Bjork is Probably an Alien

I wrote this for my friend Sara 
who wanted to hear about our trip to Iceland. 

And, I suspect, to pull me out 
of my writing slump. 
Thank you, Sara. 

We have landed on the moon. Or perhaps it’s Mars. We dropped out of the clouds into a freezing, desolate rockiness – a throwback to the age of amoebas. Iceland is a recent addition to Earth’s above-water bits. Its eastern coast is nothing more than a preserved lava flow, a blanket of rock and moss buckling like an old parking lot. It does not sound beautiful, but it is.

             Icelanders are instantly likeable. They are like Canadians, except they all sound like Bjork. Iceland is, purportedly, the least genetically diverse country in the world. And it is true; there’s a distinct familial resemblance. Perhaps even sweetness is hereditary.

            We are transported like quarantined cattle to the capital Reykjavik. It is a tiny town, to match this tiny island. Not quaint, exactly, but not entirely devoid of a certain charm. It is efficient, and Scandinavian. Immaculate, but rough around the edges, the lovechild of Copenhagen and some remote whaling outpost. We must transfer to a smaller bus to navigate the narrow streets to our apartment.

            Our first meal on Mars is a spicy Asian noodle soup. We have played the game where you pass a hundred cafes (and knitted sweater shops), peeking and wondering. This one? What do you think of this one? You can get whale just about anywhere, but the locals rave about this noodle soup. It’s served fast and crazy hot by a trio of waitress who certainly shared a womb. We slurp our soup with running noses, our burning tongues trying to decipher its broth. Tummies slightly unsettled, we grab a few Viking beers and call it a night.

            It is hard, at first, to leave the sanctum of our apartment. There is a television the size of a small car and 400 channels waiting to be explored. We are mesmerized and, besides, Iceland is not very welcoming at first. In fact, it is pouring. Will pour buckets all day. It is true what the natives have told us: always bring a raincoat.

            And so we do. Out into the deluge we go, with one destination in mind: the Sea Baron and their famous lobster soup. Finally, a country that understands the importance of soup. I will eat soup until it runs from my ears, I think, as we plod down toward the docks.

            The Sea Baron is about as humble an accommodation as you can image. Part baitshop, part pitstop, the Baron is spare. We sit on ancient boat fenders and lean over split wood tables. This is not a place to linger, and yet we do. Several parties come and go while we marvel over the insanity of this lobster soup. Is that cardamom? We are in love.

            What we don’t know is that we will overdose on lobster. We will eat pounds of it before we go; Maricris will be served eight tails in one sitting. For the rest – though we cannot know this yet – I will prefer chicken to puffin, and be enamored of biscotti made with Icelandic moss. We will both find whale meat illicit and indescribable. 

            We have not been gone so long as to not be a little homesick for Copenhagen. Our first bar is a Danish bar. Den Danske Kro advertises Tuborg, Gammel Dansk and, we see too late, a variety of Mikkeller. We drink two Classics in the deserted gloom. It is, I realize, a bit like sitting in a British pub in India. We are in the old colony, with the habits of the colonizers still fresh in us. I attempt to make peace with the locals.   

            The bartender looks like Bjork. I’m sorry, but she does. Even the boys look a little like Bjork. They are all rather elfin, in a way. She’s young and pretty, quiet but not shy. She tells us about her spotty education, her sister in Sweden, how she hated having to learn Danish. And underneath it all is the story of perhaps every small-town girl who’s tending a desolate bar on a Tuesday afternoon. There’s not a chance to be much of anything, she says, if you stay here. She wants to go to Australia. And maybe the grass is always greener when you’re young.

            We spend rather a long time in the bar, as we sometimes do in bars. Still, it’s raining. We are debating where to go. Rain calls for the indoors, but it’s too early to stay and get drunk. We manage to get about halfway there, sipping a Scotch each before we leave our bartender to her life. We need to get the full story on this place: the National Museum awaits.

            What I can tell you about Iceland, now having toured several fine exhibits and clearly being something of an expert, is that it’s probably best if you weren’t born here. At least anytime before, say, 1989. (Which is coincidentally the year that beer became legal.) Iceland is a harsh mistress; I think perhaps the people are so sweet because the land beat the fight out of them long, long ago. Their welcome is not unconditional, however. On the way home, I see a sign at a bar that says, “If you are racist, sexist, homophobic or an asshole, do not come in.”

            But they do seem to tolerate cats. There are a lot of cats. Even in the rain. But these are not street cats. This is not Rome. These cats are tended, collared and spoiled, apparently. I watch a fat orange tabby eat ice cream off the street, as if there were always a spot of ice cream on the street. Just for him.

There’s a whole world, however, beyond this village of cats, knitted sweaters and colonial bars. Not a signpost passes without promoting some rugged glacier climb, volcanic cave diving or otherwise improbable adventure. We are practically guilty about it. In the land of Vikings and people who have been bitch-slapped by the elements for a thousand years, clearly we couldn’t just idle between bars and cafes, listening to Bjork all day. We had to do something epic. But which of these myriad butchy offerings should we choose?

Honestly, I might have opted for a dip in an active lava flow before showering with a bunch of strangers, but still, there I was. Naked. In the middle of Iceland’s answer to Club Med: the Blue Lagoon. It might sound romantic to bathe in a geothermal spa – and indeed, the water is opaque enough that I imagine “romance” sometimes goes rather far – but ultimately, you have to admit that you’ve paid a lot of kronur to slather goo on your face in the run-off from a nearby power plant.

All tourist trappings and Puritan modesty aside, Iceland gave us a rare gorgeous day, and we spent it wisely. And there’s nothing like sipping drinks in a hot tub in the sun to make you pass out on the bus like a champion. I can’t even remember what we had for dinner.  (Yes I can. It was organic fish and chips, made with spelt and barley, served with skyronnaise. I still don’t know what that is, but while we ate it, we watched a golden moon the size of my fist rise over the cliffs in the harbor.)

 And that was all the kindness Iceland would afford us. Anesthetizing as our one beautiful day had been, it was a cold, windy, spitting farewell. The elfin people in the airport practically escorted us to our gate, where I tried to get Maricris to notice that we were sitting next to a famous person without alarming said famous person. (For the record, it was Kristen Wiig.) Apparently famous people are in Iceland all of the time. And not just Bjork. Something about the place – a bit of Mars in the middle of the North Atlantic – seems to attract film crews. I’m pretty sure they don’t come for the whale sandwiches. 

Monkey Wrestling

I started smoking when I was seventeen. About a month after my mom passed away, in fact. I told myself that it made me feel closer to her, but the truth was that I didn’t really give a shit. Smoking when you’re seventeen, when you can’t even fathom the life before you, is probably the easiest thing in the world. And, much like my mother, I proved to be a natural smoker. I was up to a pack of Camel Lights a day within two months and I continued this trend for the better part of the next sixteen years.

I have seriously quit four times. By seriously, I mean for three months or more. The first time I accomplished this, I very smugly thought the monkey was off my back. Even through each relapse and new attempt to quit, I continued to think I had mastered the monkey. Yes, this time, I’ve done it. I’ve figured it out.

Last summer, I quit again. It was easier than all the other times, and again I believed I had won. For nine months, I gave up cigarettes with hardly a look back. Willpower, I thought, is just desire. It’s wanting something badly enough. I still think that’s true. But I no longer think of quitting as mastery. On some level, addicts always wrestle with addiction.

And so I have had a relapse. Granted, I’m not smoking a pack a day, or even every day. But I have been smoking and I recognize all of the anxiety and rationalization that has characterized my past failures. The monkey lies to you. You lie to yourself.

My girlfriend, a casual social smoker, believes that my physical impulse to smoke is a distortion. It is all in my head, she says. Why can’t we have a pack of cigarettes in the house and smoke one or two when we feel like it? Why can’t I “feel like it” just once in a great while?

Because I can’t. I either smoke, or I don’t. I can’t open myself up to the possibility of cigarettes without being a dedicated smoker. Perhaps that is all in my head, but far easier than trying to change the way my brain works – with the ridiculous reward of again smoking cigarettes, however casually – is to eliminate the possibility altogether. All or nothing, for me. All or nothing.

Today I rode my bike all day with aching lungs. Today I rode around all day with aching lungs, berating myself, while still acknowledging the little demon whispering, “You have those cigarettes at home….” And after I locked up my bike and took off my helmet, I sat by the window of our apartment and I fucking smoked one.

Then I poured water over that pack and threw it away. All or nothing. All or nothing. Ok, monkey. Let’s try this again.

Blocking the writer

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.


.

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.

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?

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.

Fear

Ok, so I'd love to say that my many-month absence has been tied into my inability to change the language settings on my Gmail account. I'd love to say that it's because I've been traveling. Or because I've found a new job.

All of these things are true. But they're not correct.

There's no good reason for me to neglect this space except one: I didn't know where to go. What on earth do you say while you grieve? "Hello, everyone... here's a post about how I'm still grieving..."

No. And I also felt the need not to write anything silly. Like how I don't really know what "business smart" means, as a dress code. How the centrifuge at the laundromat shredded my only appropriate pair of pants...

But tonight, I think I've isolated something that is both past and future. In as much as I want to think about either of those things.

I've been reading Nicola Griffith, lately. The most recent of her Aud Torvingen series. Let's nevermind the fact that I think of Aud as--that, in fact, she is-- a superhero. Let's not discuss how passionately I want her to simply occupy my couch; to feel her spring-coiled power, to look at the gorgeous expanse of her legs in my living room. No, that's all just good writing.

What I'm interested in is how deftly this novel explores the concept of fear. Fear in every tense.

My girlfriend and I don't, generally, discuss certain feelings. We don't much "process." We don't really know how to, not with each other. It's a strange state, actually. One that forces me to be far less verbal, and entirely more present. It's important that she gets my message right from the beginning; it's vital that I understand hers.

But tonight, somehow fear came out. The way we anticipate it, the way we hurt over what is simply a message. The way we worry it into a great monster. And my girlfriend--my weathervane and my lee--named her fear for me.

It's so simple in its brutality. I can comfort, I can soothe. I can open myself up and say, "Here I am. I'm just like you." But I cannot protect. It is not only me who has lost. Who is grieving. And who, again, will lose.

There is always a monster bigger than you.

What I Meant

Well, I haven't posted much. Clearly. Of course, those of you who know me probably don't expect much, anyway. And I guess I appreciate that.

The truth is, I have written. I've written three or four different posts. Most deleted because they're, really, not what I want to say. Always, there is the line from Prufrock: That's not what I meant, at all.

But writing goes the way of living; very often, what comes out is a great surprise. I sit down to do one thing, and, somehow, I create another. So, to circumvent any need for poetry, I will make a list (my writer-friend Jill has illustrated the succinct power of the list) of all that is with me.

1. I miss my brother.

2. I am giving myself license. To miss him and to be self-destructive.

3. Self-destruction is less dramatic, as I get older.

4. I need. I have an intense need--the kind which is there in all of us, all the time.

5. Loss makes this need a sad hunger. Insatiable.

6. History has taught me: this will become a longing. And then a simple hurt. And then a fact.

7. The fact is that I could not save him. I could not, maybe, ever have saved him.

Also, there is this: I'm back in Copenhagen, with what was waiting for me. Regular life. Normal life. Easy to be here, without him. It's a guilty ease. But also, I am immobilized. And I'm not particularly self-motivated, as a rule.

So, again, this is not what I want to say. Or even what I meant. What I meant is his smile and hopeful voice: Hey, big sister... It is a person, flesh and bone. Living, hands and blood.

But I do understand, now, that words are the only thing I can do. And I understand, now, that these symbols are an adequate illustration for loss. Because they are essentially a removal. Sorry little place keepers for the thing itself.

Things

Of course, it doesn't make sense. There is no sense in it.

If this were someone else’s thing, their life, there’s little doubt it might have gone this way. There’s little doubt that the twenty-five year old boy would have succumbed to all the demons he’d met.

How fitting would have been that funeral, then. How easily canonized the pretty day, the hand-in-hand walk from the grave back to the church.

I process all of these things, now. They are all a part of this, and yet still wrong. Grief delivers all things wrong, to me. It makes an uncommon family phone call portentous; it turns the crystal around my neck into a life vest.

In short, I feel the need to ward off everything. I feel myself descending to a place where life is a warning, a line cobbled in stone, a last breath.

The ordinary fact of it is that I ache for my father. A hurt I can’t believe. I ache for me, and for all of us. All of us who had this boy—this magnificent boy—as our care. We could have done better, I have thought. Because somewhere, there’s an outcome—a purely rational outcome, I think. A boy who didn’t die.

Reality, however, is where we all fail. It’s where we grieve and suffer until our throats go numb. It’s where we find how much we loved, are loved; qualifiers so often measured not in major events, but in moments. And in things.

I gave my brother two items of note in the last few years. One, a framed picture: I held him, a child sleeping in a rocking chair. The other was a modest silver cross I’d found in our mother’s jewelry box. I was, for some silly and perhaps not-silly reasons, convinced that it protected me. And I’d told him to wear it.

Objects. Baseballs, and trophies, a worn leather belt. T-shirts and wallets. Just little remainders. These are what I have, what I keep. But, still, they work like amulets. They feel like some kind of power.

Funny thing, though, is the power that we are. That thing that is living, alive and unbroken. I can hold this baseball—I can wear these jeans, this sad little scarf—and I will. But these are nothing so much as an afterthought. A longing.

The day my brother died, there were two things of consequence on his nightstand. One, the picture—an almost blurry, candid shot of his sister holding him in a rocking chair. The other, a tarnished silver cross.

Happy Birthday, Mangopants

We almost didn't get her. Wait, we said. Don't just get the first shelter dog you see... not just because she is a happy, goofy, beautiful dog who stole your heart. Be practical, we thought. Sleep on it.

I went back the next day because, of course we wanted her, loved her already. I went right to her cage, ready to liberate her from the hot, stinky captivity. But she wasn't there. She was being held for someone else.

So I drove home, thinking about how Maricris--who'd never been much of a pet person--had fallen in love with this silly yellow dog. I drove back.

It turns out, the family never came. And so we had a dog, a dog who loved to run and jump and chase... everything. A dog who was a little nippy, sure, but who came when you called her. A dog with stinky feet and silky soft fur... a dog named--most improbably--"Shelly."

It seemed pretty obvious to us that she was a Mango, though. That was July 28, 2006.

Today, Mango is being fostered by Maricris's brother, a veterinary resident in Texas. And she is as happy and healthy as a young dog with hip dysplasia and a bulging disc can be. If she plays too hard, she is often in pain, which is sometimes debilitating. And maybe, just maybe a complicated back surgery will make it all better.

How do you decide? How do you make a decision for a being with no knowledge of her condition, no voice of her own? The surgery could leave her paralyzed. Doing nothing might end the same.

How on earth do you decide?

Olympic Hopeful

The other night I attended a little get-together at the Niels Bohr Dark Cosmology Center--known professionally and affectionately as simply "Dark." (I have no credentials for this, or even the remotest idea of what people do in "Dark," but somehow I manage to talk my way into these things.)

Anyway, at Dark I pretty much held my own with science people in serious conversations such as this:

Me: "So, do you know if there'll be any Danish coverage for the Olympics?"

Science Person: "Who cares? It's just the Winter Olympics."

Me: "But the Winter Olympics are awesome!"

Science Person: "No one watches the Winter Olympics."

Me (disliking Science Person, who eats pistachios and refuses to look at me): "Where are you from?"

Science Person: "Athens." (And then, as if I clearly wouldn't know) "Greece."

Me: "Oh, ha ha. I didn't realize I was speaking with an Olympic expert."

Athenian Science Person: *much self-satisfied pistachio eating*

So the rumor is confirmed. I have it from a Doctor (probably) of Science Stuff. And not just normal Science Stuff, but Space Science Stuff. The Winter Olympics is dead. And anyone who's anyone from a hot climate knows it. Except for me.

I freaking love the Winter Olympics. And, I don't care what people know, science or otherwise: I love it way more than the Summer Olympics. You know why? Because I've never done any of it.

Oh, you can swim? Awesome, great. You can ride a bike? Me too! You can run, fling a rock across a field? I've been doing that since I was three.

Eh, fine: I'm not an athlete. I'm not even athletic. And I am profoundly in awe of anyone who is, regardless of the season. When I run, I do it because I must. In tennis shoes. While someone chases me. But I don't ever, ever do it on a sheet of ice with razor blades attached to my feet.

I have a reverence for snow that can only be defined as childlike. A frozen puddle, icicles off the roof--these things send me to near giddiness. When I watch the Winter Olympics, I reflect not only on the dedication of the athletes, but also on the sheer joy they must have known once, when they first fit their feet into skates, into skis, and glided across and over winter's quiet places. It's a glimpse of snowmen through the trees, of frozen crystals on the window pane.

Maybe this is the fantasy of a someone who grew up with hot sandy beaches at her door step, the romance of a girl who imagined moguls instead of waves. But I have always loved the smell of ice over salt. For it, I would have suffered scarves and snowsuits gladly.

In a few weeks, I will be in Norway. On skis and hopefully on my feet in a little village called Lillehammer. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. I can't tell you how stoked I am to learn on slopes first known by some of the world's greatest athletes--for the awe and the joy of it--as the Olympics.

And I'm pretty sure I'm going to break something. This is about as cool as it gets.


_

Language Barrier

So I started my Danish language class tonight. Intensive lessons. The pretty blonde woman who interviewed me said that, if I apply myself, I'll be fluent by the end of the year. Fluent. In Danish. A language spoken by like .008 percent of the world population.

(I'm going to stop bitching about that. Really. Would it be nice to learn French or Spanish instead? Sure. Will that help me living in Denmark? Not even a little bit.)

The class is free. And, at the moment, I have nothing better to do. So, tonight I shlepped myself over the icy sidewalks, through the immigrant and working-class neighborhood to my own little culture club. Of the ten students, I am the only native English speaker. This, I think, gives me a leg up as the lessons are initially in English.

But then I realize this means I am also the only monolingual student. That I speak only one language is something that separates me from literally every single person I know in Denmark. How lame.

At home, I know only a tiny handful of people who speak another language. One of these people is my girlfriend. They all grew up somewhere else, of course. Middle class, public school Americans don't do languages.

But I am. I'm going to learn Danish--glottal stops and 87 vowel sounds be damned. I'm going to read Hans Christian Andersen in the original, and when you come to visit, I will wow you with my ability to order from the sausage wagon.

Until the sausage guy realizes I'm not Danish. And immediately switches to English. Because everyone here speaks English. Perfectly.

January 22

I got my only tattoo when I was 18. I was in Boston for the first time, celebrating New Year's Eve in the North End. It was crazy cold, and we were crazy drunk. Liz, my amazonian friend--who would one day wear bright red dreadlocks and become incapacitated by my gravity bong--convinced me that this was a good idea. A tattoo. She knew what she wanted, was going the next day to get it. Would I come?

So there we were on the northern border of Massachusetts, just far enough into New Hampshire to get legally inked. I picked a design off the wall. It felt like a bee stinging. We walked through the snow giggling, back to a car that would leave us stranded for six hours.

The beginning and the end. That's what I chose. A chinese character in black on the back of my neck. One symbol, two words, everything included.

What I liked about the idea of a tattoo was that it could be an outward sign of inner hurt. I have a four-inch scar on my arm to remind me that I climbed a barbed wire fence. I have dents in my mouth where they took my wisdom teeth. I didn't have anything to mark the day my mother left.

For a long time, I drank margaritas on her birthday. For years I took the day off, the day she died, to ride horses. Because that's what she loved to do. But I've long since stopped celebrating her birthday. And this year, I forgot the day she died.

We had fondue with friends, went to a movie. We came home and drank and listened to classical music. Because that's what we love to do.

When I put my fingers to it, I can feel the faintest rise of the beginning and end on my neck. "They cancel each other out," I used to say. Cancel each other out, as in zero. As in a blank page. Grief can be such a selfish thing that forgetting feels like a triumph. Just another day.

Homecoming

I don't think of Denmark as home. The same way I didn't think of my college town as home, or Boston in the year that I lived there.

But after three weeks away, there was a sense of relief coming back here. Settling. Like an old house. It feels good to settle, to hunker down. I feel, if not at home, more and more entrenched here. I have a residency permit, now. Official permission to reside. They will (hopefully) heal me if I am sick; they will (attempt to) teach me their language. Doors are opening. And like a benevolent, but slightly weary, parent, Denmark is telling me to get a job. Socialism doesn't grow on trees, you know.

But, the impending slog that is jobseeking aside, I am happy to be here. Content, at least, because here there are a lot of very kind people, people I like very much, and in whom I have very little invested. There is no one here whose happiness I agonize about. There is no one here who agonizes over mine.

Release. The burden of love is often too great to shoulder. And I realize that this is rather like a gorgeous women complaining that no one asks for her opinion, but honestly, I need this detachment. I craved it. Distance dulls the pain of the hurts at home; allows me to throw up my hands and say, however little I may have done there, "Well, there's nothing I can do from here."

Peace. The way you can believe peace is possible if you live in Topeka, Kansas rather than, say, Kabul. A very selfish peace. When in doubt, we take the next small step. I need to go to the post office. Practice yoga. Take a walk in the sun.

Sophisticate

Most of the people I have met here are fairly worldly. Often they are foreign nationals, they have gone to school abroad, they work for the UN, they spend their summers researching in Africa... it's easy to forget the other half. It's very easy to forget that some of my neighbors have never been so far away as the airport.

Yesterday, I stop into a convenience store. When I space out, as I often do, on the debit card machine, the young man behind the counter asks me where I'm from. I get this a lot. When I say the US, his eyes light up.

"The US!" he says with heavy accent. "I want to go to New York!"
I nod. "New York is great."
"I hear it is big--much bigger than even Copenhagen."
I almost laugh. How would you compare the endless urban landscape of the five boroughs to tiny, genteel Copenhagen? There are more people in New York City than in all of Denmark. "It is bigger, yes."
"I hear that the trains in New York," he continues, making excited gestures now, "travel underground, on top of each other." His tone and expression turn skeptical, so I nod again. "Yes, that's true."
"And they built the tallest building in the 1930s..." I realize he means the Empire State building, which is now, again, the tallest building in NYC.
"Yes."
"Amazing..."

He looks wistfully at some midpoint near the Dorritos, and for all my world-weary condescension, I suddenly remember a 20-year-old me in New York for the first time... I remember how I felt: humbled, scared, exhilarated. I realize that I still feel that way.

"It's very big and very exciting. You should go if you ever have the chance," I say, sad because he probably won't. I turn to leave.
"Yes," he agrees. "Yes, I want to go to New York. And to Detroit City!"

"Um.." Okay, sure. Rock on.

The weird thing is that I have more in common with the guy behind the counter than I do with most of the people I know here. I've been starstruck by Europe. Much like my first trip to New York, I walk around amazed. So different... so old... so beautiful.

I can just imagine this kid hopping up and down in front of the Statue of Liberty, because if I ever get to see the Eiffel Tower, I'm going to pee my pants.

Barackstar

I was walking by the lakes the other day, and I saw this boy playing with his friends. They were all maybe about 12 or 13. Now that's an age where what your friends think of you matters. That's an age where--particularly here, it seems--kids start claiming a sense of style highly influenced by their peers. So what was this boy wearing?

An Obama t-shirt. Specifically the ubiquitous "Hope"/Fairey image, which we could argue is losing all meaning and impact based on its now-iconic status--much like Che Guevara--but that's a post for another day.

The point is, when was the last time you saw a teenager wearing the face of a US president in a non-ironic way? In Europe, he's crazy popular. In Denmark, his name is spray painted on buildings. Not "Suck it Obama," but honest to God... just "Obama."

That there is a collective sigh of relief in Europe over Obama's election is hardly news. And I'm probably the 40 billionth blogger to say it, but I understand how deeply reviled Bush must have been here when I see things like this:



And this:



I know that Barack Obama isn't the Second Coming--there can be no such thing in politics--but gosh it's nice to have him there... especially while I'm over here.

Bright Blessed Day

I was thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, today--you know air, water, food, shelter. And then farther on down the list, things like companionship, confidence, creative outlets... essentially all of the reasons that self-help programs are so popular. But you know what's not on the pyramid? Not anywhere? Not even in the highest levels (and therefore lowest priority)?

Sunlight. It's just not there. And you can't piggyback it with something like homeostasis. That's simply a catch-all for the fact that we need to be generally not ill or, say, stuck in a walk-in freezer.

We are not algae or bacteria. On a very technical level--even if you take in the whole vitamin D business--sunlight isn't a requirement. Isn't that odd?

Today, I went for a walk and took this picture. This is high noon in Scandinavia.



While I was trying to get a shot light enough, I realized that this strange woman was speaking to me.

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said," she repeated in English, pointing to the sky, "that it's beautiful isn't it?"

And even though I took this picture because I knew you all would be incredulous--even though it was a weak, watery sun behind our traditional blanket of grey--I couldn't help but agree.

"It is," I said. "It really is."

Voyeur

The view from our apartment, from all three windows of our apartment, is... other apartments. Other people, other rooms, other candles flickering over other lives. I cannot tell you how seductive this is, how very much I want to look.

From the sink, as I wash dishes, there are two or three lives that specifically draw my attention. There's the family across and below--the baby there just graduated to a "big kid" bed. They have colorful dishes, which the father always washes in a separate dish pan. I wonder why.

There is the couple down to the right. He wears boxer shorts; she is small and pretty and dark. They don't often cook, but they entertain friends now and then, congregating in their kitchen with beer in bottles--never cans. And then there is the young woman above them, whose bedroom is also visible. She likes espresso, and has no qualms about being naked in front of her open windows.

They all have one thing in common: they never look back. Is this part of the Danish "mind your own business" personality? I suppose I'm being terribly rude. I suppose I should keep my eyes on the sink, on the cars in the street. But how human is that?

Maricris, who probably doesn't look much herself, tells me that if we were in Puerto Rico, everyone would look. You couldn't stop them; grandmothers would be swapping stories about how the people in the adjacent apartment probably couldn't afford that big screen TV... how if they spent less time in front of it, they might have a baby or two by now...

Honestly, I can't believe the Danes don't look. They must. They must look up from their sinks every so often and wonder about the strange girl who sits at her computer so much of the day. The girl with the crazy hair and the Polo shirts. "Bet she's not Danish," they say. "I wonder why she never looks back..."

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 nothing.

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.


.

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.