"Very strange to have walked this street so many times since my arrival last week — noticing things, remembering things — but not recognizing the pub until I thought I saw Daniel sitting in its window seat. The substantial pedestal table is still there, and so are the Halloween decorations, taped to the same green walls. It's the same as I remember, and the same time of year. But such a long long time ago.

I remember our cuddling conversation about the paper jack-o-lanterns and the witches flying on brooms — typical Halloween displays from the West, infiltrating their way into Danish culture at the time. It seemed funnily to us like I was doing something similar. I had just arrived in Denmark for the first time, here to meet my new family, to become a part of Daniel's daily life. We kissed gently over the table with this thought. Then we laughed at the supposed need for an October Halloween in Denmark in the first place. For centuries, on the 22nd of every February, Nordic children have dressed themselves up and gone door-to-door collecting candy and sweets. And they've had their own special holiday game for the occasion — a wicked game, as so many games are when the rules roots lead to ancient Roman Catholic carnivals.

In the Danish Fastelavn, the kiddies play slå katten af tønden (hit the cat out of the barrel). This is like a game of hit-the-piñata, only with a barrel full of candy and a baseball bat. While the 17th Century Viking child might actually beat a wooden barrel with a flesh-and-blood black feline inside, the modern Danish child hits one with a cat painted on it. The goal is to be the first to release the candy from the barrel and become the katterdronning (queen of cats), or the one to win the very last of the candy and become kattekonge (king of cats).

But it wasn't Daniel, the king of cats, sitting in the pub's window seat today, just a similarly featured much younger version of him. So here I sit alone at the pub's bar, saying "tak" each time I'm presented with another pint of sloshing beer, glancing at the odd sight of toothless pumpkins and a strange man sitting where my lover sat, once upon a time. I'm thinking about an earlier time, before Daniel and I had even met face-to-face, about the insane timing of it all. About how, as Daniel and I were sending our first rounds of erotic writing back and forth between our Denmark and Portland computers, my sister's liver was pickling itself in alcohol and virus."

The excerpt above is from a chapter in Act On of my draft memoir The Miracle in July: a digital love story. (You can read the entire chapter here: http://themiracleinjuly.com/story/2009/08/17/safe-tomorrow-sun/) It describes one of the places I will visit in Copenhagen, Denmark. I'll go there to take photos and capture video. That is...once I find it. You see, I've not been able to locate the place using online searches. I will need to hunt it down, according to my memories. Destination Denmark will get me to Strøget — to the pedestrian street — and from there, I'll find it.

Remember, the story you see online at http://themiracleinjuly.com is just the beginning, a draft. The simple purpose of this Kickstarter project is to get The Miracle in July to the next phase of story format development: to capture images, video and audio of places like the pub described in the excerpt. With this media I can create a truly transmedia storytelling experience that goes well beyond, and yet compliments, a traditional hardback book or a static ebook.

Support the future of storytelling and The Miracle in July (and me!) by investing in Destination Denmark. Thank you!

♥ mediaChick