wine and clinton make everything better

my breakfast - doesn't really have anything to do with the post, i just thought it looked pretty.

i've mentioned it before, but i just want to say that it's really true that if you come yourself with positive energy, it can have an enormous effect on a situation and your experience with other people. i am also fully aware that this is easier said than done.

last night, i was dreading my meeting after my previous encounter with the troglodyte at the helm of the group. i had tried to speak to him a week later at another meeting and his response to my saying that i found his name-calling unacceptable and would appreciate that he refrain in the future was "kom an" or "bring it on."(hence my blatant calling him a troglodyte - i figure if it's ok for him to call me names, i can do it too.)  i will admit i was quite in despair that anything would ever get better. but i reminded myself that i had as much right to be part of the group as he did and that i wouldn't let my fear of his bad behavior keep me from showing up and contributing.

and then i had a glass of wine.

and i watched the daily show. and it was the one from last week, where my boyfriend jon stewart talked about my boyfriend clinton's speech at the DNC. and it put me in a positively euphoric mood. and although it made me a few minutes late for the meeting (i couldn't leave jon and clinton alone here at my house when they had been so kind as to come by), it changed everything.

my positive energy filled the room and affected some of the others as well - bowled them over a little bit, actually. and we had a great meeting wherein a lot of people had their say and expressed opinions similar to mine about how we need to involve the community to get buy-in for the project. and the troglodyte sat at the head of the table, sour puss expression on his face, and his energy was no longer allowed to pervade the group, because it had been replaced with positive energy. i won't even say my energy, because mine only started it and then it snowballed and became the positive energy of everyone in the room.

so the lesson here: a little alcohol and politics really can change the world.

or at least my little corner of it.

~  *  ~

i know that it's september 11, but i really can't join in the memorial cavalcade of posts. tho' that day changed the whole world and we are still reeling from the repercussions, it feels quite remote and in some sense always has. because it did happen at a physical distance from me in my safe, comfy life in denmark. and i didn't know anyone who was involved or injured or killed there that day. i've never even been in new york. which isn't to say that i don't, in my own way, mourn the tragedy of those lost lives, it's just that it was and remains somehow very far away from me.

the evening it happened, we drifted, together with friends, to the american embassy, where others had also gathered in some unspoken agreement and we stood there together in stunned silence, many of us holding candles. someone began to sing a haunting song (i don't remember which one) a capella. it was a welling up of solidarity that came naturally as a response to the tragedy.  sadly, looking at the world, i'd say it's dissipated greatly today. so that's all i have to say about september 11.

a world worth living in

september 11. all over the world, people are marking the tenth anniversary. i say marking because celebrating, that word we normally associate with anniversaries, isn't the right word, is it? like many, watching all of these programs and listening to the radio (which is mostly what i did, because i was driving across the country today), gave me pause to remember where i was and what i was doing when i heard about what was happening to the world trade center on that day ten years ago.

i was, just as i did today, driving. that day, i was listening to de sorte spejder, an afternoon radio program that was normally very funny in a biting, ironic way. so when i heard anders and anders talking about a plane crashing into the world trade center in NYC, i initially thought they were playing an elaborate radio joke. then, there was a second plane, and i thought hmm, they're carrying this one on a little farther than usual. i think initially i imagined a small private plane, piloted by a near-sighted, lost midwesterner, but when there were two and then they began talking about the pentagon too, i thought ok guys, this is a radio joke taken too far. but then i arrived to pick up sabin from her daycare and found out it wasn't a joke at all. but far from it.

i don't think any of us could have imagined how that event would change the world. there has been a shift in mentality worldwide. we are more wary, less open to strangers, more insular and protecting of ourselves. we put up with the most absurd things at airport security - removing half our clothes just to enter the airport. we're simply much more afraid. our innocence is lost.

tho' they say it's the most analyzed event in history, i'm still uncertain that we learned the right lessons from it. i certainly don't feel that the lessons we learned have made the world a better or safer place. in fact, i'm a little concerned that the crumbling of those towers started a crumbling of the world as we know it and we haven't yet seen the end of that crumble, let alone started to rebuild it.

so when on the eve of september 11, i saw the sign above on the side of a building in copenhagen, advertising an exhibition about what makes a city worth living in, i started thinking about what constitutes a world worth living in. i think that many of us are in a process of rethinking that.

i'm still thinking about it and don't have any final answers, but i have some ideas. they have to do with performing meaningful work for which i can see the results (and which do not involve selling my soul). they have to do with being closer to and more in tune with nature. they have to do with consuming less. increasingly, i also think that the key is more openness and less expectations. i think achieving these things is a process and doesn't happen all at once. maybe the events of september 11 started us on this path, or maybe it would have happened anyway.