Almost midwinter.

the apricot tree asleep

The sun set at 04:28 pm today. The wind is fierce but we enjoyed an almost blue sky when we went out for the afternoon walk. Earlier, R insisted on going up on the roof to nail down the zink top of the chimney that was blown down. This was accompanied by me complaining hysterically about him taking risks while these kind of events and repairs are covered by the expensive insurance we keep on paying and never claiming. But there are things a man must do. Or so it seems. Anyway, he noticed my distress and voluntarily joined me on my walk.

The garden is more or less dormant. This is the vegetable area with a stretch of sprouting broccoli and Brussel sprouts in the top right, some chewy green leafy stuff from a Chinese plant in the top left, a last bit of hardy spinach and couple of parsnips in the front left and green manure (phacelia) in the right front. The rest is a neglected mess. We share the parsnips with the magpies and the squirrels, strictly on a first come first serve basis.

In the greenhouse, I am nurturing two surprise avocado plants from stones that started to sprout while sitting deep inside the compost and two pots with next spring's new lilies or maybe iris. I forget.

I have again been odered to document my food intake (energy, protein, B12) for a couple of days and this has been today's fare. You are welcome to skip this bit. And I won't do this every day.

• Breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal porridge with low fat milk and a delicious clementine fresh from Spain. Two cups of black tea, each with a drop of low fat milk.
• Mid-morning snack was a slice of spelt toast, with a bit of that vegan butter stuff that's meant to be rich in omega 3, topped with a slice of fol epi (French cheese from the Loire valley) and  another cup of black tea with a drop of milk.
• Lunch was a soup I made from a large fennel bulb, a chunk of cauliflower and two small potatoes, all of which I first roasted in the oven with a generous dash of olive oil, salt, pepper and baharat (Middle Eastern) spice mix before I whizzed the lot with an added handful of Thai basil and some left over feta cheese in the blender. Ate it with another slice of spelt toast with that omega-3 spread on top of it. Followed by a large cup of coffee with hot foamy milk.
  
• Mid-afternoon snack was the daily dose of protein powder (pure whey) mixed in a cup of Greek yoghurt and a handful of fresh raspberries - they come from Morocco these days.
• Dinner was cottage cheese mixed with cherry tomatoes and Thai basil. More black tea with a little bit of milk and three slices of Zwieback. 

I enjoyed all of it, most of these are from my favourite foods list anyway. As long as I can remember I have been a big fan of Zwieback, which is sometimes translated as rusk but that's not quite it. At some stage, I even baked it myself but it's a bit labour intensive (Zwieback translates as baked twice) and much easier to just buy it. The variety of Zwiebacks is vast, I am currently partial to the "whole spelt with butter" version. It must be dipped into tea or coffee. My mother and women of her generation made a baby dish of Zwieback soaked in some hot water or milk - depending on the age of the baby - and then mashed with a banana. It is also excellent in a decent sherry trifle.

Here is a picture I have borrowed from Wikipedia.

On our walk we talked about the state of the planet, we always do. We covered fake news, our own set of blinders when it comes to how (not) to avoid fossil fuels, plastics and other comfortable stuff that we are too lazy to change. We talked about the civilization collapse and the roof skylight that needs repairing. Also, Black Doves on Netflix.

 

What motivates us to act is a sense of possibility within uncertainty – that the outcome is not yet fully determined and our actions may matter in shaping it.

Rebecca Solnit

when we were gods

These are the days of darkness and cold. It's barely above freezing outside. While I was cleaning the downstairs windows (I enjoy cleaning windows BTW), I notice that something or someone has been gnawing away a bit of the frame from the patio door. The door is made from very hard hardwood and has been unblemished until six weeks ago when I last washed the glass and the frame (I take window cleaning very seriously). We decided that it's not the end of the world and that for now we shall observe hoping that the door will not collapse. Maybe the termites are coming to take over the house. Last night I dreamt of being back in Africa fighting with never ending columns of red ants.

My mind is otherwise blank and blissfully useless. I got yet another letter from the pension people in Ireland promising even more arrears to be paid shortly. As a matter of fact, shortly could mean anything and R thinks it's a scam anyway. 

Here are some mostly anonymous bits from the wise internets. That's all I have the energy for.

History has shown time and again that defeating injustice is much easier than achieving justice.

 

You can relax. If you decide against climate protection, it does not mean that you are selling your soul. You are only selling those of your children and grandchildren, and if things go well for you, you won't even have to watch.

 

Lauren Hough

For all the mothers out there, I wish you would read this post, it's longish, so take your time. I admit that I got quite emotional reading it. And I am a hard nut as the saying goes.

https://katywheatley.substack.com/p/a-very-long-post-about-maternal-burnout

diagnostic dead end

 

In fairness, it was kind, the way he told me over the phone. In my mind's eye I could almost see him shrug. We have reached the end of diagnostic options. And I replied that I understood, obviously. I almost laughed. After four experts and I lost count how many procedures, it has been agreed that the displacement of various bowel segments due to chronic inflammation scars and whatever else could - in theory - be surgically repaired but what's the opposite of in theory here, maybe in fact. In fact, surgery is not an option because of the compromised immune system due to the past 10+ years of immune suppression therapy, which most likely saved my life or at least the life expectancy of my liver, kidneys, heart and lungs. Also eyes and ears. And ayway, surgery in otherwise healthy people without an autoimmune disease has a success rate at only around 50 percent.

In short, this is the shape of things from now on. Me, hoping in the morning that the small bland yet pleasant breakfast portion will not cause a wave of painful bloating that could last until evening, while creating an Ottolenghi style lunch with said bland ingredients.

I have long ago accepted how limited my personal autonomy actually has become with a body that's a site of complication and now that eating has become a trial-by-error assault course, I can only shrug.

As Virginia Woolf said, in illness, the mind gives way to a thousand fantasies we don’t find time for in health.

Other than that, it's winter and cold and wet. I push myself outside, well wrapped, listening to a gruesome thriller, feeling slightly embarrassed for doing so when this is the view.

I could share my thoughts on stuff, like how the more feminist achievements there are, the more patriarchal violence increases. And how the crisis situations we are living in - climate crisis, wars, increasing poverty - motivates men to abuse and humiliate those who are below them in the hierarchy and how this behavior is increasingly accepted. How global right-wing extremism celebrates a traditional, alpha image and how religious fanaticism, whether evangelical or Islamist, celebrates the oppression of women. But then what? Right now, I just want to get from one day to the next, have a decent walk, digest my food without too much pain and find out who did it (in the thriller).

 

and everything moves

 The sky this afternoon just before sunset, 28 days to midwinter.

 

Today, suddenly and with a strong wind, it got mild again. I went for a long walk along the river, feeling lucky and content for the moment. The nasty cold is behind me and as for the rest of my health concerns, something will work out eventually. Maybe, hopefully. Enough to feel good. For the moment.

Unlike last Friday evening, when I attended a debate on the war in Ukraine and what could, may, will happen next, now that the madman in Moscow has begun to deploy his new range of weapons. It was not an evening of easy listening. What do I know. All I could think of afterwards was how glad I am my parents are both dead, my mother would be so frightened, so freaked out. 

After reading Eve (Cat Bohannon), I am now halfway through Mother Nature (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy) another book on motherhood and evolution or according to the subtitle: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species. It helps to engage with a broader viewpoint of humanity for a change, to consider how recent and how pretty amateurish and stupid our footprint as homo sapiens has been to date and how minute in the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, this country I am living in is preparing for a general election in February. The tone is getting increasingly nasty, the hype of fake news while not quite (yet) trump material, nevertheless gaining ground. I try to remind myself that although it appears that the cement within this society is no longer solidarity with one another, but common hatred of others, every system, be it a democracy, a dictatorship, an autocracy, you name it, is led by individuals.   

In view of this, I have started to set up a little toolkit, a collection of essays, handouts, opinions, guiding voices from here and there, maybe just to calm my nerves, maybe to reassure myself that there are outspoken, sharp, caring, attentive, thoughtful people out there, around me. People who will keep their eyes and ears open, ready to step in, step up. I may figure out a way to create a link to it eventually. Currently it's just a mixed bag in three languages. While I am working on this, here the main theme (taken from here):

• As much as possible, we should do things fascists cannot do. 
• As much as possible, we should not do things fascists want us to do and we should do things fascists don't want us to do. 
• Never accept the fascist offer.

Thus,

We do have to call them out, and name them as the Windigos that they are, with all the ethical, moral jeopardy associated with that.

Robin Kimmerer

 and

What is a tyrant but a grotesque clown, a farcical reflection of humanity’s darker nature? He, like all despots, will pass. The earth will continue, wounded perhaps, but enduring. 

Philippa Perry

Hence,

Underground is where the work gets done.
For decades this has been true and the moment to get to work has been here for a long time…. A long time.
I think it’s time to go underground. Stealth care… Create women’s health clinics that are safe and secret. Create assistance and care for climate disaster victims. Create portable homes for people in motion. Create safe havens for whistle blowers and dissidents. Create help for immigrants. Create care centers for substance and tech addiction. Tend the communities of people who are making new paths. Make music. Create restoration of waters and soil that are not state bound. Time to go beyond borders and tend beyond nationalistic boundaries. Tend your and others’ mental health. It’s time to get off the stage and on the ground. Time to get to work in ways that are not ensnared in polarized politics. Unseen and unnoticed acts of generosity and triage are needed, regardless of who has the microphone.
No meme or model or glamor will do it.
Be a dandelion; persistent and filled with healing gifts. Expand into the minutia.

Nora Bateson

and more:

I'm just a sucker for courage. As I say so often, I'm moved by the gift of courage, because when you walk towards danger, in the danger, and dare to do what's needed, you put your own safety at risk so you become in some way larger than life. Fear makes you shrink, doesn't it?

Joanna Macy

As the institutional care of dominant politics breaks down, as politics becomes a vassal for something else, revealing other desirous vocations that disrupt the idea of the isolated discerning human subject, may we find the openings to do more than we think possible now. Something more compelling than victory (and the moral assemblage that makes finish lines and trophies meaningful) shimmers in the near-distance. Something that urges us to lose our way, together.

Bayo Akomolafe

We say everything comes back. You cannot divert the river from the riverbed. We say every act has its consequences. (. . . ) We say look how the water flows from this place and returns as rainfall. Everything returns, we say, and one thing follows another. There are limits, we say, on what can be done, and everything moves. 

Susan Griffin

It is a help towards sanity and calm judgment to acquire the habit of seeing contemporary events in their historical setting, and of imagining them as they will appear when they are in the past.

Bertrand Russell

 

Totally unrelated, but as (grand-)parent, I can feel it:

the best day, the hardest day

Today is the birthday of our daughter. The hardest day of my life, the most beautiful day of my life, the best day of my life. (I have written about it here.)

This morning, we woke to frost and a dusting of snow, so we wrapped up well and went for a walk. Every year on this day, when we share memories, it's different. Today, R talked about how he feared we were close to death, how he thought we would die, our premature baby and myself, how he tried to stay calm. And I remembered his shaking, cold body when I tried to lean against him, his white face, and that I asked the midwife to look after him. I remember watching blood running down my legs and trying to think why. I also remember signing my name under a short note I wrote in a shaky hand (when this is over, never again) but no note was ever found. I remember roaming the house all night, shouting and laughing and roaring. It has taken me years to speak calmly about the nuns and the nurses at the hospital where S spent two weeks incubated in a brightly lit room, where we had to fight for access, had to beg for my milk to be fed through the gastric tube. So on this cold and grey day we walked full of wonder how it all turned out, how we are all sane (?) after all. And at one stage, this girl was walking towards us, maybe six, seven years old, on her way home from the school down the road. She was deep in an imaginative play, gesticulating, hopping, whispering, not noticing us or anything else. And R looked at me and smiled, wonder what's her story, he said.

 

And I will raise my hand up into the nighttime sky
And count the stars that's shining in your eye

only 32 days to midwinter

There's the good and the not so good but what the heck. It's November, what do you expect.

The good news. We spent most of the weekend potting small tree sapplings and then putting up notices online and by hand on the garden gate and throughout Sunday, people came to pick them up. Once upon a time, these sapplings were squirrel food storage, now long forgotten. I checked and no, squirrels are not into planting trees for future harvest. They just bury too much stuff and also, they are forgetful, which, if you happen to be a growing forest, is a nice touch of evolution but when you have a medium sized garden in suburbia, the number of trees you can grow is limited.

Next, I potted most of the aloe vera offspring, all the small bits that grow around the big ones. I'll give them some time in the greenhouse to grow roots and then they'll go the way of the sapplings.

After much deliberating, we moved all the plumeria into the big basement room where there's almost no daylight.

The bad news, I divided up the amaryllis shoots into individual pots and now they look miserable and maybe won't flower at all. 

Also in bad news, I am still working on that cold. I tried ignoring it and went for a long walk in the rain and did some yoga and cycling around for an hour or three - not all on the one day - but this cold is of the stubborn variety it seems.

Almost forgot the other good news which arrived in the shape of an official letter from the back and beyond of County Sligo in the far northwest of Ireland, which is where the Department of Social Affairs (pension, contributory) has been abandoned relocated in an effort to decentralise things away from Dublin. Anyway, the good people inform me, in a long letter written both in English and as Gaeilge, that I am entitled to a pension as of November of last year and that I will therefore first of all receive an arrears payment, followed by monthly instalments. Hurray for paying PRSI tax back in the dark ages while working for pennies in the worker's co-op. I am now able to afford a large pizza for three every month. Or maybe one for two including drinks. And since I am currently unable to digest pizza and don't partake of the drinks, this is even better. I will be rich!

Another bit of not good news is that the weight loss has moved from discreet, which was deemed acceptable, to concerning. But I tell them it's probably an outlier, a bad month, that kind of thing. This was met with disbelief. Instead, I had to provide another stool sample to check on flare-up control, with mediocre results. I may be looking into a change of monoclonal antibody, which is tedious but still preferable to surgery. Or maybe not. Some days, I get a brief and sudden taste of some almost forgotten food right there in my mouth as if I'm eating it. Odd things, like bland chicken breast, or, yesterday, warm German custard. German custard  - Vanillesosse - is usually runny, a thick sauce poured over overly sweetend desserts. Even with a healthy digestive system, I wouldn't really eat or cook either but who knows, maybe one day. Which is to say, I am still hopeful that this digestive conundrum will come to an end eventually. 

Temperatures are in the single digits (Celsius) and there has been snow in the distance which means rain and more rain here. Four and a half weeks to midwinter.

The news from Europe are that Europe stares war in the face because Trump is aligned with Putin who wants to crush Ukraine, and also maybe the Balkans and Poland and the governments of Sweden and Finland are now instructing households on how to prepare for war. While we watched the footage from hīkoi mō te Tīriti, yesterday's march for the treaty, in Wellington, NZ, knowing that our family is somewhere there in the happy, peaceful crowd, we felt such relief knowing that where they are, neither Putin nor Trump can touch them, yet. And that maybe, maybe, maybe, a strong indigenous community will continue to keep this corner of the world safe and alert.

 

small acts of resistance

This here, watch, spread it and think.

 

When the nazis came to power in Germany, my father was a toddler, when Germany finally capitulated, he had just turned 16. Throughout his childhood, his primary school years and a big chunk of his secondary education, access to literature, art, music, media, was strictly controlled. Only one radio station was permitted and households had to purchase a specially designed radio, the Volksempfänger, for this. I know from his recollections that many households had more than one radio and that even on the Volksempfänger, foreign radio stations could be listened to. It took some fiddling and obviously, secrecy. There is this story that one day, my father's older sister was picked up by a suitor for a date and apparently, he turned pale and rushed to my grandfather's big old radio to quickly move the dial from BBC back to where it had to be. 

Anyway, imagine a childhood and education where most books were banned, where all education materials, including songs, music, outdoor activities, sports and so on were strictly controlled. Also, imagine children in compulsory uniforms. (This is one reason why there are no school uniforms in Germany and youth organisations like the Scouts are not very popular here.) In 1939, six years after the nazis came to power and just before Germany started WWII, the Hitler youth, which had existed for a decade as a "voluntary" youth club for boys (in fact a paramilitary training camp) became mandatory for all boys from age 10 upwards. My father turned 10 that year. My grandfather managed to convince the local police chief that my father, his 10-year old son, a small shy boy, was very skilled with horses and could be trusted to look after the parade horses the police kept for special occasions. My father had never been near a horse but one of his uncles gave him a crash course and so my father - instead of marching and parading with uniformed school boys - mucked out stables and groomed horses for many years, all of which could obviously not be done in uniform. I call this an act of resistance, albeit a small one.

Another one was my father's classics teachers. Secondary school with only nazi approved literature, just try and think what it may entail.  While the officials were busy banning and burning novels and picture books and history books, my father and his school mates studied Latin and Greek, they translated and discussed in the original language, texts on democracy, failed tyrants, how to debate, the power of public participation, philosophy, but also the beauty of nature, poetry, art. Nobody stopped them, ancient classics, these old dusty books, they meant nothing to the nazis, they had no idea. We used to laugh at my father's party pieces, quoting original verses and lines from Homer and Plato, Aristotle and Tacitus. 

 

news in brief

"A Russian state news channel aired nude photos of former U.S. First Lady Melania Trump as newscasters reported on her husband, Donald, who, since launching his successful campaign for 45th presidency of the United States in 2015, told supporters that being eaten by a shark was better than being electrocuted, said that he wanted to purchase Greenland, claimed that American bowel movements require fifteen flushes, speculated that the hairspray he uses to maintain his “gorgeous head” does not contribute to climate change because he keeps his windows closed while spraying it, stared directly into a solar eclipse as his aide shouted “Don’t!,” told a widower that her husband was looking up at her from hell, denied his first ex-wife’s accusation that he assaulted her in a fit of rage after a botched operation to reduce the size of his bald spot, buried his first ex-wife near his New Jersey golf course, recounted to a group of boy scouts the details of a decades-old cocktail party featuring a pro-segregation real estate developer that was attended by the “hottest people” in New York, repeatedly praised a fictional serial killer, said that “Second Amendment people” could “maybe” kill his opponent, accused congress members who didn’t clap for one of his addresses of treason, reportedly condoned the idea of his supporters killing his vice president for certifying the presidential election he lost, said black Americans should vote for him because he was “discriminated against” when he was arrested and charged in Georgia with attempting to subvert the state’s vote tally in that same election, and said he would act for one day as a dictator if he was reelected as the 47th president, which he was, by a margin of almost 4 million votes."

 

Harper’s Weekly Review, today

news? truth?

"Social media is mainstream media now. It’s where the majority of the world gets its news. Though who even cares about news? It’s where the world gets its memes and jokes and consumes its endlessly mutating trends. Forget “internet culture”. The internet is culture. And this is where this election was fought and won … long before a single person cast a ballot.

Mark Zuckerberg has ditched his suit, grown out his Caesar haircut and bought a rapper-style gold chain. He’s said one of his biggest regrets is apologising too much. Because he – like others in Silicon Valley – has read the runes. PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, creeping around in the shadows, ensured his man, JD Vance, got on the presidential ticket. Musk wagered a Silicon Valley-style bet by going all in on Trump. Jeff Bezos, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon with just days to go, ensuring his Washington Post didn’t endorse any candidate.

These bros know. They don’t fear journalists any more. Journalists will now learn to fear them. Because this is oligarchy now. This is the fusion of state and commercial power in a ruling elite. It’s not a coincidence that Musk spouts the Kremlin’s talking points and chats to Putin on the phone. The chaos of Russia in the 90s is the template; billions will be made, people will die, crimes will be committed.

We’re all wading through the information sewers. Trump is a bacillus but the problem is the pipes. We can and must fix this."

 

Carol Cadwalladr (klick on her name to read the rest)

seven in flower

 

the one in the middle only flowers in summer

 

In the analysis and debate following German reunification in 1989, when things didn't exactly proceed as fairy-tale-y as imagined, there was this one statement that - at the time - captured it: A nation has risen to be able to go shopping. 

Today, in one of the many comments on the US election results, I read: You voted for fascism because cereal, eggs and gasoline have become more expensive?

Obviously, that's not the whole picture and I am an ignorant old woman from Europe. But still. I made the mistake (?) of downloading the entire Project 2025 and started to get the shivers on page 3: Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. WTF. No source given, of course, no research results, no statistics, no evidence, just a nasty piece of opinion.

Also, on Wednesday after we got the news on the US election in the morning, our own government collapsed in the afternoon - these two events are not (yet) related and while our own versions of the ultra right wing and the not quite ultra right wing but nevertheless nasty populists are all getting ready, we don't seem to have as nasty a piece of shit in line as trump (yet). But when in the far future, two German historians should meet and one asks the other, what's your area of research? and the answer is, November 5th 2024, the next question inevitably will be, am or pm?

I believe there are two things that can stop the fascists. The first is their own vast incompetence. The second is all of us. I think I'd rather count on the second than the first. Actually, here is a third thing: climate change. 

Remember. There is a lot of power in society that is not in hands of elected heads and their staff. There is power in state and local governments, the courts, federal bureaucracy, schools, nonprofits, businesses, churches, mosques and synagogues, in local communities and yes, in families, with or without a father. Much of this power can be used to work to stop or mitigate the bad things that a fascist, autocratic whatever government is imposing.

I have a cold, my throat is raw, R made me do a covid tests (neg) and I am grumpy. Also, angry, because I want to go outside but: too exhausted.   

Finally:

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have never looked at the world.

Alexander von Humboldt

Now pay attention: you and I are among the most privileged people on this planet. We have access to information. Not only do we have the right to freedom of expression, we can even exercise it. We can be politically engaged citizens in our societies. It is absurd for people like us to think about despairing or giving up.

Anne Applebaum

A depressing day for freedom and tolerance.  The outcome of the election in the US points the way to an age of intolerance, lies and violence - worldwide, not just for Americans. Other, smaller countries have long since gone down this path. And my country, Germany is already on the way.

What do people around the world may learn from this? Why be honest and kind when lying and being rude/criminal gets you elected president twice. This overwhelming desire for leadership through authoritarian conservatism will serve as a model for populists everywhere whereby malice, unscrupulousness, brutality, isolation, lies, selfishness, wealth, lawlessness, oppression are the accepted means to success. 

Our world and humanity have suffered a great deal of damage. Yes, and maybe the only positive thing about this day for some will be to remember it for the rest of their lives. But people everywhere, we have no choice but to show courage, solidarity and organization. First and foremost, we must look after the planet, each other and the less privileged and show them that they are not alone. 

When in Germany earlier this year, the ultra-righwing fascist party gained 30% of the vote in three federal states, we went through a period of shock. But eventually, we recognised that 70% did not vote for them and that we must concentrate our efforts there. And the same is true for what happened now in the US, a slim majority voted for intolerance and hate, but a large minority did not.

This day has a great tragedy, let's make it a great strength.

 

Here a good example of what a joint effort can look like, from Valencia, Spain, earlier this week.

migration

I often feel embarassed to admit that I'm an optimist. I imagine it knocks me down a peg or two in people's estimations. But the world desperately needs more optimism. The problem is that people mistake optimism for 'blind optimism', the unfounded faith that things will just get better. Blind optimism really is dumb. And dangerous. If we sit back and do nothing, things will not turn out fine. That's not the kind of optimism I'm talking about.
Optimism is seeing challenges as opportunities to make progress; it's having the confidence that there are things we can do to make a difference. We can shape the future, and we can build a great one if we want to.

Hannah Ritchie

All day, we were busy in the garden. I was busy sitting down and watching and drinking cups of tea while R was busy mowing and clearing and mulching and all the stuff that he has been doing for ever.

And all that time, thousands and thousands of crane were flying above us, on their way from Sweden and Finland to their summer homes in northern Africa. They do make a lot of noise. I waved to them and asked them to please come back next March.

to refrain from encroaching on what we don’t quite understand

 

 

I did many wonderful things this week, I laughed often, appreciated my excellent fortune of where and how we live, had enjoyable and enlightening times outdoors, indoors, in conversation and while contemplating.

Somewhere along the line in the past years or so, I think, I must have figured out that I want to have all that (above) despite the ongoing ill-health issues. After a while, it's either giving in and breaking into pieces or getting on with it, sort of.

When I had the three sessions with the clinical nutritionist earlier this year, I was introduced to the proper way of recording food intake, its positive and negative results and why. At first, I found it tedious and thankfully, I only need to do this for 2-3 days every so often to keep on track, but in hindsight, it makes sense and yes, shows some sort of cause and effect.

Anyway, the barium paste seems to have left the body and the bad days are not quite as bad which gave me enough energy to go for another long hillwalk with the man.

We started with a short steep climb to a 11th century castle ruin.

 and proceeded through dense forest in gorgeous autum colours

and found a small cemetery from the middle ages

some excellent views once we got up high

and a soft path with thick gorse bushes on the way down

with plenty of mushrooms

On Thursday was Samhain, one of the Celtic quarter days better known as Halloween and wrongly described as a US custom. I don't mind, really. It's slowly arriving here too but the few kids we saw running around were basically just after bags of sweets.

We built a small fire in the fire bowl on the patio and R talked about the Samhain rituals of his Irish childhood which involved apples and nuts and bairín breac (barmbrack) and much scary laughter and story telling. Athough he grew up in middle class suburbian Dublin, the ancient folklore traditions were part of his life. It was around this time of the year, when I first arrived in R's family and I had No Idea. Especially when the barmbrack was served and my slice miraculously contained the much cherished ring. A barmbrack is a sweet raisin bread that is used for fortune telling (more here). I also thought the entire family was slightly mad when we proceeded to do the weird thing with apples in a bucket of water. 

This here is a lengthy but enjoyable podcast episode put together by the National Folklore Collection of the University College of Dublin explaining and celebrating the Samhain origins of Halloween:

AmbasadaIrlandii · Samhain event recording

 

Folklore is a beautiful way for us to connect with our local landscape—our own natural environment—through the symbols and stories and narratives that are told about it. I think there’s a tendency nowadays to look at these things in terms of “They may be a bit twee,” or “They’re slightly footy because they’re so odd,” or “Ha-ha, who could take those silly things seriously?” But I think they should be afforded much more dignity. So much of this has been distilled through countless generations. The contemporary experience of modernity that we’re passing through now is a sort of restless discord, a feverish hand-wringing. And these structures—whether fairy lore or ritual or belief or custom found in our traditional practices—hold a lot of joy, profanity, wit, wisdom, humor, darkness, even, which is useful. They’re meaningful, they orient us, they ground us. They can help us move from disenchantment to enchantment with the world around us. When you look out across a landscape, it’s not just some bleak void—there’s a mystery and depth and richness to it. Suddenly, there’s a flash of the fantastic into the ordinary, into the everyday.

 Jonny Dillon (archivist of the National Folklore Collection at the University College of Dublin)

 

fog's sake

This is what greeted us late afternoon today. It was very silent for a Sunday and yes, beautiful. But not my beautiful.

It has been a shitty week with seemingly endless cramps and bloating and all the heavy stuff that goes with it. There are times when I hang from the door frame like a woman in labour, followed by long hot showers. More often, I feel the urge to drop the grin from the grin and bear it approach and instead kick the door frame or whatever else comes my way. Which is when R thinks it's time for the ER but so far, none of the real emergency events have occurred that I have been informed should neccessitate such a trip (vomit, blood, fever). This started after I had a strange imaging procedure on Wed morning, involving a sticky toothpaste like barium paste, and things have been going downhill since. I am hoping for an uphill turn eventually. The intestine is such a massive disappointment currently. Somehow I do believe I am on the way to possibly have some of it removed. I wonder when the day comes. Meanwhile, food intake is tricky.

My daughter was almost in tears when I told her this morning that I don't see myself going out for a meal ever again. The life of the young loses meaning without sushi or pizza. I told her that I have had my share of delicatessen, some of which I would not eat again even if healthy (octopus, bat, pig's glands, snake, escargots) and that I have excellent and fond memories of eating in amazing places on several continents. It calmed her down a bit.

The silver lining in all this is of course being retired, having time and place for distraction, for the making of bland soups in their endless variations, for gardening and staring into space while sitting in a deck chair wrapped in several warm blankets, for watching the jays flying in to elegantly pick the peanuts I place on the patio for them. Also, we cycled through glorious sunny forests yesterday and sat down for coffee in the Portuguese cafe where I watched R munch a warm pasteis de nata. Now that is something I wish to eat again one day. 

And of course, reading, this not for the first time, but the book is so amazing:

So I think there was one moment in the evolution of human language that marked a dividing line: before it we were not yet human, but after it we where.

It was probably the smalles thing, neither heroic or grand. More than likely, it was the intimate moment, probably late in the evening in the low blue quiet before dreaming, when a single human being told the very first story.

I doubt it was told to a group. If anything, it probably took shape between two people who already spent most of their time trying to talk to each other: a fussy child who needed to sleep and a mother who needed to sleep even more.

Cat Bohannon in: Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution (2023)

And finally, a poem that spells autumn for me:

    

 

Rock Me, Mercy 

    The river stones are listening
    because we have something to say.
    The trees lean closer today.
    The singing in the electrical woods
    has gone dumb. It looks like rain
    because it is too warm to snow.
    Guardian angels, wherever you’re hiding,
    we know you can’t be everywhere at once.
    Have you corralled all the pretty wild
    horses? The memory of ants asleep
    in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.
    The magpies gaze at us, still
    waiting. River stones are listening.
    But all we can say now is,
    Mercy, please, rock me.

 

Yusef Komunyakaa

the news today

The garden is all autumn.

The cabbage season beckons.

The eight xmas cacti came inside and promptly started to produce buds. 

We walked for a couple of hours in the forest 

 

 

 to visit a waterfall

 

and marvel at the horizon

 

I am living in the country where in my parent's lifetime, books were burned, people were persecuted for their political, religious, personal opinions, children with disabilities were selected and institutionally murdered, where the Holocaust was invented and carried out with great precision. I am also living in a country with a long history of great thinkers, creative artists, composers, architects, painters, inventors.

In most towns and cities in my country, there are memorials, statues, museums, stepping stones, monuments, signposts, street names, commemorating resistance fighters, Jewish or Roma or Sinti or gay or otherwise persecuted citizens.

One set of my grandparents were nazis, the other tried to avoid any involvement with them, tried to keep out of it and did nothing. My parents went to school at a time when flags with the swastika were on every building, when almost all activities, from sports to music, chess to scouting were under nazi control. Both my parents remembered friends, neighbours, shop owners, public figures disappearing. My family made it through twelve years of fascist rule, too many wounds and scars to count, but safe and apart from one cousin killed in Russia alive.

Until most recently, we would almost laugh out loud when someone like trump used the word fascist or nazi. You haven't the faintest, we muttered, your idea is based on a cheap Hollywood version where the good guys win.  But now I am not so sure any more. I read this here today by Heather Cox Richardson:

Examining a number of types of Americans, she wrote that the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so completely in the promise of American democracy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easygoing to join a struggle. “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”

Read the entire letter, I urge everybody and not just in the US. This could happen anywhere. Trump, coronavirus, the Russian attack on Ukraine and Hamas terrorism have only been the triggers that have made a change visible, which in turn lies more in the reactions to these events. Epidemics, wars and terrorist organisations have happened before. The insecurity they trigger has more to do with the fact that we cannot find an appropriate response to them. We withdraw, stop reading the news, shrug and concentrate on the mundane, dinners, shopping, gardening. There don't seem to be any institutions left to handle crises effectively. Instead, it looks more and more that it's not who is right that wins, but simply who is stronger. Is it just me that finds this scary? 

There are days when I try to reassure myself that all fascist states have failed eventually and utterly, some sooner  (Germany 12 years), a few lasted longer (Portugal, Spain), but they collapsed nevertheless. 

Because: people stopped them. People. Like us. We are people.

Also, climate change could speed it all up dramatically.

 

no children

 

Today, we were meant to attend a wedding in a castle in Ireland, the whole shebang, dress code, timetable on specially printed stationary, cousins and counsins and cousins and eventually food and drink followed by speeches and dancing. But, printed on page 2 of the invitation with exclamation mark, strictly no children. I was conflicted, debating how to react and so on. We had composed a friendly letter wishing them a lovely day (without adding the snarky stuff like hoping there would not be any foolish mess, that nobody would be knocking down the decorations or singing out of tune or otherwise mess with the protocol) and declined due to other stuff like a couple of health issues and medical exams and so on - chronic illness comes in handy at time - and so, we are not going and won't really be missed. I haven't been to many weddings as we come from a generation of people who, if it had to happen, opted for the potluck variety and kept it down to a minimum of commercial fuss. My idea of a wedding is bit like a barn dance thing with kites flying and a couple of very cosy bean bags for the older relatives, a hot tub under the full moon and many candles. But it seems times have changed. No children.

As a sort of punishment, today, I feel like mush, shaky, tired mush.
For the last couple of hours I have been debating with myself about going out, walking down to the river - at least that far! - or maybe take the bicycle and get some cottage cheese and a fresh bag of peanuts for the jays, or find any other excuse reason to get up and move.

There's this thing that I have cultivated in the last year or so, the thing about pushing myself no matter what. And usually, it works. By the time I am up and outside walking or cycling or doing yoga or cleaning the fridge, wiping down basement walls, scrubbing the skirting boards or raking up leaves from the front door steps, I am energised and fine. For a while. I actually did rake the leaves earlier and come to think of it, I did scrub the skirting boards, even cleaned away a million spiderwebs from behind the radiators and changed the sheets on the beds this morning.
There was a time when I actually felt somehow strangely entitled to Take It Easy and taught myself to Own It and all that stuff they tell you when you are first diagnosed with a chronic illness. For reasons unknown (today), I have left all that behind or at least pretend that I did. Look at me, I would tell that woman in the hall mirror, I am off to walk 20,000 steps and when I come back, I will clean the 12 windows downstairs or dust behind the bookshelves for another hour. Meanwhile, the man tells me that I had very little sleep last night and that in his opinion, I should maybe better not . . . I get it.

 

It is still possible to be kind to yourself,
to drop constraints and fall often
to your knees, it’s not too late now, to bow
to what beckons, the world still swimming
around you as you kneel transfigured
by what sweeps on, it’s still possible
to leave every fearful former self
in the wake of newly-heard words
issuing from an astonished mouth.

David Whyte

autumn week

It's been a hard week, physically, but the mood has been surprisingly cheerful. We are eleven days into October, then comes November, December and before we know it, the days will get longer again. Time flies. Autumn is late this year, colourwise. 

 

 

This is the cemetery I visit quite often. At this time of the year, it really should not be that green. 

Temperaturewise (is that a word?) it's autumn, I wore my winter jacket for the first time this evening.

 

We harvested all the pumpkins and have eaten some already, here's the rest.

 

 

 

Basically, I am exhausted. But not always, not all the time. I wouldn't be able to hold down a job right now. My siblings are confused, tell me how well I look and how fit I am, what with walking and stuff. 

A person with a chronic disease should not look so normal.

Anyway, been through this so many times.

Here are two nice little videos that came my way this week, first from rural New Zealand:

next from a laundry room near you:

Between two hospital procedures

Without much discussion or preparation, we took the car and drove south on the slow country roads, turning uphill at the valley entrance. The road got narrower as it wound its way up and up, it came to an end beside an old chapel where we parked the car. It was sunny but quite chilly, we walked briskly. 

The view was spectacular, the forest welcoming and silent.

Eventually, we needed coffee and other types of sustenance, so we made our way back to the car. Isn't it great to be retired, R said while he drove us home.

blue is my colour

Once again, autumn descends in a flash, last Saturday, we were sweating it out in the city, listening to street musicians, licking ice cream and today, we are debating whether it's time to heat the house. When I set off on my bicycle this morning, I put on mittens! Not the thick ones but mittens nevertheless.

It's been a bit of an exhausting week what with blood and stool sampling and gruesome results and all that it entails (change of meds, mostly) and the urge to basically sleep A Lot. And there I was about to celebrate a month without doctor's visits. Still the relief when a slightly alarming diagnosis confirms what my body had been telling me in recent week, with increasing urgency. But hey, I am an old hand at this game and so did all the right things incl. a three hour wait in A&E.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Virginia Woolf

And once again, there it is staring into my face, this for-ever narrative, unable to find a linear explanation for the state I am in.  It's fruitless, at this point in time, apparently inevitable, but I admit, it's hard, so hard to carry it like a middle name, the disease, the diagnosis, the inevitable consequences. Plus, the new angle, the one when . . .  at your age . . . I must apparently not expect too much improvement.

But then again, I do know there are ways to change it, even if there may be circumstances that won't make change possible (like, your immune system is fucked), I can and will, once again, challenge the way I view it, the way I place myself in it, battle with the victimhood I so easily could accept. The way it seems inevitable. Only, I just don't have the energy for it right now. It'll come. I am in a safe place. We harvested all the pears, all the apples and all the pumpkins. What could possibly go wrong.

To celebrate life and to cheer myself up, I am seriously contemplating to purchase this dress all the way from Jaipur, Rajasthan, India ( https://www.nilajaipur.com/). Blue is my favourite colour. In our conversations, we establish this fact almost daily, the grandchild and myself. The grandchild does a lot of drawing and colouring.

 

stay awake and tender

 

winter bird food in the making

 It is better to wear out than to rust out. Did I read that or did somebody say this?

Anyway, I am working hard on the wearing out bit, not a chance of rusting. The purpose of my activities is to fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day after having done too many things to remember. But I do spend a considerable amount of my time in the basement sorting and cleaning with the vague hope that I will feel so much better once the rooms underneath our living space will resemble something Martha Stewart would approve of. Also, the new washing machine needs a suitable environment and we are running out of storage space for the bottled pears and the gallons of freshly produced grape juice. 

the onset of winter veg, aka brassica season

 

I also went on my walk before lunch and cycled before dinner. While I enjoyed both activities, I had neither lunch nor dinner as this whole thing about energy dense nutrition is currently not quite coming along as planned. I am working on it though and chopped up the first fat pumpkin for soup tomorrow.

Earlier, I baked an apple pie, the old fashioned way, following a recipe I cut from The Irish Times about 40 years ago. R enjoyed it immensely, he said. I enjoyed watching him eat. Some days, I feel very sorry for myself because of all the restrictions a twisted intestine brings but most days I remind myself of all the weird and wonderful meals I have had and how lucky I have been. Or should I say, entitled.

These are my thoughts in preparation of the next gastrology appointment on Thursday. My expectations are low but I have started the requested food intake diary.

general mayhem with asters

 

Ok so, the state of the world. There are people in this country who are adamant that not all populists, right-wing zealots are nazis just as not all members of Hitler's national socialist party were nazis (good grief, it's in the name, folks) and that one must distinguish and not lump them all together, but that obviously all immigrants are terrorists and/or criminals and therefore, we must shut our borders, regardless of international or EU law or whatever.

Also, according to these not-all-are-nazis smartasses, those-up-there should stop telling the people what to do and what is really needed is a strong leader. Spot the error.

Two things I found:

 and what a surprise

autumn

Today was the last day of summer. Rain and a considerable drop in temperatures forecast from tomorrow. I spent the day outside nursing my aches and pains and my foul mood. It has been a wonderful late summer day, clear air, plenty of wasps, the kids from the Baptist family across the garden playing Pharao and Joseph, or maybe Moses. They were hysterically shouting attack and I found you! 

I just sat there most of the time, dozing and breathing and keeping it together, after a bad night. Things can only get better.

On Friday, I stood in a large crowd in the city listening to an open-air performance of Beethoven's 5th symphony.  The stage was placed right beside the cathedral, built in the 11th century as the burial place for two Roman soldiers who were beheaded by the Roman emperor of the time because they had converted to Christianity or something like that. Every religion has its martyrs and these two, Florentius and Cassius, eventually became the city's saints. Still two of the most popular boy names here.

Anyway, not my saints. Also the fact that Beethoven himself was actually born here in this city does not affect me the way it does the endless stream of mostly Asian tourists who patiently wait in long queues to document on social media that they are indeed in front of his former house or have climbed on one of the various statues of the man and purchase all the touristy stuff laid out for them, including Beethoven tea and Beethoven wine and Beethoven chocolates, also Beethoven tote bags and Beethoven socks, obviously.

While I was listening to the second movement of Beethoven's fifth, I looked up and the sky was just beautiful, all sunset pink without a cloud and a flock of pigeons circling the cathedral towers. The second movement of this symphony is one of my favourite pieces of classical music - and I am not a classical music person - and as always, it made me cry a bit. But maybe also, because I was thinking of how much my father would have enjoyed that evening, the air, the light, the birds, the music. I do miss him at times.

 

 

Tomorrow, a new washing machine will be delivered to us. This is a milestone, as always, and hopefully it will be the last washing machine in our lives. It will be washing machine number six. I am now going to write about all the washing machines we ever had, so if this is not your thing, you can stop reading here.

As background, I must mention that after years of scraping together sufficient means to feed the laundrettes during my student years, a real personal washing machine was a game changer.

The first one was a large top loader and it wasn't really ours. Its purchase had been decided after a heated debate during a housing meeting of the commune we lived in at the time and top loader because one of the communards had strong feelings regarding cats being accidentally locked inside and washed to death. It basically ran all the time because it was used by various groups and committees and campaigns. Approval for all voted for at house meetings, of course. 

The second washing machine was smuggled past the customs in that tiny African country we had moved to. Initially, we did what our neighbours did, we bashed our soapy laundry onto a concrete slab behind the house and provided there was no water stoppage on the day, spent ages rinsing it. When I heard through the grapevine that a consignment of Yugoslav washing machines was due to arrive at the port, we developed a complicated scheme whereby I posed as the girlfriend of a newly arrived Belgian diplomat we had bribed with drinks and excellent freshly grilled tuna on banana leaves to insist that a new washing machine was urgently required by me, his future diplomatic wife, with full approval of his embassy since no ordinary person would have a chance to even look at such an item without large sums changing hands. Probably everybody involved - from the customs officials to the stamp duty collector and the taxi driver and their families and friends - spotted the ruse and as expected, our standing in society was elevated by a couple of steps with much nodding and winking.

For a while, this washing machine was a major attraction and we had many visitors to sit and watch until it eventually, luckily only a few weeks before our departure, met a dramatic end when a couple of fat cockroaches electrocuted themselves in a nest they had built behind the dial switch, almost setting the house on fire. 

Number three was purchased in a mad rush on Boxing Day after our return to Dublin, the day of the year when people get up really early to avail of the xmas sale bargains, we opted for the cheapest model. When we moved to Germany a year later, number four had to be purchased as the cheapness of our Irish model did not comply with the safety stipulations of our landlord at the time. And number five was purchased to celebrate the mortgage approval when we bought the house and gave up its ghost after many useful years in the basement laundry room.

Exciting stuff, yes?