some days are just like that...

it's been a blah monday. maybe because of the change to summer time, it just felt wrong getting out of bed this morning. all day i've been wondering if i'm getting sick, which would be bad because we're going to barcelona later this week and i don't want to be sick if i have to fly.

i've been dragging all day. and on top of it, i got a HUGE tax bill in the mail today as a little surprise, which just underlined the extreme mondayness of the day. sometimes there are just days where you should simply go back to bed. unfortunately, i didn't get the hint, so i did not go back to bed.

it isn't really that anything has gone especially wrong today(other than the tax thing, which husband says isn't really as bad as it appears), it's more that it felt like a blah and uninspired day. i got the things done i needed to do, but i didn't do them in a particularly engaged fashion. i just kind of floated through, feeling sluggish and heavy, so not really floating at all, more like trudging, actually.

i guess it was just a monday. not a day to remember at all. in fact, probably one to forget. maybe some days are just like that.

kraka fyr

we spent our saturday at the viking ship museum in roskilde. husband joined a "laug" last year on the replica vessel, kraka fyr. it's basically a club whereby you pay 200DKK (that's $42 these days with the dollar so low) and for a whole year, you're a member of the museum and get yourself and a friend in for free. but, even better, on wednesdays all summer long, you can go sailing like the vikings sailed, in a vessel with a square sail out on the roskilde fjord.

part of the deal tho', is using some of your time on maintenance of the vessel. so, that's what we did yesterday. "our" vessel is called kraka fyr.

here's husband painting on a toxic tar mixture which protects the wood from the salty sea water. you can see the difference between the bits that were already painted and those that needed it.

i worked on these oars. they also received the tar treatment. and then it rained on them, making them look rather pretty with droplets of water on them.

husband rolling linseed oil onto the benches. luckily they don't have to have tar, otherwise it would be all over your clothes.

here we are working on the various pieces of the inside of kraka.

it's an interesting and international group who belong to club kraka. there is a german guy who works for the museum who sort of heads the group, a woman from the netherlands who is posted in copenhagen with her job and american me. additionally, half a dozen other danes were there. it was really a fun day--we worked hard, tarring everything, including the ropes!! and the weather wasn't really on our side. at one point, after getting thoroughly soaked by a shower, sabin and i went into the museum to warm up. inside, they have beautifully displayed 5 viking ships which were recovered from the roskilde fjord in the early 60s.

anton, the guy who works for the museum, had to go into the boat-building workshop to repair one of kraka's benches and sabin and i tagged along and watched him make new wooden pegs for holding the bench in position. i asked what kind of education people need to work there...there are archaeologists, conservationists and boat-builders. what a fascinating place to spend a saturday! next weekend, kraka will be put in the water and filled with her ballast rocks and her mast will be mounted and all of the final preparations will be made to make her ready for the sailing season.

observing or judging?

i realized something today on my journey home from oslo. i didn't realize it yet as i sat in the airport, looking around and noting down observations, such as that the woman next to me kept putting her camera up to her ear, as if it were a phone. why did she do that? was she a private detective trying to take surreptitious pictures of the people across the way? (this crossed my mind.) or was she just mental? or drunk at 11 a.m. and thought it was her phone? what was it?

i was only when i got on the metro in copenhagen that i realized what it is. i look around and my head is full of judgements:

• cheap shoes
• cool shoes
• very cool shoes
• trashy shoes
• (why are they all about shoes?)
• bad nose
• nice coat
• good haircut
• did they do that to their hair on purpose and moreover, did they PAY something for it?
• is she wearing pants?
• shouldn't she be wearing pants?
• leiderhosen--an interesting fashion choice for a 60-year-old woman

how do you turn it off? i'd actually LIKE to turn it off. but, something in us is constantly judging. i actually watched another girl (the one who may not/should have been wearing pants) watch a couple have a conversation and could see on her face that SHE was judging. (they were having a totally empty conversation.)

i remember when i first came to denmark and didn't understand danish, i thought that all of the conversations around me on the public transportation were totally of high level importance--the fate of the polar bear, whether postmodernism was indeed the cultural logic of late capitalism, björk's latest album. they weren't. they were about grandma's hemorrhoids, same as anywhere else.

but, the stories we tell ourselves about others in our heads are interesting, aren't they? i make up stories about the people i see around me all the time. i have a theory that i can tell by looking at any other person at the train which danish newspaper they subscribe to. just by their clothing, glasses and the expression on their face. i've been proven right many times, when they take the newspaper in question out of their bag and begin to read it.

i suppose along with those stories one tells oneself about the others on the train or the bus or in the airport, there is always an element of judgement. we are constantly assessing whether people are like us or not. perhaps it's just human nature. but i'd like to be more aware and try to keep it to the level of observation and stop judging so much. maybe the first step is realizing what's going on in my head...

catching up

so, i'm back home from wonderful oslo (i know, that's copenhagen's phrase--wonderful copenhagen, but i'm appropriating it for oslo). it's friday night. sabin and i just played a fun drawing game and now she's watching friday night t.v. and since i'm not that keen on it, i'm looking at all the blogs i've missed out on over the past nearly two weeks--one without internet and this week where i was working.

my german friend gabi, who i met while studying in kazan in 1994, has a blog and i just discovered that during my offline time, she actually wrote about MY blog on hers! thank you gabi!! how cool is that!?!

we met while we were both studying russian at kazan university (she was much better than i was). she lived with aida and diljara, two young girls who were lucky enough to have their own apartment. i lived with an ancient old soviet apparatchik who would wax philosophical about stalin with tears in her eyes after a couple of shots of vodka every evening. so, you can imagine that i spent a lot of time with gabi and aida and diljara, drinking endless cups of tea from the samovar and talking and going for walks arm in arm. those were truly wonderful days. it was winter when we arrived in kazan and we saw spring come and begin to be summer. it couldn't have been more wonderful...to see the world thaw and turn green around you, together with great friends who you laughed and made music together with.

gabi and i have managed to keep in touch...at times sporatically, over the years. but, it has always been a friendship that was instantly back to the same level of closeness as soon as we were together, no matter how long we'd been apart. i have to give her a lot of credit--she's been the one keeping up our contact over all these 14 years--writing wonderful REAL letters that came in the mail. she was a bridesmaid at my first wedding in the US and sang at both the wedding and reception. i can still picture my uncle who had been in germany during WWII, standing there with tears in his eyes, as she sang marlene dietrich songs at the reception.

and these days we're talking a lot more online after i left my job (and remembered what was important) and after she and her son, benjamin, visited last fall.

as she says on her blog, i went on her honeymoon. that sounds like a totally weird thing to say and an even weirder thing to do...but to defend myself, gabi and i had planned the trip together first, had gone through the whole invitation/visa process and THEN she decided to get married and bring along her husband. so actually, he came along on OUR trip, as i remember it. and, she and i are still together, but she's not with him anymore....so that speaks for itself. wouldn't you say? :-) and it was a wonderful trip...sailing on the volga on an old river cruise vessel from the 1950s...on "local" tickets, purchased for us by our friends in kazan. to this day, when i catch a whiff of esteé lauder's white linen breeze, the perfume i happened to have along on the trip, it transports me back there instantly, to those leisurely summer days along the volga.

what's wonderful about gabi's blog is her level of raw honesty...she shares her innermost thoughts and revelations. it's sometimes shocking, but mostly it's very revealing and you're left breathless at how brave she is to share herself in that way. go and read her, i guarantee you'll want to keep going back. and, on top of it, she's a professional musician and makes podcasts of her music available on her site!

of travel cynicism and leading a simpler life

so, i wandered for an hour or so around oslo this evening after i left work. i was looking for bookbinders design, a swedish store where they sell the most beautiful fabric-covered journals, to which i am wholeheartedly addicted after stumbling upon them in singapore a couple of years ago. they're lovely, like this one, which is incidentally my favorite color, tho' i managed to make myself buy other colors this evening:

my one that's this blue color, which is called the aptly poetic duo emerald, is almost full and i will soon need a new one, especially since i seem to be drawing in them these days. so i stocked up-in green and reddish rusty orange.

anyway, my point was actually totally different, got a little carried away there with the pretty blank books of unlined(!) paper....my point was that i felt rather giddy with happiness to be walking around the streets of oslo. i think i'm falling in love with it. which, strangely, disturbs me a bit. i'm the CYNICAL traveler. the one who says, "singapore--it's like disneyland with nationhood." or "thailand is so seedy, i hope i don't have to go back there, there seems to be a glowering menace underneath all that bowing and politeness." or "thank god i haven't had to go back to india since the bull attacked us on the beach in goa--it's been so long my visa has thankfully expired."

so, how can i be so enchanted by oslo? is it the fjord? the mountains? the snow? the fact that it's not copenhagen, which has, after all, lost its charm for me in its level of familiarity? is it just that residual, long-buried american inner voice that thinks, "hey, it's cool to say, i work in oslo." much cooler than the rest of my working life, which has just been in denmark, apparently. again, familiarity breeds contempt, right? and that's kind of silly, because there are many good things about denmark and who i am to crave mountains, having grown up on the prairie? but anyway, perhaps i shouldn't over-analyze and should just appreciate it! perhaps it's a sign of my healing after my last job, which surely drove me to that level of cynicism in my travel. and, if i'm honest, there are many places i love. manila is one of my favorite places on earth, followed closely by cape town and moscow--i'm totally a moscow person. i liked palanga/klaipeda in lithuania (admittedly, maybe i just like SAYING palanga). it was a lovely little tucked away corner of europe that was extravagantly undiscovered by other tourists and therefore wonderful. so perhaps i'm not as cynical as i think. maybe i just don't really like singapore. or thailand. and they can pretty much keep india. which i'm actually sure they're quite happy to do.

so, i'll stop dwelling on that and get to my other point...paring down and living a simpler life. this has been on my mind for awhile, but thoughts of it have been provoked again this week by the discovery of this wonderful blog and several comment conversations with the writer of the blog. (totally strange that i feel that i know her and yet so totally do not--but that's a whole 'nother posting, isn't it and another of my many digressions). anyway, back to the point. so as i dined alone, i thought about what aspects of my material existence i would be willing to give up. and sadly, they are few. i would give up the t.v. and the car. i'm already not one for prada shoes or gucci bags, tho' you would be hard-pressed to separate me from my zebra bag. look at it, it's fantastic (and this is really my very bag in the picture from the african gameskin website)

oh, please, don't be shocked. zebras are NOT endangered. he was going to die anyway and he may as well have been made into something lovely that i truly enjoy every day, rather than being devoured by a lion. but AGAIN, i DIGRESS!

i want my writing house and the sauna in the garden (and the environmentally-friendly materials are all ordered--oak beams and not a bit of treated wood in sight). i can do without all of the plastic junk that comes into our house thanks to having a 7-year-old who adores things like Bratz and Littlest Pet Shop. but that would be HER doing without, not me, wouldn't it? actually, if i'm honest, hand the kid a stick and some pretty rocks and she's happy. tho' admittedly spoiled as all hell--example: on our last flight to manila, "mom, why are we in monkey?"(a statement of which i am perhaps perversely proud--but again a whole 'nother post)--but perhaps she could do without all the plastic toys. those Bratz have a seriously trashy way of dressing anyway--that can't be good for her psyche.

but, i want lovely fabrics and yarn in my life. things which i can make something out of with my own two hands (if i ever learn to knit--which i will). do i have to do without things like that? they can't be that bad, can they? i would like to limit the chemicals in my home. i would like to use natural products. i buy organic food unless i'm absolutely desperate--the store is closing and the only milk they have left is the regular stuff. i try to buy locally-produced whenever there is a choice and i do without (on occasion) if there's not. i've taken to buying wines produced from organically-grown grapes. i'm concerned about pesticides and gene-manipulated foodstuffs. i'm concerned about the world we're going to leave to sabin--what will she have to deal with?

i love owning books. my books make me happy. when i sit in the room next to the book shelf, it calms me. it makes me happy, just being there, among the books. but i SHOULD visit the library more. i don't need to own them all. just the ones i want to write in. which is, if i'm honest, most of them.

perhaps what i should think about is which of the things i have that make me happy. and then focus on those. because in this world, sadly, it's about stuff. and stuff does, in the case of great books or yarn or blank fabric-covered books in jewel tones or that zebra purse, have the capacity to make me happy. but it would also make me happy to be more CONSCIOUS (and conscientious) about what we consume as a family. and i am doing that more and more all the time. not only keeping the food journal, but selecting things wisely and from an energy-conscious standpoint. or from a humanist standpoint.

for example, i haven't set foot in a wal-mart since 2003. and it's not only that i live where there isn't one. even if i still lived in the US, i wouldn't go there. i object to how they treat their employees and the conditions in the factories where their things are produced. tho' i have on occasion, on this very blog, complained about the danes being insufficiently capitalist--there is a limit to how capitalist one should be. and wal-mart is WAY too capitalist. i don't care if i can shop for my cleaning products at 3 a.m. (which i used to love, before i became more conscientious). it's simply wrong how they do business and how they treat their employees and the communities in which they do business. and i'm so proud of my dad, who writes a little anti-wal-mart nugget in his column every week and who is 74 and has never set foot in a wal-mart. now THAT'S commitment.

but i do so want a mac. i just got a new dell laptop from my new job. if i were really a good person, i would have refused it since michael dell was one of bush's biggest campaign contributors and let's face it, bush isn't really going to go down in history as the greatest president ever (again with the digression). i am a mac person on the inside (and was one until i started to work for microsoft, where, funnily enough, they're not that into macs). i mean macs are vibrant and creative and there are even OLD guys (in nice suits, i'll grant you) in the business lounges at the world's airports with MACS!!! and PCs are stodgy and middle-aged and lumpy. and i'm definitely none of those things....right? ok, maybe a little middle-aged and probably more than a little lumpy, but definitely not stodgy. and totally creative. for sure. and trying to be a better, more conscientious consumer, in little ways for now, working up to the bigger ones as i gain strength. that's all one really can ask, isn't it?

the dangers of blogging...

...on multiple blogs include that you possibly post a perfectly good post to the wrong blog. or not exactly the wrong blog, but not the right blog for the post. although it went pretty ok over on that blog, it was probably a bit more of a moment of perfect clarity...

i think i could live here

can i just say that oslo is beautiful? maybe it's because it's a "new" city for me. it's my third visit (or is it my fourth?)...but each visit has been short and spent mostly in meetings or in the office. however, this time, most everything is covered with snow. and snow makes things magical, doesn't it? they look clean and fresh under all that glorious whiteness. when the sun shines, like it did today, it's all sparkling and lovely. and if you eat a totally delicious dinner at a beautiful restaurant with fantastic service up near the holmenkollen, as the sun sets and the city lights below begin to twinkle, well, it seems just almost heavenly. and that dinner takes place after you've had a day of fantastic discussions about a really, truly exciting new project...well you start to think that maybe you could live here...and that maybe even you should.

i'm not sure i've fallen in love with a city like this since cape town. but there's something about snow-capped mountains and a fjord and being on a the 31st floor of the radisson that just totally kicks copenhagen's flat no-more-than-6-stories-tall butt. it makes me feel that copenhagen doesn't DARE to really be anything. i mean, it's sweet and quaint and nice enough in its own derivative dutch renaissance architecture kind of way, but let's face it, the key word about the little mermaid is "little." and that's actually kind of strange, because the danes are otherwise the most design savvy of the scandinavians. they have style when it comes to furniture (not clothes, i grant you--if you see anyone well-dressed in copenhagen, i guarantee you they're swedes). but maybe oslo just has nature on its side. and what nature! i think i could live here...do you suppose they'll want half my salary in taxes too?