those weird feelings you can't put your finger on...

i have the weirdest feeling when i go to our creative group's atelier up on the top floor of our local library. something about being there just makes me feel prickly, negative and a little defensive. i think it's been going on for awhile, but i only just was able to put my finger on the feeling last evening. i don't know why, but knowing that is a step towards figuring that out. 

i can feel that i put up a wall around myself. and that the wall actually prevents me from being present and open. it's like it appears without my knowledge and i find myself behind it, feeling a bit negative and out of sorts. 

or maybe it's just that i'm sensitive to negative energy. and there's loads of negativity there. i'm not sure that i've always felt it. at the beginning of the pandemic, i spent a lot of time there, as the library has a good internet connection and ours at home was iffy at best. so i worked there many days during the time we had to work from home. maybe that's it. some kind of corona-induced anxiety kicks in when i'm there. but why would that make me defensive and negative? 

it's also the scene where someone questioned how i was raised because i had wanted to send flowers from our group to the funeral of our group's founder's father. the other members of the board were against that idea, by the way. i'm still wondering how on earth that makes me the one who is badly raised. but i live outside my own culture, so perhaps it's just one of those things that's impossible for me to understand. but perhaps i associate it with the place. 

but how do i shake it off? i can feel that it prevents me from enjoying getting together with women i genuinely like in a place that's made for creativity. do i need to burn some sage up there? exorcise the demons? how do i get rid of this feeling so that i can enjoy being there again and be present for the people who i like being with? 

i don't mean to imply that i don't take responsibility for this feeling in myself. i just don't know the source of it, nor how to get rid of it. 

standing with millions around the world

this group set off for the march around 8 this morning. we thought being at the last stop would make our journey in to D.C. easier. it did, in that we got to sit, but there were many unscheduled delays due to the sheer number of people. you'd think that D.C. would be used to this.

even just getting out when we reached our destination took ages. but the crowd was overwhelmingly chatty and positive. there was an amazing energy in the air.

escalators were all turned off, we guess that it was in the interest of safety. if the escalator was forcing people up and there was no room at the top, it would have been pretty bad.

couldn't resist a shot from the top - so. many. people.

father and daughter discussing technology

(husband was just upgraded from our original iPhone 3S to my old 6 and needed a bit of a lesson)

he's a keeper.

yes, he is.

just a little taste of the crowd. so much creativity on display - both in knitting/crocheting skills and the signs (more about those later).

i can't believe i was here today. such an amazing experience. so much positive energy. no one was angry or aggressive or even remotely making trouble. it was incredible and a little bit overwhelming. but also reassuring and empowering. and despite a bit of ugliness on a friend's facebook wall from the cheeto-supporter set, i still have hope for the future. i marched for the rights of women to choose what happens to their bodies, for equal pay, for equal rights for all, no matter their race, nationality, sexual orientation or diagnosis. for the climate. for the future. for the country of my birth. for my friends around the world, who also marched where they were. for my beautiful, intelligent, talented daughter. for my family. for me.

so great these two were there with me!! one of the most amazing experiences of my life!

i'm still processing the experience and i'm sure there is more to come.

slacktivist no more

it's easy to be a lazy "activist" these days - just like and share a few outraged posts on facebook, tweet some smartass retort to the coming clown in chief, unfriend a few trumpets. slacktivism at its best. but after months of sleepless nights and teeth grinding, we decided we had to actually do something. so we are going to washington, d.c. to be part of the women's march this saturday. to be there and feel the energy and power of all those women (and hopefully men, since husband is coming along as well) of every shape, color, size and age, in one place will restore some of my hope. and make me feel like less of a slacktivist. i'll be there, with my husband, daughter, cousins, friends and even my favorite professor from so long ago at arizona state. it's going to be amazing.

making pottery is hard

three whole days of creativity. turns out operating a pottery wheel successfully is rather difficult. and while you can manage to make something in only three days, it might be a bit on the wonky side. but i enjoyed decorating my creations very much. and i enjoyed spending three days in a wonderful creative space.

the weather was crazy over the weekend, covering all the seasons in the space of a few minutes. it was good to be inside at the wheel. even if the wheel was very difficult.

a few of the pieces i ended up making. they'll be glazed and fired and i'll be able to take them home in early june. looking forward to seeing how they look when they're finished!

and now, packing up my suitcase and getting ready for the week ahead. yoga, seafood and brussels on the horizon. it seems life is as ever-shifting as the weather around here...

another successful drink & draw weekend

i had a little weekend getaway with a few friends. one of them has moved over to fyn (the island between us here on the "mainland" and the big island where they keep copenhagen) to an idyllic little village and opened a gallery and B&B. so charming! and she's got a beautiful studio, where she showed us how to do the monoprint technique she's been working with of late. we used "china paper" - a thin, but surprisingly strong paper that can take a lot of layers of paint and texture.

so much fun. we each chose a color palette and after a walk, to gather bits and bobs from nature, we settled in to work. we used a variety of techniques - painting with acrylics, using gel pens, printing with feathers and plants, slowly building up texture on our pieces.

i found myself working with mustard yellow, teal, payne's grey (it looks quite black in these photos) and a peachy color that i mixed, plus the odd metallic gold accent. it was interesting how we were each drawn to a specific palette that i'm not sure any of us consciously knew we had in our heads.

some of my pieces worked and some didn't. some worked for awhile and then stopped working. it was an interesting process and one which i thoroughly enjoyed, but never really felt i had control over.

through it all, we laughed and drank some wine and enjoyed some good vegetarian chili, told stories, shared and laughed some more. we had moments of silence, deeply concentrating on our work, and then more laughter and sharing. it was that kind of powerful feminine medicine that you just need once in awhile.

i was surprised by the direction some of my pieces took - these two got rather dark after i became inspired to use a bit of dusty grey pastels on them, giving them a very different look than my other, bright pieces (underneath, the palette is the same). and some of my old favorite helleristning motifs came out from somewhere in my subconscious. it felt right, like moments of flow always do.

here's the end result of one of the others - i think you can tell that she's actually educated as an artist.

this friend did two rounds of the small sheets of chinese paper, with very different color palettes. she felt the second round went much better than the first. but sometimes it does take warming up when you're learning a new technique.

and our hostess, who had been working with the technique for some time, made some beautifully textured, multi-layered pieces. beautiful to see the individual ways our creativity manifested itself, expressing something utterly unique, using similar materials. magical. we definitely need to do this more often.

enough

i know i complain a lot, but sometimes groups of women can be awesome to one another. there's no energy like the positive energy that a group of women can create when they want to. when someone needs support or a shoulder to lean on or just an ear, we can be there for one another. we don't need to have all the answers, sometimes what it takes is just to listen. to be there. to allow someone to be heard. to offer support and a hug. or even just to fill the air with the positive vibes that only creativity can create. sometimes that's enough.

life lessons

how to be a bitch:

1. float into the room, wafting expensive perfume and dramatically flounce down your easel and art supplies.
2. immediately pounce sarcastically on a small grammar mistake (the equivalent of a/an) made by a non-native speaker of your minor language.
3. hold onto that grammar mistake like a nasty little growling drop-kick dog with an organic designer artisan dog biscuit, pointedly bringing it up again half an hour later.
4. when the person who made the mistake (and who is tired from being up half the night watching the lunar eclipse and on top of it, in the throes of PMS) doesn't laugh, sarcastically ask if she's "too delicate to take a little teasing."
5. ask as well, "do you have trouble with the full moon?" in some knowing way that just seems weird.
6. refer to your husband as your consort (as if you're the queen). 
7. disparage the large, successful international company that has put your podunk little nothing town on the map, complaining about the tourists they attract and how the town is filled with their offices, theme park, school and museums and worst of all their foreigners (gasp!). (not to mention their airport, and the public sculpture they've provided...)
8. don't be able to take it when the absurdity of complaining about that is pointed out with a genuine out loud laugh.
9. deny that you said anything disparaging about said company and fluff up your feathers, preening about how your consort was instrumental in it all, including the airport.
10. launch into some insider story about the airport using a bunch of obscure acronyms and referring to your consort's private plane.
11. get in one last snide shot at the grammar while also disparaging the non-native speaker's husband (who is clearly helpless if he hasn't managed to eat dinner by himself) and whom you have never met. 
12. appear as a character in my novel. and wish to hell you'd been nicer.

* the g&t photo is because i needed one after that encounter.

cat love revisited

lady, you sound familiar, but i'm not sure i know you. - fizz

ginny is growing up into a lovely young lady

i visited a good friend today.  this friend and i have that kind of friendship that i call cat love. we don't see one another that often, but when we do, we have a great connection and immediately can fall into comfortable and often deep conversation. we can tell each other the dark thoughts that are hard to admit out loud as well as laugh about the silliest things. i always go away thinking that we need to spend much more time together than we do, with our busy lives. and apropos cat love, she's the one who provided a new home for ginny & fizz, our spring kittens. they're so playful and cute and growing up nicely and are as happy as can be in their new surroundings. i think they recognized me by my kittty voice. anyway, we had an afternoon full of laughter, deep conversation and plenty of coffee. just what we were both in need of.

we've come a long way, baby

yes, that is one of wonder woman's fabulous boots on the couch beside her.
it snapped off my wonder woman christmas ornament and it has a kind of morbid hold on me.
so i included it in my photo. and this wonder woman comes in this set with her invisible jet. 

i'm reading jill lepore's the secret history of wonder woman. there's a whole lot more to wonder woman than just a comic book heroine (as if that wouldn't be enough). and although my love of her comes from the 70s television series starring lynda carter, i just love her even more now that i know she finds her roots in the whole suffrage movement and the attendant fight for birth control and general women's rights that women waged at around that same time.

here in denmark, this year is the 100th anniversary of women gaining the vote (that was why we had our wonder woman salon a couple of weeks ago), so that's part of why the topic has surfaced on my radar. and it's funny how once it's on your radar, you keep coming across things that are related to it. like these horrendous anti-suffrage posters that circulated 100 years ago. i don't think i'd fully appreciated how far we women had come and how much those early feminists did for us so that we have the rights and norms that we, quite frankly, take for granted today.

the jill lepore book is one of those where i find myself staying up late to read it and simultaneously feeling eager to turn to the next page to drink in the story (and this is actual history) and wanting to slow down and not come to the end of the book too quickly.

the inventor of wonder woman was a very strange man named william moulton marston. he was a harvard educated psychologist and the original inventor of the lie detector test (hence wonder woman's truth lasso) and generally a rather weird and possibly perverted guy. he lived in a very strange relationship with his wife and his mistress and their four children under one roof. because he was a polemic figure, he had a hard time keeping a job and his wife was the main breadwinner of the family, with the mistress playing nanny to all four children, despite only 2 of them being hers. and yet he was also quite a compelling figure - charismatic in a way and quite a prolific ideas man. and he believed that women were powerful forces to be reckoned with, so he couldn't have been all bad.

wonder woman came to life just as the US was entering WWII and thus there were many themes with a patriotic tinge to them. once she was allowed to join the justice league, things got a little less feminist for her, as another writer took over from marston and relegated her to secretary status, while the other justice league members went off to fight. not to make excuses, but that reflected the times as well, the men went off to war and the women stayed at home to handle the everyday duties.

it's also pretty fascinating, the insight into the early days of comic books and how they arose both out of the film and pulp fiction industries. all of the creative artists and storytellers and maverick publishers that did battle with censorship make you wish you had lived in a more dynamic time.

i'm only a little more than halfway through the book, so i'll wind down for now. i'm sure i'll be back with more thoughts on it once i'm finished. but suffice it to say, wonder woman is even more awesome than i ever knew.

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.

the formative years - on wonder woman and barbie

i've always loved wonder woman. especially in the form of lynda carter's portrayal of her during my formative years. she was so brave and true and tough and beautiful, all at once. and man, those wonder woman jumps. i practiced those by getting the swing at the park going as high as i could and then leaping off. i'm sure i was very graceful and strong, just like wonder woman, tho' i'm glad that video mobile phones were not ubiquitous then, so that i don't have to sacrifice that memory. i too wanted bracelets that could deflect bullets, a lasso that could make people tell the truth and an invisible jet of my very own. wonder woman inspired me to greatness. i've probably let her down, but she was inspiring to me just the same.

charlie's angels were around in that same era and with their beauty and bravery, they inspired me as well. i know charlie ultimately took care of them, but they seemed so strong and capable by themselves. they were tough and beautiful and they had great hair and clothes and they always caught the bad guy in the end - what more could you ask?

speaking of great hair and wardrobe, i'll admit that i loved barbie as well. she also had great hair and clothes and those shoes, they were awesome. my cousin had a fabulous barbie collection that burned up in a fire and i missed those lost barbies for years afterwards. they'd never been promised to me and i'd only been allowed to look at them, not touch them (being much younger and probably much stickier), but i adored them anyway and lamented their passing. of course, i had barbies of my own, but her collection was something special.

i read this morning about a very thin study suggesting that playing with barbie limits girls' career opportunities. at least in their own minds. and i have to say i think that's crap. barbie always had way more going on than ken and we all knew it. she was the brains and she had her own car and house and he was a mere accessory, who she didn't even really need (my barbie personally liked johnny west way more and in fact, she taught him a swear word or two (goddamn son of a bitch, jesus christ almighty was her go-to swear phrase of choice). yes, her feet were forever stuck in high heeled position and her waist is abnormally tiny, but she was fabulous. like wonder woman and charlie's angels, she was strong and capable and the leader of her pack. i don't feel at all that my love for her has held me back or made me not pursue a career in science or math. what kept me from that was the fact that i spent most of my time reading dostoevsky during physics class in high school.

in the company of women

i have, over the past year, found a really awesome group of women friends to hang out with. one of them was able to borrow her sister's summer house near the west coast this past weekend and we spent a truly blissful 24 hours there together.

earlier in the week, we had been to a salon evening, where we got these red yarn bracelets, which we were to wear for three days with the purpose of looking at it and meditating on all of the happiness and good luck we would have in the new year. we decided already then to take them with us to the beach and release them into the north sea, in a kind of ceremony.

so we each took off our bracelet and released it into the sea in our own fashion. but it felt powerful as we stood there together, giving the little bit of yarn a last moment of silent, individual good intentions for 2014, before sending it out into the waves to be free.

then we wandered down the rock-strewn beach. so funny that just a few weeks ago, there were a few shells on the beach, but no stones at all and now it's covered with stones. (tho' i will grant that this is a different beach, a bit farther north).

we found a small beach ball in the waves and kicked it around a bit. this despite being five grown women. our little groups formed and reformed as we all walked and talked and enjoyed being together in a setting apart from our everyday.

after our trip to the beach, we retired back to the warm summer house, where a fire was soon burning merrily in the wood-burning stove. we got out our art supplies and began both the drink and the draw phase of the weekend. i made a gin cocktail (of course), using homemade pear-ginger cordial as a base. we each brought something to share (both wine and food).

we ate a tuna mousse with some very good bread, followed by a gorgeous fish soup and then my chocolate pots with salted caramel in the bottom for dessert. all along, there was wine. late in the evening, after the crochet lessons (i really learned how to make a granny square this time!), we turned to pomegranate gajol and a smoky laphroaig whiskey that i brought along. happily, lots of laughter and water in between kept it from going totally wrong the next day.

we don't really have any rules for drink and draw, but we did decide that we all had to draw the little silvery fish we saw on the beach in some form or another. other than that, we all indulged in whatever we wanted to. several of us are using an old book as the base, humument style. we had quite some fun reading from one of the books, which had a lot of illustrations as well. old books provide a surprising base for creativity. my own is called talismanen (the talismen) and tho' it's about knights and such, there are meaningful words on every page if you select carefully.

there was much laughter and sharing and deep, serious conversations as well. it all felt very, very good for the soul. i don't know what it is, but as i grow older, i find that more and more i crave hanging out with women friends. our spouses and families weren't far from our thoughts or our conversation, but it was good to just be together, eating, drinking and drawing and even singing. and crocheting. just the girls.

scenes from a weekend on the west coast of denmark

i went away for a weekend drink & draw with my posse of amazing women who make me laugh. we borrowed a wonderful summer house and stayed up very late learning to crochet, talking, laughing and drinking a bit too much wine, gajol (a licorice-flavored tipple), laphroaig and gin cocktails. we also ate some amazing food. but i'm pretty exhausted, so i'll have to tell you all about it soon. these photos of our walk down to the beach, where the north sea was crashing to shore with strangely yellowish-brown rather angry-looking waves, will have to suffice for now. and i totally want that little steep-roofed magical fairytale house in the last photo, don't you? it was quite amazing, coming up over the dunes to see it. kind of like stumbling onto how i imagined denmark would look in reality, after all these years.

here's hoping your weekend was amazing too.