Tonight for the first time in my life I heard my mother call someone a turd. The lucky winner of this apellation was none other than Pat Robertson, who later in the evening was called "the scourge of humanity." I'm tempted to bring him up again just to see what new thing will pop out of her mouth.
I know your studies are supposed to change the way you think, but I'm wondering if academia is supposed to have quite the effect it's having on me: I want to write papers.
I can't listen to the song "We Don't Need the Men" without wanting to write about the irony of objectifying the male body. I can't watch The Fellowship of the Ring without wanting to write about the class paradigm in Frodo and Sam's relationship. You see what it's doing to me? I just used the word "paradigm"! Thanks to having altogether too many friends (read: two) who study philosophy, I have now actually used the word "epistomological" in a conversation with my mother.
I know part of the point of academia is to turn you onto learning on your own for the rest of your life, but if my impulse when I notice something interesting is to formalize it in a paper, does that mean my thoughts aren't free to just exist? Surely you should be able to just have thoughts without needing to trap them in essay form? If so I'm in trouble, since after all what I write here is just a chance to do the same less formally.
Despite Sarah's assertion last night that everyone likes to look at women and no one likes to look at men, I've decided there's nothing more fun to watch than college-age guys dancing with each other (unless it's two kittens playing with each other.) There are occasional forms of folkdance that can be breathtakingly lovely done by women, but there's nothing to equal the energy and springiness a couple of 21-year-old college boys can put into a contra dance or a Morris set. If I could jump like that, I would die happy. Hopefully I'll die happy anyway, but until then I'll watch them whenever I can.
My favorite phrase in my translation of the Odyssey is “the honey lights of home.” It’s hygge, it’s what Dorte’s house had that Jorgen’s didn’t. There are a lot of things I’m willing to do without, but to have a house with that kind of glow is one thing I won’t give up.
Danish has a verb for “to stress out over Christmas” – julestresse - which I find entirely reasonable. It’s not Christmas without Mom or me breaking down in tears for one reason or another, which started this year in the computer lab in Denmark when I found out I was only going to have a day and a half in Richmond before we went off to the tour of relatives’ houses. I wondered if I was crazy for spending my one evening at home having four friends over instead of sleeping off jet lag, but I spent the day in a blur of baking and decorating and extending tables and grating potatoes. Suddenly it all came together and the eight of us were holding hands around the table with candles and a big plate of latkes, singing “Joy to the World” in three-part harmony. There they were, the honey lights of home. Especially seeing it through Andrew’s eyes, to have the whole family together and everyone smiling was suddenly worth any amount of julestress and jet lag.
Tonight after the high school reunion I pulled a similar hostessing feat when five people unexpectedly came home with me for dinner. I had hoped that one of the things I would learn from the Danes would be their hospitality prowess, and I think I pulled off a very decent evening with tea and candles and vegan chocolate cake and everything. I'm quite pleased with myself.
In the past two days I've said goodbye to Ricky's host family (hard) and to Jørgen (easy) and finally to Ricky. I wrote my love letter to Denmark the night before I left and leaned out the window to read it aloud to the cold sky. On the plane I cried as we flew over Jutland, the yellow farmhouses and windmills hidden by the clouds.
The US feels familiar and strange at once - the position of the lightswitches on the wall, the clothes in my closet, the penny dropped on the floor, the way strangers say "bless you" when you sneeze all surprise me. The house is sweetly cedar-scented and still. Everyone else is asleep, but I've been up for hours. All is as it should be.
Here at the year's end, at the feast
Of birth, let us bring to each other
The gifts brought once west through deserts—
The precious metal of our mingled hair,
The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,
The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—
Let us celebrate the daily
Recurrent nativity of love,
The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,
While the earth rolls away under us
Into unknown snows and summers,
Into untraveled spaces of the stars.
- from "Lute Music" by Kenneth Rexroth
There are some things I can do better after a glass of wine, like touching my thumbs to the ground.
Juggling, it turns out, is not one of those things.
juliawise07(at)gmail.com