Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: Copenhagen

  • jousting

    Guy sauntering through the pretty part of town with a flashing, winking keychain, silver and the size of a beer coaster, jouncing at his groin. Its flashing and winking caught my eye, and then he caught my eye, with a smug, knowing look which spurred the mean hope that he may never get close to any woman again.

    Girl wheeling her bike alongside the lake, its rear wheel throwing up pinkish white blossom in tissuey arcs. I walked behind her like a bridesmaid, the bottoms of the green Spring trees stroking soft as mothers across the crown of my head.

    H2O HoL bought myself a present

  • coffee breathe

    coffee breathe

    I was in a strange city recently, got lost, felt overwhelmed momentarily, & needed comfort. Ducked inside a Guitar Shop to touch all the guitars. You pluck one string and wait for it slowly to come into stillness. At the back a man in a fisherman’s cap was playing a song of his own, I think, for the politely-smiling Guitar Shop man… they sat on matching, facing stools and one leaned in and one leaned back. Leaving the shop I felt just that bit more tuned in to sounds and to music, the traffic seemed rhythmic and spare, I kept hearing in the street the repeated curve-notes of a wolf whistle from somewhere high, or far away. Five times, six times, seven times, eight: was it a nerdy, somewhat serious guy who having gotten up the courage to catcall was now determined the object of his passing affection would not walk by without learning how beautiful he found her? Actually it was two college girls, leaning out of a fifth-storey window wolf-whistling their friend who was unlocking her bike oblivious in a stand of bikes downstairs, her hair wrapping itself around her in the wind. Wit-wheel! Wit-wheel! is how my ex used to spell it (and say it): Wit-wheel!

    I went into a crowded little food boutique that had a whole wall of small-brew beers. They had beautiful, grotesque, weird, colourful labels. They were honey-coloured, molasses-coloured, golden, greenish, dark. I bought a chocolate wrapped in sardine-printed foil for a friend who is overcoming a phobia of fish. I went to the back of the store and picked up the brown-paper packages of whole coffee beans and held them to my face and breathed in.

    H2O HoL an ambitious door

  • op shop ‘n’ glory

    op shop ‘n’ glory

    Sauntered past the op shop where I bought some stuff yesterday, in the sun this afternoon, whilst wearing most of it. A lovely lady with white winged arms and white winged cheeks (a Twenties bob) was sitting out the front, resting and sunning herself. She showed me by gestures and impenetrable dialect, O! You look good in that… thing.

    That Thing is a cute pair of dark denim dungarees I found in the half-price pile, when it finally got too hot for the winter layers I brought from Melbourne in November. In English I told her, Thank you! Actually I bought these from you guys yesterday!

    Ok! she said, fanning herself. And this, I told her, tugging at my skintight navy and white striped top underneath. Cool huh?

    Ok! she nodded, plucked at the fabric, smiled. Is pretty! Very good!

    See I’ve been travelling – from Australia – for so long now…. I only have winter clothes. I showed her my feet. See my winter boots? See? My winter socks?

    Ah! she said, ok! I see! Is very good!

    I love the church ladies. In Brisbane I lived round the corner from an oppie which was run by the Uniting Church and had a genius for fastening on the unlikeliest stuff to price very high (suitcase in the window like a large sucked caramel, its sign saying “$20. No less. VINYL.”) It was staffed by a wonderful variety of ladies and I wished every one of them could be my grandmother.

    H2O HoL holyfoot mother of god

  • hipsterest, like Everest

    hipsterest, like Everest

    Call off the search! I think I may have found the world’s heppest hipster. All those people complaining that they’re not one can relax: this guy blows you out of the water. He is tiny and slight – built like Prince – and perched on his front steps in a crowded cafe street, wearing skinny black jeans, elfin boots, and a cunningly off-the-shoulder stripey sailor’s jumper. He caught my eye because his elbow was pointed above his head at a most uncomfortable angle – like an alerted bunny’s ear – as he gave himself a beard trim, slowly, searchingly, luxuriously, into a bevelled mirror on his lap, using a large pair of silver antique dressmaker’s shears.

    H2O HoL backlit kreuzberg

  • the bowled soul

    the bowled soul

    Today I had to face some things inevitable but leaving pain. They are not my fault nor anyone’s and there’s nothing I can do about them. But it’s ok. You know how you grapple til you get to grips.

    While I was grappling I walked the streets. As I walked I passed a very well-dressed woman talking with an equally well-dressed man. They were speaking in English. As I passed, she said: “and sometimes I feel like I could just lie down? and cry? You know?”

    The clipped question marks at the ends of her sentences showed me a desperate soul. How courageous to tell it all to this man who had on a leather jacket and who when she said these words put both of his hands behind his back. I wove round some parked bicycles and came up beside her. “Excuse me. Did I just overhear you say, sometimes you want to lie down – and cry?”

    Her eyes were blue and spiky with mascara. To her infinite credit their pupils did not shrink at this accosting by a stranger. “Yes,” she said.

    I put my hand on her arm. I have no shame. “I feel that way too… sometimes. May I just say – as a stranger – please – just do it.

    “Find someone who can hold you, and really hear you -” (we both inadvertently glanced at the well-dressed man, hovering nearby with a studiously disengaged expression on his face) “- or maybe a counsellor, and just do it. Don’t try to be brave.”

    She was wonderful. I just loved her. Her face crumpled into compassion – for me. Women are incredible. “Oh,” she said, “that is so kind of you.” She put her hand on my arm too, as though we were dancing. “Oh thank you.”

    As I walked on I felt the tears on my own heart lift and leave. How can this world be bad, that has such beautiful persons on it?

    H2O HoL lisbon laundry door

  • you are fire

    you are fire

    Walking home past an outdoor restaurant in town that provides rugs for its hardier patrons. Everyone else was huddled indoors, it’s barely ten degrees and the wind is icy. A woman wearing a piled confection of blonded whipped hair drew on her cigarette as I passed and said, drawlingly, “…but it’s ok. I paid him in shag rate.” She saw me listening and fixed me with her eye and blew out a long, expressionless stream of blue smoke. Dragon lady! You are fire. I adore you.

    H2O HoL we found here a blanket

  • just entwined

    just entwined

    Found this unbelievable stationery store. It is vast and old-fashioned, everything neatly arranged. They had blocks of yellow writing paper, stacked in rows, some with no margin, some with a narrow margin, some with an extra-wide margin for some specialized purpose. They had gleaming jars of bulldog clips, silver ones, brass ones: pretty. They had all different kinds of string: hemp twine, sturdy and wrapped in a round ball the size of a baby’s head; and mean-looking black-and-white flecks, thin and strong; and a dreamy colourful cotton twine which came on a long tall spool and which I held in my hand for five minutes, warming it. Like an egg. They had a whole shelf of little cardboard boxes, the kind pastels and charcoal come in, held together on the corners by neatly folded staples. They had Moleskines designed by people who use Moleskines: the covers printed with one guy’s harbourside sketch of Hong Kong in pen and ink, another woman’s purling abstract with falling petals. They had slabs of plywood for balancing your painting on your easel and aisles thinly populated with drifters, holding up articles and musing on them, some of them wearing a kind of half-smile or fierce frown of concentration that seemed to me to indicate they were dreaming up what they would make with all these products.

    This was in Copenhagen, which I visited at the age of 10 and again two months ago, and where if it didn’t cost twenty Kroner every second just to breathe, I would move tomorrow, and learn to play better piano and be a better jazz composer. In the teetering, cobbled old town I found five jazz clubs within a square kilometre; most of them filled to the gills; and the audiences ranged from age 20 to 70. What a lovely town. Cold and windy. But beautiful. And peaceful in the water.

    h20 HoL cobbles puddle copper

  • antaquarium

    When I went to Copenhagen on my own it was cold and windy and there were times I felt very lost and alone. When I felt lost and alone I would take refuge in one of two places: the library, which has free wifi and a cafe and people clustered around low tables on Eames chairs, earnestly chatting; or this antiquarian bookshop I found, labyrinthine and lined to the ceiling in leather books, which has been made over into a student caff. There are little tables tucked under the shelves and in corners. They make a very rich hot chocolate and they serve cheap food. I loved to sit in there out of the wind and just gaze and gaze, letting people’s conversations filter through me, feeling how the venerable books stand shoulder to shoulder, a phalanx of minds, and how their massed presence like the presence of noble clouds grounded and rooted me with a kind of magic spell. I grew sleepy and the world seemed much kinder. My ears blurred. I sat for hours as though underwater.

     

  • a-biscuit, a-basket

    a-biscuit, a-basket

    O, the sweetest! Boy pedalling through the old part of town with his girlfriend in a wheeled box fixed to the front of the bike. It’s intended for children. He is wearing jeans and a stripey shirt and a little pork pie hat. Her blonde hair spills over the back of the box, she is tucked up in a blanket and eating a biscuit. At the traffic lights he slides forward off his seat and onto the ground, bends to give her a kiss in the small of her neck.

    H2O HoL golden window aslant

  • braincloud

    braincloud

    An acquaintance of mine was teasing after he inadvertently tapped into the ideas fountain and could not make it stop. We had brunch and he mentioned some frustrations he has been having with his business. I threw out about a dozen ideas to start with and then four dozen more whilst spooning up yoghurt and fruit. You know how one idea leads to the other. We finished our drinks and went out into the street where I turned to face him, still talking. “OR… you could try this, and that… Have you thought about trying it this other way?” ‘Well, mmm….’ “Another way to look at it would be…”

    Finally he put his hands on my shoulders to make it stop. “You know, it seems to be very brainstormy around here today. Must be a lot of brainclouds about. Now I am going to walk off in that direction and in a few minutes, I’ll be back.”

    So he went off to unlock his bicycle and left me there, standing with my mouth open in the pouring brain, in that chilly kind of sunshine with the icy wind that qualifies as Northern European spring; getting wet.

    H2O HoL glowing trash video bar west end