half way through November

 

A reliable sorce informed me a while ago that the various AI apps can  - depending on variables such as age, habits, career, family and whatever else they have on you - calculate how many more movies and series you will watch, how many more books you will read, and how many new people you will meet before you die. And here I was thinking AI was mindless shit.

In a convoluted way it does bring to mind the much adored (by me) German performance artist/theatre director/filmmaker Christoph Schlingensief who said shortly before his death from cancer in 2010 that he would give anything to lie awake at night and just ponder whether he had taken out the rubbish or not.  

This post is not meant to be all gloomy but it is November after all and today we had the whole programme from stormy winds to sleet and hail and snow and back to briefly sunshine and now frost. And drizzle. Drizzling frost freezing on the roads. The house makes a clicking noise only I can hear.

Last Friday I finally accepted that the headcold symptoms were getting a tad too intesive and that after two weeks there should really be some improvement and not shivers and fever and later that morning, my friendly GP gave me a stern look and a short lecture about immune suppression and risks and ladila and a prescription for antibiotics with rest. To top it, R has set up a regimen of inhalations and keeps putting very large glasses of water within reach and I have watched a couple of Scandinavian thriller series and obviously, read all the internets.

Here is what I found:

• For decades, scientists have been collecting brittle stars, or Ophiuroidea, a relative of the starfish, and storing them in museums and universities. Now, DNA analysis from thousands of these ancient, prickly crawlers shows that family ties extend across oceans, plural. All that deep water is much more interconected than previously thought possible. In fact brittle stars from the South Pacific near New Zealand, for example, are related to those found as far away as the Indian Ocean and the North Atlantic. For marine invetebrates, tiny creatures living on the sea floor, the oceans are a connected superhighway.

• While I watched the inauguration of the wonderful new president of Ireland, Catherine Connolly, and listened to her gentle voice speaking as gaeilge (in Irish) not understanding a word, I, for the hundredth time, decided to finally once again have a go at learning this amazing language (I am the only person in the family unable to utter even a few words of it). Obviously, I was running a temperatur and no, it's not going to happen, who am I kidding. Just consider the word for hole: one dug into the ground after dark by an animal is uachas. Or one made by fish in a sandy riverbed for spawning is saothar. One hollowed out by the hooves of beasts and then filled with rain is plobán. And one where a lobster is hiding in is fach and a hideaway by a wild beast is puathais. The Irish word for president is uachtarán and it translates as the the cream that rises to the top and thus the presidential palace in Dublin is called Áras an Uachtaráin or house of the president or to some, the country's creamery.

And then I found this: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the power of novelists

As mentioned a few times here, English is not my first language and since I had been told during my school years that I had no talent for modern languages, I did not waste much time trying to speak or read let alone understand English.

As also mentioned several times here, this all changed dramatically in the summer of 1979 when, at age 21 on the wild Atlantic coast of Connemara, I met R who has been the man in my life ever since. And while he speaks a couple of modern languages, German was not part of his repertoire. And since I can be determined when I want to, my talent for one of the modern languages improved rapidly and the rest is history. (He also speaks German by now.)

I may have also mentioned that I am an avid reader and incorporating English into my life opened the door to a whole new world of literature. At first reading in English was like driving without headlights, I just guessed my way through the narrative, but it did not stop me.

The first novel in English was The Magus by John Fowles. It was quite the rage at the time and had made a huge impression on R and when I asked him to tell me what to read, he got me a copy. To say that I struggled with it would be an understatement but I got the general drift and did read it to the end. I tried reading it again a few years back but just could not get into it.

The second novel in English was The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. There are many ways to read this massive and amazing book and I have read it three times by now.

The third novel in English was Them by Joyce Carol Oates which blew me away with its sharp honesty, describing a world I could only try to imagine - being 21 and living in the safe cocoon of love and affection and happiness. 

I've read a good few of Joyce Carol Oates's books since, did not like all of them but whenever I find one of her titles in a shop or library, I pick it up and have a look. Which is why this little missive by her is such a refreshing, uplifting and to-the-point thing to read:

Other than that I am grumpy and mean spirited since I picked up R's head cold a week ago and while he recovered within a couple of days and is now frolicking like a young deer, I am nursing the worst symptoms in the history of head colds. 
 

my life in ten objects: union card

I don't have an actual union card any longer. The last one looked like a credit card and I had it tucked away somewhere with my work papers. It's all online now but I left the last union I was in when I retired.

The first union I joined was the German Education Union, which organises educators and teachers in schools, universities, early childhood education, vocational training and adult education. 

I joined because my father had urged me to do so. Also, a cousin and various other family members and I had grown tired of the discussions as to why not and so on.  

It was the time when I was a student and trainee teacher and I remember lots of action but mostly fun. And learning workshops on all sorts of stuff. The union financed the interrail tickets that enabled me to travel all over Europe during the summer, visiting festivals and doing voluntary work in many different settings (mixing cement for school renovations, chaperoning youth groups, serving coffee to old age pensioners, cleaning hospital floors, replanting beach grass at the coast, you get the idea). And along the way, I met the man I am still sharing my life with.

When I moved to Ireland and worked in bookshops, I joined IDATU, the Irish Distributive and Administrative Trade Union, which then was the trade union representing workers in Ireland. I wasn't an active member, not someone who went to meetings and such, but when in 1984, several female workers and one man at Dunnes Stores, one of Ireland's large department stores, refused to sell South African grapefruits as part of the growing campaign against the Apartheid regime, my union branch decided to follow and soon enough, there were pickets all over the country where I spent many hours, my small kid asleep in the buggy or playing with others between our signs and banners.  

This guy tells the story quite well and almost like a joke: 

I found out a bit later that my name, together with all other IDATU members, was on a list of people barred from South Africa at the time. When we moved to Germany, I dutifully joined the next best union and paid my membership fees and helped distributing newsletters from time to time, collected signatures on petitions and funds for people in need. I had nothing to worry about but I had my rep's contact details and the knowledge that any time any place I had the legal protection of my rights at work - as well as being part of a collective muscle for lack of a better word. 

A while back, during one of my father's family dinners, the above-mentioned cousin was explaining to another guest why he, now a well off retired academic, had always been a union member. It's because I never wanted to lose my sense of solidarity, always wanted to remind myself what social responsibility means and why it matters. But also, because I can.

Hallowe'en

In this part of the world, we don’t observe the dead, we just shunt them aside with awkward funerals. In the past and in some corners of the world, however, this day has been celebrated as the ancestral doorway of the year, but since has become a children’s party game. Or an occasion to watch a horror movie. Or both.

I am not complaining. Hallowe'en arrived in this part of the world a few years ago, in the shadow of the coca cola xmas truck. Whatever the marketing strategy, it's not quite catching on - yet. Probably because we have carneval in various shapes and forms, traditionally dating back to the dark ages with a history of defiance during the French occupation of the Rhineland thrown in etc. and then there's the feast of Saint Martin in early November and All Saints/All Souls on first/second of November - that day/night people here light candles on the graves of their deceased and the cemeteries look kind of spooky after dark. 

But thanks to coca cola and social media, who knows, there may be some trick or treat kids calling tonight and if not, the sweets are waiting for the Saint Martin latern singers next week.

I may blog about the Rhineland Carnival another time, it starts on November 11th at 11 hrs and 11 min on the dot and that day it's mayhem in town, and it drags on until pancake Tuesday in February.

More and more of my younger Irish family are seriously into Samhain hoping to recall their ancient Celtic roots, visiting sacred hills for all sorts of rituals. Good luck, I hope it's not raining.

Click here to read a bit about the Celtic origin of Hallowe'en. 

This household is now completely vaccinated against the evil viruses. We have complained about the soreness of arms and muscles and despite warnings of doom and decay by some in our outer circles have survived it. 

The garden is getting ready for winter, mostly. The plumeria has yet to get the message.

 Earlier this summer, the man accepted a horticultural challenge, namely growing an endagered species (not previously known to the area) that for whatever reasons, dedicated gardeners around the world have decided to cultivate, giving it a boost so to speak. Apparently, less than 200 mature trees (yes it will grow!) are currently present in the wild. From my distant observation point I noticed the word cult in cultivation but what do I know. The official name is Global Tree Campaign. 

The plant is Gigasiphon macrosiphon and it arrived in the shape of a single giant seed, which has been carefully nurtured and observed on a daily basis.

Here is what it looks today. It will eventually have the most gorgeous giant flowers I have been promised.

And here is our first and most likely last peanut harvest. It was just something that had to be done in the same way that I would put an orange pip or an avocado stone into a pot with good potting soil.

 

As for horror movies, here's a short one to watch.

 

you are here now, alive and conscious, able to experience the world

 

Stormy weather here, even had some rain. That's how I would have started a phone call to my father. We always talked about the weather first of all, he in more detail in relation to all things agricultural. Anyway, autumn is early this year. I had the flu shot and then the covid shot and for about three days it felt a bit like having been knocked over by something big and heavy but I pretended this was nothing and so we went to the museum and cycled back home through the park where the geese are grazing and one day we went uphill deep into the forest where autumn does its wonders best of all. But still. The downside of autumn is that when it's over, it's winter and that's not a season I am fond of.

The thing is that I feel the cold, always have, always the kid with frozen toes and fingers, hence always the first trudging home when we were out skating or sledging or skiing and whatever stuff kids did during the long Franconian winters. Back home my mother would have to alternatingly dip my feet into bowls of warm and cold water to wake them up from their frozen stupor while I tried not to cry because my mother was of big fan of heroics. Also, I never really liked snowmen and avoided snowball fights if at all possible. 

So the state of things is beautifully autumnal and shitty dark, depending how we look at it. 

I recently joined a small group of people for a listening project. It involves pairing off into twos and going for a walk for 45 minutes. Before we go, we are given a piece of paper with a prompt/question and the task is that first one and then the other person gets a fixed time period each to speak on that prompt while the other person does nothing but listen. The prompt is fairly basic, like "is there something that made you happy, worry, laugh" etc. and nothing but listen means, no eye contact, no nodding, no touching or sighs or whatever, just listening and giving the other person the space and time to talk, no responding, no solutions offered and so on - unless the speaker gives you permission. It's quite a thing to listen without your mind trying to respond or react or having to provide an answer or a solution and it's quite a thing to be able to just talk without interruption yet knowing that the other person is really listening and just that. I realise it's hard to describe and it's something that requires concentration and empathy on a different level than the usual let's-have-a-talk or I-am-here-to-help you scenarios. I never met any of the people in the group before, I only know their first names and it's a different person I get to walk with every time. I think it's a bit like one of these 12-step groups from the movies or at least how I imagine them.

Perhaps this is what we need to do, creating moments of community and loyalty in everyday life and remaining human, not allowing our own indifference or our own self-importance to take hold. Even when it is most difficult, even when we are exhausted. (Maybe this is also the only reliable strategy for confronting criminal politicians and power structures.)

The liberation of insignificance: it lets you focus on what actually matters to you, right now, without the weight of cosmic importance crushing you. You can be kind to people because kindness feels good, without trying to tip the scales of history. You can create art because creation is satisfying, without competing for immortality. You can love people fully, knowing that love will end (one way or another) and that's fine.

There's something deeply wrong with how we've constructed meaning in the modern world. We've lost most of the traditional sources of significance (religion, community, duty) but kept the anxious feeling that we need to justify our existence. So we've turned to careers and achievements and metrics and status, trying to prove our worth to the horizon. We're all performing significance, trying to matter, desperate not to be forgotten.

But what if being forgotten is the natural state of things? What if almost everyone who has ever lived is already forgotten, and that's just how it works? There are about 100 billion humans who have lived and died, and you can probably name a few hundred of them. The rest have vanished into history, and the world keeps turning. 

I think we'd be happier if we could internalize this. Not in a nihilistic way, where nothing matters so why bother, but in a liberating way, where things matter in proportion to their actual impact on actual people, not in proportion to how much astral significance we imagine them having. 

J A Westenberg 

 

reasons to be cheerful

Just like any other morning, I woke up today with a great gift: I have the freedom to make decisions. And today, too, my decisions will shape how I feel, what I believe is possible in this world, and ultimately what I make possible for myself and for those around me and so on.

I could get bogged down by the histology findings of my finally removed and good riddance gallbladder and the conversations I had earlier this week with the experts, which included briefly: "the very obvious and widespread and ultimatively destructive inflammation of the entire mucosa and its blood vessel supply is clearly of autoimmune origin and regretfully avoided detection at an earlier stage as  long-term immune suppressing medication tends to camouflage the necessary laboratory markers" and "in this case, it was only due to the insistent reporting of increasingly stressful symptoms by the patient that resulted in surgical removal" and "due to the patient's history and diagnosis, potential further damage to vital organs including liver and pancreas must be carefully monitored in short time intervals". 

These are the kind of experiences that have rearranged my life for so many years now. And after every blow, and yes, even after so many years and all the ways I have figured out to accommodate and adjust, the blows are big, it takes me a while to realise that my strength extends beyond my misfortune, that while it may look and feel as if I am robbed of so much, I know that even when disappointed for a while, I will once again find that am able to live well. And once again look beyond my little horizon. Which today will include getting on my bicycle and make my way into the forest and see where it takes me. The man meanwhile is making jam, the leaves are turning all of the reds, renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to María Corina Machado, an outspoken politician from Venezuela. 

 

 

 

 

wherein I praise the work of antifa

We woke to a misty rainy day, summer is definitely over.

Just the day for a good damp walk after breakfast. Hiding under my big hood, I visited the local antifa memorial site. To recap: as we surely all know, antifa stands for anti-fascist and just in case there's still any doubt, below, here is a press photo of antifa fighters landing at the beaches of Normandy, France in 1944. I don't know whether I would be able to write this blog post today without them.

So today - like most days - I walked down to the river and looked at the water and the hills and also at this little model bridge a local business man erected in the small park.

It is a replica of the original Hodges Bridge, built right here by US soldiers in April 1945, enabling allied troups to cross the river Rhine and to proceed towards meeting Russian troups thus ending WWII and the rest is history.

Click here for more info about the original Hodges Bridge.

Let's not allow giving antifa fighters a bad name. 

 

 

October

The solution in today's cryptic crossword of my favourite newspaper was Tiefpunkt, low point, and if I win the competition, the first prize is a weekend in a spa hotel (two nights incl. dinner and massage) in the Italian Alps. Of course I always enter competitions, handing over my name and address to all the advertisers out there. Last year I won a selection box of vegan whole food snacks, so there's hope. My mother in law was a great one for competitions and she won tons of stuff including coffee makers and waffle irons and hair dryers and an entire tea set for six which she gracefully passed on to us. We still have one saucer from it, which I use to cover the porridge bowl in the microwave.

Anyway, Tiefpunkt, or starting point for all-round improvement as the final clue suggested. I should take this to heart. Last night, I went to a talk and discussion about war and peace and whether there is such a thing as a just peace (spoiler: no) and what are the options (compromise peace, victory peace) and where we are in the coming multipolar world order. It was very depressing and cycling home in the dark with my hands getting very cold did not improve my mood.

I really could do with a weekend in a spa hotel, any spa hotel will do.

Life and mood massively improved when the grandchild read both The Gruffalo and The Jolly Postman to us this morning. 

Also, here are our cabernet mitos grapes, such beauties.

 

  

Geography Lessons

When you've reached the peak,
the summit, the end,
you've come to the limit,
let me tell you gently
that the world is round, my sweet,
and it's all a long walk backwards,
starting from here.

Caroline Bird 

 

The grandchild (6) has figured out reading - properly - and has taken to it with much energy. We are now being read to on a daily basis and with great gusto and dramatic effects. All involved have agreed that books are great treasures and while we - regretfully - will never be able to read all the books in the whole world, there will be a new book every day and most importantly, a book can be read again and again.

Today, we were read poems by Michael Rosen and were told that he is surely one the best poets and story book writers discovered by the grandchild to date.

This was our favourite poem of the day (from A Great Big Cuddle by Michael Rosen) we discussed it in detail and found it perfect in every way.

 

Coming Home

Here's a house
Here's a door
Here's a ceiling
Here's a floor

Here's a wall
Here's the stairs
Here's the table
Here's the chairs

Here's a bowl
Here's a cup
Open your mouth
And drink it up.

tomato is a fruit

 

We've been away. It was a good break, great weather, good scenery, mostly no internet, long walks up and down hills and meeting people, old friends, long talks into the night about trying to make sense of the world around us, our place in it and how to handle this whole shit show.

 

There were castles and forests and streams and valleys and vineyards and old towns and tourists. 

There was listening and laughing and also feeling sorry for ourselves and overwhelmed by the tasks at hand but not alone. There were reports on actions and learning and showing up for others, too detailed to share but so very hopeful. That now is the time to escape commodity and replace it with community (paraphrasing Richard Powers) so that our capacity for empathy remains intact. 

 

And so today, after the laundry has been done etc. I am so very tired. It's been a lot. But R made apple crumble and there are still some pears and grapes to harvest.

Somewhere someone mentioned something like this as an approach to the endless feed of news and dystopia and schadenfreude and blaming and told-you-so and well, all of social media especially before sleep:

• Check if what you are reading is facilitating more understanding or more confusion.
• Check if it's adding to your awareness or hindering it.
• Check if it's contributing to your knowledge or making you feel more hostile and out of control. 

Because the biggest problem is actually a very trivial one: we refuse to believe what we do not want to believe, even when we are confronted with clear warnings.

We have suppressed the fact that each and every one of us bears responsibility. We have lived in a kind of paradise for 20 to 30 years, at least 80 per cent of the population. And we thought it would always be that way. We thought we could buy security with money. Today we are learning that we will have neither endless time nor enough money. 

 Jeanette Winterson (not sure, thanks for pointing this out, Steve)

You know what to do. Because as a wise woman said ages ago, knowledge is recognizing that a tomato is a fruit, whereas wisdom is knowing not to put tomatoes in a fruit salad. 

 

the King of las Bromas de Fartos

If you’ll allow me a crude metaphor (as I’m sure you, the King of las Bromas de Fartos, will): a guy comes into a dinner party, takes a dump on the rug in the living room. The guests get all excited, yell in protest. He takes a second dump. The guests feel, Well, yelling didn’t help. (While some of them applaud his audacity.) He takes a third dump, on the table, and still no one throws him out. At that point, the sky has become the limit in terms of future dumps. 

George Saunders (Love Letter)  

We should make it a habit to read the complete short story here or listen to the author reading it here. Every morning for a week.

Here's another bit from it:

Every night, as we sat across from each other, . . . , from the TV in the next room blared this litany of things that had never before happened, that we could never have imagined happening, that were now happening, and the only response from the TV pundits was a wry, satirical smugness that assumed, as we assumed, that those things could and would soon be undone and that all would return to normal—that some adult or adults would arrive, as they had always arrived in the past, to set things right. 

And then there's that, from a guy called Mike Monteiro:

Mostly, though, we’re sorry we gave up. It all seemed very hard. We let a lot of stuff go by. We were going to fix it all in the next election. Also, we read something on Reddit about how the best way to fix it was to let it all crash, and then rebuild, and there’s a certain logic to that. We didn’t think about all the people who’d get killed on the way to the collapse. So yeah, I think we might’ve fucked that up. Getting to tomorrow felt like more than we could handle. 

We watch the polls, in the last month we moved from every fifth to every fourth person wanting a fascist party in power in Germany. I sit in my favourite coffee place at the farmer's market and count, one, two, three, four. I wish my parents were alive, just for comparison.

I know I will not be able to just hang around watching and quoting disillusionment beautifully crafted by educated writers, I am working on it. We are grandparents.

In other news, here is a picture of some of the grape harvest, 16 kilo, ready for wine.

 

And last week, I finally figured out how to properly cook tofu thanks to my Japanese neighbour. She just laughed when I told her about cubing and marinating and the resulting somewhat tasteless rubbery consistency.

This is what she taught me.

First you press as much water as possible out of a block of firm tofu by wrapping it in paper towels and putting three to five heavy books on top of it - in Japan, you would use a snazzy tofu press - for at least 30 minutes. 

You prepare a marinade of choice while you wait. Following her suggestion, I mixed equal parts of almond butter (because there was no tahini in the house), soya sauce and apple vinegar, added a dash of lemon juice. 

Next, you tear the tofu into pieces, you do not cut it into cubes. And you totally ignore the marinade for now. Instead, you fry the torn unmarinated pieces of tofu in sesame oil until everything is nicely browned, the browner the better she said. Be patient, take your time. When everything is nicely brown, you turn off the heat and only then do you pour your marinade onto the fried brown torn tofu and toss the lot. If need be, you can sprinkle some roasted sesame seed on top. And then you eat it.

 

 

hello there September

The tomatoes are all harvested, either eaten or in various stages in the freezer or dried, I canned most of the pears with lemon, cardamom and cinnamon, the not so good ones I slow cooked into a thick pear sauce for winter porridge. 

Every morning R measures the sugar content of the grapes while the wasps are having a feast. When the time is right, he will make wine.

And the plumeria is going full blast.

 

In the greenhouse, we are harvesting black, red and green peppers. I forgot to take pictures. I have started to roast them, hoping that I can digest them. I made apple sauce this morning from the windfall apples down by the fence and we ate some of it with Greek yoghurt for dessert. It is currently making its presence felt in a not so pleasant way as it passes through the dark tunnels of my digestive system.

So yes. Food wise, I am in the trial and error phase, some days are great, others not so good but miles better than what life has been pre surgery. I am working my way slowly back to the ususal life with all that chronic illness stuff. It looks like it will take a while, I couldn't say I am on top of it.

At this time of the year, our gardens and parks are taken over by harvest mites (Neotrombicula autumnalis), tiny red bastards, some call them chiggers, that make it their live's work to jump onto a human body and sit there until you are in your nice comfy bed asleep and then they bite and give you itchy hives. Hours later, mind you, not while you are in the garden so that at first you think it must be bed bugs and you frantically change all the sheets and power clean the bed inside out. 

But, the trick is to have a hot soapy shower every time you come in from the garden and change all your clothes and obviously never scratch any of the bites but of course you must because instinct and out comes the antihistamine gel and this goes on until the weather changes and the nights become cool enough to kill these bastards off once and for all. 

For years I suffered stoically and then suddenly, they stopped bothering me completely and whenever neighbours complained I offered a mild smile with a slightly condescending shrug. Also, R has never ever had a single bite. Apparently, babies are immune as well. But he is not a baby, just a hairy monster.

Anyway, this year, I am back among the victims and I feel very sorry for myself and currently I am in this in-between stage where part of me wants to completely avoid going into the garden and another part of me say, feck this, it's only an itch and off I wander with my first cup in the mornings inspecting the beauty, watching the green parakeets feasting in the sunflowers and the big hornbeam. 

On Sunday, we sat and listened to a debate between the various local candidates in the upcoming state election where the audience was asked to select the topics for discussion beforehand. This was done via a snazzy device and shown in real time on a screen. Top issues were housing, school buildings, roads, taxes and culture. Climate change was a no show. The guy from the neo fascist crowd tried several times to raise something about parallel societies, the latest terminology for people not white or German, but got nowhere - at least that.  

 

 

 

 

 

mid August

 it is a serious thing

just to be alive
        on this fresh morning
                in the broken world. 

Mary Oliver 

Late summer always has me all over the place. The mornings are cool enough for long (!) sleeves but by lunchtime it's hot again. The garden is a jungle, we pull out plants that have finished their business (thank you massive tomato harvest) and argue about the best time to pick the conference pears. Wait another week, says I and let's store them all in the basement now, says he. The apples are already stored there the way my granny would be proud of, double layer of newspaper, decently spaced and so on. 

I walk and cycle and sit down with a cup of coffee watching the world go by and occasionally I recognise someone from the world and we chat for a while about the world going by.

We went to two museums in five days. One exhibit was local/national photography and the other was in honour of Wim Wenders, 80 years old now. The Wim Wenders thing was a lot to take in, so much memory lane for me, the way we watched movies back then, seriously, discussing endings and scenes and reenacting bits for clarity. Paris, Texas is still one of the best movies for me.

 

 

I am slowly reintroducing long forgotten food. One step at a time and with all the cautions I have been given as I am still waiting for the pathology/histology report on why and how this gallbladder was chronically inflamed, also liver values are not quite back to healthy. But I had one of these sourdough bread smashed avocado sandwiches with rucola and cress and radish and lived to tell the tale without pain. In other words, we sat down in a restaurant together like normal people.

Here's another video, very popular at the moment.

 

 

Here's an odd thing. In my immediate and extended family we've been booking flights from Europe to NZ for quite a long time, usually going south east from here, via Singapore or Dubai, the shortest route. In my latest search because yes, I am going to travel, the algorithms offer me dirt cheap routes via Texas with various US airlines. The price difference is considerable (much less), the stopover time too (much longer). And these routes come up first in almost every portal. No, I am not going to travel that way but what's going on? 

it is hot outside

So today's the day of that meeting between an easily manipulated, not very intelligent narcissist and a highly manipulative, completely unscrupulous former KGB officer. Apparently, first it's just the two of them one to one, probably most likely sorting out a deal involving minerals and rare earth and such like, all for the filling of coffers no doubt.

The heat has returned in full force. With good timing and attention we manage to keep the house cool, it's what I learned as a child in Franconia where summers are hot hot hot but I still have to explain methods to the man who grew up in Ireland at a time when summers would last a day or two. Last night we briefly debated moving the beds down into the basement but I was just too tired for it and slept in the living room on the guest sofa bed and when it had cooled down to 25 C outside at around 2 am, I opened up every window and the patio door and let the lovely night breeze blow through the rooms.

This is the coolest summer of our coming life, so we are told.  

 

The pears are ripe already, a month early.

 

something will come to you

 

 

This afternoon we sat for a while by the small pond in the back of the large cemetery, watching the dragon flies. The cemeteries here are beautiful parks and when I started to discover them during those strange and silent lockdown months I realised how busy my working life had been and that I must begin to pay attention to the world around me. Sitting under the willows with the dragon flies darting here and there I remembered my grandmother. and how she was always busy, so many chores, always on her feet. This is of course not true, she would also sit down and watch tv and talk while her guests ate the cake she had baked. She used to stack up on chocolate bars and hand out one each to her grandchildren if they had been good during a visit. The stack of these chocolate bars was in the big sideboard in her dining room on the shelf below the silverware drawer, next to the tea set. This is the same sideboard where, after his death, my brother found that box full of letters my father had collected, letters he had received from the women he must have dated over the years. I never saw these letters, I only know what my brother told me. "They were from all over, love letters mostly, some desperate, in German and French and Swedish, he must have met them on his travels. God knows what he promised them. Anyway, I got rid of them all there and then."

Once my grandmother had handed over the chocolate bar, we knew that we had to thank her politely and that we should never tear open the wrapping until we had left her house. Most of the time the chocolate was white with mould anyway and we broke it into small pieces that we flung out of the car window on the way home. Into the fields of Franconia.

My grandmother died thirty years ago in her sleep shortly before her 103rd birthday and on the way back home from her funeral we crashed the car during a sudden snowfall on the motorway, a rear-end collision while driving very slowly but a total write-off nevertheless resulting in the first of two spinal surgeries for me, one that summer and the second one, almost 20 years later. 

My grandmother is buried in her hometown, my grandfather, my father and my father's sister are buried next to her. Their cemetery is on a hillside in a dense forest. I think I've been there maybe five times including my father's funeral two years ago - mainly when I helped my father over the years to place several expensive terrocotta pots with seasonal plants like some sort of offering between the tombstones, but I know I can find the site no problem and I can see the writing on their tombstones when I close my eyes. Not that I have plans to visit. As was the custom, my grandfather's profession - senior magistrate - is recorded and for my grandmother it says senior magistrate's widow. In Franconia, back in the days, the wives insisted on having their hard work that enabled their husband's career recognised and honoured.

Eventually, the gnats got the upper hand and we left the pond and the cemetery and cycled on to the Italian icecream parlour where I had a scoop of butterscotch and R had pistachio.  We swapped half way.

I feel almost back to normal these days, I am digesting ice cream without pain, the resorbable stitches at three of the four incision sites have almost disappeared. The GP is a bit concerned about the fourth incision but I think the redness is due to a mosquito bite and we agreed to wait and see.

Another snippet I found at the back of my blog draft archive:

 As a queen sits down, knowing that a chair will be there,
Or a general raises his hand and is given the field-glasses,
Step off assuredly into the blank of your mind.
Something will come to you.

Richard Wilbur

 

 

spuds and news and a nasty lump of coal

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Carl Sagan 

First things first:

After admiring Ellen's feast of blossoms forever, we ordered seeds from a hopefully reliable Dutch supplier and look what has come up:

Caesalpinia gilliesii aka Bird of Paradise bush

 

I speak words of encouragement everytime I pass the little pots. I am expecting only greatness.

One of these days, my energy storage tank, which is filling up nicely, will reach sufficient levels to become active in the blogworld again. However, supervision in this household is strict, nurse Ratchet would be proud.

So again, just a few bits and pieces. 

Because of about a hundred stickers protesting against the Nazi regime, Liane Berkowitz was beheaded with a guillotine 82 years ago today, on 5 August 1943, two days before her 20th birthday, in Plötzensee Prison, Berlin. Take a moment to remember her.

The potatoe harvest has been exceptional this year, we are reaching Irish standards. Here are representatives of some of the varieties we harvested and are now eating.

left to right:

Ackersegen (blessing of the field), Rote Emalie (red Emalie), Cilena, Blauer Schwede (blue Swede), Heidemarie (Mary of the heather)

The last tigridia of the year:

 

And two bits that came through the ethers this morning. 

This is not meant to be funny because it's actually disturbingly evil, where to begin, if women are bits of coal what's next . . .

 

Instead, let this be your guide today:

 

 

 

 

so this is August

Here is an amazement - once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

         Mary Oliver

But wait until you're 67 and had surgery . . . 

Accepting 

1. limitations of age 
2. chronic illness treated with immune supressives 
3. after effects of surgery due to 3
4. massive lack of get up and go 

 All of it a work in progress. Isn't this the life.

Due to a massive lack of energy and brain power, all I can do is dig up my seemingly endless list of drafted blog posts, mostly first sentences, half finished posts, a selection of what I saved ten years ago:

 

• There’s being dogged in pursuit of a goal and there’s the pointlessness of being bitchy.
  A hen is a hen and a cock is a cock, but a chick is always female.
  An Old Master is one thing, but an old mistress is something else entirely (note those capitals). 

• I spent the last two hours editing papers on oxytocin and its effects on hunger craving in women. Yes, it is just as you imagine only now male scientists have found a way to prove it using big machinery and extensive tests which include healthy women staring at images of sweets and desserts while inside MRI tunnels. 

• I am whistling in the dark - praying, hoping, that fraying edge between worry, misery, loneliness and actual illness, that blurred line.

 Recent social media finds:

 

 

 

A fitting addendum to my bicycle post: Norman Quentin Cook (aka Fatboy Slim) shows off his new one.

 

 

Also, the last post was censored by my family. And they come first. 

 

 

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 bicycle

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