Meme - seven random things.
roane was kind enough to give me seven things to ramble about. Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
I will spare my f-list lengthy rambling and hide the whole thing.
Criminal Minds: Well. What can I say, really? It hadn't really been on my radar because it hadn't been on any of the (by choice very few) TV-stations I get, but as an advertising-stunt last fall, one of the big TV-providers opened up free access for a couple of weeks. And one of the stations was airing Criminal Minds. And since one of my LJ friends had been ranting, and since I was avoiding actually writing a paper that was due, I thought; well, heck, let's see what all the fuss is about.
The first couple of episodes were... a little boring. I didn't see why it was such a big deal. Then I watched 3.14 (you know the one, where Hotch is badass and hot and takes off his tie to fight Hardwick, and where Reid is smart and saves the day, and where we finally find out what Rossi's damage is), and I thought; Whoo, boy. I need to watch more of this show!
So I... acquired season 1 and was, again, slightly bored (and puzzled by who this 'Gideon'-character was), and then I got to 1.06; LDSK, and Hotch was hotter than a lit stove, and the show was clever and funny and the characters began to gel, and I was well and truly hooked. 3 weeks and mainlining the entire 6+ seasons later, I started writing fanfic.
I love Criminal Minds because it's a clever, clever show, but mostly because the heroes of the show are damaged goods, and still manage to live their lives and make a difference, and right when I hit on that, that was a message I was beginning to realize for myself, and the whole thing just... came together.
Where you're from: Denmark. Well, that's not really enough. For a small country, we have a big difference in attitudes and culture and it really does make a difference whether you're from the west, east, north or south. I'm from a little island to the west, and I spent the first 16 years of my life speaking in a dialect so thick that our teachers in school all but begged us to talk the Queen's Danish. It's a place where the history is rich, and my dad, being something of a hobby-archaologist, got me hooked on the stone-age early. When you grow up holding stone axes that are five or eight thousand years old, you tend to get a certain appreciation for age.
Anyway. It's a beautiful place. Famed far and wide for compacting almost all the nature that can be found in Denmark into a small, 400 km2 package. Wild and rugged and shaped by the ice-age in the north. Soft and gentle with rich, rolling fields to the south. Windswept (I grew up knowing that trees always lean to the east because of the wind) to the west, and with a forest that's really only about 150 years old (because prior to that, there was a longish period of no trees on the island at all due to deforestation), but still seems to be dark and deep and mysterious.
The sky seems bigger out there, in a way that I've yet to figure out a logical explanation for, but it's a grand sight and makes me breathe easier than anywhere else.
Pick one OTP: Now, that's just cruel. *pouts*
Well. I suppose the one I have to chose is going to be Buffy/Giles. Just because it was my first, caught me by surprise, but still has the power to make me smile whenever I stumble on fic.
Also, I have a serious weak spot for seemingly unequal pairings that none-the-less has a sort of a fated component. Witness my abiding love for, say, The Sentinel... :-)
Writing: That thing that I do because I can't not do it. Way back, in the early days of the Internet, I got an email from a guy I didn't know, inviting me to join his writer's group online. The Mighty Quill was amazing, and really gave me an understanding of self as a 'writer', differentiated from someone who 'just write'.
Two years ago, when I was struggling my way back to work after a terrible bout of stress, I sat down to figure out what I wanted out of life, and found that I want to write. And that I wanted to know if I could write well. So I made the decision to take leave and attended a folk high school for 5 months on a writer's course. Now, of course I had expected it (being an international folk high school and all) to be more open-minded to people writing in English, but... yeah. No. Luckily the writers on my line were all pretty deft at reading English (definitely better than the teachers), so I got out of it with very little useful, but with a lot of praise for my writing.
I still haven't gotten around to writing an actual book (which is my end-goal of all this; try it and see if it'll fly), but I'll get there. Eventually. :-)
Music: Pre-stress, music was a big part of my life. I loved listening to music; loved playing; loved singing. Post-stress, I live mostly in silence. Not that I can't listen to music, or play, or sing - it just needs to be the only thing I do, when I do. Which is why my aunt's tendency to have her radio on at all times can drive me absolutely bonkers. I just can't not focus on it. That part of me is gone for good.
Also... I miss my piano. I attended piano-lessons for 10 years. Can't say I ever got really good; but I got good enough for myself. But I miss my piano right now, like crazy. I miss sitting down and just doing that for an hour. It's the easiest way for me to achieve flow, to lose myself in the creation of music through my hands and fingers moving over the keys.
Colors: The entire, freaking rainbow. I love colors. For years I wore darks. Dark brown, dark grey, dark blue. Black was a favorite. And then, one day, I realized that all the darks were about me trying to hide myself. It was about me having learned in childhood that being noticed was bad, and folding into the fabric of 'everyone else' was the only acceptable way of being (incidentally, one of the downsides of growing up in a small, old-fashioned community where the biggest, baddest thing that ever happened was someone stepping out of place).
But the truth is that I'm more than just the plodding Taurus my birth assigned me. And I'm never going to be good enough a camouflaging myself to pass for normal in the eyes of the world. So I reached the conclusion that I might as well start the lengthy process of letting out my inner fire dragon the Chinese astrology bestowed on me, and which I discovered by reading a poem and thinking: "that's so me!" - and only later discovering that, yes, that was in fact me. And part of that is to wear colors, and let colors into my life and out in my paintings.
Lemme exemplify. I'm looking for a new car. There are very few things I care about color-wise, but it can't be black, grey, white or red. Period. Maybe the greys are practical. Maybe red is still the second-most favorite color of cars here. But, god damnit, I want a green car. Or a blue one. Or, hell, give me a purple car. I don't want the same as all the rest, thank you very much.
Favorite memory: Sitting in the plum-tree, eating peas, freshly picked from my mom's garden. Shade, fresh peas and a tree to climb. Life just doesn't get any better than that. :-D
This entry was originally posted at http://dhae-knight-1.dreamwidth.org/100697.html.