finding joy in the small things when the world seems to be falling apart

it's been a lot lately. the land of my birth is busily being dismantled by a tyrannical minority, against the will of around 70% of the population. and it feels like there's nothing that can be done about it. apparently we weren't paying proper attention for the past 50 years. or we weren't willing to do something about it because we didn't really believe they would be that backwards or that evil. but they are. and then some. and it's very disheartening. i find it very difficult to listen to it. mostly, i feel shame. being american is embarrassing again. i remember when obama was elected, i rejoiced that i wouldn't have to hide my passport while i was in an airport line anymore, but alas, i need to hide it more than ever. or finally get that other passport. it's definitely time.

i find myself looking for around me at the little things to be able to find some joy, despite how disheartening and humiliating it all is. things like the baby chickens our chickens hatched out and which two hens are very dutifully tending (though only one of the hens is in this photo).

or our very cute, but very fraidy indian running ducks, who stay, as husband puts it, in an organized clump and have the cutest penguin-like walk.

or the four-leaf clover i spotted as i sat in the garden the other day.

or the daily walks i've been taking during most of june to keep a new back problem at bay and to spend some time in my body as well as my head while listening to the cozy daisy dalrymple mysteries. 

or enjoying a really good cup of coffee in my favorite handmade ceramic mug. and the fact that my peonies are blooming.

it helps me feel less helpless. i can have an effect on things. i can pull those weeds in the garden and tend to the plants, i can feed the kitties and spend time with them in a favorite corner of the garden. i can do interesting work with interesting people. i can look forward to my child coming home in a week or so. i can put new sheets on the bed and snuggle into them at night. i can take a long walk. i can have long, deep conversations with husband. i can invite friends over and enjoy spending time with them.  i can sit in the chair i recovered with handwoven fabric and have the privilege of working from home and making a good living. and i can vote. for now, voting matters and is something concrete that i can and will do. it's clearer now than ever that it's important, so let's remember this horrible time and get our asses to the polls come november. our lives and the freedom to live them on equal footing with all those old white men might very well depend on it. 

we'll always have paris

my throat is raw. i was walking across paris, back to my hotel in the 6th arrondissement, from the eiffel tower, talking to my mother, who finally actually answered the phone after weeks of trying her and never getting her. mom started in on how it was good that hillary didn't win the election because she had received a letter from her, in which hillary threatened to take away my mother's right to be a good christian. she went on to say that it was because hillary had spent too much time with barack obama, so she had become evil. and i was outraged. i screamed at her that those were fucking outrageous lies and she should stop saying them. and she said she sure wished she hadn't thrown it away, because she'd show me that it was true. and i screamed some more about outrageous lies and that it must have been the first piece of mail she'd thrown away in years, which seemed ironic. (not to mention, who sends these things?) and i was shaking so badly, i almost had to sit down right there on a paris street. and i thought, "this is it, this is the last conversation i will ever have with my mother and i always remember that it took place in paris." and i didn't know whether to be jubilant or devastated. life is like that right now. emotions run so close to the surface it's hard to grab onto what you really feel. and i was a little surprised at the heat of my own reaction. my throat is so sore - i must have really screamed. and then i calmed down and mom admitted that she didn't like trump either and that she didn't want to vote for either of them. but she didn't remember who she had voted for, but she did vote early. and she would have to ask her friend who she voted for. i asked her to lie to me if it was trump and she said, cheerfully, and perhaps a bit too readily, "i can do that."

and we ended up ok and she said, "i love you, honey" before we hung up and i said, "i wuv," which is our family way of ducking the real words.

and i have to wonder if my yelling at her didn't scare her lucid, for just a few minutes. because she seemed ok after i did it. and i told her that i was sure that dad would be rolling over in his grave if he knew what she said about hillary and obama. and i almost hung up. and i thought for a minute that she hung up on me. and i was shaking in anger, throat raw, heart pounding, livid.

and now this is what i have imprinted on my first trip to paris. and i don't know what i think about that.  but my throat sure is sore.

inexplicable

i'm still numb. i keep hoping every morning when i wake up, that it was just a bad dream. but apparently it's not, tho' it continues to spiral downward and seem increasingly like a nightmare. and unfortunately, it's increasingly evident that we can't wake up from it. i spent last wednesday curled up in bed with the gilmore girls on netflix and a cuddly cat. it didn't help that much. i spent most of the day in tears. i cried until i had no tears left. and then i cried some more when i imagined how hillary must feel. it must be simply unbearable for her if it was this unbearable for me.

i've unsubscribed to a drove of the pundit podcasts i was listening to, as they self-servingly spurn hillary now that she's lost the electoral college (remember, she resoundingly won the popular vote) and open the door for the withered kumquat, giving him a chance he so richly does not deserve. i haven't been able to watch hillary's concession speech. and i turn away from anything the cheeto is saying as well. i. just. can't.

of course, every lunch conversation is about the election. everyone i meet offers their condolences. a friend even sent her husband over with two bottles of wine to make me feel better. i feel i am grieving. but then i realized that my overwhelming feeling (in addition to grief) is embarrassment. i feel mortified that the country of my birth chose this damaged, sociopathic, racist, sexual harassing narcissist to follow the very classy, intelligent obama. it's quite humiliating to have to answer for it to level-headed europeans who remember history all too well. i can't. i don't understand it myself, so how can i possibly explain it?

in which i say fuck. a lot. and it's totally necessary

ok, US airlines can fuckity fuck fuck off for not letting young people who are 15 fly somewhere alone, not even for outrageous unaccompanied minor fees, if they have to change planes. how infantile are american young people? and how worrying is that for the future of the whole fucking world?

and you, allegiant airlines, with your incredibly bad reputation, but direct flights from one obscure airport to another (i'm looking at you FSD), blocking access to your website from outside the US. fuck you and your americentric ways.

and donald trump, you disgusting, vile, cheeto toned troglodyte. fuck off. you and all your deplorable, uneducated, toothless mouth-breathing followers. most of whom live in my hometown. fuck. the. hell. off.

and teachers who have their heads so far up their asses, they can't see daylight. and who threaten my child with scissors. and who try to blow sunshine up my ass and do fuck-all to actually help the young people who are in your class. and who have the limited world view of a troglodyte. fuck you. and the periodic table you rode in on. i bet you don't even speak a second language. other than fargoese, which, while incomprehensible, isn't actually another language.

rant over...but i'm not sorry for the swearing.

taking comfort in kittens

after a wonderfully hectic week last week, involving being onboard four different ships and some very late nights, i've succumbed to a summer cold. the weather has deteriorated from glorious summer sunshine to dreary rain in tempo with my health. i have the comfort of kittens. and what a comfort they are. i'm utterly depressed and rendered speechless by the latest shooting in orlando and the vitriol of the fundamentalists and bigots of the world (all of whom seem to be filling my facebook feed). not even instagram was safe ground as my own nephew shared a worryingly pro-gun, pro-trump post. i wonder if he even knows what he's saying? or if he's parroting the society around him? it's all too depressing, so i retreat to the comfort of kittens and cups of tea and chicken soup with kale from the garden. and i wish that it would all go away - the terror, the bigotry, the hatred, the guns, the rain and this cold.

where are all of the dannede people?

danish has this great word, dannelse. google translate tells me it's formation in english, but it's more than that. it's a combination of education (the danish word for that being uddannelse), being widely read (at least partly in philosophy), having travel experience (slow travel of the kind favored in another age) and displaying good table manners. kirkegaard was a dannede man. erudite, gracious and a deep thinker.

the dannede person is capable of synthesizing complex thoughts and having a coherent overview of complex situations, further s/he is able to articulate real arguments with a basis in logical thinking.  s/he dresses well and can equally well dine with royals or with a table full of smoking intellectuals at the algonquin. s/he probably writes - essays, novels, fairytales, poetry or perhaps even the constitution. s/he commands respect because when s/he says something, it's thought-through and erudite.

we are sorely lacking such people in the world today. and i'm not sure how it happened. husband's theory is that it all went sorely wrong when the masses got money. once we no longer needed to be particularly educated in order to succeed financially, people stopped seeking education. eventually these people, who lack any basic training in how to form logical arguments and systematic ways of thinking about the problems facing the world, end up in places like the congress of the united states. and it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

they have a lack of respect for the principles of a democratic process they don't understand - instead behaving like naughty children who throw a temper tantrum and stand and stomp their feet when they don't get their way. they don't understand the bigger picture or the tradition into which they've fallen - that when a bill is passed by a majority and signed into law, you cannot later tack it onto some other bill which has nothing to do with it and hold a whole country hostage. that's not how democracy works.

what seems to be the saddest part of the kindergarten that is now the american house of representatives (and i'm being sorely unfair to kindergartens here) is that there doesn't seem to be any adult supervisors. i have read time and again over the past week that this is a handful of extremists with a new and decidedly not dannede stranglehold on the repugnant party. there was a time when there were smart republicans out there, but they seem to be curiously powerless and silent and not doing a damn thing to rein these clowns in.

how on earth can the united states go around the world, forcing democracy down on the heads of afghanis and iraqis when they can't even get their heads around how it works at home?

i shake my head and feel grateful to be observing it from afar.

* * *

please help gwen get stories to her students.

we won't solve the world's problems on a monday morning

the longer i live outside the country of my birth, the less american i get. it stands to reason. we are most affected by the environment in which we find ourselves. for me, this means that i have become more egalitarian (what? a differentiation in the car taxes by area (200% instead of 150%) to help with traffic congestion in cities? no way, car taxes must be the same for all), i have better taste, i am less likely to talk to strangers or say "excuse me," and i think that famous people should be allowed to get on with living their lives unmolested (winona, you did NOT just take a hit on that 17 when the dealer has a 6 up).

generally, i trust the integrity of the media where i live, find the healthcare system to be modern and accessible (even if they're not the most service-minded folks ever), and while politicians are a bit idealess, they're generally not corrupt (i mean, what's a little fudging your taxes among friends).  all of this contributes to my today having generally logically-reasoned, balanced, non-conspiracy theoretical opinions about the events of the world. and for that i blame credit denmark (and husband, all those holes he digs aside, that boy is good for me).

so it's quite interesting to encounter someone who makes wild leaps of reason in the course of an otherwise quite normal and reasonable discussion. for example, that michelle obama hates america. this reasoned from a comment that she made about having never been more proud of america before whatever day she made the speech. conclusion: since she'd never been proud of america before, she must hate it. really? i don't know the context of her comment (and neither did the person making the conclusion), but it seems pretty innocuous to me. and context would seem to be completely necessary to drawing any untoward conclusions. but my impression of clips i see of current american media is that context is irrelevant. and the person making this statement (possibly parroted from something former miss america (obviously makes her an authority on the level of affection for america) gretchen carlson said on fox "news") didn't question that at all. he had just ingested and then passed along the venom.

i really don't understand the venom towards obama. while i grant that he has not lived up to the promise and hope i felt in november 2008 as i bought a huge ring to commemorate his election and for the first time in 8 years didn't conceal my passport in line as i went through passport control, he has done what he can. i simply can't fathom why, when millions and millions have no health insurance anyone would be against obamacare. i'm still reeling a little a bit from a bloggy friend who asked me if it wasn't just horrible for the poor insurance companies? really? you can't be serious.

it strikes me that people's memories are short - does no one recall the mess he was handed by bush, an illegitimate president, bent only on being elected to get the approval of his father? when bush took office, there was a budget surplus.  after two wars that have accomplished little as far as i can see there is now billions in crippling deficits. bush's cronies dismantled the last of the regulation keeping the financial sector in check and i think it's quite obvious to everyone that's been a disaster of global proportions. these are the things that obama was handed to deal with. and no mere mortal could solve these problems overnight.

it's problematic in general that the people who might be the very best for a job like president of the united states or even prime minister of denmark aren't the ones running. it's problematic that we seldom have access to the real person behind the power - they are so spun and fluffed and polished that i don't think we have any idea who they really are and what they stand for, other than remaining in power. but, we've got to keep cool heads and draw logical conclusions and then vote accordingly. michelle obama doesn't hate america. to say so is ludicrous.  and makes me a little bit more inclined to start hiding my passport again when i'm in line for passport control.

things i hate

things i hate:

~ sleeping badly.
~ feeling incompetent.
~ not being instantly good at everything.
~ feeling frustrated.
~ feeling made fun of.
~ asking for help when i should be able to figure it out myself.
~ being dismissed when i actually do finally ask for help.
~ ten years of cultural oppression by a cold and closed culture that's not my own and which is prone to dismissing anyone who is not family or someone they met when they went to kindergarten together.

when these things happen all at once, watch out.

and i decided january 1 that i wasn't going to be quiet about it anymore when i felt dismissed and negated as a human being by this culture in which i live. and so it wasn't that pretty this evening when all of these things happened at once.

i was having trouble with a simple task at weaving and after trying on my own for ten minutes, i finally asked for help from one of my fellow students. it was actually a really simple task and all i needed was about 10 seconds of help, just to get me started. the person i asked totally waved her arms and dismissed me so she could continue her endless stream of chat standing at someone else's loom and then as i walked away, muttered something under her breath about me. and i can tell you that it made me very angry. and i can tell you that she and everyone else present now know how angry it made me.

and i can also tell you that i'm not sorry. treating people as if they are invisible or stupid just because they're not native speakers of your language is not cool. is. not. cool. and i won't enable you do it to me anymore.

please note that i am not at all complaining about my weaving teacher, he's amazing and helpful and kind and patient. this was a fellow student who did this, and it's her and only her i'm complaining about. :-) just for the record.