snowpenhagen |||

Holy shitsticks, I've landed!

2007-05-23T13:10:00.001-05:00

Back here: http://shinyshinysocks.blogspot.com.

Listmaking

2007-05-19T16:45:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth just left to go home after sitting with me for the whole evening, watching me pack and scrub down every surface of my Danish room. This is the cleanest I have ever left a place, so I'm pretty proud of myself. My replacement moves in tomorrow and I want to leave him a clean room with spotless windows, plus a large blue IKEA bag, a budget guide to Italy and a book on the history of movies.

I'll see Elizabeth in little over two weeks' time, at which point we will reunite in glorious New York City and once again color isolate the world around us.

When I leave Copenhagen, the thing I will miss above all else are chicken sandwiches from Eat Me. Perfectly toasted Italian bread, a light smear of savory pesto, a substantial portion of sliced juicy chicken breast, tomato and green lettuce in harmony. I will miss eating it while walking, while sitting on a bench blocking pedestrian traffic, while typing at a computer. I will miss how ingredients drop out the bottom where a laptop keyboard usually swallows them. I will miss every excuse to find someone special to take with me up the three blocks from classes. I will miss the sweaty man who knows before I start the ky- in kylling what it is I want.

I'll probably also miss standing on a the train while it comes to a stop and the little wobble that results. I'll miss Tivoli and the shopping and the bad jazz band that played in the beer garden when we grilled burgers and zucchini. I'll miss the upright bass player who held a lit cigarette in his playing hand and didn't flinch when the ashes fell off into the strings. I'll miss the golden retriever at Valby who smelled like a sack of potatoes. I'll miss missing my train and watching the flickering minute cards. I'll miss the loudly rotating billboard signs and the ballet class where we talked about precision, speed and energetic bodies. I'll miss watching Heino show us his favorite ballet ever, called "Sophisticated Lady".

I'm not spending this hour ceremonializing anything. Instead I am going to fall asleep twirling my hair, like I do, between my fingers, not in chunks, but in bunches of asparagus or cooked whole wheat spaghetti. I'll miss my white apartment in Østerbro, too.

When I plan trips here, I usually start surfing the 'net like a pro at CTU. TYPING TYPING TYPING means that I'm getting something done. Man, Denmark would be an entirely different place if Frank had not lent me all those seasons of 24. From it, I have learned just how much I appreciate competence, which enables trust that when you give an order, it gets done. I also learned that if something bad jolts me toward duty, everything will be solved exactly 24 hours from that moment.

In 24 hours I will be in Virginia eating stuff my dad grilled. I won't have to summon any enthusiasm because it will already be there. It will be the same energy that propels me to learn to write something longer than a poem this summer. I'll miss my friends here a lot.

Last weekend we all spent another long night at Andy's talking to strangers. An old man played air guitar and yelled syllables. I spoke with a ragamuffin poet who talked about being high and sitting under a tree, staring at the leaves and the branches, until another girl asked him what he was looking at and he told her he was watching a Native American, can't you see it, and she said no, so he asked again and then she said yes. He talked about the power of words and our powerlessness with using them. He asked me what my favorite movie was and I made one up. Another old man with glasses grabbed me around my ribs when I got up to leave and, shaking me, told me "You are a spectacular woman."

I will miss Matilde chocolate milk and all the memory-making it lubricated. Matilde comes in boxes with a little girl in pigtails on the front. Matilde also has no expiration date, leading me to conjecture an inevitable trip to outer space in which Matilde will be the beverage of choice, seeing as it never spoils and probably contains ingredients indigenous to the great void. We'll discover planets that thrive on the life-giving properties of Matilde. And let's face it. When I'm in outer space, I will probably have a special edition blog for that trip, too.

I will be interning at the Glimpse Foundation in Providence this summer, living in a house with 11 other terrific boys and girls, located on the corner of a streetcar named Hope and tennessee Williams. Kim and Daphne made a list of things to look forward to, which rivals my list of things to miss from this foggy, wonderful semester. On the list are:

cheddar cheese
bagels
lasagna
meeting street cookie
CEREAL
flip flops
bralessness
unpoisonous tap water

That's a pretty thorough list. Of course, it's probably more representative of the deprivation they experienced in Russia, because I certainly had most if not all of those things while in Copenhagen. Probably more bralessness than the natives knew what to do with. Anyway, when I get home, I will have more to report.

But before I depart this dear study abroad blog, two pieces of news. Danny has just informed me that he has gone grocery shopping to STOCK UP for COMPANY (emphasis his). He said he purchased abundant meat. He must know me almost as well as my dad because I love meat. In fact, earlier today, Elizabeth and I found a restaurant in which to enjoy our "final Danish brunch". By the time the waiter got around to us and asked me what I wanted to order, I just ripped up the menu and shouted "MEATSSSSSSSSSSSS".

The second piece of news is that, unlike myself, who never got around to crossing out every item on my "To do before leaving" list, Elizabeth completed one of her central tasks: steal one of the hanging advertisements on the S-train. Coming home from my apartment, she saw her target. She tells me it is green and says Kan København blive mere WONDERFUL?

I submit that it cannot.

I love my dad!

2007-05-18T03:49:00.000-05:00

If you read this in time, send me an e-mail telling me the food you
want to have me buy for while you are home. I am going to Wegmans
tomorrow about 10:30 and I thought I could at least get your
breakfast foods and have a few other things you would eat. I know you
want some yogurt and was it Grape Nuts? I will also try and BBQ at
least once and we will eat out Tuesday evening, either Esposito's or
a good steak house or somesuch.

I guess he remembers the time long ago (in January) when I cried because no one would go to the store to buy me my Grapenuts and Activia. Somesuch! :)

Video metaphor for my life #2 of 2

2007-05-17T03:12:00.001-05:00

Becca Lasky's camera caught the man in Venice who restored my faith in the crushing power of love at first sight

2007-05-17T00:51:00.000-05:00

I literally followed him around Piazza San Marco while on a simultaneous quest for a Venezia Cat-in-the-Hat hat. Isn't he precious?

Video metaphor for my life #1 of 2

2007-05-16T00:00:00.001-05:00

Somebody else's umbrella, indeed

2007-05-09T05:18:00.000-05:00

Wtf , weather in Copenhagen? Seriously. The last few days have been intermittently rainy and sunny. I walked into 7-11 for a bottle of water yesterday while it was dark and pouring and I emerged to blue skies and puffy white clouds. Walking home from the train station it was hailing all up on me, but the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in sight. It was pretty biblical. My roommate translated the weather report for me. Apparently Danish meteorologists are saying, "Look, we don't know anymore than you do about what the heck is going on. Ask again tomorrow." I don't have the luxury of asking tomorrow! I have only a few more tomorrows on your soil and I don't want to spend it taking my puffy vest on and off every few minutes. My LDD (Last Days in Denmark) campaign is significantly hindered by the fickle sky. I guess I'll just have to spend the next week-point-five drinking chocolate milk and scratching my confused head.

M.(k).(m).s.(?!). Pearl of Scandinavia

2007-05-06T07:51:00.000-05:00

I'm eating lunch on the pull-out breakfast table attached to the kitchen windowsill. My roommate spent all weekend potting plants and they're arranged in a row in front of me, sitting in terracota pots or empty soup cans. I have both windows open so that I'm overlooking our tree-lined courtyard where my neighbors are sitting at tables and standing at Weber grills. I'm eating chevre on cracked pepper crackers and pineapple yogurt. One woman from #9 who I thought was sunbathing is actually changing her baby's diaper. I'm chatting with Gill and she is telling me the story of how she got hit in the face with a ball of fire.

I went to Oslo for this long weekend. Plans for Bergen fell through, so Elizabeth and I hopped a DFDS Seaways overnight ferry to Norway. I'm telling Gill this and she's saying that she's never heard of an overnight ferry. I'm saying that maybe she knows it better by its other name: booze cruise. She's asking if I participated. I'm saying that Elizabeth and I went to the ship's karaoke nightclub, stayed long enough to listen to two Swedes utterly butcher "I Will Survive" and vomitted our over-salted buffet dinner from laughing by the elevators where we could still hear them. Then I'm saying that we bought two bottles of cheap Asti champagne at the duty-free shop, drank them in our economy cabin bunk beds, sang songs and fell asleep.

In Oslo we bought sandwiches and tried to hijack city bikes. We saw the Scream at the National Gallery and then got on the train up to Holmenkollen where the old Olympic ski jump stadium was located. We got to the edge of the big cement crater just in time to see a group of Norwegian men cheering on one of their friends who was dressed in a moose costume, chugging beers and performing physical challenges. He was halfway up the long staircase, lunging with his hands clasped behind his back. One of the men told us that if we stuck around we could see him "empty his insides." Elizabeth asked why he was in a moose costume. Another of the men said, "His name is Deer, so he's dressed like a deer."

The view from the top of the jump tower, while cloudy, was exhilirating. The event loses its depth when televised. Now that I know the physics, I'll be watching with new appreciation. We were so high up that we could see mountains and mountain-side homes. We could see the water as it hits the coastline. We could see Oslo's ruggedness, which contrasts Copenhagen's manicure and pedicure. We looked to see if Deer was emptying his insides. I could have sworn he was a moose.

We rode the train back down the mountain and walked to a park. The monolith on top of the hill in Frognerparken is made up of men, one on top of the other, all the way to the tip of the sculpture. It looks like work holding that pose. The Vigeland sculpture garden featured statues of stout men, women and children in the act of touch. Situated along the railings on either side of a bridge, they're tumbling in play, caressing, reprimanding one another or fighting. My Oslo city brochure is in both Norwegian and English. The articles appear side by side. In the section about spectacular views, it translates romantiske vårvibber as amorous spring sensations.

The breakfast table is starting to creak under the weight of my plates and teacups. I'm worried that it's going to break, which will be funny considering that I've already managed to break my roommate's Egyptian perfume bottle (my head hit the fragrance shelf in the bathroom) and one of her glass candle holders (a jar of blackberry jam fell off the top shelf in my cupboard, rolling onto the windowsill and knocking over the stick, breaking it into three jagged pieces). I hope it holds up. An old woman across the courtyard from me just stepped onto her little balcony that's big enough for two people. So far it's just her and a huge rainbow-striped umbrella that she's been wrestling with passionately. I want to be here when it opens.

Trinity.

Nasti.

Sound system.

*** Thanks a million to Elizabeth for sharing her pictures with me while I wait for my replacement camera.

2007-05-02T03:40:00.000-05:00

The bus took us from Frue Plads to Helsingør where we took a Scandlines ferry to Helsingborg. At the duty-free shop aboard the ship I bought a bag of assorted mini chocolate bars and a box of licorice Skipper pipes. Once in Sweden, we drove an extra hour out to Jonstorp. The bikes were waiting for us in front of the hostel at Gamla Södåkravägen. Most of the trip we biked past pleasant farms and burning piles of dung. The sky was blue, the grass was dull but dense, and as far as the eye could see there were yellow fields of mustard. From Mölle we hiked out to the NIMIS and ARX driftwood sculptures. The whole thing was built single-handedly by Lars Vilks on the north side of the Kullaberg Nature Reserve. Apparently he worked for nearly two years before anyone stumbled upon the products of his hammer. The area was subsequently shrouded in controversy. The Swedish government ended up fining Vilks, but in 1986 Christo bought the site and never removed the sculptures. As it stands now, it is one huge piece over 100 meters in length, with several towers of 15 meters made out of 25 tons of wood. We climbed all over it. Though it’s very secure, there are moments at the top of a tower when you realize just what it is that is keeping you from crashing onto the boulders below: a mere web of wood and nails. As sprawling as it is, it feels organic and sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re looking at something two hands made. I couldn’t help thinking that if a giant-ass kitten were to stumble on Nimis, it would think it a paradise.

When we hiked back up the cliff past the sneering totem poles that greeted us on the way in, we ran into some members of our group who had gotten lost and managed to get electrocuted somewhere. We gave them directions to the piece and then picked our bikes back up at our lunch picnic area. I hopped on and raced downhill. When I wasn’t brave enough to lift my hands off of the handlebars, I settled for loosening my fingers’ grip. My butt hurt to touch the seat again. At the next intersection, the group decided to try biking out to the Kullen lighthouse on the peninsula, a huge landmark along the Swedish coast and the most powerful lighthouse of its kind in Scandinavia. Since most of the trip was uphill, we eventually collapsed on a look-out shoulder of the road and gazed on the town below us. The sky grew dark and dramatic and we took pictures.

We got lost a couple times on the dusty country roads leading back to the Vandrarhem. When we got there, we took hot showers and put on fresh clothes and sat on the grass outside to wait for the leaders to grill our food. Then we ate, drank tea in the lounge and played hearts on impossible double-sided cards. I got into bed early, listening to music on shuffle through my headphones. A song from way back that meant a lot of things came on. Every boy I ever embraced either knew or didn’t know that it was playing for me when we embraced.

The next day a familiar breakfast spread was waiting for us. We hydrated and hopped on the bus to a stop on the Rönneå river where we picked up our canoes and headed out for a full day of paddling. The river started out looking like a simple irrigation ditch. We took over, racing, relaxing, shouting at our friends in other boats. Then the river became more river-like until we floated through a town and found ourselves paddling through people’s backyards. It was a Sunday, so people were outside walking with dogs or sweethearts, throwing Frisbees, grilling or watching to satisfy their minds.

2007-04-30T13:03:00.000-05:00

MS: he's not going to say no
EM: how can we find him?
EM: hes so elusive
MS: DIS isn't that big
MS: I can pretend I have to do something in his part of the building
MS: and you stand around or something
EM: hahah
MS: & then if you run into him, you strike something up
EM: yeah
EM: or i could throw my shoe at him
MS: OR YOU COULD THROW YOUR SHOE AT HIM

My Love

2007-04-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

Don Paterson

It's not the lover that we love, but love
itself, love as in nothing, as in O;
love is the lover's coin, a coin of no country,
hence: the ring; hence: the moon --
no wonder that empty circle so often figures
in our intimate dark, our skin-trade,
that commerce so furious we often think
love's something we share; but we're always wrong.

When our lover mercifully departs
and lets us get back to the business of love again,
either we'll slip it inside us like the host
or we'll beat its gibbous drum that the whole world
might know who has it. Which was always more my style:

O the moon's a bodhran, a skin gong
torn from the hide of Capricorn,
and many's the time I'd lift it from its high peg,
grip it to my side, tight as a gun,
and whip the life out of it, just for the joy
of that huge heart under my ribs again.
A thousand blows I showered like meteors
down on that sweet-spot over Mare Imbrium
where I could make it sing its name, over and over.
While I have the moon, I cried, no ship will sink,
or woman bleed, or man lose his mind --
but truth told, I was terrible:
the idiot at the session spoiling it,
as they say, for everyone.
O kings petitioned me to pack it in.
The last time, I peeled off my shirt
and found a coffee bruise that ran from hip to wrist.
Two years passed before a soul could touch me.

Even in its lowest coin, it kills us to keep love,
kills us to give it away. All of which
brings us to Camille Flammarion,
signing the flyleaf of his Terres du Ciel
for a girl down from the sanatorium,
and his remark -- the one he couldn't help but make --
on the gorgeous candid pallor of her shoulders;
then two years later, unwrapping the same book
reinscribed in her clear hand, with my love,
and bound in her own lunar vellum.

Look, there's God coming out of the men's room

2007-04-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

There’s a cluster of soccer fields across from my train station at Ryparken. This morning Elizabeth and I went there to see our friend Frank play ultimate Frisbee with a local team. She and I wore identical black spandex, grey sweatshirts and puffy vests, unplanned. We sat at one end of the field to watch and debated my timidity. Should we have moved to the middle of the field and sat by the sidelines? I didn’t want to risk raising the attention of the team and thought our support would be better felt if we stayed out of the way. Besides, moving to midfield meant being on level ground with the players – at any moment they could rush past us, a renegade Frisbee could whiz by us, and I would be defenseless – whereas at the end of the field we could sit on a slight hill with half-bloomed daisies on it. From that vantage point, I didn’t have to be the embarrassing mom and could be part of the cute pair of girls who stumbled upon the tournament. Halfway through the first game I found someone else who had also stumbled upon the tournament. The snail was a tan swirl among the grass and I watched him for a few minutes as his feelers extended and retracted, examining each blade before proceeding along a path of slime. I wondered how far he’d get if he were left unimpeded. I lost patience and cracked the nearby stalk of a thick weed to tempt him to climb aboard. When he didn’t, I stopped and forgot about him. By the end of the game he had moved a good six inches, which is either very far or not very far, depending on who’s doing the measuring.

Once again, Jack Bauer has managed to jeopardize the efficiency of this blog. I would have posted something about the last five weeks earlier if I hadn’t spent the last two days watching 18 straight episodes from season two of 24. Here’s something I have learned and would like to impart to my readers as a precautionary note: A computer chip is a completely fallible device for storing information. Think about it. A computer chip is small and you need a computer to access the information written on it. If you ever needed to transport that chip from a location without a computer to a location with a computer, while a bunch of ruthless, expertly-trained government rogues working outside not only protocol but the bounds of human morality is on your trail, the tiny thing is too weak and powerless to make the journey. Unless that chip has wings or can grow a pair, what we need is to find a way to memorize extensive sets of data, because a brain, being inside a skull, is safer than a chip in a cheap plastic case. Of course, that’s only true if you’re Jack Bauer, whose skull could withstand any blow that would knock me right dead.

Which reminds me of my recent trip of a lifetime because of (insert tenuous connection). I started by traveling with a group tour arranged by my European Culture & History program at DIS. Surrounded by friends, I traveled first to Berlin and then to Prague for week one. We were kept relatively sheltered by the tour itinerary, but were treated like royalty with special access to amazing sites and three-course lunches. We ate at the top of the Reichstag in a glass restaurant and I made my perpetual mistake of filling up on the complimentary bread. The bathroom speakers played sounds from the rainforest. The owl was not very subtle.

My group left me in Prague where I stayed with Kathleen for six more days. Spring weather emerged for those days and when I wasn’t watching Sex & the City in pajamas with my gracious host, I did a lot of walking around on my own. My favorite day was spent across the river at the Kampa museum where I walked around slowly and wrote down the titles of every piece in the museum for no real reason at all. As I was moving up the stairs to the roof I passed by a man on his way down. Our eyes met accidentally. I kept ascending the staircase but he stood where he was, looking up. The steps curved and as I doubled back above him, catching him again through the gaps in the steps below me, I wondered if he was looking up my skirt. I pressed my knees together and put my pen and pad in my purse to free my hands.

On the side of a big hill overlooking Prague I fell asleep one day. I had plans in my mind to order a fabled pastry for myself, a cream-filled swan. A swarm of Brown kids had descended on Prague for an early spring break and we had spent the day looking at the Lesser Quarter through the narrow apertures of our cameras. I was tired, so I traded the swan for a few moments of listening to organ music and falling asleep in that holy precinct.

Another day I sat in the indoor balcony of the Globe bookstore and café, drinking peppermint tea and eating honey from a spoon, delaying writing postcards. On the back of one of them there was a piece of famous correspondence announcing an important artist and an important work: "I bought it at an auction for only 500 francs, but this painter is your compatriot and some day he will be very famous." I liked the way the 500 looked next to francs. There was an extra space between the two, a typing error. I also liked the word compatriot. That night I went to see a film with Jeff that was part of the Prague film festival. It was Italian, called “Cover Boy…Last Revolution”, about some mess of friendship, male bonding, exile, alienation and perfect faces.

Kathleen took me to a bookstore where I bought a copy of The Waves with a blank cover. It’s called the “Books by the greats, covers by you” series and I think it’s stupid. Penguin says that we can design our own covers and submit them to their website. I’ll think of something to put on the front of the book after I read it. Something equal parts beautiful and futile.

In Paris I stayed with Becca in Steven’s apartment overlooking the Luxembourg garden. From experience we learned that our tolerance for museum air caps off at one and a half hours, at which point we begin gasping for air and running for coat check. This same limit does not exist for stuffy bookstores like Shakespeare & Co. where I bought two Don Paterson books of poetry, an Italian phrasebook and Say it in…Danish. On the day when Becca and I ate sandwiches on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, I saw a couple napping side by side with their arms draped over their faces to block the sun. They were perfectly still except for the arrhythmic twitching of their loose articles of clothing in the wind. When you sleep outdoors, there are parts of you that are awake, like a napping coral reef.

At the top of the Eiffel Tower there is an enclosed observation room. Along the circumference of the room are the names of world cities with big numbers for the distance between you and that city. They’re spaced out so that when you stand in front of the name you are facing that city and that number comes to mean something, even if it’s in kilometers.

On my last day, Steven and I met Colin in the garden. Colin brought along a special pastry that looked like a sun. The top was a sort of crème caramel and the middle was filled with pears in syrup. After we grew tired of looking at the blue pigeons, we walked back to Colin’s apartment, stopping at a market to buy strawberries, which we dipped in sugar. When we couldn’t find milk at any of the stands, a woman told us in French that the cows had gone on strike. With jazz playing through the speakers in Colin’s sunny room, I cut his hair and rinsed off the scissors in the bathroom where he spilled potpourri earlier that morning.

When I was in Notre Dame I stopped for a few minutes to hear the liturgy of a weekend mass. I couldn’t understand anything, so I joined a stream of tourists headed to the back of the cathedral. They were all whispering about things to one another. You think no one can hear you, but in a room that big, you contribute to a murmur.

After a night of bubble bathing in the Teddington Suite of a hotel outside London-Heathrow, compliments of British Airways, I met Becca and Elizabeth, late, in the train station in Milan. We hopped on the next train to Florence. I was too sugarated to sleep so I watched the black power lines dance up and down out of the window. We stayed in a cozy hostel run by a pleasant old man. The streets of Florence were narrow and, given the sheer number of leather goods stands, begged the name “Aggressive Leather.” We climbed the campanile and had a picnic in the Boboli gardens. We drank 79-cent champagne with Alexandra and her friends who have an apartment across the city. I learned a new joke involving my whole hand and audience participation.

Venice was creepy. My impression of the city was informed both by Chasing Liberty and Death in Venice, whose setting was that of an infected city during an epidemic and the spiritual yearnings of an obsessed protagonist. I came expecting gondola rides and free stays at quaint inns. Mandy Moore didn’t have to pay 100 euros to ride a black gondola down the canal and there was no Tadzio to be found. Instead, we bought waterbus passes and commuted with the masses. Our bed and breakfast was conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, at a fake stop near the end of the #5 bus called Tessera. We were told to alert the bus driver to let us off across from a Fiat dealership. At no point during our stay did I see anyone drive out of that dealership a) with a new car, and b) alive. It was approaching nightfall when we got off. We turned down the corresponding road to our instructions and walked along the rock path beside it, staring at barbed wire fences for most of the way.

When we got to Villa del Sole, everything was pitch black except for the bright red and yellow of the hand-painted sign. We fiddled for a bit with the gate when all of a sudden floodlights came on and a figure appeared backlit in the distance, holding a barking dog. He approached and asked if we had reservations. When I told him my name, he simply said, “We were expecting you at 1.” I apologized and he let us in, saying that he had to turn away another group that had come by that day looking for a room. I wondered who would have the cunning to figure out where this place was. He showed us our rooms and helped us register, which turned into a 40-minute ordeal of miscommunication and awkward joking. He wrote down Elizabeth’s birthday and turned to her, smiling, “Cancer?” She said, “Excuse me?” “Cancer.” He read her birthday aloud. “Oh! Yes. I’m a Cancer. You too?” He said yes. “Do you have a soft, sensitive core and a hard outer shell?” she asked. He blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” His name was Francesco.

He gave us our keys and we went on our way, taking the same bus to the actual city of Venice. We searched for someplace to eat and settled for some pasta place with a completely illogical theme: Lord Brummel and the Dandy. I don’t think any of the waiters in the place had any clue of the connection between their establishment and the original Dandy, other than what the placemats say, but that wasn’t the only time we ate in some mixture of an “authentic Italian restaurant” and were assaulted with misplaced efforts at attracting tourists. On our last night in Venice we were roped in for a meal in a reasonable-looking restaurant, but the first bad sign was that the menu was available in any of five languages. The English one was a jumbled list of standard Italian fare, with some entries repeated and mysteriously highlighted in codeless colors. There was no map key to decipher the menu’s stipulations, signaled, we thought, by the many ^^^’s and ##’s that dotted the whole thing. After a while, we realized why the menu was so familiar. Given it’s tremendous length, it was instantly comparable to any American diner that has every kind of food on call for its customers. Our waiter in Venice kept responding to our questions with a more exasperated version of “Just order whatever you want and I will bring it!” Then spaghetti started to fall from the ceiling.

We spent a day island hopping around Murano and Lido. There was a lot of beautiful hand-blown glass and I got to see the setting for Death in Venice. We also went to Peggy Guggenheim’s small museum at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni where every piece mattered. I fell in love with her taste, from her starburst sunglasses to her shih tzus. There was a lovely sculpture garden outside the main exhibit building. Next to an ivy-draped wall was a long marble bench with a bad poem carved into it. I started reading it from end to beginning, but when I got to the left end, a woman was sitting on the first stanza. I stood in front of her and she looked at me before her face exploded in a grotesque yawn. At all times in Italy we were surrounded by throngs of people herding through the narrow streets like alien cattle. In contrast, within the walls of the museum several Giacomettis were on display, tall, deceptively lithe and boneless. In contrast, the David on display in the Academmia was the most beautiful man I have ever seen, marble or no. On the flight home I sat next to a man with a two-colored mustache.

That was everything and nothing. Becca joined me back in Copenhagen for a truly Danish weekend. We spent Saturday in Tivoli, paying money for machines to throw us around. That Sunday we went to a football game, rooting for FCK against Odense. We sat near the top of the stadium in a narrow row of seats. I’ve been feeling pretty bold lately. There were three attractive men sitting in the row in front and below us. I joked about how to get their attention, speculating what would happen if I dropped my flip-flop over the empty seat in front of me so that they would have to pick it up and return it me or I would have to climb down and retrieve it, either way striking up a conversation. I dangled my left foot over the seat, inching the green sandal off my foot by scrunching my toes. Eventually it fell off. Right at that moment, something dramatic happened on the field so that their heads turned in the opposite direction. The mission was completely unsuccessful, so I climbed over, picked the shoe up myself, and returned to my seat totally unnoticed. As a gesture it was doomed from the start, but as a departure it took a lot to do and by my measure, I went pretty far.

Back and Ready to Update Soon

2007-04-12T02:03:00.000-05:00

So, we are a speck on a speck on a speck on a speck

2007-03-16T23:31:00.000-05:00

Two more things that have nothing to do with one another *

2007-03-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

These attempts at setting herself free were futile. She sank back into the dreams of her girlhood, but with the difference that now they were no longer illumined by hope. Moreover, she had learned that they were only dreams -- distant, illusive dreams, which no longing in the world could ever draw down to her earth. When she abandoned herself to them now, it was with a sense of weariness, while an accusing inner voice told her that she was like the drunkard who knows that his passion is destroying him, that every debauch means strength taken from his weakness and added to the power of his desire. But the voice sounded in vain, for a life soberly lived, without the fair vice of dreams, was no life at all -- life had exactly the value that dreams gave it and no more.

2.
BowmAn244: I skipped class
BowmAn244: she was going to sleep so we stayed on the line as she drifted off
BowmAn244: and i looked at the clock and was like 'this > class'

*An essential theorem of crushulus: What is impossible sometimes is possible at other times.

A day in Helsingør to see Kronberg (Hamlet's) Castle, after remarking that the only thing in the world I needed was to swing on a swing

2007-03-12T19:59:00.000-05:00

You can see Sweden!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

The Modern Breakthrough

2007-03-11T10:04:00.000-05:00

We were under a small tunnel to the school that Søren Kierkegaard attended when a woman told us that Kierkegaard left Copenhagen for a bit because he thought it an irredeemably mediocre city. He wasn’t alone; even the famous Scandinavian playwrights it claims to have adopted into its publishing capital agreed on the point of its banality. I became defensive. Having chosen to spend a significant portion of my college career here I wanted to hear its greatest artists and thinkers singing its praises. I never expected them to be among the city's most ardent detractors, among those itching to get out.

Despite myself, some thoughts started to come into place: the greatest achievements of Danishness we learn about in our classes are dated by at least 100 years; other cities claim top honors in fashion, food, art, literature; Copenhagen is dirty despite its luster; graffiti is common, but never striking or poignant; there are no stunning vistas, no natural wonders and a climb to the fifth floor of any building will grant you a view of the entire city, where in the absence of skyscrapers you learn to appreciate copper roofs and the handful or so spires that punctuate the otherwise quaint or industrial view.

And then it hit me: Copenhagen is small. The tunnel we were in was about 20 feet long. The walls were painted white, broken only by a simple glass door. On the other side of the tunnel was a small stone driveway-turned-courtyard surrounded by the offices for the country's most prestigious publishing company. The building took three floors before it stopped, content. The lamps that lit the area were round and dim yellow. In the book shop the clerks had stopped their work to stare at our group. I looked up into the windows of the office and people dressed in black were walking around. Some typed at computers. There are thousands of little nooks like this in the city. Even when I've entered a church here to be stunned, it's only in comparison to the rest of the places I go. The controversial new opera house is despised for its aspiring to something more than itself. It sits proudly across the canal from Amelienborg castle, a big globe with shimmering chandeliers, but you can't help but feel somehow estranged from the rest of the city: it's simply too big, therefore disowned. A big hollowed out church, then, is the closest we come to grandeur, but Sundays come and go and the pews remain mostly empty.

Are the Danes at home in their cribs and nests? Are they too busy lighting candles and renovating their samtalekøkker (conversation kitchens) for their weekly dinner gatherings to go out and build something big? Are they so secure in their serially monogamous relationships, their carefully planned networks of friends, that they don't want to meet me who is also small, who has also stopped going to church, who also lights candles and plans dinners, who also has never built anything big, who also does not want to meet them, but hates that I don't want to meet them and so wonders why no one is meeting anyone?

There is a new ad campaign everywhere on Copenhagen transportation. It's a bright green sign with big bubble letters saying KOM HJEM!. My friend Iva tells me that the campaign is intended to persuade people from Jutland, the peninsular part of Denmark, to leave Copenhagen and come home to their native region. In effect, they're imploring these prodigal people to fill up jobs, soothing them into coming back away from the anxiety of the city to the place 'where they belong.' It's a maternal nudge and a disturbing one. In my head, these people from Jutland walk around distinct from the native urbanites because they're lost.

If they're anything like me, they're mesmerized. This city that manages to be by turns continental and northern has something about it in the spring, I don't care how that sounds. My body doesn’t know how to react to the sudden sunlight and warmth. It stares wide-eyed in confusion at blue skies, mouth gaping at blooming purple weeds, ears in awe of birds chirping outside my window. I can’t even think to take pictures, I just want to deflate and lie on the dry sidewalk.

Copenhagen reacts naturally while the sun assembles outdoor tables under Tuborg umbrellas. Boots go on sale and sandals emerge, god-expensive. A man plants an upholstered upright piano across from the Post Office Museum on Købmagergade and begins playing a vague tune. The top half of an androgynous mannequin wearing a t-shirt and a hat, some Danes, me and my friends, are his audience.

In the botanical gardens yesterday with Elizabeth and her friend Christy I drank Easter-themed beer in cans with yellow chicks painted on them saying “kylle kylle”. We walked through the greenhouses and my camera fogged over. Today it is sunny again. Today, when the ducks paddle around the lake asking for bread, you give it to them.

My flatmate, Elizabeth, baked again this morning: more chocolate muffins and rosemary bread. When the items have cooled, she puts them in a transparent blue plastic bag, pushes the air out, and ties the ends together, to simulate their natural environment.

At the Royal Theatre to see a double bill of 'The Private Lesson' and 'La Sylphide' I am struck by two things. First, I am struck by the iconic pose of the Sylphide. Second, that I do not hate the miming. She is a fantastical creature. She is unattainable. Those who try for contact are doomed. And so her avatar is diminutive, her arms elegantly crossed over her chest, the forearms parallel, the hands floating on opposite ends like wings. Her torso is turned away from you, but her neck bends gracefully back, her face full of longing, her eyes sad. She is wearing a long bell skirt and she is always well lit. All the characters on stage who mime the plot look beautiful. There is lots of pointing at their hearts and nodding their heads yes or no.

So much has happened here between commutes, crises and whispers. I've taken to calling my parents everyday. I've gone on psychadelic voyages with Frank every Monday and Thursday in our literature class. I eat Thai ~~Cock~~ Kok take-out at Elizabeth's apartment while watching drunk Diddy scream "WINNEBAGO" on Making the Video, Britney Spears wearing a hat that says "CARPE ASSÜM", and Nick & Jay's I Love Ya video a billion times. I've learned an essential lesson from my time obsessing over 24: If you stop at an intersection and a suspicious-looking vehicle does something suspicious, the person you are looking for is probably in that vehicle. Once I fell asleep reading a packet for my media class and when I woke up it was torn apart with the pages sliding like tectonic plates under my body. I've laughed so hard at the internet. I've found hands to put my handshake in. I've made travel plans. I saw Aberfeldy and danced so hard. I turned 21. I thought about writing a year in review, but then seeing as my entire life is a year in review, I didn't risk redundancy. I took more blurry pictures.

I went to Christiania a few weeks ago. We walked through most of it, looking at the makeshift architecture. The walk was pretty standard as far as walks in Copenhagen go: it was quiet and thoughtful. Turning corners I'd hold my breath, preparing for it to be taken away, wondering what I'd see. It would always be just nice, a sigh-worthy view. One doesn't gasp here; one breathes. One is charmed, not seduced.

I've had my breath taken away once in my two months abroad. I was on a short study tour in Odense on the island of Fyn, the birthplace of H.C. Andersen. It was our first night of the trip and a bunch of us went to a bar after a filling buffet. I expanded my tummy by about three sizes when I managed to finish the final delicious plate of the meal: pancakes with ice cream. I was too busy digesting to think about drinking, so I sat at our table and looked out. One of the boys with us struck up a conversation with a man at the bar who turned out to be a scholar in racism. Two went to play pool. There were three of us left and we chatted. A strange man kept poking his head out from behind a wall for a separate area of the bar. After doing this a few times, he started to emerge in full body, bending his knees to the music like he had a dump in his diaper. He'd grin at us and then go back to his cove, emerging every few minutes or so to repeat the gesture. The last couple of times he brought his lighter with him, which he had switched to the torch setting. He'd light it and smile at the tall flame, looking at us, still smiling. We were a little creeped, but also a little giggly. My friend was feeling adventurous so she went over and talked to him. The only message she brought back with her was a question: "Why do Americans think I'm the enemy?"

That's not what took my breath away. A few hours later we were wandering through the dark, abandoned town, tired and chatty, headed for our hostel. My friends thought it would be funny to give each other flat tires. Then it became funny to trip one another. I walked along, exempt from these games, laughing at their shouting. All of a sudden I felt an arm move around my waist, grabbing me and pulling me back into someone warm and strong. He picked me up and waved me through the air, twisting my clothes and making me scream before placing me back on the ground. I don't know if that could have felt like it did if Copenhagen had an Eiffel Tower.

Photo Suppository Part TWO

2007-03-11T06:16:00.002-05:00

Justin made me easily one of the top three birthday cards I've ever received.

Headline news.

Pre-blizzard Kongens Nytorv.

Intermission.

Kongens Nytorv, post-theatre.

Best window.

Everyone loves a good loaf.

A wall of paintings at Statens.

The other wall.

Did I?

Nick or Jay? I can't tell.

House of cards.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Quack!!!

Easter beer!

Botanisk have.

Purple flowers. :)

Photo Suppository Part ONE

2007-03-11T06:16:00.001-05:00

Brandts Museum for Kunst

A street scene. Twice removed.

Boobs.

Kids in a castle in the clouds. The castle walls had telephones bolted to them.

The march of death in Veyen.

A man by the sea in Esbjerg.

A street in Ribe.

P.

Behind my future home in Ribe.

Ribe Dom Kirke.

Cryptic, quasi-pagan modern art inside.

View from bus ride home.

Hjemmearbejde

2007-03-04T20:18:00.000-05:00

In a country with 99 words for “overcast,” it only takes one sunny day to triple the population. With the people comes the trash and I spent the greater part of this weekend sidestepping litter and holding my nose. I guess people don’t shower when they hibernate and I hear turtlenecks can be ovens for baked odor. The blizzard that shut down the city over my birthday weekend made possible some late night adventures, some spectacular snow scenes and some fist shaking at public transportation. Between gangrenous toes and trains of little children in one-piece snowsuits with muddy bottoms, I was beginning to think that the descent of winter was a permanent one. And then on Wednesday we had our first glimpse of sun, which is to say a crack in the clouds. This morning I woke up at 8am to blue skies and the sensation of actual sunlight hitting the objects in my room. And the color! The streets may be stained with salt, but boy does this city know how to sparkle.

I got to experience this sparkle from the top of the city’s famous Round Tower. 25;- got me a ticket up the winding ramp to the top, but the journey wasn’t that easy. To begin with, I had to peel myself out of bed at 3:30pm when my friend Elizabeth presented me with the option of actually waking up and experiencing the day. You see, previous to her call I had been lying in bed watching episodes of 24 nonstop. I was completely horizontal, my nightgown all crooked and bunched, my headphones melting into the sides of my head, and I was drooling out the side of my mouth. My laptop was perched on the desk chair next to the bed and a growing pile of dishes and crumpled napkins told the story of my descent into the Kiefer haze like the rings of a tree. What I’m saying is Elizabeth saved my life.

This morning I was experiencing what I call a road trip mood. Not in the sense that I was craving a road trip (though I certainly wouldn’t turn down the offer were I was shown car keys, some boxes of Special K, mix tapes and an open door), but more like the feeling you get when you’re on a road trip and you’re staring frozen out the window. It’s a mix of nostalgia, restlessness, longing and wonder. And all of it is vague. What’s frustrating about a road trip mood when you’re disheveled in bed is that you’re not going anywhere and the functionality of your muscles is questionable. So is the functionality of that mechanism in your brain that says enough is enough.

So I got up when Elizabeth called. I didn’t have time for a full shower, but I washed my hair and face in the sink, brushed my teeth, put on some new clothes. Walking outside without mud, slush and ice on the sidewalk is motivation enough to keep going, so I hit a stride pretty soon and went with it. I was picking up momentum walking down my street. I passed other people and I raced them, taking big strides and staying focused. I tried to walk all day like that, with rockets on my shoes.

I know it’s been three weeks. Here are some of the more legitimate of the many obstacles to a proper update:

1. I have a paper for my ballet class due on Tuesday.
2. I have an oral and written midterm in my Danish class on Monday and Tuesday.
3. I have seven more episodes of 24 to go.

Once the gridlock of those obligations breaks up, I’ll be back on. If you don’t hear from me in the next 48 hours -- and I’m talking a full text and photo update of my life in the last three weeks -- call Jack Bauer.

Why, God, WHY?

2007-02-21T07:55:00.000-05:00

Internet, don't change too muchwithout me.

It's incredi-lonely out here without my laptop. My beloved PowerBook bit its last byte on Sunday night. I found it the next morning frozen, unable to make it past start-up mode, blinking a few life blinks. All that remains is a bright blue screen and a perfectly functional mouse that no longer has anything to open, highlight or drag. Of course this happens when I'm overseas and the Apple store is only open for five minutes a day. Meanwhile I have papers to write, plane tickets and hostels to book, e-mails to send, facebook profiles to check, entries to post and so much more. All gone. The laptops at DIS are dumb. All of the letters and symbols are moved around. They are also unforgivably slow. My little lappy was fast and shiny.

There was a "blizzard" today, my only fully free day of the work week, and I got on the train to take my little toppy to Vesterbrogade. I got to the mac store and almost went blind from the whiteness. I found the Servicekasse and the doughy man behind the counter had to go through four other pathetic customers before me. I could tell that each of their problems was stupid, so by the time he got to me he was pretty much predisposed to dismiss me. He immediately took points off when I spoke English, more when he realized I had no paperwork with me. He hit some keys, grunted and grimaced, annoyed as Nick Burns on a bad day. He took my information, unable to spell my name correctly despite my attempts to spell out the letters in both English and Danish. He took my address. He said they'd "send me a letter." IN THE MAIL. He smelled really bad.

Still, I'm probably jumping the gun. My computer is probably salvageable. I will pray, but it will be a long, hard, lonely 10-15 business days.

I went on a trip and I'm going to write about it soon.

2007-02-17T18:21:00.000-05:00

My Dinner with Anders

2007-02-12T14:00:00.000-05:00

It is a mystery to me how my body chooses to play its emotional chords. In a stunning turn of mood, I have been prone lately to bouts of irrational happiness, such as when I was watching The Deer Hunter yesterday at Dagmar in Vesterbro in a living room-sized theatre for 85kr. I was sharing a big bucket of popcorn with three other people, arriving at some kind of rhythm between reaching for the kernels and eating them from a stuffed fist. I sipped from a cup of black, black coffee and got to the sugar-dense bottom just as the lights dimmed and the movie started, shown in an exquisite print, throwing gorgeous, saturated colors on the screen. I love green street lights and red headbands. The muffled soundtrack made me strain to hear and kept me rapt for every click of the gun.

And the pastries, my God, the pastries. Chocolate croissants with Elizabeth on a bench in Strøget, fresh Kringles at Illum, 9kr. almond and toasted sesame Tebirkes at Sankt Peters Bageren. And 20kr. mystery hot dogs! The kind consumed while walking intoxicated in heels in bitter cold in heels in bitter cold on cold cobblestone streets in heels with clumsy frozen hands like blocks! And my delicious flødeboller, a chocolate covered dome filled with whipped marshmallow and sprinkled with coconut, that I ate while walking in Christianshavn and looking at the yachts in the canal. The marshmallow that got all over my face and the fortuitous turn down a street that led us to the architecture museum and an exhibit on sustainable urban planning for China. Justin said that everything looked like the future, to which I actually responded, "The future is now."

A happiness like when I read Heidegger on a seat with a butt mold, staring at hip black and white wallpaper and a mirror so close to my face that it exhaled my own breath steam back onto me. Or when I went to the orientation for this weekend's Odense/Ejsberg trip and my guide brought his little son along and sat him in a desk in the corner. Happiness like watching him watch his dad talk to big students. Happiness like his little hands holding onto the top handle of his backpack.

On Friday night I had the most awkward of awkward conversations. I ran to the train station only to find that I'd missed my train and would have to wait 20 minutes for the next one. I had my headphones on and was huddling with my music inside the station. I saw a dashing young man run up the escalator to the platform and sulk over to a spot inside near where I was standing. I looked at his face and recognized him as Anders, my rommate's boyfriend. Anders and I had talked before, though only under brief, introductory circumstances. The rest of the time, whenever he's over, which is all the time, I hide in my room until he and Elizabeth decide to close their door. I'm naturally shy, but manly men (or in his case, manly boys) really seem to bring out this quality in me. I thought I'd go over and say hello, but he seemed worried and was pacing by himself. I pretended I was off in my own little iPod world, pulled my hood down over the majority of my face, turned my head up so that my nose was pointed in the air, and did little dancey moves like I was having so much fun and didn't care if anyone saw. I played games with myself and walked in complex patterns over the station's dull tile. The whole time he just stood there. I figured if he at least recognized me, he would come over. But we just kept pacing, perpendicular to each other.

A train came and went and Anders ran out to meet it, returning alone. This time he caught my face and walked over to stand in front of me. I looked up and feigned surprise, mouthed an "Oh! It's you!" and pulled my headphones off. He smiled at me and asked if I was waiting for Elizabeth. I said I wasn't, that I was waiting to head downtown to meet some friends. I must have looked so nervous looking around and wrapping my headphones cord around and around my hand. He asked me how I liked Copenhagen and I said I liked it just fine, though I wish I had more time and energy to see everything. And then, because I was so flustered, I just started saying things that were blatantly untrue. I stuttered my way through a dissertation's-worth of words about the weather and how I'm not used to the cold, painting Washington, D.C. a balmy paradise, the whole while mentally stabbing myself in the belly button for sounding so obnoxiously daft. He was so tall and so angular and so pink from the cold that I couldn't look him in the eye. Eventually my train came in the middle of one of his sentences and I said, "Well, that's my train! See you later!" and ran away before he could finish.

I was determined to straighten this situation out. I thought I'd make more of an effort to be present in the apartment. Yesterday I did my chores out in the open when they were having dinner and had the door propped. Anders walked out of the room and said hello to me before entering the bathroom. When he emerged, he came back out and I smiled at him and then couldn't think of anything to say, so I just held the toothy asshole grin. He lingered expectantly for a brief moment in case I said something, but when I didn't, he looked confused and moved and then moved back and moved and left. I whispered, "Stupid, stupid!" to myself like in the movies.

I am determined to straighten this situation out. I am going to cook an amazing dinner for Elizabeth and Anders, the happy couple, and let them know it's okay to sit on each other's laps in front of me because I know what that's like and I know that they want to. (Answering my inquiry into their relationship story, Elizabeth said, "Only four months," adding, "It's very new.") I am going to say funny things that make wine come out of their noses and make them love me and scream things like, "Let's keep her!" I want them to want to pet me after every thoughtful and true thing I say.

Today I came home between classes to put away new groceries. Elizabeth was repairing the tile and had a drill and some special glue out on the counter. She ran in and asked me an urgent question: "What's the word when, like, you want to vote or something, but you can't do it, so you sign a paper so that somebody else can vote for you?" I thought for a moment and said, "...Proxy?" "How do you spell that?" "P-R-O-K, I mean X-Y." What a dumm I am. We were chatting about our days and she was gushing about her upcoming graduate scholarship interview with the University of Wisconsin-Madison when the phone rang. She said some things in Danish and hung up the phone. "Anders had a job interview today. He said he had a few hours before he needs to go back and asked if he could come over. Is that a good sign? Does it mean it went well? For me, when something goes badly, that's when I want to come over...what if it's bad?" I said that it's different with boys and that he probably just wanted to smooch her.

The buzzer rang and Elizabeth let him in. He was so tall and so angular and so pink from the cold. I was still mixing marmelade into my yoghurt, so I couldn't very well leave. Instead, I tried to converse, trying only a little to be funny and trying very hard to be a cool, confident member of the apartment. "How'd the interview go?" (Question accomplished, sense made.) He answered that it went very well and showed off his new official ID from Dansk Statistiks. Elizabeth and I ooh'd and ahh'd with wonder and jealousy. I told Elizabeth that Wisconsin would give her an ID, too, and she laughed. I sensed a shift in the room. Wisconsin meant she would leave in August for two years of study. Not in Denmark. Standing, she leaned back onto the counter where Anders was sitting, tall, angular and less pink. Still looking at me she reached behind her and held his hand in her hand, at which he stared. Only four months, very new. She said, "Yes, that's true." I'll make them dinner sometime soon.

2007-02-09T11:58:00.000-05:00

The most widely traveled ballet star of her time, Elssler made quest appearances throughout Europe and was the first major ballerina to visit the New World, where her performances were received with wild enthusiasm. In Havana she was surprised when an admirer gave her a cigar box as a present; when she opened it, she discovered that all the "cigars" were made of solid gold. In Washington, D.C., Congress adjourned on the day of one of her performances. Her enthusiastic fans christened such diverse commodities as boots, horses, boats, stockings, garters, corsets, shawls, parasols, fans, shoe polish, shaving soap, and champagne after her. The New England intellectuals also fell under her spell. At one Boston performance, Margaret Fuller remarked to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Ralph, this is poetry." "No, " he replied, "it is religion." Nathaniel Gnawthorne [sic] seems to have agreed, for he hung a picture of Elssler on his wall between portraits of Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier. Elssler's most devoted fans did even stranger things. Some drank champagne from her slipper. Others presented her with a cross made from the wood of George Washington's bier. And Elssler was not the only ballerina to receive such adulation: once, Taglioni's fans in St. Petersburg cooked and ate a pair of her ballet slippers at dinner.

-Jack Anderson
Ballet & Modern Dance: A Concise History

City of Doom

2007-02-09T11:06:00.000-05:00

Someone get these yummy Digestives away from me! I ate my weight in (chocolate covered) Digestives while in Ireland, and now it looks like I'll be eating an elephant's-worth here. That's the scientific measurement, you see. In about two seconds I am going to test if I can fit an entire biscuit in my mouth. A result in the affirmative could be dangerous for all parties involved. The biscuit, my mouth.

At sunset, clouds here look like the "art" I used to create by smashing whole pastel sticks against paper. That is, mounds of color. Lumpy, cracked masses of pigment. That is, more than clouds.

Headline news today: Anna Nicole DØD.

Other news today: A group of 4-year old boys in Børnhaven (like Kindergarten) managed during outdoor playtime to dig a hole under a fence big enough for them to crawl through and escape. They were found later that day wandering the streets of Copenhagen. Authorities gently scooped them up and brought them back to school.

On the train a few days ago a teenage couple sat across from me. The boy had long dirty hair and the girl wore a black hoodie. They had their arms around each other and were kissy kissing for about three stops. At one point the girl pressed her face into the side of his head. The boy would move, but her face would stay glued to his cheek. He tried to push her off, struggling for a time before she bit his ear and he screamed. It's so hard to tell who's gonna love you best.

My Danish teacher was telling our class about parenting philosophies in the country. We were talking about how discipline works and she mentioned that Danish parents always believe in the power of negotiating with their children. They allow children to make their own decisions at very young ages, hoping that they will arrive at the most reasonable conclusions. After this she related an anecdote about a supermarket trip with her then 6-year old son. They were walking through the aisles and he was begging for something outrageous. To drive his point home, he bit her leg. She was so angry that she bit him back. I love Suzanne.

I was in this Finnish boutique a few blocks from my classes this afternoon, sifting through beautiful prints and finely cut clothes. The saleswoman was very nice and responded well to my questions in Danish. I was in the dressing room trying on a dress when I heard her ask if she could see how it looked. Feeling a little awkward, I emerged from the dressing area and she became very excited, saying if I liked that dress, she could bring out others in different prints. 20 minutes later I had tried on the dress in six different colors and fabrics, settling on a gray and blue one.

SOMEONE EXPEL ME. I made the dummest of dumm comments in my media class today. Seriously, it was so dummmmm. I thought I had a point, but as soon as I opened my mouth, my 10kr. coffee spoke the words for me so that I sounded like a flaming crazy person. I think at one point I was able to string together eight infinitives in the middle of a sentence. JEBUS.

Result: I can fit two in my mouth at once. Hm. Well, I guess it's not that bad. The more quickly I get through this one last package of Digestives, the quicker I can not run to the store and NEVER BUY THEM AGAIN.

Sha-La-La Family

2007-02-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

Olive Branches, Rough Sex & the Lord's Prayer

2007-02-07T03:43:00.000-05:00

My friend Ben likes to meet new people. He also informed me last night on the train that he hates small talk, which I think is something to which most of us can relate. When we go out in public and we've had a little something to drink, it's almost a guarantee that he'll be chatting up our neighbors. He's an incredibly deft conversationalist, using wit and sarcasm to break down barriers. Sometimes this goes over well, as with a group of Spanish girls we met last night at a bar called "Floss", whom he engaged in a process of creating a secret handshake. (Despite my best efforts, I couldn't show off my Spanish skills with the Lord's Prayer...looks like that one's only good in mass.) He was eventually asked to take a photograph of the group, a favor which I'm likening to officiating an intimate wedding ceremony. So pretty much he's their new best friend. Sometimes he says things that make me a little uncomfortable, though, as when he shared with the snobby-looking Danish girls at the table next to us that I had learned the word for "rough sex" in Danish. It's true that I had, but as far as diplomatic gestures go, this was the linguistic equivalent, maybe, of planting a zerbit on their necks, farting and running away screaming. They laughed heartily enough and I could see how Ben offered himself gladly (he never really wanted to say "rough sex" correctly) as the misanthropic jester of the table. Our friends squirm a little when things like this happen. I was feeling bad about it this morning, but then I realized how necessary our visible discomfort is to the success of his conversational missions. We're the foil to his outgoingness, a legitimizing force that says, "Hey, he's not a creep he's our friend." And I'm really glad he's our friend.

Den Eneste Ene

2007-02-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

I went over to my friend Frank's kollegium late last night to watch the Superbowl as told by matching-belt-and-shoes Danish broadcasters. On the way there I chanced upon a urine puddle in an S-train car. In Albertslund I stayed awake long enough to achieve victory in three games of foosball, but I fell asleep after the first Bears touchdown, only to wake up two hours later with the daunting task of navigating the night bus system. I've learned that Frank and I, who are not snorers, are snorters. I missed the moment, but apparently he woke himself up.

Last Wednesday I traveled with my "European News Media in Transition" class to the temporary headquarters of Berlingske Tidende, the oldest newspaper in Denmark. Our group entered the building and was taken into the cafeteria for our coffee talk. Accomplished Danish journalists dined alongside us. In my smart jacket and boots I fancied myself indistinguishable from the youthful, saavy regulars, but I was promptly put in my place when our host, Michael, politely informed us that we were not permitted to partake in the buffet. As soon as he said that, the colors and smells of the gourmet spread turned to high definition and I felt myself an Oliver in an orphanage, red-nosed and bottomlessly hungry. I asked some dumb questions about fact-checking and drooled myself two inches shorter in the quiet hum of the newsroom. I was disappointed that we didn't get to tour the archives, that branch of the human paper trail, but elated to be near people who wholeheartedly believe in the value of print and get deeply sad at the sight of a page three ad. Anyway, the free coffee was bountiful and Michael was so very handsome.

I guess I like my classes. Besides Intensive Danish and the aforementioned News Media class I'm taking Modern Scandinavian Literature and History of European Ballet. It's not that I don't enjoy going to class, it's just that in the last year or so I've realized just how much I've checked out of the classroom, how uninterested I've become in classroom procedure. I'm that butt in the second row sweating with a comment that never gets said. For me the space of thought is a sleepless bed and a train ride, places where I can word out praise, plan my next dinner party, leave my understanding of texts at the level of intuition and wonder, in light of recent weddings, if I was ever meant to be a young wife. Who thinks these things that isn't awake, in flames and in transit?

Saturday night I went to Det Kongelige Teater for a production of Svanesøen. The whole evening was beautiful from start to finish. My entire ballet class occupied the third row of the second balcony. High up, but there are no bad seats at the ballet. Everytime I go to some enlightening cultural event I get angry at my parents for not forcing me to be talented. In kindergarten I quit ballet after, I think, two months, and quit pretty much everything else I tried after that, from soccer to flute. When I have kids I am going to subscribe to a school of parenting that spawns a Lifetime movie about abusive gymnastics coaches and the slippery slope of discipline. But these thoughts only last a few seconds and the rest of the time I use my energy on being inspired. During Swan Lake I sat and wondered if only all stages of love could be denoted by the harp and why only the most beautiful things make you feel the loneliest.

I think the world runs on magnets. On Friday night I went out dancing with friends of mine. I wore a treasured necklace with something flowy that felt heavenly against my skin. We walked all over the city center looking for our nightclub destination and finally found it. We stumbled in just in time to catch the last part of a popular band's set. The act was some sort of Danish reggae outfit and the crowd was really into it. We slipped to the balcony and watched the men in neon jumpsuits from above. After they cleared the stage, Vega turned into the promised night club. Strobe lights and lasers took over, along with some positively boring house music. Three of us tried to dance but were discouraged first by the lack of other dancers and then by the occasional swarm of eager goons zeroing in on our circle. Since we were tired of dancing in an airtight triangle and the struggle not to make eye contact at any cost, we pooped out after a while and resigned to the smokey, well-lit bar. This gave me a chance to catch my breath, whip out my camera and take a look around at the buzzed and buzzing club-goers. I saw fresh, fun 'n flirty girls like swans talking to well-groomed (or not well-groomed) men. I saw people making out and older men like sharks at the bar, sensing prey and promising they're not creeps. I saw the people who look, the people who look back, the people who keep looking and looking back and the people who get up and walk over. I saw attraction and repulsion in layers and second thoughts. They all looked like gaping question marks. I guess it takes one to know one.

Generally what separates me from their questions is that they go to places like that to ask their questions and I stay home. Their Denmark is questions asked like strobe lights and lasers and my Denmark is whole plain yoghurt and candles and checking my e-mail. But on Friday night I was out there and the extra shimmer on my eyelids gave away that I was asking some questions of my own. I received a familiar answer. I think everyone wants to believe in the power of their own magnetism.

2007-02-01T13:50:00.000-05:00

I Took a Shower in Hope

2007-01-29T16:12:00.000-05:00

Fellow blogger, ASCii artist and supportive friend who helps me fight insomnia, Danny Bowman, recently posted about a Brown Daily Herald article which explained the consequences of a water shutdown in Keeney Quadrangle. He was right to point out the inherent comedy in the image of hallways turned rivers of vomit. Since I read the article after reading his commentary, I knew what hilarity was ahead. As a result, even dry facts in the beginning of the article became funny. "Cold weather caused the pipe to crack, and a large rock located beneath the pipe caused it to rupture, said James Coen, director of maintenance services for Facilities Management. The pipe has been replaced by 12 feet of new pipe installed on top of clean fill to ensure that another rupture does not happen, Coen said." Ah yes, insurance against future ruptures. The article ends on a rather hopeful note, one that resonates with my current situation. "Despite the disturbance, most students found ways to deal with the shutdown. 'I just walked into a random frat house and looked around until I found a shower,' said Ethan Currens '10, who lives in Archibald House. 'I got some funny looks, but it was OK.'"

Friday night was my first night out in Copenhagen. We began at Den Glade Gris (The Happy Pig) for discounted international student drinks and appalling "grind dancing," as Ben called it. After the strobe light started to freeze my soul, we took off in search of a fabled karaoke bar. A reasonable walk along Stroget saw us to the doors of Sam's Place, a real goddamn karaoke bar. Filled with honest Danish folk taking their songs very seriously, we definitely stood out. A few strategic tables by the door eased our minds.

On Saturday I went on an alternative sightseeing tour of Copenhagen with our guide Lars. Lars is a big Danish man with longish black hair, a little gray by the temples. He is beautiful and married and works for a company called "CPH: cool". He took us to a few interesting pieces of architecture, dropping deconstructivist and Mies and other words like grapes to follow him by in the desert. Oh, Lars, you have me. The tour showed me some interesting sights to return to, like Copenhagen's smallest bookstore, adjacent to Copenhagen's smallest gallery and smallest coffee shop. And then also a little restaurant called Granola, tucked secretly away in an alley. The shop is modeled after a 1950s diner car, built by one of Denmark's premier set designers, and I could see the look of shame and dread on the patrons' faces when a bevy of backpacked Americans on a tour approached their treasured hang out, appearing poised to invade. But instead I went to Bang & Jenssen for the best breakfast ever.

Sunday saw my first successful accidental dinner party. I knew I wanted to have people over that night, so I texted the appropriate people in the morning and went about my usual routine of watching crap television, doing 8-12 crunches at a time, eating milk-soaked Weetabix and finishing half cups of tea. I got confirmation from a few and quickly returned to relaxing. Elizabeth gave me a call after lunch to ask if I wanted to find a nice coffee place to study. We agreed to meet one train stop over from our usual meeting place in the hopes of spicing things up. Frank also joined us and together we walked around Vesterbro looking for someplace open and inviting. We eventually settled in a Gelateria called Paradis and were the assholes who didn't order any gelatto. Instead, we purchased tea and coffee and I made a mess of all my coins. We chose a remote table by the window overlooking the rainy, steamy streets and I hit my head on the light above our table. Seriously, of all the places in the world in which I could have studied abroad, I had to choose maybe the only place that hangs its lights low enough for me to hit them.

At this point I've actually been in this apartment alone longer than I've lived in it with my roommate, who returns on Thursday. I'll be a bit sad to give up my unchecked reign on the sofa, but it will be nice to have someone around to exert social pressure on me not to take naps at 6pm and accidentally wake up 1am, completely rested and curious why the world isn't also up. To ward off loneliness this weekend, then, I organized the aforementioned dinner party. Elizabeth and Frank came home with me from the Gelateria and we chatted and watched YouTube while waiting for Kari. The dinner group was finally assembled so we started cooking right away. I had no idea what we were going to make out of the scraps for groceries I've been subsisting off of for days. We just dove into the pantry and fridge head first and hoped to come out alive. I must say that for an unplanned meal event, we pulled it together. Our table overflowed with pasta, Danish meatballs, sauce in a white gravy boat, sautéed green beans and carrots, a platter of salami, cheese and bread, and a platter of strawberries, grapes and bananas. I'm starting to be really happy here.

My friend Annemarie came a little late to the meal. She called during dinner to announce her arrival at my train stop and to ask for directions to my apartment. I gave her what I thought were good directions, but what actually instigated a game of lost and panicked. She called to describe her location, naming landmarks like the Shell station she was next to. I hadn't seen a Shell station in my neighborhood at the time and thought I must have directed her back to the States. Why couldn't her landmark have been something Danish, like a windmill or a pølser stand?

On Monday I got on the wrong train home. The sign informed me that the H train would arrive at Spår 3 in 3 minutes. Of course, the B train, which arrived in 1 minute, is the one I got on that took me to the wrong stop, Hellerup. I knew something was amiss when after my usual passage through Svanemøllen the landscape did not turn into rows of apartment complexes but into a neighborhood of big houses with lots of windows and red roofs. I got out of the train when I realized the mistake I'd made. Looking around, I noticed that I was in the middle of vast rows of train platforms, connected only through an underground tunnel. It felt a little like Animal Planet as I'd go under the earth to emerge on another platform, repeating the action until I made it to the right place. Don't let the first four letters of the name fool you; pulling out, the train passed by a muddy park with a row of empty strollers and I wondered if I'd just passed through heaven.

And then this morning on the train I had my headphones on and a lunch that I packed for myself in a plastic bag with a silver spoon for the yoghurt. I get to pass the north harbor on my way to class, see how close the clouds are and an office building named "Dong Energy". I had another music day where all earthly action collapsed into the song I listened to so that the two pigeons that walked for two blocks on either side of me were timed to the beat and everyone I passed on the street was mouthing Mama Cass, asking me to dream a little dream of them. On the ride home tonight I experienced actual Copenhagen rush hour. Everyone had to sit three to a seat and I was squished between a snorty old woman in a fur coat and a stern man in a trenchcoat reading the newspaper. Trained out of saying an American 'excuse me,' I silently gathered my things as we approached my stop and watched as the people around me coiled to let me pass.

Slow Fade Pictures

2007-01-25T01:06:00.000-05:00

Desktop light play with my milk glass.

View from my bed into the kitchen.

Our bafroom. Tight 'n bright. My personal basket is the middle of the three. Behind me is the shower, which isn't a shower in the sense that I know. Rather, it's just a showerhead and a curtain to section off the area. The water (ideally) drains along the floor under the sink. When I'm finished showering, I have to squeegee the walls and tile.

My new second favorite coffee/bookshop I've found so far. I couldn't get a picture of my first favorite since it was more crowded and I would have felt dumb. That one has a top floor of seats along the windows, which make for excellent people-watching. The bottom floor is cavelike -- dark with many shadowed couches and flickering candles. Very romantic. A good place to copulate over lattes, or caffulate, as I like to call it (which then begs the question of what it would mean to de-caffulate).

Indoor vines at the Carlsberg Brewery. SMELLY.

A small stream (attractive, but perplexing) separating the lobby floor. I actually saw a dignified man run across by accident and then run away with his pant leg dripping. Hohohohoho.

On the walk to the old brewery.

The magic of fermentation.

Some beerz.

More beerz.

I made a new friend in the stables! Meet Ipoopedonyourfaceanddidn'tevenknowyourname.

FREE beerz and sandwichez.

Visual evidence of the bag I wrote about. Lest you think that my struggle was less than I made it out to be, and if the presence of the Advil bottle does not prove scale, let me remind you of an essential fact: I am weak.

One thing for which I regret being unable to furnish photos (seeing as it would be impossible) is the many jokes about my name I've heard since my arrival. Apparently we DIS students brought winter weather with us. Jon, I'm thinking of your Michelle Kirstin Avalanche?!

(My roommate and her boyfriend are up and about, preparing to leave for Egypt (read: abadoning me). I'm in my room typing quietly in the dark, doing my best impression of a mouse.)

Easy & Me

2007-01-25T00:06:00.000-05:00

Strangely, I've been finding myself in bed at the end of the day with a bunch of little cuts on random parts of my body. Like right now, I found a new one on my left thumb. After careful consideration, I think these cuts may have to do with all of the sharp-dressed men I see in Copenhagen. OOOOOOOH. But seriously, the little cuts are one of maybe two things that are hard about life here, which is to say that life is, incredibly, not hard at all.

Let me begin by describing my last few days. Tuesday's commute went as smoothly as ever except that I accidentally parked my butt in the strip of seats dedicated to cyclists with their bikes and parents with their strollers. Afraid of appearing skittish, I try to feign a sense of deliberateness behind all of my actions. The story behind all of my behavior here is never ignorance, no, I meant to block that biker, he gave me a funny look. And, yeah, I wanted to sit next to an attractive father with his even more attractive baby girl, the latter wearing a puffy fuschia snowsuit (the former sadly not), and watch them both read the newspaper. Babies speaking Danish is about the closest I come to cute overload and I have a notoriously high tolerance. In other words: dead.

So far I've just been attending various orientation seminars, trying to find each of the many scattered DIS buildings, holding my paper materials in mittened hands while desperately holding my hood close around my ears (which will likely fall off somewhere in the next 48 hours). DIS likes to advertise itself as a roller coaster experience, replete with ups and downs, creaks, groans, excited screams and a certain rush of endorphins, which I find funny mostly because for a country so flat, they sure have to create opportunities for hills and thrills. This brings me to my first point: the Danes like life easy and so do I. Actually, if Denmark were, say, a man in tight pants with a strong jaw and a gold medal in cuddling, we'd probably be married and living in a blissful household where the only problems we face would be how we're having too much sex and being able to afford our zillion kids' appetites for gourmet food and beautiful clothes (answer: rob a bank, get away with it because no one has the energy to chase/prosecute us, the people whose money we stole simply go take advantage of the incredible public welfare here, living happily ever after, and really, they see where we're coming from, so they certainly don't want to hurt our chance at a steady livelihood, and hey, more power to us). Here, everybody wins because nobody loses.

Of course, to give credit where credit is due, it's not that nothing is hard, it's just that even things that would be hard for Americans are suddenly no-sweat for a well-adjusted Dane. For example, women here like to bike through the frigid streets wearing only stylish wool coats, colorful hats and high heels. No problem. Babies are out in carriages with or without windshields and lovin' it. In fact, I distinctly remember one baby sitting up in his stroller to look at me standing on a streetcorner in full epileptic shiver mode to say, "Suck it up." And this doesn't even begin to touch upon other ways it seems the Danes have of making life easy, like the fact that beer is quite literally cheaper than water (I'll certainly be carting my fair share of beer bottles in a hypothetical red flyer wagon to be recycled at the grocery store), and any variety of meats are available as pastes, many dispensed from tubes. It's worth mentioning that the sound I make when I tilt my head back, detach my jaw and squeeze the tube materials into my mouth is something akin to Danish. What I love most about these pastes is that they render chewing superfluous at best, almost obsolete at worst, a kind of outdated, novel activity, like cashing traveler's checks, manual plowing or riding a unicycle. While it may be inconvenient at times that stores open late and/or close early, I can't blame them. It's as if an entire country got together, decided they wanted to sell some goods, make some people happy, but, like me, didn't really want to wake up all that early and certainly didn't want to miss their baby's first words were they to grace our ears in the afternoon or on a Sunday (though I don't have a baby). All in all, the country seems founded on a sense of contentment and that is something I can certainly live with.

That said, this contentment-as-virtue state of life here makes the difficult moments stand out all the more. I should preface this by saying that I love that DIS takes care of us international students, gathering all of our paperwork in one convenient if embarassing official embroidered messenger bag, and holding our hands through the adjustment process. They have most if not all things taken care of for us. (I sometimes speculate that if I were to lose a liver or some organ, DIS would have a vault somewhere deep in Vestergade 10 with a perfect match liver waiting for a transplant, provided the need arise within the six weeks for which the DIS-issued health insurance is valid.) And on Tuesday, after a long day of orientation and survival Danish, it was nice to find that DIS employees had gathered every single one of our textbooks for us. However, it was not nice to find that these textbooks were gathered into large, bright blue IKEA bags. The basement of Vesteragde 7 was a virtual sea of giant blue bags, arranged alphabetically, sitting like sputtering masses of unfathomable girth, or something. Each of the students then had to carry these monsters home, which for some students meant an hour-plus commute, and for all of us meant walking side by side with graceful, efficient Danes. I personally did my best to efface my struggle, but it probably was more than a little pitiful to see my frame carrying a bag half my weight on my (now bent) shoulder. But I'm not complaining.

Second Day Photo Supplement in Chronological Order Part Two

2007-01-22T15:19:00.000-05:00

Hammerrichsgade.

A fountain with a name.

Christians Brygge.

Kgl. Bibliotek.

Harbor.

Underbelly.

Hey, she kind of looks like me!

Second Day Photo Supplement in Chronological Order Part One

2007-01-22T14:45:00.000-05:00

Let my goal for this semester resemble this delightful photo montage that greeted me at Kastrup Airport. Let me begin a baby -- innocent, disfigured, leaky -- and let me finish a man with reflective goggles -- inquisitive, focused, outstretched.

Taxi taxi, green light.

Welcome session for Family Stay and Danish Roommate students. At the end of the speeches, families and roommates stood outside the door of the auditorium with the name of their hostee(s). DIS officials read the names off one by one and each student descended the stairs to meet them.

My first morning bowl of cereal in a strange place. Special K, milk, spoon, counter.

Part of my room. Snow outside. Østerbro.

Snow in my courtyard.

The first leg of my commute, the staircase to the inbound H/H+ train at Ryparken.

Opening ceremonies at Ny Carlsbergs Glyptotek. In the words of my new friend Adam, seated to my right, "OHMYGOD EUROPPPPPE!!!" Chamber group + speeches heavily coded with words like "experience" and "cultural exchange" = WELCOME. Something about "Aha!" moments and having them.

Sliding Glass Doors, National Libraries & Other Reflective Surfaces

2007-01-22T13:11:00.000-05:00

If there's one thing I've noticed in my short time in Copenhagen so far, it's the overwhelming number of sliding glass doors. I first encountered this design statement as I went through Passport Control at the airport. After checking my embarassing photo (think Nick Nolte's infamous mugshot) and shiny visa, I had to pass through a short tunnel with not one, not two, but four sliding glass doors of varying sizes. It seemed unnecessary, but also beautiful. The mechanisms involved allow for a smooth, graceful gesture. It truly is a pleasure to walk through them. Glass doors are also found on the metro here, with the platform of some stations completely encased by clear glass. Individual metro cars also have glass doors as borders and can be opened with the simple touch of a button. I see this as a way the Danes have of foregrounding modern technology's most fundamental and magical feature: its invisibility. Here I am, walking through glass doors that sense my presence almost intuitively. Each slide is a welcoming and a promise. Each successful entry of mine is a small victory -- something I hear the Danes appreciate more than most -- that allows me to count one more day that I did not smack into a wall and cry.

I think I've made quite the impression on my roommate, Elizabeth. I don't mean that I accomplished conveying a deep sense of myself in the hours we chatted sitting on the kitchen countertops drinking tea; I mean that when I woke up from a three hour nap to find that she had prepared dinner for me, I entered the dining room only to shout in my delirium, "MEATBALLLLLLLLLLLLS!" Really, I was thrilled. She seemed thrilled that I was thrilled. She'd prepared a full Danish meal with authentic Danish meatballs (patty-shaped, pan-fried), plus pasta, Bearnaise sauce and a blood-red shredded apple and berry salad. Elizabeth is a beautiful Danish woman. 25. Political science student. Saavy, sophisticated, yet grounded ("I don't understand how some Danish women can spend up to two hours in the morning getting ready. I believe in upholding other values," she said, adjusting her skirt). She lit candles for the dinner and told me about the history behind her furniture. (Most of the pieces came from her family's summer house.) She'd designated a full cabinet for my use, along with a metal shower rack and a wicker basket for my toiletries. She even got me fully stocked with groceries and laundry things. She makes me feel immediately at ease and she runs a laidback household. I imagine that the easy-going atmosphere here is what I would cultivate in my own apartment five years from now. While eating the very meatballs I so enthusiastically salivated over, she dropped the bomb that she is leaving this Thursday for a week to snorkel in Egypt with her boyfriend. What a woman!

My travel to Denmark over Saturday and Sunday was as painless a trip as I could have hoped for. Sleep and consciousness became virtually indistinguishable within the eight hour flight. In the airport I met a ton of DIS students, one of whom goes to Brown with me (just met!) and another of whom went to high school with me. It was a literal party in the terminal with excited American students running around. I floated from group to group, making small-talk and participating in the inappropriate, though requisite ticking unattended luggage jokes. There were some Danes on the flight with us, too, identifiable by what else but blonde hair and sharp outfits. I read some of my New Yorker on the flight, watched some How I Met Your Mother and a documentary about savants.

Everything is beautiful here. I understand that I am in the honeymoon phase where all sidewalks and all spaces become holy places. I also understand that in this phase any successful movement from point A to B without angering any locals or being crushed by bicycles is tantamount to winning the Nobel Prize. I got through my first night of loneliness and isolation, sleeplessness and nervous excitement. I think now my job is, among other things, learning to be the best pedestrian I can be. I believe that this will have something to do with rhythm.