Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 11 Number 1, April 2010
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BLUE
I'm writing with a blue pencil because I've become a royalist
(a Danish royalist). It came upon me in just 6 days. I arrived on Saturday
and this very afternoon - while viewing an exhibition at Frederiksborg Castle
about queen Margrethe II who turns 70 tomorrow - I became a royalist.
Tuesday and Wednesday evening Danish TV was dedicated to the queen
and I watched with fascination - surprising myself
(after all I haven't lived here in almost 35 years)
I even discovered a clichéd lump in my throat.
My father is tired of the queen. He makes fun of her verbal mannerisms
imitating them - quite well, if truth be told.
"It's time for her to step down," he says, "retire already."
He's not a republican. He wants her son Frederik to become king.
There's a great painting of Frederik's wife, Mary, in the exhibition
where my royalism was clinched. It shows the crown princess
putting on the first glove of a pair that symbolizes (it said) the obligations
she's taken on as Denmark's future queen.
Though she's standing in the garden room at Fredensborg Castle
(the royal summer residence) the mirrors behind her reflect buildings
from her home town of Hobarth in Tasmania. She's a Dane (now) representing
a much hipper generation and I'm a prairie boy (now) headed for retirement,
images of a Danish queen
reflected in non-existing mirrors behind me.