so many things to ponder

whoa, it's been awhile. things have been busy. it's been a pretty intense period and there's no end in sight. i've been trying to take creative breaks - a lovely weekend away with my creative group, the yearly trip with my weaving group, going to weaving, going to a gourmet knitting day, a pampering event with a friend (think facial and foot bath), followed by an art show and a really nice lunch, several work trips to copenhagen - but it has all left little time to think about personal writing. i miss the way this space allowed me to process things and it would be nice to get back into the habit. odin knows there's plenty to process.

today, as i made dinner - a roast chicken, jerusalem artichokes freshly dug from the garden and some roasted beets, plus a salad with avocado, mango and tomato - i found myself pondering topics to write in the way that i used to and it made me think it would be nice to be back here again. 

things that crossed my mind...the need that everyone seems to have acquired to have a diagnosis, the latest james bond, growing older, the individual nature of grief, what lumke would have wanted to be could she have chosen anything, how to best talk about kitchens from a warm, sympathetic perspective, the natural order of adjectives (thanks, molly), an obsession with growing things from seeds extracted in the kitchen (see the mango plant above, which i started myself), old friends i got to see again this week, sharing what i love about copenhagen, our upcoming trip to arizona (i SO need a holiday), tomorrow's make-your-own-ravioli dinner with friends, what tattoo to get next (i'm thinking a cactus), the chestnut man on netflix. so many things to ponder and write about.  

i think i need to start blogging again like it's 2010 and no one is reading. because, after all, it always came back to me. and it's extremely likely that no one is reading.

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wow, what a story that was released on the day of the seafarer a few months ago (yes, i started this post awhile ago). tales of politics, containers, big tobacco, cancer and whitewashed company histories. i worked for maersk for 5 years and never even heard a whisper of this - only that sealand represented the great maersk move towards containerization. that and the banana plantation that they bought somewhere in africa to push containerization of bananas, which were hauled on refrigerated bulk carriers before containers came along. 

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a national geographic piece on adult fans of lego that, if you ask me, doesn't give enough credit to the actual fans themselves. 

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best ad for wearing a bike helmet ever. the danes are just so good at these things.

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fantastic cooperation between marina abramovic and wetransfer.

i wonder who made this tiny bicycle

i think about the person who bent and twisted this wire to make this tiny little bicycle. it's just one piece, so it's like one of those line sketches, where you draw the whole thing without the pencil leaving the page. it's slightly wonky, but it's also utterly wonderful in its tinyness and level of detail - the kickstand, the handlebars, the wheels and the chain, just a little wire doodle, but somehow perfect. i wonder if they made other things? i found this in a bowl of tiny things for 10kr. in a strange secondhand shop where we bought a little yellow boat. when i saw it, i knew i had to have it. it's very tiny, about 3cm is all. i keep it up on a high shelf, because i'm afraid the cats will play with it and then it will be lost underneath something or get vacuumed up because i don't see it on the floor. but it makes me smile whenever i see it. and i think about that person who made it, wondering how many attempts they made before making this perfect specimen. dozens? or perhaps they just got very lucky on the first try.

magical thinking

magical thinking. that illogical connection of disparate events in the mind. i think it's hard not to do it sometimes, both with good and bad things. the sparkle unicorn fairy waved her wand and the sun burst through the clouds at last. i stuffed her in my dark pocket and it clouded up and began to rain. a lump of adorable plastic does not have the power to make the sun come and go. i know that rationally, but sometimes you can't help but look for connections.

i wrote on facebook a week or so ago that i had a longing for people to just spontaneously drop by. right after, two different friends did so. there was arguably an actual cause and effect relationship there since they had read my post on facebook. but since then a couple of random folks have also dropped by. a charmingly toothless man, wearing an old-fashioned helmet and driving an ancient moped (words you never thought you'd see strung together) stopped by to see if we still had a saw for sale that was listed on our craig's list equivalent. i had a surprisingly delightful and funny conversation with him that gave me happy energy for several hours afterwards.

then, last evening, as i wandered the garden in the golden hour sunlight that the unicorn sparkle fairy had called forth, another stranger parked in front of the house and came up to me. he asked if he might try fishing in our lake one day. we chatted a bit and i agreed that he could. now, he and a friend just came and knocked on the door to say they were going to give it a try (despite the steady drizzle caused by the unicorn sparkle fairy still being in my coat pocket). i don't know his name and i'm probably not going to invite him over for dinner, but these are exactly the kind of random human encounters that i have been missing. have they come to me because i put it out there in the world that i wanted them? or would they have happened anyway?

who really knows? magical thinking.

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.

what are you listening to?

ever since serial, the fabulous podcast that changed the way we all think of podcasts, ended i've been a bit bereft and in need of other stories well-told. so i've been on quite the podcasting binge. of course, one turns to serial parent this american life, but you are quickly out of episodes of that as well, since they don't seem to leave them up for long. also a TAL spin-off is invisibilia, which is brand new and wonderful, tho' wonderful in a different way than serial. the hosts lulu miller and alix spiegel are charming and the episodes are self-contained, but fascinating in their mix of stories and science and they too leave you longing for next week's instalment. also arguably a TAL spin-off is startup, where TAL and planet money alum alex blumberg chronicles the start of his...you guessed it...podcasting business. if you have an inner entrepreneur, you will find yourself practically taking notes and definitely encouraging all of your entrepreneurial friends to listen to it as well. reply all is the first podcast released by blumberg's gimlet media and is definitely worth a listen if you like the internet (which i assume you do if you're here). last among these good ones is criminal, the first podcast i discovered from the radiotopia collective. unlike serial, it explores, in self-contained episodes, short tales of often very strange crimes, including a baby-killing pig who was put on trial and hanged in 18th century france. as an example to other pigs, so they wouldn't turn to a life of crime as well. you can learn a lot listening to podcasts.

as i already said, in recent days, i've stumbled onto some podcasts that are part of a collective called radiotopia. 99% invisible's roman mars seems to be at the helm of this particular collective and his podcast is definitely worth a listen if you're looking for different stories. but my favorite of the bunch is probably strangers, which has a danish host, tho' she's been in the US so long you can't hear it. lea tau, the host, was involved in the moth at one time and that shows in her storytelling ability. another one worth listening to is benjamen walker's theory of everything, which did a recent awesome 5-part series on the "dislike club," his dream of a platform for people who are tired of facebook and twitter (the last episode of it is found on another podcast called radiotonic). snap judgement is interesting too, but love & radio didn't capture my attention at all.

the cool part of all of these podcasting collectives (feral audio is another one, heavy on comedians), is that they refer you to their other podcasts, so it's a little like following an endless string of hyperlinks and you can discover lots of cool stories. i don't subscribe to all of them. generally, i download a couple of episodes to see if i like them and then subscribe if i do. if they are so engrossing that they can make me forget that i'm mucking out stalls then i subscribe. radio diaries and the truth are also part of radiotopia and i haven't yet decided about them. i listened to a rather terrifying story on the truth (which oddly, isn't truth, but is small mini fictional radio plays, not reporting) while i did chores this evening. it was a story that will probably give me nightmares tonight. but i think it's good to have stories that stick with you. slumber party i downloaded only the episode with the oatmeal's matt inman, because i wanted to hear him. i will not be subscribing as the two hosts are rather full of themselves in that way that only people from LA can be and poor matt hardly got in a word edgewise, the way they prattled along.

hello internet is insufferable and i'll be deleting it. in fact, i just did.  i've listened to entirely too many of the thinking sideways podcast. the three hosts are just average people with mediocre brains, a marginal ability to google things and too much access to recording equipment. they prove that although anyone can put out a podcast, maybe not everyone should. i've only listened to as many episodes as i have because they do like to cover mysteries like the voynich manuscript and jack the ripper. however, because they seem to get all of their information by reading wikipedia, i suggest you take a shortcut and just read the wikipedia yourself so that you don't have to hear the one dumb guy say he's not an expert (as if you hadn't noticed) while the pretentiously-named girl devon tries to blame it all on aliens.

spilled milk is another one that proves that not everyone should podcast just because they have a microphone in their macbook. i loved molly wizenberg's blog and cookbook, but she and her sidekick (whose name i've blocked out) in this one just annoy the hell out of me. i only tried it out because they were going to talk about cocktails. the sublime one below it also contains a cocktail episode which i haven't yet listened to. i think spilled milk is another one i'll be getting rid of.  there are too many good podcasts out there to waste time listening to crappy ones. 99% invisible with roman mars, as i said above, is a keeper. big ideas features some longer, more professorial talks by scholars. you have to be in the right mood for those.

last up in this rundown is the moth podcast. they were telling stories before it became fashionable and they are damn good at it.

you may wonder when i'm doing all of this listening. generally, it's when i'm on a long drive. but since that doesn't happen all that often, i tend to put on headphones and listen while i'm making dinner, doing the evening chores or cleaning out the stalls on a sunday afternoon. i can also listen while i sew, tho' i haven't sewed anything much lately. when i can't listen is when i'm not doing something else...if i try to listen at bedtime, i fall asleep immediately and miss the whole thing. i also can't listen and read or type something, so i'm not listening right now. i will say listening to podcasts has cut into my netflix time, but i think that's quite all right.

did serial get you into podcasts? if so, what are you listening to? any and all recommendations are most appreciated.

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and in case this isn't enough, here's a list of the best podcast episodes ever (according to slate). and a whole language for talking about them from a critical perspective, in case you really want to nerd out.

a little assemblage of thoughts on the tragic events in paris

the tragic events in paris at charlie hebdo are on my mind, like they surely are for you as well. i'd frankly never heard of the magazine before, but my french is pretty weak, so it's no wonder. i have great affection for biting satire that forces you to think deeper and from what i've seen and read, they produce a newspaper in that vein. it is a horrible tragedy that they were slaughtered for doing so by people who didn't agree with their views and methods. it's so horrible that i think on some level i can't even really fathom it. it seems quite unreal, even in the face of graphic videos shot by bystanders. so it's taken me a few days to begin to collect my thoughts enough to write something about it. but i have been reading a lot of articles about it in a variety of places, from the nytimes to the guardian to danish newspapers to a friend's blog. that blog is probably the best, most sensible piece i've read.

i find it exceptionally disheartening what the tragedy seems to have done to people. i see it in my facebook feed, but i'm also reading it in the various opinion pieces online. it's not only the blood and gore of it, but how it has turned on a hatred of an entire religion, based on the actions of a few fanatics. my facebook feed is full of people calling for closing denmark's borders and sending home syrian refugees, calls to withdraw all resources from programs which help people in need who happen to be muslim. there is a mass reaction that is very black & white, very unnuanced and which, in my view, contains as much hate as those men with the guns must have felt on wednesday. it's a similar kind of reactionary fanaticism.  and it's tinged with more than a little racism and xenophobia. and to me, it means that the terrorists have won beyond their wildest imagination. if they can make us fear and hate at the same level as they do, they have reduced us.

i am heartened to see pockets of rationality and sense here and there. twitter is our barometer these days and like in australia, where a supportive hashtag surfaced, saying #illridewithyou, after the lunatic held all those hostages in the lindt café, there seems to be a groundswell of folks rallying around the policeman they so brutally shot, saying #jesuisahmed, rather than #jusuischarlie, which carries with it a more radical connotation.

it is hard to see what good can possibly come of this, but i do hope that we are able to take up a discussion which allows us to discuss the nuances and actually begin to address the problems that underlie these things...like the imbalance of resources in this world, the imperialist notions of those in the west, so sure of our own superiority, like getting education to women and the young populations of the muslim countries, so that they can see that they have options other than violence. rather than saying we need to send all of the foreigners home, maybe we should make them more welcome around here. it's much harder for people to hate and kill when they are your friends.

i resolve not to resolve

with the dawning of a new year, i always ponder whether or not to make resolutions. i'm not so good at them, you see. and so i was thinking that this year i'd make some that i can keep...like drink more wine, watch more netflix, eat more and exercise less, never dust, buy more stuff. those would be pretty easy. but is that what i really want? i could throw in a harder one, like "start smoking," which would be a bit of a challenge for me, since i really have no desire to do that. but i wonder if those are actually resolutions at all.

but still, the blank slate of the new year beckons new thinking.

we could spend the summer as vikings, dressing the part, going from one of those viking festivals to the next, cooking over open fires and learning to dye wool with nothing but pee and wildflowers. husband wasn't that keen on this idea, since he's got a new saw of which he's rather enamored and was thinking he'd need an awfully big trailer and a pretty long extension cord to haul it around to the viking festivals.

we could volunteer to help with the ebola epidemic in africa. but alas, we have no medical training and who would feed the horses and provide the service level the cats have come to expect while we're away?

i think about going on a writer's retreat and getting serious about that book. sadly, i fear it's already been done (tho' i wouldn't have made up some crap about "disney sex" if i'd written it).

maybe i just need one of those silent getaways where you don't speak for a week.

or perhaps i just need to reread my own manifesto and leave it at that.

theosophic works: hilma af klint

youth - #3, group IV, 1907

adulthood - #6, group IV, 1907

adulthood - #7, group IV, 1907

adulthood - #8, group IV, 1907

there are ten works in this series, these were just my favorites. they represent the phases of life, from infancy to old age. they are enormous and dominant works. they were painted on paper using hand-mixed tempera paints. they had been rolled for years in an attic (luckily dry), since hilma af klint's will specified that the works could not be shown for 20 years after her death. she believed she was painting the connection between the physical and inner worlds we inhabit. she believed the pictures came to her from a higher consciousness, which conveyed its message through her. she created a whole symbolic language with which to convey these messages. it has yet to be fully decoded, despite her leaving behind extensive journals, documentation and notes. scholars are only beginning to give her work the attention it so richly deserves.

the swan, #16, group IX/SUW, 1915

the swan, #17, group IX/SUW, 1915

the swan, #17, group IX/SUW, 1915

in af klint's symbolic language, blue represents the feminine and yellow the masculine. i find that quite appealing and feel it underlines how today's pink for girls and blue for boys is a more modern construct and just that, a construct, not something inherent in the colors themselves. although the works try to convey a spiritual message from another plane of consciousness, they are very rigorous and quite scientific in their discipline. every color and line is laden with meaning.

alter work #1, group X, 1915

there are three large paintings in this series and i'm not sure why i didn't photograph the other two, as they were marvelous in the whole they presented, the three of them hanging together. it makes me want to go back, tho' there isn't much time, as the exhibition closes june 6.

i find these abstract works to be thought provoking and evocative. despite the crowds and that we were in a bit of a hurry that day, i found they triggered something deep in my solar plexis, something indefinable and which i can't yet put words to. perhaps she really did capture something of a higher consciousness and tho' i don't consciously understand what it's saying in so many words, it felt like they were actually communicating to my soul.

you can read more about hilma af klint here.

reflections on the poetics of unsolvable problems

i went to a most interesting salon evening tonight. i drank too much coffee and had my head filled with so many new and exciting ways of thinking about things that i can't sleep. i went because the title of the talk was the poetics of the unsolvable and i loved both the notion that there was a poetics, but also that something could unsolvable in these times when we think there is a quick fix for everything. what it turned out to be was a researcher who had looked at the ways that creative interventions in management training could change things for managers and how they think and learn presented his research. best of all, he asked us to try out some of his experiments. i don't yet have it all straight in my head, but already i feel that it awakened in me new ways of thinking about things that will be very valuable to me.

in his study, he asked his subjects to come up with a problem that seemed unsolvable. then he asked them to take three approaches to it. in the first, he wanted them to do a systematic, rational analysis of the problem, which would eventually result in a map of their assumptions - a problem statement, who the actors were in the problem, what their interests are, then the distinctions and eventually a set of dimensions the problem (i understand these dimensions as a kind of list of binaries and quite black and white). it was these dimensions that could eventually be mapped in some way. we had only a short amount of time, so all we did was write a problem statement and begin looking at who was involved and what were their interests. i didn't get as far as distinctions (partially because time was short and partially because i didn't entirely understand what he meant by that). i would actually say that this resembles my usual approach to solving problems in quite a rational, systematic, analytical way. it undoubtedly lends to overthinking and confirming yourself in your opinion that the problem really is unsolvable. ironically, it also makes you think you see the problem more clearly and in some sense, maybe you even do.

the second approach was to apply metaphors to the problem. he asked us to think of the problem as a plant and quickly sketch or describe it. then he asked us to think of the problem as a movie or novel and note the work that first came to mind. we didn't delve a whole lot deeper than this and alas, fargo was the movie that sprang to mind when i thought of my problem. i'll need to ponder the meaning of that a bit more. actually, i had two problems noted down (that's how i roll) and the film that sprang to mind for the second problem was the matrix. that's also something that bears more thought. i tried to make books spring to mind for my problems, but oddly, none did. in his experiment, he sent the subjects out with cameras to take a photo that would stand as a metaphor of the problem. i would love to have done that (and let's face it, i do it most days here on mpc - after all, blogging is cheaper than therapy).

the third and perhaps most interesting approach was to describe the problem as a sensory experience; to give it physical sensation. this was difficult (especially in a short time) and my list included broad emotions - stressful, negative, tense. i had to keep reminding myself to stick to physical sensations - loud, grating, jarring. but it wasn't easy and the exercise gave me a tightness in my chest and i felt a little bit that i couldn't breathe. so trying to describe it as a physical sensation actually caused a physical sensation in my body. this made me realize that mind and body are so much more connected that i generally think they are. and this made me think i need to take better care of my body and use it more wisely. i'd like to think i take better care of my mind, feeding it with nourishing books and images and thoughts. my body probably needs less caffeine, alcohol and unhealthy foods. i must remember that (she says as she takes a sip of wine).

and although listing my problem as a sensory experience caused a physical reaction in my body, it also had a distancing effect, making me more able to look upon my problem from a new angle, with less emotion and less judgement. which is quite new and i think it's quite difficult for us to be judgement-free, as we come loaded with expectations and judgements from all of our previous learnings and experiences. it was quite freeing to somehow let go of that. i'd like to do that more.

if we'd had more time, he would have asked us to write a poem based on the list of sensory experiences. he would have given us only 20 minutes, so that the poem would be more automatic and we wouldn't have time to sensor or polish it. he showed us some of the results from his subjects and they were powerful. i feel i missed the window on the poem for this experience, but i'm going to go through the exercise again.

and do you want to know what the problem i thought about was? (at least the main one?) it was the problem of being productive in an open office environment. because i think that's pretty much impossible. i won't say that i solved it, not even remotely, but i got closer to seeing a clearer picture of why i don't like such spaces. and that may be a step towards an eventual solution. and that feels pretty powerful. i'd like to think of myself as more reflected than most and i do (as you know, if you are a regular reader), tend to over-analyze things, so having new tools which will help me think about things in new ways is awesome.

noticing...

noticing...

...the birch pollen is bad right now. my allergies are much better than they once were, due to eating loads of honey made by our own bees, but the birch pollen gets me every year. this year, with a dull headache that i can't shake (in addition to the usual itching throat and watering eyes).

...that it requires a whole new language to even read about minecraft, let alone play it.

...sometimes, it just feels like you're herding cats. and even if you love cats, that's not an easy task.

...that saying how busy you are and how packed your calendar is as a marker of your importance does not impress me. nor does it actually make you important.

...that i have, without my knowing, suffered a loss of confidence. i'm more tentative and less sure than i used to be. i wonder if this is simply a consequence of being older and wiser or if i've actually truly lost something that i cannot regain. i used to go so boldly through the world and now i feel i tread more lightly. this is both good and bad. puzzling and a bit frustrating. but also fascinating somehow.

...that walking out into the yard and feeding the animals is my favorite part of my day. and honestly, my days are pretty filled with good things, so that must be awesome.

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have a look at what my boss says about co-creation.

(have i mentioned that i love my job?)

and this review of the new lego brickumentary, which just debuted at tribeca, is funny.

gathered

skimming some or other feed, a headline about small household shrines caught my eye. i didn't click on the article and naturally, i have no idea where it may have been posted and i can't find it again. but that didn't stop me from pondering the growing pile of small, mostly natural, found treasures that has gathered on the window ledge in terms of whether they constitute a shrine. it does feel somehow like a shrine of sorts, gathered there over time. but a shrine to what? nature? walks? found objects? the passing of time? that little pear was perfect and green when i found it and now it's dry and wrinkled, but somehow more charming, even if it is now a mummy of a pear. i'm glad it dried up and that it didn't rot.

it's not all found objects, unless you count seeing something in your facebook feed and ordering it from etsy as finding, which i did with the heart by kim from numinosity beads. but even the little bottle is a found object, which i found one day out in the yard when i was emptying the litterbox. it does make me wonder what other treasures are lurking out there.

that little egg, which i found late last summer has also dried instead of rotted (thankfully) and is light and hollow now, as the inside has dried up. i'm pleased the cats have left it alone so it could do that. what is our human desire to gather things and keep them? why are we somehow driven (some of us more than others) on an almost unconscious level to gather and keep. stones, bits of moss, driftwood, shells, feathers. they constantly find their way into my pockets.

for me, there is pleasure in the arranging and rearranging and the photographing. it gives me a small moment of beauty and creativity in the midst of a busy everyday. and i guess that's shrine enough for me.

happy weekend, one and all.

too young to die

i don't keep in touch with many from my old high school class - it's been nearly 30 years since we graduated and i've quite literally drifted far, far away from them. but i'm friends with at least one classmate on facebook. late last week, she let me know that another of our classmates had serious cancer and wasn't expected to live much longer. it was just a few days later that i learned that he had died on saturday. i hadn't thought of him in years and he wasn't someone that i'd say i knew very well, despite being only 36 people in our graduating class.

when i was a kid, we had lived in the same neighborhood and biked around in a pack as kids do. but my main memory of that is that i argued with him that i was older than him because my birthday was in march and his was in may, not realizing he was a year old than i was. but it was because we were in the same class, so i assumed we must be the same age. odd that i clearly remember that silly argument after all these years.

i don't know what became of him after high school, what he studied, what he decided to be when he grew up, who he married, whether he had children, if he was happy. but i find myself thinking about him now that i know he is gone. 47 is far too young to die. i've since learned he had a very aggressive and rare neuroendocrine cancer. although i'd lost touch, it makes me feel sad to think that someone (nearly) my age, is already gone. how much more did he have to do? how old are his kids? now he won't see them grow up and become who they will become.

he still lived in south dakota, about an hour from where we grew up. and on sunday, the community pulled together and held a benefit auction for his family, since they are facing a whole heap of medical bills. i imagine when they planned it, they didn't expect that he would die the day before the event. those organizing the event shared it on a facebook page. all kinds of people and businesses in his community donated items to be auctioned for his benefit and to scroll through the timeline, looking at them is somehow comforting. it was clear that he was well-liked and respected and loved by people around him and by his community. and although i hardly knew him, it brings a little tear to my eyes to see how they rallied around him and his family.

it also gives me pause, because you don't see such things here in denmark, where a community rallies around someone who is ill and comes together to help. mostly because we have universal health care and there wouldn't be any big medical bills piling up around someone who was seriously ill. but i also think that we miss out on a feeling of community spirit that such events bring. there are times when i admit i miss that sense of community here in denmark and when i feel that the society is poorer and more selfish without it.

i suppose like any death, it makes us confront our own mortality and that's what's really giving me pause - someone my own age dying brings it a little closer to home. now don't get me wrong, i don't go around fearing death like a cloud hanging over me. but it does make me think that i should probably do a little bit better with the time i have, because you never know.

the comfort of daily rituals

this is easier to read in person than in the photo.

i found myself thinking this morning about all of the little, everyday rituals that make up a life. things like putting on the kettle to make a morning pot of tea. we are coffee drinkers around here, but we do like our tea in the morning. then, on the weekends, around 11, we have our first cup of coffee - our version of elevensies. with a piece of cake if we have some on hand, but often just a cup of coffee with milk and a speck of cream.

nearly every morning, as i sit down to work at my computer, molly, who is otherwise independent and now spends most nights outdoors, wants in and she wants to spend an hour or so in my lap, on a red-dyed, curly-haired sheepskin pillow. she comes in, smelling of fresh hay and the outdoors, jumps up onto her throne and curls into a ball on my lap, sleeping contentedly. it's one of my favorite parts of my day. when i'm away or have morning meetings, i really miss it.

on sunday mornings, my ritual is to stay in bed with a book and the iPad. propped up with pillows and warm under the duvet, i skim facebook and catch up on blogs (using flipboard) and read the opinion pages of the new york times. husband brings me a cup of tea, so i can stay in the warmth of the bed. there's usually a cat or two there with me, purring contentedly away, enjoying the lazy sunday morning as much as i do.

meanwhile, husband's sunday morning ritual is to make tea and sit on a tall stool in the kitchen, listening to the radio and eating his breakfast. sometimes he runs out to the bakery for fresh bread, sometimes we have some left from dinner the night before. i bake bread 2-3 times a week, but we are lucky to have an awesome bread culture in denmark, with good, freshly-baked bread available even at the gas station.

our usual friday dinner is a ritual as well - i almost always bake fresh bread and make a few different things to put on it - garlic mushrooms, some creamy eggplant, maybe hummus, definitely mojo, possibly roasted peppers. whatevers strikes my fancy, really. a sweet , older lady with a truck full of cheese comes to the town square on friday afternoons and i often pick up a big, creamy round of brie or our new favorite - p'tit basque, a sheep milk cheese from france that's just divine. she also has some hand-churned butter that's out of this world. it feels like a relaxed way to eat dinner at the end of the week and a fitting start to the weekend. i'm not sure exactly when we started it, but it has definitely become a ritual and we take comfort in it.

funny how all of the rituals that came to mind are ultimately related to comfort in some way. i think these are the building blocks of our lives, these small comforts we create for ourselves, to fortify us against the sometimes harsh world. they're where life is really lived.

what daily rituals do you have?

life lessons revisited

three years ago, almost to the day, i did a post on life lessons. on this rainy, grey, early dark (after the time change) afternoon we have going on, with candles glowing on the window ledge above my desk, and a contented cat in my lap, it felt like a good time to revisit the notion and make a new list. which is not to say that i don't stand by the first list, more just that i do love me a list...

~ words matter.

~ to appreciate the sunshine, you need a little rain.

~ time really does fly.

~ moisturizer is really quite important.

~ people will often disappoint you, but you will get over it.

~ it's good to see the place where you live through fresh eyes.

~ you grow more patient as you age.

~ but you also tend to take less crap.

~ you are never too old for glitter nail polish.

~ you are never too old to dress up for halloween.

~ nothing beats a logical argument. but those are few and far between.

~ so much of who your child is is already there in the child. it's up to you to nurture it.

~ everyone is pretending at something.

~ don't ever go to work for a friend.

~ a glass of wine has healing powers.

~ sometimes you just need girl talk (best paired with above-referenced wine).

~ it is possible to do something creative every day.

~ many of life's most satisfying moments happen in the kitchen.

~ spending time alone is good for the soul.

~ chickens are smarter than you think.

~ a good night's sleep will restore you.

~ there is always a good book to read, it's just a matter of finding it.

~ the internet is huge.

~ blogging is cheaper than therapy.

~ sometimes you don't know what you think until you write about it.

~ you're never too old to learn something new.

~ you can learn from your mistakes, but it might take a couple of tries.

~ it's totally normal to listen to the same song over and over again.

and that's my list. for now. play along if you'd like (please let me know, so i can read your list as well). it's surprisingly cathartic.

* * *

you never know who those people are.

friday randomness

little chocolate-colored flowers from the garden on the windowsill. i've been collecting acorn caps every time i go out to the barn as well, to try my hand at lisa's famous felted acorns. i want a more natural look to our christmas tree this year.

i thought the raspberries were finished after we had a couple of frosty nights in recent weeks. but they were most decidedly not finished and the frost seems to have rendered them sweeter and more delicious than ever.

* * *

in the wake of the recent weeks of madness in the US congress, i find myself wondering what passport i will have when the US completely falls apart? will illinois issue passports themselves? or south dakota? or arizona? and what will the requirements be? place you were born? where you last lived? where you hold your driver's license? or will i qualify for asylum in denmark as a stateless person?

* * *

have you seen these fabulous dressed sculptures? they bring hipster to a whole new level.

* * *

i'm missing the child, but she's having a wonderful time in st. petersburg. and thanks to the wonders (and ubiquitousness) of wifi and FaceTime, we've been speaking to her daily. things have most definitely changed since i studied in russia nearly 20 years ago (holy crap, it was nearly 20 years ago!)

* * *

our local scouts hold a big two-day flea market every year at this time and i can't wait 'til the doors open at 2 so i can go to see what treasures are there! photos will most surely follow.

* * *

happy weekend, one and all.

reading out in the corners

i am a frequent borrower at my local library. there's this brilliant service (bibliotek.dk) where you can order books from any library in the country and they send them to your local library. when they come, you get an SMS and then you pick them up and read them. i'm always ordering strange and esoteric things like postmodern theory from the mid-90s, books about early soviet textiles or artists that were popular in the 50s or else the entire collected works of whoever has just won the nobel prize for literature. as one of the librarians said today, "you're really out in the corners."

i laughed when she said it, because it really is true. but of course, i had to think about it afterwards as well. what does it really mean to be out in the corners? i hasten to say that it was said and meant in a kind way and was not at all an insult. we were laughing because very often when i go to check out my reserved books, the self-service machine won't allow me to do it - it always wants some other number or says that the book doesn't exist in the system or some such error. this means i very often have to go to the desk and have someone help me. in this way, i've gotten to know all of the library personnel very well. which is how the "you're really out in the corners" comment came about.

i took it as another way of saying off the beaten path. when i look for my books on the reserved shelves, i see a lot of self-help, how-to books, cookbooks, contemporary crime novels (i do order my share of those at times) and those infernal 50 shades books. those are all on the beaten path, down the middle, ordinary. today i picked up the tom phillips book (he's the artist who did the humument altered book i told you about a few days ago). at the same time i returned slavoj zizek's latest tome, less than nothing: hegel and the shadow of dialetical materialism. i'll admit i only read a couple of chapters of it, not the whole thing. i go for such a book occasionally to exercise my brain (this was, i will say, one of the more lucid zizek since sublime object of ideology) and to remind me of the thrills i found in grad school. but of late, i've also been reading douglas kennedy novels, which aren't exactly lacanian marxism.

which leads me to another aspect of what it might mean to read out in the corners - to read broadly, all over the spectrum, thoroughly in some sense, covering all the bases. i like that idea too. i read a lot and i love reading. i can't go to sleep at night without it. sometimes i want to read to relax. sometimes to think and be challenged. sometimes to help me figure out what my opinion is. sometimes to enlighten. sometimes to learn. sometimes just to be entertained. sometimes to get lost. reading can give you so many different experiences and feelings - the whole spectrum, really. and i guess that's what it really means to be out in the corners.

* * *

how charming are these diving pigs?

ponderings as the holiday winds down

questions i'm currently pondering:

~ will spring ever come?

~ what is the shape of now?

~ what is the feeling of now?

~ what is the look of now?

~ what do i want to be when i grow up?

~ tho' i've read lots of complaints out there about daylight savings time, i still love it. i'd rather have my light at the end of the day, thank you. it cuts back on television time and lets you sleep a bit longer.

~ what will i read next?

~ will i ever really be able to quiet my mind and meditate? (and will it help if i do?)

~ as much as i think the notion of coaching is a snake oil worthy of p.t. barnum (there's a sucker born every minute) or scientology, do i actually need one? or would it be better to just go running?

~ is it ok to be a snob? 

~ is it ok to assess the blame in order to avoid taking on someone else's bullshit? (husband says yes and i'm inclined to believe him.)

~ how can i introduce play into my everyday? and is there a way make a living doing so? (without involving too many children.)

~ i need more happenings in my life. and pop-up shops. and restaurants. and quality coffee. and organic veggies.

~ how can i be a better friend to me?

~ when will i stop using that essie nail polish that destroys my nails?

~ do you think you are drawn to the things you need, just when you need them?

~ where is the outrage in the danes over the coming teacher lock-out? (it starts tuesday and will last indefinitely.) and what do people do who don't have a child old enough to be left home alone in front of the internet with her iMac?

~ why don't people don't write letters like this anymore?

What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study, will…. Every hour is precious for it…. Come to us, smash the vodka bottle, lie down and read…. Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.

that's not quite true, i have read turgenev. and my bottle of choice is gin.

but of course, chekhov wasn't writing to me.

* * *

how fabulous does this version of alice in wonderland look?

with art by yayoi kusama.

circles are everywhere, i tell you. everywhere. it's the shape of now.

capturing moments in time

you may have noticed that i gave up on the small stones thing. it didn't feel like me. my noticing moments in my daily life are the photos i take. i've trained myself carefully and dutifully in that for four years, so i'm just going to go with it.

the other reason i'm abandoning the project is that i'm reading another david whyte book. the three marriages. it's essentially a book of deep philosophical self-help and to underline his ideas, he uses a lot of poetry. he quoted a long section of wordsworth. a poem in which wordsworth documents a walk and a spiritual awakening of sorts. and i'll admit it made the small stone thing seem a little hollow and empty. here's the wordsworth:

The Prelude

Two miles I had to walk along the fields
Before I reached my home. Magnificent
The morning was, a memorable pomp,
More glorious than I ever had beheld,
The sea was laughing at a distance; all
The solid mountains were as bright as clouds,
Grain tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn,
Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,
And Labourers going forth into the fields.
Ah! need I say, dear Friend, but to the brim
My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated Spirit. On I walk'd
In blessedness, which even yet remains.

tell me, what do you think?

somehow wordsworth manages to capture a moment in time and preserve it in poetry - far more powerfully than any small stone.

more about the whyte book soon. i'm only about 1/3 of the way through.

~~~

whoa, some seriously creative textile art going on here (scroll down for the hair nest).

still pondering those photos from the crimean war

no. 1

no. 2

i went on a frenzy today and switched around our living room (read: room where we watch television) with our dining room (read: room where we never sat to eat dinner because we were too busy watching television). in the process, i messed up my thumb in a badly-installed door (grr to those people we bought the house from - i'm still bitter towards them) and dropped the extremely heavy and two-meter long unwieldy dining table on my foot (hello giant bruise). but after several hours of swearing, vacuuming and sweating more than i'd like to admit, the result was that we ate our cheese soufflé and simple salad at the actual dining table and then stayed there for and hour and a half, as a family, talking and drawing and laughing. wow, what a difference it made!

during our discussion i showed husband the two roger fenton photos from the crimean war. and interestingly, husband had an entirely new perspective on them, one not mentioned in the errol morris book (which i love even more now after chapter 4 - about the FSA photos taken by walker evans and others during the depression...more about that soon). and one definitely not mentioned by susan sontag in her take on the photos.

husband looked at them as a soldier and an officer. i told him there was controversy over the sequence of the photos. it was known that that were taken on the same day during the same shoot, but that the interpretations of the meaning of them were different depending on which one you thought was taken first.  you also recall that i didn't tell you what morris' conclusion was (i still think you must get the book - via your library, i'm not advocating consumerism (tho' i want to own this book now)).

husband's take is that no. 2 is first, because it represents a "before" shot - tho' after a barrage of shelling by the russians. before in the sense of before the road was cleared for the soldiers to pass with their wagons and horses and continue the war. no. 1 comes after it was cleared.

what do you think?

authenticity in photography

i picked this book up from the library yesterday (i've been waiting for it for ages). i sat down with it and didn't put it down again until the end of chapter 2 - the television remained off and dinner was leftovers warmed in the oven. i was riveted.

chapter 1 is an exploration and analysis of two photographs taken by roger fenton (famed as the first photographer of war) in 1855 in the crimea - valley of the shadow of death is the name of the photo. there are actually two versions - one with cannonballs strewn on the road and one without. the controversy is whether fenton staged the shot for dramatic effect by spreading out the cannonballs (as susan sontag suggested in her last book regarding the pain of others) or whether the cannonball shot was taken first and then they were picked up and recycled by the british soldiers.

here are the photos in question (i found them here):

without cannonballs on the road

with cannonballs on the road

morris goes through a fascinating journey (literally traveling to the crimea to find the spot where the photo was taken) and a compelling analysis of whether it matters which shot came first and why it seems to be so important to us, as humans, to assign meaning. after all, posing a shot isn't necessarily a deception, but why do we have an impulse in us to think it is?

and simply as a photo, there is definitely more drama in the shot with the cannonballs on the road and in my google image search to find the shots for this post, it is by far the more reproduced of the two shots. was it a decision made by the photographer for the sake of drama? or a coincidence that he came upon such a scene? what are the implications of trying to capture war in photos? (or in words, as he quotes tolstoy's sebastopol sketches as well (my favorite tolstoy, if i have to like something of his)).

as morris concludes, "...is it unnatural to have people move cannonballs? Or inauthentic? Aren't these photographs of human events--even if there are no people in the frame. They are photographs about war. The effects of war. Is war itself natural or authentic? The concepts of naturalness, authenticity, and posing are all slippery slopes that when carefully examined become hopelessly vague."

after subjecting the photos to extensive analysis (shadows, light, etc.), he does make a conclusion as to which photo came first. but rather than tell you what that conclusion is, i'll insist that you get this book from your local library (i'll bet you won't be able to restrain from writing in it either) and read it for yourself.

do come back and tell me what you think - i think the question at the heart of it is one of authenticity, something i think we're all desperately searching for in what seems like a world gone mad (which is probably why this book speaks to me so strongly).

i want to continue this conversation.