Denmark and Elements of Happiness

The one person I knew in the country stood on the other side of sliding glass doors, shock apparent on her face as I banged on the panes before the metro zoomed into the unknown, taking me with it.  I turned, looking at the annoyed looking people around me and muttered mostly to myself: “Welcome to Copenhagen”.

The abrupt immersion into the complete and utter unknown is something rarely experienced by individuals who are not either just being born or being abducted by aliens.  I can say this experience was close.  Fortunately my first visit to Denmark didn’t continue to be as dramatic and I enjoyed the nine days of my “spring break” in the presence of a good friend and the pleasant Danes, sleeping in and going on day adventures.

Church of Our Savior

It was when I was up on the very top of the Church of Our Savior looking out at the beautiful city after a frightful climb that I began to contemplate happiness.  As apparently the world’s happiest nation, I wondered if that was actually true and what factors contribute to this notion.  I visited the colorful neighborhood of Christiania where it was apparent that the social factors added to the inhabitant’s personal delight.  Labeled as Copenhagen’s “Green Light District”, the streets were lined with colorfully reconstructed army quarters, abstract sculptures made from recycled materials, and uplifting quotes about freedom and expressionism.  With the personal liberties, albeit ones the law doesn’t necessarily agree with, and likeminded people banning together, this community welcomes outsiders in to witness their different kind of lifestyle.

A storefront in Christiania

It is obvious that societal influences affect overall happiness, which was curious to think about after lately experiencing several different types of cultures.  While Florence seemed to be a city full of always emotionally distant people who focused on personal benefit, Copenhagen proved to be a city of high social trust as security itself adds largely to a more content mindset.  The official report as to why this windy country remains so blissful is the result of six existing factors: (1) a large GDP per capita, (2) healthy life expectancy at birth, (3) a lack of corruption in leadership, (4) a sense of social support, (5) freedom to make life choices, and (6) a culture of generosity.*  The general attitude can be summed up by a question posed by a true Copenhagen fanatic:

“But shouldn’t all of us on earth give the best we have to others and offer whatever is in our power?” -Hans Christian Andersen 

By one of the many “lakes”

I was glad to witness such a positive environment but began to think of happiness on a more individual level.  One of my drawing professors once said that for him to be happy he has to live without feeling guilty; he has to have personal responsibility in life.  For me, I need change, both mentally and physically, and I need to conquer this guilt.

When I was a child, I was afraid of everything.  I used to think that when I grew up I couldn’t live in a normal house because of earthquakes and fires but I couldn’t live in a boat because it would sink.  So I decided I needed to live in a blimp high up, but then I remembered lightning and that I was terrified of falling.  I used to be scared of people, and of their intense emotions.  I would shake when other people got mad or frustrated, and I would hide.  I thought everyone else had so much authority, which led me most of all to be petrified of getting in trouble.  I was the ideal child, obeying rules and being quietly polite, but no one realized it was because I was fearful.

Copenhagen from a great height

I don’t exactly know what I thought would happen if I was caught doing something wrong.  Maybe I was worried that person would tower over me and slowly break me down, making me believe that I was in fact what was wrong.  For years I lived harboring guilt for things that didn’t actually happen; guilt for being scared.  So I would run to the woods and make a fort out of sticks and grass and think to myself, “maybe I can just live here.”

I can identify six following points for my own personal happiness, some already stated and some more common sense, starting with the borrowed principles (1): banish unnecessary guilt, (2) build a personal community, (3) embrace change or, in the least, diversify life, (4) make journeys, either physically or mentally, (5) perpetuate creative learning, and (6) seek self-improvement.  These may seem inherently obvious but for a long time, I did not follow them.

I am not a scared person now…I wouldn’t be where I am if I was.  Of course I have rational fears but I do not let myself be controlled by what I haven’t experienced or what I don’t understand.  Now, I am not afraid of the unknown.

 

*Information courtesy of The Huffington Post.

Last Thoughts about Italy: Religion and Connections

The last email I received from my mother started off with her asking if being in Italy has reaffirmed my Catholicism and I really didn’t know what to reply because I didn’t want to simply respond with the abruptly dismissive answer of “no”.  After visiting and seeing so many churches in such a short amount of time and thinking a lot about what it means to fully understand something, this question made me consider the idea of faith and the things involved with it.

Praying has always been something that I have done, even after stepping away from organized religious practices and these days, I pray the most by the river, my back resting against a thick barked tree.  I have a special place by the Arno where the grass is still long enough that lizards stumble over my crossed bare feet and peek into the folds of my jacket spread out underneath me.  I used to pray to the Mississippi during the months I was home, running there with very little air in my lungs.  I suppose I have always unconsciously gravitated to rivers because they give me both reassurance and peace of mind.  They represent movement, sometimes adapting and sometimes not, sometimes being absolutely vital for prosperity and sometimes carrying alien toxins that will destroy an entire ecosystem.  There are two exact sides to a river and a heck of a lot of content in between.  They can represent adaptability and change.  Or they can just be water, forever traveling. I don’t think that any God would have a problem with me praying to the river.

The Arno

When I was younger, I used to sing to God at night, especially after watching Jurassic Park because I was convinced that while my family was sleeping, a dinosaur would step on our house and the four of us inside.  There is a zero percent chance of this happening but sometimes I would see them outside our windows and cringe farther under the covers, terrified of the idea that something could be that large. When I was younger, I was most vulnerable to my own mind, just as the human knee is most vulnerable to the body it is a part of, considering that much of the body’s weight is constantly rested on it.

Pisa

There are roughly sixty nine churches in Florence and over two thousand churches in Rome and twenty four churches in Siena even though only forty percent of Italians consider themselves to be practicing Catholics.   I have been in twelve churches in Italy but always prefer the river.  However, when I can, I give my fifty cents and light a candle, whispering a little prayer.  I believe in well wishes so I pray for exactly three boys and one girl and the entirety of the rest of the world.  Sometimes if there are kneelers, I will be a little bit selfish and bow my head to look down, praying for my knees and increased resistance, hoping that these parts of my body aren’t as vulnerable as they seem.

The Duomo of Firenze

Over one million bibles are sold every year.  The average household owns four bibles which they read only four times every year which is three more bibles than I own and four times how often I read it.  I tried to read it once, so if people asked why I am not religious, I could give an informed answer.  But I never got very far with the book and so I just tell people that for years I watched people who didn’t know what faith meant kneel in front of a wooden cross because if they didn’t, they would probably get detention.  The concept of religion that I was taught contained very little movement, based off of memorizing the Act of Contrition for a grade and followed a strict rigidness that was entirely not worth it if you didn’t even understand the words you were taught to say.  It was supposed to be Catholicism but almost a larger teaching hidden behind that was the religion of obedience.

Siena

I guess I never really associated with those religious ideas which resulted in me finding ties in other things.  Recently rereading my previous posts, I realize that they all have a common theme apart from travel and perspective, it just took me until now to see what it was: the importance of effective connection.  While it may seem dramatic to say that we wouldn’t survive without connections, it is absolutely true, just in various degrees of validity.

Moving to a new country with very little idea of what I was getting myself into, successful interactions are 100% necessary for survival, primarily in relation to the language.  In the beginning, with no previous knowledge of Italian, association and being able to identify logical equivalents were key.  However, I will say that recognizing different societal cues and mannerisms is also essential as success within society is all about understanding different situations.  As someone who is not very physically affectionate, the first time my host mother kissed me, which was also the first time we had met, I was quite taken aback as only one person in my life has gotten away with this before and it was under very different circumstances.  But this was a gesture of friendship and hospitality, something that would continue my entire stay in Italy, and I was thankful to discover that this act did not happen between everyone and before every approachable interaction.  Connections are understanding.

My host mother with a fake fish she made and decorated

Integrating into a new place, especially one as large as Florence, many people were introduced and many people were passed by.  But there are those who stick around because for some reason there was some conversation that was stimulating or a face that was more keenly remembered; a volley of knowledge resulting in a passing between: a connection has been made.  This can be a result of particular wording which will erode as time flies by or it can hold on like nothing else matters.  These are what count, the connections in friendships that keep us all relatively sane.

I am always nervous when I go to a new place that I won’t for some reason fit in, that I will be driven into a spiraling loneliness that will make me regret the wonderful places where I am.  Thankfully,  this was not the case and I have met some really interesting individuals who I look forward to getting to know more in the future.  But good connections coupled with the unavoidable changes necessary for life can create a moment of sadness when one thing ends and another begins.  I really will miss my little visits to the Arno and the way the Italian countryside smells but more importantly I will miss the friends I have made who I have to say goodbye to.   To avoid sounding entirely like a graduation speech, I will just say this, I will see them again…just a little bit later.

Possession and the Sistine Chapel; or Depth and Illumination

I recently returned from a short trip to Rome, a city rooted with ancient ruins and umbrella pines, and while it seemed to be inhabited mostly by determined men from Bangladesh, I loved it.  See, Rome is big.  And I mean big as in expansive but also regarding grandeur: every building seemed to contain many archaic levels, every horse statue fit only for riders of gargantuan size.  It is natural for a place like this to produce something like awe in travelers like me.   Possession 

As we began our tour for the day, our group embarked with the ingredients of tourists: a map of the city, too many euros, and our cameras weighing down our necks or jacket pockets.  We started at Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of  Rome and had a guided tour through the Forum.  We simultaneously lifted our arms  to snap a picture of the ruins, of the pillars, of the skyline because they were ancient and beautiful and we all certainly wanted to remember them, to hold onto them.  Not quite as drastically as the ancient Romans sought to conquer and  control a large part of the European continent, as traveler and writer John Ruskin identified, part of being human is wanting to possess beauty.   Photography seems an initially convenient medium for capture as it offers an immediate result with accurate proportions and  depictions of reality.  While Ruskin was originally a fan of  daguerreotypes, he soon realized that practitioners of this new art were replacing actual sight and study of place for a fleeting click of a camera.

As my last post highlighted the importance of learning how to see, I connected with Ruskin’s goal of teaching people how to see through drawing, not so that they will become better artists but so they will learn how to love their surroundings.  I constantly see people around me looking only through the lens on their camera, taking a picture and moving on, scarcely looking up.   And I have been guilty of this myself but I have recently been frustrated by the pictures I take.  They do not capture the depth that I need in order to fully possess the beauty I see and I am often left with a small image that is flat and seems to represent limitations more than the vastness of the original scene.  

Robert Pirsig also writes about this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, comparing the act of  looking out of a car window to watching TV, all confined “boringly in a frame”.  Pirsig and his extensive values stem from the openness of experience, of being completely a part of surroundings and existing “in the scene”.   And while Ruskin might have challenged Pirsig to make more frequent stops and certainly would have added a sketchbook and pencils to the list of vital travel supplies, I think they both would have agreed with Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel when he says:

“We can see beauty well enough by just opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it.” 

Continuing with our tours the next day, we embarked on an incredible journey through the streets of the Vatican Necropolis, through long underground roads that gave a new meaning to the term “dead end”.   It was humid and quiet and I  loved that I could touch everything: walls, engravings, the smooth marble of sarcophagi that represented entire bygone generations.  And then we moved up to Saint Peter’s Basilica, craning our heads back in order to take in as much as possible.  I am still having a hard time contemplating the exact magnitude of each detail of the walls and ceiling, and because of my realizations of the cameras restrictions during the previous day, I didn’t even dare take a picture of the inside.  It was completely enough to just wonder at every aspect of the basilica’s glory.  

The Sistine Chapel 

 After slugging through the rain and entering the labyrinthine Vatican Museum, full of rooms of tapestries, sculpture, and art from every movement, I finally got to what I really wanted to see: the famous Sistine Chapel.  I packed myself into the space along with a hundred other people, shuffling along and waiting until I could get a seat along the edge of the room.  Sitting, I finally looked up at  Michelangelo’s ceiling.  I was incredibly disappointing by the whole thing, extending down to Botticelli’s frescoes and the papal conclave.  The people who had come to view this religious space scuffled along like they were part of a current, only moving rhythmically, systematically and were occasionally shocked into silence by the stern voice of the museum guard whose reprimanding hollers were as distinctive as the green parrots I had tried to spot outside.  I left with a frown on my face.

courtesy of the internet

I suppose I was so disappointed because I found there to be a striking lack of illumination, both physically as the room was surprisingly dimly lit, and mentally as some sort of understanding evaded me.  I am not sure if I went there expecting to gain some sort of comprehension regarding the glory of either God or the greatly artistic space but I left thinking that it was smaller, less complex, and in some ways, more human than I thought it would have been.  I tried to give the paintings more attention in my mind, focusing on small parts at a time but when I looked back at the whole picture, I still felt a little bit cheated by the previously boasted splendor.  I again thought back to de Botton and applied the inverse of his words:

“Many places strike us as beautiful not on the basis of aesthetic criteria – because the colours match or symmetry and proportion are present—but on the basis of physiological criteria, inasmuch as they embody a value or mood of importance to us.”  

Learning to See

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered;

            the point is to discover them. – Galileo Galilei

It is not so debatable to say that a lot of great artistic minds were born and enhanced in the giant “boot” shaped country that is Italy, enriching their art and perspectives by learning from each other and the majestic components of the Italian culture.  But it was their passion to learn to notice things in ways that were both realistic and that captured a fanaticism the common hand could not copy.  Their products took a considerable amount of talent . . . talent that I do not innately have.  But there is something to be said about studying drawing, writing, travel, and language outside of the realm of ones comfort zone that is particularly eye opening.  

Drawing 

I started a class called “The Sight-Size Tradition: Drawing and Portraiture” after studying Italian pretty exclusively for three weeks in hopes that the art course might get me at least a little bit farther in deciding the outcome of my educational career.  Instead of an immediate epiphany regarding my future, I was hit by the importance of really learning to stand back in order to see full perspective within reality.  In the first ten minutes of the first lesson we were instructed to firmly plant our feet at a distance from our papers, stick out our arms straight as arrows, and firmly grasp a piece of string with a small metal weight on the end.  This string, named the “plum line”, was our form of measurement, in both the vertical and horizontal and was the key to what we learned to be the “sigh-size”  method.  Sight-size can be described as “ subject and image (are) depicted to scale as seen from a given distance. When properly understood, sight-size is not a mere measuring technique, but a philosophy of seeing.”  It was emphasized and reiterated through the artistic ages that this definite distance is absolutely necessary in order to discover and perceive the truth.

We started  drawing a plaster cast of a woman and while she did not have either a head or arms, she stood with what seemed like great ease and nonchalance, rested her weight primarily against her right  leg, curving her shoulders away from her feminine hips for balance.  We called her Simon and drew her in what seemed to me a painstakingly slow fashion for six hours spanning across three days, first measuring out identifiable points on the body: the point of the waist, shoulders, curvature of the knees, etc. and then connecting them with what were supposed to be confident yet delicate lines.   This technique, I have learned, involves a great deal of standing back, pacing forwards, and inevitably erasing hours of previous drawing, working and straining the eyes.   As the eye continuously looks and the brain continuously interjects with what it thinks the body looks like, a small internal battle ensues, forcing your hand between lines you think vs. lines you see.  It is from this optical fatigue and subconscious struggle  that I learned one of the most important things of my trip so far: the power of looking in nontraditional ways.  We each were handed a medium sized mirror and told to stand back, and using our dominant eye, position our drawings along-side the model in order to see them both side by side in (hopefully) equal proportions, or sometimes even position the mirror in order to be shown an inverted image.  These unfamiliar perspectives can trick the eye into seeing something that can look completely new and that highlight previous errors in observation.  

Simon: unfinished after three days

Writing and Travel

There are many reasons as to why we write: to gain a certain liberation, for pleasure, to test ourselves, to embark on a voyage of self discovery (to see our truths, to see our lies), etc.  These curiously are also some of the identified reasons as to why we travel, as articulated by Eric Leed in his article The Ancients and the Moderns: From Suffering to Freedom.  And so looking at travel writing in particular is very interesting as far as gaining perspective.  First, a departure: we take a flight or train or boat, but we also depart from a previous mindset, we are entering the foreign, the unknown; in writing we sit or stand or lean, leaving behind a part of our world in order to focus on what we are trying to say and often we don’t know even know what that is.  

I have been writing for years, beginning with silly stories about turtles that have peanut butter fetishes and moving on to memoir writing, micro-fiction, and poetry, never really settling on one, I prefer to move around, explore new things.  This is my exact reaction to travel as well, honing in and stepping back, moving on and finding more and more out about both the world and my my own self.  In writing, I often had to remove myself from the obvious perspective, had to stand back and size myself  or others up: I often gained a notion of the truth, even if I didn’t want to see it.  Travel is also a way of physically stepping back, or moving away, of looking at things with a new perspective, and correcting errors of worldly perceptions.   

A Pigeon Friend in Siena

Language 

When I first stepped onto Italian soil, I came equipped only with the knowledge of how to say three things: “hello”, “I am hungry”, and “fuck off”. . . this certainly says something about the mindset I left the US with.  As stated before, during my first three weeks I endured intensive instruction in the Italian language, starting with common phrases and moving to verbs and simple conjugations.  At the end of that time I prided myself in having the vocabulary of a not so bright five year old child.   But I was proud of myself, able to contribute to dinner time discussions and able to maneuver Florence’s many markets.  It was only after I lost the glow of basic comprehension that I realized my limited vernacular was making a difference in my daily interactions.    My audio perspective was very narrow and similar to squinting at a fine piece of art and seeing only vague shapes and a noticeable frame; I longed to fill in the spaces of my diction, to accurately convey the authenticity of feeling in my speech.  But I only knew how to say: “pretty, very pretty”.  Language and efficient communication effect perspective more than I would have thought.  Sometimes I do not go to new places or do new things just because I do not know how to verbally navigate them here.  

 

Sight

Perhaps this post should have been titled something about discovery, as a lot of my words have dealt with that concept.  However I think discovery, especially in this day and age, absolutely necessitates new perspective; if we are looking for the truth and haven’t discovered it yet, it would be foolish to keep doing the same thing over and over hoping for a new outcome.  It is important to stand back, to depart from ourselves, and try to say things differently, even if it is with a few nonintellectual words, that we can create our own philosophy in order to truly learn to see. 

A cliche yet accurate description of Venice

Moving

I first came to this website with not so much an eager writing mind, but with the exhaustion of having to email several individuals about my travel and life experiences, a daunting task that usually ended with a very generic story which could be copied and pasted and ran no risks of offending anyone.  I titled the blog “Time to Begin”…and then promptly logged off and pretty immediately forgot that I was supposed to be starting something new.  Four months later, equipped with a mind now ready to write, perhaps now I will begin.  But maybe this will be a different sort of blog because I want to start with the past.  

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

Dublin

The coast of Northern Ireland and the North Channel in Co. Antrim

I moved to Dublin on August 24th, 2013 to study English Literature at Trinity College in the city center, leaving behind a boy I had been dating for a couple of months, a scattered and already distant family, and the slight  familiarity that I had built up after two years at my previous college in Illinois.  I was excited to start this new adventure and was fascinated by the foreign city.  Immediately I picked up on a feeling in the air: not only did Ireland have the highest birth rates in the EU but the general attitude was that of expectancy.  It seemed that everything and everyone was pregnant in body and mind, swelling with new ideas and rich cultural backgrounds, birthing epiphanies and grand artistic works.  But it took me a few weeks to realize that while everyone seemed to be gravid with this certain prosperity, I was only heavy with a mind that did not know where to truly exist.

Portrush, Northern Ireland

I was in this new and beautiful place but I was unconsciously inhabiting  the past,  not living life because  I was only looking backwards, trying to understand things that I hadn’t been able to process completely before.  I realized that inevitably I was still moving forward because that  is just how time works, but without actively looking ahead, I lost my sense of direction.  I had wanted to start something new, to embrace the “time to begin” but a large portion of my days involved a mind wandering back to Iowa and Los Angeles and Seattle.  I became obsessed with people and places I was not around, scribbling frustrated thoughts about moving on but not allowing myself to actually let anything go.  

My mind became a center for disjointed inner-narrations, mulling close to but never touching on the idea of reconciliation between the old and the new; it became a center for neurosis  and repetition and obsession about time that could rival characters of William Faulkner.  I became depressed and angry and lonely, not developing strong relationships with the people around me and starting petty arguments with people back home in order to spark any kind of intensity within conversation.  

Going Back

I originally wasn’t  planning on returning to the states for Christmas, I wanted to stay in Wales with my father after my time in Ireland was over and before I was supposed to start studying in Florence three weeks later.  However, after things started going awry in Dublin, I made up my mind that I would go visit my mother in Minnesota for a few days and then surprise my boyfriend in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve before heading back to Europe.  My journey home was that from Hell and I arrived in Little Falls very mentally and physically exhausted.  I spent most of my stay sleeping, eating homemade chex mix, improving creativity within the Nativity scene, and watching Lord of the Rings with my dog.  

Happy Birthday Jesus: A grand improvement

How to Cope: No Internet, No TV, and No Car

After catching up on rest and finally seeing old friends, I left my small -30 degree hometown at four in the morning, greeted my 5th airport in ten days, and boarded a plane to give my best friend exactly what he had been wanting for Christmas.  Because of the assumption that he was picking up his grandparents at LAX and that I was enjoying a “child’s Christmas in Wales”, I was able to implement a pretty astounding surprise. My mind was finally in proximity of the subject of my long-term thoughts.   I stayed in LA for the next ten days, enjoying more rest, an openhearted family, and 80 degree weather.  I celebrated New Years for the second year in a row on the front steps of a well loved house in North Hollywood, and simply reveled in existing where I actually was.  

Leaving Again 

Airports are often bittersweet places.  Here you can see, without changing locations, faces lit with excitement for upcoming adventures, bored looking business men and women whose airport experiences are purely ritual, astonished expressions due to certain surprise visitors, and finally the pained look of someone leaving behind someone they love.  My mind was rapidly switching through all of these and forcing them onto my own face as I started step one of my journey to Florence, Italy; I didn’t know what to feel, or think, or be.  Step two of my voyage brought me to the Seattle airport, where the long overdue meet up with an old friend  resulted in a more at ease mind.  Unfortunately, the flight to Paris was just long enough for my mind to go back through that very complicating array of emotions: I kept my eyes trained out of the window until the sun set and everything went black, trying to distract myself from reverting to the negative mindset that I had tried to leave in Dublin.

Mount Rainier in Washington. A perfect last view.

Moving On

I arrived in Firenze tired and late, immediately experiencing the roadblocks of a language barrier.  But I was excited about the challenge of it all, and became obsessed with trying to mother the culture and language until I was an effective part of it.  For the second time in a foreign country, it took me the first few weeks before I realized that something was again wrong.  I became determined not to be stuck in repetition, stubborn against adopting the same  thoughts, and insistent on an actual change.  I would not go back to the days where my mind was existing elsewhere.  I would not be mentally somewhere else.  So I opted to break my own heart, and finally had the conversation that I had been avoiding.  I told my boy that I needed to be selfish, that I loved him but I couldn’t be with him, not like this, that he needed to set my mind free to exist in Italy.  I needed to separate from everything and everyone holding me back from finding myself in a new place.  

Things like this hurt, and sometimes leave interesting marks on a person, but are usually beneficial in the long run.  I am trying to live forwards without spending so much time looking backwards: I know that I don’t have to be obsessed with understanding everything; I know that I will be happy.  And now, by finally forcing my gaze onward….now it is time to begin.  

Me-sa in Pisa