nobody without my stuff

i heard about a study today about consumerism and identity and how so much of who we are today is defined by what we buy. even if you decide you're not going to buy stuff, you're just building another identity and it's still about you as a (non)consumer. how can we get away from consuming and just be?

it's dizzying when you start to think about it. when i put organic milk in my basket or sew with organic fabric or drink fair trade coffee, i'm signaling my identity. our car, my bike, my camera, my computer (definitely), my phone - all send signals of who i am. it frightens me a little bit to think that i might not even know who i was without my stuff.

i am not my car

we have an ancient toyota carina - ancient being from the mid-90s. it has 400,000 odd kilometers on it and it uses the occasional (read: weekly) couplea liters of oil. it's dark, boring grey. it has 2 of 4 hubcaps and we did finally put them both on the same side so that it would at least look more or less ok from at least one side. it has no frills whatsoever. no automatic locks or windows. no power steering. but it gets us where we're going (unless we wanted to drive to italy or spain, it might not like going that far). and with car taxes at 150% in this country, we don't even consider replacing it. we have considered not having a car at all and we didn't when we lived in copenhagen, but the reality of where we live is that it would be pretty difficult to get along without a car.

i normally don't put much thought at all into the car. it's there, it serves its purpose and that's it. that's kinda how i was brought up to think about cars. my dad had a old blue chevette that he kept driving until my sister, at the age of 12 (if you recall) finally put it out of its misery. and i had to take my driver's test in that godawful giant old station wagon named lurch.  my first car was a nondescript american-made (i can't even recall the make/model) two-tone brown sedan. the first remotely cool car i had was a little green mustang named iggy that very quickly revealed that it used more oil than gas. tho' during my aberrant years in southern california i got a little car crazy (the peer pressure oh the peer pressure) due to a boyfriend who happened to have two porsches and my little gold pontiac fiero that perfectly matched my hair, i generally could seriously care less about cars.

so it wasn't until we approached the end station that it occurred to me that the blog campers were going to not only see but get into our ancient toyota so i'd better warn them since they probably were far more car people than i am. we had a laugh about it, especially since they approached from the hubcapless side (i should really have parked the other way) and it seemed even worse. but honestly, i didn't really think more about it, except to use it for comic effect in one of my post blog camp posts.

last weekend, the sister-in-law gave us a bad time about the ancient toyota. husband gazed at it mildly, as if it had only just occurred to him that it was getting rather old. because he cares even less than i do. SIL reported that some friend of hers who had met us remarked that it was quite ironic that we had multiple fancy cameras, iPods and macbooks, plus more than one nintendo DS, but we drove that old rust bucket (for the record, there's very little rust on the car, so that's not an entirely fair characterization). middle child's friend apparently had said the same thing. apparently people can't really reconcile wegner chairs, 3 macs (4 if eldest child is here) and a 42" phillips flat screen t.v. with the ancient toyota.

and it made me realize that it's all a matter of perceptions and priorities. we don't define ourselves by our car. at all. and i realize that a lot of people do and that's ok for them. it's just that we don't. which isn't to be high and mighty and all anti-materialistic, because we do define ourselves by a whole lot of other material symbols. like macs and iPods and nikons and designer chairs and pretty refrigerators. husband stubbornly holds onto a 3-year-old sony-ericsson mobile because he extends his not caring to phones (unlike me, i do obsess care about my iPhone). but don't try to take away his iPod Touch or his iPod Shuffle.

the whole car thing is really only a problem when other people, who define themselves by their car,  judge us by our car, because we're not our car. not at all.

before & after

i'm so excited i can't sleep. our kitchen is going to be featured on apartment therapy: SF in the next couple of hours (i'll have to sleep before then, it's almost 1 a.m. now!). it's not up yet, so i can't link to the actual post yet, but will definitely update tomorrow!  i'm so excited because i've been checking out apartment therapy for home decor inspiration for ages and never imagined that my own kitchen would ever appear there!

just to refresh all of our memories, here's what the kitchen looked like last june:

and here's what it looked like yesterday:

and now, it's time for bed. just had to share the excitement! thank you apartment therapy!

colorful awesomeness

i was browsing for a wedding gift for my swedish sister-in-law on etsy (where else?) and i came across the most awesome shop that i simply must share with you.  it's called atelierBB and it is the home of the wobbly plates. these are the coolest thing to happen to ceramics since, well, since ceramics began, if you ask me.

check out these gorgeous bowls:

i want one two ten of each! in every color. because color makes me happy. but, of course, i'm not shopping for me, i'm shopping for my sister-in-law and my brother-in-law-to-be.  their home is all black & white and grey, so i've ordered some gorgeous reds for them (this may be because i love red myself, but still, it goes well with b&w, right?).  i ordered some of these (tho' both will be red) and a few of the above bowls:

the artist, brigitte bouquet, is from the netherlands, but has lived all over the world. i learned that here, on her website. and knowing my thing with eyeballs at the moment, how could i not love her when she did an artwork like this in sydney...

sigh....when my new job starts, i'm so ordering some of this stuff for us. it's wonderful! ok, and maybe i did order a few dessert plates already. since we were already packing things up. i'm weak in the face of gorgeous colors, what can i say? go, order something from brigitte already, i'm certain you won't regret it!

scent of a woman

i love perfume. in fact, i'm a little mad for it. and i have a rather obscene amount of it. just in the past few months, i've bought:

1. tom ford - white patchouli
2. vera wang - bouquet
3. mac - creations hue: turquatic
4. calvin klein - eternity summer
5. burberry - summer
6. chanel - no. 5 eau premiere
7. kenneth cole - black
8. mont blanc - individuel
9. michael kors - island

part of it is because i am too frequently in a duty free. and it's not because the perfume is necessarily cheaper there, it's more because it's there in such a decadent, sinful array. they have it all (even the juicy couture now, monica). and no one is snotty to you like at the department store perfume counters. you can try everything (i cannot wear the juicy couture, for example and both me and everyone who had to sit near me on a recent flight to singapore wished i hadn't tried it). and you're quite unaccosted and unmolested by sales people (except in singapore, where they must be on commission, but you can deflect them by walking around on your mobile phone), which i like. i want to see what catches my eye and spritz it on myself, not have someone else trying to force something on me. i must have my own opportunity to commune with the perfume. to bond with the pretty bottle. to swoop myself in the heady scents. 

ever since my summer voyage on the volga river from kazan to moscow, in which i was wearing white linen breeze, i've realized that perfume and memory are intertwined. to this day, when i catch a whiff of white linen breeze, i am instantly transported to the volga. so, what is now quite possibly an unhealthy obsession started innocently enough. 

when i started my last job, i went on a familiarization trip onboard an LNG carrier. i knew i would want to remember it, so i fittingly bought ralph lauren's blue, since i would be sailing on the blue of the mediterranean. on my first trip to korea and the shipyards, i was so excited that i bought kenneth cole's black (the one i replaced in the past couple months, because i love love it so much) in order to trigger a scent memory later. it worked like a charm.

so, it seems that whenever i've gone somewhere special, i've bought a new scent. sometimes i get one because it's a small size and will fit nicely in my makeup bag for traveling.  somtimes it's because i've read about it in that infernal sunday lifestyle magazine. but mostly, because i'm a bit obsessed.  

what are you obsessed about?

on simplicity and the christmas season

i found the coolest shop in manila in the new greenbelt 5 (man, that mall just grows and grows!). it's called brat pack and is actually a super cool concept for a store. it's mostly funky backpacks and bags and clothing and shoes and some accessories (think lomo cameras and stuff like the fab team manila clock i bought there). the stuff is there on consignment from various vendors, but must have to conform to some certain style guidelines, because it's all quite harmonious. check out the shopping bag for a taste of how cool the shop is:

anyway, i bought the simplify shirt above at brat pack. (and yes, i appreciate the irony of me feeling that i have to BUY something in order to simplify!) it's from a label called good karma by life is good, and the label says it's "environmentally friendly clothing for environmentally friendly people." in any case, it's super soft cotton and i love the shirt. and i bought it to remind me that i've been talking a lot this year about simplifying and paring down our lifestyle, but i haven't been doing a whole lot about it.

husband and i just discussed on monday that we don't want to engage in that whole christmas madness this year. that awful panicked feeling that you don't have enough or the right presents, so you rush out and buy a few more things that you don't really need at the last minute. we don't want that feeling this year. we actually pretty much have what we need, so we have agreed not to get presents for one another this year.

then, this morning, i read tara's thoughtful posting on christmas madness and sustainable living at eyeblog. as she says, it's actually about living so that your life makes sense. we'd all love to give only presents that we have made by hand, but who really has the time for that? the reality is that we have to live our lives and make them work too and if we sat around knitting and sewing for everyone all the time, would dinner get made or the laundry get done? as it is, i am a little fearful of looking under the chairs for fear of being attacked by giant dust bunnies.

like tara, i also worry about where the things i buy are made (admittedly not sure it's a good thing that my new simplify shirt was made in pakistan). i would say that i've tried hardest on that front with food this past year...i have made a real effort to buy produce that is produced locally. i've been learning about cooking with nordic ingredients--did you know you could make hawthorne syrup? and we've been learning to enjoy things when they're season and not buy them otherwise--therefore, only 2 glorious weeks of strawberries and the tomato consumption has tapered off significantly. we're finding it makes us appreciate the goodness of the food more. it's true that we'll buy those clementines as they come into season, so we're not entirely faithful. we buy ones that are from spain, so that they've only come up through europe and not been shipped across an ocean on a container ship. somehow the small, easily-peeled juicy deliciousness of those clementines just means christmas, so we're not really prepared to do without.

i had already vowed to give presents i've made to those i need to exchange presents with this christmas (tho' sabin will no doubt get some legos and probably some littlest pet shop). but i'm thinking of nicely framing photos i've taken this year, or having some photo albums made on one of those sites online. i'll also make some cushion covers and perhaps a lap quilt or two. i'm still rubbish at knitting, so no knitting hats and mittens, even tho' i'd actually like to do that.

how can we live more simply and sustainably at christmas? i guess with worldwide economic crisis, it seems easier to imagine paring down and not indulging in complete christmas madness. the truth is that we don't actually need any more stuff here at our house (tho' i did kinda want a red retro espresso machine--but wants are different than needs, aren't they and we do enjoy going out for a latte). but i am looking forward to having a big, lovely christmas tree in our new addition. we won't skip that, nor will we skip making wonderful christmas food. we're just going to try to be sensible on the gift front. thanks again, tara, for prompting me put some thought into this one again.

of travel cynicism and leading a simpler life

so, i wandered for an hour or so around oslo this evening after i left work. i was looking for bookbinders design, a swedish store where they sell the most beautiful fabric-covered journals, to which i am wholeheartedly addicted after stumbling upon them in singapore a couple of years ago. they're lovely, like this one, which is incidentally my favorite color, tho' i managed to make myself buy other colors this evening:

my one that's this blue color, which is called the aptly poetic duo emerald, is almost full and i will soon need a new one, especially since i seem to be drawing in them these days. so i stocked up-in green and reddish rusty orange.

anyway, my point was actually totally different, got a little carried away there with the pretty blank books of unlined(!) paper....my point was that i felt rather giddy with happiness to be walking around the streets of oslo. i think i'm falling in love with it. which, strangely, disturbs me a bit. i'm the CYNICAL traveler. the one who says, "singapore--it's like disneyland with nationhood." or "thailand is so seedy, i hope i don't have to go back there, there seems to be a glowering menace underneath all that bowing and politeness." or "thank god i haven't had to go back to india since the bull attacked us on the beach in goa--it's been so long my visa has thankfully expired."

so, how can i be so enchanted by oslo? is it the fjord? the mountains? the snow? the fact that it's not copenhagen, which has, after all, lost its charm for me in its level of familiarity? is it just that residual, long-buried american inner voice that thinks, "hey, it's cool to say, i work in oslo." much cooler than the rest of my working life, which has just been in denmark, apparently. again, familiarity breeds contempt, right? and that's kind of silly, because there are many good things about denmark and who i am to crave mountains, having grown up on the prairie? but anyway, perhaps i shouldn't over-analyze and should just appreciate it! perhaps it's a sign of my healing after my last job, which surely drove me to that level of cynicism in my travel. and, if i'm honest, there are many places i love. manila is one of my favorite places on earth, followed closely by cape town and moscow--i'm totally a moscow person. i liked palanga/klaipeda in lithuania (admittedly, maybe i just like SAYING palanga). it was a lovely little tucked away corner of europe that was extravagantly undiscovered by other tourists and therefore wonderful. so perhaps i'm not as cynical as i think. maybe i just don't really like singapore. or thailand. and they can pretty much keep india. which i'm actually sure they're quite happy to do.

so, i'll stop dwelling on that and get to my other point...paring down and living a simpler life. this has been on my mind for awhile, but thoughts of it have been provoked again this week by the discovery of this wonderful blog and several comment conversations with the writer of the blog. (totally strange that i feel that i know her and yet so totally do not--but that's a whole 'nother posting, isn't it and another of my many digressions). anyway, back to the point. so as i dined alone, i thought about what aspects of my material existence i would be willing to give up. and sadly, they are few. i would give up the t.v. and the car. i'm already not one for prada shoes or gucci bags, tho' you would be hard-pressed to separate me from my zebra bag. look at it, it's fantastic (and this is really my very bag in the picture from the african gameskin website)

oh, please, don't be shocked. zebras are NOT endangered. he was going to die anyway and he may as well have been made into something lovely that i truly enjoy every day, rather than being devoured by a lion. but AGAIN, i DIGRESS!

i want my writing house and the sauna in the garden (and the environmentally-friendly materials are all ordered--oak beams and not a bit of treated wood in sight). i can do without all of the plastic junk that comes into our house thanks to having a 7-year-old who adores things like Bratz and Littlest Pet Shop. but that would be HER doing without, not me, wouldn't it? actually, if i'm honest, hand the kid a stick and some pretty rocks and she's happy. tho' admittedly spoiled as all hell--example: on our last flight to manila, "mom, why are we in monkey?"(a statement of which i am perhaps perversely proud--but again a whole 'nother post)--but perhaps she could do without all the plastic toys. those Bratz have a seriously trashy way of dressing anyway--that can't be good for her psyche.

but, i want lovely fabrics and yarn in my life. things which i can make something out of with my own two hands (if i ever learn to knit--which i will). do i have to do without things like that? they can't be that bad, can they? i would like to limit the chemicals in my home. i would like to use natural products. i buy organic food unless i'm absolutely desperate--the store is closing and the only milk they have left is the regular stuff. i try to buy locally-produced whenever there is a choice and i do without (on occasion) if there's not. i've taken to buying wines produced from organically-grown grapes. i'm concerned about pesticides and gene-manipulated foodstuffs. i'm concerned about the world we're going to leave to sabin--what will she have to deal with?

i love owning books. my books make me happy. when i sit in the room next to the book shelf, it calms me. it makes me happy, just being there, among the books. but i SHOULD visit the library more. i don't need to own them all. just the ones i want to write in. which is, if i'm honest, most of them.

perhaps what i should think about is which of the things i have that make me happy. and then focus on those. because in this world, sadly, it's about stuff. and stuff does, in the case of great books or yarn or blank fabric-covered books in jewel tones or that zebra purse, have the capacity to make me happy. but it would also make me happy to be more CONSCIOUS (and conscientious) about what we consume as a family. and i am doing that more and more all the time. not only keeping the food journal, but selecting things wisely and from an energy-conscious standpoint. or from a humanist standpoint.

for example, i haven't set foot in a wal-mart since 2003. and it's not only that i live where there isn't one. even if i still lived in the US, i wouldn't go there. i object to how they treat their employees and the conditions in the factories where their things are produced. tho' i have on occasion, on this very blog, complained about the danes being insufficiently capitalist--there is a limit to how capitalist one should be. and wal-mart is WAY too capitalist. i don't care if i can shop for my cleaning products at 3 a.m. (which i used to love, before i became more conscientious). it's simply wrong how they do business and how they treat their employees and the communities in which they do business. and i'm so proud of my dad, who writes a little anti-wal-mart nugget in his column every week and who is 74 and has never set foot in a wal-mart. now THAT'S commitment.

but i do so want a mac. i just got a new dell laptop from my new job. if i were really a good person, i would have refused it since michael dell was one of bush's biggest campaign contributors and let's face it, bush isn't really going to go down in history as the greatest president ever (again with the digression). i am a mac person on the inside (and was one until i started to work for microsoft, where, funnily enough, they're not that into macs). i mean macs are vibrant and creative and there are even OLD guys (in nice suits, i'll grant you) in the business lounges at the world's airports with MACS!!! and PCs are stodgy and middle-aged and lumpy. and i'm definitely none of those things....right? ok, maybe a little middle-aged and probably more than a little lumpy, but definitely not stodgy. and totally creative. for sure. and trying to be a better, more conscientious consumer, in little ways for now, working up to the bigger ones as i gain strength. that's all one really can ask, isn't it?