The Turn of the Screw

Well, events have really come apart here lately...it looks like very very soon Denmark will be coming to a grand conclusion, more like a whimper. I have found that I am just as worthless to Denmark as I am to the United States in the course of my "job hunt." Good to know, I will add it to the list of growing grievances I have to cash in before its all said and done.

I did land an interview in the next couple days! In London, all day, on a Sunday, for lifeguarding..."you sound like just the kind of candidate we are looking for!" I think the market is trying to tell me something..."just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" I can obviously not make a full day lifeguarding interview in London in two days, and really its just as well. I hung up the tiny red shorts and fox 40 whistle almost two years ago and swore my near decade-long odyssey in lifesaving had passed.

I was a good lifeguard...in fact I am a very good lifeguard and its definitely still what I am best at. What is frustrating is I was a good rookie guard 10 years ago...when I was 15. I am 25 now and I have about 4 more jobs, two states, two continents, 7 years of higher education and two degrees behind me and I am still just that...a lifeguard. The market doesn't lie, its truth, God, good, justice and everything else so long as the commodities are cheap. The battle lines between me and the market were drawn long before I came along and these little indignities will be addressed too...(probably my favorite quote by Marx addressing the sores on his rear-end that he developed by sitting day and night working on Das Kapital, "The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles for all time!" Word is that a Starbucks went up recently where Marx's favorite pub used to stand...I fear the bourgeoisie has all ready forgotten Herr Marx's carbuncles).

So I return back to the United States, an exile in my own nation, and half-defeated. Get this, my California Driver's License is expired and I cannot renew it because I am not in California and do not have a California address...I am a stateless person because I am a resident of a state I cannot live in, I have a permit to live in Denmark but cannot work here, I am accepted to study in the UK but cannot get a permit to live there till September...and I am on my way back to one of the biggest countries in the world where I feel completely out of place. I suspect that you have not heard the end of me though. The "prince" has made a habit of airing the bizarre behaviors of these invaders from the north for the last 6-7 months, but I am going to an even more bizarre land than this one I leave. I will have no end of complaints and absurd observations from the place where I am going...this place is really more of an incident or a spectacle...this place is Texas.

Texas and I share no lost love between us, in fact I overcame Texas a long time ago (and folks, lets not make the non sequitur conclusion that since Texas is horrible I don't like any of my friends and family there...must I deal with that collapse of logic right now from a state that twice elected quite another event to governor, "W"). Texas should expect nothing but hostility from me, and I declare right now that the cowboy capital of the world will rue the day this wayward "citizen of the world" was banished to a term of imprisonment in that place. Yes, for now I am certainly defeated, but I have been defeated before. I will return to my old delusional, arrogant and flippant ways, and I will disembark from the semi-republic of Texas. My life has a fair balance of pleasant and unpleasant aspects and I plan to will the pleasant back to the forefront, by force and with malice aforethought if necessary.

I should say a brief word about our dearly departed Denmark (in my universe I am the center...its never me that is "leaving," I always just am and everything else slides away; its not me that is "difficult," everyone else is impatient; its not me who has no redeemable aspects to offer society, its an out of whack world of madmen that just don't take my inherent value serious enough). I have REALLY come to love Denmark of late. I have never been in a more relaxed and easy-going place in my life. The winter, well the winter is like slow death especially when you are new, don't know anyone, and have just left a place where it is probably still sunny and warm with decent surf. The Danish people may well be the most beautiful people on earth (second only to the Swedes probably and nobody but the Danes and the Swedes are buying this "two different nations" thing). The Danish people are hard to approach to a newcomer, but they are wonderfully friendly. Nobody ever just came up to me and talked to me when I was out, but when I talked to others I was always met with a big warm smile. I think it will be the people I miss most.

The spring has been incredible...so much light, green, flowers. Its so seasonal here that the entire community undergoes a collective shift in disposition around March. The city is beautiful with a lot of green spaces, beautiful buildings and old cobblestone roads. The place is just crawling with bookstores and cafes! If the books were not $100 a piece and mostly in Danish I would worry I might have died and gone to heaven.

Man, I really don't even want to talk about it now cause I just wish I could stay longer...it just got really wonderful like 1-2 months ago and that time was consumed by law school. I won't say anything about my friends here cause I just don't want to. I don't think I am going to post anymore from here in the old world unless I return to go to school in the UK in Sept.

Farvel, tusind tak...jeg elsker Kobenhavn og Danmark!