I will have used to live here

I'm departing today from the 'film' side and emphasizing the 'feelings' side, because I'm soon departing from Copenhagen, going back to live in Boston.

Last year, when I moved into shared housing, I wrote an application for acceptance. I titled the Powerpoint presentation "The Road Ahead," in which I detailed how the travel bug had brought me from Boston to Paris to Bretagne to Denmark and finally, I hoped, to Egmont Kollegium. In the application, through my enthusiasm for Danish canals and Carlsberg, I hinted at a sense of hope that Denmark would be my home, indefinitely. A year ago, my future did look that way.

the road ahead, one year ago. 

But I think, even then, something was nagging at me that I didn't want to acknowledge. Now, four days away from my transcontinental move, I'm finally able to embrace what two years of learning Danish, studying film, making great friends, and writing a thesis have pointed to.

I am American.

When I lived in France, I tried my hardest to rid my French of any trace of an American accent, lest strangers, upon meeting me, inquire, "Bush ou Obama? MacDonalds ou freedom fries?" I hated being associated with those stereotypes and instead tried to carve out my own sense of identity, away from cultural impositions. But the truth of the matter was, I came to France in the first place because of all the romantic cultural lore about France that I had soaked up as a teenager, so I was also guilty of generalizing. And at a certain point the lore no longer stuck, so I moved, but I didn't yet consider myself any more American than before.

I came back to Boston briefly, then went on to Copenhagen. I didn't give Boston a chance that year because I was dead set on coming back to Europe, thinking that maybe in Scandinavia I'd feel a true sense of home-away-from-home.  And I have, for these two years, mostly because I was studying something I love and made incredibly deep, lasting friendships (with Danes but mostly with other foreigners who have showed me that where you come from is just part of the equation, but a part nonetheless).

But this sense of home is fleeting, falling away, and when I projected myself into the future, I couldn't see myself marrying, having kids, or growing old here. I've dated only casually here; perhaps my wavering commitment to this country is why. I learned Danish with the prospect of finding a job after graduation and staying, but I found myself not trying very hard to look for those jobs, thinking that it was starting to get exhausting to have to get by all the time in a language and culture that makes me feel always slightly uncomfortable.

Because I am American. And finally, I know that this isn't a bad thing. It's what I make of it. Jason Farago articulates it well on the eve of his thirtieth birthday: "America isn’t like other countries; you can’t escape it, you don’t ever get to start again. Wherever you go America will find you." So why not mold it to your own standards instead of making sweeping judgments of it. It's like I've been ignoring my cultural identity not in name but in spirit--people here in Denmark have told me that I'm the least American American they know. I no longer treat that as a compliment, but rather something to puzzle over.

I've been reading a lot about sustainability (partly because climate change terrifies me, and partly because I want to get involved in the fight against it). And I've come to associate it with this conclusion: Kate in Denmark is not sustainable. If I were to stay, I would be burning up all my resources in trying to create the circumstances needed to be happy, whereas a more (emotionally) sustainable life in Boston does not impede the potential path to that happiness that may result in wasting fewer resources. Which in turn will hopefully help me focus on the stuff that matters: family, love, meaningful work. For example, if I am to invest in writing, trying to write convincingly in Danish is a frustrating impediment.

So I'm excited. To be able to watch Homeland on TV, not streamed on my laptop. To hug my parents and my puppy and not have to think about leaving them again. To exclaim over the variety of yogurt products in the grocery store. To engage with film and media in my own language and culture.

Of course readjusting to being an American in America will have some difficult moments, especially when I know I'll miss my friends immensely. I also know I'll try (to my chagrin) to transplant my European habits--biking, drinking in parks, and taking up less space--onto my life in Boston. But for once, I look forward to this challenge. Instead of bolting and running, I'm going to put my long-standing restlessness to work by living an intentional life, not a transitory one.

Because I am American, and so for Copenhagen, I can presently say, with both sorrow and joy: I will have used to live here.

L'auberge espagnole over the years

Some people have comfort food. I have comfort movies.

Last night was such a comfort night; a long, work-filled weekend called for indulgence with slik (Danish for candy) and the movie that made me fall in love with Europe: Cédric Klapisch's L'auberge espagnole (2002). I estimate this was probably around the 50th time I've seen this French film, and it never disappoints, because it evolves with me over the years.

the multilingual, multinational cast of L'auberge espagnole 

Let me give you a history of my decade-long relationship with this film, in the hope that if you have felt your identity expanding thanks to travel, you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Age 15: Mme Follett shows us the film in French class to teach us about cultural exchange and Erasmus. I fall instantly in love with the idea of living in Europe, sharing an apartment with young people and speaking a hodgepodge of European languages.

Age 16: I buy the DVD and work on saying the lines error free. My sister, best friend and I are proud of the fact that we recognize the subjunctive tense when Martine says "je suis triste que tu partes" and that we now know colloquial expressions like "elle a un mec" and "c'est un vrai bordel."

Age 18: I show the film to dozens of my college friends. I expect their unabashed enthusiasm for it, but it's met with lukewarm enjoyment instead. My friends seem not to have the crazy obsession with Europe which I do. Although I'd always known I would, I finally declare a major in French at the end of my sophomore year.

Age 20: I watch the film on the eve of my departure for Paris. I've turned the goal of living in Europe into a temporary reality by going on junior-year exchange. My heart patters and my stomach drops when the opening line of the film strikes a new meaning: "Tout a commencé là, quand l'avion a décollé." (That's when it all started, when the plane took off.")

Age 21: I come back from France after my year abroad dead-set on returning. Like Romain Duris's Xavier, I have trouble explaining my experiences, how I've changed, and what I learned, to my family and friends back home. My life in America now seems like the entr'acte to a fabulous play in Europe.

Age 22: After my senior year of college I barter my way back to France with a position as an English teaching assistant in Bretagne. As I traverse the streets of Brest looking for a place to live, I remember how Xavier says that when you first arrive in a city, everything is unknown and virgin territory for you. After having walked these streets 10, 20, 1000 times, you see yourself as you once were, newly arrived but now forever changed. I see an ad for a shared apartment which turns out to be the exact incarnation of l'auberge espagnole. Like Xavier, "j'aurais donné n'importe quoi pour qu'ils m'acceptent." Luckily, they accept me and I have the most incredible year of my life.

Age 23: Back in Boston after a year of teaching and an expired visa, I itch to get back to the camaraderie and international life I had in France. I therefore apply for graduate school in a bunch of European cities, hoping to combine the two things I love: film and Europe.

Age 25: On my birthday, after nine months in Copenhagen, things come perfectly full circle. While my sister and same best friend visit, we go to a street festival and spot Christian Pagh, the Danish actor in L'auberge espagnole. I tell him that the film is the reason I'm here, and everything feels right.

Yesterday: I'm about to hand in my master's thesis in film studies, and I can feel the whole world opening up in front of me. I'm no longer the idealistic teen I once was, but I also feel like "I'm French, Spanish, English, and Danish. I'm not one, but many. I'm like Europe. I'm all of that."

My personal B(r)est version of L'auberge espagnole

Girls Against Boys?

Uh oh.

So I've been reading a lot lately about how millenials are in a "post-dating" world. There's Hanna Rosin's polemic book The End of Men. There are the women at The Gaggle who encourage opening up your eyes to the men you never considered. There are the depressingly spot-on Atlantic and New York Times articles condemning hookup culture, texting, and online dating. There are the Acculturated symposium articles that ask "Can Men Be Men Again?" The (horrible horror) film above, Girls Against Boys, seems to be an extreme prediction of a result of this current battle of the sexes. So, in a departure from my usual film-focused posts (which nevertheless owes a lot to Girls) I'd like to weigh in with my take on "post dating."

Of particular importance here is the fact that I don't date a lot. This is both a conscious and subconscious decision. The simplest explanation is that living in Denmark as a non-Dane, I may be scaring off potential interests because they worry that I'll leave the country (which I did, once, after a French boyfriend broke it off for precisely this reason), so neither of us tries from the start.  But the second-simplest explanation is that it's too hard.

Sometimes I'm full of rage, like these murderous women, that post-feminism has rendered men lazy, unambitious and averse to commitment. Unfulfilling past experiences with "the casual thing" tell me I don't want that anymore, but how do we get out of the cycle when casual sex is everywhere and endorsed? So my anger brews until I (wrongly) peg all men in sight as commitment-phobes without getting to know them.

Sometimes I think it's us girls' fault for putting up with casual sex. Some argue that casual sex empowers women; I think that in a society with more highly educated women than men, we're really just scared that if we stick up for our right to monogamy, we'll scare the boys away because they can chase easier tail. Plus, casual sex is awful and awkward. The insidiousness of hookup options leaves the mature women partnerless.

Sometimes I'm complacent, more interested in my comfy bed with its comforter that hugs me just right, and that doesn't snore. Reading a book on a Saturday night often feels much more fulfilling than braving the sticky floors of bars, only to have unwelcome men barge their way into my (great) conversations with my friends.

Sometimes I simply have no idea where to meet men. In my daily life I'm surrounded by students (I can feel my mom repeating, "they're too young, Kate!") and, worse, startup entrepreneurs. And with a job, a master's program, intensive Danish courses, and an active social life, all my time for new activities is taken up.

Sometimes I pity the men who've missed out on the encouragement and support that my fellow female generation has reaped. Masculinity is confusing these days; how are boys supposed to learn how to be men if Bruce Willis's guns and hipster jeans are the only guiding symbols?

But most of all, I don't date because I am an emerging adult. I have a lot of things to work on, for myself. I genuinely feel as though I do not really know who I am yet. I would argue that most of my peers agree. We're in the midst of deciding careers, lifestyles, worldviews, and finances for ourselves, and this is more than a full-time job. Therefore, none of us can possibly know what we want in a relationship, and what we have to offer the other person.

So I guess I wish that the media would quit ringing the alarm bells about millenial dating, because it's making a pressure-filled situation even more stressful. Could we instead focus on the fact that emerging adults need help and guidance too, much like teenagers and new parents? At this age, I'd much rather be asked the question "how would you describe yourself" than, for example, "what do you do for a living?" The latter implies a fixed identity, while the former hints at the truth - that we have the capacity to decide who we are and who we become. And that we are ever-changing.

Loneliness and Life of Pi

It's no joke that my favorite pastime is movie watching. It's my go-to for any stretch of free time, and on weekend mornings you can often find me relaxed (or slumped) in front of the screen.

Movies are my adventures. I connect with fictional strangers every day, engulfed in their stories which are so vivid to me that characters feel almost like friends in my heart. Through films I adventure to the tips of the world, where my senses and feelings are heightened.

I am somewhat of an adventurer myself. I live in Denmark, where I am a foreigner. Being a foreigner means living outside of your comfort zone. And while it's usually fantastic and exciting, sometimes it gets lonely. So movies are also what I turn to when I'm feeling alone, because they are an escape from feeling lonesome.  It's rare that in a bout of melancholy I'll choose to take a walk in Fælledparken, despite my mom's well-guided suggestions. Instead of seeking comfort in nature or the city of Copenhagen, in these instances I tend to reach into another, filmic, world. It seems easier to displace my emotions onto a story than to tackle them head on during a walk where my own thoughts, not a character's, are front and center.

But today was different, because the filmic world became my own. My grumbling stomach pulled me into the kitchen of the kollegium where I live. I thought, I'll just make some quick lunch and then, I will work on my thesis. I had already watched part of a tennis match and Blå Mænd instead of working (being a film student makes you feel like any film you watch is justified as part of your "studies," even when it's a goofy Danish comedy about a recycling plant starring my Danish crush Thure Lindhardt). But my hallmates were starting Ang Lee's Life of Pi on the projector, and ooouuff I really wanted to see it. Plus, it was one of those listless snowy Sundays where a dour mood was winning against productivity. So I watched the whole thing, and it is dazzling. I don't need to tell you that much about this story of survival, beauty, and God; just see it.

I had a different reaction than most will have to this story. I think many will walk away from the film both struck by the gorgeous CGI, and thinking about religion, fragility of life, and whether or not the whole thing is an allegory. For me, however, it was Pi's loneliness that collided with my own. His need to survive after a shipwreck is of course something my comfortable life has never had (nor do I wish it!), but in some ways I felt his lifeboat was my own.

I think we all drift, alone, in our lives at some points--feeling isolated, warding off danger, and searching for companionship in our surroundings. Allegory aside, Pi had to tame and befriend a tiger to keep him sane and alive; perhaps in moments of deep loneliness we too feel fragilely human, and that the people who surround us are another species who do not understand us.

This is sometimes how I feel in Denmark when loneliness hits (thankfully it's not often). With my family far away, I think about the life I have here and wonder if choosing to live in a foreign country was in fact an act of isolation. My goals here--to learn the language, to make earnest friendships, to have new experiences, to create and sustain a life worth living--sometimes get lost in the loneliness of having to exist forever in translation. Because it's hard to connect, really connect, with another human being (or tiger), in a foreign language and culture.  But this is not just the case for ex-pats like me in the midst of mid-twenties self-investigation who have chosen to investigate far from home. I think it's true for everyone--beyond survival, we want to be understood.

Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz, Sarah Polley's 2011 film, is not an easy film to write about. In general, but especially because it hits me so terribly close.

In the beginning of the film, Margot (Michelle Williams) watches a reenactment of an adulterer being brought to the gallows. She is asked to participate in the charade by whipping the adulterous pilgrim, which she shamefully performs. There, a man laughs at her and eggs her on. That man turns out to be her neighbor on the plane home and her new real neighbor, Daniel. She instantly likes him. This is problematic, because Margot is married to Lou. She's also, at 28, scared. When Daniel asks her why she was pushed through the airport in a wheelchair despite her ability to walk, she admits, "I'm afraid of connections. In airports. The running, the stress, the not knowing, the trying to figure it out, wondering if I'm going to make it. I don't like being in between things."

Even more than scared, Margot is restless. While the film emits a quietness that's not stifling but subtly beautiful, Margot is figuratively unable to sit still. She giggles with Lou like a child, picking at his face and biting his shoulder in a marriage that's friendly and non-sexual. She wants to write but can't seem to do it. At the same time, she's melancholy. All of this pulls her towards Daniel, who is new, persistent, and infatuated. But he notices her restlessness too upon their second meeting: "You seem restless. Not just now, but in a kind of permanent way."

I, too, have this permanent restlessness. It's so strong that a film professor recently suggested, out of the blue, that I try yoga to calm my nerves. This restlessness has helped me move to Paris, Brittany, Boston, and Copenhagen all within the last five years, never more than a year in each place. I desire the new and shiny opportunities that await overseas, in foreign languages.  Even film fuels this consumption of newness--I can throw myself into a new world even several times a day if am bored with my own. New experiences are my form of adultery; I cheat on the old ones when they become ordinary.

But as one of the women in Take This Waltz so simply says, "new things get old." What Margot and I are actually scared of is this change from new to old in our lives. As a result, we avoid having a deep intimacy with the everyday. We want to spin so fast, like she does at one point with Daniel on a fairground ride, but we end up turning in circles. I think this is partly a product of our age, where the desire for adventure has a certain immediacy. We can travel the globe at will if we have the means, or connect to it from our computers. But it's also just me. I end up speeding through life with a sense of urgency because I don't know how to actually hunker down and live it.

A Danish friend once told me that a year, now, feels like the same amount of time to him as when he was five. This gave me pause. It amazed me that he wasn't counting down the days and years until some distant future became his Life, where that projection of how he imagined things would go finally, magically came true. I could blame my '90s optimism or the economic cushion when I came of age that told the world that kids like me could have their dream job. I could accuse my tiny liberal arts college of demanding its students to be exceptional in a niche, not just laudable enough with a clear conscience. But instead of blaming, I want to fix. I want to learn to sit still, to stop climbing, to see what's there, to rely on myself for happiness.

At the moment outside my window, bundles of snow weigh on the trees in a post-snowfall stillness that muffles all sound. Tonight I'll wrap myself in the snow's weight, to hold in its quiet. Perhaps that will make it last.