turning off the inner anthropologist

i'm finding that i'm developing a work-related injury as i work on this piece on the danish welfare state. it's an injury more mental than physical - i simply can't turn off my inner anthropologist. everywhere i go, i'm observing and analyzing (i suppose regular readers of this blog know that this is actually nothing new), but it feels somehow different. it's become more systematic, perhaps, than my usual musings.

last evening, i attended a large party and had occasion to do a lot of anthropological observation of the natives in their natural habitat (if indeed their natural habitat can be said to be a rather large exhibition hall transformed into dinner seating for 7700 people and the swedish 90s band roxette). and in my observation (and mental application of various theories), i realized that playing the role of anthropologist tends to make me hold back from participating fully in the moment myself. i end up sidelining myself as mere observer (at least i restrained from scribbling notes in my little notebook, tho' it was in my tiny little purse and i was sorely tempted). so while i gain a great deal from the experience in one sense, i come away from it feeling that i wasn't truly there, except in some abstract theoretical sense (filtered heavily through bourdieu).

and while these clinical anthropological skills are all well and good for the purposes of the book, i do hope i can achieve some degree of being able to turn it off again - because it's making me effectively miss the party.

saturday musings

we're on the third day in a row of absolutely glorious weather...clear blue skies and golden sunshine, plus it's about 23°C, which pretty much couldn't be more perfect. everyone is talking about how they're soaking it all in, for the coming darkness ahead. it's so glorious it almost feels like that's possible.

it's one of those saturdays, where you run around, doing a lot of small tasks and thinking a lot of small, not very profound thoughts. you know days like that, right?  thoughts like....

~ who decides the smell of things? i accidentally bought some detergent tabs that i thought were for the dishwasher, but they turned out to be for washing clothes (luckily i read the package and didn't find this out the hard way). and after years of buying detergent with no perfumes (i started when sabin was a baby), it is so strange to have the clothes smell so strongly of a scent chosen by someone else. yuck. but throwing them away seemed worse (i had opened the package before i realized the mix-up, so i couldn't just return them to the grocery store) than using them up (tho' with this scent, i'm no longer so sure about that).

~ the way you're treated at the beginning of a job is so important - if your computer and phone and office are ready and they give you a big bouquet of welcome flowers and invite you to their big annual company party on your first day, they've pretty much set the tone haven't they? (all of this just happened to husband. and shall we just say that there's a vast difference between vestas and siemens wind power in this area. and by the way, vestas wins.)

~ you can never underestimate the righteousness of danish women. nobody can do righteous like they can. nobody.

~ we're (and by we, i mean husband) scraping the horrible nasty plastic paint off the house that the morons people we bought the house from painted it with. it was catastrophic for the bricks with that paint and a house that had always been washed with white chalk and not painted. sometimes i still feel so ANGRY at those people and the cheap, nasty solutions they came up with around this house.

~ the roaming gnome arrived at my house today. looking forward to seeing what adventures he gets up to. and if you'd like me to send him to you next, just let me know, as you too can host this little adventurer.

~ what do you wear to a party with 7700 other people (none of whom you know), at which roxette is going to perform? (who even knew roxette was still alive?)

~ we're now up to three eggs a day from our chickens. they're still pretty small, but each egg makes me unaccountably gleeful.

happy weekend, one and all....

a totally civilized sunrise

i like that sunrise now happens at the decidedly civilized hour of around 7:30 a.m. happy friday, one and all...

ancient tech support

sorry, my english-speaking readers...this is in norwegian with danish subtitles. but very hilarious. today's IT support language, but regarding how to operate a book.

laughing and crying

this to make you laugh

because this will make you cry. 

a sparkling spider kind of a morning

you've got to love autumn. for the light. and the spiders. who are apparently out partying all night, come home late, possibly drunk. and then spin their webs. in a state of drunken confusion. i'd like to have caught them in the act, but it seemed they had all gone to bed to sleep off their hangovers.

shadows on the wall

we all have shadows on our souls that haunt us. sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes when we're under pressure, they cloud our judgement or make us behave in bewildering ways. i think my primary shadow is having grown up in a small town where everyone knew everyone. and while that was good in many ways, it makes me overly eager to be accepted and liked, because it meant too so much in that little society. but this isn't really about my shadows, more about how we are affected by the shadows around us.

spending time with a whole lot of people who are long-term unemployed and interviewing them for my book on the danish welfare state, i have seen and felt a lot of shadows in recent weeks. and i think that it can't help but cast a shadow over your own soul and your own existence, to be in contact with so many sad stories and depressed people. it drags you into a kind of darkness yourself, no matter how much anthropological distance you try to have. there is something to the notion that the people you hang out with have a big affect on you and how you view the world (and i knew this, but i didn't realize how hard it would be to keep it separate). and i think it's also difficult, when you're in the midst of a situation, to realize what's really going on, especially one like this, where at the same time i'm very grateful to these people for opening up to me and telling me their stories.

by the end of last week, i found myself feeling short-tempered and crabby. and i couldn't help but be hyper-critical of everyone and everything around me. it was like all those shadows ganged up on me and gave me a very bleak outlook, expecting the worst of the world.

so today, i stepped back from my project and worked on something else - a whole stack of new stitched-up photos that i actually started last week. i hope to get them backed and photographed tomorrow so i can show them to you. there are a couple of new themes...hedgehogs and mushrooms (unsurprisingly) and some travel dreams. it was just the the thing to push those shadows back where they belong...against the wall.

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and don't forget, the last batch of stitched-up photos are 25% off - and i've made it easier...the price you see is the sale price, no code necessary. if there was one you were wanting, now is the time to pounce! and there aren't any aliens or fish in this second round, so it's the last chance at those (for now).