In hopeless times, we can never afford to lose hope. When we feel beaten, we can take a breath and love: a word, a view, a dog, a dream, a person, a hope. We can act and work and hope like citizens of a better country, a better time. We can make 2025 find out there’s a power in that.
Knackered. I am starting this year knackered. Spent too many hours sitting down with siblings talking, talking, talking. Trying to sleep in unfamiliar cold rooms and to crown it driving four hours through swirling snow, aka mini blizzard, on the motorway in Germany. This in itself is madness even without snow as speed limits are minimal and even when they are, nobody pays any attention.
Before the snow started to fall so furiously, we stopped for a while in another small Franconian town, dating back to the 11th century. Everybody was asleep, every door was closed, no food was available, just pertrol on the way out.
It took me several years to actually get the meaning of the word 'knackered' despite the fact that I used it regularly. Actually, there are many words I use in English that I couldn't translate into my first language. In the early days when I was introduced to R's family, when my English was really limited, they had great fun playing charades on a Sunday after lunch and my first test was to act "Deliverance". To this day, I haven't a clue what it means in German and I haven't seen the movie - I think. Of course, I failed, there was much laughter but somehow I must have passed the test because my next clue was "Casablanca" - which I delivered with great skill. They were just as rough with each other. This was a long time ago.
I have cleared the paper stacks on my desk, I have defrosted the freezer and got rid of the out-of-date stuff from the medicine cabinet. I am ready for 2025.
So hope for a great sea-changeSeamus Heaney
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
And a hopeful lecture to listen to, here:
We don't use the word "knackered" here in the US but I think it is a very fine word and wish we did. We just say "exhausted" which is sort of boring.
ReplyDeleteAfter a day like you had, i completely understand why you were both knackered AND exhausted.
Love Hayhoe and her messages. Thanks. Of course you were knackered, a well earned one at that! I honestly don't know where the word originated, but it fits well with your situation (and mine several times I can think of.) Hope your new year is just fabulous, with only a few occasions of feeling knackered, and only when having a wonderful use of your efforts.
ReplyDeleteHope, and casting an appreciative eye on this beautiful planet, is sometimes the only balm available. Hope here is that in two years at the midterm elections the incoming idiots and oligarchs will lose power, hope that these first two years they will spend fighting with each other and not getting anything done. While I gaze at the world around me and nurture gardens and cats.
ReplyDeleteI cannot even imagine how to convey either Deliverance or Casablanca in pantomime.
So hope for a great sea-change
ReplyDeleteOn the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.
Seamus Heaney
What a lovely poem and a good reminder for me. Thank you.
New Year's is a good opportunity to clean out the old and make way for the new. We've been doing some of that around here. That town may have been closed-up but it looks very picturesque!
ReplyDeleteKnackered is a good word if we listen to is command. Rest up my dear. The season both gave its gifts and took its toll. Seeing siblings always reminds us who we are, I think, or at least who we were.
ReplyDelete