spring always too fast

 

the pink tulips

When we lived in the small tropical country we call paradise, just three degrees below the equator, I would tell my small daughter stories about what life is like in Europe, about cities and traffic and shops and playgrounds and most of all, about seasons, lest she forget. When we returned to Europe after a couple of years, the first winter was as I had described, snow and ice and sledding and snowball fights. But spring, I had forgotten to mention that spring happens seemingly all at once and not really in slow noticeable steps - daffodfils, leaves on the trees, roses, strawberries, peaches, sunburns. One day while we were eating strawberries on her grandparent's patio, she actually complained that this was all happening much faster than anticipated.

pear blossoms

 

And I feel it every year. Some of my garden pictures are already old news.

St. Agnes flower/March cups (leucojum)

 

I think I am done with diagnostics for now at least. My pharmaceutical cocktail has been remixed and topped up and I spend most afternoons pleasantly dozing as prescribed. The digestive system is still protesting but there's hope it will calm down and let things be, eventually. Waiting for appetite to find its way home, too.

 

wild garlic

Other than that, life is full of good stuff. Surprisingly. I mean I could write long and extensively about the disappointing and in part decisively inhuman coalition agreement of our new government and maybe a bit about tariffs and presidential insider trading but why.

 

asimina

The biology teacher (retired) in my life tells me that everything alive is evolving all the time.

Also, I read that a single rotation of a modern wind turbine (approx. 10-11 kWh) produces enough energy for an electric car to travel around 50-70 kilometres. There's a lot of hope in such a single finding.

I participated in an online ceremony commemorating the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp 80 years ago and listened to a speech by Marina Weisband, Ukrainian-German politician and psychologist.

We say we are fighting fascism - but what is this fighting actually? And when does it begin? Fascism is not recognised because we secretly expect that the film music will somehow change at the end of democracy. That the sky will turn an ominous grey. That banners will be unfurled. But that doesn't happen. When fascism comes, the sun is still shining. The birds sing. We go to work. Everything is normal. Only trans people lose their rights. And asylum seekers. And immigrants. And disabled people. And Muslims. And Jews. And left-wing journalists. And then other journalists. And me. And you. And nobody realises when it actually became too late.

I don't want to fight. I want to love. I want to be curious about my fellow human beings. I want to listen. I want to be empathetic. I don't want to be in competition, I want to build great things together. Nazis can't deal with that.

I want to open my heart wide to people. To stand between them and inhuman ideas. That's how I understand my place. Not fighting against what I hate, but protecting what I love.

And I know many of you may think that's incredibly naive. Love. It seems like such an inappropriate, unrelated word in light of the news today. But I think it's naïve that we can banish fascism if we don't learn to love ourselves and others.

Even if the worst happens tomorrow - if my whole world collapses and I lose everything - there will still be a day after tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow, the world will go on somehow. With me or without me. But then I want to leave something behind. The dream of a world in which we no longer inherit violence and don't see ourselves in constant struggle. That's why I want to sow the seed in the ground today. Even if there is a forest fire. Then it's my job to bury it so that it can germinate afterwards.