on inspiration

it's weird how writing is for me. when it flows, it flows and when it doesn't, there's seemingly nothing that will make it come. i am waiting for inspiration to strike on a couple of creative job applications. i think that the pressure i feel to be creative and inspirational is the wrong kind of pressure at the moment. what i need is the deadline pressure (they're not due 'til sunday)--that's the right kind of pressure for me. maybe i just need to slog through it and and see what comes out. i'm often surprised, pleasantly surprised.

strangely emotional

i'm reading clinton's my life. already from the first few pages, i am feeling strangely emotional. reading along with tears in my eyes. last night, as i was beginning it, it filled me with such a feeling of despair and hopelessness at bush. he has no such lofty ambitions to help people and make their lives better. he's a child of privilege who thought it was his due to be president. clinton came from a poor family and made something of himself because of the kind of person he was. he's displayed human fallibility, but who hasn't? what kind of man are we stuck with now? when clinton was in office, there was a sense that he had making the lives of real people better at the forefront. there's no sense of that with bush. he has only his own power at the forefront. it's depressing.

rainy day ponderings

strange. it doesn't seem like nearly two months since i've opened this. much has happened in between...a fabulous vacation in turkey with jens-prince and sabin, much work as a freelancer, some technolution translation, many dinners, many bottles of wine, much rain and grey skies (so much for the danish summer). but, now i'm back. i'm still in the healing process after being fired. a bunch of new clothes from noa noa helped my self esteem. i'm applying for jobs--everything that looks even remotely interesting at novo. i want to work for a company with a conscience this time. no more soulless microsoft.

we are, at last, putting our living room in order. we've lived in this house for 3 years now and never really did much with the living room. i sped up the need to do so with a little fire a few months ago. now we have a new ceiling and floor and so we have been inspired to paint--coffee cream--an absolutely lovely, warm shade that reminds you of just that--coffee with cream. in the process, we moved all of our books upstairs. it was great to be reminded of the wonderful collection of books we have. i placed all of my favorites closest at hand to my low leather reading chair. i am going to have some enjoyable times there this fall and winter with a cup of steaming milky tea and a good book. in fact, on this dreary, rainy (is it really summer?) day, i think i'll head up there right now.

Lifestyle Magazine

I was at an afternoon party two weekends ago. It was held near a lake on the grounds of the summer residence of the Queen. There were platters heaped with chocolate-dipped strawberries and smoked salmon sandwiches with a sprig of arugula and slices of melon and cherries. Glasses of champagne all around. We were celebrating the launch of a novel, after all. Everyone there looked the part--breezy summer skirts and sandals, the men in khaki shorts, the children in stylish, but ecological cotton and linen (mine included). It struck me that we looked like something out of a lifestyle magazine. And I don't think it had been conscious on anyone's part. I guess that's how it is to be thirtysomething at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We've bought the lifestyle that's been sold to us. And strangely, I think it's actually making us happy.

Weeds

Verlyn Klinkenborg says in his Rural Life that "A garden is just a way of mapping the strengths and limitations of your personality onto the soil." When I first read it, I was amused by it. But, lately, as I find myself increasingly drawn to getting rid of the weeds that keep insinuating themselves in all of my flower beds and vegetable rows and my herb garden--I find that I am learning exactly what he means. Until recently, I didn't care much about weeds. As long as the flowers appeared to be stronger and the veg could fight its way through the weeds--I was happy. But now I have discovered the therapy that is the battle against weeds. I had let the garden get rather shockingly weedy--just as my life had become choked by too much that was unwanted. I couldn't see the flowers and the productive, useful plants for all of the weeds that were in the way. It was definitely a limitation of my personality that I allowed it to happen--my life to be metaphorically covered by weeds. But now, slowly, I am clearing them and the flowers beneath are starting to enjoy the sun and getting ready to bloom. And it feels wonderful. And meaningful to have found myself in the garden. Finding my way back to myself and what's important by mapping my strengths into the soil.

Reagan Nausea

I am utterly nauseated by the eulogizing of Ronald Reagan. It's nauseating from afar and it must be a veritable nightmare for anyone with functioning brain cells and access to a television in the US. The man has effectively been dead for 10 years, just get it over with already. Admittedly, I had one moment of being moved watching CNN International this a.m.--a shot of Gorbachev paying his respects at the coffin--hand outstretched, lost in thought. It seems that he has some legitimate ownership of the grief. Whereas the rest of us--why do we have to be subjected to a litany of airbrushed (typical Hollywood) half-truths as to the grand effects of Reaganomics.

I realized during a course a few years ago at ASU that Reagan was a defining president for me--but in a negative sense. The president of my childhood. The president whose thoughts and policies I defined myself against. Even as early as his shooting in '81, I was in the 7th grade and my entire class had to stay after school when I asked brightly (and not without hope) in response to an announcement that he'd been shot, "Is he dead?" This did not please the wizened Mrs. Walker and she doubly punished me by making me unpopular with my classmates, since the entire class had to stay after for my statement. No wonder he was the defining president for me. It makes me feel a bit sad, really, to think that Reagan had any part in defining who I am.

Pure Circumstance

Being a person who has chosen, for love (a worthy reason indeed), not to live in her home country, it is strange that I do not allow myself to feel completely at home in the country in which I have chosen to live. But, I didn't necessarily choose to fall in love with a Dane in particular, thinking "oooh, Denmark." We were in Macedonia, so it would have been an odd place to go looking for a Dane. It was pure circumstance. Of course, with the twat [please pronounce this to yourself using the British pronunciation--it will sound much better to you, I promise] who is currently running the US, I am not necessarily sad that I don't live there. But, the whole thing leaves me with the sense that I don't really belong anywhere. I hate the notion of being a "citizen of the world," so that doesn't work for me. Where does one belong in a globalized world? What is home? Is it where your family and friends are? Your work? Your love? Your child's kindergarten? Your garden? Your language? I guess it's all of those things and they all happen to be situated somewhere in particular country somewhere. By pure circumstance.