dad's birthday

today would have been dad's 88th birthday. in this picture, he looks remarkably like jonathan franzen. i wonder if that's why i've always liked jonathan franzen. i look at this picture and i find myself wondering who he was then? it must be from the late 70s, as i know it's from our house in town. i was probably 10, which would have made him 44. who was he at 44? he was in the state legislature. he owned and operated a weekly newspaper. he golfed with his buddies on wednesdays. he was a husband and a dad of two daughters. but who WAS he really? can we ever really KNOW our parents? we see them so differently from our child's perspective. can we ever access who they were? 

it's a weird thing to ponder, because at the same time as we have no idea, who we are is so utterly formed by them. what do i remember of those days? i remember that making him laugh was the goal. that was always the goal. i definitely still do that today, sometimes to my detriment, as always going for the laugh isn't always appropriate. but i still have a deep need to do so. 

i find it hard to go back to the child me, to remember what i thought and how i saw my dad. 

but today, on his birthday, i miss him. i think i write this every year, but i would so much love to talk to him about the state of the world - about trumpty dumpty and climate change and roe v. wade and the rest of it. i don't think he was one to make it all ok for me, but his perspective would always make me think about it in a different way and well, despair less. i miss him. a little bit every day, but especially on his birthday.

5-4-3-2-1 method

still reading and rereading that nytimes piece on being kind to yourself.  i haven't been particularly kind to myself of late, so i'm eager to figure out how to do so. according to the article, there's a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method, which involves naming five things you can see in a room, four things you can hear in the room, three things you can touch or feel, two things you can smell and one good quality about yourself. so here goes...

5 - starbucks cups full of colorful sharpies, my cameras, a flock of unikitties, original art by people whose work i love, a photo of my father-in-law beside a drawing of him that husband did at age 9
4 - it's nearly 2 a.m., so i can hear husband snoring, my own fingers on the keyboard, my ears ringing and silence
3 - i can feel the touch of my fingers on the keyboard, the scratchiness of the wool fabric on the chair and the softness of the lambs wool pelt that's also on my chair
2 - i can smell the fragrance of the shampoo i just used in my shower and if i'm honest, the nagging odor of a litterbox that needs to be changed
1 - i am self-reflective, even if i don't always give myself the right message.

inside of ourselves

"you never know how inside of themselves people are." i read that long ago in a barbara kingsolver novel and it's stuck with me ever since. in any given situation, you don't really know where people are coming from. maybe they've had a completely shit week. maybe it's been awesome. maybe it's been both - up and down, like any other week. maybe they've just learned they have a terminal illness. maybe their father just died. maybe their mother with alzheimer's just failed to recognize them for the first time. maybe they just lost their job. maybe they just got a new one. maybe they just learned they're pregnant. or perhaps they miscarried. maybe they're tired or have a toothache. maybe they feel lonely or sad or joyful. you just don't know. maybe the path ahead of them seems clear. or perhaps it's obscured and murky. maybe they're relieved the sun is finally shining after too many days of rain. maybe their awesome boss just quit. maybe they feel like they're in limbo. perhaps they're caught up in needless office politics. what if they have a need to be right? to be comforted? to be understood? what if they feel bewildered and alone and cast adrift? what if they are newly in love and their stomach is full of butterflies? you just don't know. you can never really know. and quite possibly they'll never really be able to tell you. but maybe what they most need from you is that you see them - really see them. no matter how inside of themselves they are.

to be or not to be (danish)

a friend on facebook shared an interesting article yesterday. it's an interview with a german journalist who has lived in denmark for 15 years, is married to a dane and is raising danish-german children. unfortunately for most of my readers, it's in danish. but, i'll tell you the gist of it. the rhetoric in today's denmark is much like that in the uk, which recently precipitated their brexit vote - anti-immigration, anti-foreigner. when i came to denmark 18 years ago, it was easier, today, you have to put an obscene amount of money in a bank account and pass a high level danish test to achieve permanent residence. in my day, you married a dane, met up once a year at the immigration office for two years and then after three years, you were a permanent resident. in those days, there was talk of integration, not assimilation. that's all changed. the danish justice minister recently said that anyone coming here should "adopt danishness," with the implication that our original cultures should be obliterated and we should just give ourselves over to being danish (he's a bit thin on what exactly that entails, but it has something to do with paying taxes, eating pork and thinking christmas is december 24).

and like marc-christoph wagner, the german in the article, i think "no way!" i am, in many ways, less american than i once was, in the sense of being less loud, outgoing and open to talking to strangers. but where i was raised is imprinted in me in ways that i can never change. i just have to hear a cars song and i am transported to teenage summer nights, driving around with friends, singing along, the radio glowing green in the wide front seat of the car, windows open. talking about everything and nothing. sometimes all it takes is a scent to touch something deep inside me, triggering a flood of memories and a sense of who i was and where i grew up. while i have memories and songs and scents from denmark that do that for me as well after all these years, i can never and never want to, be free of the ones that stem from the culture where i grew up. to want to take that away and replace it with pork rinds and thinking that christmas is the 24th would be to try to erase who i am. not to mention that i don't even think it's possible.

i was thinking the other day, as i biked 16km across copenhagen (the stuff of another blog post), that denmark has changed a lot in the 18 years i've been here. when i came, people were more open, more prone to public nudity (sprawling out in their underwear in the parks and cemeteries at the first rays of sunshine), more rebellious (they had the highest percentage of women smokers in the developed world). it was ok to be proud of what you did for a living, whether you worked in an office or on an assembly line. that's all changed. now it's scandalous to go topless on a beach, men are hardly allowed to work in kindergartens for fear that if they hugged a crying child to comfort them, they would be seen as pedophiles. and everyone wants a career and not just a job. and there's a big rise in nationalist rhetoric and xenophobia. a few months ago, it was perfectly ok to stand on an overpass and spit down on the refugees as they come in, as some danes did down at the border with germany.

i realize it's not just denmark. it seems that the zeitgeist of the moment is right wing extremist madness. those with less education and less money are frightened and pressured all over the world and they are speaking out with their bigoted viewpoints and votes. it's what caused the brexit vote and the rise of a clown like donald trump. and it's why even politicians who once seemed sensible are saying increasingly awful things in the interest of remaining in power.

and as usual, i find myself out in the middle of the atlantic, wanting to feel neither danish nor american.

a new happiness wardrobe or is it the happiness of a new wardrobe?

i did not buy all these dresses, but i wanted to. i do have some restraint. but at the same time, i am working in the more dressed-up world of shipping again and i needed some new work clothes. my old shipping wardrobe had been hanging in the closet for ages and was pretty out-of-date and just didn't feel like me anymore. i'm a different person now than i was then. and this person needed some new clothes.

i've been drawn to navy blue for awhile now, i think it's since i picked navy blue glasses about a year go. slowly, i've added blue items to my wardrobe. today, i went in to my current favorite store (COS, which is H&M's answer to banana republic) to have them remove the anti-theft device they forgot to remove from a necklace i bought the last time and there were new styles in the store. and frankly, i couldn't resist them. black isn't far from navy blue, but everyone needs a good little black dress and the cut of this dress? swoon! and to push myself out of the blue rut, i grabbed the mustard dress (those pockets are dark blue in reality, tho' they look black in this instagram photo, so there's still a bit of navy) and made myself try it. it didn't look like much on the hanger, but i fell in love with it. i didn't fall in love with the one in the middle, so it stayed in the store, but i did like the burgundy, pink and navy combo.

i think best of all, i realize in looking at these photos, snapped in a dressing room mirror, that i look happy again. and feel worthy of pretty new clothes. it's been far too long since that happened. i think it might have something to do with all those ships.

museums :: the new selfie central

the wonderful louisiana museum of modern art is open 'til 10 p.m. on week nights. so, after work today, i decided to pop up there and see the kusama exhibition that's on at the moment. polka dot explosion and precisely what i needed after starting my day with a rather nasty email from that infamous deficit person i've mentioned before (more fodder for that novel that i need to get to writing). kusama and a solitary, but not lonely, dinner at the museum was precisely what i needed to shake it off.

in the kusama exhibition, there are several places where there are mirrors and which invite one to partake in today's selfie culture.

ok, it was kind of a lot of places. lots of mirrors and many, many polka dots. kusama is an amazing woman. i sat for a long time and watched a film with her. she's got quite the ego, actually, but i suppose at this point in her life, she's earned it. and she does, after all, live in an insane asylum and has for many years, of her own choice. you may think it's all just polka dots, but it's much more than that...a kind of search for but obliteration of the self in endless repetition. much deeper than it may appear on the surface. and she has enviably lived her art as a way of life.

and it got me thinking about these endless selfies we take these days. are we also searching for who we are? or are we obliterating ourselves in the repetition?

and what does it mean that we see our own reflection (quite literally) in the art we obsessively photograph as we go around the museum - like me in this rothko?

or the ghost of me against william burroughs in this mappelthorpe? maybe it doesn't mean anything other than that i really should put away my phone and just be there with the art. but those polka dots do make an excellent screen background on my phone(s).

crystal knows

i heard about crystal on the note to self podcast (formerly known as new tech city). crystal is an online tool that helps you write better emails, because it runs a profile analysis of the person you're emailing and gives you ideas of the best approach. and what with me being a bit of a geek for such things, i had to sign up to try it out. and in this me-centric era, naturally what i was most interested in was what it would say about me. they want you to sign in with your linked in profile and i believe they use that and possibly a whole lot of other stuff they find via your email address online to analyze you. i had been hoping to directly point it here to my blog, as it's the biggest collection of my writing and surely reveals a lot about me. but even just using linked in, i think it's pretty accurate.  here's what it advises about me.

for the most part, i can recognize myself in these statements, tho' i'm less keen on emails that are full of abbreviations than it indicates and if you spell "you" with the just the letter "u" forget about it! i don't think i'll extend my crystal profile beyond the 14 day trial (where i expect that you probably have to pay for the service), but i like the idea of it. maybe someday such tools will be built right into our gmail and we'll all start to communicate much more effectively (hint, hint, google, you should buy this start-up).

three words

bread. butter. radishes.

best. sandwich. ever.

i learned about this here.

i thought it sounded a bit wack.
but it won me over with the simple.

try it. now.

we served them at our salon evening this evening. it helps if the bread is homemade, freshly out of the oven, still slightly warm. chives should probably be from the garden and include a few blossoms, which are in their glory right now. but if you have other herbs, they're ok too. plenty of flaky salt is essential. and good, organic butter. the elements are simple, but you choose them wisely, they just work. 

and about those three words, we ended our salon (the theme was reflections, just like our spring exhibition) by asking everyone to describe themselves in three words. it isn't easy. you should probably just say the first three words that come to mind. and what was weird was the ones i was sitting there, thinking up, weren't the ones that came out my mouth when it was my turn. the words i actually said were: relaxed, creative and honest. the words in my head were: funny, laid-back, creative. at least creative was on both lists and arguably relaxed and laid-back mean the same thing, so maybe my lists weren't that different. i also added, when i said it out loud, that i was more of an introvert than i seemed. a good friend nodded at that.

what are your three words? are they different on a given day? or a given hour? or a given minute? who are you anyway when it comes down to it?

if i had to say them right now, they would be: nightowl, electric, awake. 

seeking inspiration in saul steinberg's work

as i move to the next stage of decorating my torso (it's finally the color i want it to be - funnily enough, based on leftover paint from my beloved blue room), i find myself turning to saul steinberg. a jew who fled europe in the years leading to WWII, he became the quintessential new yorker and was, for years, a cartoonist at the new yorker.

i'm drawn to his simple lines, his use of rubber stamps, his clever fingerprints, his small topographies and the way in which he mixes styles. especially that last bit.

i do like to draw and mostly i draw plants and feathers, but also buildings - barns and houses. i had a couple of steinberg's books from the library a couple of months ago and i snapped these iPhone shots of the things i wanted to save.

there's something about me and inspiration and i never know when i will actually use it, but i am a compulsive collector of things which inspire. but, if you've been coming around here any length of time,  or follow any of my 119 pinterest boards, you know that.

i love this passport photo steinberg made with his own fingerprints. a passport is an identifying document, and what could be more identifying than a fingerprint. it's genius.

this seems to have been made of spilled ink - i love the notion that something artistic and beautiful can come of a mistake and i imagine being able to use that on my torso somewhere.

here's some of that mixed style i was referring to - all within one piece. the man in the middle is my favorite. people aren't really something that i draw much, but i'd like to try something like that.

i love the way these small, disparate drawings are connected by ladders and stairs, it has an autobiographical ring to it that i think will be perfect on my torso.

and a collection of meaningful objects - this is the kind of thing i draw in my art journals - just collections of the random things which are lying around the house.

and this use of rubber stamps in an unexpected fashion just speaks to me. i guess i'd better get to work.

what/who is inspiring you?

in the company of women

our torso project approaches. 26 women. a shitload of plaster for casts. nudity. breasts. i'm both excited and worried. honestly, there will be no hiding. i'm not super fond of my body. and it's going to be cast in plaster for all to see. and for posterity. and let's face it, gravity isn't kind. and i'm not getting any younger (tho' i did recently realize that i've thought, for nearly a year, that i was already thirty-sixteen and it turns out that i will only be that on march 22. however, i'm not sure at this age that it makes that much difference.

but i'm looking forward to the laughter and high spirits that will undoubtedly ensue on friday afternoon and most of saturday. bonding. laughter. art. in the company of women. they all have breasts too. and they're undoubtedly about as fond of theirs as i am of mine.

if you were going to pick music for such an event, what would it be?

molding the territory of my own belonging

"i began to work the clay of my own life again, to mold the territory of my own belonging." - david whyte, crossing the unknown sea. 

i'm reading david whyte's crossing the unknown sea: work and the shaping of identity. i have this notion that we come to the books we need to read at the moment we need to read them. and if we come to them at the wrong time, they don't speak to us (the snow child is just not doing it for me and i'm going to return it to the library without finishing it). it's not the book's fault, it's something within. but when the book and your need align, hello! it's magical.

my encounter with last evening's troglodyte reminds me that i have spent a number of years trying not to be defined by what i do for a living. this is partially because i think that the nature of work is changing and partially because i don't think that my work (or my car or my house) is who i am, i'm far too complex for that.

thus, i only reluctantly listed my current (and several former) workplaces in my mini-bio on our group website because i have come to feel that it is expected of me. plus, the things i have done lend credibility to me and my story. no one in denmark can bring themselves to look down on someone who worked for denmark's biggest, most revered company and people also have respect for those who have their own business. so i have ended up in a position where i felt like i had to list those things to be considered legitimate. otherwise, i'm just some foreigner trying to horn in on local business. (if you can make out danish, you'll notice that many of the members have listed how long they're lived in town to boost their credibility.)

for two years, i answered the question of "what do you do?" with a list of the many things that fill my days - horses, kittens, chickens, cooking, laundry, writing, photographing, gardening, conversations, thinking, volunteering, sharing, laughing...but people look at you like you're mental when you do that. a few got it, but mostly, they acted like they thought my danish was bad and i had misunderstood the question. that begins to eat away at you after awhile, so you just revert to custom. perhaps i gave up too easily.

maybe it's time to begin to work the clay of my own life again, to mold the territory of my own belonging.

don't trip on the baggage

"the world is, after all, an endless battle of contrasting memories." - murakami, 1Q84

i'm grateful for the thoughts you shared on my language post last week. both in the comments and via email. the post was some initial thinking about some situations i've found myself in of late and all of your ideas have helped me sort out a bit further what i'm feeling about this issue. it is to an extent, as jessica suggested, a question of whether you feel you belong or not. and the ever-present (if you're me), resistance to belonging fully.

in one of the settings, i've made an active decision not to belong anymore and tonight will be the last time i put myself through what has become a nearly painful evening. the decision to withdraw from that group has more to do with pony abuse, tho' it's also connected to language abuse, than with not feeling like myself. mostly, i think tho', it's a clash of values - or perhaps culture. in my model of the world, it matters more to do all you can than to righteously follow arbitrary rules. i also value good arguments and "that's how we've always done it" is simply not a good argument. once i've lost respect for a person or a group, it's over for me. quite probably my own shortcoming, but nonetheless true. i just hope that i can hold my tongue tonight.

with the other group, i hold back because i'm new and i'm getting the lay of the land. i can also see that my purpose for being involved is different than what the group is currently preoccupied with. but i think it will be ok, as there's room for both my purpose and their preoccupations. but i definitely do hold myself back because it's all in danish in a way that i wouldn't if i could speak english in that context. however, that's not all bad.  it's a good lesson for me to learn. and a bit like taking your husband's last name when you get married, it's a way of starting with a fresh, clean slate. and life doesn't present us with that many chances to do that.

but back to language and the way it constructs us. how we articulate, the words we choose, the history and weight behind those words (both our own and linguistically) - it all matters. we use language to include and to exclude - think of the way doctors speak so that patients can't understand or how when you join a new company and don't yet know all of the acronyms - language is both a way of marking who belongs and perhaps more importantly, who doesn't.

but things do get interesting when the intersections of language involve other languages and other histories and other memories and other baggage. or maybe i'm just preoccupied with all of this because reading murakami makes me even more introspective than usual.

do you recognize yourself in a language not your own?

i've been thinking a lot lately about whether you can ever truly be yourself in a language not your own.  are you recognizable as yourself? and to yourself? i've had occasion to feel that i wasn't myself several times of late in danish. and yet, i can also have moments of feeling comfortable in danish and feeling like my sparkling self. but i wonder if i will ever truly feel like me in danish.

so i asked husband about this, especially since he has spoken exclusively english with me for going on 15 years now and we will never switch to danish (it feeling most unnatural to both of us). i asked him if he ever felt something was missing. he said it was the cultural references, especially those of childhood -  books, films, television programs - that he felt most acutely.  but he said it never made him feel like he wasn't himself, just that he didn't have the full breadth of expression that would be at his disposal in danish.

i actually at times feel like a different person - one who is quieter, who holds back when she would normally say something, who thinks more before she speaks (admittedly not a bad thing), one who sometimes sounds sharper than i mean to because i get something slightly wrong (tho' i'm sure there are those who would argue that i am at times sharper than i should be in english). it's partially that different words and grammar express things differently, it's partially intonation, and i guess it's also a feeling of awkwardness. maybe i'm simply never truly comfortable in danish, so i can't fully relax.

i know some of you live outside your native language too...do you ever feel this way? do you lose a bit of who you are when you're speaking a foreign tongue?

inner prudish american alive and well

it was a glorious afternoon on the beach. much better than legoland. no one was wearing any shoes at all. and sand feels gloriously wonderful on your feet. the only unpleasantness encountered was my own inner prudish american, who i was surprised to find was still there (after 12 years) and in apparent robust health. she was suitably shocked by the sight of a 60 (possibly 70)-something german woman with more than a slight mustache sunbathing topless on the beach.

i know, i know, i'm in europe, it's not unusual here. and really, after 12 years, shouldn't i stop being shocked by such things? on one hand, i really wanted to admire her and her body confidence and on the other, well, eww.... sometimes, as a member of a civil society, you have to participate in societal norms and being properly clothed in public is frankly one of those. especially if your bits are hanging down to your waist. real life is not an issue of national geographic.

but speaking of that, i do wish i'd dared to sneak a photo, if only to subject all of you to what i was subjected to...but i guess i'll have to leave it to your imagination. and honestly, we should all be thankful for that. the picture in my head is haunting enough.

am i just a prude, or is it a bit ew?

nobody without my stuff

i heard about a study today about consumerism and identity and how so much of who we are today is defined by what we buy. even if you decide you're not going to buy stuff, you're just building another identity and it's still about you as a (non)consumer. how can we get away from consuming and just be?

it's dizzying when you start to think about it. when i put organic milk in my basket or sew with organic fabric or drink fair trade coffee, i'm signaling my identity. our car, my bike, my camera, my computer (definitely), my phone - all send signals of who i am. it frightens me a little bit to think that i might not even know who i was without my stuff.

i am not my house (yet)

the room i'm sewing in these days contains our dining table and most of the boxes of stuff we haven't yet unpacked (and won't 'til we have the space - stuff like everything from my blue room). it also features hideous carpet (visible on lower right of this photo) and a hideous ceiling where the "cornices" are actually made of rope. yes, rope. what WERE they thinking? oddly, i turn on the iYiyi, light some candles and i can ignore it. i guess because i know it's not a permanent state (this bit will be gleefully bulldozed torn down. eventually.).  and ignore it i did today. and the only reason the quilt pictured here isn't finished is because i got so many ideas while i was sewing it (sewing is extremely conducive to ideas) that i had to go off and work on some of those. well, that and the dishwasher was running and i can't actually iron at the same time or the fuses blow. oh, the joy of an old house with a fuse board that one electrician characterized as "something hitler left behind after the occupation."

last week, we had some friends over. friends who, like us, have bought a falling-down farmhouse that no one else really can see the potential in. happily, they live nearby (we may have bought in a falling-down farmhouse sort of area) and happily, they totally get us, so they don't mind sitting in our rope-ceilinged, box-lined dining room, eating dinner and enthusiastically discussing ten-year plans.

and casper said something that has really echoed in my head ever since. he said when they first moved in (they moved here about a year before we did), he spent so much energy apologizing to people who visited. apologizing for what is essentially the visitors' inability to see the potential. but also apologizing because you don't want people who don't know you very well to think that the the place is really YOU. (as if that's not obvious.) and i realized i had expended an awful lot of energy on exactly that.

a colleague from husband's former workplace visited us between christmas and new year's with his totally lovely wife and two gorgeous, well-behaved children. they live near nyhavn in copenhagen, in an undoubtedly fabulous 4th floor apartment overlooking sweden. *sigh* and so the minute they came in the door, i found myself apologizing for the house. for the 7 different ceilings, the rope, the fake formica (who knew there was such a thing as fake formica?)  countertops, the pink cupboards, the low ceilings and doorways. and honestly, they were perfectly lovely and even, on some level, through their oh-my-odin-why-didn't-they-childproof-this-place eyes, got it. and they knew it wasn't us, but could respect that we saw the potential in it and that in its current state it wasn't who we were. but for some reason, i didn't trust that, even tho' the former colleague worshipped professed awe at the apple hardware altars around the house. so i spent the whole time apologizing.  which is really kinda sad at this point in my life. i should have more confidence than that.

and i even DO have more confidence than that. so what is it? we both are and aren't where we live.

but we are our wegner chairs (tongue firmly in cheek). but i should trust more in that.

identity and other mysteries

identity is a funny thing. sometimes you don't actually know what it is until you don't have it anymore. take our child, for example. she considers herself a sjælland girl (the big island where copenhagen is located and more or less affectionately called the devil's island if you're in jutland). she's strongly and solidly sjælland girl, but never professed this until we moved her to jylland. anyone who's spent any time in an ex-pat community knows that nothing breeds patriotism like displacement.

i never identified myself as an american until i was 27 years old and in russia for the first time. before that, my identity was my state, my hometown, perhaps my family, my university, but never my country - but when you're actually IN a place, and OF that place, it seems you have less of a need to call yourself by its name (or at least that was true before sept. 11, 2001 - but i'm not going to go there at the moment).

ever since that first experience abroad, i have to admit that whenever i've been abroad, i've been wary of the ex-pats, as they always seem a waspish bunch. not in the terms of the bush clan sense of WASPs (as in white anglo-saxton protestants), but of actual stinging and nasty and generally-to-be-avoided. i've found them generally condescending towards the locals and more nationalistic than usual.

there's something in us that paradoxically wants very much to belong where we are, but also does not, which wants to be special and other. part of the not wanting to belong is a defense mechanism, we reject them before they can reject us.

i think this whole phenomenon isn't just limited to national cultures, but sub-cultures, like a company culture, for example. do you identify yourself with the company? do you feel proud to see your company's name and products when you're out there in the world? do you want to identify with that logo and brand or not? i think in the past, i've wholeheartedly given myself over to the company culture, even when i accidentally worked for microsoft (sorry, mr. jobs). but i find myself holding back now, wanting to preserve myself for myself and actively resisting. why is that? what is it about certain groups that makes us want to identify more than others? identity is a mysterious thing.

oh the joys of travel

whether you mean it to be or not, every journey is a voyage of discovery. often self-discovery. in the wee hours of a long-haul flight, when sleep eludes, or in the quiet moments soaking in a sinfully deep bubble bath in a luxury hotel room, there is time for reflection, time to hear your own thoughts, time that doesn't necessarily appear in the reality of everyday existence.

travel is also jarring...the fact that a few hours on a plane can transport you to a different climate, to a different culture, to the other side of the world...is hard on the body. and the mind. and sometimes it's hard to catch up. but it's mostly amazing. and a privilege. 

travel makes me feel alive. it inspires me. it clears my head and gives me the time to think that i crave. breathing new air, drinking in new experiences, talking to different people, these things feed my soul. make me feel complete. and even when the journey is long and tiring, i find it somehow exhilarating.

traveling to distant shores helps me know who i am.

you can run but you can't hide

there's something about blogging. something real and true and when you're not being real and true, people can feel it. they might not be able to put a finger on what it is, but they can feel it. and so, because they're lovely and despite not knowing you in real life, they email you and ask if you're all right. and you answer that you are, that it was just because you lacked internet. you do this not because you were intentionally lying or concealing, but because even you yourself hadn't really seen what the problem was. and then you have a fantastic, very grounding visit to an art museum and find that that you were totally out of sync with yourself, but the visit has settled you back in so that you feel once again comfortable in your own skin.

and so you begin to wonder what it was that was different about you and your posts. you know yourself that you hadn't been feeling the vibe, but that it was never so bad that you didn't feel like blogging at all, you just had a vague awareness that you lacked inspiration, mostly because all of the things that were foremost in your mind were things you weren't really prepared to blog about at that moment. so you were holding back. not lying, just holding back. because some things just can't be blogged about. at least not at certain moments. things like health fears (easy there, not serious ones) and work issues and money issues (part of work issues in that they are rubbish at paying my travel settlements and in case you haven't noticed, i travel. a lot). but there all that was, lurking in the background and keeping me from being the real me here in my little corner of the blogosphere. (aside: they said blogosphere yesterday on BBC World and it made me smile.)

all of this personal, internal revelation makes me realize once again that the nature of blogging as a genre is such that we can't really hide ourselves out here. and to be honest, i wouldn't even want to.

and i really want to say thank you to all of you for noticing and emailing me and well, for caring. it means a lot. and it helped. a lot.

in my own head...

in my own head...i'm not:

• intimidating
• exclusionary
• snobby (ok, maybe a little)
• prickly
• clique-ish
• confident
• ponderous (ok, maybe a little)
• brooding (ok, maybe a little)
• harsh

in my own head...i am:

• kinder than i seem
• softer than i seem
• less ponderous than i seem
• not huggable
• academic
• domestic (at least the cooking part)
• creative
• innovative
• intuitive
• someone who follows her gut
• always, always thinking

in reality....i am:

• constantly analyzing
• procrastinating
• someone who has not used her time wisely
• snobby
• ponderous
• brooding
• looking for what's next
• hoping
• wishing
• loving
• real

who are you?