between a rock and a hard place

Greetings from the stranded beetle.

The post OP cast has been removed, revealing impressive bruising and nicely healed stitches.

(Don't look if you are of the squeamish type.)

There is an equally impressive surgical suture on the other side of the foot. Inside is a shitload of metal.

And this is the new cast, I had a choice of black or pink.

And so I am now counting down the days (28) until this rock solid beauty will be removed and I can - hopefully - progress to a moon boot and some form of walking. For now, imagine me bum crawling and one-leg hopping with various helpful contraptions, twisting and turning my way from chair to walker to knee-scooter, wriggling my toes per instructions and doing a silly looking work-out to look after muscles and strength - if the dog lets me since he remains ever hopeful that I will just get up and do the stuff he thinks this granny should do and jumps for joy ontop of me when I lift my good leg and my arms.

 

This is the good story, the health recovery story. And I am feeling hopeful.

 

And then there's the rock and the hard place scenario.

 

I am in my daughter's home, I am looked after with love and care and all the attention I could wish for. I could stay here until I can use both legs at least in a way that will make it possible for me fly back home on my own  (33 hrs, two stop-overs). We think hope I will reach this stage by mid June the latest. That's one option.

 

The other option is that R comes here (yes, he remained at home in Germany for too many reasons to explain) and we both return together earlier than June with him as my travel support, probably mid May.

 

And then there are these factors to consider:

 

• daily, in fact hourly increasing airline ticket prices, especially on the best long-haul route via Singapore (the safest and "shortest" route for travel between Europe and NZ and Australia and SE Asia), I will definitely not fly via US for reasons and via Canada or Japan/Korea/China will take several days and while we are not poor, it irks and feels dramatic at the same time
• as airlines react to jet fuel shortages, flights have been cancelled already, especially on this route and booked tickets have gone into the nirvana
• once my renewed visitor visa has been approved, I will be able to stay until end of June without a chance to renew it - unless WWIII breaks out
• I will be running out of my immune suppressing medication by mid June, and as even world wide courier services are affected by reduced flight options and jet fuel prices/shortage, no guarantee of getting it in time and no it's not easily available here
• while all treatment costs of the fracture are picked up by NZ accident compensation, my international health insurfance cover for anything else that may hit me health-wise will run out by mid June

 

So we are back and forth throwing the dice and no doubt, we'll come up with something. We've lived this across-the-world life for long enough to trust that there will be a way. 

To be continued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on my way to the fascinating new territory

Greetings from the secret den of the stranded beetle. 

I was booked to fly to Singapore this week, imagine. I got a nice refund from Singapore Airlines and now have neither a date nor a booking to get back home. Also, I am nowhere near the F2F (fit to fly) certificate that would allow me to even book a return flight.  

As expected, we are losing the usual fight with the travel health insurance company. It happens every time I have a claim and they find some clause on page 529 that I overlooked or maybe not or a signature that's missing. Life goes on. 

I could will be here for a while.  

Meanwhile I continue with elevating the cast for 23 hrs a day and freaking out when hopping on the good leg whenever the spirit moves me as I am still in the total NWB (no weight bearing) period and have nightmares of slipping and accidentally using the cast leg. Six weeks of it I've been told, one week down, five to go.

The extremely efficient health services have supplied me with a selection of mobility aides and shower stools and handle sets for bath- and bedrooms and tomorrow I shall try the snazy knee scooter that was delivered today. The hallway is so crowded with all the gear a visitor could think we run a rehabilitation center - oh wait, that's what we do.

On Friday, the Wellington Free Ambulance Service (another example of a visionary community service) will collect me with their amphibian device to transport me down the 43 but feels like 500 steep stairs in my daughter's front garden so I can get to my next outpatient appointment. I have been told that a physiotherapist will come to the house from next week on to show me how to maintan or if necessary regain muscle power and whatever else for a decent recovery. All this is part and parcel of New Zealand's accident compensation scheme as I mentioned before.

Now, before we get carried away praising this free health care (only after accidents), let me explain.  New Zealand is a small country, most of it remote, wild and with poor access to amenities, add to that earthquakes and tsunamis, erupting volcanoes and landslides. In such a setting, regardless of life skills and community support, accidents do happen and the country would go bankrupt if every person who fell down a path or was knocked down by a falling tree in a nature reserve or got hit by falling rocks on a public road starts to sue the state for damages due to poor maintenance and lack of care. Instead, the country decided to provide free health care and rehabilitation after accidents. Cheaper in the long run. 

I feel very old. Really old. The last two days, I tried to take the photograph required for my visa renewal and no matter how I turn and what light or angle I chose, the result is of a scared looking old hag with scrawny long hair and I delete it immediately. One of these days, I'll have to face it.

The grandchild meanwhile thinks this is the best of times and joins me for long reading and singing and talking sessions, preferably before bedtime and before school. I treasure this time. 

But while physical recovery is a given, I now have enough metal in my ankle to keep it together, mobility will most likely never be again what I had taken for granted. I am working on getting my mind ready for this, preparing for the inevitable dark hole I will eventually fall into for some time and the (I hope) recovery of my mind and soul as I prepare myself to take on yet another of these fucking life challenges.

Your youth evaporates in your early 40s when you look in the mirror. And then it becomes a full-time job pretending you’re not going to die, and then you accept that you’ll die. Then in your 50s everything is very thin. And then suddenly you’ve got this huge new territory inside you, which is the past, which wasn’t there before. A new source of strength. Then that may not be so gratifying to you as the 60s begin, but then I find that in your 60s, everything begins to look sort of slightly magical again. And it’s imbued with a kind of leave-taking resonance, that it’s not going to be around very long, this world, so it begins to look poignant and fascinating.

Martin Amis 

It’s a Steal

Seema Jilani

March 19, 2026

attention investors / fixer upper oasis on the Med / erected
_________on remnants of sacred souls / complimentary essential
oils / purge the stench of rotting flesh / chef’s kitchen / maqlouba
_________still warm / backgammon mid-game

savor morning kahva / private balcony / overlooking
_________corpses / alarm clock / ocean of weeping mothers /
vintage carnage / plantation shutters / no sage tea burnt /
_________secret passageways / clandestine graves / tick tock

cat cafés / no kittens / fill the hot tub with leftover blood / still
_________warm, frothy / a shattered tibia / found in the
childrens’ playroom / bury the skulls deeper / floor boards
_________don’t lie / DIY skeleton hospitals / schools included

paint the baby room cyan / we have enough red / save the dolls /
_________pink booties too / plant the all are welcome sign / slim
rainbow font / local orphans / available for landscaping / will work
_________for wheelchairs / countertops with genuine human bone inlay

private olive grove / roots endure / relentless / undaunted / inexorable / extermination ongoing

listing price_________30k children_________digital keys only_________non-negotiable

and then this happened

The beautiful, messy, buzzing and welcoming city of Wellington is covered in many walkways, some are easy to do, an hour or two, always with a lookout along the way, others are longer, with much climbing and stepping up and down through housing areas and deep bush, all with birdsong and amazing vistas along the way.

Yesterday, I almost completed the Southern Walkway. As I was slowly making my way down the last meters of a steep path in dense woods, the wide open southern beaches beckoning at every bend, I slipped and fell and broke my right ankle. That day I had spent three blissful hours hardly meeting a soul, just many many birds. And now I was on the ground trying to take in the odd way my right foot was hanging sideways when I heard voices. They came from a playground downhill across a large meadow at the foot of the path. And when I called out, the first person running towards me happened to be an emergency doctor on maternity break, toddler twins in tow, followed by a firefighter who had taken the day off and his partner, who both had just moved into their home across from the play area. Within the next hour or less, I was carried across the field to a bench, where I passed out briefly, was given two paracetamol and much back rubbing and comfort while the firefighter managed to bundle me in his car, drive me to the A&E where my daughter was waiting with a wheelchair. 

The triage nurse saw me 15 minutes later, followed by an X-ray to confirm bimalleolar ankle fracture and after my foot was cleaned (some nasty looking cuts punctuated the heavy swelling), I was given iv antibiotics, a cup of tea and more iv painkillers plus propofol, which meant that I was in dullaly land while the bones of my foot were straightened and plastered in place. When I was back in the real world, the orthopedic surgeon handed me a bowl of lemon icecream, more tea and detailed the coming scenario, a couple of days for the swelling to go down before surgery, hopefully Monday and then several weeks of recovery. All medical staff, from receptionist to surgeon were female and we were on first name terms as is the custom. My wonderful daughter who stayed with me throughout was given a bowl of passionfruit icecream. I only found out later, so missed my chance to taste it.

By 10 pm I was on a bum crawl up the many stairs to my daughter's beautiful house. Where I am now resting with the leg elevated, crawling on all fours to the toilet if need be and otherwise being looked after in splendid luxury. Alfie, the dog, slept by my side all night. I spend my hours dozing off the propofol (vaguely thinking of Micheal Jackson), watching training videos on walking with crutches - I am looking at six weeks of cast and no weight bearing - and marveling at New Zealand's accident compensation scheme which states in the official paperwork: It doesn't matter who you are, where you're from or what you were doing when you were injured, you are covered.

The grandchild is slightly overwhelmed but looking forward to painting on the cast and promised to read me stories. The rest of the family is serving snacks and excellent coffee, sorting out visa extensions and travel cancellationns/changes, while I pray to the gods of the expensive comprehensive flight insurance I bought last year.

It hurts like hell, I could complain a lot about living like a stranded beetle but I leave that for - maybe - later.

 

 Just last week I read this here somewhere and I can confirm that nothing is boring right now.

People have different comfort zones. You can think of it like an onion: inside, in the core zone, you feel comfortable, life is running smoothly, but it's also a bit boring. Around it is the zone of learning and challenge, where you feel challenged but not overwhelmed. And on the very outside is the panic zone.

 

Alfie

 

I think it's a sea horse

bath time

 

along the way

 

about 30 minutes before I slipped and fell

 

brief reminder along the way

t
 

war in Europe

Four years equals 48 months equals 208 weeks equals 1460 days equals 35040 hours equals 2012400 minutes equals 126144000 seconds.

Ukrainians have changed the way they wage war; they no longer ask when it will end, but only how. Ukrainians are saving us all, and unlike us, they don’t even ask us to say thank you.

Anne Applebaum interviewed in Il Foglio (link in Italian)

briefly

For the past month and the next and the next, I am in a far away place, doing the school run, laundry, gardening, cooking, shopping and lots more in a household where one person goes to school, nature school, gymnastics, swimming club, music and art clubs as well as bath, hairs, teeth etc maintenance not forgetting reading and drawing and playing, another person is about to publish a book with all the deadlines and let's not disturb stuff going on, a third person is organising and chairing a major science conference while on day three after my arrival she sufferef a freak accident resulting in substantial injury to her right hand which means I do a lot of wound care, typing and accompanying her to various medical appointments trying to ease her load because conference is imminent and important to her - and there is the dog and a cat and much more, so no, I don't really read or comment or look for comments on a regular basis. Bear with me if you can. If you can't,  sorry.

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them (Germaine Greer)

The absurdity of being asked to justify the need for feminism in a world where men in positions of extraordinary power were humiliating themselves for access to a convicted pedophile sex trafficker is almost hard to process. 

In that context, the question isn’t whether feminism went too far. It’s how anyone can still pretend it went far enough. It’s difficult to take critiques of feminism seriously in a world where male solidarity routinely outranks basic moral judgment. 

Liz Plank

 

One of the foundational acts of the Roman empire was the construction of the Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer that carried off the city’s effluent and made its glories possible. The Romans thought of it as sacred and gave it its own presiding deity, Cloacina.

The Epstein archive is the Cloaca Maxima of the contemporary American empire, a vast sewage system that underlies and enables the triumph of gilded misogyny. Epstein is its sacred monster, the presiding deity of the cult of rapacity to whom men of privilege sent up their supplications: let us prey.

The Epstein files (and we should remember that millions of documents are still being withheld, presumably to protect the guilty) are the underground waste disposal system of a very open and massive construct: the backlash against feminism. These are secret histories of a counter-revolution. Epstein and all those within his astonishingly expansive sphere of influence – bankers, speculators, political players, but also scientists, intellectuals and artists – are culture warriors. The war is being waged on women. What we see in the files is a coherent and concerted reaction by elite men against one of the great revolutions of history: the feminist revolt of the 1960s and 1970s.

Fintan O'Toole

 

It’s not all men. It’s not all billionaires. It’s not all power brokers. But it’s a lot of the ones that have been dictating a lot of the terms about the place. It’s not even that it’s a lot of men, it’s the fact that the slippery networking, covering-up, the leveraging and assumed exclusivity of what was a men’s club cult seems so normal, so familiar, so assumed for them all. Like it’s what they do all day, in their outside lives.

Sarah Wilson
 

Kia ora koutou

 

Here I am, where birds the size of a child's fist make the loudest call, where butterflies the size of my hand surround me on my morning walk, where you greet the bus driver when you enter and say thank you and goodbye when you step off, where the sun is hot and dangerous and the sea is freezing, where the coffee is black and stronger than anywhere I can remember, where the wind can be relentless and overpowering, where the city is really a maze of walkways and trails and where every walk involves steep slopes, thick bush, amazing vistas and seemingly endless stairs and every encounter is on first name basis.

 

courage

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was a student of Plato, another Greek philosopher who himself had been a student of Socrates, who is often refered to as the first moral philosopher, talked about a concept called hexis. I was first introduced to this when I was, maybe, 15 years old as it was part of the school curriculum to read ancient Greek texts - something I disliked greatly and therefore failed most of the time - add to that that the teacher was a veteran of WWII who, while he never spoke about it and nobody did anyway at the time, was highly suspect to us resulting in various boycotts and other so-called rebellious acts. Anyway, hexis indeed stood out and made me wake up in class as it is actually a reassuring concept if you feel you are stuck and unable to get on with life, something I had experienced as a teenager repeatedly - but who hasn't.

Hexis is more than a habit, more than a skill. Hexis is something we, if we put our mind to it, can cultivate as a state of being. We get there if we stick to an action or an concept, a plan, again and again, not merely as repetition but despite internal resistance until this resistance becomes less and less and the wish to do whatever it is you set your mind to becomes more compelling and eventually a skill set and a part of who you are. Or in the words of Jiminy Cricket to Pinocchio, if at first you don't succeed, try and try again.

The above-mentioned Aristotle said that we can become courageous by doing courageous things.  And to develop courage, we all start without it, we may be terrified, we may be doubtful, but if we just behave like someone with courage then we will eventually become a courageous person. Add to that Jiminy Cricket's wise words, always let your conscience be your guide.

(Fun fact aside: Socrates never wrote a single sentence, no texts, books nor pamphlets. What is refered to as Socratic thinking is what his student Plato wrote down in the shape of his dialogues. Having to read and struggle to translate these dialogues made my teenage life quite miserable.)

 

Anti-fascism is the concept and antifa is the courageous stance. It evolved in Germany in the 1920s as a direct response to the fascist threat and it is self-evident in any democracy. Without anti-fascism, there can be no democracy. If you want to live in a free society, a constitutional state and a democracy, you must be an anti-fascist. Fascism is not simply an opinion within the democratic spectrum of opinions.

Fascism is the opposite of humanity, brutalising and dehumanising not only its victims, but also its followers. That is why it must be opposed and all areas of our society must be protected from it.  You can't allow a little bit of fascism and watch what happens. Fascism is like lead in drinking water, even a little bit destroys everything.

 

The next revolution – World War III – will be waged inside your head. It will be a guerrilla information war fought not in the sky or on the streets, not in the forests or even around scarce resources of the earth, but in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, on TV and in ‘cyberspace’. It will be a dirty, no-holds-barred propaganda war of competing world-views and alternative visions of the future.

    Marshall McLuhan (Culture is Our Business, 1970) 

We have long memories. We remember what it means to be human, beyond our economic function as a consumer or voter. We have the wild world as our ally and our ancestors stand behind us. 

Charlotte du Cann 

 

And now for the final bits of packing, I am once again looking forward to experience the amazing wall-to-wall carpeting of Changi Airport.

I'll be gone for a while. 

. . . if at some point your eyes look at a video of someone getting murdered in broad daylight and your mind’s first instinct is to say but what if or but what about, I would urge you to stop, because I want you to be a person who understands that you are the only person who loves the way you do, which means that every person you see, whether in a video or in the broad daylight just outside the reach of your outstretched hand, is the only person who loves the way they do, and, honestly, if you refuse to see that, and if you choose instead to attempt to justify rather than mourn the death of someone whose love is a shiny, remarkable gem polished under the light of the same sun where you and I both stand, you are just like the millions of others who have abandoned the radical and wildly special individuality of their love to instead become people who hate other people in exactly the same way.

 

Devin Kelly (please read all of it here) 

concentrate on our ethical muscles

 

Dangerous pavements.
But  this year I face the ice
With my father’s stick.

Seamus Heaney 

 

There is snow, quite a lot of it, something that doesn't happen often here in this big fat river valley. It will all be gone by tomorrow but not before a night of heavy frost and ice. Looking outside, I can only see white and grey and black. 

Yesterday, I had the last of a string of medical exams and imaging tests and have been given the all clear for the long haul flight. Tomorrow I will start packing, summer clothes and bicycle helmet and the high SPF sunscreen lotion. Yesterday, I also deleted my instagram account, my social media activities are now reduced to reading a small number of writers on substack, a couple of blogs and mastodon, where I keep in touch with a group of scientists and climate activists. How weird it now seems, that initial excitement about social media and finding old friends from another lifetime and what has become of it, this strange addiction to scrolling and schadenfreude.

I want to continue exposing myself to the real world, and I know that - like the people whose homes are threatened by rising sea levels - I cannot do this without accurate information and that this involves a struggle with a great deal of dullness and nastiness in today's media world. 

It is so important to avoid seeking comfort in resentment, but instead have confidence in what people can achieve as long as they preserve their humanity as a core value. 

Because ultimately we have no choice but to love our world. We can follow our cynicism and our despair until the cows come home. But in the long run, that will neither change anything nor make us feel better. Seriously, there is no alternative to lovingly helping to shape the world. Otherwise, people who do not love the world will take over.

So, as a always, this means to pool my resources and energy with others to help rescue people from their agony of resignation, from their apathy born of despair - something I myself have known and continue to experience. But instead and without moralising, concentrate on our ethical muscles and our sense of community.

And remember, progressive movements have never been unified movements. We don't need to wait until everybody agrees or is convinced. Debating and arguing is part of the process.

To paraphrase Erich Fromm, without the practice of love of life, societies simply cannot survive.

 

I do wish there was less harshness to endure, less hardness for my soft body to push against, but what they all have in common in their endurance and adaptation is that they remain soft. I, too, plan to remain human, wide open to the heartbreak and despair of the harm being done . . . Let me not harden myself against all this hurt. Let me be owl down, seal fur, nudibranch flesh. Let me bend, give, flex. I plan to endure, and to turn towards cooperative efforts to right the overwhelming amount of wrong in the world.

 

Mary Beth Rew Hicks