Happy Birthday Christiania

- and Jinx, she's celebrating in style. Well, in a manner of speaking. Her greens got a trimming, trash a cleaning, and pushers a fresh supply of hash for tonight's festivities. What can I do, earnest traveler, put partake in full? I mowed the little theatre bowl outside 'Wonderland' and so met my ins to the freetown, the very cool original pusher of the lawnmower until he got an unexpected smoke break.

All this talk of birthdays has been thinking about time and space, and the points of intersection along that four-dimensional axis we call experience. In my urban ecosystems class, a group project involves retrofitting a historically important train station to a zero-solution stormwater management approach. Background: basically cities make surfaces impermeable (we pave&build everything), so when it rains sewers manage our water but they often flood (bigger storms)..Q: how can we also manage the water cycle locally - A: sustainable urban drainage systems, SUDS.

Back to the train station, the idea is that as an old historic site there's a greater question of what to keep and what to toss. Change is seen as more a negative destruction of historical value, atmosphere, and tradition than a wonderful makeover. Sure putting in a WADI would solve everything but it would destroy the old fountain out front put in by King F. in century X. and we can't do that! But I'm not interested in the details so much as the underlying question, because really history is continuous uninterrupted (and highly subjective) flow. The points we highlight are exactly those, the history of someone from a certain perspective. That we strive to be unbiased doesn't change the fact that the winners write the history books; every time we 'preserve' one history it hides multiple versions of the same city, events and experiences. Who chooses which histories are made available - and to whom?

It's funny that in thinking about space and time, and the points that constitute my human experience, I end up thinking about power. Most of my experience takes place in the urban environment, like anyone who lives in a city which is mostly anyone reading this. Think about this, urban environments (what people tend to think of as their world) are entirely the product of humans. We have built, imagined and designed our cities (often using, imitating or learning from constructions in nature) and thus created our surroundings, our lives and shaped our futures. Ideas shaped reality, reality pushed back, and they kept right on taking this waltz to make the universe. In practical terms, that has me wondering if I change my mind, will my reality change? Why can't I take active part in the world around me, if it's mostly made by other people? Which brings me round to power. Flows of power, like the energy available in a system to do work, control the built reality in a pyramid. Very few people at the top make the decisions that trickle through to create the lives of those below.

But sewers flood, populations grow, another year brings another birthday and things change. And right now sitting on a freshly cut patch of grass enjoying free net and rare sunshine, I'm optimistic. Because the future doesn't exist, history only sets a precedent not a certainty; maybe tomorrow will be better because I made today a little better. Maybe if everyone at the bottom does some creative thinking they can flip the pyramid, measure in the currency of human potential and not paper money.

Happy Birthday Christiania, you exist as a reminder of another history and honey tonight that story will turn up the volume. Let Copenhagen hear there's alternative ways to live, maybe some sound waves will bounce out your way Jinx. Listen up.

Random Thoughts On a Wine-less Night

Ahh, Janis m'dear, you're right - yes you are. But you forget who & what we are, us humans. We've split the atom, walked on the moon, built complex political & social systems, philosophized, mathematized & dragged our souls out on paper. We watched the telly and read the papers. We invented currency & economics and let them run rampant though the world. Amazing creatures, us. Aber im Keller ist immer eine Leiche.

You'd figure we could spread the love & the food & the medical advances to all, but there's an entire continent of misery to tarnish our glory. You'd figure we'd have the basic animal instinct of not shitting where one sleeps resolved to a civilized & advanced level, yet we've shit all over this planet without shame. We simply fail to see the bigger picture; I don't think our brains are wired like that.

A certain german used to say that sometimes it's just numbers - that bigger picture. Of course, he was a monster, him. And we? We eat & fuck & watch the telly.

But why is the wine gone?

It's a funny night. I have this need for reality bubbling to the surface; I wish I could paint or draw or draw haunting melodies from the strings of a violin. When too many hours are consumed by worrying about the quirky garbage collecting habits of a JVM or balancing paychecks to account for parking where I shouldn't & driving too fast I wonder what the point is. Not that parking where the mood strikes & driving as fast as the car will go & even overactive garbage collecting are not thrilling enough in themselves - but them's cheap thrills. I wonder when I started correlating feeling with reality.

That's the yearn - feeling & cherries & the road. I'm rambling in sentiment tonight, clearly.

Since there's still no wine (I tried to miracle my water, but I must be rusty), let the music compensate: Iron & Wine - lovely soul.

Dear Janis, I want to know more about Denmark & Copenhagen. Draw me there, so I can leave here.

But until then, farewell, and write to me,
And keep these very wise words in your mind:

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Though canst not then be false to any man."

... or woman. I'm sure that's an allegorical use of the word :)

Peace, out.
Jinx

Kashmir Abend mit Fragen

One night, hanging out in my Norrebro flat in Copenhagen smoking some nice Kashmir with Maria's polish friend who was philosophically & literally crashing, we talked about the why's. How sometimes, when you stop and think about the general pool of knowledge in the world, you get really hung up. I've explored a lot of academia; wandered everywhere from the hard-core sciences (math, physics etc.) to visual arts, anthropology, native studies, and now things like urban ecosystems and Danish culture. Basically I know academia quite well, and can navigate through the ebbs and flows of it's literature. It's opened my eyes to all these massive pools of knowledge - like a hypertext of scales, you can keep clicking deeper into a knowledge pool to all degrees of specificity. And you can get lost in these things because they're fucking deep!

What it boils down to is, we the human race have amassed an unbelievable quantity of quality know-how. We have specialists in every imaginable field, and enough human potential energy on this planet to give everyone on earth a great quality of life. We have modern medicine (when resources and manpower aren't wasted on obese, diabetic, heart-diseased North Americans who just need to eat less and walk more...), spacecraft communications, the internet, art, literature, music, crafts, cultures, societies, biodiversity, philosophy, sociology new political thought...all these fantastic things through our history that we've come to invent, learn and develop. We've come a long goddamn way but somehow those of us who have the power have never managed to put this all together. Our enlightened leaders have never seemed much concerned with connecting the good creative force available for the betterment of all, so much as fulfilling their own agendas.

This seems pretty evident today when sad statistics like the number of people dying of over-eating equaling those dying of under-eating are stacking perilously high (not to mention bullshit wars, economic imperialism, democratic death in the States, environmental rape, list goes on...). It's like the problems are getting more complex, and the majority of us are just getting stupider and more ill-equipped to deal with them. Extreme weather is increasing, big fish are disappearing from the oceans, rivers are polluted (everything is polluted), the average human has two pounds of plastic molecules in their body says David Suzuki. Things are bad, and people not looking, or wanting to look, doesn't really change the situation. This is a time for some pretty mass (badass) global co-operation. We have global communications, transportation, media, food production, trade, GPS etc. In short all the systems and technology needed to solve the problems we have. Pause, seriously pause and think about that...we have all the tools necessary right now.

And what the fuck is stopping us? Ourselves. The fifteen massively rich and powerful financiers and business people (watch some Alex Jones) who run the institutions and governments that create the urban worlds we live in. Cities are designed, and the way we interact with them, move through them, the public space available, are all contributing factors to our lifestyles. We should care about them because they make up the day-to-day quality of our life. Which could be so much better.

Maybe I'm just a stoned joker of an idiot for pausing to laugh and ask why, but sometimes today just doesn't make any sense to me. Typing this is making me sentimental, because it reminds me of of all the talks I had with Jinx in the car only now it's such a solo discourse...not even a bottle of wine! No cheap (even crappie) wine in Denmark – not even Macedonian import.
Jinx (who'll have wine and thus be true to the spirit of this blog, I compensate in my way) over to you m'dear.



Part II – The Christiania Continuation
Hanging out in Christiania at Nemoland (bar and smoking pit), which always sounds somehow badass. But people, this place has the most unique atmosphere that makes relaxing here pure pleasure. Picture a hill, a ramshackle rooftop with a guitarist and high rocker singing about freedom, the sun shining, and walking by every mix of grannies, babies, punks, pushers, suits, students and hippies. People who would freak you out in any other place, but here everyone just chills & mingles. Feel the love, feel the cool shit that happens when you 'exit the EU' establishment – says the sign above Christiana's main totem-framed entrance.

I wanted to live here, still do, and if it wasn't for the slightly more advanced standards of hygiene expected at U Copenhagen I think I'd be spending the rest of the summer smoking under the stars in a happy shower-free outdoor existence. Though mind you, the ten minute hail downpour (hail, the size of pebbles, in Copenhagen, in fucking August...maybe the weather's on crack) makes me mighty glad of the flat, mainly its roof. Read an article today about Norrebro residents (my neighborhood) moving out cause of the gang stuff and shootings. Okay, so night-time can be loud and there's some dicey areas on the roll but it's a pretty cool place nonetheless. We have a deal with a little Pakistani fruit & veggie place down the road (Norrebrogade, across the street from Kierkegards grave) to get the stuff that's near expiration – we more or less raid their trash. Though after I made them some jam (many jams and stews at our place) for Rhamadan we started getting some freshies tossed in. Which rocks as food, like everything, is expensive in Denmark. People dealing with people, no middle man or institutions to translate their transaction.

I started off my posting the way I started off my life in this city (though less homeless) – sleep deprived, crazy, and flying high all over the place. Coherence, or editing, will follow at some point but in the meantime just enjoy the chaos.