The following is an excerpt of a conversation I have with myself almost every day.
This is one of those times you should be writing.
But I don’t even know where to begin!
It doesn’t matter. You’ve had this idea for days. Just start anywhere.
The character’s not developed yet. She’s boring.
And she always will be if you don’t write her down.
Borrrrinng.
Do it.
No.
Look, it’s raining. The house is relatively clean. You’re not reading anything right now. Just write a sentence.
One sentence is pointless.
Ok, write a paragraph.
I’m busy.
No, you’re not. You’re bored.
I have real work to do.
But you’re not doing it. You’re not even going to do it.
Yes, I am. And I have to beat the Bejeweled high score.
Wouldn’t you rather write this story?
You would think so, but no.
Why not?
Because it’s not defined. And it’s pointless. I have this beautifully vague thing in my head and words will just mess it up.
You don’t want to share that story?
Not really.
Why not?
Sharing stories feels like sitting in my underwear.
So, why do you spend so much time thinking about it?
Because I want to be a writer.
You are a writer.
I want to be one that people respect.
You want to be a writer who people respect, but you won’t write anything because if they read it, they might not like it, thus no respect, thus no writing. Does that seem silly to you?
No, I think it makes perfect sense.
Why not write for yourself, then?
What’s the point in that?
To sort shit out. You’re doing it right now.
I hate you.
What?
You’re the same voice that tells me I suck when I get more than five pages of anything. You’re a sadistic asshole.
No, actually. That’s you.
Um, no it’s not. I think I know the difference.
Suit yourself.
Fuck you.
.
July 22, 2011
June 29, 2011
The glory days of urine-dusted birthdays
So, two things are happening tomorrow: I am going to the Roskilde Festival and, somewhere around the time that Frisk Frugt is hitting the Gloria stage, I will be 34.
Is it crazy that I feel entirely too old for the former, and far too young for the latter? Anyway, so PJ Harvey's stopping by for my birthday. I bet you can't say that about your 34th.
This is a crazy big festival, people. It's like the mother of European music festivals. People die here. People are conceived here. Hell, I'm pretty sure that more than a few people have been born here. (Cool fact: the festival was created forty years ago by two geeky Danish high school students and, get this: since 1972, all of the profits are donated to charity. Yeah, serious.)
Now, normally, Roskilde is the sedate little sister city to Copenhagen, with about three percent of the population. And that's saying something. Dude, I’ve been there many times; it’s about as happening as Mayberry. They still have houses with thatched roofs. There's a fjord. And a Viking boat museum logically placed on the fjord. (In defense, though, their magnificent cathedral holds the bones of every Danish monarch back to Harold Bluetooth. Yeah, that’s where that comes from.)
But for one week every summer, this town gets inundated with hippies and backpackers and all sorts of unclean and possibly deranged tent-dwellers... I'm told that the Roskilde Music Festival is an absolute rite of passage for Danes. We'd put it off for a few years, but sure as hell, no one was going to let us escape the spectacle.
So, but that's just the thing. It's a motherfucking SPECTACLE, y'all. I'm talking 80,000 people and port-a-potties. I'm talking weirdos (European weirdos!) from every strange counter-culture enclave you can imagine. We'll be floating on this putrid wave of debauchery for three days in a tent you would buy at the corner drug store.
People, I'm a little bit terrified. Actually, I have a lot of anxiety about this whole business. I don't have a car. I don't have a private shower. What if I get sick? What if it's too hot? Too wet? Too crowded?
Oddly (so I've been told by the forty-somethings in my office who go every year), it's not chaos. And maybe that shouldn't surprise me. The Scandinavian ability to control oneself is not, as I first assumed, the product of inhibition. No, it's actually something much deeper than that. It's a sense of decency that comes from a society that treats people as adults and expects the same in return. Remember that one really cool teacher in high school who let you assert yourself, your identity, your manic teenaged opinions so long as you did it with respect? Do you remember how calm that class was? How supportive?
That's Denmark. That, I'm told, is the Rosklide Festival. They call this phenomenon the "orange feeling." I don't know why, but basically it has to do with not just the hippie mindset of "live and let live," but reflects something more dynamic. A personal responsibility. And a sense of trust in the system.
That's like the antithesis of counter-culture, right? But the interesting thing about Scandinavians, and Danes in particular, is that – just like the kids in that high school class – they kind of figured out how to assert themselves without fucking up everyone's good time. See, being an asshole is not hygge. And hygge is the highest Danish good. Even at a urine-soaked rock festival.
The move to Denmark has easily been the most cathartic of my life. Before I left the States, I was getting panic attacks in Home Depot. I was talking myself down in traffic jams. And it's not what you think. It's not because life is "simpler" here. It's not because I now ride my bike to work and have only three brands of toothpaste to choose from.
On a hot, crowded bus, a ten-story stairwell or a nine-hour flight, there’s nowhere to run. And in any strange country, support comes where you can find it. Sure, I'm older, I'm more centered – you might argue those things – but here's the fact of me, what I’ve learned about myself – the worrier, the superstitious fool: my comfort zone is entirely variable. It's a spoiled space of my own definition.
So bring on the Roskilde Festival. Bring on 34. Bring on the chaos and the urine dust and the hippies and all the cold showers with strangers. Bring the intensity of 80,000 bodies, all of them seeking that one righteous thing: hygge.
That’s my favorite word, by the way. A prize for someone who managed to snatch some sanity back from the face of the Chaos Monster. Dancing my ass off in the middle-of-nowhere-Denmark, up urine creek without a flushable toilet, I guess we’ll see. I guess we’ll see if joy isn’t something I can have anywhere.
Is it crazy that I feel entirely too old for the former, and far too young for the latter? Anyway, so PJ Harvey's stopping by for my birthday. I bet you can't say that about your 34th.
This is a crazy big festival, people. It's like the mother of European music festivals. People die here. People are conceived here. Hell, I'm pretty sure that more than a few people have been born here. (Cool fact: the festival was created forty years ago by two geeky Danish high school students and, get this: since 1972, all of the profits are donated to charity. Yeah, serious.)
Now, normally, Roskilde is the sedate little sister city to Copenhagen, with about three percent of the population. And that's saying something. Dude, I’ve been there many times; it’s about as happening as Mayberry. They still have houses with thatched roofs. There's a fjord. And a Viking boat museum logically placed on the fjord. (In defense, though, their magnificent cathedral holds the bones of every Danish monarch back to Harold Bluetooth. Yeah, that’s where that comes from.)
But for one week every summer, this town gets inundated with hippies and backpackers and all sorts of unclean and possibly deranged tent-dwellers... I'm told that the Roskilde Music Festival is an absolute rite of passage for Danes. We'd put it off for a few years, but sure as hell, no one was going to let us escape the spectacle.
So, but that's just the thing. It's a motherfucking SPECTACLE, y'all. I'm talking 80,000 people and port-a-potties. I'm talking weirdos (European weirdos!) from every strange counter-culture enclave you can imagine. We'll be floating on this putrid wave of debauchery for three days in a tent you would buy at the corner drug store.
People, I'm a little bit terrified. Actually, I have a lot of anxiety about this whole business. I don't have a car. I don't have a private shower. What if I get sick? What if it's too hot? Too wet? Too crowded?
Oddly (so I've been told by the forty-somethings in my office who go every year), it's not chaos. And maybe that shouldn't surprise me. The Scandinavian ability to control oneself is not, as I first assumed, the product of inhibition. No, it's actually something much deeper than that. It's a sense of decency that comes from a society that treats people as adults and expects the same in return. Remember that one really cool teacher in high school who let you assert yourself, your identity, your manic teenaged opinions so long as you did it with respect? Do you remember how calm that class was? How supportive?
That's Denmark. That, I'm told, is the Rosklide Festival. They call this phenomenon the "orange feeling." I don't know why, but basically it has to do with not just the hippie mindset of "live and let live," but reflects something more dynamic. A personal responsibility. And a sense of trust in the system.
That's like the antithesis of counter-culture, right? But the interesting thing about Scandinavians, and Danes in particular, is that – just like the kids in that high school class – they kind of figured out how to assert themselves without fucking up everyone's good time. See, being an asshole is not hygge. And hygge is the highest Danish good. Even at a urine-soaked rock festival.
The move to Denmark has easily been the most cathartic of my life. Before I left the States, I was getting panic attacks in Home Depot. I was talking myself down in traffic jams. And it's not what you think. It's not because life is "simpler" here. It's not because I now ride my bike to work and have only three brands of toothpaste to choose from.
On a hot, crowded bus, a ten-story stairwell or a nine-hour flight, there’s nowhere to run. And in any strange country, support comes where you can find it. Sure, I'm older, I'm more centered – you might argue those things – but here's the fact of me, what I’ve learned about myself – the worrier, the superstitious fool: my comfort zone is entirely variable. It's a spoiled space of my own definition.
So bring on the Roskilde Festival. Bring on 34. Bring on the chaos and the urine dust and the hippies and all the cold showers with strangers. Bring the intensity of 80,000 bodies, all of them seeking that one righteous thing: hygge.
That’s my favorite word, by the way. A prize for someone who managed to snatch some sanity back from the face of the Chaos Monster. Dancing my ass off in the middle-of-nowhere-Denmark, up urine creek without a flushable toilet, I guess we’ll see. I guess we’ll see if joy isn’t something I can have anywhere.
April 8, 2011
April is the coolest month
So, while the dead land is now breeding daffodils (daffodils!), and mixing memories of Alice in Wonderland with my desire for fucking warm weather, already, I have to admit that this little old lady of a town is finally coming back to life.
It's really an amazing thing to live in a place that has seasons. I mean, even if most of those seasons are winter, there's still this great anticipation, this sense of hitting the refresh button, when all the little things start to change. There are buds on the trees, tourists in the harbor, daffodils in pots on all of the tourist cafe tables in the harbor. It's ... wait for it... wait for it... Spring!
And I feel like writing. Man, do I feel like writing! I'll write on this damn iPad, if I must, but I'm dangerously close to rambling (Spring is all about rambling), so I'll make you a list instead. Here's some of the shit going down in Coopertown...
1. Danish people refuse to accept that there's any weather unsuitable for biking. I watched them slip and slide all through winter, and now they are full-on getting blown across the street. Forty mile an hour wind gusts? Don't be such a chickenshit.
2. Time change = magic. Coinciding with the crazy bell graph that is Scandinavian sunlight, adding an extra hour somehow instantly yields like four more hours of post-working daytime.
3. Carlsberg is probably not the best beer in the world anymore, unless you live in the UK. The company changed their classic slogan to "That calls for a Carlsberg," prompting Anheuser-Busch's army of lawyers to proclaim that the campaign infringes upon their "This calls for a Bud Light" branding. Interestingly, Carlsberg's new tag line is actually quite old: it's one they used in the 1950s, so, yeah... much head-hanging and possible counter-suing to come.
4. I have a scheflera plant that may or may not have been exposed to high levels of radiation. Are they supposed to sprout like a million new arms overnight?
5. It's shame upon shame for the Danish immigration services. After the former minister retired in disgrace (apparently you can't deport stateless people when they have no state, and folks tend to frown upon sending kids back to parents in Thai prison), our colleague Gus was kicked out of the country for some serious governmental fuck ups. But, it made the news and, more importantly, Facebook. We're betting Gus gets his visa back within the week.
6. Maricris and I are going to Budapest next month. So I'll be adding Hungarian to my ever-growing list of languages in which I can order beer.
7. Even though I rarely (ha!) update this beast, and have all of three readers, I'm considering a switch over to Wordpress. So pretty! So shiny and new!
8. Children and birds go batshit crazy in Spring. Serial. Between the screaming and the chirping and the trolls that live in the apartment above ours, it's amazing that we get any sleep at all.
9. Because it's about the only thing we can get for free online over here, we are spending way too much time watching Rachel Maddow. Dude. I'm scared to come home. What the holy crap is wrong with you people?
10. And finally, Mango's best friend is now a goat. Named T-Payne. And no, that's not happening in Denmark. But really, it bears repeating.
Huh, that's totally a top ten list and I didn't even try. See? Even my subconscious likes symmetry. But I promise that the next post will be horribly morose. Really. I mean, all sorts of shit could happen. Will I ever figure out how to get a monthly Metro pass? Will I be fired for playing with Wordpress all day? Will I be driven to alcoholism by a hoard of angry trolls?
Dude. Who knows?
It's really an amazing thing to live in a place that has seasons. I mean, even if most of those seasons are winter, there's still this great anticipation, this sense of hitting the refresh button, when all the little things start to change. There are buds on the trees, tourists in the harbor, daffodils in pots on all of the tourist cafe tables in the harbor. It's ... wait for it... wait for it... Spring!
And I feel like writing. Man, do I feel like writing! I'll write on this damn iPad, if I must, but I'm dangerously close to rambling (Spring is all about rambling), so I'll make you a list instead. Here's some of the shit going down in Coopertown...
1. Danish people refuse to accept that there's any weather unsuitable for biking. I watched them slip and slide all through winter, and now they are full-on getting blown across the street. Forty mile an hour wind gusts? Don't be such a chickenshit.
2. Time change = magic. Coinciding with the crazy bell graph that is Scandinavian sunlight, adding an extra hour somehow instantly yields like four more hours of post-working daytime.
3. Carlsberg is probably not the best beer in the world anymore, unless you live in the UK. The company changed their classic slogan to "That calls for a Carlsberg," prompting Anheuser-Busch's army of lawyers to proclaim that the campaign infringes upon their "This calls for a Bud Light" branding. Interestingly, Carlsberg's new tag line is actually quite old: it's one they used in the 1950s, so, yeah... much head-hanging and possible counter-suing to come.
4. I have a scheflera plant that may or may not have been exposed to high levels of radiation. Are they supposed to sprout like a million new arms overnight?
5. It's shame upon shame for the Danish immigration services. After the former minister retired in disgrace (apparently you can't deport stateless people when they have no state, and folks tend to frown upon sending kids back to parents in Thai prison), our colleague Gus was kicked out of the country for some serious governmental fuck ups. But, it made the news and, more importantly, Facebook. We're betting Gus gets his visa back within the week.
6. Maricris and I are going to Budapest next month. So I'll be adding Hungarian to my ever-growing list of languages in which I can order beer.
7. Even though I rarely (ha!) update this beast, and have all of three readers, I'm considering a switch over to Wordpress. So pretty! So shiny and new!
8. Children and birds go batshit crazy in Spring. Serial. Between the screaming and the chirping and the trolls that live in the apartment above ours, it's amazing that we get any sleep at all.
9. Because it's about the only thing we can get for free online over here, we are spending way too much time watching Rachel Maddow. Dude. I'm scared to come home. What the holy crap is wrong with you people?
10. And finally, Mango's best friend is now a goat. Named T-Payne. And no, that's not happening in Denmark. But really, it bears repeating.
Huh, that's totally a top ten list and I didn't even try. See? Even my subconscious likes symmetry. But I promise that the next post will be horribly morose. Really. I mean, all sorts of shit could happen. Will I ever figure out how to get a monthly Metro pass? Will I be fired for playing with Wordpress all day? Will I be driven to alcoholism by a hoard of angry trolls?
Dude. Who knows?
March 8, 2011
The family tree
In Norse mythology, the whole Universe is a tree: Yggdrasill. It joins and shelters all worlds, and her messenger -- the go-between of gods and demons, giants and men -- is a mean little squirrel.
The Yggdrasil suffers. But it is the timeless Guardian Tree, and it never dies.
Of course, that's just one of myriad tree myths. They're an easy hanger for belief, trees. Targets for cliche and epicly bad poetry, but justifiably so. Few people live to see the birth and death of a great tree. They're very easy to take for granted.
When we moved to Florida, I was eight. Our house was brand new, built on a dirt lot full of weeds and not much else. We came in at night with blackened feet, and knees and necks, pulled sand spur spikes out of our fingers and toes. For my father, this was a blank canvass. And within months there was jasmine and scheflera, baby palms and citrus saplings and who-knows-what. Over the years, he's experimented with all sorts of plants: roses, pumpkins, tomatoes, ficus, butterfly bushes. It's a jungle, now. The configurations change, but always it is green and lush. My dad can make anything grow.
Well, anything that doesn't require sun. See, there was something else on that dirt lot: a massive live oak. It was two trees, practically. So enormous that even though it sat on our property line, bisected by a wooden fence, there was enough for two families. And we did all of the family things you do with a great tree. We tied ropes with tires and hammocks to it. We carved at it and cursed the layers of leaves it dropped year-round. This tree raised thousands, perhaps millions of angry squirrel babies, all chattering proprietarily from its heavy limbs. I imagined that this tree had shielded Seminoles and dinosaurs.
Today is the first day, perhaps since the beginning of the world, that there is no tree. There is no tree because time and disease and chainsaws can dismantle any Universe. Let it be a lesson to you, says the tree -- because I am always surprised by this lesson -- that all things go.
The Yggdrasil suffers. But it is the timeless Guardian Tree, and it never dies.
Of course, that's just one of myriad tree myths. They're an easy hanger for belief, trees. Targets for cliche and epicly bad poetry, but justifiably so. Few people live to see the birth and death of a great tree. They're very easy to take for granted.
When we moved to Florida, I was eight. Our house was brand new, built on a dirt lot full of weeds and not much else. We came in at night with blackened feet, and knees and necks, pulled sand spur spikes out of our fingers and toes. For my father, this was a blank canvass. And within months there was jasmine and scheflera, baby palms and citrus saplings and who-knows-what. Over the years, he's experimented with all sorts of plants: roses, pumpkins, tomatoes, ficus, butterfly bushes. It's a jungle, now. The configurations change, but always it is green and lush. My dad can make anything grow.
Well, anything that doesn't require sun. See, there was something else on that dirt lot: a massive live oak. It was two trees, practically. So enormous that even though it sat on our property line, bisected by a wooden fence, there was enough for two families. And we did all of the family things you do with a great tree. We tied ropes with tires and hammocks to it. We carved at it and cursed the layers of leaves it dropped year-round. This tree raised thousands, perhaps millions of angry squirrel babies, all chattering proprietarily from its heavy limbs. I imagined that this tree had shielded Seminoles and dinosaurs.
Today is the first day, perhaps since the beginning of the world, that there is no tree. There is no tree because time and disease and chainsaws can dismantle any Universe. Let it be a lesson to you, says the tree -- because I am always surprised by this lesson -- that all things go.
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