I’ve been blogging for Bitch about ecofeminist issues, but if someone said, “How’s it going?” I’d be stumped. I’m not a very good blogger in that I tend to avoid arguing in comment sections. I also never know if I’m doing a “good job” by pissing people off. Some folks would argue that starting fights is effective communication. I learned long ago via a next level feminist therapist that arguing was a pattern to transition out of my life, not one to more fully integrate. In this case, the personal is most definitely political—or at the very least, professional. If I make people mad by speaking my truth, it’s more traffic for my contractor—but does that come at a cost to me? That I managed to put up some of my most controversial posts two weeks ago with snot clogging my sinuses and wheezing onto my computer seems to be an indication that I’m quicker on the uptake than I thought. I love a deadline, but I never get used to the manic speed of the internet.

I call this photo “learnin’ about other women.” I turn on my Indiana accent to say it.

Sitting on the train with my bike next to me a while back, another commuter with a bike in tow looked over and read the stickers on my ride. Without irony, he asked, “Is ‘fuck work’ a shop or something?” Bewildered, I responded, “No, it just is,” wondering what was difficult to comprehend about the simple phrase adhered to my bike’s middle bar, near others that say “demand justice,” “organize,” and “go beyond comfort.” He didn’t question me further and looked away. Maybe he thinks I’m just another freeloader immigrant. I didn’t bother to tell him I was on my way to a job, part of my typical 50-hour work week, the minimum I clock on average.

After fighting with my underwire for months and finally realizing that I hadn’t purchased new bras in over two years, I let a woman in a department store measure my chest—size me up, so to speak. That’s her job. Doesn’t make it any less weird for anyone involved, though amazingly, she guessed my cup size without touching me. She’d just transferred into intimates (intimate what?) from another department, so her visual assessment was only that much more impressive. She also complimented my Danish pronunciation, and I helped her learn the English words for “padding” and “sheer.” A week later, I took my best gal pal back with me for a similarly productive encounter. “How did she do that?!” If only we had been taught to understand our own selves as well as random saleswomen.

We are on the verge of buying our own photo developing chemicals. The canisters are in a box at the end of the bed, waiting to be filled with film and fluids. The time—the time to take control of our own processing—is now. The latest addition to our increasingly large collection of cameras is a teeny autofocus Olympus. It looks like something another kid’s parent would have had at one of my childhood birthday parties. Inevitably, we always buy our old cameras from elderly men in the suburbs, who are endlessly amused by our willingness to travel in search of outdated equipment. They also inevitably think I’m pretty funny, since I’m relatively unable to say anything useful in Danish while we test our purchases before buying.

I’ve been trying to take time to work on fiction, contemplate why mood disorders are useful, and to follow some recently compiled excellent wisdom. I’m also trying to ramp up my editing-based income but it’s a tough sell. Who doesn’t think they can edit? Then again, who doesn’t think they can write? To date, the worst sentence I have ever edited: “This book is a collection of poetry from the author.” I rest my case.

click to play deaf Swedish beaver TV

This is a Lumiere video. Your own soundtrack is encouraged.

The city’s influx of people has many early impacts. The trains—both the S-tog and Metro—smell absolutely atrocious (though this may also be from all the drunken holiday festivities). There are more people than ever standing in my way—literally. For once, I’m the rude one pushing around them instead of one more aggressive commuter in a crowd. There are also more awkwardly smiling people, a pleasant surprise every time a shy outsider looks my way. What do they think as they look around? After sixteen months here, I take a lot for granted.

Last year, an MTV show about teen pregnancy featured a young couple from my hometown. It finally aired in Denmark this weekend. Andreas made a point of coordinating our schedules around it, and every time they showed a water tower or a well-known apartment complex where the couple lived (where many former co-workers from high school used to live), I would shriek and slap A on the arm. There were obligatory repeat visits to Wal-Mart, a “cookout,” and the baby was born in the same hospital that I was.

Meanwhile, in one of our three local grocery stores last week, I spotted a good friend behind a shelf of organic grains. I didn’t have to say her name. By speaking in our shared Rust Belt accent in her close proximity, her expat radar went off and she immediately turned toward us with a smile.

When I cannot sleep at night, I sometimes watch “the sleeping channel,” a TV station for children that goes off at night but continues to broadcast images of sleeping youth. It would be a lot more soothing if the young people did not constantly toss and turn, or the producer did not cut between different sleepers every thirty seconds. Once, at 2:20am, a giant green fuzzy muppet/alien/monster appeared on screen, apparently also asleep. It didn’t appear to have eyes, nor was it able to lie down properly. I’m not convinced I was even awake by then.

I’ve always been an introvert, but it’s easy for us to be misunderstood—including by our own selves. I was treated like an extrovert for enough of my younger life that I bought into the idea that I was good at being “on.” I definitely thought I was up to the challenge of being involved in office politics, or social clubs, or personal media. I ended up being largely incorrect. That I now spend nearly every day alone is immensely helpful. It doesn’t just facilitate quality writing, although it does help. I’m also a much better friend and partner when I do spend time with others. I get more time to recharge than most of my fellow hermits.

You’d think a library would be an ideal environment for an introvert such as myself, but let me be the one to tell you: libraries in other countries—even gorgeous, rich countries that build exquisite, expensive buildings—can be bewildering. Recently, I was at Den Sorte Diamant picking up research material for an encyclopedia entry I’m writing. It took several trips up and down the flat ramp escalators to find: my book on reserve, the circulation desk, the restroom. I never found the lockers, where I was told I must store my coat if I wished to enter the reading room. I decided I’d rather just leave.

I handed over my all-purpose CPR card, which is the Danish government’s way of keeping track of me or minimizing bureaucracy, depending on which explanation you prefer. After scanning my card, the librarian looked up in surprise. “Oh. You are a new loaner.” I contemplated my response. “No, I have always enjoyed solitude.” Instead I just smiled and felt crazy. My sense of humor tends to get lost in translation.

MX the catness had ass surgery last week. He has stitches, a big shaved patch, and a plastic neck cone. He sits patiently every time we put it on him and has decided that lying squarely in the middle of my chest with his cone/face right up against mine is the best way to sleep at night. Far be it from me to argue. He also comes running for his medication—twice daily antibiotic pills and mid-morning liquid pain reliever. Must taste a hell of a lot better than the fake cherry crap I get from the pharmacy. When the coneheadedness becomes too much, he sits under the edge of the bed. He is a new loner too, albeit temporarily.

Recently, as I was negotiating whether or not to stay at my day job, someone asked me if I was making enough to survive on as a freelancer. I said, “I’m used to being poor.” This answer was met with a laugh and the beginning of the “It doesn’t have to be that way” talk that far too many people give one another without knowing the other person’s history, politics, heart. I cut him off. “I’d rather be poor and happy,” I explained. I was then told that condos in the city are going for cheap – a million and a half kroner! I smiled. “Cheap is relative. I don’t have a million of anything.” I left – the office, but also the job – before I could be told that capitalism will save me. It will not. Poverty is not liberation, but knowledge and happiness are.

Treat your discomfort not as something to be cured or eradicated, but as a sign of your dissatisfaction with your own current life, and a sign that you are being called to a new and deeper relationship with the world. [source]

I recently gained a new client who, after realizing how much I enjoy pet sitting, suggested I connect with other expats to expand my business. “Maybe you could hook up with one the ladies’ clubs,” she offered helpfully. Only when she brought it up a second time did I have the heart to be honest. “They don’t really like me,” I began. She looked a little horrified so I quickly continued. “I’m a little too young and a little too radical for them.” She looked me up and down for a telltale sign of the progressive in her home. I offered, “I don’t really ‘lunch,’” implying that lunch was a verb. She smiled. “I don’t either.”

In an ideal world your family and culture would recognize that it’s time for you to wander and you would be celebrated and brought to the gates of the city and bid farewell for a time. But it’s likely that your culture is the same highly technical, scientifically and industrially organized culture that I grew up in and that most of our readers grew up in, in which such necessary mysteries of life as the wandering of youth are ignored or tamped down. [source]

After a long weekend of dog walks, cat belly rubs, and bunny snuggling, I came out with the following injuries: a pinched nerve connecting my tailbone and left leg, two enormous black and yellow bruises on my legs, several scratches on my face, a bloody cut on one finger, a long red welt on my left palm from closing my hand in a door, and generalized soreness. The physical pain is no match for the discomfort feeling chained to a desk. In fact, I sleep more soundly, snack less between meals, have more energy, and experience fewer headaches that are also curable with a simple bike ride. No need to pop pills when you can breathe fresh air while winding along the beach or navigating suburban streets where companion animals rely on your presence, your love.

Even burning my hand on the oven tonight was bittersweet. While my blistering wound of the second degree will require a call to my rather adorable doctor in the morning – admittedly no trouble since she’s very sweet – I kept thinking, “But I was cooking.” Hard to have a happy accident when you aren’t skilled in the art of feeding yourself, you know? I spent the hour+ with my hand under the faucet talking to my grandparents and reading. Time is only a waste if you are.

You are being asked to live a meaningless life, and when you have trouble adjusting to this meaningless life, they give you pills to make the symptoms go away. [source]

When we were visiting Poplar Spring sanctuary last spring, one of the caretakers mentioned that he used to get migraines like mine. “Used to?” I asked. “Ever since I started working here, they’ve vanished,” he explained. This simple exchange has stuck with me all year. Why don’t more folks make healthy choices? The evidence in favor of personal health and satisfaction is striking.

Money has no smell.

Just because something feels different or unpleasant does not mean it was a bad decision.

That’s the thing about being in a relationship: everyone now assumes you are only one half of a decision.

One of my best pals called from home. I ranted at him for twenty minutes, and he told me I’d learned a lot about myself way before turning thirty—an impressive achievement, he believed. Then he said, “One thing about myself. The Mall of America opened a Sanrio store. I got a cell phone charm of Hello Kitty wearing a Superman outfit.” You’d think they’d have the parking lot of America to go with the Mall of America, wouldn’t you?

We watch an embarrassing amount of bad music videos. However, it can prompt an exchange much like the following:
“I read a Marxist analysis of the PUSA song ‘Peaches.’”
“The Joshua Tree is the same age as my car.”

Just when I think I’m out of the woods, I flip on the tube and Gone Baby Gone or Mystic River is on. I see a local rapper for whom I once helped make a (rejected) music video, or I hear someone ask, “Wanna go to the Cantab?” All I can think is, “Yes.”

Our screaming abusive neighbors from across the hall took their two giant dogs and iguana and moved out. After slamming it so many times, the front door to their apartment will not stay closed. Unsurprising, no one has snapped up this prime piece of shiteous real estate.

Being a good human being doesn’t seem to be a guarantee in this life though. Recession times make people hostile towards the suffering of others, and I admit to being among the former group (if perhaps because I’m part of the latter too). Forgive me if I’m not more sympathetic when people whine that they’re relying on a safety net. The best people I know are quite poor and without a backup plan, thanks to a lifetime of serving what they believed to be a better god than money. But, your morals are not a pension.

Twice in one week, we purchased rotting produce from the supermarket: first mushrooms, then red peppers. We returned both with no trouble, but after the second exchange, we wondered if this wasn’t somehow related to the economic downturn. “Do you think people buy fewer vegetables so they’re molding on the shelves?” “Maybe they’re just pushing the expiration dates harder so that they don’t have to dispose of as much inventory.” You gotta stand behind your fruit.

This weekend, we are dawg sitting for Sam, our friends’ 13-year-old lab. He likes to shake my hand and runs errands with me in the rain, taking my focus off the crap weather and putting it squarely on whether or not he’s trying to lick slugs on the sidewalk. Malcolm is not quite as impressed by our guest, but there is peace among humans and animals in our home. The gnats have been committing suicide by lamp, so there’s one less species with which to coexist.

Stopping here between Gaza and the U.S., Dead Prez came – for the fortuitous first time – to our city. When M1 signed my CD, he wrote, “Power 2 U!” When I told him where I was from, he said, “I know ‘Napolis.” Stic.man and I exchanged hands on our hearts and a mouthed “thank you” as I turned to go. I always wish I could better convey my appreciation in these situations.

Eight years later, we’ve essentially switched places. She just returned from a drive around our homeland, venturing across disputed borders, into smoky souvenir shops, and discovering historic sites marked by nothing more than a chain-link fence. I just returned from a week in her former city, though my trip’s soundtrack was big band instead of Kid A.

Anyone who knows me understand that I increasingly resist my own documentation, though I’m simultaneously thankful for others’ records. Do I really need to report back on photo exhibitions, falafel wraps with cabbage, a concentration camp, or one of the worst migraines of my life – one that literally shook me awake? Does it impact anyone to know that I sleep like a baby with open windows next to city traffic, while Andreas can barely stand my drowsy need to hear the din from our urban hideaway? We saw beautiful art, terrible barren sadness, and ate vegan fast food. Despite arriving after closing time, we were welcomed and ate a late afternoon meal in a macrobiotic restaurant, probably because we seemed to bewildered and tired after wandering to find it without confirming hours of operation. During a freak rain shower, we shared a doorway with a Polish family and their dog. We confuse everyone the moment they ask, “Where are you from?”

Excellent question.

click to play Kommer Igen

Dear Nik & Jay,

I am not your target audience, for I am not a screeching, fainting 14-year-old girl. However, I am quite enamored with your white boy hip-hop-lite take on my new city and all it has to offer. If I may, a few words – mostly questions, really – on why my pulse races whenever I hear your oddly charming pop tunes.

Despite the embarrassment that accompanies my awkward love of your simplistic pop-hop style, I’ve found that it increasingly comes in handy as I learn your native language. Did you know, for example, that I was able to read a friend’s note from a repairman only because of your song, “Kommer Igen?” She looked bewildered, but I calmly explained, “He will come back.”

Similarly, in my Danish module one course, I have confirmed that “flytte” means “move,” since to me, it originally sounded like you “flew into Vesterbro” in “Du Gør Mig Høj.” I was a real pro at this particular word by the time my lovely teacher asked me to speak aloud about my own relocation.

I wonder:
- Where is the helipad in your “Kommer Igen” video, and how does a proletarian like myself access it?
- I live near Bellevue. If I go out and stand on Strandvejen, will I ever see you cruising my direction?
- When you say “skru op for den bitch,” do you mean that a bitch should turn it up, or that it – it being an amp or the volume perhaps – is a bitch that should be turned up?
- If your story in “Du Gør Mig Høj” is true, why did you move so much in such a concentrated area? Over what time period did these relocations occur?
- Do I really make you hot, and do you really love me?

I say with shame that I cannot tell you apart from one another. If I saw you walking in Nørrebro, I would have to call you by your collective moniker. And yet, you are the ultimate package deal. If anything, this should be a compliment. I resist paying entrance fees to Tivoli to see your perform – I am trying to be less of a resident tourist, after all – but I eventually hope we pass and man-nod to one another on the street. I’ll be the punky looking chick who isn’t as cool as you. Then again, you’ll also probably be in your sweet ride. I’m usually on foot.

Thank you for your contribution to our insular shared land. I remain indebted to your simple grammar, recognizable video backdrops, neighborhood name-drops, and attention to current local fashion. I am fascinated – without irony – by your pensive stares and random pointing. You make understandable pop music, even as my Danish comprehension remains poor. Thankfully, though, you also assist me in learning, just by being.

I hope that as my language skills improve, our relationship does not diminish. You are not first in my iTunes, but you are not last in my heart.

xo,
b