stream of consciousness

seriously, wtf? (even molly thinks so)
and she's also a transplant from the midwest.

when you live your life outside of the culture of your birth, no matter how "integrated" and part of things you think you are, there will always be moments where you are smacked up side of the head with the big old stick of feeling you don't belong. it can happen at the grocery store, in traffic, at lunch, at work, when people are late for a meeting or oddly if the stewardess skips your drinks order on a plane. but it's very worst of all when it happens in your home, among those you love and have chosen as your family. and the problem is that you can never really know when that feeling will strike. it's a feeling borne of a complex combination of factors and there's no way that i've found to predict when that combination will be exactly right, or rather, wrong, and it will hit you that you are still an outsider. and when it hits you, everything is magnified. the smallest thing becomes enormous and has the capacity to grow and grow in your mind, crowding out any of the feelings of belonging you may have harbored, and convincing you that they were never real. it's quite horrible, actually. especially because of how little it takes and how that thing can be so random and so subject to the fragile barometric pressure of feelings and hormones and possibly wind speed and temperature and butterflies in the amazon rainforest and the price of corn futures on the chicago exchange. and it's so distressing that all you've built up over such a long time can be so easily smashed and you feel like you're starting all over again and you wonder if you even want to. but you probably aren't, it just feels like that in the moment itself and the moments that follow. but it likely won't last and even as you're in the middle of it and you realize it's a complicated combination of the obliviousness your husband has to extended family matters generally (which is different than not caring, tho' it's hard to see that when you're in this place) and your own sadness that some of those you considered your favorite family members didn't come to sabin's party or even send her a card or offer a proper explanation of their absence, plus your chosen displacement from the culture of your birth and possibly a teency weency touch of pms thrown into the mix, you still find it very hard to be rational and non-emotional about the whole thing. all he had to do was tell you he received a text that his sister had a new baby girl and it would never have happened. this whole strange avalanche of tears and emotions and being reminded that you're an outsider could easily have been avoided, if only you knew what would trigger it. and ironically, you can't even learn from the situation, because something else entirely will trigger it next time. and you'll ride the roller coaster again. and you'll get through it. and probably the good bits of life wouldn't seem so good without the bits that seem pretty awful. and maybe that mid-atlantic feeling is just a permanent state of being.

turning off the inner anthropologist

i'm finding that i'm developing a work-related injury as i work on this piece on the danish welfare state. it's an injury more mental than physical - i simply can't turn off my inner anthropologist. everywhere i go, i'm observing and analyzing (i suppose regular readers of this blog know that this is actually nothing new), but it feels somehow different. it's become more systematic, perhaps, than my usual musings.

last evening, i attended a large party and had occasion to do a lot of anthropological observation of the natives in their natural habitat (if indeed their natural habitat can be said to be a rather large exhibition hall transformed into dinner seating for 7700 people and the swedish 90s band roxette). and in my observation (and mental application of various theories), i realized that playing the role of anthropologist tends to make me hold back from participating fully in the moment myself. i end up sidelining myself as mere observer (at least i restrained from scribbling notes in my little notebook, tho' it was in my tiny little purse and i was sorely tempted). so while i gain a great deal from the experience in one sense, i come away from it feeling that i wasn't truly there, except in some abstract theoretical sense (filtered heavily through bourdieu).

and while these clinical anthropological skills are all well and good for the purposes of the book, i do hope i can achieve some degree of being able to turn it off again - because it's making me effectively miss the party.

shadows on the wall

we all have shadows on our souls that haunt us. sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes when we're under pressure, they cloud our judgement or make us behave in bewildering ways. i think my primary shadow is having grown up in a small town where everyone knew everyone. and while that was good in many ways, it makes me overly eager to be accepted and liked, because it meant too so much in that little society. but this isn't really about my shadows, more about how we are affected by the shadows around us.

spending time with a whole lot of people who are long-term unemployed and interviewing them for my book on the danish welfare state, i have seen and felt a lot of shadows in recent weeks. and i think that it can't help but cast a shadow over your own soul and your own existence, to be in contact with so many sad stories and depressed people. it drags you into a kind of darkness yourself, no matter how much anthropological distance you try to have. there is something to the notion that the people you hang out with have a big affect on you and how you view the world (and i knew this, but i didn't realize how hard it would be to keep it separate). and i think it's also difficult, when you're in the midst of a situation, to realize what's really going on, especially one like this, where at the same time i'm very grateful to these people for opening up to me and telling me their stories.

by the end of last week, i found myself feeling short-tempered and crabby. and i couldn't help but be hyper-critical of everyone and everything around me. it was like all those shadows ganged up on me and gave me a very bleak outlook, expecting the worst of the world.

so today, i stepped back from my project and worked on something else - a whole stack of new stitched-up photos that i actually started last week. i hope to get them backed and photographed tomorrow so i can show them to you. there are a couple of new themes...hedgehogs and mushrooms (unsurprisingly) and some travel dreams. it was just the the thing to push those shadows back where they belong...against the wall.

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and don't forget, the last batch of stitched-up photos are 25% off - and i've made it easier...the price you see is the sale price, no code necessary. if there was one you were wanting, now is the time to pounce! and there aren't any aliens or fish in this second round, so it's the last chance at those (for now).