Giving opportunity a chance

By now, I have figured out how to shower safely and anyway, wounds are healing, generally that's their job. There are wobbly moments but all in all, it's a pleasure to notice improvements, something that's not part of my usual chronic disease experience.

We are testing friends and family on their anatomical knowledge, looking for novel ways to incorporate the word duodenum into day to day parlance and watching reactions.  

I am experiencing the first twitching moments of boredom and plans of a walk down to the river are being formulated - against some resistance but working on it.

On one of the extremely hot days recently, the builders down the road, a poor sweating crew from Poland, cut through a cable which resulted in a power outage for a couple of hours. We just found out today in conversation with a neighbour, because with a the solar battery in our basement we didn't notice a thing. Now we feel ready for the end of the world as we know it.  Also stocked up on coffee.

I should expand on all the important stuff we are debating, the way some of our own politicians are starting to play being trumpish and how is doesn't seem to matter at all to some. May the best liar win etc.

Greetings from the garden:

we don't mind the crocosimia

 

this is waiting for the wasp attacks

one of many beauties

the day lilies are coming up everywhere

only a small sample of a massive tomato harvest

sharing with a stink bug

 

 

 

one organ less

I am on day three. Carefully coughing up the phlegm residue from the stomach tube I had inserted during anaesthetics takes time. Also, laughing hurts. My abdomen is full of air, I can tap it like a drum.

Of course, I showered a day too early and while I was rinsing my hair, could watch the blood seeping into the compress underneath the waterproof covers I had so carefully pasted over it. For a moment, I felt guilty and thought about using the hair dryer but thirty minutes later, R had delivered me to the GP. They just smiled politely while cleaning and covering it and told me to behave.

In other words, the gall bladder has finally left the building. As expected and predicted, there wasn't a single trace of stone inside. Instead it was found to have attached itself to the duodenum, requiring some additional manoeuvres and we are awaiting pathologic workup of the why and how. When the surgeon mentioned a most likely autoimmune cause with chronic inflammation and ladida whatshallwecallit, I almost said, didn't I tell you. But I was the good patient and I thanked him for his insight. 

We are now watching The Narrow Road to the Deep North which has the most amazing soundtrack and is the saddest most depressing brilliant story, so no risk of laughter for me. 

When I got home last night, sitting in the garden was the best thing on earth. 

Here is another tigridia blossom.

 

 

my life in ten objects, #2

Behold the bicycle: an ingenious arrangement of metal and rubber that liberates the body from the dusty plod or the frustrating car to ride on a cushion of air, at speed or with leisure, stopping on a whim, travelling for free. Its design is simple and its maintenance inexpensive. Yet for all the ease and economy the bicycle possesses an even greater quality. It offers the possibility of escape.

 

This is me with bicycle number one, in the summer before I started school. One morning my father told me that if I could show him by Saturday that I can ride a bike, we would go into town to buy one for me. I have written about it here. 

For me, cycling is a means to get from one place to another. It is neither a hobby nor a sport activity although I have done a lot of fabulous long distance cycles in my life. 

I do not own a single piece of "cycling" attire apart from basic water- and windproof stuff which I often forget to bring and a hi-vis vest with IKEA family written on the back (a freebie from way back). I own a helmet but don't always wear one (another story).

This first bicycle was used to travel to and from school during my first four years (German primary school) in all weather, all seasons, unless the roads were icy. All kids had bikes, they were our horses, our racing cars, our ladders to get up on to a high branch, our scaffold when we built dens, they were an extension of ourselves. This bicycle stayed with me until I was half way through secondary school (which was too far from home to cycle) and my legs had grown too long for it. I still managed to have good grades then and as a reward - always rewards in my family - I received a fancy folding bicycle, the latest craze at the time. 

Bicycle number 2 looked a bit like this one and I brought it with me when I started university in Heidelberg. Like all of the very old German university cities, Heidelberg is really a small town and cycling is the fastest way to get around. But in order to be part of the cool crowd, it became important to invest in a Dutch bicycle, a preferably vintage Gazelle Omafiets. Purchase of which involved some pre-EU smuggling across the Dutch-German border. My memory is hazy.

Bicycle number three was the first one with gears, three gears to be correct and it was the only bicycle to date that was stolen from me, outside a pub one night. At the time I was a member of the student union and as it was deemed necessary for me to have a mode of reliable transport at all times - we were organising marches and sit-ins and boycotts all over town - bicyle number four, an almost identical replacement but with five (!) gears, was generously financed. And it was bicycle number four that I rode from Heidelberg to Dublin, together with R on his bicycle, in the autumn of 1980. There were stopovers in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and London and ferry journeys and for part of the UK we used the train but we cycled off the mail boat from Holyhead one early morning onto Dun Laoghaire pier into the Irish rain. This bicycle brought me all over County Dublin, along the Wexford coastline and into the Wicklow mountains. It had its troubles, something with the gears not being aligned but bicycle number four, and R's bicycle, too, were eventually fitted with a child's seat on the back to carry S across Cork, up and down the hills, to preschool and her first primary school, panniers packed below her legs. When we left Ireland to work in the small African country we call paradise, we gave both bicycles to another young family on loan forever.

Bicycle number five was only with me very briefly. A proper pink lady's bicycle with a fancy basket hanging from the handlebars. I inherited it from a Swiss midwife who left paradise in a hurry after she discovered her Swiss doctor husband's affair with a young local nurse. It wasn't very practical, the bicycle, it attracted a lot of attention and it often took me far too long to get to work or home what with people stopping me and cheering and laughing. So when the wife of a minister decided she wanted to have it, I sold it to her for a small fortune in foreign currency. I believe she cycled around her courtyard for a while.

Before bicycle number six, I had to live without one for almost two years, travel, work, family and work interfered. But at least I could watch my child learning to cycle, which she managed one sunny afternoon under the supervision of her Irish granddad.

Eventually, number six was purchased at the fleamarket, a sturdy second hand one with five gears, it lasted for the first year of our new life in Germany and was soon replaced by bicycle number seven, brand new and again five gears! On number seven I cycled along the Danube into Vienna, along the Rhine south to Switzerland and northwest to Holland, and along many more German rivers until I finally had enough money to spend on a serious trekking bicycle, twelve gears, hydraulic breaks, strong handle bars, to carry me up and down the hills to work and countless other long distance trips for 12 years. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with bicycle number eight, but shit happened, aka chronic disease diagnosis, and now bicycle number eights rests patiently in the basement for visitors to give it a run.  

At around that time, while I was coming to terms with my miserable fate and people suggested cumbersome tricycles and even wheelchairs, along came the amazing invention of the e-bike. Thus, bicycle number nine, by now scratched and covered in accident wounds and various campaign stickers, has been my chariot for 14 years now. It has saved my life, my sanity. I call this bicycle my freedom.  On it I have cycled up and down the coast of North Holland, along various German rivers, across the Auverne mountains in France and I still dream of cycling across the Alps from Bavaria to Milano and on to Venice. And that route from the Rhone glacier to the delta or at least as far as Lake Geneva. Alas, only dreams.

 

 

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.

Iris Murdoch 

 

      Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the human race.


H.G. Wells

 

 

It is very hot. We get up very early, pick the raspberries and the blueberries, dig up the last potatoes, fill the bird bath and are greeted by yet another of the Tigridia blossoms that will last for that day. Later when it gets hot and hotter, the hover flies will crowd it, drunk on pollen.

After breakfast on the patio, we move indoors, shut all windows and let down the blinds and stay in the cool old house until sunset, hoping for a cool breeze by then, fresh enough to sleep well beside a wide open window. If not, we move down into the basement for the night. One of us will wake in the early hours when the birds start and open up all windows. 

My brother tells me that in the years to come, this summer will be remembered for being the coldest in history.  

My sister complains that the heat is keeping her from being outdoors, now, in summer, and that it's not fair.

My nephew, a marine biologist, shrugs and says, we made this mess, we better adjust. 

I am glad I don't have to go to work anymore. Instead, I have an appointment late afternoon with outside temps expected to be 40C in a building that most definitely has no airconditioning. I just fixed a thick neckband to my wide straw hat so I can tie it below my chin and it won't blow off when I cycle there. 

For a while we lived on the edge of the Thar desert in India,  R reminds me as he hands me a flask of water to bring along.

I tried to listen to the Peter Thiel interview in the New York Times but gave up, not sure what hit me. seriously, these tech bros, I get memory flashes all the way back to early childhood psychology lectures, John Bowlby's rhesus monkeys and their hopeless search for attachment, acceptance, empathy.

 

In contrast, this sounds like a breath of fresh air in tech sis speak: 

 

island of sanity

. . . for those who choose to awake to collapse, it becomes their duty to put their care and attention into creating spaces and communities of spiritual hope, stability and resilience.

An island of sanity is not a sanctuary; it is where we go to contribute.  

Margaret Wheatley 

      Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.

Gary Snyder 

I cherish these two quotes and will now use them as my excuse to post a load of garden pictures, all taken after a heavy rain.

this plumeria is a cutting from last year

 

Santolina is taking over the herb bed

 

bedlam

corn and beans and peas

 

there will be wine making

 

 

the sturdy apricot

 

 

 

first fuzzy peaches

 

blueberry hedge waking up

 

raspberries

 

even more bedlam

 

the Covid patch year five

only a step away

It is really hot. And very windy. I should take pictures of the garden, I really should. At least I can report that we had a bumper sugar snap harvest, are now deep into tomatoes, zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, strawberries and raspberries. Blueberries almost ready, stone fruit next week, corn and onions and so on. Also, ants and spiders and a 24 hours house fly infestation thanks to a colony of maggots in an unwashed carton of cottage cheese deep in the yellow bin. We took apart most of the IKEA kitchen before we copped on. The adventures of a retired couple.

We both applied to have our passports renewed. You never know these days. Mr Rutte, head of NATO, has warned that maybe Europeans will need to learn Russian in the near future. He was not joking. 

I bury my head in cryptic crossword challenges. Also helped a friend to write a paper on alternative pollinators, it has been accepted for publication and briefly, we were elated and full of hope for humankind.  After dark, I watch gruesome Scandinavian thriller series, lots of killing and kidnapping and all that snow and ice. 

And stuff happens.

Let me tell you. Europe is not perfect. 

But neither Macron nor Merz or von der Leyen are inclined towards personality cults. The political stage is not populated by billionaires and millionaires alone. As of today, the checks and balances hold, religion is a private matter and anyone who falls ill is not ruined at the same time. Those who lie and agitate will be contradicted. Those who claim to get their politics from God personally are advised to have their souls examined by a doctor.

But it could be worse. All of this could change, what do I know. The fear mongering against migrants, the increasingly violent terminology, the hardening of the them vs us mentality, it's happening.

And yet, we look on, find it difficult to imagine, that the grandson of a German pimp and son of a criminal slumlord is waging a war against immigration in the world's largest country of immigration, which was appropriated by the first immigrants through genocide.

Back then, before the internet, we thought that the reason for human stupidity was the lack of information.
Let me put it this way: it wasn't.

my life in maybe ten objects #1

It's been tough, what with the heat and being cross with the world in general. But needs must. Two weeks to go until the MRI, I try not to think of it or rather I imagine that nothing will come of it.

Anyway, I could and should post pictures of the gorgeous garden and the abundance of blossoms and fruit and goodies we harvest every morning. But needs must. The squirrels come early to drink from the bird bath and the robins are by now so used to us, they mess about in the water when we are close by. This morning we gave away the  grandchild's paddling pool to a very happy young family. 

So I've been contemplating Ellen's brilliant series of life in 100 objects. I don't think I have 100 objects in me. But I'll start with #1. In fact a group of four objects. For several years, these heavy tombs were opened and perused daily, in the days before the internet. 

 

 

I started my bilingual life when I was 21 years old, the year I fell in love with R who speaks English and Irish and French and some Swahili but at the time, not a word of German. A few years into this adventure, I started to get asked for translations, nothing official, basic touristy, small business stuff. Favours really. I did not feel confident to think of it as a career option. 

My first translation job came from an arrogant German business man working for the World Bank while we were living in Africa. He promised riches and success to all and nothing came of it. Of course, he forgot to pay me before he left in a hurry. So, for many years, I stuck to favours and translated for NGOs, small environmental campaigns, women's groups, the odd alternative conference and so on. Until one day, a customer at the food co-op where I was working asked me if I wanted to apply for her job at the university because she was moving abroad. Two weeks later - that is 25 years ago now - I was at a desk with a pile of medical manuscripts to read, translate and/or edit. Learning by doing never felt more real. And urgent. 

Language and science had been my worst subjects in school. While I was pretty much bilingual by now, I did not have any grammar knowledge, no idea about simple present, present continuous, present perfect and so on. I pasted a sheet with the standard proofreading symbols on the notice board above the desk and got myself a nice range of fine coloured markers. This was all in the days before the internets and Microsoft Word and I quickly learned whose manuscripts I could mark in red and who of the hard working researchers had hidden school traumas requiring purple or green marking.

To this day, I know next to nothing about science and medical research in particular. Thankfully, I figured out early on that what matters was grammar and style and that content was none of my business. I suppose it would help to understand the rudimentary concepts of supernatant and precipitate or what PCR stands for and why mass spectrometry is such an important analytical technique but even after 25 years all I can offer are my excellent bullshitting skills. If a long sentence has to be shortened, and that is often the case, it helps to subsitute the big words with simple ones and reading it out loud. Also, living with a science teacher has enormous benefits. 

But as I knew early on that reading English novels, watching English tv series and arguing in English with a teenage daughter and a stubborn husband would not be sufficient, I went back to university to study translation. After some persuasion which included a gruesome conversation exam and two written tests, I managed to skip the first two of a four year distant education degree in business English. I wanted to specialise in science English but I was one of only four applicants and the university did not want to waste funds on such a small number. So for two years I studied All The Grammar, wrote countless essays and sweated through exams. During lunch hours, I studied index cards on vocabulary and comma rules. Throughout the course, we had been expected to diligently read The Economist and The Financial Times to remain up to date on business lingo. I haven't looked at a single page of either of these since. My last exam day was on the eve of 9/11 and the final test was a two hour long oral grilling on current business news items. One day later and I would have struggled with lots of new vocabulary. I got my degree in the post three weeks later.

My translating career came to an end at the right time, I have been lucky to retire just as AI and all its translation tools arrived. It seems so easy - and in many ways it really is - but it also is a tricky minefield. 

I still don't understand a thing about medical research but I have come to respect the detail and care that goes into research, often beginning with minute puzzle pieces that seem to suddenly fall into place with amazing results, like the development of potential MS treatments, groundbreaking insights into our immune system, early detection of pancreatic cancer and DNA sequencing (don't ask, still no idea) and novel treatment in liver diseases.

I can find my name in google scholar and the NHI pubmed database thanks to the acknowledgments some, but not all, authors have generously expressed for my editorial work. I can recite the main rules of the AMA Style Guide probably for ever. Some days, this feels like an achievement. But just one of many others in my life. But it has been a great time. This may sound weird, what with no science background, but it felt I was in my element (get it?).

 

 

 

 

June - already

It has rained and it is getting hot.  In other words, summer.

lily season

This afternoon, I sat in the auditorium of a concert hall and listened to 500+ primary school kids, aged 6-8, sing their hearts out. Not only did they sing, they used sign language and various percussion instruments incl. their hands and feet and heads and it was a most joyful afternoon. This choir is part of a local initiative to bring together children of all backgrounds and nationalities in about 25 different primary schools in our city. In the end, we all sang - three times! - Beethoven's Ode to Joy in German, Kurdish, Arabic, and Urdu. Imagine standing and singing "Alle Menschen werden Brüder" (all people become brothers) surrounded by 500 small kids and try not to be moved.

As I cycled back home in the evening sunlight, my mind was a whirling mess of thoughts. All morning I had heated debates with R and a couple of friends and family about recent political events in Germany and while we are nowhere near the US scenario, there are signs of clear danger and we are experiencing the first open and brazen illegal actions by the government, copying what others so openly do.

It seems that wherever I look, in countries near and far powerful people believe that the best way for them to hold onto power is to hurt other people. And their logic appears to be that the more all of us are afraid of them and of each other - our shared humanity - the more they win. Seeking to dehumanize marginalized communities and anyone who opposes them, attempting to outlaw our active civil society. 

So where do I stand? First, I know that what matters is solidarity. Personal networks, personal relationships, community. Always has been what kept me going. 

And deep down, you can see it in every crisis, in every misfortune, when someone stumbles and falls on the street and someone will run to help. Because we do not believe that this person deserves to have stumbled and fallen, and it doesn't matter whether that person has paid their taxes, how they make a living or whom they love, and if we like them or not. A person who needs help is helped. Big or small. This for me is humanity, this is what I call socialism. We need to make sure that we dig out this humanity again, that we stop people from being turned into wrecks, into ruins by fascists and neoliberals. How nice it would be if we simply lived in a human future.

A lot gives me hope. so many people just get it, so many people show solidarity, are co-operative. If you let people be, nobody wants to be mean to their neighbour. I don't want to come across as naive. But in evolutionary terms, this has been the survival strategy of the human species.  It's not so easy to stop people from being that way, even if it has been successfully attempted, by neoliberalism, which pushes us away from any form of community, and by the extreme right, which pushes us away from any form of trust in other people. Either way, we would be doomed. I think all fascist movements thrive on that death wish anyway but that's another story.

There is a video making the rounds where a mother reads out the first half of sentences she was told by her parents when she grew up maybe 30-40 years ago and asks her kid to complete the sentence. The one that made me cry was "As longs as you put your feet under my table . . " - the eternal threat shouted by my angry father when confronted with yet another teenage behaviour he could not tolerate - and today's kid replied ". . . you are safe."

Also, spelling is really necessary when dealing with AI.

 

 

how to stay engaged

This. Just listen. I am glad I did. Click on the "Last Year's Move to Toronto" heading and then play on the video on his substack page.

 

Last Year's Move to Toronto by Timothy Snyder

And This Year's Politics (video and commentary)

Read on Substack

small talk about the weather

 

things have grown

Before reaching a decision in favour of surgical removal of a gallbladder with neither acute inflammation nor stone formation, the gods have placed another MRI as well as more lab tests and outpatient appointments. In other words, still more waiting. 

When I mentioned that this will cost me at least another kilo in weight loss, the medical expert's eyebrows twitched slightly and he added the word "urgent" to the MRI request. On a scale from one to ten, how is the pain during a colicky period, he asked. Like the final hours in childbirth, I replied and his facial expression flinched slightly. Have you tried painkillers, he asked next. I gave him my most hollow laugh and explained how I alternate between hot showers, distraction and gravity (aka letting my body hang from the nearest doorframe) and he shook his head with a couple of tsks. Look, he eventually said, I am with you, most likely this is a partial torsion of your gallbladder with diffusely thickened wall and pericholecystic fluid built up but we need to see it before we believe it. 

Because where would we be if we remove an unnecessary organ without following the guidelines simply because it could result in a favourable result? Insurance pays you more the more procedures you impose, I added under my breath. 

But reader, I remained polite to the end and only cried when I was back where I had locked my bicycle. Also, I kicked the bike stand hard and shouted swear words. But lucky for me and the world, on the way home, cycling through the lushest of forests, I remembered that distance is the prerequisite for all perception and I turned my mind to better and more delightful issues.

it's the year of the potted potatoe varieties

In fact, I have recently taken a liking to short, not too in-depth conversations about the weather, mainly because of the progressively more worrying state of the world but also because I need to avoid thinking about health and weight loss all the fucking time.

Hence, weather, temperature, wind, lack of rain, and before you know it, birds, insects, pests, weeds, no wait, blossoms, fruit, berries, roots, back to temperature, lack of rain, roots again, this time tree roots, water, watering. watching, digging, soil, dirty fingernails.

Is watching the weather, the garden a way to shut myself off from world events and health issues or is it actually a means of remaining alert, wide awake even in view of what is at stake, but nevertheless also a concern about my own well-being. What use is it if everyone collectively falls into depression?

On top of it, I seem to have developed an almost obsessive devotion to birds. The app that recognise bird calls explains that what some think is a blackbird is actually a blackcap and I feel like a good schoolgirl for having recognised this. And almost 25 years after her death, I still believe that my mother visits me in the disguise of a bird.

I find nothing nicer than being able to sit outside on the patio late at night without a jacket, but there are now days and nights every spring that are so warm that they make you feel melancholy, for lack of another more positive word. At least I do.

I have a brother with extensive climate and weather knowledge, I have a nephew who works on research vessels on far away oceans. The smallest bit of small talk with either of them could send anybody with a spark of a mind into a dark place of despair  feeling melancholy.

But every time I cycle through this forest and every morning when I look up at the sky scrutinisingly, I have to admit that checking the weather and the tree tunnels of a thick forest, relaxes me inwardly. My breath deepens, my pulse slows down, the evil noise of the world falls silent. 

 

 

fast moving sloth

 

 

current scenario upon opening of the patio door

Another couple of quotes I had saved ages ago and which pop up now that I am killing time while waiting, still waiting for the phone call from the surgery department. Instead my lovely GP calls to cheer me on.

It has been heartening to read your comments to the chocolate quote. I could respond and write about the cardiovascular and gastrological health benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate (numerous, well researched, click here to read about it) and in particular, the beneficial effects of chocolate on mental health because chocolate contains endorphins, which are the little cousins of magic mushrooms.

But I could also dwell on the fact (FACT) that due to climate change, we are fast approaching a chocolate crisis which is a double sided hardship because not only will the price of cocoa rise exponentially, making chocolate a very expensive and rare luxury before we know it, the people depending on growing and selling cocoa beans are already beginning to suffer greatly as rising temperatures and erratic rainfall dramatically hammer cocoa harvests. So, get it while you can (afford it).

 

Naivety is one thing, ignoring the incontinent elephant in the corner of your living room is quite another.

source unknown  

What you people call collapse means living in the same conditions as the people who grow your coffee.

Vinay Gupta

 

            Wisdom is chasing you but you are faster.
 
Nigerian proverb 

Like our planet, sloths are actually moving extremely fast all the time, so fast that it seems like they’re not moving at all. We are wrong about sloths; they’re quick and fast. Science will prove this one day.

Michael Kleber-Diggs
 

The fact that people seem happy enough to cite heat as a number of degrees is surely a sign of what Adorno called reification, by which he meant the habitual response in modern culture to abstract and then quantify even lived experience as though it were money. If you do this long enough, the abstraction comes alive and seems self empowered like a person or a god. 

Michael Taussig

 

three more quotes I saved years ago

To know one drop is the first step to know the boundless ocean

Światosław Wojtkowiak

 

 There are two types of women – those who like chocolates and complete bitches.

Dawn French

 

 And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open.

Tomas Tranströmer 

 

The link between the first and the third quote I had saved way back in 2014, is of course chocolate and the lamentable fact that I haven't been able to digest any, not even the tiniest crumb, without painful side effects. Like the fool Iam, and also because I am not a complete bitch, I do nibble the occasional bit - the man has a vast supply - and pay the price and I tell myself, I am open, the ocean of colic is boundless.

patient wait

Things are rough right now, waiting for the next call. I cannot remember when I had the last proper meal. I push myself through my daily schedules, determined to not let this condition allow me to shrink and hide. Soon, R reassures me, soon you will feel better. An elderly woman with a chronic condition has to make way for emergencies, I understand, I smile and nod and act the patient. Also, more tests to keep everybody busy. The old kidney scare resurfaces and I tell the junior radiologist that it's nothing, read the notes from years back. In the end, he thanks me for giving him this learning opportunity.

I do stuff, I walk and I cycle, I visit the library, galleries, parks, gardens, I sit in cafes with a cup of something, I smile and talk to people, visitors, friends, family. Early morning, I walk through the garden, inspect the courgettes and the sugar peas and the lettuce and tomatoes and so much more. I pick strawberries I cannot eat but admire their beautiful shape and colour. We are waiting for rain that will not come. In the evening, we watch mice eating the bean seedlings. I put out flat dishes of water around the garden, R sets traps.

I try to remain attentive, aware and mindful, that magical word, in between distraction. I am tidying up my blog, all these quotes I collected. In 2014, I saved this one. 

Solitude is a description of a fact: you are on your own. Loneliness is a negative emotional response to it. People think they will be lonely and that is the problem – the expectation is also now a cultural assumption.

Sara Maitland

hello May

 

 

 

 . . .  and my point is, there is always something. I think as a species we have a desire to believe that we are living at the climax of the story. It's a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we are uniquely important, that we're living at the end of history, that now, after all these millinia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it's ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.

 

Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility 

The weather last week was beautiful, sunny, the kind of not-too-hot warm air that makes me want to spend all day outside. Which is what I did more or less. That and three mornings on the ongoing diagnosis trail which culminated in an endoscopic sonography exam, a most pleasant experience as I was knocked out by propofol. And now I am waiting for the verdict. I must say that everybody has been very nice and pleasant and professional and informative about the usual caveats and risk factors. But seriously, I am so tired of it by now and my face is hurting from smiling and looking upbeat and friendly all the fucking time. Thank goodness, it's May at least.

 

80 years ago

I know the material reasons for the rise of fascism. I also think another reason - which doesn’t get talked about as much because it’s embarrassing that humans can be that naive - is that when you are financially comfortable but bored, abstract cruelty can give you a sense of purpose.

Musa Okwonga 

On 29 April 1945, eighty years ago today, US soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp. Hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned there during the nazi era. They were at the mercy of the arbitrary behaviour of the guards and were harassed, abused and tortured. Tens of thousands did not survive their imprisonment. Dachau is a small town roughly 20 km to the north of Munich. The camp was  built in 1933, the first of the nazi concentration camps. 

The GIs found more than 30,000 people in the completely overcrowded camp, which was originally built for 6,000 prisoners. The prisoners were emaciated and exhausted, many suffering from disease. Typhus and dysentery were rampant in the camp. In the newspapers and on the radio, on tv, today we read and watch and listen to documentaries and eye witness reports and commentaries of this day. This is an excerpt from The Liberation of Dachau by Marguarite Higgins, New York Herald Tribune on May 1st, 1945:

There was not a soul in the yard when the gate was opened. As we learned later, the prisoners themselves had taken over control of their enclosure the night before, refusing to obey any further orders from the German guards, who had retreated to the outside. The prisoners maintained strict discipline among themselves, remaining close to their barracks so as not to give the S.S. men an excuse for mass murder.

But the minute the two of us entered, a jangled barrage of “Are you Americans?” in about 16 languages came from the barracks 200 yards from the gate. An affirmative nod caused pandemonium.

Tattered, emaciated men weeping, yelling and shouting “Long live America!” swept toward the gate in a mob. Those who could not walk limped or crawled.

Yesterday, I walked in a crowd of 20 people for three hours through the center of the city we live in, following a young man with a long beard and many tattoos who guided us from one house, street corner, park to the next, where he carefully pointed out memorial sites and their significance in today's fight against fascims. Because fight we must.

Meanwhile, the garden provides solace.

 

 

dawn chorus

Yes, I know the world is in bad shape, I could go on. Yesterday in the queue at the supermarket, I stood behind two teenage girls who debated whether they will or will not go on the upcoming climate ralley or maybe instead to the anti nazi one and like the old fool I am, I barged in and said, go to both, Very politely, they turned and smiled and said, yeah, but, and then, ok why not. And I smiled back and they pulled out their cell phones and asked for a selfie.

I’ve been in several meetings and conversations these past few weeks about what we will say if we can’t say “climate” anymore. We’ll say “extreme weather.” We’ll say “heat wave.” “Flood.” “Wildfire.” “Drought.” “Coastal erosion.” We’ll say “clean air.” “Clean water.” And we’ll say “cancer,” “asthma,” “birth defects.” We’ll say “cheap, reliable, locally produced energy.” We’ll say “healthy farmland,” “good soil,” “regeneration.” “Animals.” “Plants.” “Life.” “Help.”

And if they ban those words, we’ll come up with more. I loved this earth before I knew the word “earth,” and I will love it the rest of my life.

Anya Kamenetz

And today I spent the best and the longest part of the day with doctors. I set out very early cycling through the lush forest, it was just gorgeous. And for the next eight hours, I was examined by hands and eyes and machines and body fluids were sampled and many questions were raised and yes, answered. And now I will have to stop thinking of the worst outcome which includes but not necessarily will result in necrotising and death. Whereas the best outcome could be regaining my ability to process food - to an extent beyond the current scenario. The diagnostic term is cholecystitis due to gallbladder torsion and one of the surgeons expressed his delight with this relatively rare challenge. I got a handy list of symptoms that necessitate an immediate trip to the ER and otherwise have been told to sit tight and wait for the phone call. After a couple more tests and stuff to properly determine possible causes and risks, the GB will go.

It helps to know more of the why and how and seriously, I already feel so much better. The funniest bit was when I mentioned that I haven't had any coffee for the past four weeks and every person in the room went, oh no, poor you.

Cycling home through the forest was again lovely and a balm to the soul. I pity all of the people who haven't got access to an early morning forest cycle path. So, click here for a link to an amazing soundmap of the world's dawn choruses.

apricots and peaches

Happy Easter. I am a bit late, Easter Sunday is almost over. But in this secular country, we have Easter Monday tomorrow, another public holiday with all shops closed - apart from the bakeries until lunch so people can stock up on buttery sugary Easter baked goods. Wikipedia tells me that Easter. Monday is the second day of the Octave of Easter, which is where I leave it because that's the first I ever heard of. Any excuse, my radical atheist father would say. As far as I remember, the story was like this.

I am looking at the list of stuff I want to do and wonder how did I ever fit paid employment into this schedule. Not that I have done anything from that list for the past week. Yesterday, I spent watching an entire season on the adventures of the Bavarian Voluntary Mountain Rescue team, both in winter (on ski!) and summer and marvelled at various dramatic rescues of ignorant, ill equipped and poorly shod tourists in the Alps. What had me hooked was the strong Bavarian accents of the women and men who go out at any time, sprinting up steep ravines like young mountain goats and the way my inner linguist Franconian, albeit born in Upper Barvaria, was proudly and successfully able to reject the subtitles. 

We had a small bit of rain, nothing substantial. I marshalled my meagre energy levels and watered some of the plants that have not been eaten by slugs and increased the level of warfare against the ants under the patio stones. I told them that there is plenty of safe and comfortable space elsewhere. 

Here are our baby apricots. 

And the furry baby peaches.

 And the vegetable bed, with some extra potatoes in pots in front and two bolted fennels in the back left.

And the last of the tulips, this has been an excellent tulip year but I think I will replace all the fancy ones with a wild variety that bees and other insects actually feed on because the big showy ones here are totally insect free, they could be made of plastic for all the good they have to offer to biodiversity, namely null, nil, zilch.

Health wise I am three steps forward, two steps back, in other words, it's fucking slow. But this an old cranky body, so patience.

And so I have managed to write a post without doom and gloom despite the fact that I could. 

Crazy times don’t have to make us crazy. They can inspire new levels of coherence, meaning, and purpose. There’s nothing like a rocky sea to make people find their best compass.

Douglas Rushkoff

it's a Wednesday

I keep thinking that today is Sunday. Maybe because it's raining and so very quiet outside and many of our neighbours are on holidays. Or maybe because I feel shitty and ill and slow. Earlier I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and I told myself, just stay with it. This will pass. As if that helps.

This morning I read an opinion piece of one of the daily national newspapers, the left wing one from Berlin, with the heading I want to fight injustice instead of breathing it away mindfully. It's all about mock solutions and avoiding responsibility and the cynical appeal of a positive mindset catering to individuals and their fears. The promising balm of kindness and avoiding stuff that is too hard and may disturb our ever so important inner peace. Have the courage to be angry, it ends.

To which I may add, get me the energy. And while I lack that specific item, also the positive mindset is very faint at the moment, all I am left with is reading and watching and listening. Here are some cherry blossoms from a few days ago.

I am reading Werner Herzog's memoirs, Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is really a long rambling jumble of the outrageous thoughts and anecdotes and wild insights of a person with an enormous ego. Great reading. Really great.

We dusted off the old record player and connected the ancient tuner system to the big fat speakers and I am now listening to our vinyl collection - the remains of it - one LP a day. Today's one was Dire Strait's Love over Gold, which we bought for 2.99 pounds (Irish) at Golden Discs in the Dun Laoghaire shopping centre in 1982 a week or two before the birth of our daughter. The shopping centre is long gone, but Golden Discs is still around. It was great fun listening to a young Mark Knopfler. I am just pulling the records off the stack as it sits here, without looking and the rule is to play it no matter what. Tomorrow it will be The Inner Mounting Flame, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. That's one of R's records, from long before we met and I have a vague memory that I never really liked it. Back then that is.

And a final thought, something that came up in a conversation a few days ago. You know why we Germans are so pedantic about data protection? Someone around 90 years ago went through all records available, selected people with certain criteria, with the help of IBM, and then killed them all.

spring always too fast

 

the pink tulips

When we lived in the small tropical country we call paradise, just three degrees below the equator, I would tell my small daughter stories about what life is like in Europe, about cities and traffic and shops and playgrounds and most of all, about seasons, lest she forget. When we returned to Europe after a couple of years, the first winter was as I had described, snow and ice and sledding and snowball fights. But spring, I had forgotten to mention that spring happens seemingly all at once and not really in slow noticeable steps - daffodfils, leaves on the trees, roses, strawberries, peaches, sunburns. One day while we were eating strawberries on her grandparent's patio, she actually complained that this was all happening much faster than anticipated.

pear blossoms

 

And I feel it every year. Some of my garden pictures are already old news.

St. Agnes flower/March cups (leucojum)

 

I think I am done with diagnostics for now at least. My pharmaceutical cocktail has been remixed and topped up and I spend most afternoons pleasantly dozing as prescribed. The digestive system is still protesting but there's hope it will calm down and let things be, eventually. Waiting for appetite to find its way home, too.

 

wild garlic

Other than that, life is full of good stuff. Surprisingly. I mean I could write long and extensively about the disappointing and in part decisively inhuman coalition agreement of our new government and maybe a bit about tariffs and presidential insider trading but why.

 

asimina

The biology teacher (retired) in my life tells me that everything alive is evolving all the time.

Also, I read that a single rotation of a modern wind turbine (approx. 10-11 kWh) produces enough energy for an electric car to travel around 50-70 kilometres. There's a lot of hope in such a single finding.

I participated in an online ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp 80 years ago and listened to a speech by Marina Weisband, Ukrainian-German politician and psychologist.

We say we are fighting fascism - but what is this fighting actually? And when does it begin? Fascism is not recognised because we secretly expect that the film music will somehow change at the end of democracy. That the sky will turn an ominous grey. That banners will be unfurled. But that doesn't happen. When fascism comes, the sun is still shining. The birds sing. We go to work. Everything is normal. Only trans people lose their rights. And asylum seekers. And immigrants. And disabled people. And Muslims. And Jews. And left-wing journalists. And then other journalists. And me. And you. And nobody realises when it actually became too late.

I don't want to fight. I want to love. I want to be curious about my fellow human beings. I want to listen. I want to be empathetic. I don't want to be in competition, I want to build great things together. Nazis can't deal with that.

I want to open my heart wide to people. To stand between them and inhuman ideas. That's how I understand my place. Not fighting against what I hate, but protecting what I love.

And I know many of you may think that's incredibly naive. Love. It seems like such an inappropriate, unrelated word in light of the news today. But I think it's naïve that we can banish fascism if we don't learn to love ourselves and others.

Even if the worst happens tomorrow - if my whole world collapses and I lose everything - there will still be a day after tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow, the world will go on somehow. With me or without me. But then I want to leave something behind. The dream of a world in which we no longer inherit violence and don't see ourselves in constant struggle. That's why I want to sow the seed in the ground today. Even if there is a forest fire. Then it's my job to bury it so that it can germinate afterwards.

the thing about groceries

My first thought when I read this stuff about groceries was a childhood memory. I was five years old and we had recently moved to a new city, or rather a new suburb of the city where my dad had been offered a job. On the corner of our street, a small supermarket cum butcher shop was to be opened, run by a young couple with a toddler, a baby and two cats. We watched through the glass doors of the shop while they were stacking the shelves with the radio on inside at full blast and every so often, they would stop and dance. The Twist! We were floored and full of admiration. Back home, my sister tried to show me how to do the twist but I just hopped up and down.

The day the shop opened, my mother sent me there with a coin in my hand and the carefully practised sentence: one pound of mince meat but not too fat and a small sweet for me instead of change. This sentence has been my memory mantra for new and slightly scary situations ever since.

And then I remembered the endless hours we played shop at home and on the curb in front of the garden gate, selling stuff to neighbours walking past and buying it back with paper money, filling our grocery bags with tiny crumbly apples and flowers and stones and small toys and legos. My child often played shop and shopping for groceries, we, the assembled adults, would carefully select our goods from her wares and buy them and sometimes, she would watch us with alarm and asked for reassurance that we understood that it was only a game. And yes, we sent her to the corner shop, the bakery, the ice cream van with a handfull of coins or maybe a banknote and instructions or a shopping list we drew together. And this afternoon, as I walked down to the river, I passed a table on the sidewalk where two girls, maybe six or seven years old, were selling handmade stuff and I stopped and selected a set of handdrawn playing cards and one chatterbox folding game. When I asked how much I had to pay, they discussed options for a while and then decided I could have it all for free because it was a nice and sunny day.

 

That man who said the stuff about groceries probably, most likely, definitely never experienced the excitement of going to a shop for the first time, bringing home a pound of not too fat mince and feeling amazingly grown up and rewarded and loved. Somehow I don't feel sorry. As it turns out, he thinks that the poor old US has been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered" by Cambodia, Lesotho and Madagascar, three of the poorest nations on earth, which must therefore pay the highest tarifs. 

 

 

discuss with examples

An old fashioned term that we use -- groceries. . . . It's such an old fashioned term, but a beautiful term. Groceries. It says a bag with different things in it.

 

April is here

The last couple of days in a few short sentences.

If you want to make loud phone calls in a doctor's waiting room, no problem. But a short ‘what happened so far’ at the beginning would help us all, waiting is so tedious.

There's only two genders: fascists and anti-facists.

Why is it said that young men are turning ultra right-wing because of feminism and not that young women are turning to feminism because of right-wing men? Are we again blaming women for the mistakes of men?

We are reaching peak magnolia season.

I got yet another diagnosis, a sort of tag along diagnosis, something that gets explained to me as an almost inevitable consequence of what has been going on in my body for seemingly ever, like 10 or so years (?). The doctor was polite and carefully explained that this is most likely another novel aspect of the autoimmune disease and we smiled at each other when I replied, well it seems we can blame this shit for everything that goes bad in my body. I even chuckled. Back home I kicked at the sofa and had a bit of a meltdown. Later, we watched the first episode or two of the apocalyptic Danish series Families like Ours, and what can I say, I feel fine in comparison. (I also have gastritis, so no coffee, no black tea.)

 

A child’s body is very easy to live in.  An adult body isn’t. The change is hard. And it’s such a tremendous change that it’s no wonder a lot of adolescents don’t know who they are. They look in the mirror—that is me? Who’s me? And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy.

Ursula K. Le Guin