It's Oh So Quiet...

Riding my bike home from a friend's apartment tonight, I could hear only one thing: my own breath.

Okay, so maybe I'm not so fit. Maybe I do sound a little like a hyperventilating walrus when I pedal through the city center. I'll concede that. But the fact is that Copenhagen is revealing many sides of herself to me, and the most profound of these is that she is silent.

I mean silent like worship. I mean soft as snow. Muffled. Hushed. Riding my bike this evening, it was me, my walrus breathing, and the sound of this city -- the wind, the crystalline, almost gothic, cackle of leaves over cold streets... the silence.

When I am in my apartment -- on the third floor -- I can hear the clip of a kick stand across the street. I can hear a car over cobblestones three blocks away. At three in the afternoon, I hear the children laughing as they come home from school; I hear church bells at six. In short, I can hear everything -- and nothing.

The peace is immense, almost painful, but this is not to say that nothing is happening. This is not the quiet of a small town on a Sunday evening. This is not the quiet of desertion. It's the quiet of Denmark. Of the Danes.

Copenhagen is a city packed with people, with bars and gatherings and a hundred thousand bicycles. And there are children -- so many tiny children! At the risk of seeming trite, they are undoubtably the happiest, most contented, quietest children I have ever seen. They put something in the water here; even the dogs are reticent and mild-mannered. I've yet to hear one bark.

But this is the funny thing. In a city where babies sleep noiselessly outside of genteel restaurants, a city where I might hear a petal plucked from the garden on my street, I am somehow ten times louder. I am American, hear me talk!

And talk. A lot. I can't seem to shut up. Whenever I meet someone new -- and this city is full of someones new -- even I am embarrassed as my lips move. I am helpless to stop them. What is it? Is it the fact that I am often alone? Is it that I don't speak the language, and am all too happy to exercise my own? Is it the very Danish silence that burdens me to break it?

I've been criticized for talking too much -- perhaps from the time I could talk. It's not so sad a quality of itself. I do it because it's sociable; I despise the awkward lull. I do it because I want you to feel comfortable. And I do it because I want you to understand.

But I've come to find that, with all of these words, I'm not saying much. I'm not saying all the things I thought I was saying. I am reverb; I am white noise. I am the sonic equivalent of a porno mag: all reveal and no revelation.

Then so, among the many lessons this city would teach me, perhaps I am listening. I'm getting that what I say is not the same as what I do. I get that what I do prevents me from learning who you are. And the revelation -- as sound as a breath over silent streets -- is that I very much want to hear it.

I want to hear it all.


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Time Change

I have been consoling myself lately with Ecclesiastes 3, the famous passage from the Bible that says "To every thing, there is a season..." Sure, it made a groovy song in the 60s, but this is also just profound advice. There is a time for every purpose, great and small, wise or wicked. However set those times may be, however, it seems governments the world over are not content. It seems that even Denmark is not immune to the idiocy of "Daylight Savings."

I realize there is a history and yes, sort of kind of, a purpose for the time change. The only thing it has ever meant to me, however, is that we lose an hour of evening light in winter. Of course, in Florida, that doesn't mean much, particularly when every single winter day brings a glorious gift of sunshine so abundant and clear and brilliant, that each morning fills with bird song and squirrels help you tie your apron into place...

The descent into the winter season here in Copenhagen -- whose nearest neighbors are countries like Sweden, Russia, Norway -- is a little more profound. By my calculations, we've lost something like six hours of light in four months. It's amazing, actually. It makes me wonder exactly what sort of position we're in, here. Where, exactly, are we in relation to the sun?



That's a picture taken by the "lakes" here in Copenhagen, around 2 pm. These days the sun doesn't get up much higher than that. It comes up over the buildings, and then slides along sideways for a few hours before dipping back below them. And it's only October.

Aside from the sadness of losing the sun -- of feeling guilt prickle over the years of light and heat I often complained about -- I find this whole process somewhat fascinating. And just a little bit ominous. People here talk about "winter" as if it were an animal, a beast to guard against. "Be careful..." they say; "Just wait."

Theoretically, I'm going to learn a lesson, here. To everything there is a season, indeed. A time for light and a time for dark; a time to get, a time to lose. A time for plane tickets to Florida, and a time to gather your flip flops together.

My Polo Shirts Give Me Away

I am known in certain circles as a trendsetter. I brought wool socks to Florida. I single-handedly popularized safari hats for everyday wear, and I have extended the appeal of flannel shirts well beyond their normal life span.

Still, it was a small surprise when, speaking with a new Danish friend recently, I learned the full extent of my otherness.

"I suppose people here can tell I'm not Scandinavian pretty quickly," I admitted, considering my outgoing personality and general doofiness on a bicycle.
"Yes," she said. "It's mostly the Polo shirts."

Really? Polo shirts? Since when are Polo shirts not cool?

Okay, you see, trend-setting status aside, the style genre I am generally most comfortable with would fit somewhere in the mid 1990s. I'm talking preppie GAP-cum-wannabe grunge. I like plaid. I like Army/Navy stuff. I like layering long-sleeve shirts under skater t-shirts. I like Doc Martins.

This look is the antithesis of now. Particularly now in Scandinavia. The look here is (and I am surprised to find, has been for some time) skinny jeans. Aptly named because you do need to be skinny to look good in them. Lacking that, there is even a revival of what I'm hoping is an "ironic" tight-roll. Exhibit A:



Those socks and shoes are totally rad, too, apparently. (In my world, grunge rockers and riot grrls beat the crap out of dudes like this.)

So, fine. Scandinavia is all big scarves and long sweaters and leggings and leg warmers. So what? I rocked the eighties once already. I think once is enough. I'm just going to stay right here in my boot-cut GAP classics until they come back around again. By my calculations, it could be any day now.