København

books I haven’t written yet

@lieffaxelrachelbank

Bispebjerg Bibliotek

• yes yes YES • this • if only books hadn’t been the first ballast tossed overboard when my ever-loving roommate, back in brooklyn, wrestled me yesterday from two suitcases down to one • it’s okay • i’ll milk white noise as long as i can • then something else will happen such that i may read again • also full disclosure it was actually the second ballast • the first was extra journals • you’re carrying around empty pages, rachel, he said • i didn’t correct him that those are books, too, books i haven’t written yet • he’s right, of course, though • i’m pretty sure one can buy paper in denmark •

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jøde and reading lamp

Today I went back to the café where I made my one Danish friend the last time I was here, an old hippie who called me out right away as jøde because he himself is, too, and there he was, waiting to hug me good and tell me to come back on Friday, by which time he’ll be through with the ministry of food health or whatever they call it here and ready to ping-pong — his verb—with me about what I might do from now onward. The Danish aren’t particularly open-minded to what is known as networking, he says, for they miss the point that to let someone new into a circle is to one’s own benefit, too. The Germans, he says, will be different.

Now it is six minutes ’til ten at night and I am only just beginning to need a reading lamp to write by, which really could be called a writing lamp if not for the crushing creative imperative. 

Northern Europe in May, as advertised.

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Friends with Danish subtitles

The apartment where I will be cat-sitting for the next few days is fabulous, too fabulous, such that now that the owner has left me and it for Paris, instead of exiting into greater Denmark I am hanging out, eating whatever meal-like arrangements I can make from the contents of her larder and being soothed by the Scandinavian design and unimpeachable blondness in every one of the portraits and watching “Friends” with Danish subtitles, trying to pick up a pronoun or two.

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what treachery is that

I said,

I am at the moment having some trouble getting out of Ingaʼs apartment

She said,

As in you are locked in?

I said,

As in it’s a little too beautiful out

There are a few too many possibilities

I’ve been hungry for two days, and there is so much food here, and she told me to eat everything

And now I am full but I’m afraid to leave the food

She said,

Do the thing you are most afraid of right?

Especially if what it is is leaving the house

I said,

Maybe it’s that there are barriers

Like changing my clothes

I keep dozing off because what bodily time is it?

Also now I am reminded of what treachery weʼre dealing with here.

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