the end of the innocence

i had a discussion with my sister some weeks ago about don henley's 1989 classic the end of the innocence. go watch it, i'll wait here...

Remember when the days were long
And rolled beneath a deep blue sky
Didn't have a care in the world
With mommy and daddy standing by

When "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly

But i know a place where we can go
That's still untouched by man
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind

You can lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie

But i know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us

I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say good-bye

Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence

what was interesting is how different our memories of the song were. she finds it very political, whereas the only politics i can find is the stanza about the tired old man that we elected king (has anyone ever described reagan more aptly?). for me, that summer was the one where i had a very painful broken engagement. i was devastated and lost 17 pounds in a week, mostly in tears shed. that felt like the end of my own innocence and a real transition into adulthood. it caused my life to change course...shifting from plans to attend u.c. irvine to iowa city and the university of iowa. looking back, i think it made me less trusting of potential boyfriends for years afterwards, really ending my own romantic innocence...poisoning my own fairy tale. in other words, i found the song very much about my own situation, even though reading the lyrics now, i can clearly see that it was about one's parents splitting up. my own happily ever after had failed (thank odin now, looking back), so i sang along at the top of my lungs as i drove my little gold pontiac fiero and felt like the song was written specifically for me. especially after i met a handsome summer fling who gave me back some confidence and made those lines about the tall grass in the wind and the small town in each of us ring true. it was really more or less the anthem of the summer of 1989 for me.

for my sister, her departure for college was on the horizon and she felt the pressure of that. i think we both thought that our parents wouldn't be able to survive the empty nest, having such separate interests. so the words about daddy having to fly spoke to my sister and she felt a heavy weight of responsibility for keeping them together. and watching the video, with its odd 50s feel (aside from the shots of tattered reagan posters and ollie north), it does seem much more political that it ever seemed to me at the time. and though i was home that summer, i definitely didn't feel the same pressure my sister did to be the glue holding our parents together. in the end, their marriage held, though some part of me still wonders why when they shared so little. i suppose staying together was just what you did in their generation (speaking of the 50s).

in these times, where our entire existence is smeared in the nasty politics of our post-truth era, it does seem that our innocence has ended once and for all.

* * *

today's lack of truth has its roots in postmodernism.

i heard about this piece here on T.O.E.
and i'll admit to feeling a little guilty for all that derrida, foucault and baudrilliard i read in college.

* * *

the problem is way deeper than trump. 

common threads

NOTE: i began this post a little over a year ago. it's been languishing in my drafts for that long, but i opened it again today and found it spoke to my late night mood...not least because i wonder what the me of a year ago would have written? and at this moment, as i type, i wonder what the me of today will write. let's find out...

think of three people you admire and determine the common thread. a friend did this exercise today (read: last year) (it's apparently from brené brown's book, which i haven't read, because i'm not that fond of her, tho' i may have to reconsider) and it made me curious to try it out for myself.

i think the reason this long languishing post speaks to me today is that i am feeling an acute need to look for the good in people. i've been spending far too much time feeling critical, paranoid and sarcastic of late. it's time to flip myself out of that rut by taking a look on the positive side of things.

first step - sorting through the different people i admire: husband (he continues to surprise and engage me in the best of ways, after all these years), our child (she is so much her own - smart, thoughtful, funny, sarcastic, dedicated), my dad (he may be gone, but he is not forgotten and he was his own to the very end), michael barbaro (what an amazing interviewer!), glynn washington (gives so much of himself when he tells stories), trevor noah (another amazing interviewer - so smart and funny and it's perfectly ok that he's not john stewart, he is trevor noah), karl ove knausgaard (luminous writing to savor), david letterman (his netflix series - such amazing conversations). my old friend joyce who seems to have found her way back from a dark time to be living her best life. my dear friend cyndy, who told us all yesterday in a stark facebook post that she's been diagnosed with lung cancer, but communicated it in an amazing way in which the foundation of strength that her family gives her came shining through, even tho' there is so much uncertainty on her (and their) horizon. another bloggy friend from the old days, mari, who is also moving into an amazing place artistically after the death of her husband from cancer a few years ago. her renewed strength and energy shine through in her pictures these days and she seems to have found a group of supportive, artistic women who give her a power that you can practically feel warming your skin as you scroll through her instagram. it gives me energy just to see her photos.

that's many more than three. and not even the tip of the iceberg.

what do they share, these people? curious, sharp, inquiring minds jump out at me first. a sense of humor is a close second. and lastly (but definitely not least), an independence of spirit that makes them unique.

what is the lesson in this? i need even more people in my life who make me think or laugh or wish i was them - or all three.

* * *

speaking of people i admire, someone wrote a wonderful tribute to my cousin jerry, who lost his battle with cancer last year. you never know whose life you touch.

* * *

look, new podcasts! 

to grieve or not to grieve, that is the question

so many thoughts swirling in my head of late, especially as i listen to podcasts, which i do constantly. i don't always know if the podcasts provoke the thoughts or reflect them. a growing suspicion that i suck at grieving has been crossing my mind of late. and then a couple of podcasts i listened to on the way home today covered the topic of grief - this week's death, sex & money and malcolm gladwell's revisionist history touched upon it as well.  i don't know if they helped me work through my own struggles or not.

it comes down to that i don't think i've properly grieved for my father. i shed tears on the plane on the way there, as he lay dying in a hospital, nearly three years ago, but i don't think i've really, truly cried about his death. and i am not sure that i know how. there are times when i miss him acutely. most often when i'm in the garden, which is also where i talk to him. he's come to my sister on two occasions, reassuring her, but i've not even heard a whisper from him. i'm not envious exactly, more puzzled. is it because i lack the ability to open that portal to him? am i less open to it? or am i at another stage of my grief than she is? have i even started it properly? can i even recognize it? these are the thoughts that have me convinced that i suck at grief.

but it's also mom's decline. alzheimer's is so cruel and strange. she's still here, but it feels like we already need to grieve her. i don't even know this strange fabulist she has become...telling lies, or perhaps fractured fairy tales, to explain the world around her in a way that makes sense to her, as her brain fills with holes and erases the old ways of making sense. i worry that my good memories of her are being similarly erased, but i'm not sure that what i feel at this stage is grief. i find it hard to even summon pity, which sounds horrible, i know and then i feel guilty for that. but it remains that it's how i feel at the moment. 

and then i can't help but wonder if i ever properly grieved for sophia. when it happened, i was so sick and we had sabin to focus on, so did i properly grieve her passing and the passing of the specialness of being a mother of twins? i don't know. it seems like maybe it got pushed under somehow and never really dealt with, though i have always been able to speak of it, so it's not like that. but is glibly being able to mention it the same as dealing with it? i suspect not.

but how are you supposed to know how to grieve? i think our culture today places so much pressure on us to get back into the saddle immediately that we maybe don't give ourselves time. maybe grief takes years. maybe it doesn't look a certain way. maybe i don't wailingly grieve my father because i think he lived a long, amazing, worthy life and died the way he would have wished, so i can have nothing but respect for him and and be grateful for the time we had and how he shaped who i am. maybe i don't wail because it was his time and i feel that in my heart and while i am sad for me and for us and for mom that he's not here, i'm not sad for him per se. or maybe i just suck at grief.

with mom, it's more complicated, due to the disease and that she's still here, strangely more physically fit than ever, even as her personality changes so radically that she seems like someone i don't know. maybe grief doesn't come because the time isn't right. maybe i will learn to grieve when it's needed, or find my own way to do so. maybe our grief is singular, individual, so unique that i don't even recognize it because it's so much a part of me.

oddly, i think i've grieved harder for lost jobs than for lost loved ones. what does that say about me or about the times in which we live? what we do is so important to identity that we feel it as a loss of self when we leave a job, whether it's by choice or not. and so a period of mourning follows.

and then i wonder if grief is really about missing who we once were? do we lose that? or do we contain it within us, so there's no sense grieving it...

as you can see, i have more questions than answers. and rather a lack of grief. or at least the ability to grieve in a definable way...

* * *

daily affirmations from lenny.

"fucking up is how you go pro." - words to live by, i tell you.

* * *

i want to be e. jean when i grow up.

mood

about right now:

~ there is a (disturbingly large) segment of the population that is wilfully, proudly dumb. that's disconcerting. people who were dumb used to want to conceal that fact. i wish they would again. i blame reagan for the fact that they no longer want to do this. and doubly so dubya. and now, we see the results of it with the current dysfunctional administration.

~ sometimes it's fun to go against your own nature and just quietly observe instead of jumping into the conversation with your own stories. or rehearsing them in your head before it's your turn and then not really listening. this is also hard. but undoubtedly good for you. and by you, i mean me.

~ when your own mother is losing her mind, it's always interesting to listen to someone else's lightly racist mother reminisce. being able to remember is a good thing.

~ husband took a disgusting manufactured (albeit locally) plastic-wrapped cake of the sort that will be what survives a nuclear war (which these days, is closer than we might think/hope) to his meeting instead of the beautiful homemade cake that i made for him. he took the cake i made for him along, but "forgot" it in the car. the purchased cake was a joke. apparently. (tho' i fail to see the punchline if one doesn't reveal that one has actually brought a proper cake.) but i'm not bitter. or maybe i am. seriously, wtf?

~ i would feel better if we just had a few days of sunshine. i'm definitely in an end-of-winter-darkness funk. and probably have a serious vitamin d deficiency.

invisiblity

it hit me recently that for the last half decade, i have felt invisible. it may have even been more than a feeling, i suspect i might have actually been invisible. i think it happens to women when we reach a certain age - and it really is a middle age - we're done having children, but haven't yet hit menopause. we become invisible somehow, perhaps biologically but certainly culturally. for me, a couple of soul-damaging workplaces didn't help. they shook the foundation of my very identity. and i struggled for a couple of years to not be where i work, but i also have to admit that it was a struggle that i lost. my work life fills a great hole within me and gives me a space in which i unfold who i am. this is both good and bad. because work can push me places that i wouldn't always want to go. happily, for a year now, that hasn't been the case and i feel like i have emerged and that i'm unfolding my wings once again and it seems like they still work and i can still fly. and i've become visible again.

why do grown-ups play with LEGO?

living vicariously through blog posts and instagram shots of the opening of the in LEGO, we connect exhibition a week or so ago at the bryan ohno gallery in seattle, i've found myself once again pondering the whole love of LEGO among adults. when i started working on this question in earnest a year ago, i think that one could still detect a slight sheepishness among some of the adults who loved LEGO. but that may have been my own uninitiated perspective.

today, i believe thanks (at least in part) to the LEGO movie, it seems that love of LEGO is everywhere. people get enormous and colorful LEGO tattoos (and they must be adults, since you have to be 18 (or at least reasonably look it) to get a tattoo). gizmodo writes about LEGO regularly and so do the folks at geekwire. there are elderly folks using LEGO to keep their fingers and their memories nimble. there are serious blogs, discussing the LEGO community at a rather academic level. and blogs analyzing in minute detail every new LEGO brick and color. thousands of grown up people around the world are unapologetically and even proudly devoting their precious spare time to their LEGO hobby.

there are also some folks who love LEGO who are making a business of it in grand style. people like ryan "the brickman" mcnaught in australia. warren elsmore in the uk. nathan sawaya in new york. these are folks who took their hobby and made it their very successful businesses. and they think they're lucky to get to play with LEGO for a living, there's no sheepishness in sight. as well there shouldn't be.

i wonder if this embracing of a childhood toy in adulthood is something unique to our times? we all want to hold onto our youth these days. and we do so in the form of elements of pop culture. so i find myself singing along to the same songs on the radio as my 14-year-old does and i too want urban decay eyeliner. and i want to play with LEGO minifigures. granted, i play with them differently now that i would have as a child (i say would have, because i didn't really play with LEGO as a child, i had a pony, after all). and my method of play - taking photos of them "in the wild" - actually rather embarrasses my child, who isn't that keen on me arranging marge simpson on a shelf next to a cup at ikea. so it is something other than holding onto my youth, at least for me, since playing LEGO wasn't a part of my youth.

but what is it? is playing with LEGO just like any other hobby? like flying radio controlled planes? or building model trains? or quilting? or painting or any other creative hobby? why do so many more men indulge in the hobby than women? can it be taken seriously? is it art? the three showing their LEGO photos in the gallery are daring to think so. and their photos are each marvelous in their own very different ways. and i think that's some pretty cool boundary-pushing.

the beginning of a new photo obsession

i asked my friend bill to give me some photo assignments to do to get me through this interminable wait. we've had some very grey, dark days and i haven't really felt too inspired, but today, i decided that despite the grey fogginess of the day, i'd tackle one of them. the assignment was: reflections. the indirect reflection of someone or some thing. the actual person or thing can't be in the pic.

this fits very well with the theme of our local creative group's spring exhibition, so i cleaned up an old ikea mirror that we had hanging in our bathroom at the old house and i went outside. here are the results:

and one of myself, because i couldn't resist.

i liked the assignment. i'm less fond of the fir tree than i expected to be - the fine, black, bare branches against the grey sky just work better. i like the brightness of the mirror, tho' i'd like to have had some cool gold-framed oval-shaped one. there's something about the blue and green mosaic mirrored edge and the way it blurred out with my 50mm fixed lens that i just like. it gives a life and color to the photo that would have been absent. i spotted another location when i picked up sabin from school and i suspect i'll be loading that mirror into the car and carrying it around with me. that won't look way sillier than lying on the ground, photographing minifigures, now will it?

reading and listening and strangers and historical perspective

i just finished the last book of ken follett's century trilogy. i know they were novels, but as historical fiction, i feel like they gave me a more personal take on the sweeping history of the 20th century and a greater understanding of things like the cuban missile crisis and the fall of the berlin wall. literature can do that, as can 20+ years to reflect on the events. it struck me that it's very hard to know the meaning of things immediately after they happen. or even a decade after. i think we are definitely still struggling to make sense of september 11, 2001. and i think our round-the-clock style of news doesn't do us any favors. the nature of today's media means that analysis must begin immediately, before we even really know what's happening and i think it's diminishing the human race. we can't possibly know the meaning of things without reflecting on them. but that certainly doesn't stop the relentless talking heads on television. makes me glad i pretty much only watch netflix and hbo nordic these days (plus my guilty pleasure of a few programs on tlc).

i've also been listening to as many of the strangers podcasts as are available on iTunes. they are filled with stories that make me long for more stories. stories of people who were strangers to one another, strangers to themselves, and then strangers no more. since the host is danish and refers to that fact quite often, i feel a strange connection with her that makes me wonder if it borders on stalkerish. she's been in my country a little bit longer than i've been in hers and she is at times as bewildered by the US as i am by denmark. she seems like someone i'd love to invite over to dinner.

this listening, coupled with reading the edge of eternity got me thinking about marina ivanovna, the very soviet-style russian teacher i had at iowa back in the early 90s. she struck fear in our hearts - using public humiliation as her main motivator. that works for me, i must admit, so despite how tough she was, i quite liked her. she lived in russian house, a big old house on a tree-lined iowa city street where a bunch of russian majors lived - kind of a sorority/fraternity house for slavic geeks. and i wonder what she made of it all? so weird that i never wondered that at the time - i thought of her as a teacher, not as a person. i think we all did with teachers at some point in our lives - being surprised at seeing them outside of school with their families or just mowing their lawn or something entirely normal. it seemed so strange that they were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives.

but here was marina ivanovna, a professor from moscow university who must have lived her entire life under the soviet system, plopped down in iowa city, just as the soviet union was dissolving. it must have been so bewildering and overwhelming in many ways - the nature of the students, the abundance of consumer goods, the informality of it all. i wonder what she made of it and whether she had aching moments of homesickness or whether she felt so fortunate to be there. what did she think? did she find it all so strange? was she happy or frustrated or overwhelmed or puzzled? she was probably all of those things at different moments, just like i am here in denmark, even after all of these years.

we can all feel like strangers at times, even when we live in our own cultures, but it is magnified when we live abroad. i guess all we can do is keep telling stories to try to make sense of it all, and remember to be patient, because it may take the vantage point of years before it does indeed begin to make sense.

missing my new york window

it's rather easy, when you're walking down the busy streets of new york city, to forget to look up. cyndy tried to warn us about this, but i'm not sure i fully appreciated it until wandering alone on my last day. i looked up at the imposing structures lining 5th avenue ahead of me and found them quite surprising and surprisingly the opposite of beautiful. they are dominant, cold, masculine, insurmountable, full of inhuman perfect lines and squareyness. they're not comforting or hyggeligt. at all. and i wonder whether they were shaped by the people who made them or whether the people who made them were shaped by them. or whether those lines blurred along the way and it's now impossible to say. do they inspire a cold, clinical, hard view of the world? one that resulted in the hubris of the financial crisis, which we're all still trying to shake off? would the world be a different place if the architecture of new york city was different? but could the architecture of new york city be any different than it is? or was it destined to be this way?

what is it that draws us to a place? makes us love it? or hate it almost instantly? everyone always told me that i would love new york. and in many ways, i did. the pulse, the vibe, the walkability, the whole sense that it was just alive and happening in every imaginable way. the food. the people having total screaming matches on the street at another person or into a telephone. the diversity. but i wouldn't want to live there. i think it would get to me after awhile. all that erect, hard, agressive squareyness.

so while i loved every minute of my first trip to new york, i'm not a new york person. i didn't fall head over heels for it the way i did with cape town. or london. or istanbul. or seattle. or san francisco. or moscow. to be fair, i'm not sure i'd fall for moscow in the same way today. it had to do with a certain phase and time of my life. and perhaps i just missed my new york window.

* * *

the architecture of new york city got amy thinking as well. 

the outside view from the inside

lego me being buffeted by north sea waves.

i've been quite bowled over of late by all sorts of things...things which have kept me from my usual amount of time in front of the computer. but they've also been good things...an abundance of strawberries that demanded processing into juice and shrubs and jam and such; my mom's visit for sabin's confirmation party (and the party itself); lots of work projects growing in intensity in the push towards summer holidays; and a visit from my cousin. (actually, my cousin's daughter - what is that called? first cousin once removed? second cousin? we're not really sure.) it's all been quite wonderful, but it has cut in on my sanity time in front of the internet.

not our house. if our place looked like this, this would be a different blog post.

both my mom's visit and emily's visit have me pondering how things look around here from an outside perspective. this is a falling down farmhouse and a 10-year project (where we're only 4 years into it) and we're in our late 40s and should have a more settled, prosperous life than the house (and my aging, dirty toyota) may make it appear we have. and while i'm normally quite comfortable with that, when you think about how it looks from the outside, you (and by you i mean me) may start to feel a tad, well, insecure, no matter how much you (again me) try not to.

a walk in the creek with mom.

as for my mom, i know she feels a bit sorry for us with our lack of microwave and fans and proper curling irons. i've lived without a microwave for 15 years and have only missed one on two occasions...once when making homemade lip balm and all the recipes gave microwave directions and once when reading recipes for homemade mozzarella, which also seem to all call for microwaves. neither made me give in and buy a microwave. where fans are concerned, we need one for approximately 3 days per year if we're lucky, so we haven't invested in one. people don't have air conditioning or screens on their windows either for the same reason. the season for those things is so short, we invest our money elsewhere. and as for the curling iron, since i haven't had a perm since 1987 and left my hot rollers behind in 1997, i've been pretty much a flat iron girl. but i'm certain these things feed into my mother's notion that europe is, at the heart of it, a backward, old-fashioned civilization that can at best be pitied. i think she hopes it's just a passing phase for me.

fourth of july wish lanterns (we didn't have any fireworks).

as for emily, who is young and sweet and open and curious and smart and just at the beginning of becoming who she will become, i loved the freshness of seeing things a little bit through her eyes (even tho' it's actually impossible to see what another person sees). or at least what i imagine that to be. and i've laughed a lot today, to myself, as i imagined what she may have seen.

everyone around here will eventually have to build lego

she would have seen that we drink a lot of wine around here. we build lego for fun, tho' we aren't under 12. we eat late. we're a bit casual about doing the dishes after dinner and content to actually load the dishwasher the next day in the interest of hanging out, talking or watching a british crime show. we go to bed late and we sleep in. i dress casually for work, preferably in a superman t-shirt and converse. we have a lot of cats. and bunnies. our remaining hen is a bit mad and insists on spending her evenings up a tree and coaxing her chicks, who can't fly as well as she can, up there too. emily took it all in stride and we truly enjoyed her visit.

summer poppies - just thought they were pretty, so i had to use this shot.

there's something to having a shared foundation. we both grew up in that small town in south dakota. we know the same people. we share crazy family members (some of them crazy in a good way and some less so) and although we have different perspectives and memories of them, that shared foundation means a great deal. it helped us bridge what is arguably a generational divide. we can share stories and memories and fill in the gaps for one another. it was, in short, wonderful. and it made the falling down, cluttered house just a comfortable setting in which to talk about it all over a glass of wine and some awesome cheese and bread. because although this house isn't how we would wish it to be (yet), it is, if nothing else, a welcoming place where you can feel comfortable and relax and have room to be yourself. and by you, i might mean me, but i hope that i also actually mean you.

* * *

what if your password could change your life?

* * *

what is the deal with the anti-feminist women? and why do they have a voice?

detritus on the beach as a metaphor for life

we always try to take a walk on the beach at the end of the year.

something about the bracing winds coming off the north sea have a clearing effect on the mind and the senses.

recent storms made the beach different. covered in bits of detritus and debris, but no stones.

nature has a way of arranging these things, even bits of string and trash and shell and bone, more artfully than we humans ever could.

i took that heart-shaped bit of wood with me. in lieu of stones, it was the best i could do and i had to have some memento of the trip.

the wind was cold and strong and we didn't stay long, just long enough for it to blow any residual troubles and cares out of our heads.

the bits and pieces of the year, floating in, like so much flotsam and jetsam. quite literally.

the last, remaining carcasses of 2013, left strewn on the beach. undoubtedly to be washed away by the next tides.

leaving us a fresh, clean slate from which to start 2014.

and begin it all over again, gathering the bits and pieces that form our memories and our lives.

tangling it all up, mixing it together, and hopefully leaving something beautiful behind.

overthinking christmas

i read a marvelous little piece in the new york times by gary shteyngart. shteyngart captures somehow the ennui i think many of us feel around christmas, wanting to embrace the traditions and have family around, but feeling underneath it all that acute sense of our inability to really know other people, perhaps especially our families. the facades we put up to get through it all, the way we hide what we really think and feel. the masks we wear.

i think it's part of why it's such a relief when the holiday is over, you can exhale and go back into your real self, putting aside the performance and the smiles and the false gaiety. there's so much pressure for christmas to be perfect - you have to give the right presents, eat the right food. you have to meet so many expectations that are unspoken and unwritten, but powerful just the same. and it's impossible. and exhausting.

sabin is off skiing in austria with her best friends, so husband and i sat out in the brewery room by our new fireplace (it's a wood-burning stove, actually) last evening, relaxing, sipping a cocktail in front of the crackle of the fire. husband philosophized as to whether we as humans are drawn to fire because we're the only animal which has conquered it, or because we recognize something of our basic natures in it...we're all burning out towards an end in a pile of dust. either one is quite profound,  even if the latter is less than optimistic. we sat for long stretches, just relaxing and not saying anything, letting our souls settle back in after the mad rush of christmas. the crackle and warmth of the fire helped with that.

we as humans seem to have some kind of need for ceremony, as susanne moore puts it in the guardian, "it is through ritual that we remake and strengthen our social bonds." our christian christmas traditions must have a basis in earlier pagan midwinter rituals. as the years go by, i grow more and more uneasy with the religious aspect (as well as the commercial one), but, there must be a way to celebrate the return towards the light in a non-religious way that "does not mean one has to forgo poetry, magic, the chaos of ritual, the remaking of shared bonds." i guess here in denmark, we do come rather close to that, as attending church isn't really part of the ritual, and there are plenty of old pagan elements in the stories of nisse (a kind of combination elf/gnome/pixie figure) and the plethora of candles and the use of evergreens and moss and pinecones in decorating. i just wish it didn't all seem so soul-draining. i want to feel renewed, refreshed, re-energized by the midwinter celebration - elated that we've turned back towards the light.

maybe i'd better go stare into that crackling fire for awhile again.

* * *

beautiful photographs of frozen bubbles

make me long for lower temps.

tho' haunting fairy tale photos

would make me settle for a nice fog.

* * *

seriously amazing maps made from ships' logs from the 18th-19th centuries.

also here.

endless hours of fascination in these.

* * *

i've just updated my about me, if you're interested.

woman, know your strength

there's a lot of talk in denmark recently on the subject of feminism. it's been in connection with the anniversary of a danish feminist landmark book - woman, know your body. much of the talk has centered on whether or not there is still a need for feminism and young women's reluctance to identify themselves as feminist. i've blogged before about whether i identify as feminist or not.

the sunday evening talk show actually featured an interview of three stark naked ordinary (as in not famous) women, talking about their very real bodies. i thought it was a little weird that all three had completely shaved (or waxed) their pubic hair and were bald down there. but perhaps i'm a little behind on pube fashion. i admired them for being relaxed and seemingly comfortable carrying on a normal interview on national television. it was pretty brave in this age where we're surrounded by photoshopped perfection at every turn.

i am grateful for the strides made on my behalf by the feminists who came before me. i haven't had to struggle to be a woman in a workplace and haven't felt held back by my gender in terms of career. i've had my moments of encounters with misogynist dinosaurs, but they were slightly different than actually being kept from getting a job or a promotion.

the danish book is centered on the woman's body, so i guess that's where the focus on naked women comes from in all of the recent discussions of feminism. but should feminism be so fixated on the body? what about the things that women can do as people? things disconnected from the gender of their bodies - things like using their hands or their muscles or their brains? my cooking and sewing and making and creating and thinking and talking and philosophizing all have very little to do with my naked body.

i find deliberate attempts to connect making and the body (like that woman who knits with yarn she's stuffed up her vagina (sorry, having trouble getting past that one)) to be somehow grasping at something artificial and constructed. is that really necessary? do we have to be so extreme to be one with our womanliness? can't we just be women, without doing something extra (or grotesque) to embrace it? is that what it takes to be a feminist now?

i hope not. i hope feminism is just under our skins. that it's there in our ability to raise strong, smart, capable, innovative girls into strong, smart, capable, innovative women. that it's there in our feeling that being a woman is a power in its own right and it entitles us to take our place in the world - the place best suited to our abilities and ambitions and strengths. to know that our brains are where it's at, not our bodies, even as we love and accept and embrace our special, unique bodies (without needing to resort to running the yarn we knit through them). to be happy and comfortable in being humans who also happen to be women.

i should be where people are not

i need to be where people are not. i'm on the verge of a cold, achy and crabby and a bit foggy in the head. everything and everyone is very irritating, the internet, facebook, my family, the needy cat, the less needy cat, the totally independent cat, a crazy woman who knits with yarn she's stuffed up her lady parts (i could go on but i'd like to give you a moment with that image in your head)...

my energy is sapped by the sunday market. tho' our space is limited and we only had space for a dozen sellers, so much work went into it - setting up (i was not only selling my wares, but i also was one of the organizers), making things, preparing, doing everything i could to make sure the other sellers would be happy with their spots. we had ads in the local paper two weeks in a row and still, very few people came and those who came, weren't really in a buying mood. i think everyone sold some of their work, but i think everyone also wished they had sold more. and while not all of it was my taste, the quality was high. lots of christmasy floral arrangements involving candles and bits of greenery, but homemade goodies as well.

but the most energy-sapping aspect wasn't not selling as much as i might have liked, but it was a general bad atmosphere. we managed to get it a little bit on track in the afternoon thanks to some spotify christmas music lists, but it was a long few hours before i managed to lure husband out of the woods (literally, he was out working on the trees that fell over in a storm last summer) and have him deliver the iPod HiFi to me. and i can't put my finger on what it was...too many people with the same type of items was a factor, and they spent the first hour or so sitting and glaring at one another. the lack of music was a factor, as was the lack of crowds. people didn't feel comfortable going around, looking, when there weren't very many people and everyone could hear everything they said. danes are generally shy with people they don't know and so those who came hurried around, looking, eyes averted, not wanting to talk to the sellers if they didn't know one another.

a number of people admitted out loud that they weren't going to buy anything, but were just gathering ideas so they could make things themselves. yes, really. out loud. i mean, we all think that, but to say it outright to the people who worked hard to make their wares seems a little mean. or at the very least, thoughtless. but it was that kind of day and that kind of atmosphere.

worst of all is the lack of cooperation within our little community. we tried to schedule the market to coincide with the arrival of santa and the lighting of the christmas tree on the square (which is organized by the local commerce association). when we scheduled the market, they were on the same day and then, funnily enough, the local commerce association changed the date to the day before. they did something similar with our market late last summer and tho' i'm certain it was more a lack of communication than malice, it does begin to feel a bit like the latter. would it really kill them to communicate and coordinate?

so my energy is gone. i don't want to be a pessimist or give up on organizing these types of activities (for the sense of community, even more than commerce), but it is disheartening. tho' i'm normally full of ideas for the next steps and what to learn from such experiences, i'll admit this time i'm all tapped out.

maybe a person shouldn't try to over analyze with a cold coming on...

* * *

and speaking of craft and community,

why do the craft sessions have to be so far from my hemisphere?

reflections on TEDx Copenhagen, part one

i've had a few days to let the experience of TEDx Copenhagen wash over me. on the day itself, i think i felt a little bit let down and disappointed, feeling that the talks didn't live up to the quality i had come to expect from TED. that feeling hasn't really changed after a few days of pondering it. to be fair, there were a couple of exceptions - young entrepreneur sara naseri, of persian descent, but raised in denmark, took us through her development of a molecule to protect from uv rays at the age of 17. she was utterly charming and wonderful, as well as having an inspiring story of having the courage to pursue your idea and to continue even in the face of roadblocks. i also thought mads lodahl's call to challenge the straight world order, questioning how our notions of normal came to be what they are and who benefits from them, was worth the trip (more about that in another post).

the overall theme was "mirror, mirror," a reference to snow white's step-mother's truthful mirror on the wall, unable to speak other than the truth, even if it was uncomfortable. the talks didn't all fit this theme, to be honest. and the quality was all over the place. low points were the oddly-dressed eva kruse, founder of copenhagen fashion week, who had a vague message about how the clothing industry needed to be more sustainable, but few notions of how that could happen aside from utilizing the cloth more efficiently. it was a shame her talk was so empty, as she had pretty much gotten top bill on the TEDx Copenhagen website. i spent most of her talk distracted by the odd outfit she was wearing, sort of 80s aerobics wear meets star trek with a peplum.

other low points were the emotional talk by comedian and cancer survivor geo, who did a short plea for people to not be afraid to talk to people with cancer. it was sweet and his tears seemed real, but i couldn't see how it fit with the program. there was a sales pitch by a blind man named hans jørgen wiberg, who had invented an app called be my eyes that could enable us all to be volunteers from the comfort of our own couches. again, he was sweet, but it didn't provoke me to think the way i had expected of TED.

i was suprised by how many of the online TED talks (five or six) they showed throughout the day. at one point, i tweeted that i could watch these at home, why were they using valuable time on them? especially as they had chosen hard-core science and math talks that, in my view, were mostly far from their theme. they then explained (far too late), that they were required by the licensing agreement to show a certain amount of TED talks from youtube. they really should have explained that up front.

the two organizers, lærke and ronni, behaved onstage like they had recently broken up and couldn't stand one another. happily, they only came onstage and subjected us to this at the beginning and the end. i think if they'd acted as hosts, it would have really ruined the day.

late in the day, i wrote in my notebook: this conference needs higher caliber presenters. a girl who helps homeless men play soccer gave a sweet, but ultimately pointless talk. an artist, working in glass, gave a strange, disjointed talk on the properties of transparency and then rushed offstage in a way that struck me as far before she originally planned to. a young brit, harry fear, who was a documentary filmmaker and a bit too in love with himself promoted his films about the gaza strip. he had a valid message about how we should seek news in alternative sources, rather than from the monolithic mainstream media (which he left undefined and unquestioned), but missed the chance to delve deeper into how the mainstream media has come to present the version(s) of events it presents. in my view, his gloss on it was just as shallow as theirs. i'll take bets that he'll be working for the BBC the next time we see him.

but it wasn't all disappointing, the opening talk, by head of the danish design center, nille juul-sørensen was interesting and started the day off well. he brought one of arne jakobsen's ant chairs onstage and issued a call to danish designers to stop thinking about designing iconic objects and instead design the future in a meaningful way. he cited two areas where he thought that the design of the future could make an impact - in the area of waste (thinking beyond recycling) and in the notion of a circular economy, where things get shared or reused or repurposed for another use when their original use is over. he said, "the coolest thing about the future is that we're going to live there." 

some of the unexpected highlights were the various performances that interspersed the talks and the videos. when all you've seen are online TED talks, you don't realize that as an event, there's a whole lot more going on at a TED conference. there was a very provocative burka-related dance/video/music/theatrical performance by EUrabia. improvisational music directed by sound painting (it sounded an awful lot like jazz) by a group called borderline. and my personal favorite, a phenomenal performance by one-man band kalle's world tour. there was even live entertainment in the bathroom by niels gröndahl.

i thought that TED stood for technology, education and design, but learned that it actually stands for technology, entertainment and design. entertained, i definitely was, but not always provoked to think at the level i had expected. sometimes tho', it can be good to check your expectations at the door and just let the experience wash over you.

i have more to tell about something unexpected that came out of the conference, but i'll leave that for the next post.

toto, we're not in kansas anymore

during my usual sunday morning troll of the internet, i watched this wonderful TED talk by pico iyer on the subject of home:

as one who is by choice displaced, i often ponder what home means. quite often here on this very blog. i think that instead of getting easier to answer, the longer you are gone from home (your original home, the place of your birth), the more muddied the waters become. you begin to feel that place isn't home and this place, where you live and make your life and even find a lot of happiness, sometimes even on a daily basis, definitely isn't home either. and it leaves you all with what i like to call my mid-atlantic feeling (as in cast adrift in the middle of the atlantic, neither here nor there). and it is, as always, a lonely feeling, tho' it can also leave you feeling utterly unique and who doesn't, especially in their moments of private solipsism, want to feel unique, even if it unique in your own particular brand of lonely.

and so i struggle with notions of home. and making a home. and feeling at home. and maybe it's a normal state if 220 million of us are living outside the country of our birth, as iyer suggests. so maybe i should just lighten up and go with it. because this makes me sound like i'm unhappy and i'm far from that. i just don't really know if i know what home is in this age when so much is in flux. it's where you keep your important books, i thought at one time, but when our books now fit on an iPad, then home is wherever i find myself (provided i have my iPad with me) by that definition.

i suppose, as iyer says, i somehow do manage to stitch together a sense of home (and thus identity), from the various pieces i carry around inside me...where i was raised, where i live now, all of the places i have traveled, all of the experiences i've had, all of the memories i've created. i carry it all within me, no matter where i am. and my actual house is filled with things gathered on those travels...trinkets, statues, glassware, rugs, scarves, so it reflects that sense of home that i attempt to construct, almost unconsciously. and what is a home? a nest, a place to feel safe. a place to call your own. a place to house your important books. and i can't complain because i do have that, even if i couldn't have imagined how it would look and what it would be like, had you asked me to do that 20 years ago.

and so i muddle along, like so many others, constructing a life, a home, a family and filling it with deeds and memories.

from whence surplus?

i had a long conversation last night about that whole concept of overskudsmennesker (surplus people) and underskudsmennesker (deficit people) that i believe i've mentioned here before. those words are so wonderful and packed with meaning in danish, meaning that's not contained in the literal translation, nor in any more metaphorical one i can come up with. even tho' we lack a word for it, i know you know people in both categories.

overskudsmennesker are largely positive. they have time for things. they are creative and their actions reflect both an open mind and a big heart. they're able to see situations from all sides. they are good at having an overview. when someone presents an idea, they run with it and expand on it, instead of shutting it down or making fun of it.

underskudsmennesker, as you might imagine, are the opposite. they have something negative to say about everything. they aren't open to new ideas and they often are critical naysayers in the face of other people's ideas. they're the ones who you'll hear say, "we tried that before and it didn't work." they are often utterly unable to see a situation from another perspective.

i know i show traits of both at times, because i don't think that anyone is ever always on top of things. we all go up and down, depending on our energy levels. but i've come to think that once again, whether you are generally in surplus has a lot to do with social capital (i know, i'm always bringing it back to that, but i think bourdieu was right). do your background, education, upbringing and situation equip you to deal positively with the world or not? do they enable you to see the big picture? i think for many, the answer is no and it means they wallow in their own perspective and their own negativity, never lifting their head above the horizon to really look at things. never having the surplus to do so.

i don't mean to say that you have to be educated to be happy (tho' somewhere inside i probably do believe that to an extent), but that you need to be equipped with a broad way of looking at things in order to see situations for what they are and not get bogged down in some minute and unimportant detail. one that drains your energy and the energy of those around you.

another thing i've noticed is that when you have many passionate people involved in something, those passions will clash and result in a disturbing draining of energy that leaves everyone feeling like an underskudsmennesker, at least at that moment. great passions are energy dynamos, but that means that they are also energy drains. and sometimes we're so caught up in them we can't see that we crossed the line from surplus to deficit.

morning moon

as a hurricane ravages the east coast of the US, it seems rather frivolous to sit at my desk, sipping a mug of tea, contemplating a blog post and the rest of my day and looking out at the beautiful, cold, clear, sunny autumn day that's going on outside. in fact, i unfollowed one asshole on twitter this morning for blithely posting crap-ass scrapbook pages while the storm raged (why was i following such a person anyway?). it feels odd that life goes on as normal while it's interrupted so dramatically for so many people elsewhere. but i suppose that's true at any given moment of any day. it just doesn't always make the news.

i feel a bit guilty for sitting here, brooding in my own thoughts, pondering things like how i lack a group of truly creative people to hang out with or how i will construct a paleo meal this evening when we have 15 more rows of potatoes to dig and use or whether i'll dare to remove the horse's stitches myself to save another vet visit. people have lost their homes and cars and belongings and the physical evidence of their memories and i'm sitting here with my petty concerns.

but again, it happens every day - tragedies, manmade and natural, befall people all over the world all the time and i normally don't worry about it. i'm only worried today because it's filling my screens and my twitter feed. i haven't even been to new york, so how can it really matter to me?

so not to discount the actual, real misery, but i think we should all have better things to think about. like how we can be positive towards that person who meets us with negativity. because maybe precisely what they need is a dose of positivity coming their way. maybe what would give us the most energy is to simply decide that we will give away all of the energy we ourselves have. maybe that's actually how you make more.

i realize this isn't making that much sense, but the hurricane has jumbled up my thoughts. or perhaps it's the morning moon. and i'm mostly left thinking we should just be a whole lot kinder and gentler right here, where we are now. and that it might make a big difference in the big scheme of things. hurricanes or none.

reflections of the shadows within

it's raining and i wanted to capture a photo to depict this wet day. as i was snapping this big bowl of stones, i noticed my own shadow in them, distorted by the surfaces and the rain. i had the hood of my raincoat up, and thought the shadow looked quite monster-ish. it's fitting since i'm reading peter ackroyd's the house of doctor dee, a novel based on the real john dee (a 16th century alchemist). there are a lot of shadows, ghosts and monsters in the book, so perhaps i'm just seeing them everywhere. the atmosphere of the book is wonderfully dark (also fitting for a rainy day). it seems to be out of print as copies are £99 on amazon, so check your library.

in addition to making you see monsters and shadows everywhere (or monsters in your shadows), it will also make you want to go to london. immediately. it's like london is one of the characters in the book, with a life of its own, going on underneath the people that populate its streets. it's wonderful in an ominous sort of way.

my recent encounters with a compulsive liar have me thinking about the shadows we all have within. i wonder a lot about her shadows, the ones driving her to tell so many lies. i think at the bottom of it, she knows she's in way over her head, but has so built her identity on where she is and what she does that she can't face the thought of it all coming crashing down. so she lies. and frankly makes it ever more likely that it's going to come crashing down. because the lies are easy to disprove at every turn and they are piling up. but she hides those shadows quite well by having a bubbly and winning personality. but i predict that the lies will catch up with her. probably sooner, rather than later. and it's so unnecessary. i feel a bit sorry for her, really.

sometimes the shadows are just baggage that we carry with us and it breaks open once in awhile. or shows very clearly to others, even if it doesn't to ourselves. i actually had to photograph my buddy the troglodyte this week and funnily enough, he chose himself to pose with a sculpture of suitcases that's on display in town. it made photographing him so easy because i don't think he saw himself the delicious irony of it - that his photo puts his baggage on display for all to see. my photos of him underline it perfectly. and that makes me rather happy in an admittedly petty and mean way.

most of the time tho', i think that no one else can truly know the shadows we carry within. no one else can know what's really going on inside of exactly me - how i feel, what i think and the whys and wherefores. sometimes i think that even i can't really know it - it's too complex and elusive. i guess that's what makes it all the more interesting to catch a reflection of the shadow within. 

is it just me?

are you looking at me?

i had a really weird moment yesterday. an unbidden, unwelcome and unusual moment (more like an hour) of an utter lack of confidence. accompanied by a strange feeling of guilt. it was especially unwelcome because i was on my way to an important meeting. and i needed my confidence and belief in my own abilities. i'm working on a project that's very important to me - it's precisely what i want to be doing - think writing, travel, writing about travel - and the meeting was about the next steps of the project. so i needed to be my real self. not some hesitant, shy, strangely guilty version of me. luckily, i had an awesome friend to call - one who happens also to be my business partner - and she talked me down. and the meeting went well and all is right with the world, project-wise.

but i'm still wondering why i felt that way. especially the odd sense of guilt, tho' i honestly hadn't done anything i should have felt guilty about. at least nothing i could think of on a conscious level. where do these feelings come from?

do you ever have that happen? you feel alone and vulnerable and lacking confidence, even when you usually face the world head-on and are pretty angst-free (tho' admittedly you do overanalyze a bit)? or is it just me?