100 happy days :: day 94

mystery planes. from ukrainian airlines. three of them, parked in billund. the grass is growing around them, so it seems that they're rather permanently parked there. the happy in this is the story that must be behind this. surely a story of the crumbling of the ukraine, which admittedly doesn't seem that happy, but there are much better stories. intrigues. eastern european oligarchs. airline pilots on the lam. ukrainian school children who escaped to legoland? the possibilities are endless.

when no one was home

i read an article yesterday on the nytimes (when it's online it's on not in, right?). it was about how people who have a lot of family stories and a good sense of their family stories are better at coping both with tragedy and with life in general. and it made me think about sabin's craving for stories. every night at bedtime, she wants a horse story or a cat story or a childhood story. and sometimes no stories come to me, but often they do. stories of runaway ponies and broken carts, races up the second row of trees in the shelter belt when the trees were small, stories of first trophies and first place plaques in obscene quantities or that time that we decided when no one was home to teach switch, our calm paint gelding, to drive. we harnessed him up, made him pull a tire once around the driveway and then just hitched him up to the cart and went for a ride. or the other time when no one was home and we let elvira (a goat) in the house and she trimmed all the plants on the front porch. or the other time no one was home and there was a tornado warning and we brought skip's galley lad (a horse) into the basement. and i say "we" to implicate my sister, but i was nearly six years older and probably should start to take responsibility now. tho' that decision to drive her friend home in the chevette at the age of 12 (because no one was home...hmm, that was apparently a theme) is all on her shoulders, as i was off at college by then.

family stories fill our lives. dad's watermelons in the trees one hot summer, tales of warming his feet in a fresh cowpie as he walked to school barefoot on a frosty morning, or that time the old horse dumped him off into the water tank. or was that uncle red? and don't forget the disassembled ball point pen that got him into so much trouble he never picked up a tool again.

husband remembers at about the age of 4, riding his tricycle down to the harbor where ferries were coming in and out all the time and putting the trike up along the heavy beam, right at harbor's edge and careening as fast as he could along the water, precariously balanced and gripping the handlebars of his tricycle. he also remembers being spanked for it and going right back and doing it again.

we are a most complex sum of our stories and we are constantly adding new ones to the equation of our lives. and to think that they enable us to cope makes so much sense. i wonder if, in the contexts where there are no stories, it's there that things go wrong. there where the stories are separate and not shared, hoarded and even concealed. because stories need to be told, to take on the warmth and life of those who tell and those who hear them. imagine what stories are just waiting to be told.

as long as someone remembers

i'm reading orhan pamuk's museum of innocence, which is one long pondering as to whether objects can house memory and feelings. in the book füsun says "when we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. instead, we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them..." my visit to the flea market on saturday rendered a new little collection of objects which feel somehow laden with more or less inaccessible memories, reminders of stories not my own. and yet, i am still drawn to these things.

this old typewriter was there the last time i went to the market, so you might say we already have a history together, or at least that we'd met before. i didn't intend to buy it, but as i was leaving, the guy said 100 kroner and so i went for it. mostly because it still had a little poem in it that must be the last thing that was typed with it.

it's a sweet little poem about a little frog by chief doctor morten scheibel from the hospital in viborg. somehow, such a remnant there in the carriage of the typewriter does give a little bit of access to the stories and the memories it silently holds.

he experimented with the lines...using no spaces initially, then reverting to normal spacing. there's even a word he struck out and changed, offering glimpses of his creative process, left behind in the typewriter. tho' there was a more fetching typewriter there at another stand (and another price), this little poem made this one more appealing.

this camera may have similar secrets to tell, as there's a film still in it and it's on photo #14. it'll need a new battery before i can find out what memories it holds within. and discovering the battery thing makes me think that the other practica i got at a flea market a month or so ago might be ok after all if i just replace the battery.

stoneware plates and bowls keep their secrets more closely guarded. the azur nissen denmark plate is crazed and has a hairline crack, belying tales of long and not always gentle use. i loved the color and the amusing chat i had with the rather crotchety woman who sold it, so already i have laid a thin layer of my own memories onto it. the little bowl is a bit more silent, speaking only through the HAK initials on the bottom, as being a descendent of a long tradition of pottery-making in denmark. i loved the soft colors and the shape and size of it.

this little flat bowl/tray is HAK as well. the simple flower motif reminds me of the flower people sabin drew when she was little, so already i begin to layer my own meaning onto the object. it makes me a little bit sad to think that it found its way to the flea market. it must have once been a present to someone, thoughtfully given and once that person was gone and the story with it, it was packed up and sent off to the flea market. objects only retain their meaning as long as someone remembers.

70 years of luck

i bought a stack of old books at the flea market the other day. among them was a little almanac for northern norway for 1942. i grabbed it because it had quaint handwriting in the back and interesting charts of things like animal prints in the snow and old norwegian measurements and how they compared to the metric system.  i was paging through it today and found this perfect four-leaf clover.  tho' my family helpfully, immediately and most unromantically suggested that it could have been put there anytime since, i choose to believe it was tucked in here in 1942.

that's 70 years of good luck.

i imagine it has such stories to tell and that if i listen very carefully, it will whisper them to me. (possibly in norwegian.)

scenes from the first snow

i spent a lot of time outside today, despite the snow. looking for our escape artist bunny, who broke out of his cage in the night. but this time has disappeared. i still have hope he'll be back out there in the barn, driving the other bunnies mad tomorrow morning when i go out. but i'll admit i'm worried. i wonder how much he knows about the big wide world. a neighbor came looking for his foal, which had also disappeared. perhaps they've run off together...young lop-eared bunny and a young quarter horse foal - off on adventures in the snow. there must be a story in that....

viking imaginings

there are times when you come upon a scene that transports you, just for a moment, back in time. i imagine that this scene wasn't all that different in viking times...cows grazing on the shore and a long viking warship at anchor in the lake. a crisp autumn day, birdsong in the air and a light breeze of the sort that the vikings undoubtedly enjoyed. i didn't see any actual vikings, but i suppose they were at the nearby kro, having lunch and a few beers...just like in the old days.

it kind of makes me want to pillage something...

on collecting IV: metal bits

some of the collections we have are something that husband and i began to collect after we met. mechanical counters are one collection - the one on the far right being the first one we acquired at a little antique place on gilbert street in iowa city. it began as a fascination husband has with things mechanical.  others followed as we ran across them in various antique places, mostly in the US, but also a couple here in denmark. once you have spotted a certain object, others have a way of popping up. they also somehow begin to tell you their stories...i imagined that original counter on the gate of a fairgrounds or baseball field somewhere in iowa, counting attendees in its day.

children can be found winding them forward, synchronizing them. i can see that the one shows 7272, which means that my sister must have spent some time on it, combinations of 7s and 2s are her thing. i once, in a devilish fit, made them all show rows of 6s when my parents were going to be visiting - since i'm pretty sure they have moments of worrying about my soul.  i guess i wanted to silently confirm them in their worries. but i don't think anyone even noticed.

from mechanical counters, it wasn't a big leap to heavy, ornate padlocks from the mediterranean region. the one on the lower left was the first one we found in morocco and has a rather ingenious key that opens it lying in front of it. all of them work and can actually be used. i suppose that if he'd thought about it (they're currently packed away - these photos are from the old house), husband would have incorporated one into the chicken coop. perhaps he still will.

with these collections, i think the pleasure is in the looking for the next item. you never know where you'll spot one...in a quiet little shop in bergama, turkey or a dusty roadside market in afghanistan (we have locks from both places). such objects come laden somehow with the stories of the doors and perhaps chests they've held safe from intruders. it feels a bit, in handling them, like it might be possible to unlock their stories with a twist of the key.

i suppose what they have in common is brass and a similar heaviness - so tho' locks and counting mechanisms are different, they complement one another somehow. these adorned either end of a long shelf in our old dining room and they will again, even tho' they are tucked away in boxes at the moment.  and we'll undoubtedly run onto more of both and keep adding to our collection over the years - the pleasure being most definitely in the finding.

a little legoland story

 this is #33. he's from sweden.

 he had a few issues handling his car.

 his parents shouted instructions from the sidelines.

 but eventually he had to raise his hand for help.

 yup, that's a little bit embarrassing.

 the multi-lingual lego employee helped him out and he immediately crashed into another car at the adjacent gas pump (i missed that photo - because i was laughing so hard).

 you have to be at least 7 years old to get a driver's license at legoland.

we're pretty sure #33 was nowhere near that.

this is #33's aggressively perfect father. 

he undoubtedly signed his underage son up for the driver's license.

too bad he was the first one in the history of the legoland traffic school to completely fail the test.

much to our amusement.

that's my story.

and i'm sticking to it.

said the rooster to the hen...

said the rooster to the hen...damn, those lego people are ingenious!

it occurs to me...

~ that my child is growing up without peanut butter in her life. she will never, ever crave a peanut butter sandwich when she needs a moment of comfort.  she will probably turn to licorice instead. and i think that makes me a little bit sad.

~ our lake ghost could be a peat bog man, since our lake was created where they dug out peat for fuel.

~ a terabyte isn't really enough.

~ i could spend the day at the west coast, communing with the north sea all by myself, even tho' it's cold. 

~ the ultimate reality t.v. show for me would combine LA Ink and Toddlers & Tiaras in one train wreck of a show that would, once and for all, make me feel like the best parent on the planet. i give you - Toddlers & Tattoos.

~ a toyota aygo is really just a very small step above a golf cart.

~ not ALL of the TED talks are brilliant, but most of them are.

~ everything really is going to be all right.

* * *

happy weekend, one and all!

reality t.v. without the t.v.

my friend and i were sitting by the window of the cafe. it overlooks a bustling copenhagen street. this green BMW was parked across the street. we watched as two parking attendants circled the vehicle and discussed it. you see, it was parked too close to the corner and it needed a parking ticket. the female parking attendant punched information into her little handheld device and appeared to take quite a long time doing this. in fact, it looked like she went through the whole thing twice. after bashing parking attendants in general for a bit (seriously, how DO these people live with themselves), we got bored and stopped watching and eventually the parking attendants wandered away.

the next time we looked up, a stringy, gangly man with thinning reddish-blonde hair in a strange suit with too-wide pinstripes and a red shirt unbuttoned just a bit too far approached the car. he got in and riffled through some papers. we watched, waiting for him to see the ticket on the windshield. strangely, he didn't appear to see anything there.

his mouth was moving, so we assumed he was on the phone. lots of people have a blue tooth earpiece in their ears these days and although they look like they're talking to themselves, they're actually talking on the phone. he took a big swig out of a tetrapak container that may have either been wine or juice. the picture on the carton looked a lot like wine. it was a little early in the day for that, but what the heck. he then rifled through his papers a bit more and then got out of the car. we were sure he'd seen the ticket on the front window and was getting out to get it.

but no.

instead, there was the glint of a golden coin in the air as he tossed it up. he allowed it to land on the pavement and picked it up. yes. the man got out of the car and flipped a coin. then he got back in. and still showed no sign of seeing his parking ticket. we thought that was really weird and since my friend was getting up to go to the bathroom, she looked to see if there was a ticket. strangely, there wasn't. we wondered what all that walking around the car several times by the parking attendants was about.

we decided it was a guy who was hanging out in the car because he didn't dare to tell his wife he'd lost his job. he had to leave the house and pretend like he was at work all day, so she wouldn't know he'd been fired. he got out of the car again and got something from the back seat. it was some more papers. further supporting our theory. then, he began to admire himself in the mirror. he preened a bit and ran a comb through his hair. it was quite a lost cause, as he had pasty skin and too-light eyebrows and looked a bit unhealthy. no doubt from drinking box wine in his car at 11.30 in the morning.

when we left, we noticed that the car had german plates. and that seemed to explain everything--the lack of a parking ticket, his coloring and complexion, the strange clothes. if only i'd have seen his socks when he was out of the car, i could have pegged it earlier--you can always tell germans (especially men) by their socks.

we don't know what happened with him, as we had to leave. but for a little while it was like watching reality t.v. without the t.v. and frankly, without the reality. people are pretty weird when they think no one is watching.

tropical backwaters

the setting: slightly seedy bar on an out-of-the-way tropical island in what might as well be the south pacific.

the characters:  one brit, heavily tattooed, wiry, small, late 40s, early 50s; another brit, early 60s, or perhaps a bit older, grey hair that has the unreal, unmoving look of a toupee, missing a couple of key teeth in the front; a balding aussie with reading glasses and a severe case of the shakes, might be only late 50s, but could pass for late 60s; heavily-tattooed and pierced, mid-50s american, trying to hold onto youth with long, thinning, grey pony-tail and biker-style leather hat. it’s 11 a.m., but cold, squat, dark-bottled san miguels, glistening with sweat in the heat and humidity, stand before them.

what are they doing here? their conversation is largely about how much tickets cost now to get to the out-of-the-way island. it’s clear they’ve been coming for years. they talk about harrowing landings and take-offs on a nearly-too-short landing strip that starts in the water and ends in a volcanic outcropping that might as well be a mountain. they talk of hong kong, macau, melbourne and manila.

the younger brit who has just arrived has a two-day-old copy of the sun with him. he proceeds to engage in a conversation about how the muslims are taking over the UK...the newspaper has a story of a council that is hesitating to put up their christmas decorations because of the possibility of offending muslims in the community.

i find myself wondering what they’re doing there. what brings them back to this backwater place, where they clearly meet one another again and again? the bartenders know them--setting out their beers without them even asking. people passing by know them. some of the local girls know them. perhaps it’s the girls that bring them back. they’re talking about meeting in melbourne in february. there’s no hint of their business. but i find myself musing on it...small times arms dealers? drugs? whatever it is, it seems small time, more than a bit seedy, insignificant in the scheme of things...something that takes place in a tropical backwater such as this all the time...