We are living in striking times here in France. The pun is intended, because the last couple of weeks have been featured by what the French call manifestations sociales – I call them strikes, although I ought to distinguish between the two. Strikes are types of manifestations sociales, and as I understand, of the heavier category, which would ground the entire country. We are not there yet, thank God for that, but the milder forms of manifestations sociales, as we experience them, are irritating enough. Trains cancelled, others delayed – and now, that has expanded to the civil aviation sector.

It is then, that it gets really annoying, because where you can take the next train, it is not always so with flights – certainly not for the long hauls. Thursday morning I waited 2 hours for the stewards to arrive, but they flew, and I could still participate in the day’s most important meeting scheduled for the afternoon. For the return all alternatives to Air France were overbooked – so I could just hope that they would show up and fly me back to Paris. That they did, and the impact of the stewards’ dissatisfaction was kept within the limits of irritation.

But it is a totally different ball game when it comes to cancellation of trans-Atlantic flights at the end of which there is a busy schedule. Here the delay of a day becomes a show-stopper.

Air France cancelled Friday’s flight to Houston.

We just see that they cancelled Saturday’s as well.

We have tickets for Sunday’s flight.

So, how to go about this situation? Heap up irritation to the level of stress and anger? In the younger years, yes, that would surely be the case. Now we deal with it differently. Well, we try.

We realise that our irritation cannot change the present situation. The irritation and uncertainty experienced with Air France now can make us select other airlines in the future, but in the present situation our personal feelings cannot change the situation by one inch.

So, how do go about it? We insert a switch on the track ahead of us and construct an alternative to the originally planned one. The straight track will take us to Houston, the alternative will take us to Brittany.

How would such a switch impact our artistic lives? Houston will allow us to stay in touch with the world of textile art, refresh the personal networks, and take in what the world around us produce.

Brittany will seduce our senses and probably lay foundations for new works – this is what usually happens out there. And then the food…

Who would have believed, that the stewards of Air France would influence our artistic evolution?

Tuesday this week I had a morning rendezvous with the other woman. You, who follow this blog will immediately know that I’m referring to my dentist…

Now, when I lie there, the distance between me and my dentist is very brief – if not zero sometimes. This is normal and I did not pay attention to the notion of distance. But when I a little later had chewn deeply into this lump of modelling stuff for my next crown I noted that the dentist pushed back her chair a little and sat there waiting for the stuff to solidify.

We are talking minutes, perhaps five, not more. It was when lying there, unable to speak with the dentist who sat patiently – and silently – on her motorbike-seat, hands folded in the lap, that I noted the distance. In reality it was perhaps not more that 50 centimetres, but with the silence in the clinic room it felt like a far bigger distance between us – far bigger than the distance between the two huge Rothko reproductions hung on opposite walls of the clinic.

If she began to hum quietly, I wondered, would the distance between us appear shorter – or if she started to talk, perhaps?

Not that I in particular wanted her to talk. Humming would have been ok, maybe even relaxing, but talking would have been awkward – you know such one-way conversation. I appreciated her cool professionalism.

The five minutes felt like a much longer time than it in reality was, but exactly this feeling provoked, I believe, the amplified feeling of distance between us.

A piece Inge has created – she calls it “Relative Distance” – plays in its composition with the notion of perceived closeness and distance. This piece came to mind while laying there in the clinic and I wondered if its composition will make the viewers feel the same sort of quietness and urge to reflect on the concept of distance.

She would – were this the case, I thought – have produced a piece of artwork which brings forward in its beholders the same kind of reflections I experienced being part of the scenario in the dentist’s clinic.

That would not be bad at all.

It was now time for the dentist to continue her work…

Living in the countryside and working in the city inevitably means commuting and in my case it means going by train to Paris, taking the Metro line no. 4 and subsequently line no. 10. Had it not been for line no. 4 it would have been relatively comfortable and not worth spending words on. But, for this reflection I need tell you that my problem with line no. 4 is that it scores heavy on some of the things I dislike: crowded places, sultry air. These things fill me with discomfort.

So what do I do about it?

I obviously cannot change the old fashioned infrastructure of the Metro, and I cannot ask everyone else to stay home or not travel at the same time as I do. But I have to go to work. So what I do is to distance myself from it all, to abstract myself from the claustrophobia-challenging feeling of being a sardine in a tin, from the unpleasant bodily closeness not deliberately sought, from heavy air and the mix of body odours and fragrances.

If there is no room for holding a book in front of my eyes, I resort to reveries on various topics, e.g. the next input for the blog. Otherwise I read. And that was I was doing last Thursday on the way home.

For once the wagon was not jam packed and I quietly continued reading the section on Contemplation in John Armstrong’s book The Intimate Philosophy of Art. The situation changed when we stopped at Les Halles. Two stout ladies entered the wagon without discontinuing their conversation and occupied each a tip-up seat on either side of me. The fact that I stood between them seamed not to hinder their conversation. The ladies just tilted their heads a little if they needed eye contact.

That became a little more difficult at the next station, where a group of four entered leaving only narrow slits between legs for eye contact. To my surprise this did not at all impede the conversation between the ladies. They continued happily.

At Reamur Sebastopol, the next station on the way to Gare du Nord, an entire class of Italian high school students – probably doing their cultural trip to Paris – entered and occupied the remaining space. The sardine tin effect now approached 100%. But did that hinder the two ladies in conversing?

No, not at all. They continued unimpeded their heartily exchange of views, laughing a lot and even gesticulating! They acted as if I were transparent!

I soon started to feel transparent myself. I felt that the lower half of me became invisible. I was partly like the Invisible Man from the boyhood’s movies.

Suddenly my ability to abstract from the situation crumbled, and the feeling of discomfort due to the press in the wagon, the lack of fresh air and all that overwhelmed me. It appeared to me that I did not have enough big city genes in me – or that growing up in a Danish provincial town did not precondition me for this.

There was just space enough to allow me to open John Armstrong’s book again and as an escape I tried to continue on his section on Contemplation. And what did I read in the upper half of page 101 where he discusses absorption – that of taking something inside to retain it?

This: “It depends what is already there within us: our pre-formed digestive capacity, our already existing manner of feeling and behaving”.

I understood exactly what he meant in terms of aesthetical experiences in the world of art and realized that it also brutally applies to coping with the busy life of a big city – two opposites indeed!

I felt happy that not every trip with Metro line no. 4 is like this one.

We had been out of bed very early that morning to catch the first Paris-Copenhagen flight. No breakfast, so no wonder that we needed a little energy before starting our doings in the city. We knew that on the way from the hotel to the shops we were heading for there is one of these coffee shops where they serve ecological stuff to take away or to have at a counter facing the street. So we went in there.

Sipping coffee to a cheese sandwich we followed the morning scenario in the street. Apart from passers-by who occasionally may catch the attention, nothing really happens out there. It’s a narrow and relatively quiet street. But suddenly we noticed two removal guys marching past with a big canvas. It was big – 4 x 1.6 metres – and covered by a sheet of bubble-wrap, which nonetheless without doubt revealed that it was Double Pain, a work from 1995 by of one of Denmark’s most interesting contemporary artists – in our eyes, at least – Michael Kvium.

We had become part of a surrealist scene. Sitting there – on the high chairs at the counter – sipping coffee and watching the passing by of this huge surrealist composition of two sitting men, who were naked and distinctively Kvium-ish in appearance, and having their lower legs in common.

Carrying the canvas from the next door gallery to a removal truck a little further down the street, the removal man at the back noticed our attention to the work and put on a big smile while pointing at it. We repaid with two smiles as big as his – acknowledging that this was special.

You will not see a photograph of this scene – simply because it happened so unexpectedly. Before we could think about getting a camera out of the backpack, another canvas passed through our field of view. This was not another work of Kvium, someone else. Again we saw the work in this surrealist semi-transparency through the bubble-wrap. We figured out that the gallery next door moved an entire collection from their downtown location to somewhere else – a place we did not know about.

We finished our coffee and left the shop.

Outside we noticed the removal men handling the canvas which just had passed by. They were loading it on the truck. We had the camera ready and got the shot you see above, plus a few others, which revealed that the last canvas was a work of Bjarne Melgaard. A new acquaintance in an unexpected place!

Now, did we get curious as to where these pieces were going? Were they sold or were they moved to storage?

We didn’t really start speculating on that issue? We merely reconfirmed our beliefs that one never knows what’s around the next corner – and that what counts, is to be aware and open for new impressions when they occur.