Part 2
Danish.
I can’t really say what attiréd me to Dansk. Was it the movie, the Prince and Me, with the fabulous Julia Stiles? One could say that. If you look at life as purely materialistic, and nothing more. But to be quite frank, that movie didn’t make that big of an impression on me, other than the fact that it was my only real exposure to Denmark growing up. I didn’t know any Danes. In Kentucky, where I was raised, there’s not a sizeable scandinavian community. There really is nothing tangibly physical that I could say caused me to become so enamoured with Denmark, Danish, and the nordic region at large. I can’t even quite conceptualize when it began, either. I just recall thinking about all the languages I wanted to learn, and somehow Danish became a priority.
The spiritual side of me suspects I had a great past life there. Have you ever had a country (or person) you’ve met, and just kind of love or hated for no particular reason? Well, you probably have past life energy there, so the theory goes. So that must be it. Or maybe it’s just all of the aquarius in my natal chart. Scandinavia seems so aquarius. Technologically advanced, intelligent, prosperous. They weren’t always that way, but the region’s history is so rich and fascinating. I feel like I could live in Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Faroe Islands, for a thousand lifetimes. It’s a pity I don’t have any connection to them, yet.
On the subject of synchronicity, where things just kinda unexpectedly happen but all make sense. Like the fact that my friend’s dad brought up alchemy randomly (I rarely hear about alchemy) then a couple hours later someone else randomly brings it up. Two in one day. It’s kinda like that.
Well, I could go two paths here. Stay on synchronicity, or go back to middle school when my infatuation with Denmark arose. My routine, while living with grandma, was to wake up in the morning, go to the living room. She would make us cinnamon toast, and I would watch TV. When I was younger, I’d then go out and play with neighborhood friends. But this was middle school, and we had drifted apart. I habitually would just browse the computer, while I comfortably sat in the living room, feeling cozy and warm in juxtaposition to the cold, gloomy, winter weather outside. Reading about Danish culture, and specifically the alcoholism, made me feel so warm and /excited/. Just reading aout Denmark and how people would get hammered and throw up on the city streets, riding their bikes. Gee. I was like, this is amazing! I wanna live there. Maybe that’s where my alcoholism started?
Well I suppose maybe that was just it. I just saw a movie about a Danish prince, then stumbled upon random internet information and the rest is history. Well, not quite. After I had a deeply profound conversion to Mormonism, I ran away from home to Utah. I met a homeless man there in temple square, and I of course was heaily mormon and set on the church being true and not open to other spiritual thought, but obviously still exposed to it. Well this homeless man and I were talking, and he told me about some experience he had where he was speaking in tongues and the people he was with said that he was speaking Old Danish. Well what are the odds that I run away from home, strike up a conversation with this random homeless man, and he mentions having a spiritual experience where he spoke a language only a few million people know out of billions. Maybe it’s not that unique, maybe he was speaking gibberish, and some returned missionary with decent exposure to northern european germanic languages got the impression he was making Old Danish noises. I don’t quite recall the details, but I will entertain the skeptics.
Regardless, maybe we had a past life connection. I haven’t seen or talked to that homeless man since, but I always think about that when I think about Denmark now. And I have been able to study Danish. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I wish I had more time and more use for it. I could say rød grød med fløde for hours. I could die in Copenhagen a happy man. A happy, drunk, alcoholic man, with all of my hygge and the cosmopolitan amenities europe has to offer.
Alas, I really do have no use for the language. No one shares my passion, and I have other things to worry about. It will always pique my interest though when Denmark or scandinavia is mentioned. Maybe one day I’ll get to at least visit the country, maybe that will give me some kind of closure. I will end by reflecting on one of the happier nights of my most recent life. It was a chilly night, I was dating Craig, a man much older than I who I wasn’t particularly attracted to in the romantic sense (was I?), but he made me feel comfortable. So comfortable, and loved. He fell asleep on the couch like usual, and I stayed up watching the tele. This time I was down the rabit hole of watching youtube videos about scandinavian history. I pranced around the house while he slept, eating these oriental flavored pretzel things from costco that were quite good, and just felt so in awe and in love with life. Soaking up the atmosphere and that warm cozy feeling that comes with being under the same roof of someone you love and trust on a moonlit, frosty night. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. And now I recall a similar feeling, with my high school boyfriend Andrew. It was a similar relationship. I had little romantic and sexual interest, but like Craig, Andrew was quite pushy and kind of coerced me into the relationship. And I got comfortable. We had spent the evening walking down Frankfort avenue, eating sushi at my favorite restaurant, Osaka, then stopped in a mom and pop catholic bookstore. They impressed me with their language selection, which is always the first section I go to in any library or bookstore. There was a book on Dutch and Finnish that I was torn between, but I ended up getting the some decades old Teach Yourself Finnish book. I ended the night up in his attic bedroom in his charming old home. I popped some hydrocodones, and as he slept I taught myself Finnish while the warmth of the opiates spread throughout my body. I was happy. Genuinely.