Floriography

At some point in high school we were doing The Merchant of Venice. Our teacher was a tall dame nearing retirement. She was always impeccably dressed, with a hint of expensive jewellery. Frau something-or-other was intimidating yet friendly, intent on teaching us to have ambitions whilst also making us appreciate the beauty of the language. 

This day, we were nearing the end of the play, and I knew the scene would come. The one I had heard quoted before, the one I (mis)wrote on my jeans, the one thing Shakespeare wrote besides 'to be or not to be, that is the question' that I can't forget. 

Always these lines: 

SHYLOCK

To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we willresemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

The Merchant of Venice,3,i.
  

Young and Beautiful

Earth Day slipped past me, unnoticed as we enjoyed the glorious rays of sunshine by the harbour. This is happiness, if only temporarily: the feeling of easy conversation, of trusting those you are with to be yourself.

Once at home the National Geographic's Instagram feed gave me this:

Safe and Sound

Somehow, you find your way in a new place. You get lost, often, in the beginning, but after a while you figure out which bus to take, where to buy your groceries, when market day is and which club you should not go to, ever again (I'm looking at you, Phono. That name should have been a hint). You develop a routine with roads walked and people seen on a daily basis, because after all you have chosen to be here for some time so you might as well burrow yourself into a niche and make yourself comfortable. It becomes the home you speak of when you go home after a day at the university or drinks with friends. 

And yet, it is not. This cloudy place is not home. Although beautiful, this city with its harbour and beaches and friendly people does not make me want to stay longer than needed. I miss sunsets where cherries and strawberries blend with peach colours as you drive home. I miss seeing the stars (or just a cloudless sky for that matter). I miss the ladies that pack the grocery bags. I miss fruit that smells like fruit and not simply like nothing. I miss Hunter's Dry. I miss Woolworths. I miss road trips, weekend adventures and dancing to good electronic music. I miss the heat, the food and the people. 

This onslaught of nostalgia and Heimweh has a source: my people came to visit, and with them the language, the habits and the memories of home. My mother and sister were here for only a week but their presence had a lasting effect. Perhaps it is the time of the year, with the semester coming to a close and my plane ticket taking me home being only a month away. I am pretty certain that home will not be home, or not the one I remember. The house we have lived in for the past 20 years has been sold to a young family. My sister lives and works in a different city. My friends have moved to cities far away, have started new jobs and new relationships, everyone has made everyday choices which I have not been privy to but which have marked them ever so slightly. In turn, my choices here have influenced me as well. 

W. Somerset Maugham wrote in The Summing Up that "we are not the same persons this year as last ; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person." (I've quoted this previously). It is this sentiment that I cling to, it is this that I am homesick for: although the cities change, although we choose different paths, although my mother's house is no longer hers it is this environment that formed me. I long for this illusion of 'home', the 'home' of my past because it constitutes my foundation. It is the habits I have assimilated from my family, it is the new friendships I am willing to invest time in because I know what good, old friends are and it is the security of being unguarded in front of people who will not reject you.  

In some way I see this homesickness as the symptom of another little crisis, as one of those things that life throws your way unexpectedly at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday. I am sloth-like here, unhappy with being unproductive for a university that asks nothing of you, and unhappy for then not challenging myself. I could be reading, I could be writing that novel, I could be doing things that other, working people no longer have time for. Instead I languish on my bed, watching mindless series and sinking deeper into to-do lists I don't do. 

This is my fault, naturally. Blogging today is a start. Reading something for classes after this will be another. Getting away from the screen, from the foolish distractions of facebook and 9gag, taking charge of my time again is where I put my faith in. So I'll start. I'll make myself some rooibos tea, dunk one of the rusks my mom baked and brought, and start focusing again. 

High Hopes

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”

― Miriam Adeney

After 6 years of friendship and living on two different continents for most of those years, my friend has finally managed to visit me (usually I would manage to win a trip to Paris and see her). We spent three days in Flensburg just catching up and testing how long we could lounge around on the couch before we headed to Copenhagen for three days.

It is the most silent city, like a ghost town. Even the swarms of furiously pedaling cyclists make no sound. Very strange. I don't know if it is the climate or because we were there during the week, but the noiselessness was astonishing.

The first day we arrived, booked into our hostel and walked to the Tietgenkollegiet near the University of Copenhagen. It is a residence that looks as though the architect was playing a game of Jenga. There we also saw the Konserthuset (concert hall) before finding our way back to the main shopping street Strøget to eat something (which turned out to be Burger King because it was the cheapest). 

That evening we found the only source of sound in the entire city: our hostel. Monday nights were apparently acoustic night or something and there was a band playing below us (our room was directly above the bar/check-in) til well into the night.

Hello Copenhagen.

Tietgenkollegiet, or playing Jenga. 

The next day we made our way to a bakery because we thought we'd always grab some Danish pastry for breakfast, but sadly the store had disappeared. We found another though and then walked past Nyhavn to the Amalienborg castle to see the changing of the guard.

Like in John Irving's Til I Find You. 

Changing of the very young guards.

Then we jumped on a canal tour and saw the city from the water. We were extremely lucky with the weather during our entire stay in Copenhagen. Given that it was not even spring yet it was fairly warm and we had no rain. Yay! NO RAIN!!!

Nyhavn

Vor Freisers Kirke

After the hour-long boat ride I spent more money on a pair of beautiful earrings than on the entire trip (bad bad Sabine) . We wanted to go up the Vor Freisers Kirke but were too late so we instead went directly to Christiania, which is a neighbourhood that doesn't see itself as belonging to the EU and where drugs are dealt openly. It was a bit too hippy-ish for us so we went in search of pastry yet again and walked along Strøget (it is one of the longest shopping streets in the world, so enough space to drift along silently). 

It was so good to get away from Flensburg for a few days and to spend time with someone where I don't need to explain my jokes or feel self conscious about what I am allowed to say without being too honest. It is a strange tightrope one walks when being alone in a new place and has to find new friends. But it makes me all the more thankful for the old ones that I can carry with me whether they live in the same city, the same country or 12 000km away. 

Rewrite

"Sometimes I wish there was someone I could write a letter to. I look at piles of mail on the floor. They have someone to write to. I bet its not a bad feeling. To be able to reach out. And believe in your heart that someone will be there. I wish I could believe that, too."

 - Henry Rollins

I am lucky to have people who send me things in the mail. The short rush of joy as I open the letter box and see something has arrive for me is such a high. I don't understand why people take drugs, they should just send one another letters instead. Not knowing if or when the letter will arrive causes enough anxiety and receiving something in the mail that is not a bill is so wonderful than one needn't look elsewhere for excitement. 

My mom sent me some of my clothes and things (a flour sifter! measuring spoons and cups! a peppermint crisp! my one blanket!) for which I had to go to the customs office. Yesterday I went again to fetch a surprise Christmas packet a friend had sent (Mrs. Balls chutney! earrings! a personalised calendar!) and also got a letter in the mail from another friend. I know the best people :) 

Pakkie 1

Pakkie 2. Nice stamps :)

Nuvole Bianche

“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.” 

― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

Measurements

* “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

Fitter Happier

On a window in Long Street:

Apparently 'Fuck knows who said this' translates to John Lennon.

*As if we were endlessly condemned to become what we see

The quote really refers to an opinion on Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher (1983), but to me is valid for more than just a literary analysis.

Life itself is gone

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind. "

- Vita Sackville-West