...and with the striking of the clock, midnight GMT+1, November the 28th 2006 begins in my little slice of Europe.
Our Meteor Blades is 60, as indicated by the title, and I'd like to say happy birthday!
A-hem, perhaps a speech is in order? This is what people do on such an occaision?
(sound: a brief, repeated ringing of a spoon striking a champagne glass... cough, cough...)
Although I have offered only a few fragments of myself at this site, outside of one general interest in a particuliar corner of the Kosmos, I have never offered you a formal introduction, nor an account of my life
during these recent years abroad, as I should, because surely a few of you would love to know how the political system functions here in Sweden (and was just rated the best democracy in the world by the Economist, so I'm told,) what the geography looks like, and something about all the other infinite nuances that come to define this place.
Sorry, but you're not going to get that now, so STFU or go start your own website!
A-hem...
!0 years ago, almost to the month, I was walking along a beach.
I had arrived to Sweden for the first time a few months before and, as perhaps one does when coming to Europe to study, alone, I ultimately found refuge with a group of American exchange students as they were the closet group I could relate to in such an different world.
But not on this day. The thing is, I had by this time just begun to play a game with myself, discovery perhaps, but in such a different place, I didn't desire the familiarity anymore- the gossip or paranoia, shared experiences or preconceived notions. I wanted to see how far I could go away from all the things that defined who I was, things I could relate to, my American-ness, until at some end, perhaps, I could pick and choose at will all the aspects I wanted to be, if one could do that...
I had befriended another student who lived in the same housing area, just down the street, or walkway, a German studying engineering named Norbert. I think it was on this particuliar day he told me his father had fought in WW2, on the German side, of course, and it was perhaps a year later when I tried to get in touch with him after losing contact that I actually spoke to his father, who was still alive, and we tried to communicate in broken English, bits of German, where Norbert was living and new number.
This morning started around 3 or 4, after a long night of partying with the same group of people I'd travel to this place with, my new friends being a bunch of German guys, French girls and a few Dutch who spoke English without any noticeable accent whatsoever. We traveled from Göteborg, (Gothenburg for those who can't pronounce the name in Swedish) via boat to Fredrikshavn in Denmark (nothing like hot Glüvine at 5a.m.)and from there took a train north as far as the train went, then walked quite a ways further, to a place called Skagen.
Its perhaps a town, village rather, but really based around a point, the northernmost tip of Denmark where the water from the Baltic meets the Pacific. There is, in fact, a tip, a place where you can physically stand and watch the the waves from each body of water hit themselves chaotically in a vague line out into the distance.
But this place had such a history. Artists had lived there 150 years before, it was known for its light, and along these beaches they would stroll too- they made paintings of this in fact. The Nazis too had been there. Bunkers left standing, three perhaps, one sinking into the sea, another the waves would crash against with the sound of thunder or perhaps the report of a canon, stuck in time.
So, as I was walking along this beach, with all this history I could only perceive, each wave came in and receded back, over and over again, like a metronome, or a rock tumbler polishing the rocks on the beach, and for the first time I realized the depth of history in world, its richness. I stood there motionless, awestruck at the power of the place and I took a series of photographs:
I'd like to say that I find this same feeling again and again when I read your work, so many moments that I know I can descern from one moment in my life to the next, like a threshold, a new me and an old me.
We/I may never thank thank you enough for the work you put into this site, your diaries, your comments, but thanks.
Perhaps, if I ever find an enlarger large enough, this will be my present to you.
UPDATE 2: GMT+1, 10:50 am: MB has suggested for those of us who wish do pitch in for some sort of gift, that he would appreciate it if we would make a donation to the Native American Rights Fund.