Copenhagen is a more uban city than Helsinki. Translation: tons more graphitti

Helsinki had a little graphitti, but in the neighborhood near my hotel, the graphitti is really all over. Even on the big statues. You would think that they would have more respect.

Then again, there are statues and carvings EVERYWHERE. All the buildings seem to have carved windows and swoops and faces and greek gods and what-not. I guess the graphitti artists have to use what material is available.

I listened in on part of a tour in English. We heard the guide from a distance. I said to Chris, “Hurry! We will hear.”

“He´s not speaking english.” Chris wouldn´t run to hear.

But he was speaking english, just with a huge accent that made it sound like a different language. He said “The direct translation for Copnehagen is the bay of merchants.”

This explained why this city felt a bit like Brussels to me. Merchants, huh? So it was all about the salesman’s flash and social mobility. Maybe that´s why they ornamented everything they could reach.

And also the incredible amount of chain stores.

We counted McDonald’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken and 7Eleven all on one block. With another 7Eleven at the end of the block.

Unfortunately, jetlag is a contant companion. We haven’t been too unpleasant to each other, though. Just a bit snippy when we’ve been walking too long. We are taking turns being completely brain dead, so that one of us is always available to steer the other towards whatever we need to do next. That is usually eat or sleep.

We have three things to do during our stay in COpenhagen. One, we want to visit Tivoli. Two, we want to see Malmø. And three, we want to go see Helsingførs, known to english-speakers as ELSINORE! Yes, Hamlet’s palace.

We have three days to do those three things. I think it will work out.

more to come

It’s a very beautiful city, a small town kind of capital. Only a hundred people there.

It never got above 70 degrees, but still I managed to get sunburned.

Now we are about to go to Copenhagen.

I think Denmark will be warmer, and more populated.

more later

At least that’s what we figured out on the subway back.

We left LAX, and we will not land at our final destination in Helsinki until 29 hours later.

So today we enjoyed the museum of Natural History in Central Park. Since it’s humid and about 90, my plan to hang out in the foliage of the park was jettisoned.

We wandered around, amazed at what east coast city folk think of as ‘nature’. No wonder this country’s environmental efforts are so screwed up.

But we also just tried to stay awake. We are tired. We told ourselves that this will help with the jetlag once we get to Finland. It IS a 10 hour time difference after all.

Now we are back at JFK, and the plane to Finland boards in 5 minutes. It’s 8 hours, and maybe we will sleep the whole way.

Wish us comfort and quiet neighbors.

more to come

I am going ON THE ROAD

Well, the airways and the subways and the sidewalks.

Which means I may not have access to blogging.

There might be radio silence for a while.

But I’ll take notes and get back to you all with my impressions.

It was one of those courtroom shows, and the girl was convicted of murder or something. She hadn’t done it, but she had used her prettiness to manipulate some hapless young man into doing it for her.

And the line was “Pretty is currency for when you are young.”

Yeah. It’s tradeable on the open market. Out there on the trading floor, “I have pretty. What will you trade for it?”

There is the obvious that goes without saying. But the experienced merchant of pretty…yes, I mean the smart girls, or at least the street smart ones…the wise ones know that it’s better to give it out in drops.

What will a smile get you? At the very least some cooperation, don’ t you think?

It’s interesting to see what pretty does. Like baking soda and vinegar. It has an effect. It’s a factor in the project plan, like the direction of the wind.

I have had some experience with the effect of pretty. As a woman, I am not the least or the greatest in the pretty department. But my store of the Pretty element, that mysterious substance, is enough to experiment and observe.

It is not such an easy thing. There have been times when it was a decided pain in the ass.

Even in the times when it’s supposed to be useful, say in romantic relationships, it is a highly suspicious thing. If I admit that I desire to be pretty, and that pretty is only in the eye of the beholder…
Then I must place myself in a position to be beheld to fulfill my desire for prettiness.

Which means that someone else has power over me. And what does that mean on the open market? I trade what to get back my own prettiness? What will it cost me to be pretty?

I went back on the dating scene again aware that the desire to be pretty in someone else’s opinion was a huge trap. It occurred to me that if someone tells me “You look beautiful”, I am disarmed. And for that particular type of encounter [dating, romance] I would need every weapon I had, and every possible form of armor.

I had to look very long in the mirror, yeah just like that. I had to be very very sure that I knew no one could give me or take away from me what I already had.

You have to be so cold. Which is a shame. I would like to have the ability to look down and blush if someone gave me a compliment. Now I only wonder what they are trying to steal from me.

It’s my currency, my treasure.

Then again, there are times when the pretty exchange is closed, or at least is supposed to be. There are times when pretty is not the point, and I just forget about it and think that other people probably forget too.

Like at work. Work is supposed to be about hard work and smarts.

At my last job, I was so busy I was losing my mind. Our cubes were short, so people could walk in the cubicle corridor, and lean over the wall to ask me a question. I never wanted to be interrupted. But I knew that being crabby would not improve anything.

I chose to pause for a millisecond after I realized someone wanted my attention. I would take that moment to paste a big old smile on my face before I turned to them. It was just to hide my inner turmoil, really.

The men (was it always men? It seems so in my memory, but surely a female had a question for me once in a while)–the men had the strangest reaction. ALWAYS, they forgot what they were going to say. They were struck dumb, and just stood there for a few seconds. They finally said “what a smile!” and then fumbled out whatever it was they had originally wanted to talk to me about.

I found this odd. The same men might have several questions in one day, and ALWAYS they would turn blithering idiot.

But I had to face the facts. I may have thought I had closed the pretty trading for the work day, but it went on without me.

Sometimes I wish I could unzip my outside and step out slick and smooth as a little green alien. No gender, no complication. Just a big huge head.

But it doesn’t work like that. And just like I had to learn not to let compliments disarm me, I also had to learn that even when I wasn’t paying attention the pretty element was out there catalyzing things. To ignore it was to leave a hole in my defenses.

So…what is this pretty thing worth? What kind of trade should I be working on for it?

I know that some females get ‘free’ dinner and even presents out of their measure of pretty. The princesses, as they delight to be called, seem to make a cheap trade to me.

I don’t want to be that kind of doll house female. I’m made out of tougher stuff.

You would have to go way back to find the sort of woman I shall be. I will be a shield-maiden. Eowyn showed that life.

If this world were a more beautiful place, then pretty could grow unashamed and free. Until that time, only the smart ones know how to handle it.

So Chris’s basketball league is back in season. They had their first game yesterday.

John, who grew up next door to Chris, had organized the team. It’s just a bunch of guys who like to play, and aren’t super-duper competitive. They do their best and have a good time.

This is the second season Chris has been a part of. John worked hard to get a bunch of guys together, enough to have at least 5 guys show up for every game. Which means that most of the guys don’t really know each other, and so the practicing happens when the game happens.

But last sunday, they were getting to know each other and working on plays and what to expect from each other. There were 7 guys. When one guy was pulled in from the bench, he and the guy coming out of the game would give a low slap of hands as they pass.

I was a bit jolted with this. THIS was the famous touchy-feely teammate behavior exhibited by sports players. Haven’t you seen it when the ball players will smack each other on the ass, or do a hand-holding kind of thing?

See, when it with your TEAM, it’s not gay.

It’s NOT.

Female athletes do this sort of thing as well. But the thing is, females IN GENERAL do this sort of thing. We just do.

We hug, we touch, we get physical with one another in a way that American men do not get with one another. At least not outside of a sports game.

I asked Chris about it after the game.

“Yeah, it’s important to let each other know that they did a good job. Or that it’s okay if they made a mistake, that we can just keep on playing.”

Well, I agree. I completely agree.

But I wonder why they need a game to do that? Why not by more physical with each other in daily life? Don’t we all need to know that we did a good job, or that it’ll be okay that we made a mistake?

The thing is, I am not trying to tell men to change how they are. They are what they are. Men feel comfortable giving one another physical affection (YES, I said it) when they are playing together as a team.

I listened to the Glenn and Helen Podcast, interviewing Conn Iggulden about his latest :
A Dangerous Book for Boys

Conn talks about how it’s important to let boys be boys–that boys and girls are just different and that’s okay.

Well, I’m a fan of men. I love men. So, it’s interesting to see a herd of them in their habitat.

But it made me think a little. It is possible to consider that women are always interested in teamwork. It’s not that we are not competitive, but we are always aware of the other people.

And maybe, just maybe, that is an explanation for why we are so easily affectionate with one another. We know that life is full of work. There is so much work to be done, that we better be connected with our teammates. The game never ends.

In preparation for next week’s journey I bought a book.

I would have got it from the library, but they didn’t have it. I read so many books that i have to be incredibly self-discipled about not acquiring too many.

I have begun to mourn the books I have read. It is getting harder to find good books to read.

But today, as I bought Speak, Memory by Nabakov, I was mourning that i would actually be able to read it. Anticipating what a good book it will be keeps it always in the possibility. But reading it destroys forever my ideas about what it might be.

Then I must grapple with what it is.

It is said that the reader is a very important part of the life of a book. Writing it is only part.

As AGONIZING a part as the writing of it is, it is only a part. The reading is the other part. It is a collaborative effort. I write my book, and you others read it. When I have shared my writing with others, they often understand it to mean something I had never thought of. It is a collaboration of creating meaning.

Knowing that, I feel almost as if I am destroying the book by experiencing it.

That reminds me of a scientific principle, whose name i forgot. About how an observed particle behaves differently because of the observation.

that the very act of watching a supposedly inanimate object changes it’s behaviour.

so….by reading a book I change it. and in a way, I feel, I destroy it.

I have destroyed hundreds…thousands, perhaps, of books by reading them. Like a ravenous dragon, I tear through them and leave their half-consumed carcasses in a trail behind me creating a never-ending path of carnage.

I may be unworthy of these books, treating them without respect.

But then again, I do at least give them the respect of reading them.

From the play The Busy World is Hushed

The mother is talking to her 20something son about his life choices

“From here on out, everything is written in ink”

I’ve had that conversation before…I have had it in my head and I had it with a friend once.

I told him “You wear your freedom like it’s a jean jacket, like it can handle all kinds of rough treatment. I wear mine like a prom dress, that it is so delicate. I have to keep it clean and fresh.”

and he just looked confused. He didn’t know that freedom had consequences.

Which is what that means, you know? “…written in ink…”

“on your permanent record”

reversion
perversion
conversion
inversion

All the versions end up in the final draft of your life.

But that only matters if someone is reading the record.

Me and my piano have been together for 8 years.

This piano has been an adventure since it first came into my life. It was free, which should mean easy. But no, it was free if I came to get it. And I began to understand right away that pianos are a thing not to be taken lightly. My piano is very heavy.

I took it to my home, and began to refinish it. It took forver, and the process carried me through the toughest time of my life, when my marriage was ending.

But I refinished my piano and it was beautiful in the end. Of course, through the process of refinishing it, I took it apart and got to know it’s insides very very well.

It began to really bother me that I did not know how to tune it. I could see the tuning pins right there. I had no problem tuning my guitar, and I could barely play it. But my piano I knew inside and out. I began to feel like I could tune it, if I could only find the right tool to turn the tuning pin. It was my piano, dammit, practically a limb off my body. I would be able to tune it if only I could find a way to get started.

Naturally, I turned to the internet. I found an old tuning tool on ebay. But I didn’t know if the price was a good one, or if I could do better. I thought I needed just a little more information.

So I found a book on tuning. It came with high reviews online, so I was pretty excited. Once I got it in my hot little hands, i opened it up to find the chapter on tuning tools and tuning.

it seemed that it was not so simple.There seemed to be more to it.

I thought then that i should pay a tuner to come in, and I could watch and ask a lot of questions. I did, and I learned a lot more. My tuner even told me that there was a correspondence course in how to tune pianos. Wow! I was so going to sign up.

Of course, life caught up with me a little bit and I didn’t have time to devote to the pursuit of greater intimacy between my piano and me.

Piano tuning is a career, you know? People can earn a living doing it. But I was too busy doing the things I was already doing to earn a living. Spending all day on pianos was just a dream. I had real work I had to do.

But last night I went to the Pomona Valley Piano Technicians Guild meeting. These people have been piano tuners…no, TECHNICIANS for years. As they introduced themselves, they said, “we probably have more than a hundred years of experience sitting here.”

They were very serious and engaged in their work. It reminded me of other technology conventions I’ve attended, where the people are all eager to talk to one another since it is so seldom that they can find a peer on their level.

Piano nerds. I felt like a noob, but like these were my kind of people. I aspire to be a professional piano technician, but even if I don’t make a career out of it, there is no doubt that i will be learning how to tune and repair my own piano.

Apparently way way back, one of the Patriarchs of their group had become interested in learning to tune pianos. I will have to learn more about this man, but they told me that he was determined to learn the skill. Naturally, he went to a local piano tuner and asked him “Teach me how to tune pianos.”

The man slammed the door in his face. But Mr. Stubborn wasn’t taking no for an answer. He was going to do this thing. He loaded a footpump organ onto the back of his wagon (this must have been before horseless carriages) and took it with him to tune a piano. He tuned the piano to the sound of the same key on the pump organ.

…not the right way of tuning a piano…

Later he found a book on how to do it right, and sold his cow to purchase the treasure.

He later held classes for people in Claremont to learn what he had become a master at: Piano tuning and repair.

This makes me humble. It was so easy for me to find excellent resources to satisfy my curiousity.

It didn’t used to be so easy to learn. It didn’t used to be so available. People were stingy with their knowledge.

This is a great time to be alive. Information wants to be free. But like my free piano, that doesn’t mean it is easy.