August Civic Holiday/Vacation 2018 (Lagom, Hygge, and Kalsarikännit)

As usual, as glorious as it can be, this summer in Saskatoon is passing too quickly. This one seems to be flickering past me even more rapidly than others. It may be because I have been overall happier. The inclusion of endearing forces in my life are doing me good. The absence of some other tyrannical, narcissistic forces, and whiney nagging people has allowed me to climb still further out of a hole of negativity. I’m enjoying the reprieve from that thus far. I feel strong enough to be a supportive friend again, and to be there for those who matter. 

It’s the beginning of another stretch of holidays for me, and yet I honestly haven’t been that eager to formulate some grandiose, concrete plan for a getaway for it; perhaps because it’s the first time after the longest time that I finally feel like there is nothing I really need to escape from. The most off-kilter thing I done throughout this time around was daring to play a clandestine poker game in a meat locker with a bunch of Russian gangsters*. My brain has been switched on to entertaining myself with puzzles and games again, on top of digesting some literature. It’s a personal barometer that indicates good things for me. It’s a peaceful retreat for this time, even when the annual ruckus of the Ex appears once again in the neighbourhood. My internal clock is already shifting itself now, by default, to waking up even earlier, and trying to nap a few hours during the heat of the day to compensate for the rest I won’t be getting at night. Yet, despite all that, I can retreat into my own head now more easily with a greater sense of clarity and contentment, without any great interference; and to seek such a thing from someplace else right now seems like a needless and futile squandering of energies. With temperatures rising as high as 40 degrees near week’s end, I’m even more disinclined to be too active. By then, the thought of playing games in an actual meat locker might really be appealing. Even more desirable would be an upgrade to a walk-in beer cooler.

I did give myself a few moments to wonder about and reassess my own personal reasons as to why I would travel. I did so because I was probed with such questions by my sweetheart about what I’d like to do for my upcoming birthday. The thrill of travel isn’t planting my ass on the sand of some beach, nor is it even visiting museums or festivals, though they’d be interesting enough I’m sure. Neither does much for me in exploring or understanding the vibe of the place, which I think is the whole jest of traveling to begin with. With this gaming mentality going on for me now, I realize that the thrill of travel for me is just to get a whole new perspective on other lifestyles and challenging myself to interact with them successfully. That’s like a game in and of itself. It includes the challenge of using and interacting with another language and finding avenues to do so for sake of just getting around and taking care of your basal needs of eating, lodging, and moving from spot to spot. It’s strange for me to see people who have traveled far more than I have, and yet who are totally scared shitless at the thought of daring to depart from their all-English-speaking tour group from their isolated resort. They say that they like to tour around; and at the same time are totally xenophobic. As introverted as I am I still like taking the more immersive and anthropological approach to traveling and touring by vagabonding.

This gaming/puzzling phase I’m in has made me both reflect and fantasize about the scenes I liked and would like to retreat to. I got nostalgic thinking about watching the citizens playing spirited games of dominoes in the outdoors taverns when I was doing life in Valencia many years ago. In past summers at some lake with family, when we were not cooling off in the water, or fishing, or eating, or listening to stories and gossip around a campfire at night, we were spending time playing Kaiser**, Meadow Lake Rummy**, or other card games in the campsite or cabin. I thought about how content I’d be and how cool it would be just chill out in a café nearby a souk in Istanbul playing backgammon with some locals, or perhaps learning mah-jong in a park in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I think about this because apart from the need to buy and consume, use math and logic, and listening to music; entertaining oneself with gaming is another thing that can transcend language, or at least be another avenue to learn about language and culture by this other amusing and informal vehicle.

Speaking of language and culture, that has been the subject of my non-fiction reading during this time off. It once again is a study into the Nordic/Scandinavian lifestyle, and being a nerd for linguistics. I should diversify into studying other cultural viewpoints, but once again, I can’t help but to be attracted to the subject of Scandinavia, as it always intrigues, interests, and impresses me. It is partly because despite with me not being immersed in such a culture, I yet somehow already live by, learned through my upbringing, or have adopted similar such equivalent ideas and ethics***; I just now have discovered new words for some of these memes by some strange synchronicity, which aren’t conveniently packaged into the English vocabulary for me to describe my own personal modus operandi. It’s the whole Law of Jante (Wikipedia source) thing they got going on over there - that I can deeply appreciate, which is sort of a Scandinavian societal modality that serves to curb things like vanity, greed, undo pride, pretentiousness, and a false sense of entitlement. The book I’ve been reading is called Lagom: the Swedish Art of Balanced Living, by Linnea Dunne. A guide for balanced living seems to be an appropriate thing to read while spending some holiday time alone. I touched on the subject of Lagom in a past entry, but I didn’t do it any justice in trying to elaborate on it.

The best new concept words I learned from this book that I can appreciate are:

·         Köpstopp – (pronounced sort of like “short stop”, switching the “rt” with "p") It’s the discipline of applying a spending cap for a given amount of time: a voluntary moratorium on shopping for anything beyond essentials for living. I experimented with this at the beginning of the year, I just didn’t have this concise name for this behaviour. A way to tame mindless consumption.

·         Panta – a recycling fee for your cans and bottles. The Swedish form of what would be the equivalent of a Sarcan refund here. A monetary incentive is always a good thing to encourage a cleaner environment.

·         Plastbanta – The banning of toxin plastic products in your household, and opting for wood/bamboo, stainless steel. I was already shifting towards this trend; again, I just didn’t have a concise name for it before.

·         Lördagsgodis- Not everything falls under the self-regulatory restrictiveness of the Laws of Jante, or the discipline of Lagom in Sweden. There are memes for unfettered indulgence, like this one meaning “Saturday goodies/candies” basically meaning going whole hog on sweets and snacks, but just for once a week. It coincides and accords with my cheat days whenever I have the hair-brain schemes of dieting, and whenever I entreat myself to something weird and exotic to experiment with in my kitchen, as the rhythm for that typically falls on Saturday.

·         Fredagsmys – Another once a week institution. This time meaning roughly “Friday coziness”, relaxing and retreating in your own home with nothing but your snacks at the ready and other creature comforts, and no other obligations to do anything else but veg out. Being that they neighbour as countries, I imagine there may be some correlation with the Finnish meme of kalsarikännit at this time of the week (read on further).   

·         Pyttipanna- A general cooking method of creatively making the most out of the leftovers in your fridge and pantry. Something I do all the time as a personal principle, because being wasteful disgusts me.

·         Loppis – A word meaning to tour flea markets, yard sales, and other places for gently used goods. Loppisrunda means making an entire day’s event of it. Another movement towards frugality, and waste-reduction, repurposing, and giving second hand items a new home and life.

The other Nordic memes I’d like to look into more, study, and explore are the concepts of hygge (Danish) – something akin to “coziness” but I’m led to believe and understand that it is something more divine and intricate than that, and the Finnish institution of kalsarikännit – I apologize that the translation is not too succinct: it roughly means “underwear drunk” but it actually essentially means succumbing to the urge to get intoxicated at home alone in your underwear after a bad day, with no intention of going out and socializing. That’s perhaps the perfect one to test out on a smoky, smouldering, 40 degree August afternoon, like what’s coming ahead.

*- Not for reals; in the Xbox game Prominence Poker. It’s the fact that I’m playing video games to begin with, instead of immersing myself in some other strange little project: that’s what is off-kilter for me, but it beats frying in the merciless heat for now.

** - Two very regional games unique to the area where I was raised here in Saskatchewan. 

*** - Perhaps it’s all mysteriously inherited and instinctual, seeing now that 25% of genome is Scandinavian after a DNA test. Nature versus nurture arguments will be for some other time.