“London Girl”

From 2/28/07

For the past week or so I’ve had the Pogue’s song “London Girl” stuck in my head. It has been especially popping up in moments of happiness (which have been on the increase as of late) and moments of exhilaration. For example, today I was walking across campus feeling all happy and suddenly found myself singing the song. Didn’t even realize I had started doing it. Luckily no one was around. And just yesterday as I was correcting some papers while students did their writing I started to hum it. A student laughed at me. But that’s okay. I get a lot of that.

But I first noticed it last week at the Snowy Owl Resort (formerly Brodie–yes, where people named Kelly skiied for free on St. Patrick’s Day) where I was snow tubing. First of all, if like me you haven’t been to many ski-type resorts you’re probably not used to cute signs everywhere that say things like: Snow tubing involves risks and dangers. These may include but are not limited to collisions that are man made or natural, within lanes or other areas of snow tubing. Injury or death may result. And to top that off, I had to sign a waiver that said essentially that if I died it wasn’t their damned fault. I’m the frickin idiot who went snow tubing.

So, you can see where I was ready for anything. On my first run down the hill, as I was picking up more and more speed than I had anticipated (ahh, that’s why they made me sign the waiver!) and as I was going down the hill backwards wondering if a small child had wandered across my path (ahh, that’s why they had their parents sign a waiver too!!), suddenly the song burst into my head louder than bombs. This could be our final dance. This could be our very last chance… and yet it all felt so good. The sun in my eyes, the spray of the snow. The 80% chance I would survive. Great stuff.

The Cursed One

From November 4, 2003…

“People call me Au∂i. I’m 22 years old and I live in Reykjavik. I have no direction in life and most of the time I don’t know if I’m coming or going.

For a living I try to convince people I know something about electric appliances. I really don’t. In January I’m planning on going back to school. I’m very interested in people and different cultures and I love traveling. It’s always been my dream to be able to write for a living but who knows what will happen with that. I will settle with just doing something creative.”

When we went to Reykjavik this past September, one of our regrets when the visit was over was that we hadn’t really interacted with very many Icelandic people, excepting cashiers and waitresses and clerks doing their jobs. This interview, and those that will follow in the coming weeks, is an attempt to at least have a shadow of that experience that we missed out on. We won’t make that mistake the next time.

When I was developing this blog I spent time searching out Icelandic blogs. Little did I know how many were out there. One of them, though it had been abandoned, stood out, if for no other reason than its title alone: Au∂i The Cursed One.***

Luckily for us blog readers, though “The Cursed One” is no more, Au∂i is maintaining a new English-language blog: A Woman Without a Man is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle***. And it’s well worth visiting regularly. Whether she is writing about herself:

Why is it so difficult to hear good things about yourself? I went out to this coffie house earlier tonight with two of my girls and it’s was a nice change from the “wow she’s hot” rambling with the guys. Not that I don’t enjoy hearing them talk about what they would do to Angelina Jolie if they got the chance. Heck I would consider a thing or two with her. They drove me home and outside my house one of them starts saying all sorts of things to me that really ment a lot to me to hear. I really needed to hear those things and it’s aways nice to hear good things when you have not been fishing for a compliment. They sound much more genuin that way. At the same time I felt really akward cause I really can’t take compliments. I feel all embarrased and I just want to run away. When you have been told your whole childhood you’re stupid and ugly you sort of start believing it and you can’t believe anyone who says otherwise. I think I’m going to sleep smiling tonight

Or about music videos:

I just watched 50 cent’s P.I.M.P video and I have to say that I was a bit surprised. The women in the video are naked. I mean ok women in these rap videos are normally not wearing turtle necks but I mean they were naked naked except for some little thong they were trying their best to hide. I mean I’m not blushing over here or anything, I only have to look down to see a pair of breasts but I’m just thinking like what next. 50 cent was groping their breasts and in my time (hehe) that would have passed as slightly pornographic. Now they are showing a video like that at nine in the evening in the most popular station among the teenagers. What did I miss?

Or about important social issues:

The healthcare system here for those who suffer from mental illnesses is a disgrace. There is no one who monitors them after they come out from the hospital if they get into it in the first place. There is no support for the families. The waiting lists for the children’s wards are unbelievable and it depends on how often the child has tried to take their own life where it is on the waiting list. The worst thing is that it doesn’t only affect the person who’s sick, the whole family is a part of it like the family of this young man I know who don’t sleep at night out of worries. Only about a year ago a man like that commited a murder right here in Reykjavik cause he just didn’t get the treatment he needed. How many more need to do something awful so something will be done???

Throughout her writing, Au∂i is consistently honest, thoughtful, passionate, and humorous.

Recently I had the chance to ask her a few questions about herself and about Iceland:

According to one blogging survey Icelandic is the 12th most popular blogging language which is amazing considering the size of the population. Why do you think this is?

Au∂i: It’s quite simple really. There is a saying over here that says if one cow pees all the other ones do as well… that’s what this is all about. This is the new trend. Now everyone blogs, when I was 14 everybody wore their sweaters backwards. Also we are a bit full of ourselves by nature, everyone is an artist of some kind and is sure he has something to contribute to the world. When I heard about this I wasn’t a least bit surprised.

You’ve mentioned having both an English and an Icelandic blog. How are they alike? Different?

Au∂i: They are alike in the way that they both tell a tale of the same main character, me, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. I try to be honest and true to myself in them both though. I’m much more conscious of who is reading my Icelandic blog so I avoid writing things that I know will hurt people. I also don’t give away any information about myself like where I work or where I live exactly cause Iceland is a really small country and if I write about a difficult customer or something it’s likely they could hear about it. I let myself go more in the English blog. And I curse more.

If you had to compare yourself to a character on Friends, which one would you say you are most like? If you could be any Friends character, which one would you be?

Au∂i: The answer to both the Friends questions is Phoebe. I’m like her in the way that I sort of live in my own world and the two worlds don’t always go together. I’m a bit wacky and eccentric like her. Why I want to be like her is the fact she wants to do the right thing all the time although she doesn’t always succeed. At least she tries.

Tourists, whatever country they may be from, can often be annoying to the people who live in a popular tourist destination. Do you find this true of tourists to Iceland? What advice would you give tourists to be less annoying?

Au∂i: I don’t find the tourists over here all that annoying. Only thing I’ve noticed is the reputation Icelandic girls seem to have and a small portion of the male tourists tend to treat them with a little disrespect. The most annoying thing about tourists in general is when they expect the locals to speak their language and then get all irritated when they don’t. That’s annoying.

I love music. What Icelandic bands would you recommend to me?

Au∂i: You have about an hour? My favorites at the moment are Maus, 200.000 naglbtar, Sigur Ros, Mum, Ensimi, Jaguar and Botnle∂ja but other good bands people like are Minus, Brain Police, Ulpa, Leaves, Quarashi, Ske and many many more. At this site you can find a list of the bands that have a homepage and most of them have some kind of sound clips. Rokk.is is also pretty interesting.

How has Iceland changed in your lifetime?

Au∂i: First of all my lifetime is a relativly short period of time. What comes first to mind is how much Reykjavik and it’s surroundings have expanded. My mum now lives where me and my friends went to pick berries when I was younger. It took us all day to go there and we packed lunches and everything. The number of immigrants has grown, especially in the past few years. There also seems to be more violence and crimes now but maybe I simply didn’t notice it back then.

What is your favorite time of year?

Au∂i: Winter because of the stars and the northern lights. Summer because of the 24 hour sunlight. Spring because everything is waking up again and fall because of the beautiful colours. There is no way I can choose between them.

If you could recommend one place to eat in Reykjavik, what would it be?

Au∂i: Being the poor little girl that I am I usually don’t have money for anything fancy. The best junk in town is without a doubt Nonnabiti in Hafnarstæti, especially after a pint or two.

Well, I could have asked Au∂i many more questions, but she was headed off to a vacation in Denmark (and you can read all about it in her blog). I enjoyed having the chance to talk to her and will be interviewing more people in the coming weeks. Look for more interviews in the near future.

***Audi can now be found here at her “A Woman Without a Man…” blog.

Whatever Happened to Teen Angst?

From November 12, 2003….

Two real conversations I had with students today:

Number 1:
Me: What did you do this weekend?
Student: Oh, I broke up with my boyfriend.
Me: Sorry to hear that.
Student: No biggie.

Number 2:
Me: What’s going on?
Student: Well, R— was kissing my girlfriend in class.
Me: Oh really?
Student: Yes, I’m quite disappointed.

Puppy Dog Eyes

From 2/3/07…So, dear reader, here’s a brief anecdote:

One night I was hanging out with Dee and Packy. It was getting near bedtime and Packy and I had just finished playing a Monkey Ball race (I won, boo-yah!). So I told Packy it was time to go to bed.

“Dad, can we play a game of chess?”

“Sorry, Packy, maybe next time. It’s bed time.”

“Aww, dad, we never have a chance to play chess and I know you love playing it.” And then he gave me the biggest, saddest look in the world.

“Okay Packy, we can play one quick game.”

Smiling, Packy says: “Thanks, dad. I can’t believe the puppy dog eyes worked.”

And, that’s all I have for you today. I probably have forgotten five or six even cuter anecdotes, but they’re not coming to me at the moment…

Victimless Crime

From 2004…

Leelee came out of the Dunkin Donuts and handed me my latte. Then she pulled a bag of coffee beans out of her coat pocket and winked: “Here’s a gift of you.” I thanked her profusely until she looked me in the eye and said: “Don’t worry about it. They were free.”

“Free? They were giving them away?”

“No, free as in if they’re stupid enough to leave their coffee beans somewhere where someone can put them in their pocket without being noticed, they deserve it. That’s the price of stupidity.”

Welcome to the new world of my 34-year-old friend Leelee whom I had known previously only as a Catholic College graduate who taught small children and who had a lifelong obsession with anything Disney. Not exactly the resume that would have piqued Capone’s interest, but maybe it should have. The last time I had seen her I had invited her out to Harry’s to see some bands and her biggest quirk that night was that she was wearing a jacket with a picture of Tigger on it. At the time I thought it was a big quirk and spent most of the night trying to hide it from everyone’s view. Little did I know that as I fretted over her jacket she was probably picturing herself jumping over the bar to empty the till foolishly left open by the harried bartender.

“Yeah, it’s just like at the Mall. All you have to do is steal the thing that removes the alarm sensors from the clothes and you’re all set.”

“What do you mean ‘All you have to do’?”

“You can walk out of that frickkin place wearing five dresses and if the alarm doesn’t go off they don’t have the brains to think of stopping you.”

“So because you can get away with it you do it?”

“Hey, it’s not easy looking cute for the kindergarteners. You know how much these Halloween sweaters cost?”

I guess what disturbed me more than her ‘if they’re too stupid’ policy was the pre-meditatedness of it. “So you first had to go and steal the thing that removes the sensors?”

“The clothes are worthless without that, dufus.” She tapped her fingers into the side of my head like you would picture Joe Pesci doing.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get caught?”

“Well, N. got caught once, but she sweet-talked her way out of it.”

This revelation shocked me. N. was another elementary school teacher, a sweet woman whom some years earlier I had a bit of a crush on. “She sweet-talked her way out of it?’”

Leelee winked. “I don’t know if it was sweet-talking or something else, but it worked.”

After the doughnut shop Leelee decided to make a stop at the Mall. I could feel my heart racing, wondering if she were about to involve me in a crime. I mean, in another one. I was still holding the hot coffee beans after all. It was a busy day and as Leelee drove around looking for a good spot, she cursed:

“Goddammit, I knew I should’ve brought my handicapped sticker with me.”

“Your what?” I suppose after our first heist I shouldn’t have been so shocked, yet I was.

“Yeah, N. and I always park in the handicapped spot. It’s convenient when you need to get out quick, if you know what I mean.”

Suddenly I’m picturing myself driving the getaway car–not to mention standing in an unemployment line after we get caught and the newspaper headline reads: TEACHER BANDITS ON SUMMER CRIME SPREE.

“But, where did you get it?”

“Well, I saw a car with the windows open and a handicapped tag on the rearview mirror.”

“So you stole it from a handicapped person? Come on!”

“Well, we figured, if someone’s stupid enough to leave their goddamned window open then they deserve to have it stolen. Teaches them a lesson. And besides, old people lose shit all the time. The registry hand out replacement stickers like they’re candy. Don’t worry, it’s a victimless crime.”

I was relieved when our visit to the Mall was short-lived and didn’t seem to involve any lifting of merchandise, but then again I was probably missing something. When Leelee used her credit card I half-expected the sales person to say: “Thank you for shopping at Filenes, Mrs. Mandlebaum” but, thankfully, that wouldn’t be the case on this day.

Some time later, I heard that Leelee was moving to Florida to take a teaching job there. Despite her new lifestyle we’d always been close so I called her to see what was going on.

“I just needed a change, you know. And I’ve always wanted to live close to Disney World. Besides, my principal didn’t renew my contract.”

“Didn’t renew your contract? Why not?”

Leelee started to cry: “I don’t know. I always do my best and she gives me the toughest kids. She’s always had it in for me. I’m heartbroken”

“Did you ever ask her why she did it? You know, to have some idea what her problem was.”

“She would never tell me why. I even I broke into her office to have a look at my personnel file–to see what she had on me. But there was nothing there. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“You broke into her office?”

“Yeah, it was during open house. The janitor saw me going in but he likes me. He won’t say anything.”

“So, yeah, um, well good luck in Florida.”

“Oh thanks. You should come down to Florida to visit. We can go to Disney together. It’ll be fun. I know where all the great shopping is too.”

“That sounds great. I’ll definitely do that.” I hung up the phone and paused for a moment to think about the Leelee I had known for so many years and wondered how she was doing.

Hope There’s Not a Long Line for the Giant Corpse Flower

From 8/14/05….
Imagine my surprise when I found out that the titan arum was blooming at Smith College, just a few miles up the road. And of course I was surprised because, well, I had never heard of Titan Arum before the story hit the newspaper that morning. And though botany certainly isn’t my forte, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by one of the largest blooms in the crazy world of flowers, especially one said to possess the smell of rotting corpses. If having the chance to experience the stench of rotting corpses without actually encountering any rotting corpses doesn’t scream roadtrip to you, I don’t know what would.

So, after I watched Dee’s grueling football practice, we headed for Smith College all agog with anticipation, for lack of a better cliche. In my mind I kind of pictured it being like viewing the Pope lying in state, having to shuffle past without actually stopping and keeping a hushed reverence while in the presence of the rare Sumatran Corpse flower. And I guess it is pretty rare. This was to be the first time one ever bloomed in Massachusetts. You can thank me later for that mildly interesting factoid.

As we were arriving around dark–as you can see from the atmospheric photo above–the greenhouse had an eerie feel to it. And a decent sized crowd. I mean, I don’t know what kind of crowd the Titan Arum usually draws but I’m thinking for eight thirty on a Wednesday night that it was a pretty good-sized crowd. Well, anyway, we went inside and wound our way to the flower, all along the way smelling for that putrid stench that makes this flower so fascinating, but mostly we smelled all the other pretty flowers around us. When we got to the corpse flower we found ourselves staring out at the people who were looking at it from outside. And of course the look on everyone’s face was “So, THAT’S what a Sumatran Corpse Flower looks like. Think we can make it home in time for Rock Star INXS?” We also discovered that, being inside, we were looking at the back of the flower–at least in terms of getting a good look at it. And we picked up a little odor. Not the sort of odor that makes one heave into the nearest Anacamptis pyramidalis but one that makes you think that someone who was just in the room was wearing clothes they just found in last year’s gym bag.

So we found our way back outside so that we could get a look at the flower and maybe get a little webcam time in. (if you check out the webcam now, you’ll find the plant notably missing from the view…sorry I didn’t blog sooner).

Out there we found the crowd a bit larger, at least at first, and there was a Smith College botanist guy throwing in random observations. Two things suddenly became apparent as we stood there. One, this plant has groupies. Titan Arum deadheads as it were: “This is my second viewing. I saw the one in Madison.” I was waiting for him to pull out bootleg photos of the show and start passing around a joint but instead he ambled off. Another groupie had been to the Yale show and talked that up a bit. The second thing we discovered was that the botanist guy didn’t know a lot about the plant beyond what we had all read in the newspaper article. Or at least if he did he was playing it off as if he didn’t know much. When the Yale groupie asked him how hot the plant got–apparently the plant generates a lot of heat when it’s about to bloom–at first he started talking about the heat and humidity in the building. Then, when he understood what the question was, all he had to offer was “I don’t know. I didn’t touch it.” I mean, isn’t the sort of thing that botanists study like crazy when they have a chance? I would’ve thought that they’d be analyzing and testing and all that other science-type stuff, but they were mostly selling T-shirts and hanging out and pointing out randumb factoids.

At any rate, you can’t beat a Wednesday night trip to the giant corpse flower, even though it wasn’t nearly as giant or corpsy as it could have been. One thing was clear though: after viewing the giant corpse flower, we needed some sushi from Moshi Moshi. And that’s where we ended our night. Sam and I made plans to golf and we ate some wonderful food and our night was complete.

It’s Food

8/31/05: Today Packy walked into the room chewing on something so I said “What are you eating Packy?”

“Something I found.”

“Something you FOUND?”

“Don’t worry. It’s food.”

“Oh, okay. What is it?”

“It’s a Twistable. I think we bought it a year ago. But it’s still good.”

I think Kindergarten’s going to be an interesting year for our PacMan.

8/16/05: What I Learned: So, anyway, the other day Dee and Packy went to see that penguin movie so I asked them how it was and Dee said he liked it and thought it was cool and interesting. Then Packy said “I didn’t like it.”

“Wasn’t it cool seeing all those penguins in Antartica?”

“Ahhh, no” replied, exasperated.

“You guys must have learned something from it?” I asked, thinking like a teacher.

And Dee told me about a few interesting things he learned. So, of course, I turned to Packy and asked again.

“What did I learn? I learned BOREDOM!”

So, without having seen the film, I can say: March of the Penguins. Eight year-olds, yes. Five year-olds, no.

And in other Packy news, he has a new neighbor just down the street who’s going to be in his class in September. AND, he has an inground swimming pool. Packy is in a heaven that only a co-starring role on Spongebob could replace.

Hold My Hand

5/30/2004: When I told Dee and Packy that after I dropped them off I was going to be bringing flowers to their Baci’s (my mother’s) gravesite for Memorial Day, I was surprised when Packy, who’s four, said: “Can I go too?” Dee chimed in as well: “We want to go.”

Though I hadn’t expected them to want to go, I, of course, agreed. It would be nice to have some company after all. In the past they’ve certainly asked a lot of questions about her (she died a year before Dee was born) and about death in general, but I’ve always attributed the need to visit the cemetery to my old-style Polish upbringing. And I guess that I was also surprised because even (perhaps, especially) as an adult I’ve always dreaded the place and, in fact, made my first trip there last year, eight years after my mom died.

As it turned out, Dee, at the last minute, got nervous about the idea and decided to go home instead. I’m not surprised. He’s the sort of seven year-old who is very sensitive to the power of such things. He knows the place is filled with emotions that won’t be easy to deal with. Packy, on the other hand, I think is more of the exploring type of four year-old. For him it’s a new experience that he wonders about and this is a great chance to ask a lot of questions.

He was excited, but a bit tentative when we first got out of the car. “Hold my hand, daddy” he asked though I already was. And within a few seconds, the questions started to come at me in rapid succession:

There were the straightforward ones:

Why are there two names on that stone? Why do we bring flowers here? Who left all these other flowers? Why is Baci buried in South Hadley?

And then the not-unexpected religious ones:

Is Baci in heaven with Jesus? Will I go to heaven? What do people do in heaven? And of course: how did Jesus die and yet he’s still alive?

And then the classic kid-quote of the day:

Is Jesus buried here? His picture is on that stone. And its eventual follow-up statement: Jesus must’ve died a lot of times for us, I keep seeing his picture on all the stones.

And then there were the tough and painful ones:

Why do people die? Why did Baci die of a heart attack? My Nana had a heart attack and didn’t die. When will grandpa die?

I’m sure I didn’t give many satisfactory answers to his questions, but I tried my best to while keeping things on a four year-old level. It was a special moment for Packy and me. For him it was some special time with dad; for me, his presence there kept me focused on the future, not on the past. I discovered last year that, when I go to the cemetery alone, I’m transported back to that horrible year when my mother, my grandmothers, an aunt and an uncle all passed away over the course of a few months. I dwell on everything I didn’t do at the time and I kick myself over it. But with Packy there I could look at him and smile and lose myself in the challenge of explaining the mysteries of life to him.

But, as I sit here now reflecting on our talk, thinking about his ‘fourness’ and his wonderful worldview, it brings me back to when I myself was five–the year my grandfather died. I don’t remember much about his funeral, but I still remember clearly a time a few months before that. He was in the Nursing Home and my father and I had gone there to pick him up so that he could be home for a family picnic. I didn’t really understand what a Nursing Home was but I knew from what my dad told me was that Dziadziu was very sick. I remember walking alongside them as we left there, my father wheeling him out in his wheelchair. My grandfather held out his hand to me but I didn’t want to hold his hand because my four year-old brain thought that if he was sick I could get sick like him and I remember it took my father getting upset with me before I finally did it. And I felt so awful afterwards. And then later that day I sat near him for a while. I guess I was just trying to say to him that I was sorry, that I loved him, that I would miss him forever and ever.

Church of Passive Aggression

3/27/03: Well, I’ve decided to give up my current profession and start my own religion: The Church of Passive Aggression. I anticipate being annoyed with my followers for not doing what I expect them to. I’m not going to tell them what that is, because, after all, they should know.

So far, I haven’t developed too many tenets of this faith. Our prayers will consist of sitting there saying nothing. After all, God is omnipotent, s/he should know what we need from him/her. And, I’ve decided to institute the sacrament of Confession, but, rather than divulging problems, the penitents merely comes to me in the confessional and say “Everything’s FINE.”

Other ways of expressing our new faith will include noisily doing the dishes and ending conversations by walking away muttering loud enough to be heard but not understood. Because we are a long suffering faith, our followers are also expected to go to events or parties that they really don’t want to without a word of complaint and then act like a jerk when they are there.

If you have any other potential tenets, feel free to email them to me. But I’m not going to tell you my email address because if you cared you would already know what it is.