Solo date

See, there comes a point when you realise that if you want your needs met and your wishes fulfilled, you might have to stop waiting for someone else to make it happen. Also, that it's no one's responsibility but your own. Which sounds so fucking snarky. Makes me defensive too, honestly. But it's meant well. And it's true.

I've been having a lonely summer, and I've been moping about it. By moping, I also mean baking an unreasonable amount of bread and cakes and creative projects. This little blog rekindling might have had a tiny bit of loneliness medicine in it too.

But anyway. I'd taken the day off, which I usually try to do on Fridays when I'm not in the busy season. I have enough to fill my time with at home, with the kids, etc. etc. But fuck it. I'd become bitter and stale, and I'm not planning on dwelling in that shitsoup for long.

I haven't lived in Copenhagen for five years, but I still go in about once a week for work, so I get my usual dose of city life. But that's busy. That's not lingering. Not moving slowly from A to B. Or, better yet, not even knowing what B is, just wandering until something makes you stop. I'd missed that. The slowness of lingering.

And that, too, isn't going to happen unless I grab it with both hands and pin it to the earth like I mean it. The general pace of the internal and external world is more than enough to make sure it won't find you organically. You notice it. You fight for it - most often with yourself. You pin it down.

A general note to say: fucking fuck productivity and practicalities. Not as a natural part of getting through the day and keeping society functional and fake-busy. Fine. Great. But the incessant need to be productive, and the complete lack of safety we seem to feel around simply taking a break. The guilt around doing absolutely nothing useful.

Why do we have to wait until we've cursed everyone, flipped two fingers at the world, called in sick and reached the verge of the verge before we allow ourselves to stop? Before that. Long before that. Guilt-free, non-productive, non-helpful, non-serving time. Time that doesn't need to justify its existence by producing anything whatsoever. I'm on a quest to find more of it. Does it come naturally? No. A quest most women end up on once they start questioning the settings they came with or are forced to when their health gives out.

Ok, but over to the solo date.
I love Glyptoteket. Everyone does, right. And when the two most likely options for my day were either to have my soul rearranged underground by Marina Abramović's video installation Seven Deaths in the Cisterns in Frederiksberg, or to see the new exhibition The Power of Fashion in the Roman Empire, it was a no-brainer. I was in the mood for something light and beautiful.

Plus, I really wanted to see Palmyra and the funerary portraits from the desert oasis, that ancient trade hub in Syria with its deep Roman ties. It was stunning!

I particularly appreciated how smell was part of both exhibitions. Reading about myrrh and actually smelling myrrh are two very different experiences. Seeing how purple dye was extracted. The shells. Actual Roman clothes on display.

There's something so wholesome about it all. An absolute treat for the senses.

There is something about beauty, no?