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.
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.
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.
A hot, humid rainy day. I brush up the remains of August, I am ready for autumn, I think. The artist living across from us, the one with a mental health issue, has been calling out from her upstairs window for at least an hour, her long grey curly hair is getting wet in the rainy gusts. It's a high pitched lament about something. I occasionally catch the odd word, nazi, pig, poison, cats. She does this at night as well and it will only be a matter of time before someone calls the police again. Last week as I saw her opening her front door, I briefly considered walking up to her and turned into her driveway - which is covered in small statues and crockery and bowls filled with broken glass and many sheets of paper with faded messages - but as I got closer, she lifted a hammer she had in her hand and hissed at me. I am considering calling social services although it will probably result in her being sectioned again and what do I know.
Last night I attended a meeting organised by our city's climate change committee where the various goals and achievments were patiently explained - once again. The 1000 fruit trees planted this year, the solar panels now on almost all supermarkets and school buildings, that kind of stuff. The first remark at the question and answer session afterwards came from an elderly guy who basically explained that it's all too little too late and what about the cherry trees in his street and anyway, who can insulate old buildings and all the faults of heat pumps and so on. Thankfully, someone cut him short with "if not now then when" and I realised that I had held my breath while he spoke, I was so mad. Eventually, during the informal part, with my glass of water in hand, I approached him with a couple of suggestions, especially regarding the cherry trees but he cut me short when I mentioned a website - I am not on social media! - and when I offered him a cell phone number of the tree activist group, he fiercely shook his head because, no cell phones either. I gave up.
We went walking a while back, deep in the country and through the woods. People have been living here since the 16th century.
And write their life motto on the truss beams.
This one is in the local dialect Allzevell es onjesond - too much is unhealthy.
