if no one is listening...

there's so much to say...and it's strangely quiet in the interwebs today, and i have to admit i find the notion that no one is listening or reading quite delicious and very freeing. the notion of an audience is a both a wonderful thing and a bit of a ball and chain. you can't help but censor yourself at times.

but what would you write about if no one was reading?

how you wish those people you grew up with would stop trying to connect with you on facebook? there's a reason you moved away.

or would you write about your ex- and why you wanted out?

or would you express your innermost fears?

would you expose your insecurities?

or would you brag?

or would you expose with a link those saccharine sweet fakers that you can't stand?

would you say that those pictures aren't in focus.

and those haikus are crap.

and that that poetry is 8th grade level at best?

would you say that you refuse to buy isreali products until they're nice to the palestianians?

would you say you think that if ships really don't want to be captured by pirates, they should stay out of the gulf of aden?

would you expose your worries about the polar ice caps melting?

or the next US presidential election?

what would you write if no one was listening. if only just to get it out of your system?

interviews starting to go up

a couple of my interviewees have already posted their answers (and there are still two who i have yet to send questions to...but i will do it, never fear!), so i thought i'd provide links so you can see what they had to say...

mary at the eleventh
lynne at wheatlands news
hele at truth cycles

i have to say that i have a little performance anxiety writing these questions. it's like one of those genie in a bottle/3 wishes kind of things...you have only the one chance to get the questions right! i've tried to ask some serious, but one frivolous question of each person. except lynne, i think all of hers were serious. this is why two people haven't yet got their questions. one is the fabulous tangobaby, about whom i have an extreme case of performance anxiety! yikes! i promise i'll get them off to you later this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.  at the same time as i have performance anxiety, i've also had a lot of fun coming up the questions..rereading blogs and thinking of things i've wondered about. the blogosphere is so wonderful, don't you think?

but now, i'm off to play cards and make dinner with friends.

interview with a...well, not a vampire, but more of a small town american girl in europe

i've recently discovered a blog called willow manor. and i'm playing along on a fun little interview game that willow has going on, here are the rules (there are always rules):

willow says:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me." check.

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions). check.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.  see below.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. check.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. please comment below and i'll ask you five questions and we can keep the interview chain going!

and the questions that willow asked, not in the order that she asked them, but you'll see why in a minute:

2. You mentioned in one of your recent posts about a Fulbright Scholarship. Tell us about it.  

arizona state university was (in the mid 90s) year after year playboy magazine's #1 party school (perhaps it still is, i've lost track). i was there, doing a master's and they were eager to shed their party school image, so their scholarship office went on a campaign to help their students get fulbright and NSEP scholarships in order to raise their perceived academic standing. seven of us won fulbrights that year. i pitched a project to study macedonian literature in, you guessed it, macedonia. a couple of months in, i found out it didn't exist (difficult to create a viable national literature when your language was codified in a political move in 1945), so i was hanging out in the balkans. 

1. How did you come to live in Denmark?

"there among the concrete slabs, great love was born." --monica b., skopje, macedonia, sometime in august, 1997. 

along the way, in the ex-pat community in macedonia, i met a wonderful (and very cute) danish boy who was there with peacekeeping troops. at the time, there were two battalions there--a US and a nordic, the nordic consisted mostly of finns, but there was a single dane, a single swede and a single norwegian. since my danish boy was in the army as a career officer and i was a graduate student, it was logical that i came to him, tho' at the time, i was a snob for eastern europe and used to proclaim that i didn't DO western europe. however, suddenly you find that more than ten years have gone by and you find yourself with a house and a child and friends and a career and, well, a life, and you live in denmark, which you never imagined you'd do, growing up in a small town in south dakota.

3. If you had to choose one spot in the world to live, where would it be?

cape town, south africa. i've been there twice on business and fell madly in love with the natural beauty of the winelands and the cape. tho' i could also easily live in manila. i love the philippines and find filipinos so friendly and warm. but i'm supposed to choose only one, so i'll say cape town.

4. Apart from your loved ones, what is your most treasured possession?

these days, it would seem to be my camera, but probably, it's our home. we built on in 2008 and it's really great now, exactly as we wanted it. we not only built on, but built a number of smaller buildings in the garden...one for me, one for husband, a fantastic a-frame greenhouse and a sauna. and our home is filled with us and our life together...things we've collected on our travels, our memories, our laughter. it's definitely a most treasured possession.

5. Before blogging, what, if any, was your main mode of personal expression?

my small black moleskine full of "to do" lists that i still carry wherever i go. it's full of everything from travel impressions to lists to small sketches to snippets of song lyrics to clever or funny quotes said by people i've encountered.  people who know me well are always trying to get a quote into my book. and in my last job, people were a little afraid of my "little black book." once one is filled, i save them, because i feel like half my brain is in there.

* * *

so, now it's your turn, if you'd like me to interview you,  asking five questions of my choosing, please leave a comment below and let's keep this ball rolling. this is gonna be fun!

night owl

maybe i'm obsessed with all things owl-y of late because i am a night owl. i love staying up late. and i am currently staying up late. it's now past 1 a.m. of course to my brain, it's only 7, so i'm not sure it counts...but anyway, back to my point. i LIKE staying up late. but it naturally follows that i don't like waking up early. and i do have to wake up early tomorrow, so it's actually pretty dumb to be up late like this...

being up late can make you start to think about strange things, like:

• why are there two belts on this hotel bathrobe?
• why did they put that stupid (invisible) plastic cover over the glass so that i just poured water all over the hotel bathrobe with the two belts?
• aren't i lucky there's an emergency backup (dry) robe in the closet?
• why do i feel compelled to share this with the world?
• why am i so silly when i haven't even been drinking?
• perhaps i should have been drinking.
• i must have the coolest sister in the world because she just sent me an iPod Touch (right when i was about to go back and buy one tomorrow after i looked up the exchange rate).
• why did i bawl my eyes out on the plane while watching the bucket list when i am actually quite opposed to sentimentality?
• why can't i ever remember morgan freeman's name? i always think it's graham-something.
• why am i not sleeping?
• should i get a nikon or a canon?
• it's not environmentally correct to drink bottled water, but what if the tap water makes me sick?
• that was a delicous lobster and mango salad i had for dinner.
• i wonder if those fish in the tanks at the restaurant were decor or dinner?
• i wonder how i'll get along without a kitchen sink when i get home, since husband has torn it out in my absence.
• ditto the stove.
• maybe now is the right time to start a raw diet.
• can you appear to be normal in public and still eat a raw diet?
• why do they make erasers shaped like sushi?

perhaps i should go to sleep now and spare us all this jetlagged chatter...