Monday, June 30, 2014

July is Holiday Month (or, Wherein, I Unravel Ungracefully)

I think the winters here must be really, really bad. It's been described to me as dreary, overcast, depressing. Two of my American friends who have spent a previous winter in Denmark implied they felt as though they were in a gray tunnel from which they would never escape. When we arrived in May, Danes would invariably say, "Oh, that is good. You arrived just in time for the good weather."

So I guess it makes sense that the Danes have built in official holidays starting with Easter that occur nearly every week (Prayer Day, Ascension Day, Constitution Day, some kind of bonfire-effigy-burning Day that we missed, but no kidding it's real), all celebrated with increasing fervor as the weather improves and coming to a crescendo in July, when schools break for summer and children fill the streets at last, and Danes sunbathe on busstop benches and green lawns and anywhere they find themselves, really, by leaning back with a slight smile on their faces, eyes closed, faces tilted up to the sky. And in July, everyone, everyone goes on holiday.

In keeping with our goal of trying all things Danish, we too are holidaying in July.  Actually, we kind of jumped the gun (sorry -- we can't help but be typical overachieving Americans sometimes, can we?) and went to Norway these last ten days,  and now that it really is July, we are going to Crete.

And so I'm also taking a blogging holiday. Maybe when I come back I will regale you with our adventures, post a million photos of us all doing typical holiday things in all the typical holiday places. Or maybe I will not.

Maybe instead, I will come back ranting and raving about how blogging is the highest form of navel-gazing and should be banned from the internet, how it's completely impossible to live an interesting life and blog about it at the same time, and we should just choose, people, which it will be and stick to it. Maybe I will come back shouting that all kinds of travel-journal type blogging must be fiction, imaginative and wild and untrue,  and that I'm quitting it, ending it here and now, so that I don't add to the increasing e-clutter of boring, time-wasting, nauseating dribble on the internet and even more boring online photos of happy-smiley children doing happy-smiley things. Because good writing takes time! It takes reflection! It takes just the right photos taken at just the right moment, in just the right kind of lighting, to depict a meaningful point! And blogging, by its very nature, is not conducive to that, no, not conducive at all. It's destructive to the very process of the good and artful; it destroys the natural creator in all of us, and crushes our spirits down to a pulp! That is what I might say. Yes, and then, then, my friends, I'm pretty sure my computer will go up in flames. Because I have a special way with electronic devices that only my husband the computer scientist can keep at bay.  After all, it's common knowledge that I merely need to sit in front of a computer to make it crash. So if I start to think rebellious, irresponsible, wrathful thoughts at it?  That would be the end, for sure.

I think I need a holiday.

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