Hallowe'en

In this part of the world, we don’t observe the dead, we just shunt them aside with awkward funerals. In the past and in some corners of the world, however, this day has been celebrated as the ancestral doorway of the year, but since has become a children’s party game. Or an occasion to watch a horror movie. Or both.

I am not complaining. Hallowe'en arrived in this part of the world a few years ago, in the shadow of the coca cola xmas truck. Whatever the marketing strategy, it's not quite catching on - yet. Probably because we have carneval in various shapes and forms, traditionally dating back to the dark ages with a history of defiance during the French occupation of the Rhineland thrown in etc. and then there's the feast of Saint Martin in early November and All Saints/All Souls on first/second of November - that day/night people here light candles on the graves of their deceased and the cemeteries look kind of spooky after dark. 

But thanks to coca cola and social media, who knows, there may be some trick or treat kids calling tonight and if not, the sweets are waiting for the Saint Martin latern singers next week.

I may blog about the Rhineland Carnival another time, it starts on November 11th at 11 hrs and 11 min on the dot and that day it's mayhem in town, and it drags on until pancake Tuesday in February.

More and more of my younger Irish family are seriously into Samhain hoping to recall their ancient Celtic roots, visiting sacred hills for all sorts of rituals. Good luck, I hope it's not raining.

Click here to read a bit about the Celtic origin of Hallowe'en. 

This household is now completely vaccinated against the evil viruses. We have complained about the soreness of arms and muscles and despite warnings of doom and decay by some in our outer circles have survived it. 

The garden is getting ready for winter, mostly. The plumeria has yet to get the message.

 Earlier this summer, the man accepted a horticultural challenge, namely growing an endagered species (not previously known to the area) that for whatever reasons, dedicated gardeners around the world have decided to cultivate, giving it a boost so to speak. Apparently, less than 200 mature trees (yes it will grow!) are currently present in the wild. From my distant observation point I noticed the word cult in cultivation but what do I know. The official name is Global Tree Campaign. 

The plant is Gigasiphon macrosiphon and it arrived in the shape of a single giant seed, which has been carefully nurtured and observed on a daily basis.

Here is what it looks today. It will eventually have the most gorgeous giant flowers I have been promised.

And here is our first and most likely last peanut harvest. It was just something that had to be done in the same way that I would put an orange pip or an avocado stone into a pot with good potting soil.

 

As for horror movies, here's a short one to watch.

 

you are here now, alive and conscious, able to experience the world

 

Stormy weather here, even had some rain. That's how I would have started a phone call to my father. We always talked about the weather first of all, he in more detail in relation to all things agricultural. Anyway, autumn is early this year. I had the flu shot and then the covid shot and for about three days it felt a bit like having been knocked over by something big and heavy but I pretended this was nothing and so we went to the museum and cycled back home through the park where the geese are grazing and one day we went uphill deep into the forest where autumn does its wonders best of all. But still. The downside of autumn is that when it's over, it's winter and that's not a season I am fond of.

The thing is that I feel the cold, always have, always the kid with frozen toes and fingers, hence always the first trudging home when we were out skating or sledging or skiing and whatever stuff kids did during the long Franconian winters. Back home my mother would have to alternatingly dip my feet into bowls of warm and cold water to wake them up from their frozen stupor while I tried not to cry because my mother was of big fan of heroics. Also, I never really liked snowmen and avoided snowball fights if at all possible. 

So the state of things is beautifully autumnal and shitty dark, depending how we look at it. 

I recently joined a small group of people for a listening project. It involves pairing off into twos and going for a walk for 45 minutes. Before we go, we are given a piece of paper with a prompt/question and the task is that first one and then the other person gets a fixed time period each to speak on that prompt while the other person does nothing but listen. The prompt is fairly basic, like "is there something that made you happy, worry, laugh" etc. and nothing but listen means, no eye contact, no nodding, no touching or sighs or whatever, just listening and giving the other person the space and time to talk, no responding, no solutions offered and so on - unless the speaker gives you permission. It's quite a thing to listen without your mind trying to respond or react or having to provide an answer or a solution and it's quite a thing to be able to just talk without interruption yet knowing that the other person is really listening and just that. I realise it's hard to describe and it's something that requires concentration and empathy on a different level than the usual let's-have-a-talk or I-am-here-to-help you scenarios. I never met any of the people in the group before, I only know their first names and it's a different person I get to walk with every time. I think it's a bit like one of these 12-step groups from the movies or at least how I imagine them.

Perhaps this is what we need to do, creating moments of community and loyalty in everyday life and remaining human, not allowing our own indifference or our own self-importance to take hold. Even when it is most difficult, even when we are exhausted. (Maybe this is also the only reliable strategy for confronting criminal politicians and power structures.)

The liberation of insignificance: it lets you focus on what actually matters to you, right now, without the weight of cosmic importance crushing you. You can be kind to people because kindness feels good, without trying to tip the scales of history. You can create art because creation is satisfying, without competing for immortality. You can love people fully, knowing that love will end (one way or another) and that's fine.

There's something deeply wrong with how we've constructed meaning in the modern world. We've lost most of the traditional sources of significance (religion, community, duty) but kept the anxious feeling that we need to justify our existence. So we've turned to careers and achievements and metrics and status, trying to prove our worth to the horizon. We're all performing significance, trying to matter, desperate not to be forgotten.

But what if being forgotten is the natural state of things? What if almost everyone who has ever lived is already forgotten, and that's just how it works? There are about 100 billion humans who have lived and died, and you can probably name a few hundred of them. The rest have vanished into history, and the world keeps turning. 

I think we'd be happier if we could internalize this. Not in a nihilistic way, where nothing matters so why bother, but in a liberating way, where things matter in proportion to their actual impact on actual people, not in proportion to how much astral significance we imagine them having. 

J A Westenberg 

 

reasons to be cheerful

Just like any other morning, I woke up today with a great gift: I have the freedom to make decisions. And today, too, my decisions will shape how I feel, what I believe is possible in this world, and ultimately what I make possible for myself and for those around me and so on.

I could get bogged down by the histology findings of my finally removed and good riddance gallbladder and the conversations I had earlier this week with the experts, which included briefly: "the very obvious and widespread and ultimatively destructive inflammation of the entire mucosa and its blood vessel supply is clearly of autoimmune origin and regretfully avoided detection at an earlier stage as  long-term immune suppressing medication tends to camouflage the necessary laboratory markers" and "in this case, it was only due to the insistent reporting of increasingly stressful symptoms by the patient that resulted in surgical removal" and "due to the patient's history and diagnosis, potential further damage to vital organs including liver and pancreas must be carefully monitored in short time intervals". 

These are the kind of experiences that have rearranged my life for so many years now. And after every blow, and yes, even after so many years and all the ways I have figured out to accommodate and adjust, the blows are big, it takes me a while to realise that my strength extends beyond my misfortune, that while it may look and feel as if I am robbed of so much, I know that even when disappointed for a while, I will once again find that am able to live well. And once again look beyond my little horizon. Which today will include getting on my bicycle and make my way into the forest and see where it takes me. The man meanwhile is making jam, the leaves are turning all of the reds, renewable energy overtook coal as the world's leading source of electricity and the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to María Corina Machado, an outspoken politician from Venezuela. 

 

 

 

 

wherein I praise the work of antifa

We woke to a misty rainy day, summer is definitely over.

Just the day for a good damp walk after breakfast. Hiding under my big hood, I visited the local antifa memorial site. To recap: as we surely all know, antifa stands for anti-fascist and just in case there's still any doubt, below, here is a press photo of antifa fighters landing at the beaches of Normandy, France in 1944. I don't know whether I would be able to write this blog post today without them.

So today - like most days - I walked down to the river and looked at the water and the hills and also at this little model bridge a local business man erected in the small park.

It is a replica of the original Hodges Bridge, built right here by US soldiers in April 1945, enabling allied troups to cross the river Rhine and to proceed towards meeting Russian troups thus ending WWII and the rest is history.

Click here for more info about the original Hodges Bridge.

Let's not allow giving antifa fighters a bad name. 

 

 

October

The solution in today's cryptic crossword of my favourite newspaper was Tiefpunkt, low point, and if I win the competition, the first prize is a weekend in a spa hotel (two nights incl. dinner and massage) in the Italian Alps. Of course I always enter competitions, handing over my name and address to all the advertisers out there. Last year I won a selection box of vegan whole food snacks, so there's hope. My mother in law was a great one for competitions and she won tons of stuff including coffee makers and waffle irons and hair dryers and an entire tea set for six which she gracefully passed on to us. We still have one saucer from it, which I use to cover the porridge bowl in the microwave.

Anyway, Tiefpunkt, or starting point for all-round improvement as the final clue suggested. I should take this to heart. Last night, I went to a talk and discussion about war and peace and whether there is such a thing as a just peace (spoiler: no) and what are the options (compromise peace, victory peace) and where we are in the coming multipolar world order. It was very depressing and cycling home in the dark with my hands getting very cold did not improve my mood.

I really could do with a weekend in a spa hotel, any spa hotel will do.

Life and mood massively improved when the grandchild read both The Gruffalo and The Jolly Postman to us this morning. 

Also, here are our cabernet mitos grapes, such beauties.

 

  

Geography Lessons

When you've reached the peak,
the summit, the end,
you've come to the limit,
let me tell you gently
that the world is round, my sweet,
and it's all a long walk backwards,
starting from here.

Caroline Bird