influences, pastiche, fusion: thoughts on the creative process

i'm reading nicole krauss' great house. she's a marvelous writer that i only discovered this past summer when a friend lent me her novel the history of love. she's a writer of the holocaust, but at the same time very contemporary. back in the mid nineties at arizona state, i took a class called the holocaust in american literature. we didn't read anything nearly as marvelous as krauss back then (of course she hadn't written these books yet at that point as she was probably still in high school). i hope they've added her books to the syllabus, as they get at holocaust issues in a much deeper and more profound way than anything we read then (painted bird, sophie's choice, etc.). but perhaps that's a natural progression of things, as we gain more distance from the horror, it can be better and more artistically processed.

but i didn't mean to write about holocaust lit. what i meant to write about is her style - a pastiche of seemingly separate stories that intertwine at the end. because it got me thinking about how things connect. and how nearly everything is a sort of amalgamation of influences that start out separate and come together.

i think i see this fusion of influences most often in my cooking - it often contains elements from my upbringing, my travels and my surroundings. last evening, it being thanksgiving which is not (shock!) a holiday here and thus you don't have the whole day to devote to cooking like you do in the US, i found myself wanting to make a turkey anyway. since it was just an ordinary weekday dinner and with all of our ordinary obligations, i didn't have hours and hours to cook, so i bought a turkey breast. i slathered it with a purchased garlic cream cheese and topped it with a protective layer of bacon to keep it from drying out. then i asked husband and sabin to dig me some potatoes (it hasn't frozen yet, so the best storage place for them is in the ground), which we peeled and sliced and put in the oven with leeks and cream and butter for a batch of traditional danish flødekartofler (tho' not that traditional, since they don't usually contain leeks). i didn't have any sweet potato, so i baked up a butternut squash, which i served simply with butter, salt and pepper, foregoing any cloyingly sweet marshmallows or brown sugar. so in the end, it was a thanksgiving of sorts, but using both the time constraints and the ingredients i had at hand. thanksgiving enough to make me feel less sorrowful that i was far from my family on the day and yet simple enough to be made on an ordinary weeknight.

but i've been thinking about influences as well where creating is concerned. trying out stitching on felted stones ala lisa or using the photo transfer techniques i learned of from artist anne brodersen. we try out someone else's style or technique in order to get a feel for it. copying something is a way of learning, as well as a sort of homage to someone whose work you admire. such copies, i look upon as experiments and not by any means something i would put in my sadly neglected big cartel shop. they are but a step on the road towards something else, something my own, but i sense they are an essential step of sorts, even tho' i don't yet know where they're taking me.

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here's the deal, people, swatch watches from the 90s are not vintage. 

i don't give a rat's ass what etsy says.

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china's next top model?

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the d boards on pinterest: down by the lake. down on the farm. drinkie poo.

it takes two

we attended the wedding of a good friend of mine this weekend. we used to work together and i used to say that she was the keeper of my brain, or at least my memory and on more than one occasion, my sanity (i should note that the times when it didn't work are entirely my own and not at all her fault).  it was so great to be there to share in the happiness of her day.

it was a gorgeous weekend and she and her new husband looked so relaxed and happy amidst their friends and family. the church was lovely and filled with lilacs and people who were happy for them and children who plugged their ears when the organ played (what is up with organs? they're a terrible instrument). everyone gathered after the ceremony in her parents' beautiful, wide front yard for champagne from her father's own vineyard (in denmark, yes, it's true - and it was good!). then on to a dinner and party that lasted 'til the wee hours of the night. it was truly a stunning beginning to what i am sure will be a long and happy life together.

we stayed with her parents' neighbors, as we were a bit slow (what, me, procrastinate? really?) to book the pension they had reserved and all the rooms were gone by the time we decided we needed one. that turned out to be quite ok, because her parents' neighbors were a couple that knew husband when he was a child growing up in the heart of copenhagen. we had a leisurely breakfast with them in the sunshine before we left, reminiscing over the old times and the people husband knew when he was growing up. it is a small world after all.

but it got even smaller, as it turned out that the groom's parents had worked closely with my father-in-law on his technolution drawings - helping him with the latin names of all of them. husband and i had some nearly-tearful moments talking to the groom's mother about him. it's been more than five years since he died, but we do still miss him. it was very nice to meet someone who had known him and worked closely with him too. it made us both happy and sad at the same time and sometimes those are the best kind of emotions because they're so keenly felt. you feel alive at moments like that, when you are truly feeling something, even if it does make you feel a bit sorrowful.

a little bit weird to run into such connections from BOTH sides of husband's family (his parents split when he was 5) at a wedding where our connection to being there was actually through me, the girl from the other side of the world.

and it makes me think, once again, that we were undoubtedly meant to be. and tho' i shudder at times to think of the chain of events that had to be as it was for us to meet and how easily they could have gone another way, perhaps it's times like this that should make me realize we really were meant to be together. these things can't be coincidence, can they? there must be strong connections binding us - and we would probably have found our way to one another no matter what.

and now, our long weekend is winding to a close. a new week awaits. with new projects and new challenges ahead. but these experiences (and a lot of sunshine) leave us fortified and ready to face it head-on. but first, a bit of rest.

* most of the photos above were taken by sabin.

coming soon: an intersection between denmark and iran

coffee on møllebjergvej

remember that film swap i told you about lo so many months ago?  well, it took us awhile but the lovely shokoofeh has her films back from developing and mine should be back very soon. we'll be sharing our results and what we think about them both here and on shokoofeh's beautiful blog and in the film swap group on flickr.

i'm still pondering how to express how profound i think this project is, but in the meantime, have a cup of coffee with shokoofeh and me on my street....

on friendship or can't we just give peace a chance?

i had a discussion the other day with bee about friendship. you know how you have friends that bring out certain characteristics in you...humor, bitchiness, glamour (aside: why do we americans spell that with the "u" but not humour?), quirkiness, a desire to drink copious amounts of red wine, or coffee, being cheap, spending too much, being in the zone. and why do certain people rub you the wrong way or the right way, for that matter? what is it about all those Other People? and what is it especially with other WOMEN.

there must be something in the air, because spud just wrote about this too. i do regularly talk to spud and i know she'd been brewing the thoughts for awhile, but i have too. i loved reading hers, because they're like an appendix to the ones i've been having.  tho' they're the energy appendix..because what she describes both gives and, in some cases, takes away, energy. big time.

like spud, i've recently joined a group of women that gives me a great deal of energy. it's my weaving group. they're absolutely marvelous - supportive, interested, enthusiastic, at ease in themselves - exactly the kind of people you want to spend time with. i'm sure there's a sense of competition there somewhere, but i haven't felt it. it undoubtedly hasn't been directed at me as the newbie (who on top of it is a foreigner with a quasi-charming accent). they have been incredibly welcoming and it's been the first place in denmark where i've truly felt welcome. (hmm, and it only took a decade.)

i've been recently transported to those painful, awkward, embarrassing days of high school, where one is anything but supported by the women (or children) one is surrounded by. and it got me thinking about the aspects of oneself that one's friends bring out...inadvertently or consciously. apparently, unbeknownst to myself, i had some kind of "miss king bitch shit" vibe at the end of high school for the person who had been one of my best friends all the way through.  and in turn, when we went to the same college, albeit living in different dorms, she made me want to live up to that moniker, so on valentine's day, when my dorm was selling hershey's kisses with a valentine's message as a fundraiser, i sent her one that said, "dear j***, happy valentine's day! {lip print} love, miss king bitch shit." and in all honestly, to this day, i feel quite avenged of the whole thing. i never really learned her reaction, but i did talk about it to a (highly flatulent) guy from the class ahead of mine who went to the same college and once rode with me (3 hours with a stinky farter guy in a car, not cool, by the way), so i assume she eventually learned it was me.

there are some friends we have who make us super funny. some who we feel totally at ease with sharing our innermost evil and naughty thoughts. and some who make us feel more peaceful and understanding of the world. friends who make us think and those who cause us to turn off our brains completely. there's chemistry of all kinds. and it's very mysterious, but i'm glad it's there. because no matter what kind it is, it does represent some kind of connection and i think we never really can foresee what those will bring...(but spud is right, let's go a little bit easy on one another, eh?)

a moment of clarity

i had a moment of clarity today. it hit me that despite much of the world i inhabit revolving around blogging and the community surrounding blogging, there are a whole lot of people out there who know nothing about it and have no access to this world that i can only characterize as fantastic, rich, lively and inspiring. they know nothing of the community that it can bring. a community in which someone who only knows you through your blog, can make something truly beautiful and meaningful for you. a symbol of clarity, just for you. and if you're lucky, you then actually meet that person in person, because she happens to live in the same country you do, which is really just a lucky coincidence, because she could live anywhere. but the fact is she lives within blog camping distance and for that, you are grateful. and you are also very grateful for the clarity symbol.

the clarity symbol that elizabeth made for me.

it's a little red heart-shaped pillow with more symbols on it (that i will use later)

and it resides on my side of the bed during the day.

hopefully, infusing my pillow with clarity for when i sleep.

...and a community in which someone who lives halfway around the world from you, sends you a little bag of stones. stones she collected for you as she scattered her mother's ashes on a canadian beach. stones that are worn smooth and shiny by the pacific ocean. and the fact that she actually thought of you and gathered stones for you (because she knows, from your blog, that you love them) on that day that was undoubtedly full of other thoughts and emotions for her, touches you deeply. and you feel really grateful for the blogosphere and the friendships you have found here. friendships and connections which are just are real (if not more so at times) than those you find in the everyday world which you inhabit. 

photo of the stones VEG sent on the sweet tapas plate BB gave me when we met in december.

and here VEG's stones join all of the other wonderful stones that people sent me from all corners of the world over the past year in my little stone bowl.

i so love that stone in trinsch of et lille øjeblik's handwriting. (and how cool is her handwriting?)

and the blue one is one i felted myself.

oh, and check out the little eyeball stone on the top left - that's from lynne.

have i mentioned that i love the blogosphere?

thank you all for connecting my world.

my inner presbyterian

if you're a regular here at MPC, you know i have a thing about chains. they depict connections to me and i'm always trying to connect stuff. i guess because i want to believe that it's all somehow connected and that things happen for some reason, even if at the moment something happens, that reason isn't always apparent. i think of it as my inner presbyterian.

my inner presbyterian also likes doors. because she believes that when you close one door, another one opens (she learned that from her neighbor a couple of weeks ago, tho' she thinks she probably always believed it). and that it maybe even takes closing that first door in order to make the next one open. and she thinks it's pretty cool how already those doors are already opening, because it seems to be more than one. and that's pretty cool.

here's hoping there are lots of open doors helping you make lots of connections this weekend. and that you only get the 12-hour version of the swine flu, like husband did.

language and connections

i'll admit it, since i took this photo of pretty purple chain onboard the ship last friday, i've been wracking my brain for a use for it. and then, this morning, a use for it fell into my lap. my blog friend Ju tweeted about an interesting post on raising a bilingual child on mummy do that! cartside, who i didn't know until the tweet, has assembled a wonderful collection of links to people who are blogging about raising bilingual children. you know, people like me. only strangely, it had never occurred to me to seek out blogs where people were writing about that. i've just sort of been fumbling along on my own. and i've only written about it once, over here on sabin and addie's blog. but what does any of that have to do with big-ass piece of purple chain, you ask? well, it's all about the connections, isn't it? and nothing says connection better than chains.

but this is actually about raising a bilingual child, so i'll get back to that now...

sabin is 8 and has lived her entire life in denmark. i have always spoken english to her and with her and so did her father until she started school. we discovered that she had some trouble cracking the code of reading in danish and we decided it would help her if her dad spoke danish to her a bit more often. and in all honesty, it did help.

sabin was slower to begin speaking than other children in her kindergarten, but i'm not sure we can blame that entirely on the two languages, it could very well be part of her personality, which is one in which she hangs back and observes before she jumps in. she also is a real perfectionist and doesn't want to make mistakes, so that may have been a factor as well. she wanted to be sure of herself in both languages before venturing out.

danish is difficult, in that the spelling has little or nothing discernible to do with the pronunciation, so cracking the reading code is difficult. that was surely compounded somewhat by my speaking and reading to her in english at home. and all of the english she hears on a daily basis on television and in music - because denmark doesn't dub extensively (the market's simply not large enough). we were fortunate that her school, which is a public one (not in the english sense of private), was very on top of the situation and she has had several rounds of extra reading help to help her crack the code. one of these was the fantastic reading recovery program, which completely did the trick last year. she's now reading very well in danish and using her reading strategies to quickly pick up reading in english.

and she's started to have english now at school, now that she's in the 3rd grade. it undoubtedly handicaps her a bit to be way ahead of the other kids because sometimes restrictions are placed on how much she's allowed to come forward with. for example, on the first day, the kids were asked to name the words they already knew in english. and sabin was only allowed to say two, which in my view, was fair enough. her teacher is great and super aware of sabin's needs, since she raised bilingual children herself. she's giving sabin as much extra work to keep her challenged as she seems to want, so she's not really being held back too much by the others being total beginners.

i actually don't worry that much about her ending up fluent in english, she already is from a speaking and understanding standpoint. and it's been our belief all along that she needs a native language. since she's growing up in denmark, danish is her native language.

some of the things i worry most about are cultural aspects. we do our best to give her a taste of the other half of her - american culture. and because so much of our television here is american and so much of the music and films american, she gets some taste of that. she's been the US lots of times and spent five weeks there a year ago in the summer, hanging out with her aunt and cousins, so she has also had the chance to partake of swimming lessons and T-ball and a fishing derby at the lake up close. but the fact is, she's a little danish girl and her main cultural grounding will be in denmark, regardless of what passports she carries (she has both).

i think raising a child to be bilingual is such a gift. i'm hopeful that she will inherit her father's ability to code switch flawlessly between languages and she seems to have that to an extent, tho' she sometimes does some really cute direct translation of danish words into english. and there are certain mistakes she makes consistently - like not saying "without," she only says "out" because that's how it is in danish. she doesn't understand that she also needs the "with" part of it, since that feels like the opposite to her. so she'll ask for a toast with nutella out butter.

we've been reading the junie b. jones books and junie b. makes a lot of grammar mistakes, so i keep talking to her about them, since i'm not sure she gets the nuances of that well enough and i don't want her to think that junie b. speaks correctly. so far, she seems to understand it and she just finds junie b.'s view on the world amusing, so the language doesn't matter that much.

it's interesting raising a bilingual child and my hope is that it makes her more able to understand and get along across cultures. and i think that it's really wonderful, through the miracle of the blogosphere, to have suddenly found a whole lot of other people who are thinking and writing about their challenges with raising bilingual children, too. see, you can learn things on twitter.

the textures of life

we live in a world where impulses come at us all day long. many more than we can ever hope to take in. we grab onto some of them, but we undoubtedly let most of them pass us by. and we don't give any thought at all to what we're missing, i guess because blissfuly, we don't really know. at bee's recommendation, i recently read amanda craig's hearts and minds. (amanda blogs, by the way.) her book perfectly captures the sense of the world today and those missed connections. but this isn't really about missed connections. it's about found ones.

like these:

: : finding out about couchsurfing through tevolving, an adventurer in montenegro (at the moment). our first couchsurfer is showing up tomorrow night (husband will receive him). i wish i was going to be home.

: : the ever-fabulous discounderworld. stacey has some really exciting things in the works, so run along and order your gold edition today. you will not be sorry.

: : lovely lynne, who thought of me when an interesting opportunity recently came up. my fingers are still crossed.

: : kristina, who i met because i was once inspired by sandra juto and with whom i now share a fantastic photography project of which we are very proud. we've got a giveaway running thru the weekend, so do stop by and leave a comment, telling us your favorite diptych.

: : marinik, whose courage, strength and honesty have been making me cry lately.

i could go on and on, perhaps by mentioning how much i'm inspired by the photos here and here and here and here, but instead, i think i'll just say that i'm very grateful for connections and the textures they add to life.

note: this beautiful thai tapestry was on the wall at bee's house, but i was trying to avoid going on and on about blog camp in this post.