dublin, october 2018

hoards of people. swarms and flocks and teams of people, pouring out of buses, drinking beers in pubs, lurching along the cliffs, discussing whose great grandfather's crest is found on the gift shop key chains, buying sweaters and heart rings and tipping the street musicians. selfie sticks. Barack Obama has an honorary rest stop complete with a life-size statue of him and Michelle in the town where his Irish ancestors came from. last time I was in Ireland with a class learning about the Troubles. memory and community and heartbreak and hope and finger pointing and storytelling and old pain. the lines that still existed. in Belfast a catholic woman gave me a ride home from the gym to my hotel because we were in a protestant neighborhood. i'm a tourist with a German last name, so. this time we are here for tech companies and new media. to learn design thinking processes and visit Facebook, another closed community to its own. the bus driver will inform me today that with Brexit on the horizon they'll start constructing a physical border in the north that the EU will have to police. farmers with fields cut in half, sheep with nationalities. tension, memory, fear? i don't know what this is, only to say there are layers and threads and what a weird wonder to traverse time zones and pop into another life for a moment, and be filled with the importance of something completely different. here are the cliffs of moher. today we had sun.

copenhagen, july 2018

i am thinking lately about last Sunday when my yoga teacher talked about the 'hips that you have today'. like a menu special: hips of the day. what do you mean. i always have these hips. they are a part of me.

yes, but how are they today? have you checked in with them? how are they after a week back at work? how are they after long bike rides, and weightlifting, and sitting at an office desk, and a stumble on the stairs? how are they after little sleep, in a heat wave, sprinkled with sweat?

maybe today's hips are tired, and want to rest. or are ready to stretch and open. or can challenge themselves. or want to be.
and you - will you accept the answers given when you listen? will you honor today's hips? will you punish them for straying from your agenda, your ego? will you thank them for what they can offer you today, no matter what? will you hold yesterday against them, make them swear on tomorrow?

i wonder why we aren't taught about many things this way. today's _____... body. heart. mind. someone else's hips of the day. think about communication with someone else. sex with someone else. we charge into everything with an agenda and patterns learned from what worked before and we forget to listen. we don't check in. we assume.

asking more often, recently, how is/are today's.....?

copenhagen, june 2018

8 pm light. danish summers on a friday are good to introverts, too. everyone exists on a sliding scale on that one anyway. i really used to hate being alone but now i need it. the american students often describe hygge only in winter terms. candles, darkness, conversation, being in the company of others. i don't know what the word is to describe being alone in summer in the plentiful evening sun, content and warm and feeling enveloped by something other than humans. sprawled out and sitting in your body blissful. knowing this is what you've waited for for 8 months of each year and it'll be over soon. i've never had a relationship with light like this until i moved to denmark. it is borderline emotional. anyways. that word.

athens, june 2018

The kind of food experience where you walk down an unmarked staircase into a dark cellar filled with wine barrels and small wooden tables. You get a nod and sit down. You're not offered a menu, or options, or any information, really, but you find it utterly refreshing in the age of choice overload. The older guy taps a stream of white wine from the bottom barrel into a copper cup. He puts that, some paper, a plastic bottle of water, and a hunk of bread on the table. Next: three dishes, ladled from big pots. Chickpeas softened in lemon and olive. Tender beef melting into orzo. A simple vegetable stew with bright chunks of striped green zucchini and tart tomato. You're overwhelmed with hunger on a 35 degree day but the dry wine and the bread soaking in lemon sauce and the cold water between hearty spoon bites is perfection. Final act: Little slices of sugary melon while you take in the guy rolling a cigarette to your left, the little Virgin Mary alter above you, the old guy washing cups.

copenhagen, may 2018

portrait of some tired af feet.

i remember as a little girl i peered at my grandma's feet and thought they were so strange looking! they were bent into pointy triangles with a bone sticking out under each big toe! they were knobby and misshapen from years and years of wearing heels to work. i told myself I'd never have feet like that.

i have flat feet so wearing heels has always been too painful to ever really be an option. every major fancy event in my life has been punctuated by eventual foot pain, lingering in my bones for days. sometimes I glance wistfully in DSW at the crazy pair of purple shoes that make my legs look 10million miles long but... In reality I'm more of a short giraffe baby.

feet look wierd.

my feet at the end of a long day are puffy because in Denmark it is a legal requirement to give employees a sitting/standing desk so I have gotten used to standing most of every day. standing during meetings makes me feel alive, capable of communicating and channeling creative energy.

my big toes are beginning to point inwards, slightly, just because of modern sneakers.

and there's wrinkles and a sock imprint. and a huge f$%*ng wound that will most certainly scar because I climbed a rope at crossfit without socks.

the heels I do wear are my weightlifting shoes, just enough height for good squat depth.

when we have our drag event at work the drag queens often ask the men to describe walking in heels... 'restricted.. you have to stick your butt out.. But also...

powerful.'