I would be puzzled to know, if I were in Putin’s position, how to run Donald Trump as my asset. I have no doubt that they have obtained him, and they could probably blow him out of the water whenever they felt like it, but I think they are having much more fun feeding his contradictions and con-tributing to the chaos. ‘The terrifying thing is, the closer he draws to Putin, the more he lies and denies, the stronger his support among the faithful. You don't need to own Trump as an agent. You just have to let him run.
John le Carré Letter to William Burroughs 23rd July 2018
It's sticky and thundery. In the last couple of days, I went for the walk first thing in the morning to avoid the heat. Not sure whether that's the best idea as I end up getting the shakes half way but this is suburbia and there are many benches and walls and stuff for a short rest. A few days ago, I bravely walked the perimeter of an ancient volcanic crater. It only took us three hours of climbing through dense forest but the water was intensely green and still and wonderful to look at. We were the only people around so nobody could hear my whiny voice complaining about the heat and the insects and that R was walking too fast.
Malbergsee
Mostly, I am cranky and seem to have lost my manners but my excuse is that I have been living on a boring bland diet for almost a year now with not a chance of improvement. At least I can do coffee and I am a sucker for porridge and toast. The man has developed some bland soup recipes with fresh garden produce incl. herbs. Soups are really boiled green smoothies, I tell myself. And they do taste good. Good enough. A decent week is one with little or no weight loss. And concentrating on that helps to ignore some other symptoms the expert has noted at the regular check-up last week, at least for while.
blackberries almost ready
Today, we cycled to the fancy French cafe, in between heavy thunder storms, and while we sat under the awning sipping gorgeous cafe au lait, discussed burial options and costs. I had this dream that both of us had died and our daughter arrived here, jet-lagged and, out of her mind, began tearing her beautiful hair out.
So we are now putting together instructions and the necessary funds. Current favourite is getting an undertaker from across the border in Holland, which unlike here, would allow collecting the ashes and spreading it where and when anybody wants to. While in Germany the laws are much stricter, you cannot spread ashes willy nilly everywhere. We next imagined her trying to get two urns past NZ customs and started to have the giggles. Anyway, lots to investigate and we are serious about preparations.
poor shot of the bees
We are both old now, more or less, and getting used to it. And while we are clearing out stuff, sorting through papers, preparing our burials, it's just old age, it's not waiting for death, it's life. Our lives will come to an end, it has happened to billions of people before and it will happen to everyone alive, everyone we know. The man is fit and healthy, I am not. Anything can happen.
It's been very hot, often very windy and in between close and grey and humid. We had heavy thunderstorms, heavy rain and today, it's sticky and grey. Whatever we may think, the garden is doing extremely well. Until a few days ago, I sat for a while every morning shelling the peas that R brought me. Now they are either eaten or in the freezer. We continue to argue about the soft fruit which according to my thinking should be eaten straight away in large handfulls while he believes in freezing it for a rainy cold day of jam making. Let's see what happens when the plums and the peaches are ripe. Any day now. Also, runner beans and courgettes and tomatoes and some lovely fat beetroot. It's also an excellent apricot year but they need to be washed - because stinkbugs. The man has started a big jar of cassis with the fat blackcurrants.
no more peas
Early in the mornings and again after sunset, if we are very quiet for a moment, we can hear the snails holding their fat bellies with laughter. They know, of course, that we grow lettuce and basil, fennel, kohlrabi and beetroot for ourselves. They think it's all a big joke. But we are not without our own menacing thoughts and means and, what can I say, ready for war and it looks like we are winning. But hush, let's not jinx it.
this is the covid patch, the bit we've left idle since lockdown
I used to be that person who could be observed devising schemes for ants, fruit flies or spiders to find their way out of the kitchen without loss of lives. On good days, you could hear me talking to them with heartfelt encouragement, even giving the last ant group a gentle push with the small duster. All for my good karma.
tons of finger aubergines
But honestly, the spiritual and I have not become friends. I probably lack the discipline, or my despair of the world has subsided somewhat. In the limited human reality, I now also find things that make me happy and keep me going. Actually, I always have. I wouldn't be where I am now if it was all gloom and despair. It's just so much more fun to complain and moan.
I've been thinking about all that recently. Someone, a long time ago, told me that not being religious (he meant not being a catholic) was cheap and stupid, leaving the hard work of salvation and whatever else to others while living the life of Riley (who and where is Riley now?). That I should be ashamed of myself. Another person, in a more serious debate, was confounded by the fact that my child, who was not raised with the fear of god and nothing about sins, was spending huge chunks of her time and energy doing what he called good, selfless work. How could this be, her wondered. A heathen child! Indeed. Dear gods, I am so proud of this heathen child, you have no idea.
I'll never understand it but I admit there are days when I wish I could just hand it all - fears, hopes, needs - to some higher force and say, get on with it, give me the rules and I'll fit them in. If only. But then again, how dull and predictable.
I wonder what the gods had in mind when they createdTapinoma magnum, an invasive ant species that used to live predominantly in the Mediterranean basin but has - thank you climate change! - found its way closer and closer to my home. Not there yet, but already established in towns and gardens at the southern end of the big river we live on. Their nests grow to several metres in size and the colonies comprise millions of workers and hundreds of queens. And individual colonies do not fight each other like other species, they co-operate and form the United States of Antsikia, an insect superpower. The shape of things to come.
In a perfect world, people would focus on the political content and, despite Biden's suboptimal form on the day, would take time to read the transcript of the debate, check the truthfulness of the statements made by both candidates and analyse on this basis who has the better plan for the US. If that was the case, I am guessing Joe Biden could win the election in a landslide. The fact that he himself is by now old and slow would be irrelevant, because he would gather around him an extremely capable team.
Perhaps the central weakness of democracies is that they are based on the assumption that the majority of the people acts on the basis of rational considerations, able to justify their voting decisions with arguments and willing to discuss them in the hope that the best argument will ultimately prevail.
Instead: A coup, and the junta wears judges' robes. And the media has a field day.
These Trump abortion lies about “after birth” abortion and abortions at eight or nine months are shiny things for the media because they evoke imagery of wanton, careless women and evil doctors. As if at 36 or so weeks (because the women getting these abortions at or close to term were previously too busy with their hair and nails), scores of women finally book a $99 abortion they easily found on their For You Page on TikTok. Unless they can find a friend who was also just too bored to get her abortion earlier, then they can take advantage of the Monday BOGO abortion deal and split the cost. And if they can’t make it to the local strip mall abortuary because of important reasons, such as shopping, for an extra $20, after they deliver, they will get the doctor to kill their now newborn as part of some kind of package deal. It is a grotesque conspiracy theory, and to let these lies fly by several times in the debate falsely implies they are grounded in reality instead of what they are–fascist lies shrouded in double-speak. And unfortunately, replying to them rationally in real time doesn’t work.
And the media can’t help themselves, because a shiny thing from Trump is just the best.
It's that time of a summer when the lime trees (linden to some) are in flower sharing their intense fragrance, especially at night when we open up the house after a hot day. This suburb is lime tree suburb with street after street lined by old tall trees. There's no point washing cars or windows are whatever until they are done. It is spectacular despite the fact that at times, the intesity of the fragrance borders on cat's piss.
When my daughter was a moody teenager, we went for a couple of days to Paris since we guessed - rightly so - that our days of family outings were numbered. There was some parental apprehension due to her teenage mood swings and her unwillingness to even look at a guide book or show the slightest interest in what Paris may have to offer. As it happened, her parents had a massive argument the morning of our departure which resulted in this grown up teenager sitting between two sulking adults who refused to speak to each other. Things improved dramatically after we arrived thanks to the thousands of Paris's lime trees in flower and we had some very fine days of which we speak fondly to this day.
Meanwhile, I visited a street music festival, the open air opera festival and the long night of the museums, not all on the same day, and was completely washed out for three or ten days. Well worth it though.
And I've gone and had the second or maybe fourth opinion from another team of experts. This one doesn't want to go for surgery - yet - and anyway, would not be able to promise any marked improvement as a result. So it's more of the same, with variations, a sprinkling of this and that and No More Weight Loss. I am still relieved about the no surgery bit. As it stands, you just have to accommodate each new bit of knowledge, each new limitation, each new experience, each new fear that comes your way. Even if you die a little. What else is there. Porridge, a small handful of freshly picked berries, yoghurt and if you are the fool I am, too many juicy, ripe Spanish apricots resulting in a sleepless night.
These three things have come my way.
A poem.
Hello to you all, how do you live?
Rabbit : We live in small groups, have no fixed partnerships. Build widely branching tunnel systems, in which our young are born, naked and blind. We still reproduce when imprisoned.
Hare : I live solitary. Sleep in a shallow hollow. My offspring are born with fur and open eyes. I have never been domesticated.
Humans : We don’t quite know. Until we have found out, we wage wars.
According to her website, Saeed believed we humans had a lot to learn from animals, and her favourite daydream was imagining aliens and animals coming together to meet humans to give them a masterclass called ‘How Not To Mess It Up’.
A bit of music.
And a short film. (More info about it, click here.)
It seems that I’ve developed a habit of holding my breath. I must remind myself to exhale. I forget what my default setting used to be. It's the strangest thing, chronic illness and its long tail of sidelines and risks. The way it doesn't stay the same despite the same old same old stuff day in and day out, the tediousness of the restrictions and vigilance that the medications dictate. Until there's the day when it's become more shit than before, in comparison. When I realise this has been going on for some time, while I distracted myself with pretending to be healthy and jolly.
trying to stay on top of it
Well, if there's one thing I should have figured out in the last decade, it's that it's rare to get through life in general without any difficult phases. In one form or another, at some point, shit happens along the way and we have to hold our nerve, get our cool, stop ourselves from falling apart. And I am at that point, I think. In all these years of being ill, as long and hard and also as wild and happy as they have been so far, there has never been a day when I am not reminded of being ill. As much as have tried, initially, there's no way to switch it off. It's always something and right now it's a bit more. It is that time again when I need to sit with all the trouble until I come to reach some balance within. Regardless or probably especially because of the surgery looming on the horizon.
very happy with the apricots
The week has been hard, more than I want to admit it, I have battled daily through long hours of cramps and colic determined to not let this rule my day and stop me from doing stuff. But Thursday was the day, I packed it in and have since stayed home, no walk, no cycle, no gardening. Instead, I sleep in the afternoons and otherwise sit on the patio doing nothing at all. When it comes to food, I pick something from the slim list of tolerables with grim determination just to get some energy, protein, fibre. The nutritionist declared to be at the end of wisdom, handed me lists of recipes for bland soups and variations of watery porridge. Her wisdom was good nevertheless and I am grateful. On Wednesday, I handed over all my medical reports and stuff to the next set of surgeons who will now deliberate options prior to next week's scheduled appointment. Sounds great but I fear it will turn out that on Tuesday, some exhausted junior doctor will quickly glance through the file and ask the same questions again and I will reply with the same old list of concerns and then there will be that moment of irritation when I cite the medical research papers on the risks of surgery option 1, 2 and 3 in patients on immune suppression. I usually smile apologetically when they realise that I am a patient with a rare autoimmune disease, one they have heard about maybe once during training and then I usually and briefly explain that due to my long work experience I have access to and experience in checking and even interpreting relevant data. But still, there will be that sigh and oh shit etc.
the front, there have been complaints about it being too much of a jungle
And yet, and yet and yet. The garden is bliss, I walk around and pick s small handful of berries. Wonderful people come and sit with me, bringing fresh cherries, flowers, laughter and talk. I nibbled some cherries, too many, and pay the price but it was worth it.
I swear when this is over and sorted, I'll design the ultimate luxury food book, one that celebrate all the delicious, spicy, sweet, fatty, rich dishes I can only dream of ever eating again.
Hold hard this infirmity. It defines you. You are old. Now fix yourself in summer, In thickets of ripe berries, And venture toward the ridge Where you were born. Await there The setting sun. Be alive To that old conflagration One more time. Mortality Is your shadow and your shade. Translate yourself to spirit; Be present on your journey. Keep to the trees and waters. Be the singing of the soil.
After several days, weeks (?) of heavy rain, we finally have a couple of good sunny hot days. Enough to go wandering about before sunset and dip into the various small local art festivals and open air concerts. I spent a few hours wandering about at the "Long Gallery Night" looking at art objects and nibbling the finger food, pretending I was actually flush enough to purchase anything, while R topped up on the free drinks.
The excitement of suburban living.
Yesterday, we received a big box of organic apricots directly from Analucia thanks to crowdfarming, one of the best ideas that have come into our lives.
Today are the European elections. A long time ago, decent people dreamed of introducing free, equal and secret suffrage in Europe. At the time and even today, plenty of opponents think this was a mad, even bad idea. But today on the continent whose history has been characterised by wars and more wars, where only 80 years ago, the allied forces landed on its beaches to set out and defeat the nazis, people living in 27 countries are now able to vote in unison for a common parliament. I know that to some the EU is nothing but a large corrupt corporation only interested in setting silly and divisive rules.
Many people vote because they think it will create the world they want to see. I don't think that. Today, I voted against the ugly new fascists raising their heads. Because if you stay asleep in democracy you will wake up in dictatorship.
Human beings are good. I am convinced that we are constructed in such a way that we want to get along well with our fellow human beings. For some, the hardware is damaged. Through violence, abuse, neglect, mental illness or just because. And then the software crashes. In the normal population, around two per cent of all people are psychopaths, very few of whom are in prison. Many have a much bigger playground, they can become CEOs, US presidents or dictators in the Kremlin. And we can only handle them if we are not divided into bitsy little countries bitching about each other.
Democracy is not a finished product, not something that we have, but something of which we must see ourselves as a necessarily active part. Which is why the man is spending his day and late into the night volunteering at one of the voting centers. I sent him off with a big box of oatmeal cookies I baked late last night.
Other than that, I have finally managed to sand down the bit of the wooden floor by the patio door that badly needs revarnishing. I tried my best, my arms are shaking from the rattle of the sander but in some places, the worn out bits are too damaged and I should probably get a better tool or someone with more ellbow grease. Do I care? Not at all.
The song for today. For more about its history, click here. In the last couple of weeks, the varied gangs of street musicians in our city have come together and wherever/whenever the neonazis put up their election campaign stands, they turned up to sing this song. I have no video from them, this one is from a somewhere in Italy.
Well, we did have a good bit of rain, as in: WTF, this is meant to be summer. But at least no flooding (yet) as is happening in other parts of this country. The garden of course loves it, although the tomatoes could do with sunlight. Which may just be around the corner, and probably too much of it.
We dug up the first lot of potatoes, the French pink ones, Franceline, that's their name.
In between showers, I have attended a Fridays for Future rally, participated in last week's critical mass cycle event and sat in a couple of meetings and talks celebrating 75 years of the German constitution. I was ten years old when we started to read and discuss it in school, one article a day, starting with the first one: Human dignity shall be inviolable. So like the good citizen I am, I have started again, one article a day, for 146 days.
It's been a difficult week or three with this diet stuff and not everything works as suggested. I cherish the days when I am not bent over with bloating for most of the afternoon. The word surgery is floating on the horizon, second opinion appointment in two weeks. I am exhausted.
As for distraction and enlightenment, this is what I have come across:
This article as an example of what could be more unhinged, crazy and yes, they do think that Elon Musk is the future king. Pronatalists, seriously?
climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it
Finally, a poem.
Questionnaire
1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.
2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.
3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.
4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing to desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, towns, farms you could most readily do without.
5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security, for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.
It's been wet, so much rain, and the garden is exploding. This year, the three plum trees are so full - even after dropping some unripe fruit - it looks suspicious, as if the trees are giving it their final all.
the veg bed in mid May
There have been days when I felt I was losing the plot and on these days, I go through the motions with teeth clenched (not literally) and the thought that no, I am not going to stop doing what I want to do regardless of colicky pains and all the rest of it. I walk into the library, pick up my ordered books, move on to the whole food shop, sit down with a coffee, smile at everybody thinking, nobody knows. Surely, I must look healthy.
the tomatoes are meh this year
On the way home, checking the front gardens and greeting the cats, the feeling of dread surfaces. The dread has nothing to do with my health, it's much deeper, bigger. It has taken me some time to recognise that it has become a constant feeling, low down, watchful. It is a bit like the feeling you get when you are awake in bed, waiting for the sound of your teenage daughter's key in the door after the night bus has passed the stop down at the corner. Only bigger. Because, your daughter has grown up and can look after herself. In hindsight, it was such a tiny feeling of dread, for such a brief period. And what a relief to know it's over. Nothing compared to this big dread. Bigger even than the fear of war, of the madman in Russia. Of the fascists gaining ground in Europe again. Of the bird flu virus spreading to humans. Fiddlesticks.
And I look at the people I pass on my walks, greet and smile at, watch them in their gardens, on their patios, playing with their kids and grandchildren, walking their dogs, the two guys who empty our bins, the postman on his e-bike, the mad woman across the street as she carefully covers her front steps with old crockery to ward off evil spirits, the toddler next door to her learning to walk, the twin girls across our garden playing Elsa and Anna. And I wonder if any of them, all of them, feel it too, maybe not right now but some day to come, the feeling of dread for our planet's future. The dread we keep on pushing away. And I wonder what would happen if we could share it and make it go away.
The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship, or family, or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.
Effort has never been my forte. In school, I was lazy. I did the bare minimum and basically sailed through it with equal portions of luck, bullshitting and because at age 10 I was deemed to be clever. For example, based on a lengthy story I wrote as a homework assignment, it was decided that eventually, I would be writer. Also, a small enamel pendant I had hastily manufactured in art class was proof that I was a budding jewellery designer. And when I correctly used an oversized protractor on the blackboard in my first week of geometry, I was considered a budding maths nerd. Whatever I did, it was enough to be placed one year ahead of my peers. That was my stroke of luck as it happened at that brief period before teenage arrogance when I was still amazed by what school and learning and the teachers had to offer. Soon enough, I found school confusing, there was much that was over my head and which could only be tackled if I invested time and effort, something that soon interfered with my other interests (I forget what they were) and in response, I decided that school was mostly boring. But whatever I did, I was still supposedly clever and so I sailed through school on the strength of that. It did not matter that I knew deep down that I wasn't clever at all. It was enough to just act as if. In hindsight, it was my first brush with politics because once you were deemed to be a clever kid, the teachers could hardly go back on their judgement, couldn't they and so I was carried along year after year, collecting dreadful results mostly, performing poorly in most subjects apart from German and Latin. I won't deny that there were times when indeed I was clever and that maybe I could have been clever all those years but basically, I couldn't be arsed to do a thing and I had figured out early enough that my shortfalls in science and maths could be nicely covered by my moderate skills in essay writing and showing off my love for reading. Plus learning Latin verbs and regurgitating translations of Tacitus and Cicero was simply down to working out the appropriate techniques and applying the stuff when required.
Modern languages were my worst subject. I failed three attempts of voluntary French and I barely made it to the end of the compulsory years of English, despite a lengthy and very boring time as an exchange student in Grimsby, one of the duller places on earth in what was then south Lincolnshire. What got me through English without complete failure was the American Forces Network radio. When I finally was allowed to drop English after year 10, I was looking forward to a life without ever having to bother myself with it again.
This morning, on the radio, I listened to a person interviewing a world famous writer. A long time ago, I knew this person - the interviewer, not the world famous writer - quite well, we were part of a crowd, young people who wanted to change the world the way you do when you are young. This set me off on one of the internet tunnel searches for the others who were part of the crowd. The ones I found, of course, are those who for reasons of their accomplishments, skills, and obvious cleverness have made their way, won awards, published poetry, lead important campaigns and so on. In all this pleasant discovery, these are good people and I am amazed that long ago, we shared a path, I felt humble. Me and my failed degrees, my zig zag course of a career, my meagre pension, my ill health, I could go on. But then R pointed out that if, for example and simply to brag about myself, I was to put my name into the Google Scholar search bar, there will be over one hundred results. That includes many double mentions and all of it is someone else's original work just edited and/or translated by me, but for a brief moment, I felt that yes, I have achieved stuff. I know my stuff, I work with language and while I was never on radio interviewing a Nobel laureate, I have left a mark, a small hidden one.
Sometimes, I regret not putting in the effort, I regret dropping too many subjects much too soon because they were not instantly appealing and obviously required time and mental struggle. I see this girl and this woman who was out looking for the short cut, the sweet and easy, the fun side of things first of all. Of this I am certain and I admit as much. Of course, life caught up with me, motherhood caught up with me, finances and lack thereof caught up with me. I managed, my life has been good, and yet I know that in terms of what people at the time - and they were no fools, they did see potential - predicted and expected, I failed to deliver. Too late. Although I just enrolled in an online course on human physiology of all things.
Good Bones
Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
As usual, spring was just a skip and a hop, a nervous day or three with sunlight and blossoms opening and now we have summer. Full on. When I was a kid, my mother and German people in general, had this thing about Übergangskleidung - transitional clothing - when you get to wear a somewhat lighter anorak and ditched the mittens and scarf on your way to school but still had to stick to the warm tights. Not here in the valley of the fat river. From one day to the next, it's all tank tops and Birkenstock sandals.
Anyway, this summer is different because I don't work anymore, it doesn't matter if there's a thunderstorm or if it's getting too hot to work without the fan on and the blinds down. I am only two weeks into full retirement and I am head over heels in love with it.
That's the good stuff.
the veg patch is exploding, the glas cover is there to protect the corn, the pots in front are even more potatoes, all in all I think, we are growing eight different varieties this year
The not so good stuff is that eating contimues to be like gambling—sometimes I win, but mostly I lose. After some complicated blood work and bioelectrical impedance analysis I have now officially earned the title of malnourished and in the spirit of, let's try whatever, have been refered to the department of nutritional science where I was swiftly included into an ongoing study on the gut microbiome. I will do my bit for science even now! For the next three weeks I have to follow a very restricted diet and ingest something called PHGG. It's only a stopgap, a distraction of sorts, however, while I await the scheduled second and third opinion on possible surgery options and these now include removal of some of my intestine. To add some entertainment I have enrolled in an online course on improving muscle strength, eight weeks, every second day, 40 minutes including warm up and cool down. Another gamble, but so far, I am surviving.
the plumeria look kind of odd this year
On the outside, I am the same skinny woman, I walk a lot, cycle a lot, I use my roll of FKNZ stickers to cover the neonazi graffiti along my walking route and elsewhere. I chat to people, dogs, cats and birds. I whisper my appreciation to the rambling rose and the plum trees. I sleep well, read a lot and solve cryptic crossword puzzles.
I knitted these three pillow cases using up some of the left-over wool that I had marked retirement. The pattern is from ravelry (designed by Jenise Hope) and R will do the sewing and stuffing, he is a talented tailor in disguise as long as the seams are in a straight line.
The year of 1979 was an educational year for me. I was a second year student at the university of Heidelberg, I had just turned 21, was really naive and impressionable, although at the time I considered myself to be extremely well versed in all things politically. Every day I collected the leaflets handed out on campus, I even read most of them but possibly didn't quite understand all of it. I frequented the radical and the feminist bookshops, I attended various meetings, admittedly some because I wanted to impress a guy or was involved with a guy who tagged me along. I campaigned for amnesty international, reclaim the night and rape crisis groups, I attended various South and Central American exile groups mainly for the great music and food but ostensibly to support their fight against autocratic regimes. I rolled my own cigarettes, wore dungarees, had long hair, occasionally took the odd illegal drug, went to festivals, rallies, sit-ins etc. and in between somehow managed to attend courses and sit exams.
Among my friends at the time were three sisters from an Iranian family, whose father had fled to Germany to escape the corrupt regime of the last Shah. These three women knew how to have a good time and could be found at the best parties and festivals. Politics was never on the agenda until the weeks in January and February 1979 when the Shah fled Iran and the exiled Ayatollah returned. First, all three of my friends - together with happy fellow students also looking for a good time - were celebrating, there was dancing and drinks and food and lots of rejoicing. During the day, they were distributing leaflets about the Iranian revolution and freedom and the end of oppression of all people and especially women and so on. Within maybe a week or two, that changed. My friends were now wearing black headscarves, chanting slogans about the new supreme leader and the power of Islam. I didn't understand what was going on. Still don't.
I think of them often these days, when I watch images from students protests across various countries, mine included. I rewatched again and again a short clip of three masked but very apparently not Arab young women, somewhere in the US, shouting, we are Hamas, we are Hamas, we hate you, at a small group of Jewish people.
I want to accept that it is probably not really hatred that drives them, but the feeling that justice is being trampled underfoot. Justice is such a high motivation for many people - I get that. The suffering of the people in Gaza is obvious, as is their helplessness against a locally overpowering Israel.
And yet, I am searching the various media channels to see if there is any resentment towards Hamas anywhere among the protests, and I find none.
Yes, there must be an urgent end to the violence, a human catastrophe, possibly genocide, is unfolding in Gaza. Yes, the Israeli army is guilty of several war crimes, this must be investigated. Yes, the situation of the Palestinian civilian population is intolerable, a solution must finally, finally be found that enables peaceful coexistence in the region.
But, Hamas is a terrorist organisation that not only accepts the suffering of the civilian population, but has deliberately caused it in order to make political capital out of it. Hamas is a racist, homophobic, anti-women organisation. Maybe they are not (yet) as bad as the taliban but if you follow the money, you can see the relationship. Please educate me if I got this wrong.
On a more amazing and possibly cheerful note, two things here that moved me this last week:
The Chauvet Cave was discovered in 1994, one year after we had spent the summer roaming around that part of France and I like to think that we may have been near it, maybe pitched our tent on a meadow close by. Inside the cave, there are paintings, works of art created 32,000 years ago. Like this one:
My life of being gainfully employed is almost over. The extension I had agreed on last November will be completed by the end of this month. That's two days. In a bit I am going to cycle there for one last time to hand over my mobile phone and some data files and whatnots. I wanted to bake a cake for my colleagues but we only had one egg left last night, so tough luck. It's all over now.
Now, when I wake up I have to first tell myself what day of the week it actually is. I am discovering that I can slow down, that I can take my time. I am a knitter and I go for the complicated patterns that involve a lot of colours and a lot of counting and checking and rechecking. When I make a mistake, a tiny one, I sometimes used to ignore it, even it out with a slip here and there in the next row. Who cares, I would think. And: oriental carpets, the hand made ones, always have errors in their patterns. That way they can be recognised as originals. Once I was told by an old woman in a small village in the Ida mountains in western Turkey, these errors are proof that only Allah is perfect. But now, I have time and I go back and redo the row, unravel a whole section with one small mistake right at the start. No rush. But no need to be perfect.
I watched a long Terence Malick film without getting impatient. That's a first. We make elaborate plans for day trips, walks, swimming in cold water lakes and hot water springs, museums, galleries, Flemish cities across the border, the North Sea coast three hours drive away. And then we stay at home, get lost in the garden, make a pot of tea, listen to the news, talk with the neighbours, cycle a while along the river in the fading light at the end of the day.
It's been cold and we had two nights of frost. This vine has got a touch of it but we hope it will recover. My father-in-law brought it back from the US many years ago, a gift from one the distant emigrant cousins. He nursed and pampered it in his greenhouse in Ireland and when the house was sold, R brought it here.
Meanwhile, mysterious stuff is going on inside our greenhouse.
While the vegetable patch is slowly coming along. The spuds survived the frost and the sugar snaps are up and climbing.
The thing is that there are good days, not so good days and completely shit days. The mistake I keep on repeating is that a good day is not necessarily followed by another good day. In fact, the statistics for this to happen are poor. The man, a retired science teacher, has in all seriousness suggested we track the daily shape of things to evaluate if there's a noticeable trend. While on the one hand that would be a form of occupational therapy and yet another reason to apply the amazing options of an Excel spreadsheet, it would on the other hand give even more space to what already rules far too many aspects of my wonderful life.
Currently, I am paying too much attention on the long and convoluted path of my intestine, from that bit behind the sternum all the way it winds criss cross behind my abdominal wall based on my breakfast of a bowl of overnight-soaked fine oats of which I microwaved all the fiber to death before I carefully chewed the remaining mush with a bit of low fat milk and sent it on its merry way. It's a slow process, occasionally I rest my hand on the small bloated lump and whisper encouragements. But mostly I use swear words while I jump up and down, go for long walks, massage clockwise and anticlockwise and take hot showers before I turn to distraction therapy and listen to the Blindboy podcast, watch true crime documentaries or whatever comes my way, all with the trusted heating pad on my belly. The best part is that it will pass even if it takes its fucking time. By when it does, life is bliss.
There are times when I wish I was a baby with a tummy ache because I know all about that, spent hours with babies on my arms, tummy side down, or on my shoulder, gently massaging back and front, waiting for that burp. The German term when a baby burps, is "ein Bäuerchen machen" which literally translates to "doing what a little farmer does", which so far has not been identified as a hostile, anti-agricultural practitioner term. Anyway, I would love it if someone could cradle me like a baby with a sore swollen tummy but even with all the recent weightloss, I am still 1.7 m tall and that would make it a bit awkward.
The man, who has been reading about methane emissions in cattle and the impact on climate change and successful remedies using seaweed, is now actively investigating seaweed sources for me.
I am writing this while seated in the cafe of the local wholefood shop, just had a decent cup of coffee, listening to the family at the next table, as you do. The parents switch to speaking English when discussing stuff they don't want their two small kids to hear. (Interesting approach to bilingual language training.) The argument is about carrot juice and whether the kids drink too much of it. Been there, I want to tell them, just let them have it, it's only a phase before they ask for sodas. But it don't think it's wise to get involved especially when they think that speaking English is their clever disguise. Dad is now quoting medical research. Always a moment when I must abstain.
And just like that the rain has ceased and I will be on my way home, walking briskly with the odd jumping motion. Every burb and fart a blessing. I hope nobody is offended by all this reference to digestive motions and gaseous effluents. My aim here is to keep the mood at an even level just above getting desperate. And if that's offensive to some, tough luck.
A few days ago, I discovered this youtube channel and it has brought me great joy (don't judge me, see for yourself).
08 April 2024
Shifting baselines is the idea that each successive generation will accept as “normal” an increasingly degraded and disorganized ecology, until at some point in the future, no one will remember what a healthy ecology looks and feels like. Absent any personal or societal accounting of migrating butterflies, winter snowfall, or spawning salmon, future generations will have tolerated so many small losses in population, abundance, and habitat that eventually they won’t know what they’re missing. Worse, they may not even care.
The last couple of days have been the hottest April days ever recorded here. I know it will get cooler again, more "normal", but this weird summer is confusing. Of course, it's wonderful in a way. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon on a deckchair reading and dozing until the ants began to become bothersome. The smell of various neighbourhood BBQ was in the air and it looked sort of benign. But there is a strange batch of hover flies living under the patio steps. I try to disturb them before they nest and find their way inside. I have never done this with hover flies and the usual approach, the one I fine tuned with the ants, does not seem to be effective. It doesn't help that I just finished a dystopian novel that featured unusual insect appearances as a side story.
I also made the grave mistake of stopping at the Italian ice cream place down the road when we went for our Sunday constitutional along the river. I had a delicious scoop of Biscoff ice cream and tasted some of R's selection. This is the reason why I am sat here, close to midnight, with a heating pad on my abdomen, waiting for the pain to subside.
Here's a lovely bit of traditional Irish music, not of the fiddly diddly, jumpy Aran sweater type, but the stuff that made me sit up and listen so many years ago.
I could explain now what I have learned about sean-nós singing and how this tradition lives on. I could tell you about the Irish composer Seán Ó Riada, who collected and preserved Irish music. I could also write about the village of Ballyvourney where he lived after retirement and died longe before I ever knew about him and how you have to walk up that steep hillside to get to it, which I did many times to visit friends who had decided to live off the grid there with a newborn baby (it didn't last, thank goodness). I won't go into it, but only this: the voice here is of Iarla Ó Lionáird, musician and ethnomusic researcher, when he was ten or maybe 14 years old - sources differ.
I haven't been back to Ireland in years now. Occasionally, we talk about moving back there what with Putin so close and the fascist party gaining strength in some parts of Germany and their threats of reversing all emigration and getting rid of foreigners but then we say, why leave it to them, why walk away. Anyway, only talking.
Today, I am in a lousy mood. What else is new. As it is, R has gone into hiding from my snappy remarks.
The thing is, surgery options appear increasingly limited if not completely out of range as it stands right now. One guy I spoke to briefly - a surgeon who called me after a friend asked him to - put it bluntly that my symptoms may only improve marginally after surgery and if at all, only for a couple of years the most. Worse taking the risks? Not really, depending on the time of day.
The alternatives are currently not endless, but out there, including dietary supplements, nutritional guidance and supervision, (limited) medication options to be verified, the obvious life style changes. Main goal, no more weight loss. Forget dinner, as if I haven't done that already. My daughter suggests to concentrate on a culinary breakfast world tour, working my way through the continents, finding stuff I can handle. Trial and error. The rest of the day can go shitface after that anyway.
It's amazing how angry all this makes me. I am tempted to give away my cookery books and delete all bookmarked recipes on my computer. Stick to food as a source of energy, forget cooking.
Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes contain forty ingredients
and you have to start making them six months ahead because you have to
grow the herbs from scratch or leave your spices out until a full moon
and then you have to lure virgins to dance around them until they are
all so exhausted that they collapse and that is a lot to do for a
risotto.
Last night I finished reading a dystopian novel (The Uninvited, by Liz Jensen). I could not put it down and read until 3 am, which meant that my dreams were somewhat impacted and today I am missing a bit of sleep. Here is a quote from it.
Humans like to believe they're rational. But the capacity for superstition is part of our DNA … All the things we fear . . . are as present as they ever were. But they're no longer external. They've been chased indoors. Where we can't let them go.
The nice stuff is still there, I do have reasons to be cheerful. Of course. All the apple trees are in full promising bloom, unlike last year. Lilac week has started. Yesterday, I walked the long route through the posh parts of the suburb where every front garden has a lilac bush. It was simply lovely, plus I listened to the Digestive Biscuit episode of the Blindboy Podcast. Currently, Blindboy, despite his endless swearing and heavy duty Limerick accent, is my daily dose of calm. I think I am falling in love with it all. I am also thinking of getting a decent supply of digestives for my breakfast challenge.
Isn’t it amazing the way life can seem too short, and intrinsically magical, yet at the same time feel like a long, uphill road, potholed with fuckwits?
Good Friday. This is the holiest of holy days in the secular country I am living in. Seriously. By law, all parts of Germany observe nine holy days throughout the year, Bavaria, which claims to be more catholic than others, observes 11 holy days. And these are serious holy days, we stay home from work, all shops, restaurants, cafes are shut, TV programs act as if it's a Sunday. As for Good Friday, no music, no dancing, no long nights in clubs or pubs, no sports and so on. When I was growing up, these days felt like heavy weights of boredom, long and cold and often rainy. Today, I watch the rain, waiting for a break so I can go on a walk. The beep from the house across the road a steady reminder of human acts of fuckwittery.
Many years ago, during Easter break, we were cycling along the river Danube towards Vienna, battling with rain and headwind so strong, we almost gave up. On Good Friday, we woke in a medieval country inn where I had spent much of the night wandering back and forth to the bathroom on the landing across, expecting an imminent UTI but it was just because my feet were freezing cold. We speculated about Good Friday rules and how to get supplies for the day but walked out into a busy market day with not the tiniest inkling of holy whatever. That's Austria for you. Now, in Ireland, it's also just another busy day, as are all other holy days, like Ascension or Whitsun or Corpus Christi. I was seriously shocked when I found out.
Last night, I've read my way through a couple of obituaries for Frans de Waal, a primatologist I greatly admire. On the bicycle tour mentioned above, we visited an exhibition dedicated to his work at the Natural History Museum in Vienna (one the world's most amazing museums, BTW).
This is one of my favourite quotes from his work (I have posted this before):
I cannot name any emotion that is uniquely human. There are maybe emotions related to religion — let’s say spirituality — but even for that, I cannot exclude that animals have those kinds of feelings. Who says they don’t? In humans, religious feelings are not expressed in the face. That kind of emotion is not visible. And if emotions are not visible, how can we exclude that it exists in other species?
One of his findings was the fairness concept, explained here:
I could go on a tangent about studies in primates and how this is so amazing and how we should watch and listen, but it's not just primates.
Pigs have been found to plan and carry out rescue missions to help incarcerated or otherwise distressed fellow pigs. In an experiment, which has been repeated by others , researchers added two small compartments to a barn where pigs are normally kept and both had a window through which the animals could look in and a door that can only be opened from the outside. In the first part of the experiment, the animals learnt to open the compartment doors by pushing a lever upwards with their snout. In the second part, each pig was isolated from the group once and locked in one of the compartments. The other box was also locked, but remained empty. In 85 per cent of cases, the pigs freed the trapped group member from the test compartment within 20 minutes. The longer pigs looked through the window at the trapped animal, the sooner they freed it.
Cows develop livelong friendships with other cows, as well as dislikes. In a field experiment, the "best friend" and "worst enemy" were first determined for each cow. To do this, all the cows in a barn were fitted with transmitters. A type of GPS for indoor areas then records how much time which cows spend together. A cow's best friend is the animal she spends the most time with. The cow it spends the least time with is considered its enemy. Next, the cows are separated for 30 minutes at a time, once with the best friend from the group and once with the animal they has had the least contact with. Most cows started licking their best friend when they met, and when put next to her enemy, started to push her around.
But really surprising are goats. Goats ask people for help, so to speak, when they cannot solve a problem themselves. Take this test that was originally developed for dogs. The goat is placed in a room in which a human sits next to a plastic box containing a reward. The lid is only loosely in place three times, the animal can easily push it away with its head and eat the reward. The fourth time, the lid is firmly closed. Now, the goat alternates between looking at humans and at the closed box, as if they are asking for help.
The more scientists find out about the behaviour of farm animals, the clearer it becomes that their cognitive and emotional abilities have so far been hugely underestimated. There is still a widespread belief that all these animals are dumb eating machines that have neither thoughts nor feelings and therefore do not need to be treated with particular consideration. However, this has long been scientifically disproved.
I have milked cows and goats, mucked out stables of all three (and more) types of farm animals, I observed baby goats and lambs being born, bottle-fed some of them, and I have eaten them, lamb, goats, pigs and cows - disguised as ham, sausage, steak, cutlet, mice, bacon and so on.
I've also eaten octopus, pheasant, chicken, rabbit, hare, venison, duck, geese, even flying foxes, snake and frog legs. Not including fish and seafood. About twenty years ago, I lost the appetite, my inflamed intestine couldn't handle meat too well and slowly it got less and less until I stopped it altogether.
27 March 2024
Here we have two of our pear trees, nicely espaliered and in full bloom. The one to the left is what we call a Williams' bon chrétien, very juicy yellow pears that need to be harvested and eaten/processed on the spot, the one on the right in front is a Conference pear, which looks green and hard but when picked at the right time, is juicy and delicious, good for storage right through the winter. Both trees are about 25 years old.
This is the state of the vegetables to date. The spuds are in, top left, so are a variety of other seeds, and the shallots and the garlic are coming up, bottom left. The white sheet is to keep the bird away and the empty orange halves are supposedly attracting slugs. Every night, R goes out there with his head torch to lift the orange domes and to kill the lot. The bushy thing top left behind the bed is the rhubarb, early and tender. I already made two big lots of rhubarb crumble, lovely to look at but not possible for me to eat this time in my life.
Also, it's the season of wild garlic, some people go mad about it, we just look at it and because it is very aromatic, grow it in a far away corner, simply to remember that we once walked through a forest in County Wicklow where the entire ground was covered by wild garlic but we never noticed the smell until much later back home because we were in our early madly in love stage.
Plants become weeds when they obstruct our plans, or our tidy maps of the world.
I met the surgeon and her surgeon boss and they were extremely jolly and upbeat about the future of my intestine. So I sat there and listened to them explaining how they would cut this piece out and push that thing in and how it would be twisted somewhat but, hey, in a good way, and the whole shebang would be completed with a bit of surgical mesh, like a little trampoline. Which is when I raised my arm and asked to be permitted to speak. I mentioned some risk indices, studies on surgical mesh and autoimmune diseases and poor outcome and mortality and reinfection on top of infection and their faces became bored and with their voices a bit sharper, they replied that life is never without risks and that their approach was very neat and that it would actually be performed by a tiny robot inside my pelvic area and when I continued to show signs of disbelief, they declared that in was in fact, tada!, THE da Vinci robot. Yeah, I know about that one, I said. And they got a bit miffed because look what I did to their punch line. We parted as friends though because getting a second or even a third opinion was one of the promises our current minister of health got elected on and everybody is now in love with the idea. Good luck with that, they exclaimed as I walked out. And so I dug into my files of who's who and made one or two grovelling calls and would you know it, I'll see another expert team in June. What's another three months, I tell myself.
But you see, my daughter who a while back supervised a government department dealing with literally thousands of litigation proceedings on surgical mesh gone haywire in various parts of the human body had firmly shook her head and said, don't go down that road, never, promise me. And, people, I trust her with my life and soul.
Then there's the nutrition situation, which is now at the stage of serious protein supplementation to halt muscle waste. I am on a protein drinks tasting spree. I had no idea! The variety looks stunning but so far they all taste like liquid cake dough. Who can drink 500 ml of liquid cake dough every day? Not me. So on to powder, equally stunning selections, plant based (like peas), dairy based (like whey) and all the variations thereof with myriad flavourings and non-sugar sweeteners. My first order of "cinnamon cereal whey powder" is currently lost in the delivery and I have started to communicate with the "chat" voice of amazon to get my money back, at least. Yesterday, I fried a bit of tofu in some sesame oil and pretended I was at a food stall in Singapore. But it's not the answer to my prayers.
Also, there is an alarm beeping since last night in a house across from us, a regular strong three-beeps-pause-three-beeps rhythm and the owners are on holiday in France until the end of next week. We had a brief neighbourhood meeting this morning. Turns out that those with hearing aids can help themselves by switching the gadgets off and some of us, including myself, only hear the beep with one ear anyway, but there are others who will have a memorable Easter week.
Earlier, we attended another online funeral - quite the thing now in Ireland - and sad as it was, this poem was read by one of the daughters of the deceased cousin and you should have seen the face of the elderly priest behind the altar (not amused).
You Are Tired, (I think)
You are tired, (I think) Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I. Come with me, then, And we’ll leave it far and far away—
(Only you and I, understand!) You have played, (I think) And broke the toys you were fondest of, And are a little tired now; Tired of things that break, and— Just tired.
So am I. But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight, And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart— Open to me! For I will show you the places Nobody knows, And, if you like,
The perfect places of Sleep. Ah, come with me! I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon, That floats forever and a day; I’ll sing you the jacinth song Of the probable stars; I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream, Until I find the Only Flower, Which shall keep (I think) your little heart While the moon comes out of the sea.
