of love and abiding friendship. a joke of the kind he will appreciate.

i've only just begun decorating it. it will be interesting to see where it takes me. it has only begun to whisper to me of where it wants to go. stay tuned.

and if you'd like to gather a group of women (you by no means need to have 24 of them) and do something similar, perhaps with an eye on a global exhibition - shoot me an email (jknachti (at) gmail (dot) com).

in the company of women

our torso project approaches. 26 women. a shitload of plaster for casts. nudity. breasts. i'm both excited and worried. honestly, there will be no hiding. i'm not super fond of my body. and it's going to be cast in plaster for all to see. and for posterity. and let's face it, gravity isn't kind. and i'm not getting any younger (tho' i did recently realize that i've thought, for nearly a year, that i was already thirty-sixteen and it turns out that i will only be that on march 22. however, i'm not sure at this age that it makes that much difference.

but i'm looking forward to the laughter and high spirits that will undoubtedly ensue on friday afternoon and most of saturday. bonding. laughter. art. in the company of women. they all have breasts too. and they're undoubtedly about as fond of theirs as i am of mine.

if you were going to pick music for such an event, what would it be?

on drinking and drawing and laughing and talking and nurturing one's soul

i didn't know what i was going to actually draw at drink & draw - i put way more thought into the food i'd make than to the actual drawing part. but when one of the guests, who is a librarian, took out a book of poetry, a library book, no less (tho' it's one the library was getting rid of), to draw in, i knew i had to draw in a book as well. it's one i bought ages ago in some or other flea market - purchased because it had a gorgeous art deco cover (it's in the background of this photo). i hadn't even noticed the name of it, which is talsimanen (the talismen), which seemed extra fitting. i got out the inks (still in love with payne's grey) and got stuck in. it was odd, because initially i felt very restless and unable to settle in and draw, but something about the others drawing diligently away, using pastels and pens and pencils, settled me down and i got into a groove.

there was something magical about the evening. eating good food, drinking some wine and then taking out art supplies opened us all up in a way that the food and wine alone wouldn't have done. we don't know one another that well, but we were soon telling stories of past loves and past husbands and feeling we were in a setting where it was completely safe to share.

it's funny how kim's casual mention on facebook of a drink & draw evening she had attended, morphed into something very meaningful right here in my own home. an evening of laughter and sharing with women who inspire and comfort and challenge (in a good way). it definitely won't be the last time we do this. it's interesting, as i grow older, my need for spending time with women friends seems to on the rise. the evening gave me both that and fulfilled my need to throw ideas out there into the world and see what becomes of them.  it became so much more than i had imagined. and it was precisely what my soul needed.

counting down to drink & draw

gratuitous photo of my knitting project 

i don't think i've been this excited about a social event since the very first blog camp. tomorrow, five fabulous women will come to our home. i have a long list of food that i'm going to be cooking for them pretty much all day tomorrow (think loads of tapas-agtig (that's one of those endings that's better in danish) appetizers). i've switched furniture around and arranged and made the house look as welcoming as it's going to look. i will have a vacuuming frenzy tomorrow morning. we'll eat good food together, drink some wine (i also made a batch of tonic, so we'll start with gin & tonics, as one does) and we'll draw together. i've asked everyone to bring their favorite drawing materials, whatever they are - ink, pencil, pastels, paper, notebooks, big drawing pads - and we'll laugh and create and eat and drink and laugh some more together. 

i'm going to do the torso project in a few weeks with these same women. they're creative, they're interesting, they're smart, they're funny, they read, they have different views on the world. and i can't wait to spend tomorrow evening with them.

* * *

could this actually make me start running again?
(maybe when the weather improves.)

* * *

this made me both laugh and squirm.

at least we have cake

expectations, they'll kill you in the end. humans are unpredictable and disappointing. i'm trying to learn to let go of them (the expectations, not the humans), but it's an uneven process. and some things are harder to let go of than others. matters of personal integrity, for example. and no matter how much you conduct yourself with honesty and integrity, there will always be people in your path who do not and they will view you through their own clouded glasses, assuming that you must be like them.

additionally, you can never underestimate people's need for their albanian (you know, that person they feel superior to).  and if you happen to be the only one in the group who isn't a member of the tribe, you will likely, whether you deserve it or not, become that albanian. and it will royally piss you off. and by you, you might have guessed, i mean me. and you will have vivid moments where you imagine indulging your inner slayer. and you think, buffy wouldn't take this shit, she'd kick some serious ass. so you do decide to stand up for yourself. but you still can't help but feel like it's all been a case of junior high-style bullying. but this too shall pass. and there truly are bigger and better things to look forward to.

like sabin's birthday tomorrow. she'll be 12! it all goes so fast. but we spent the afternoon making cupcakes together. a sort of a rainbow theme (it's apparently what her classmates requested). i've gone easy on the presents, she doesn't have much she really needs, but of course she needs a few treats. so she will have them, along with the dinner of her choice. and the bunnies just might surprise her by having their babies tomorrow - there was a lot of nest-building going on today. and she will have another cake since she's taking all of the cupcakes to school. happily, we're allowed to do that here (i've heard there are places where homemade treats aren't allowed). so at least there's still common sense on that front and that's something.

* * *

such beautiful, inspiring work:

Handed on from Chakris Kussalanant on Vimeo.

the week in review

the horseshoer blew a hole in the middle of my day. he called about 4 hours before he was due to come and asked if he could come early (must have been the first horseshoer in the history of horseshoers to do so). if the vet does it next, i may faint dead away.

so i was quite concentrated on my work before he called, but afterwards, forget about it. it was pinterest and looking for what to make for dinner after that. tiger, the tailless cat also helped me put red strips of fabric on the fence so we can turn the horses out tomorrow. we have our young 2-year-old filly home now. she's a rather interesting cross - a norwegian trotter for a mother and an andalusian for a father. but she's got a super sweet temperament and i love her red roan color. she's got a friend with her - an 8-month old pony foal who adores her, because in denmark you're not allowed to let a horse be alone. it's been snowy all week and they need to get outside. they have a big stall and plenty of hay, so they've been content. summertime (that's the filly's name) is a bit thin, so i've been trying to fatten her up a bit. it's just good to have horses on the place again.

we'll have baby bunnies sometime next week. the mama bunnies are already tearing out their hair and building their nests. i hope it warms up a bit before then, tho' i imagine those mamas know how to keep them warm. it means we'll have easter bunnies to sell come the end of march. plus, we love having baby bunnies around here.

my chickens are coming into the terrace. it's been well below zero all week and they're in search of water, despite my thawing their water with the kettle twice a day. i found a cache of 5 eggs out in the big barn. they apparently like that there are horses there and want to be out there. i've not really seen them over there before. strange that as it's turned cold, i'm getting even more eggs. so we're eating custards and soufflés (when we're not eating lasagne).

it's been a good week. i spent very productive time with a creative person with whom i am totally compatible. we were all over the place on wednesday, but in the end, it was very productive and we moved forward in leaps and bounds. we're not there yet, but we have a clear picture of where we're going.

i saw a play and it made me think. you can't really ask more than that, can you?

before the play, i ate a rather danish version of borscht (light on the beets and with a horseradish creme fraiche) and talked about a community art project with really cool, inspiring people. you also can't ask more than that.

i'll tell you more about that art project soon. there is a hint in the pinterest boards below.

here's wishing you all a happy weekend. stay off facebook. it's not good for your mental state (this means you, bill.) (i'll try to take this advice myself.)

~~~

a few new pinterest boards: events/happenings. horse is a horse of course of course. pretty party. sheepish. the torso project.

what future for libraries?

i've spent some of my happiest, most productive hours in libraries over the years. the reg at the u of c, my friend's study carrel in the law library at the university of iowa. harper library at the u of c (an oasis between classes). the hayden library at arizona state. libraries are where i've read and written some of the best things i've read and written.

the hush. the hum of enormous heating (or air conditioning) systems. soft voices of librarians helping library patrons. the smell of books. wandering through the dark, slight mustiness of the stacks, looking for one thing and finding something else and something else and something else. sneaking in a cup of coffee. chuckling over arguments in the marginalia. i just love libraries, also my own collection of books, which is still mostly boxed up here in our home, awaiting remodeling (these photos are from the old house). but you know all that about me if you've been reading mpc for any length of time.

there's a lot of talk about the role of the library in denmark these days. our own little town is going to get a new combination library/culture house - where all kinds of activities will take place. increasingly, libraries are moving more digital - with islands of devices and digital lending of books, music and movies onto your own device. stacks of musty books will, probably within my lifetime, become a thing of the past.

i spend a lot of time at my local library (which is alive and well, even as we await decisions about location and arrangement of the new one). going there helps me concentrate and focus on my often solitary work. just as it always has. just being there, with my laptop, working, i have occasion to see the enormous variety of people who use the library. elderly people who come in everyday to read a selection of newspapers. young people asking help from the librarian for their research project (and here i thought people just googled everything these days - it's refreshing to know they don't). people looking for a bit of inspiration for something to crochet or cook. folks who come in to use the computers. and something called "citizen service" - which is a screen connection to municipal services (i don't know if they use skype or something else - but it's video conferencing with a real person (during certain hours) who answers questions) from a special screen at the library. but the librarians get a lot of questions of well - things i wouldn't have imagined were within their realm to have to know - tax questions, questions related to welfare benefits, etc. i guess what i'm trying to say is that the library is much more than just books these days. and that's only going to continue.

i'm going to teach a blogging course (i think two of them actually) at the library, starting in january - when i went in to ask yesterday about the possibility of doing that, they said yes immediately. they said that was precisely the kind of thing they wanted to support. there will also be more exhibitions and events in the new year. a whole fierce tribe of local, awesome, creative women are going to make art that tells each of our (because obviously i'm one of them) stories and it's going to be on display - so we will both create together and exhibit our creations together - all facilitated by the library. there are music events for and featuring children. an antiques expert comes one saturday per month and values people's treasures. there's a knitting club. and i've held some photo events for both children and adults. the library is so much more than books. it's a place for the community to come together - to share interests and to expand horizons. it's probably the place most responsible, at least where i live, for creating a sense of community.

but i can't help but think that i will still always love the hush. and the smell. and the feel of a physical book in my hands. even as libraries are changing, i hope there will always be at least a corner of actual books. i'm not really ready to let that go quite yet.

do you use your local library? what do you love about it?

* * *

the s boards on pinterest: sawing logs b&b. shoe fetish. sinking. soup's on. soviet. sparkle. stashable. stitching (by far my most populated board, now if i'd just stitch something already). stones rock. styling. surreal.