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.

mediocrity with a dose of rudeness thrown in or just another friday in denmark

i know i've said it before, but it can be challenging dealing with the rudeness of danes in public spaces. they may be the world's happiest people, but you sure can't see it on them and they are, to all appearances, not even remotely interested in making sure those around them are happy too. especially on a friday afternoon. they all go into what i like to think of as their solipsism bubble and they close out any and all evidence that other humans, especially those they don't know, exist. i ran into several instances of it just today. but i shouldn't be surprised, because it is friday.

first encounter - i was pulling into a parking spot at the mall (i was there to pick up sabin's repaired new iPhone 4S, which was in for repairs) and there was someone pulling into the spot directly in front of me, so we were coming towards each other. and she just kept coming, to pull through into MY spot so that she was facing outwards. she was so aggressive about it, that although i was halfway in and had a perfect right to the spot, i actually backed up and let her do it. she didn't even wave or smile at me. and she wouldn't look me in the eye when i tried to give her a sarcastic thumbs up. she refused steadfastly to acknowledge my existence. it was all about her. happily, i was in a good place, so i shrugged it off and didn't let it ruin my day. i'm not always able to do that. it helped that she resembled a cow clad in a ratty-looking sheepskin vest.

second encounter - in a parking lot (the friday solipsism bubble is especially prevalent in parking lots) beside the bank. i had parked my car and was walking towards the bank when i had to suddenly stop because a car came roaring in from the road and, inches from my toes and nose, whipped into a parking spot that was to my left. as if i wasn't there. which, in the eyes of the woman driving, i wasn't, since we hadn't met one another before. because when you're in the danish solipsism bubble, people you didn't go to kindergarten with very conveniently don't exist.

this is the jerk from the third encounter, license plate and all.
i wish i'd had the foresight to photograph the jerk from the first one.

third encounter - in front of the child's school, there is parking, as you might imagine. you normally pull in nose first, front bumper of the car up to the curb. but there was a parent in a station wagon, at the "rush hour" for afternoon pickup, parallel parked there, across three spots and effectively blocking 5 in total, because it wasn't possible to park in front or behind. she was chatting away on the telephone, blissfully oblivious to the other parents who also needed to park. as if she were the only one in the world. solipsism. egotistical self-absorption.

but even before these parking lot encounters, i was feeling grumpy towards danish culture. in the form of two emails from the leadership of our local school.

in the first, the principal at the school took 374 words (i know this because i copy/pasted the email into pages so i could see a word count) to vaguely inform about something vague, at a long distance, through a fog. and i still have no idea what she was talking about, as it was filled with jargon, smoke and mirrors. reading the email was like stumbling into a theatre halfway through the movie and trying to figure out the plot. and i couldn't. and it was not because my danish is bad. it was because it utterly lacked communication skills. makes me wonder what they're teaching my child about writing and clear communication.

in the second, the superintendent (the who did such a good job (insert sarcasm font* here) of handling the whole bullying topic in recent weeks), sent us a mail with a new alcohol policy. i can appreciate that the school wants an alcohol policy, but the mail opened with the words, "Med udgangspunkt i at vi som skole altid skal tage udgangspunkt i den svageste part..." which translates as, "with a basis in the fact that we as a school must always have a basis in the weakest link..." because yes, that's what you want to hear from your school, that they cater to the lowest common denominator and see it as their mission. and even better when it's inelegantly written. again, are they passing these writing "skills" on to our children? *weep*

i am feeling a little tired of mediocrity handed my way with a dose of rudeness. some days it's easier to handle than others. today wasn't one of those days.


* which one is the sarcasm font, by the way?

epic fail on the first assignment

i'm participating in kylie bellard's fortnight of self-adoration for the next two weeks. she sends a daily "assignment" and there's a facebook group that's full of good, positive energy. i'm enjoying it. although i've already utterly failed at the first mission.

here's what it was (quoting exactly, capital letters and all):

While you’re going about your day today, look at another person whom you’ve never seen before.

Take a few moments to glance at them, and contemplate the fact that this person has had hard experiences, just like you have. This person has cried, and felt angry, and felt like they messed up, and been self-critical at one time or another. This person has felt afraid, too.

What’s it like to take the time to notice that someone else has an inner life that’s just as nuanced as your own?

my first failure on it was that i didn't do it on monday, as assigned. i've lead a hermit-y life for a couple of days and haven't really left the house much or been in contact with any people i didn't know (it's a small town i live in, so sue me). this failure i can forgive myself for.

today, i had a chance to try to do this and i even had a perfect opportunity, where to be able, even if just for a moment, to understand where the other person was coming from would have really helped me. but i simply was unable to do it. and not to defend myself, but allow me to explain.

we moved our horse to a new stable at the beginning of july. the main reason being that it's much closer to home, so it's much easier for us to pop over there. matilde spent the summer out on grass in the pasture and we haven't been over to ride much since we moved her. she needed time off and so did sabin. since school starts tomorrow and there's a nip of fall in the air, we decided it was time to, quite literally, get back in the saddle again.

we didn't really see anyone there when we arrived. some girls were being picked up from a riding camp, but then it was pretty quiet. we saddled up and sabin rode in the outdoor arena. as she was nearly done, a woman walked towards us. she was still some distance away, but i turned and said "hi." to which she responded by turning around and going the other way. i heard her daughter say, "who was that, mom?" and she said, "they must be the new (people)." (people is in parentheses because she didn't actually say it, she just said, "they must be the new," which can be said in danish,  tho' frankly, it isn't very nice.) but we apparently didn't rate a greeting or a chat or even a direct question to find out who we were. apparently that extra 20 feet she would have had to walk to have a small conversation with me was too much.

now, i'm quite accustomed to this sort of treatment after 15 years in denmark, but honestly, there are days, like today, where it really gets under my skin. mostly because i can never make myself understand it. she was walking in our direction, looking fully like she intended to say hello, but when i turned and said hello and she realized she didn't know me, she turned heel and went the other way, without so much as saying hello back. this isn't unusual. but it makes no sense to me. we are both at a stable, we both have daughters, we must both live in the area, so we actually have quite a lot in common, even if we don't know one another. so why couldn't she even say hello to me? especially when i said it to her first?

i tried to put myself inside her head, to contemplate what experiences she had that brought her to the point where she's unable to even have a common sense of politeness towards someone that she's never met before? is it shyness? is it arrogance? is it not wanting to be an inconvenience to me? or to herself? is it that i look like i would bite? or that i might smell bad (she was too far away to know that when she turned back)? was she afraid i didn't speak danish (sabin and i weren't talking at that moment, so she couldn't have heard us speaking english)? is there just a cultural chasm i can't cross? what was it? why couldn't she even say hello to me when i said it first to her?

i feel it as such a negation of my humanity. even as i try my hardest to fight that feeling, reminding myself that it couldn't possibly be about me, because she didn't know anything about me at all. but the fact is that she also didn't want to. she had no interest in me once she realized she didn't know me. and i can't stop myself from feeling hurt by that. nor can i get inside of her head and try to understand it. i simply don't understand. but i also have a hard time thinking that it's really my failure. short of running after her and insisting on introducing myself, what else could i have done?

worst was, it didn't just ruin that moment, but it put me in a bad, irritated mood for the rest of the evening. i snapped at my family. i sighed big sighs. i was exasperated with everything. i felt impatient and restless throughout an evening meeting. it made me uncomfortable in my own skin. i'd love to be able to let go and to understand, but it feels pretty beyond me at this moment in time.

overt racism becoming endemic in denmark

even our little black bunny was the last one to find a home.

in recent weeks, there's been some media swirl about a horrendously racist, pompous, superior and fascist-leaning blog post written by a danish politician, marie krarup (of the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti)), after a trip to new zealand. the blog was published on berlingske's website and is an absolutely stunning exercise in xenophobic, arrogant offensiveness. there is a full text (in danish and english) here. krarup stands by her racist remarks and refuses to apologize. but how do you apologize for stupidity?

being shockingly racist is nothing new for krarup - look here to see what she said about a visit to niagra falls. since it's in danish, and i do realize that's a minor language, i'll tell you what she said, "Niagara Falls in Canada has been allowed to remain White. In this multi-culti country a white person is always seen next to a black, one brown and one yellow. And they're all smiling so happily! As if to say to us: multi-culti is really good! But the waterfall is just white." this was posted on her facebook page and the comments all glowingly agree with her that multiculturalism is bad. jesper (the peasant) frederiksen actually comments,  "multi-culti functions only if there aren't too multi of the antisocial culti." i am rendered speechless by such a public display of racism in an elected official.

when i first came to denmark fifteen years ago, it was frowned upon to say things like this in public. a politician's career would have been over for such behavior. now, it's commonplace and even encouraged. granted the danish people's party is the most extreme right wing example, but they're the ones who have made it ok to bash foreigners and lump them all together into one big, bad group that's out to destroy the danish way of life.

all of this underlines the power of storytelling. for a good decade, in denmark the story has been told and repeated that foreigners, especially from the middle east, come to denmark to cause trouble and live off the supposed fat of the danish welfare state. there has a been an entire bureaucracy built up around a push for integration that looks a whole lot more like assimilation. and fear of The Other has become the order of the day.

i've spent some time in recent weeks interviewing foreigners who have moved to denmark for various reasons and i can safely conclude that this rhetoric and tone are not without damaging psychological consequences on the immigrants themselves. in the push to be stuffed into boxes at danish language schools, many of these people end up in a fog of depression and loneliness. they are bewildered that their danish neighbors don't speak to them and aren't interested in them. they feel isolated by a lack of language and bewildered by a culture that feels like it's rejecting them (and may actually BE rejecting them). many more of them than is healthy made the distressing statement that they began to feel they didn't know who they were anymore.

perhaps this is a common phenomenon for all who are in exile (chosen or not). it's hard to retain who you are in the face of an alien culture and way of thinking. especially when a psychological switch lays the entire burden to suck it up and integrate at your feet as the alien.

it's important to return to enlightenment values which value all individuals as equal and equally having something to offer if we are just open to what that might be. we've got to stop the negative, racist rhetoric in this country. we need to get a whole lot more outraged about it and show the elitist, fascist marie krarups of this country that it's not acceptable. i'm increasingly convinced that as individuals we can and must make a difference, starting right here in our own neighborhoods. my project gives me a chance to do something and i definitely intend to use that chance.

word for the day: solipsism

solipsistic. that's the word i would choose as the predominant descriptor of the danes. it's a word i first encountered in college, as applied to dostoevsky's underground man, a character so utterly fixated on himself that he cannot function in the world. or even see it. while the danes are solipsistic in a different way than the underground man (he's quite absorbed in philosophy and existential questions), they are self-absorbed nonetheless, to the point of often not realizing that others exist.

this manifests most often in public space. drivers stick to the middle of the road, seemingly unaware that there are other cars coming towards them. someone backs out of their space in a crowded grocery store parking lot, blissfully oblivious to the existence of other cars and people and carts bustling around them.  the same is true inside the grocery store, where they look up in annoyed surprise when they run over your foot, wondering where on earth you materialized from and without a polite apology ever leaving their lips. this solipsism is the same force that made countless grown adults walk on, not saying a word, as a young boy was pummeled on the street in broad daylight. a sense of being so much in and of oneself, that no one else is needed and therefore there's no need to help or acknowledge others.

it's one of the most bewildering and infuriating things about living in denmark. and i never really get used to it, tho' i am sure that i have to an extent taken on the behavior myself - grown colder and more closed and abrupt. it makes me sad to think of it at times, but it's also exhausting to try to fight it.

interesting, i had what i thought was a funny rant about this in my head when i sat down to write this, but it came out much more sad than i imagined. writing is like that sometimes.

~~~

i don't read a word of french, but if you like stitching, there is some serious eye candy here.