AI's greasy little voice

Click here to watch a short video with Katherine Rundell, who writes amazing books for children and young (and older) adults. 

 

The grandchild reads during breakfast, when sitting down with a snack after a long day at school, before and after dinner, before bedtime, in bed and basically whenever possible. Several times a week, the grandchild reads to me over social media, we then discuss the books. Currently it's Harry Potter of which I know shamefully little, book four, halfway through. The grandchild's mother, my daughter, would never leave the house without a book, never ever. One of my most vivid parenting memories is the exact moment she stopped moving her lips while reading, when I watched her book in hand, her body slipping down along the wall until she sat on the floor, totally absoberd. The book was James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl.

In hindsight, I retired at the right time - three years ago now. Not that it felt like the wrong time, not ever. But as my work mostly involved translating and editing science manuscripts, the arrival of AI translation and editing apps meant that almost all study groups and researchers started to use them, happy to be able to cut costs and time. It took all involved maybe six months to realise that the software was just a tool and not always up to the task. Which made my job harder and more time consuming because editing AI generated stuff most of the time meant I had to go all the way back to the source, i.e. the actual human author, to figure out what the heck they wanted to say. Not always, mind you, sometimes the software produces excellent, succint texts. Anyway, it's all in the past and I understand that most science publishers, especially the big ones, now use their own AI software to detect AI generated texts which they then reject as not original work. Go figure.

I haven't wasted much time on AI but the recent apocalyptic warnings made me laugh. 

The performance of these systems involves computing power, training data and energy resources.

Software that fails to deliver the desired results or even causes damage is a not a superpower taking over the world, it is actually a faulty product, not a masterpiece. The big AI firms are producing malware on a massive scale and are attempting to shift the blame for their poor production standards onto others by warning of a fictional future apocalypse when in reality they are trying to force others to take action. 

But AI does pose a very real threat to the survival of humanity. Large language models are extremely inefficient, and their now ubiquitous use is exacerbating the climate crisis. Their land use is vast, their energy and water consumption is enormous. Add to that the mass theft of copyright-protected works feeding the software, the even more rapid spread of disinformation and the financial overextension, which is beyond my understanding but I figure people are now speculating on profits that are mathematically hardly possible, risking a global economic crisis. 

So there are plenty of good reasons to join forces globally to stand up to the tech giants. But none of them is a super-intelligent robot seeking to seize world domination.

 

democracy

Imagine we live in a country where millions of people live together, differing in many ways. They speak different languages, believe in different gods or in none at all, and live alone, as couples, in families or in shared accommodation. They argue about what is fair, how much tax is right,  . . .  how they want to love and die. Because these differences cannot be reduced to a common denominator, they have to reach agreement time and again: in families and workplaces, in market squares, in parliaments and courtrooms. Most of the time, the result is something that nobody quite wanted, but which as many people as possible can live with.

Imagine we live in a country where this diversity is not regarded as an unfortunate incident. Where people cannot simply impose their ideas of what is right – not even if they are in the majority. Where every person has dignity and rights that are particularly valuable precisely when others do not like the way someone lives, thinks or speaks. People are free to criticise their government, to join forces with others and to take legal action against the state before independent courts. Majorities can make decisions, but they cannot do as they please. And minorities remain protected, especially when the majority disapproves of them.

Imagine we live in a country where people are allowed to be different. Muslim, Christian, Jewish or atheist. Straight or queer. Cis or trans. Tradwife or feminist. With or without a family, with two passports, multiple languages and affiliations that don’t have to end at a national border. Progressive or conservative.  . . .  Nobody has to approve of all of that.  Acceptance does not mean having to adopt everyone else’s way of life, but rather granting others the same space that you claim for yourself – as long as your own freedom does not come at the expense of the same freedom and dignity of others.

Imagine we live in a country . . . (where) political opponents are not enemies – in a country that derives its own vision of harmonious coexistence not merely from what it is against. A country that does not look on with envy at the power of authoritarian slogans and believes that only hatred can stir people’s emotions. Freedom moves us. Justice moves us. Diversity brings joy. Solidarity inspires. And the experience of achieving something together, despite fundamental differences, instils pride.

Many things are going well, many badly, and some are unbearable. People face discrimination, opportunities are distributed unfairly, and institutions are failing. No liberal society has a guarantee of its continued existence; rather, it must protect and defend itself. But we live in a country where decisions must remain open to correction. And where everyone belongs – despite all our differences.  . . . The community we aspire to become has long been taking shape within the community we are: unfinished, contradictory, unjust, yet capable of change. What matters is that we continually re-establish what we have in common through collective action. 

 Olaf Zenker

 

In Polish, the phrase Mala Odwaga means a little courage.

Courage doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be grand. It doesn't have to be the kind of thing that people make documentaries about or movies about or write biographies about. 

Courage, I think, is usually small, and it's really just a matter of doing something which is a bit more than nothing, something which is a little uncomfortable, which is a little challenging, which is a little awkward, but which is a bit more than nothing.

And I say this because I think it's true, but I also say it because I think it has political significance, that if we tie ourselves down to either huge, great, unattainable acts of courage, or doing nothing at all, then of course we'll end up doing nothing at all.
But if we're able to perform very small acts of courage, well, I then tend to think that we'll get through this. 

Timothy Snyder 22nd September 2026, Kharkiv, Ukraine 

 

 

September morning sun by the river 

 

In the German Language, we have several words for courage, one of them is Zivilcourage which is not easy to translate because it is more than just civic or civil or moral courage, it's when you jump over your shadow, put your own comforts aside, remember your deeply buried core values and listen to your fear, yes, most definitely your fear, accept that there may be drawbacks, but remain prepared to stand up for integrity, for the legitimate, collective and primarily non-material interests of all.

Oh, it's so hard. I feel so small.

hello September

It rained and it got hot again and the river is a tiny bit fuller. One of the ferries that had to stop all of August due to the low water level is running again but only for pedestrians and bicycles. The sky is gorgeous. I have made an effort to get up really early and walk down to the river just after sunrise and on for a while, testing how far the foot will carry.

There are four more physiotherapy sessions left in the foot recovery treatment. I have been told that I have come a long way and I agree, I have also been told that one or two or four of the tendons responsible for whatever - lifting or holding or putting the foot down - have not recovered and also some nerves have stopped working for now. So I have to concentrate on muscles and give them hell to pick up the job. It's a task. I accept. I can walk. And on Sunday, I cycled 50 km along the vast apple orchards to the west and through forests and up onto hills. What I need is here.

Also, this happened one evening. I was cycling along the river just before sunset on a stretch where I was alone when I heard a female voice calling Hallo, Hallo and it turned out to be of a young woman who had slipped on one of the stony walkways down to the river which are accessible now with the water so low (it's very tempting to go there, walking on the river bed). Her left ankle looked exactly like my right one looked when I had slipped on the path in the forest in Wellington. She had no mobile phone with her, neither had I but I found a young man who sat on a bench a bit further down. Turned out he was Aladin, a Syrian refugee who works in the whole food store with the vegetables. We called emergencies and waited with her until the ambulance and the medics arrived. The medic mentioned to me that it looks like a fractured ankle. This is how I pay back fate it seems.

We are still arguing here in this house, a lot. And then we make up, also a lot. We have no idea where this will lead us. I am glad this summer is coming to an end.

This here is from my current read, the very dystopian novel "All the water in the world", by Eiren Caffall (2024), which is a bit like "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) - which BTW was made into an amazing TV series. 

This morning I met with a group of women over 65 to find a way to pool our energies and ideas into working for a liveable future for our and all grandchildren, grannies for future.

This evening, we are off to a rally in the city center, one of many across the country, to show the 55% in the small German state of Saxony-Anhalt who did not vote for the fascists last Sunday that we are on their side. 

Life is hard, life is full. 

 

 
 

 

 

 

Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

The first time I came across Wendell Berry was in the library of a large, dilapidated Jacobean mansion in Gloucestershire, home to a family and their many friends, people passing through, working on the farm, a small and messy operation with sheep and a couple of meadows, a garden, magic mushrooms in the fields. I was 21 years old, my English was rudimentary, I tried to act cool and rebellious, I was truly lost but saved by the generous hospitality and good humour that held this place together so well, also R, who brought me there.

The mansion is gone, the people moved on. Wendell Berry has been in my life ever since. He died two days ago.

 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impending stream is the one that sings. 

 

fight, flight, freeze, and fawn

Hot, very hot days, the garden is brittle and dusty. In the morning, we harvest. Amazing as it is, there are trees full of pears, apples, plums, a row of blueberry bushes, beetroot, fennel, carrots like never before and a long maze of blackberry vines climbing along the hedge. We water sparingly in drips and drops, buckets of waste water from the kitchen and the shower. The house is cool with all the blinds down during the day, ceiling fans here and there. At night, a light breeze flies through the rooms, now that all windows are open and I listen to the martens fighting and mating, their shouts are very loud and shrill, almost like the crying or anguished screams of a person. 

Just before dark, we cycle along the river - nothing mighty about the narrow trickle of the Rhine these days. 

picture taken by Meike Böschemeyer/local paper

I count the swans, seven, with one black one among them. The light is so beautiful, the last rays of the sun colouring the clouds pink and purple. We stay until the last daylight fades. On the bench just before we turn away from the river, a young Arab couple has set up a small campside table for several nights in a row now. The other day, we stopped and wanted to wish them a pleasant meal and discovered that they are both deaf. We only managed a brief exchange of smiles and waves.

This here below has been on my mind for many days now. I recognise myself, my mother, myself again, and well, so many women. 

  

. . . the hypervigilance so many women feel toward others’ emotional states is not dysfunction. It is very often an accurate response to real power dynamics. When women develop finely tuned antennae for the moods in a room, they are not being oversensitive. They are being precise.

A woman’s nervous system that hesitates before disagreeing, that softens every request, that scans faces before speaking – that nervous system is not confused. It has correctly mapped the territory. Her nervous system is running an accurate cost-benefit analysis of authenticity in environments where authenticity has a well known cost and consequence for her.

When you scan a room before you speak, you may not simply be anxious. You could be calculating. Your body just might be running a complex algorithm honed over years: Who has power here? What happened last time I disagreed? Can I afford the consequences of being fully myself in this room?

That is threat assessment not a personality flaw. 

(There are) four survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

The term “fawn” was given to us by psychotherapist Pete Walker, who observed in his work with complex trauma that some survivors learn to secure safety not by fighting or fleeing, but by appeasing: merging with others’ expectations, anticipating their needs, becoming indispensable or invisible as the moment requires.

. . . fawning is what a nervous system does when its social-engagement circuitry becomes a survival tool – when connection itself is drafted into defence. It is the strategy of choice when fighting means certain defeat and fleeing means abandonment or destitution. Far from being passive, it is arguably the most sophisticated of the survival responses: a real-time diplomatic operation conducted by your physiology on your behalf. 

Now ask yourself: for most of recorded history, which sex has most often faced exactly that configuration – unable to win the fight, unable to afford the flight? Fawning is not a female flaw. It is a rational adaptation to a specific, gendered predicament, repeated across generations until it became embodied.

Your people-pleasing isn’t a weakness. It’s your body’s brilliant attempt to navigate systems that were never designed for your thriving.

Honour that intelligence.

 

Ailey Jolie 

 

It rained. Early this morning, for about one hour. Not enough but, the sound of it! And it cleared the air a bit, the physical one, the brown smelly smoke plume from the fires 50 km away from here and the sticky angry one between us two stubborn humans. This summer has been so awful most of the time. I am exhausted. 

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.

“Pooh!” he whispered.

“Yes, Piglet?”

“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

A.A. Milne (The House at Pooh Corner) 

we breathe in when plants breathe out

 

I have a vague memory of cooler days and there has actually been the odd late evening just after sunset when I reached for a thing called cardigan -  the lightweight version mind you. Thankfully, with longer nights, there is a pleasant enough cooling down period and the early hours offer a short promising glimpse of maybe even autumn. But before autumn, the gods of gardening have invented pears and plums and apples and grapes, all calling for attention.

This summer has been brutal, not just due to heat and drought but also due to hard personal private loss and grief and all that it entails. I am nursing this idea that once I have recovered my ability to walk proper long distances, I will walk away from it all and towards something lighter, easier, a more hopeful way of living again.

Part of me is bursting with ideas and plans and energy and then I find myself carefully walking down a steep hillside after watching the solar equinox yesterday and I have to stop every so often to let people pass and to figure out a way to reassure my beating heart that I will never again slip on a narrow, dry, stony, uneven, downhill stretch again, at least not now. (And I did not. But back home I crawled onto the comfortable sofa and felt sorry for myself for the rest of evening.)

 

more riverbed than river

This is where I cycled yesterday with the sun burning down on my back. I have never seen it like that. And still I am hopeful. When I cycle back from the river and through the small streets of our suburb which was once a medieval village, I can count the number of roofs and/or balconies without solar panels on one hand. Every day, I get notifications about meetings, self-help groups, technical support groups, sharing skills and ideas and tools, and also concerted actions, rallies and court cases and reminding local elected people of their responsibilities. Yes, the idea that climate action is about individual responsibility is as ridiculous as suggesting everyone can equip themselves to fight in war. But around here, I feel we are many and growing. And if it's a battle, so be it.

 

. . . people who throw up their hands and give up. I will assume some of them sincerely believe that it's too late, there's nothing we can do, we have no solutions, and nobody cares. For others it might be an excuse for doing nothing – if you can pretend the drowning people will inevitably drown, you justify remaining a bystander. 

. . . if you think the entire realm of life on earth is threatened wouldn't you throw yourself into understanding the threat the way you do when you get an alarming medical diagnosis? But lots of people don't. They make uninformed we-are-doomed-it's-too-late pronouncements and remain bystanders. 

Rebecca Solnit 

 

 . . we live on a planet where the cheapest way to make power is to point a sheet of glass to the sun

. . . sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach the earth but none of those miles go through the straight of Hormuz

Bill McKibben 

 

It's as if the ancient gods of nature are playing a prank: “We’ll set the world alight, make pigeons fall dead from the sky, make ash rain down, cook people in their homes, melt the tarmac in the car parks ... and turn the oceans into a lukewarm soup. Let’s see who notices what – and when.”

Every child knows what’s happening here. It is humanity’s most tedious, most predictable and most thoroughly studied catastrophe. But its scale still seems too vast for political action, so everywhere the response is just pretending nothing is happening. 

Instead, scientists are being discredited. On certain social media platforms, their findings have long been regarded as elitist musings from an ivory tower. The handling of the Covid pandemic served as a blueprint for the far-right attack on science.

 

Nils Minkmar 

a Sunday between heatwaves

Apparently, based on some meta review, eight in ten of these unfortunate creatures who have to hop on one leg and use walking aids for an extended period develop bursitis in at least one shoulder joint once they start walking unaided again. Something about the cavity below the joint and leaning to one side for weeks and so on. Count me as one of the eight in ten. There is of course a light at the end of the tunnel and physiotherapy. I am crossing bridges on a daily basis.

We are living between two heatwaves. The garden is dry, we water a bit here and there, mostly drip feeding the vegetable beds and filling up trays for the birds and hedgehogs and insects. Early morning is the best time, with a semblance of dew in the air. I walk down to the berries and pick a bowl for breakfast. The radio in the kitchen reports on the theatre of cruelty called world politics, government is understood as the exercise of rule that secures its power through brutality and everywhere the vulnerable are punished for their vulnerability. My brother furiously and disbelievingly shares a lead article in the most conservative of Sunday papers that suggests the fires in France and Spain may have been caused by leftwing agitators who want to push their climate change agenda. Where to begin?

In their silent, unspoken way, the protection my parents were able to offer me was that they had survived Hitler and the Second World War. That they had understood what had happened, even if it meant suffering and lifelong guilt. And yes, they forced on to my generation the traumas of the perpetrators, the victims and the bystanders. But at the same time, they were able to explain to me that the democracy I was born into would prevent it from happening again. All through my childhood, my teenage years and ever since despite all the distance I put between us, I have lived with their fears and their traumas and I felt sorry for them and tried to understand their harshness, their nightmares, their weird habits, their silences. It's all because of the past, I used to think.

But today, their fears are becoming real. I am witnessing the uprising of political fantasies of violence, racism to an extent that even I feel threatened, me, a (once) blond, blue-eyed middle class, educated, independent woman. The magic words of my parents, grown out of their multiple traumas, and their belief that democracy works and would protect us, can no longer keep me safe.

And here I am, watching the dragon flies hovering over the bronze fennel, and all I can offer to this world is to try and summon grace, to step lightly, hold on to nothing and remain open.

tigridia, hedgehogs and bats

 

tigrida season, a different colour combination every morning

It is now four months since I fractured the ankle. There is progress, so much progress and I have to remind myself of that every day. There also is a man in the house who mutters the word patience under his breath every time I whine and complain and generally feel sorry for myself. And there is an orthopedic surgeon who keeps on refering to my serious injury at every appointment. 

 

And there is the e-bike. While walking for longer stretches is still a challenge, cycling is freedom. But then there's also getting old and aching joints and morning stiffness and not tolerating the hot weather the way I used to. 

 

A long time ago, when we were young(er) and foolish, we had wild plans for retirement. They seem wild now, at the time, there were just logical next chapters to our life. They involved long distance cycling, weeks and weeks of it, living in different cities for months at a time, exploring and learning while renting out the house back home. We made a list of mountains to climb, lakes and waterfalls to swim in, nice hotels to rest in afterwards.

 

Yesterday, we sat outside on the patio after dark, a slight breeze lifted the day's heat and the bats were circling above us. The hedgehogs came shuffling down the lawn stretching their legs after their restful day hiding below the hedge. Earlier we had watched a flock of jays, young and old, refreshing themselves in the bird bath, messing about like a gang of teenagers at the public pool.

It's good here, we agreed. We like it. Let's just sit and watch. 

We opened all the windows to let the cool night air in and watched Hamnet and we cried and missed our child so very much. In the end, we had a laugh having just watched a film about the greatest writer in the English language impersonated by Paul Mescal, an Irish actor from County Kildare, and his wife Agnes, impersonated by Jessie Buckley, an Irish actor from County Kerry - both fluent as Gaeilge speakers at home.

And a cheerful image, the solar panel roof of the railway station in Rotterdam, providing all of the energy required for the service section and all platforms etc. Photo by Stefan Rahmstorf, much revered climate scientist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know that healing from this ... injury will become a blip on my life radar. I don’t think the accident contains meaning. I don’t think I’m meant to learn something from it. It came without warning, explanation, or cause (that I can remember). But I can sense an invitation arising from it anyway.

Heidi Lasher

boundless

 

... how we might become aware of real intelligence: that is, the kind that exists everywhere and between everything. It is made evident not by delineating and defining, not by splitting, reducing, isolating and negating, but by building, observing, relating and feeling. Intelligence when we perceive it at play in the world, is not a collection of abstract modes: a concatenation of self-awareness, theory of mind, emotional understanding, creativity, reasoning, problem-solving and planning that we can separate and test under laboratory conditions. These are simply reductive and all-too-human interpretations of a more boundless phenomenon. Rather, intelligence is a stream, even an excess, of all these qualities, more and less, manifesting as something greater, something only recognizable to us at certain times, but imminent in every movement, every gesture, every interaction of the more-than-human world. 

 James Bridle 

 

solar energy

It's very hot, as predicted, and some of the media are in a frenzy looking for the place and time when the next record is broken. As if it's a competition. And the winner is? We are keeping the house cool the way we always did, sleeping in the basment, using the early hours for gardening and so on. It works, for now.

The solar battery is full, every gadget in the house is running on sunshine, plus we are feeding the grid and also some neighbourhood homes. I suppose it's not strictly legal, cables through gardens are involved, but the sun shines and shines for free. It's amazing what PV on a little roof space, shaded for half the day, can produce.

I am sort of walking or better call it hobbling, limping along. No more moon boot. The physio people are "optimistic", another three months give and take, they assure me. Another three months??!! But hey, I can cycle now and yes, that's brilliant. 

 

the messy garden replacing a fake quote I used

A few years ago, five tech billionaires, who shall remain anonymous, invited Douglas Rushkoff (professor of media theory and digital economics) to a luxury spa – for a fee equivalent to a third of his annual salary. 

Contrary to his expectations, the super-rich were not seeking investment advice on future technologies but instead asked about survival in the wake of a potential catastrophe, which they refered to simply as ‘the event’.

Should one flee to Alaska, New Zealand or Mars? 
Should they start securing their food supplies with special locks, the combinations to which only they knew. Or  fit their bodyguards with a sort of disciplinary collar in return for their survival at their side. And what about robots that could be used as bodyguards or labourers.

Of all people, these tech entrepreneurs whose neo-colonial production conditions are ruining entire continents now want to escape and leave the rest of humanity behind.

We have to make do with what we have, even if right now it seems completely inadequate and suboptimal, in an attempt not to resign ourselves to it, but to cope and to let our potential grow and above all, to remain committed to humanity.  Is it normal for human beings to be unable to imagine what a better world would even be like? Hopelessness isn’t natural. It needs to be produced.  

People everywhere are asking; how did we get here? Most of them say - surely it was them, those people over there that caused this. And the people over there turn and point their fingers right back at them, which results in everyone being implicated and none being responsible. But that trick will no longer work. We can no longer escape responsibility for our collective choices. This is a time of accelerated accountability for our species, not just some, but all. The age of deflection is dying away. We must all take responsibility for the state of our world because we all possess the power to change it – when we work together. But when we fail to check the recklessness and cruelty of foolish men or to shake ourselves from the fantasies that we weave around them, we all suffer the consequences of their folly. Therefore, we have become necessary allies in the unfolding of a new reality.

 Sherri Mitchell
 

 

 

literally

 

In a strange way it is only now, after almost three months, that I am adjusting to what has happened. Three days ago, the horizontal syndesmosis screw was taken out (a short outpatient procedure under local anaesthetics) and physiotherapy is commencing next week!

I have been walking, if we may call it that, ie unaided and on my own two feet, every day around the house, in the garden and short distances in town.  

 

Not funny, not easy but getting there probably eventually. I compensate my lack of foot work with furious weight lifting and sitting down yoga/pilates whatever sessions. Not allowed to cycle or drive for another two weeks. I could just try it but if I knock down someone's dog or worse, insurance will not cover.

Cabin fever is setting in, R thinks I am slightly mad. We argue and we laugh and argue again and then we laugh and watch some crap on tv or debate the end of the world as we know it. 

The grandchild's current favourite English word is literally, the favourite German word is Gurke (cucumber). Also, air quotation is now a thing. 

Summer at least. I spent close to an hour last night topping and tailing strawberries. There's always that day when the novelty wears off and we turn to jam making.

 

Two . . . young hunters rescued a dragonfly stuck in the mud. It gave them the usual wishes you get in these stories. One wished to be the smartest man in the world. The dragonfly said, ‘So you shall be.’ But the second hunter wanted to be smarter than the smartest man in the world. . . . So the dragonfly converted the second hunter into a woman.

Tony Hillerman  

translation Prawns! I forgot to get the prawns . .

 

give it time

Yesterday I had a melt down. It was a long time coming. In fact, I had been waiting and hoping for it for weeks, like a great cleansing, a wave washing over me. It wasn't anything like it, just exhausting and snotty.

Earlier I had spent two hours with the orthopedic surgeon who will take over the recovery treatment now that I am back in the German health system. Everything looks as it should be, I am still walking with the moon boot, for another week when the screw inside my ankle joint will be removed. He had me walking a short distance without the boot and well, it's not what I call walking. Neither the foot nor the leg seem to be aware of what is required. Yet. All around me smiled reassuringly and there will be a physio plan and give it time and muscle building and more give it time and so on and I smiled too and then we had a coffee at the French place and when we got home, I started to sob like a baby for a good while.

I am all over the place with conflicting feelings. One the one hand, I want to concentrate on getting my mobility back, working hard at it with all that I can, while on the other hand, I want to lose myself in this summer, the colours, the sounds, the changes, so fast, so dramatic. No thinking, no pressure, no expectations. All that give it time stuff. How does it work?

The garden is a joy as always at this time of the year. I watch it from a shy distance, not able to pick the strawberries, harvest the sweet peas. This morning's gift, a first tender kohlrabi.

 

The best outcome so far has been the amount of reading I have done. Still do. Currently, I am racing through London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, as recommended by all everywhere. 

Also, we are watching Legends on Netflix, hooked. I am a sucker for a good Liverpool accent anyday.

 

all things tend towards chaos

I am back, the garden has greeted me with an explosion of colours, I missed the spring abundance of lilac and tulips and wisteria, but I am not complaining. Despite the heat. In the very early morning, I am listening to the familiar bird song, wondering when the tūī and the pīwakawaka will join in. The journey home was fabulous. I was treated like royalty by two airlines, with wheelchairs waiting for me whenever needed, polite porters pushing me past security queues and into cosy lounging areas with trays of food selections to nibble. 

One last bit of New Zealand that has amazed me. The grandchild goes to primaray school, to hihi 4, as all classes are named after native birds. In the morning, the class stands together for the karakia, an incantation to welcome the day and what lies before them. There are many karakia in use, to start the day, a meeting, a journey, to come together, arrive home and so on.

This is the one that gets sung every morning by a boisterous group of seven year olds:

Whakataka te hau ki te uru
Whakataka te hau ki te tonga
Kia mākinakina ki uta
Kia mātaratara ki tai
E hī ake ana te atakura
He tio, he huka, he hau hū
Tīhei mauri ora! 

translated:

Cease the winds from the west
Cease the winds from the south
Let the breeze blow over the land
Let the breeze blow over the ocean
Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened air.
A touch of frost, a promise of a glorious day.

 

I have a recording of the grandchild singing it but that's private, so here is a version from the internet, same words, same melody. 

  

In my dreams, I am falling backwards, down the stairs, out of the plane, tumbling, tumbling, through the air, endlessly.  God, I hope this is just jetlag and that it will pass eventually. But I am grateful for nights of deep sleep, evenings when I try to stay awake watching movies with R (One Battle After Ânother was a hit for both of us) every distracting phone call, all the daily rituals I can manage to remain somewhat patient, another eight days to the next orthopedic follow-up, and so on. In reality, behind my jolly calm facade, I am scared. Every tinge of pain, be it brief or dull or sharp, never - thankfully - constant, makes me gag with fear. This is all new territory, I have taken mobility for granted. How could I.

I look around, it feels unreal to even imagine that I have been away for four months.  

When I feel myself getting too smug, when I start counting all my blessings, I start to think about all the things that could go wrong. I remember that I have to die someday. Everything falls apart. All things tend towards chaos. I close my eyes against the mad torrent of panic. This is ok, I think. This is life, this is life, this is how it's meant to be.

Donal Ryan

 

 

my bags are packed

Almost. This time tomorrow I will be languishing somewhere at Auckland International waiting to board the airship to Singapore and after ten hours in the air and a brief-ish stopover at Changhi, the amazingly carpeted airport of Singapore, I shall board an even bigger airship for another 13 hours to Frankfurt, where I will reclaim the hours that were stuck onto my day when I got here thanks to dateline crossing (check Jules Verne, 80 days around the world, for detail). I will be fed excessively and probably watch season 2 of The Pitt (I watched all of season 1 on the flights here.) and if all works according to plan, I will be wheelchaired to and from cabin entrances and arrival hall. If not, I'll hobble along on my big fat black moon boot and make everybody feel thankful for having two healthy legs.

Right now I am looking out through the window onto a bright clear and sunny Wellington morning, up onto the hill behind the houses across the streets. This has been my view for the past nine weeks for long stretches of the day. 

To some this could mean the empty tunnel of being ill, immobile, helpless. To me, it has been - among many other things and thoughts - a time to float, to rebuild bones and courage and confidence in my body's efforts. As always, a work in progress.  

I would not call it a challenge because I was treated like royalty with delicatessen, story telling and reading, impromptu shows, many hours of charades, long delightful walks down memory lanes, not to forget the excellent palanquin services to allow enjoyment of the rest of the house, the patio and the garden, trips to the seaside and outpatient appointments. This after all is an experience in restitution, ie healing, a return to healthy mobility is entirely possible. The thought alone makes me happy. I am not going to be chronically hopping with a moon boot, forever unable to bear weight on that foot and so on. For someone who has to confirm manageable survival from a chronic illness by blood tests every three months, this is an amazing prospect, one that made the weeks of waiting and sitting and resting pass without too much worry.

It's autumn here, the nights are cold, the mice are coming in from the garden and Louie the cat is patiently guarding the small crack between the freezer and the cupboard for his reward. He is ready, too.

The grandchild is leaving small love notes in various places, found one stuck under my teacup earlier today, another arrived in the shape of a paper airplane through the bathroom door as I brushed my teeth.  

The final discharge letter from the Wellington Hospital Orthopaedics Department, the one I will be handing over at the follow-up in Germany, starts with "Dear Sabine, it has been a pleasure to meet you and your daughter throughout your treatment here. We are happy to see you recovering as expected. . . "

 

 

  

 Just a thought:

Global warming is man-made, it is not a fatality, and it can also be curbed by human action. Its consequences can be mitigated to some extent through adaptation.
All of this requires political action. Nothing is inevitable.

stasis diminished

Slowly slowly I am moving out of weeks of stasis, taking unaided steps with the right leg in a tight CAM boot, 24/7 for the next six weeks at least, trying not to be fearful, trying to ban all thoughts of what could possibly go wrong now. The curse of living with a chronic disease makes it hard to trust my body and her healing powers, even when the xrays show how nicely my bones have fused.

 

Still attached to the crutches and the little walker and the knee scooter, week seven after the accident. It's exhausting. And the daily 100mg of aspirin DVT prophylaxis is waking up the ulcerative colitis. But honestly, that's the least of my worries.

I booked my flight home including wheelchair assistance, managed to speak to real people of both of the involved airlines, they all promised to deliver me relaxed and supported to the man waiting at arrival. I'll leave in 19 days. The grandchild cried when I confirmed it. 

Right now I want to wrap myself in cotton wool and hide, avoiding any risks that could throw all plans out of the window again.

What else happened? A week ago, we were woken up early in the black of night on a Monday morning at 3 am with heavy rain hammering the house. And by hammering I mean loud hammering, foundation shaking hammering. We checked the house, windows, roof, all safe and dry, peered outside, called our neighbours, a flood of torchlights, shouts and then the fire trucks, sirens, loudspeaker warnings, evacuations, cars piling up at the bottom of our quiet cul-de-sac, a neighbour carried on a rescue float on a river that normally is a quiet street where kids skate and do bicycle stunts. Much damage, unprecedented amounts of rain, even the NYT reported on it, several houses evacuated, workers everywhere, people arriving with sandwiches, soup and scones and big flasks of coffee all day, all week and they still do. I mind an evacuated old dog, read storybooks to bewildered children sitting around me, hand out snacks and marvel at Wellington's pragmatic neighbourhood response. Our house, over 100 years old, sits up high, there are 46 steep and old steps from the street to the front door (I have counted them several times by now as I was transported with my non weight bearing cast by the ambulance crews) and like most of our neighbours on this side of the street, the deluge did not affect us. The worst story so far from a couple who woke because the bed was filling up with water and when they ran to the baby's room the water was just about to wash over the cot completely. A second later, he said shivering, a second later. 

Unprecedented amount of rain. Flash floods, landslides.  You can see a cyclone, a hurricane on the satellite, you can prepare for it. But for these localised pockets of torrential downpour there are no models to provide specific warnings hours in advance. This is the shape of things to come. We had 70-110mm of rain in less than one hour, that is ten times the amount of a "normal" heavy downpour.  

What next, joked one neighbour yesterday, a plague of locust? 

the new stone age

I am half way through my non weight bearing sentence, less than three weeks to go, fingers crossed, and while I am gettig pretty good at hopping and standing on one leg and of course using all the gadgets, I am slowly nursing the hope to become once again a two legged creature.  

On top of it, we all got another virus, the house has been reverberating with coughing and sneezing over Easter.  Also, we were dog-sitting a much older, much slower and totally blind but sweet and gentle and handsome version of the family dog. By day three, we all, humans, cat and dogs, had enough of it, the visiting dog decided to seek shelter on my bed where he remained for most of the time. Which somewhat impeded on my sleep.

Airline ticket prices back to Europe are going up by a thousand NZ dollars per week. 

And we watched an actual US president explain an actual war to his own citizens in what is supposed to be a democracy. What he was telling them is that Iran went from having no physical nuclear programme left at all to being on the cusp of deploying an unprecedented nuclear weapon. It did this apparently in something like six months, which would be one of the most astonishing technological achievements in all of human history.   

As a result, the president of a 250-year-old country threatened a 5,000-year-old civilisation with total annihilation including the regime’s opponents, in whom he had placed such high hopes just a few weeks ago. Never mind that he changed his mind. That it may have been just a ploy, a minor Trump-style tantrum. No big deal.

I acknowledge that Trump’s critics in the US are making their voices heard. But it seems they do so in the way one would in a normal democracy: three times a year, on Saturday afternoons, between 2 and 4 pm. Afterwards, they roll up their banners with their creative slogans and go home. A president who threatens to wipe out a civilisation must not be treated as if he is normal.

Where justice turns into injustice, resistance becomes a duty, obedience becomes a crime.

(Some sources claim this quote is from Thomas Jefferson, others that it's from Bertold Brecht, he certainly wrote it in the 1930s, but apparently it's originally from pope Leo XIII, late 19th century.)

A cyclone is approaching from Fiji, the storm warning for the weekend is orange, subject to change at any moment. I ordered wool and knitting needles, we have coffee.

between a rock and a hard place

Greetings from the stranded beetle.

The post OP cast has been removed, revealing impressive bruising and nicely healed stitches.

(Don't look if you are of the squeamish type.)

There is an equally impressive surgical suture on the other side of the foot. Inside is a shitload of metal.

And this is the new cast, I had a choice of black or pink.

And so I am now counting down the days (28) until this rock solid beauty will be removed and I can - hopefully - progress to a moon boot and some form of walking. For now, imagine me bum crawling and one-leg hopping with various helpful contraptions, twisting and turning my way from chair to walker to knee-scooter, wriggling my toes per instructions and doing a silly looking work-out to look after muscles and strength - if the dog lets me since he remains ever hopeful that I will just get up and do the stuff he thinks this granny should do and jumps for joy ontop of me when I lift my good leg and my arms.

 

This is the good story, the health recovery story. And I am feeling hopeful.

 

And then there's the rock and the hard place scenario.

 

I am in my daughter's home, I am looked after with love and care and all the attention I could wish for. I could stay here until I can use both legs at least in a way that will make it possible for me fly back home on my own  (33 hrs, two stop-overs). We think hope I will reach this stage by mid June the latest. That's one option.

 

The other option is that R comes here (yes, he remained at home in Germany for too many reasons to explain) and we both return together earlier than June with him as my travel support, probably mid May.

 

And then there are these factors to consider:

 

• daily, in fact hourly increasing airline ticket prices, especially on the best long-haul route via Singapore (the safest and "shortest" route for travel between Europe and NZ and Australia and SE Asia), I will definitely not fly via US for reasons and via Canada or Japan/Korea/China will take several days and while we are not poor, it irks and feels dramatic at the same time
• as airlines react to jet fuel shortages, flights have been cancelled already, especially on this route and booked tickets have gone into the nirvana
• once my renewed visitor visa has been approved, I will be able to stay until end of June without a chance to renew it - unless WWIII breaks out
• I will be running out of my immune suppressing medication by mid June, and as even world wide courier services are affected by reduced flight options and jet fuel prices/shortage, no guarantee of getting it in time and no it's not easily available here
• while all treatment costs of the fracture are picked up by NZ accident compensation, my international health insurfance cover for anything else that may hit me health-wise will run out by mid June

 

So we are back and forth throwing the dice and no doubt, we'll come up with something. We've lived this across-the-world life for long enough to trust that there will be a way. 

To be continued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on my way to the fascinating new territory

Greetings from the secret den of the stranded beetle. 

I was booked to fly to Singapore this week, imagine. I got a nice refund from Singapore Airlines and now have neither a date nor a booking to get back home. Also, I am nowhere near the F2F (fit to fly) certificate that would allow me to even book a return flight.  

As expected, we are losing the usual fight with the travel health insurance company. It happens every time I have a claim and they find some clause on page 529 that I overlooked or maybe not or a signature that's missing. Life goes on. 

I could will be here for a while.  

Meanwhile I continue with elevating the cast for 23 hrs a day and freaking out when hopping on the good leg whenever the spirit moves me as I am still in the total NWB (no weight bearing) period and have nightmares of slipping and accidentally using the cast leg. Six weeks of it I've been told, one week down, five to go.

The extremely efficient health services have supplied me with a selection of mobility aides and shower stools and handle sets for bath- and bedrooms and tomorrow I shall try the snazy knee scooter that was delivered today. The hallway is so crowded with all the gear a visitor could think we run a rehabilitation center - oh wait, that's what we do.

On Friday, the Wellington Free Ambulance Service (another example of a visionary community service) will collect me with their amphibian device to transport me down the 43 but feels like 500 steep stairs in my daughter's front garden so I can get to my next outpatient appointment. I have been told that a physiotherapist will come to the house from next week on to show me how to maintan or if necessary regain muscle power and whatever else for a decent recovery. All this is part and parcel of New Zealand's accident compensation scheme as I mentioned before.

Now, before we get carried away praising this free health care (only after accidents), let me explain.  New Zealand is a small country, most of it remote, wild and with poor access to amenities, add to that earthquakes and tsunamis, erupting volcanoes and landslides. In such a setting, regardless of life skills and community support, accidents do happen and the country would go bankrupt if every person who fell down a path or was knocked down by a falling tree in a nature reserve or got hit by falling rocks on a public road starts to sue the state for damages due to poor maintenance and lack of care. Instead, the country decided to provide free health care and rehabilitation after accidents. Cheaper in the long run. 

I feel very old. Really old. The last two days, I tried to take the photograph required for my visa renewal and no matter how I turn and what light or angle I chose, the result is of a scared looking old hag with scrawny long hair and I delete it immediately. One of these days, I'll have to face it.

The grandchild meanwhile thinks this is the best of times and joins me for long reading and singing and talking sessions, preferably before bedtime and before school. I treasure this time. 

But while physical recovery is a given, I now have enough metal in my ankle to keep it together, mobility will most likely never be again what I had taken for granted. I am working on getting my mind ready for this, preparing for the inevitable dark hole I will eventually fall into for some time and the (I hope) recovery of my mind and soul as I prepare myself to take on yet another of these fucking life challenges.

Your youth evaporates in your early 40s when you look in the mirror. And then it becomes a full-time job pretending you’re not going to die, and then you accept that you’ll die. Then in your 50s everything is very thin. And then suddenly you’ve got this huge new territory inside you, which is the past, which wasn’t there before. A new source of strength. Then that may not be so gratifying to you as the 60s begin, but then I find that in your 60s, everything begins to look sort of slightly magical again. And it’s imbued with a kind of leave-taking resonance, that it’s not going to be around very long, this world, so it begins to look poignant and fascinating.

Martin Amis 

It’s a Steal

Seema Jilani

March 19, 2026

attention investors / fixer upper oasis on the Med / erected
_________on remnants of sacred souls / complimentary essential
oils / purge the stench of rotting flesh / chef’s kitchen / maqlouba
_________still warm / backgammon mid-game

savor morning kahva / private balcony / overlooking
_________corpses / alarm clock / ocean of weeping mothers /
vintage carnage / plantation shutters / no sage tea burnt /
_________secret passageways / clandestine graves / tick tock

cat cafés / no kittens / fill the hot tub with leftover blood / still
_________warm, frothy / a shattered tibia / found in the
childrens’ playroom / bury the skulls deeper / floor boards
_________don’t lie / DIY skeleton hospitals / schools included

paint the baby room cyan / we have enough red / save the dolls /
_________pink booties too / plant the all are welcome sign / slim
rainbow font / local orphans / available for landscaping / will work
_________for wheelchairs / countertops with genuine human bone inlay

private olive grove / roots endure / relentless / undaunted / inexorable / extermination ongoing

listing price_________30k children_________digital keys only_________non-negotiable

and then this happened

The beautiful, messy, buzzing and welcoming city of Wellington is covered in many walkways, some are easy to do, an hour or two, always with a lookout along the way, others are longer, with much climbing and stepping up and down through housing areas and deep bush, all with birdsong and amazing vistas along the way.

Yesterday, I almost completed the Southern Walkway. As I was slowly making my way down the last meters of a steep path in dense woods, the wide open southern beaches beckoning at every bend, I slipped and fell and broke my right ankle. That day I had spent three blissful hours hardly meeting a soul, just many many birds. And now I was on the ground trying to take in the odd way my right foot was hanging sideways when I heard voices. They came from a playground downhill across a large meadow at the foot of the path. And when I called out, the first person running towards me happened to be an emergency doctor on maternity break, toddler twins in tow, followed by a firefighter who had taken the day off and his partner, who both had just moved into their home across from the play area. Within the next hour or less, I was carried across the field to a bench, where I passed out briefly, was given two paracetamol and much back rubbing and comfort while the firefighter managed to bundle me in his car, drive me to the A&E where my daughter was waiting with a wheelchair. 

The triage nurse saw me 15 minutes later, followed by an X-ray to confirm bimalleolar ankle fracture and after my foot was cleaned (some nasty looking cuts punctuated the heavy swelling), I was given iv antibiotics, a cup of tea and more iv painkillers plus propofol, which meant that I was in dullaly land while the bones of my foot were straightened and plastered in place. When I was back in the real world, the orthopedic surgeon handed me a bowl of lemon icecream, more tea and detailed the coming scenario, a couple of days for the swelling to go down before surgery, hopefully Monday and then several weeks of recovery. All medical staff, from receptionist to surgeon were female and we were on first name terms as is the custom. My wonderful daughter who stayed with me throughout was given a bowl of passionfruit icecream. I only found out later, so missed my chance to taste it.

By 10 pm I was on a bum crawl up the many stairs to my daughter's beautiful house. Where I am now resting with the leg elevated, crawling on all fours to the toilet if need be and otherwise being looked after in splendid luxury. Alfie, the dog, slept by my side all night. I spend my hours dozing off the propofol (vaguely thinking of Micheal Jackson), watching training videos on walking with crutches - I am looking at six weeks of cast and no weight bearing - and marveling at New Zealand's accident compensation scheme which states in the official paperwork: It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from or what you were doing when you were injured, you are covered.

The grandchild is slightly overwhelmed but looking forward to painting on the cast and promised to read me stories. The rest of the family is serving snacks and excellent coffee, sorting out visa extensions and travel cancellationns/changes, while I pray to the gods of the expensive comprehensive flight insurance I bought last year.

It hurts like hell, I could complain a lot about living like a stranded beetle but I leave that for - maybe - later.

 

 Just last week I read this here somewhere and I can confirm that nothing is boring right now.

People have different comfort zones. You can think of it like an onion: inside, in the core zone, you feel comfortable, life is running smoothly, but it's also a bit boring. Around it is the zone of learning and challenge, where you feel challenged but not overwhelmed. And on the very outside is the panic zone.

 

Alfie

 

I think it's a sea horse

bath time

 

along the way

 

about 30 minutes before I slipped and fell

 

brief reminder along the way

t
 

war in Europe

Four years equals 48 months equals 208 weeks equals 1460 days equals 35040 hours equals 2012400 minutes equals 126144000 seconds.

Ukrainians have changed the way they wage war; they no longer ask when it will end, but only how. Ukrainians are saving us all, and unlike us, they don’t even ask us to say thank you.

Anne Applebaum interviewed in Il Foglio (link in Italian)

briefly

For the past month and the next and the next, I am in a far away place, doing the school run, laundry, gardening, cooking, shopping and lots more in a household where one person goes to school, nature school, gymnastics, swimming club, music and art clubs as well as bath, hairs, teeth etc maintenance not forgetting reading and drawing and playing, another person is about to publish a book with all the deadlines and let's not disturb stuff going on, a third person is organising and chairing a major science conference while on day three after my arrival she sufferef a freak accident resulting in substantial injury to her right hand which means I do a lot of wound care, typing and accompanying her to various medical appointments trying to ease her load because conference is imminent and important to her - and there is the dog and a cat and much more, so no, I don't really read or comment or look for comments on a regular basis. Bear with me if you can. If you can't,  sorry.

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them (Germaine Greer)

The absurdity of being asked to justify the need for feminism in a world where men in positions of extraordinary power were humiliating themselves for access to a convicted pedophile sex trafficker is almost hard to process. 

In that context, the question isn’t whether feminism went too far. It’s how anyone can still pretend it went far enough. It’s difficult to take critiques of feminism seriously in a world where male solidarity routinely outranks basic moral judgment. 

Liz Plank

 

One of the foundational acts of the Roman empire was the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer that carried off the city’s effluent and made its glories possible. The Romans thought of it as sacred and gave it its own presiding deity, Cloacina.

The Epstein archive is the Cloaca Maxima of the contemporary American empire, a vast sewage system that underlies and enables the triumph of gilded misogyny. Epstein is its sacred monster, the presiding deity of the cult of rapacity to whom men of privilege sent up their supplications: let us prey.

The Epstein files (and we should remember that millions of documents are still being withheld, presumably to protect the guilty) are the underground waste disposal system of a very open and massive construct: the backlash against feminism. These are secret histories of a counter-revolution. Epstein and all those within his astonishingly expansive sphere of influence – bankers, speculators, political players, but also scientists, intellectuals and artists – are culture warriors. The war is being waged on women. What we see in the files is a coherent and concerted reaction by elite men against one of the great revolutions of history: the feminist revolt of the 1960s and 1970s.

Fintan O'Toole

 

It’s not all men. It’s not all billionaires. It’s not all power brokers. But it’s a lot of the ones that have been dictating a lot of the terms about the place. It’s not even that it’s a lot of men, it’s the fact that the slippery networking, covering-up, the leveraging and assumed exclusivity of what was a men’s club cult seems so normal, so familiar, so assumed for them all. Like it’s what they do all day, in their outside lives.

Sarah Wilson
 

Kia ora koutou

 

Here I am, where birds the size of a child's fist make the loudest call, where butterflies the size of my hand surround me on my morning walk, where you greet the bus driver when you enter and say thank you and goodbye when you step off, where the sun is hot and dangerous and the sea is freezing, where the coffee is black and stronger than anywhere I can remember, where the wind can be relentless and overpowering, where the city is really a maze of walkways and trails and where every walk involves steep slopes, thick bush, amazing vistas and seemingly endless stairs and every encounter is on first name basis.