Applaus Applaus

It is no longer hot, but warm. This mellow, hazy, sunny August warmth with spider nets and withered lavender blossoms. In the morning I collect a handful of blueberries from the front garden and as I walk out to the back patio I pick a fresh fig on the go. The cat is lolling below the pear tree, showing off her fluffy belly hair. The bin man walks down the road whistling Applaus Applaus while he rolls the empty bins back onto the drives. Never mind the bleeding gums, the cracked lips, the shaky nausea thanks to the new iron supplements (miles better than the infusions). This day looks like a winner, I think I better get ready to tackle my downbeat disposition.

three summer days in Franconia

Late evening, just before sunset and we are all sitting down together for dinner. The air is so beautiful, clear and balmy, a crescent moon has just appeared, the trees are full of birds. We have ordered our drinks and hearty Franconian beer garden food, spicy sourdough bread, fried chanterelles, potatoe salad with fresh chives and horseradish, smoked beer and local red wine and so on. It has been a pleasant day, not too hot but we can all still feel the sun on our arms and faces. We were very polite all day, careful not to mention any tricky subjects. No accusations, competitions, no nasty remarks about our kids. We even managed to cycle next to each other occasionally.

My sister has been doling out funny anecdotes from our happy childhood for most of the day. Earlier today when we were resting in the shade of yet another beer garden after we had raced each other up and down the vineyards I told my brother that I remembered him to be much smaller and everybody thought that was a great joke. 

And now my sister has us in stitches with the story of how she tried to make soft boiled eggs for the first time in her life. Oh, what a funny story, how she watched the eggs boil for ever, testing with a wooden spoon for softness, again and again. We are laughing and I am so very tired. I wish I could leave. For a very brief moment I catch her eyes and I am tempted to ask her to tell us all the whole story. Of that day and the tears and the snow, of how it was already getting dark outside, of my mother who hours and hours ago had locked herself into her bedroom together with our baby brother. 

Instead I just look at her and suddenly there she is, my big sister, almost six years old, with her long plaited pigtail coming apart, still in her pyjamas, standing on a kitchen chair by the cooker, her serious face bent over the steaming pot, trying to figure out how to make dinner for us. 

And I want to say something so badly, so urgently but of course I can't. None of us can.

Anxiety doesn't even cover it. I think I am coming out in a rash and my intestines, oh don't ask. This is day two in our short little pretty getaway cycling holiday and my big sister is on her way here.  I think right now I actually hate her. Once that particular emotion will have died down I will pity her, which is more painful of course and in fact downright condescending and that's not what I want to feel at all. Way back during the big freeze and snow my brother suggested this little tour, just the two of us with our spouses so to speak. All about having neglected each other for too long etc. What a surprise, nice. Until our big sister found out and without a second's thought decided not only to come along incl. her man but also to take matters into her hands and organize it properly. And so we are here in this pretty little town with the geranium window boxes and the Roman stone bridge across the river and now she is on her way and any minute she will be here, in full cycling regalia, helmet and Lycra and all the proper maps and we will follow like the little ignorant ducklings we are in her presence.

The first bit of cool air for what seems like ages. Already it is hard to remember how hot it has been only 24 hrs ago. During the past week, a large pale ginger tom cat from somewhere down the road has slowly made his way into the garden and - well, obviously - I have started to feed him. Although I read somewhere that ginger cats are usually male one of the neighbours tells me that this could be a female. Strange looking creature, pale green eyes and almost silent croaking voice, very hungry and fearless. Just now I heard this tiny clicking noise and there he was, sneaked in below my radar, eating our little old cat's dinner (who is not interested at all).

My girl would love this, put her heart into it with great urgency and so I imagine her easy laughter as I quietly talk to Ginger, carefully checking his fur for ticks and cuts, wondering what his story is.

Sunday lunch

After Sunday lunch we were sometimes allowed to choose dessert. But first, all the stars had to be aligned just so. The state of the bathroom was a major contributing factor. We were hopeless, we were careless, too many puddles, open toothpaste tubes, scrunched up damp towels. Some days the bathroom problems were simply insurmountable. The entire Sunday with all its hushed up quiet and boredom could become a nightmare thanks to a few stray hairs in the sink. Sometimes it was easier to just accept defeat.

Then of course, piano practise, we were hopeless, we were careless, too fast, too loud, wasting her good time and money, or suddenly brilliant, gifted, her proper little Mozarts.

Next, the setting of the table without squabbling, the heavy white linen cloth just so with straight corners, napkin rings in the correct order and the matching  - what did I tell you???

And so we were keeping our breath in case of faulty oven thermostats, lumpy flour, overripe onions, wrong spice mix, all the mysterious kitchen disasters she had to face, only to feed us. Us. Who in our ungrateful selfishness spilt greasy gravy on the freshly starched white linen. And once again we were not worth it, all her sacrifices, her time and energy, for nothing.

And as she stubbed the half smoked cigarette on her plate and started to cry, we knew that all was lost. Again. 

And yet, there were Sundays when we made it to dessert as a somewhat intact family and my father did his eeny meeny miny moe thing and the lucky winner would then be allowed to go down into the basement larder and choose one jar of my mother's bottled fruit: peaches, apricots, cherries with almonds, plums, pears with cinnamon sticks, applesauce with lemon drizzle.

My brother was scared of the dark basement but quite unable to admit this would run down singing and huffing while my parents smiled at each other with pride.

For maybe far too many years I was convinced that this is what happened on Sundays in all my friend's houses, that up and down the street families were steering that same treacherous course through blame and anger and fear.

the whole universe

You are something that the whole universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.

Alan Watts

The weather forecast is dodgy. Last night, early morning, hot strong winds, trees bending in the moonlight, three drops of rain and then silence. And now, another hot and humid day and the rains have just begun. Across the garden I can hear my neighbour's teenage daughter wailing in despair at her mother, cups are flying across the patio and the church bells from down by the river join in. 

Was it that difficult with us, I asked S last week and she very diplomatically replied, no Mum, never. It is a blessing, this selective memory. But then again, there always has been and will be too much love between us. Enough to blank out the difficult bits. That's what this love is for. 

My mother never liked or loved her children. I know there are people who hate me for saying this. Didn't she make these lovely matching coats for us? Her vegetable garden, the bean poles, the field of strawberries to get lost in after school? The one (and only) time she went with us all to the movies (Cinderella)? Come on. 

For a long time after her death I would meet her. She called on me and she watched me. 

One day she was a shiny black crow suddenly landing on the uphill forest path, forcing me off my bicycle. We looked at each other for some time, silent and completely motionless until she turned her head and flew away.

Another time, she was a young hawk who suddenly swooped down on me with a loud screech, almost reaching my hair with her claws. Only I was faster, cycling on with my heart leaping out of my throat.

Some winter Sundays, she sat silently on the bare branches of the pear tree, staring through the kitchen window in her shiny blue jay glory.

Most often, though, I met her as a stringy old pigeon, one eye missing, deformed toes, picking through the crumbs and cigarette buds under the chestnuts by the outdoor cafes in the city.

That was then. 

The birds I meet these days are young and cheeky, like that fearless blackbird with the odd white feather sticking out sideways. The noisy green parakeets flocking the garden in big swoops. Magpies with their messy nests.

It is not just that we see birds as little versions of ourselves. It is also that, at the same time, they stand outside any moral process. They are utterly indifferent. This absolute oblivion on their part, this lack of sharing, is powerful. 

A man tells me about the seemingly endless time he was stuck inside the wreck of his car, which had slipped down a muddy slope, rain pouring down, darkness. I don't remember if I called out, he says. I have no recollection, no idea how long I was down there, but then someone shouted: We can hear you! We can hear you! And these two sentences were the most wonderful thing I ever heard in my life.

And his face is so kind and sad and when he starts to smile, all I want to do is fold myself into his arms and cry for a long time. But of course I don't. I don't know this man, we never met before. How did we get to this topic? I have no idea. The door opens and the receptionist calls my name. I get up and he turns to continue reading his newspaper.

This could be the day when I slowly start to forgive the oral surgeon for all she has done to my mouth two, almost three weeks ago. In fact, I may even start to think that she and her colleagues were completely correct with their diagnosis. 

Admittedly, I have a hard time trusting experts in the dental/oral surgery department. Mostly I think they are all tossers who do it for the money. And with all their big white teeth smiles they surely have never ever experienced any discomfort, ache or pain (here I said it) and are thus obviously ill equipped to offer the appropriate supportive treatment. 

Come to think of it, I distrust most doctors. I occasionally wonder whether our family GP is actually able to see the Bigger Picture and even my lovely immunologist seems to smile far too much considering the severity of my fate. Oh, the nights I have wasted convincing myself of misdiagnosed heart attacks, lung failure, shrivelled-up kidneys, even tumours hidden in secret cavities. But I don't double check anymore, I no longer discuss the myriad details of how this illness apparently affects is slowly but surely destroying my body and mind. I have long since stopped going back to the experts like a lost pet dog looking for scraps of food. Nowadays, I just think that I'll show them how wrong they were provided I survive the night.

I know. Foolish.

But today I kind of seem to get there. Some form of normal has returned. Despite the fact that it's one hell of a scorching hot day. I got into work as early as I could and even my Heidi Klum colleague agreed that we put on the fan at full force. She worries a lot about drafts, the lovely Heidi. But thankfully not today. Still, I am aiming for an even earlier start at work tomorrow, just after sunrise. Provided I survive the night.

One way to start the day. A phone call. I hear R talking to whoever it is, all reassurance and lots of yes, yes, yes and something stirs. This is what happens when your child calls you during a 6.9 earthquake. 

Eventually we all, incl. the earth, calm down somewhat and in our well tested family fashion we resort to jokes and funny memories incl. cats. Still, we all check http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/felt every couple of minutes for a while.

A beautiful day. I put the box with the pain killers back into the medicine cabinet. It's been 48 hrs now without and I tiptoe out of the bathroom. Careful now, no lifting, no running etc. they said. For a couple more days at least.

Eventually this will pass, this feeling of being delicate, fragile, not quite whole. Not yet. I pull the deck chair to the most overgrown part of the garden, where the bryony has almost covered all of the bramble hedge. Its little yellow blossoms are teeming with bumble bees. I look up into the summer sky and my mind opens wide.

Once upon a time when I took health for granted, my days were full, like a doctor's appointment book, slots of 10 minutes max. The things I could stuff into 10 minutes, shower, breakfast, laundry, rain gear, lunch box, cats, quick phone call, whatever. Now I am a 30 minutes person at a stretch. Some days it works. 

The blackbirds in the garden are fearless this summer, hopping around me, picking raspberries and twinkling at me with their little shiny eyes. The cat pretends to be asleep. And I will pretend to be healthy.

correct me if I'm wrong

Because this is happening so far away, yes. And you know, I am a biased and ignorant fool when it boils down to it and all I know about Florida is what I learned from watching Miami Vice in the 1980s. In other words: nothing.

And yet, the arguments around this case seem almost more bizzare than the case itself - from my laid back European distance. So, when all commentators cannot stop stressing over and over again that it's not about race, that this is just a law and order case, well it just rubs it in, doesn't it? That it is in fact all about race. I haven't followed it in all detail but it appears that every benefit of the doubt was given to the shooter, while not a single one was given to the victim. I read that the victim was tested for drugs but not the shooter who was on prescription meds with known side effects of triggering aggression. After the trial, the black community but not the white community was warned not to riot. The shooter had a restraining order after he had attacked his girlfriend. And more.
I read that it's a criminal justice thing and that black people have a problem with it. But never the white guys, they have no problem with the system. I read about gun laws and stop and frisk laws - and I feel stupid in my disbelief: the sense that an entire system is turned against black kids as a whole. Don't get me wrong, we do have our share of xenophobia and racism in this part of Europe, but an entire system? And then my distant cousin across the Atlantic points out to me that there is this case coming up and before I can catch my breath, she sends me this and I just want to run.

A & E

Complications, abscess, antibiotics, but I was in and out in one hour. Most people were lovely. The rest is pretty shitty.

bounty

 

and again

this will always be my secret song

bees and Dutch custard

This healing takes time, sometimes I think I can feel the shifting and rearranging of cells, other times I just take a pain killer, I am not tough. I can hear my mother, pull yourself together and stop making such a big deal about a bit of pain. (Let's not go down that memory lane for now.)

The circulation is dodgy, sometimes the ground moves under my feet, my ears begin to hiss and I give in and stay put in the deck chair under the wisteria. 

So I distract myself (or panic for a short little while).

The little cat stays by my side, probably because I supply her with empty vla containers. Dutch comfort food for the chewing-impaired. That and porridge with one of R's smoothies. Come to think of it, my nutrition has never been better.

 

On Sunday afternoon the garden was suddenly buzzing with hundreds and hundreds of bees and by the end of the day a colony had settled high up in the Douglas fir. It sits there now, a large brown teeming drop, shiny and calm, just the occasional humming. Eventually the distraught bee keeper arrived, in shorts, sticking his pale bare legs out to reassure us that there was no danger. He has only been doing this for a year and apparently this is the second time a rebel colony has left his garden down the road. He frowned as he looked up into the tall tree and mumbled something about a ladder but we haven't seen him since.

And I have been watching all seven parts of Top of the Lake and now I am trying to convince everybody and the whole world to watch this. In one go.

the bigger picture

the vast blue sky

Behind all hardening and tightening and rigidity of the heart, there’s always fear. But if you touch fear, behind fear there is a soft spot. And if you touch that soft spot, you find the vast blue sky.

Listen carefully, my heart, as I will only say this once.

Your kind dentist took a careful look at the various x-ray images and before he said anything you could read it in his serious face. Still, you did not expect surgery and hospital and general anesthetics. But so be it, you will sit in the waiting areas, you will fill out all the forms again and again, you will explain patiently that you have a rare autoimmune disease, you will hand over photocopies of all diagnostic reports, lists of the drugs you have to take, you will smile a lot, remember, you will smile whenever you can. You will really try to like everybody you have to deal with.

 

And from now on you will only mention any pain you may feel if asked. You will not, absolutely not make pain a subject of conversation. In fact, you will not dwell on it at all. 

You will enjoy tonight's dinner and eat all the strawberries R picked this morning and nothing will spoil your enjoyment, no thoughts of what your mouth may look and feel like in the coming weeks. 

And tomorrow you will just walk into this adventure with an open mind.

.

I give in or maybe I give up? This is nothing. I will not spend my waking hours (and there are too many of them) worrying whether it's an infected dental root or just massively inflamed gum tissue. One minute I am convinced of the latter and the next minute I freak out at the thought of root resection. But I very carefully and wisely push away any thought of the possibility of extraction.

Anyway, all this is history, no more fretting. From now on I am just an ordinary woman with a hot face and a couple of aches and a touch of fever probably due to any old virus. Which thankfully helped me to secure a sick cert. 

Instead I am going to be utterly calm and all zen about it. From now on. The frivolity of it! Let everything happen to you, the beauty and the terror etc. (thank you once again R. M. Rilke) only this isn't terror, doesn't come near it. Beauty? Nah. Just my own little hamster wheel.

So. A bit of a fever, a crimson red cheek, sore gums and throbbing upper jaw. Today is Sunday and the sun is out at last. The week's laundry is drying outside. Woke up last night just before dawn. Tooth ache and this song in my head, I swear. I will postpone the rest of my life until I have seen the dentist tomorrow. I am scared shitless. But what else is new.

and I don't feel too good

After all those serious talks and tests and drugs over the years tooth ache stills floors me like nothing else did. This evening I was waiting at a traffic light and cried I was so fucking scared. 

The friendly dentist - as gently as he possibly could - had just tried to fix another one of these ongoing gum inflammations with some of his magic, drilled and sanded away a tiny spot of decay. The next couple of days will be a bit rough, he said. 

I am 55 years old and have only 24 teeth left in my mouth. Four were sacrificed for beauty when I was a kid (my mother loved orthodontics) and another four got lost in the great dentist disaster of 2007 and today I have been told that maybe, maybe not, another one is at risk. This one could definitely be collateral damage. The drugs keep me alive but I pay for it with my teeth.

(Now, I am a dental hygiene fanatic. Always have been one. If there is anything I am really proud of as a brainwashing mother it's the fact that my child has almost perfect teeth.)

I have been told that my liver could pack up within years, that my kidneys are at risk, that without the drugs my hearing could go in an instant, my eyes, my heart, my lungs, all the parts of my body supplied by small blood vessels - basically everything apart from maybe nails and hair. Serious, but, well, yawn.

But tooth ache makes me weep like a lost child. And so I sit in the car with my tears running down my sore red cheeks when someone knocks on the side window, makes a sad clown face, a funny clown face, blows me a kiss and runs off. And I notice that the radio is on.

I have no reasons to despair. I don't even have any problems, at least no serious ones. I am presently not afraid of death despite the fact that soon enough I will be - again. As it happens every so often.

I worry, obviously. It's a habit, a game. I can get myself deep deep into worry. Like having a bath. Almost enjoyable but too hot and hard to get out of.

When TV series show women wearing low cut sleeveless dresses, those elegant plain coloured ones, beige, off white, grey, short and tight around the hips, while the male characters walking beside them are all tucked up in long sleeved shirts with sensible cotton T-shirts underneath, blazers, ties, even coats, don't these women freeze? I do worry about them, they must be shivering most of the time.

And then I worry about their ridiculously high heels, I see them stumbling over the Persian carpets, fractured bones, broken noses, pearls rolling under the sideboards or in one of these fancy offices, headlong across the shiny boardroom floor, iphone flying through the air, skull against the hardwood conference table, unconscious.

I worry about their eyes too. All those dark bushy lashes. Shaved baby skin all over and a regular forest sprouting around the eyes. Listen, it just takes a single bitsy stray lash getting under a contact lense or simply moving high behind the eye balls. Agony. Inflammation. Blindness.

And another thing: Stop turning to face and talk to each other when one of you is driving. Keep your eyes on the road.

One of the reasons I never go to the theatre is that I worry someone could forget their lines. And then what?

It started with the cat. Or maybe not. It started when I looked at the rain coming down in sheets thinking something along the lines of surely not here. Not again. And then I noticed the cat looking down the basement steps and acting weird. Yes, there was an odd noise. A gurgling sort of noise. The noise of water. Water coming up through the drains in the laundry room, through the cat flap of the basement door, through the tiny cracks in the stone floor, through the basement wall for heaven's sake. And I am standing in the middle of it holding up the lawnmower in one hand and the hoover in the other hand and the view through window of the basement door is of a magnificent waterfall. Down the garden stairs. Having shoved as much as possible as high as possible and with the water rising to mid calf by now, I try and find a phone that works. No luck. I run next door and even before they answer I can see they are worse off. We try to laugh. Eventually I get hold of R and then he is home and the rain stops, the water has started to run back out through the drains. We empty ten buckets out of the boiler room. I make a pot of tea, we look out over the garden basking in glorious sunshine.

Failure is just another name for much of real life: much of what we set out to accomplish ends in failure, at least in our own eyes. [...] Who told us we had to succeed at any cost?

Margaret Atwood

Nick Drake would have celebrated his 65th birthday today.

Now take a little while to find your way in here
Now take a little while to make your story clear
Now that you’re lifting
Your feet from the ground
Weigh up your anchor
And never look ‘round

The sky is covered with a stainless steel grey layer of thin cloud, the odd glimpse of hot sun shimmering from behind. Sticky, yellowish air, still and heavy, from time to time a current of exhaust wafts in from the main street up behind the trees.
I opened up all windows at four in the morning to let in whatever fresh coolness was out there. Walked out into the garden to feel the dew under my feet. By half past seven, it was already gone. Breakfast below the rambling rose with my cold porridge, a handful of fresh raspberries and a cup of tea. The little old cat was not interested in chasing the blackbirds busy in the currant bushes. We both sat there leaning into the faintest breeze.
Somewhere to the west, the thunder is rolling and maybe by night time it will have moved close enough for the sky to open up, like a boil releasing the thick fetid air in one long hiss.

Following a mention in last weekend's papers I have been reading about Jeremy Bentham and his Panopticon. From which follows panopticism and before you know it, you are right there with all that surveillance and spying stuff. Which of course is an attack on privacy, on the rights of the individual. This ugly busy body attitude that involves collecting data from anybody anywhere and at anytime - precrime as they say. Reminds me of Minority Report. And that is supposedly science fiction.

I imagine some people are disappointed with their man of hope, the one with the wide smile and the calm voice. That's a tough one. But he is not the only one, they all do it. The best democracies around the world love spying out their citizens.

But here I am, an indifferent, borderline exhibitionist user of the world wide web inmate of the panopticon.  It would be foolish not to admit that I knew all along that emails are not a safe form of communication, that cell phones reveal where we are, that every clip I watch on youtube, every read and written post, regardless of my so-called anonymity, leaves a trace. 

But who cares. I'll just go on as before. Let those nerds in crypto city read whatever they want. Let them drown in my data. 

I'll pretend I am blind and deaf. I don't want to give up the idea of a digital society with no hierarchy, of a transparent culture which some believe will one day transform the analogue world into a better place.

So obviously I will continue to write here, send emails, exchange pictures, post on my friend's fb pages.

Of course I understand that the definition of what is desirable, dangerous or secret data changes all the time. And shit could happen, governments could change, whatever, and who knows where I'll then be with all my stored opinionated emails and posts. 

But the real beauty - yes beauty - of it all is that while the prism nerds and their chums are predictable, I am not. They will always do what is barely legal and technically possible. 

But I will remain unpredictable. We all will remain unpredictable because we are so diverse, so alive, so human, so careless.

We could even switch off, write letters on paper and go outside and talk to real people.

summer

 

 More here.

I should write something about these protests, about the way most of the media here now - after a first week of disbelief and even admiration - is trying to discredit it as a the unruly behaviour of a mob of wannabe Woodstockers, rich kids playing revolution. But this is the usual story and was to be expected. What remains is that my own heart leaped and continues to leap everytime I come across people who put their own heart on their sleeves, who let it all out, the love and the anger. The hopes and the ideas. I believe that for a time in our lives we all see the open corruption, the abuse of power, we see it clearly, we feel we cannot breathe, we must do something. It's a tiny window for most, open and shut before we bow to the pressures of so-called normal day to day living. I could say that opening this window in my life has cost me my glamorous career, but for that I am eternally grateful. Much harder is the never ending taste of sarcasm, mixed with a heavy lump of disrespect, that has been at the back of my throat ever since.

Some nights you wake up at 4 am and you remember what you forgot to include in your tax returns. For a very brief moment you consider the consequences in minute detail before you realise that you have no idea. Other nights you wake up to your child's laughter, you are driving the ridiculously unsafe old car and you watch her in the rear view mirror, her damp hair curling around her face while she talks to the puppy dog on her lap. Then again, you wake up and you are nowhere. You find your breath and you place your hand on your chest to feel your heart beating and as you exhale this sudden jolt is going right through you. And once again you understand, this is not something you just run under the cold tap. This  will not go away.

there you go

deep inside a Poppy

Angelica

Angelica with bees

Silene

lots of Elder

Astrantia

strawberries all the way

The summer before I started school my father came home one Thursday evening and told me that if I could figure out how to ride a bicycle by Saturday morning, we would go into town together and buy one for me. If not, there was no way I could start school after the summer.

It all worked out in the end. I spent the next day begging the older kids to let me have a go and at some time during the afternoon I was cycling along the edge of a muggy carp pond with a gang of kids running beside me, my sister one of them, terrified that I'd fall and drown while on her watch. Worse, that I could damage the bicycle. We were way outside our permitted area. Miles from home as we often were but falling into a slimy pond would have meant real trouble.

There are different directions here for my memory. 

The way my parents set us a task, a challenge and watch - or not even watch - us figuring it out and often enough, fail. A friend once called this the brick wall parenting. The glee and open disappointment when we slipped, missed the right note, fell off the horse, lost a match, when our grades dropped, our teenage skin developed acne, our light blond hair turned darker. 

But there is also the wild secret freedom when you have to learn early on how to look out for yourself, how to hide the worst and hope to somehow be able to sneak inside without them noticing the dirty dungarees, torn sandals, cigarettes on your breath, trashy mascara, cut-off jeans, lousy school report, illegal substances in your back pocket, that big messy wave of your youth, so infuriatingly different and completely useless.

It also is the memory of my first bicycle. I have been cycling ever since, almost daily. But that is another story.

My father is making plans, as always. His whole life is one long schedule. Over the phone I imagine his disgust with my organisational skills when I tell him that I cannot note down this date because I haven't got a diary for 2014 yet. He despairs in me as usual. No wonder, I hear him mutter. No wonder what? Before we get into the usual litany of my failures (which are all due to the fact that I - for reasons he cannot fathom - decided against what in his imagination was the most promising academic career ever) I try to change the subject and start talking about the weather. Clever move. While he goes on about jet streams and Atlantic depressions and the effects on the national agricultural output, I quietly empty the dishwasher letting the phone rest on the kitchen table. For a second I worry that he somehow will notice and in an instant I am 15 again, trying to hide the packet of fags in my back pocket.

Many thanks go to nmj for this gem.

the garden, rainy May

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lillies are still in the greenhouse. Iris just started today. Aquilegia and cornflowers almost finished.

The garden is all green, claustrophobic lushness, buds everywhere waiting for a good stretch of sun and warmth to burst. But those short instances when the skies do clear are not enough it seems. Not a single rose yet, would you believe. The coldest spring in 40 years we have been told. On Sunday it was so wet and cold that we went to the museum to warm up. Practicing for retirement when we'll be poor again and heating fuel will become a luxury.
Too much gallivanting on different continents, too many wild job schemes for a decent pension to accumulate. All those nixers, the barter, the commune stuff, the co-ops, the gifts that were supposedly coming round and round, the exchange society of our idealistic dream years. Plus the years working in paradise where the sun drops into the Indian Ocean every day at 6:30 pm with the birds and their racket in the casuarina pines while I swim out to the little jetty after a long day of work. There is nowhere to enter this stuff on the annual state pension insurance forms. We have a "gap" of about 15 years and it looks like we were living on another planet. Come to think of it, we probably did.

Sometimes I worry about it. But not too often. Not yet. It will work out, we tell ourselves, we will grow more food, build a clay oven, move downstairs, and and and...maybe even discover the true pension contribution of those 15 years of very basic communal living.

trying to keep warm dancing

in the rain(y) forest

Well, well, well. It's certainly a cold May. A very cold May, she mutters as she struggles to pull on her mittens (!!!). And not only is it a very cold May, would you believe it, it also rains. A lot, as in: the river has burst its banks, the garden is a soggy mess and cycling is like taking a bath. Mind you, it's also quite pretty out there in the dripping green forest full of birdsong and I did stop to get even wetter but also just to listen.

There is a point of no return when it comes to cycling in the rain. Waterproof gear is tiresome stuff, all that swishing noise, the flapping when the wind gets caught in it and eventually, the sweat accumulating inside. Then again, cycling inside this cocoon through the forest has its moments of calm pleasure. But I admit that I rather get wet, especially when I know that there is a hot shower and a big fluffy towel waiting for me in the not too distant future. And for a while it can be quite fun to lick the rain that drops from my nose. By the time the steady trickle down my back has reached my toes I am usually home. Of course that doesn't go down well with R who will give me a serious talking to about my compromised immune system. And he is right and I promise to not do this every day. Silly really, because in fact I haven't the energy at the moment to do this too often anyway.

The rain is hammering on my office window, the sky almost black. I can't see as far as the bicycle stand and it does not look like it will improve before I go home. I will get soaked and by the time I'll get home, I'll be chilled and sometime in the night, pneumonia will set in and by tomorrow I'll be dead. Probably. Not at all. Because all we are talking about is water.

For a very long time after the experts had presented me with this diagnosis I saw death around every corner. Every new and strange symptom (well, actually every symptom incl. all my nightmares) sent me round the bend. This is probably fairly normal behaviour when you have been given the potential scenarios of heart/kidney/lung failure and all that shit about going blind and/or deaf. 

I suppose you could say that by now I have become somewhat blasé about it. But only somewhat and only sometimes. I am getting there. Soon I will be completely fearless. There is a thought.

Last weekend we were supposed to be in Luxemburg but as I was climbing down from the cortisone mountain and also because R discovered that he had a touch of sore throat, we cancelled. Instead, we had a really nice weekend at home. Maybe Luxemburg would have been only half as nice. I am getting very good with all the cancellations. In fact, I may start another blog about all the trips we plan and then cancel, my virtual journey around the world.

And another blog about all the recipes I am bookmarking and saving for my gastritis-free future. I could pretend I baked a few loaves of rosemary and raisin soda bread, made rhubarb fool and something fancy with roast new potatoes, fresh spinach and salty Turkish cheese. Lots of olives. Red wine to go with it. And a little espresso.

Last night, this song popped up again which brings me straight back to the early 1970s when I was staying for the summer with my very sophisticated filthy rich godmother who had parties in her garden every night where my 13 year old self learned to dance with the pros.

the easy option

 

Sometime last year I realised that I had forgotten the date of my mother's death. I knew it was sometime in August, or July, but the year? My sister gave me this look again: typical, you have always taken the easy option. The funeral I remember. It is not something to ever forget. But not for today.


The last time my mother came for a visit (maybe 20 years ago), she decided she wanted to leave after the first night. This did not come as a surprise, there was always something. (On the previous visit she could not stand the dust on the skirting plus the fact that we were doing it all wrong with her granddaughter.) While I drove her to the station, she told me that I was and always had been too uptight for her taste. That and the fact that we had asked her not to smoke indoors. And some more, but I stopped listening. Just before she got on the train she managed a quick little thank you. She did have a thing about Good Manners.

I will never pick up all the pieces. I want to think that my very young grandmother here is looking at her newborn daughter with wonder and love. That she is excited, a bit nervous, even a little scared, of course, but basically happy. But I know that she spent hardly any time with her child, that there was a nanny waiting once the photgrapher was done. My mother's life is full of stuff like that, a never ending story of loss and riches, loneliness and grandeur, travel, music, intelligence, war and death, hardship, illness, drugs, addiction, rejection, despair and deep dark sad fury.

My life is different. So wonderfully and miraculously different and whole and sane that at times I feel faint just realising this. Some of my innocent goody-good friends occasionally try to get me to do all that forgiveness stuff complete with the self help books and daily moments of gratefulness etc. Even or especially now, so many years after her death. You must, they press on, find closure.

No, friends, the abandoning was complete and it was mutual. I admit that for some, it looks like the easy option. It was my only option.

lilac wine

Awake in the night I make up my mind to stop making such a big deal about it.

I am done with all these what if thoughts. For the time being. Breathe in, breathe out, smell the lilac through the open window. Don't give me any of this positive thinking crap. I am floating.

The experts spiked my drugs today, this could just be the kick starter of high dose cortisone. Health has become an ongoing compromise of effects and side-effects. Not sure where I am right now. 

But at least I am somewhere. Who knows, maybe I am even here.

Early summer, there is no other word for it. I tried a few fresh raspberries with the grey porridge, hell, I even ate a pear and half a banana. But went back to nibbling dry rusk and toast for the rest of the day. Too much nausea plus vertigo to do anything else. Doctor's appointment tomorrow.

The cat is pretending to be young and agile, rolling under the pear tree and walking away covered in white petals. 

We did none of the things we had planned to do this weekend. Stuff we had marked on the kitchen calendar weeks and months ago, the crafts fair, the anti-nazi demo, the garden center, the fireworks by the river. Too busy nursing our aches and pains, R complaining the Greek olives gave him indigestion. 

I booked another night for October on the Italian lake, online. I can see myself doing this regularly. There is a 24hr cancellation policy free of charges, 24hrs prior to arrival that is. I am very tempted to book all sorts of fancy places just for the heck of it. Pretend travel, until some booking engine cancels our one and only credit card for wasting their time.

My 3 yr. old grand niece is starting kindergarden tomorrow. (My baby brother is a granddad.) It is a forest adventure creche, three hours to start with, on weekday mornings. All outdoors, come rain or shine, waterproof pants, wellie boots, a sturdy handcart, exploring.

As kids we used to play in a small forest, building dens with sticks and moss, elaborate tree houses. Dangers lurking everywhere. My mother made us matching brown corduroy overalls with bib pockets, perfect for collecting beechnuts. For a while I carried with me a flattened lizard I had peeled off the road. My father eventually showed me how to dry it properly on the garage roof. It disappeared that night.

I can still see my little brother in his short lederhosen, crying and clinging onto a branch far too high for him and my mother arriving on my father's black bicyle, in a white pencil skirt, high heels, climbing up to rescue her little prince. As she brushed the bark from her skirt and lit a cigarette, she hissed at me and my big sister from behind the smoke, don't even dream of coming home tonight.

And so we were in the middle of preparing our bed of leaves, discussing whether we should collect acorns for dinner when my father drove up and opened the car door without a word. He grinned all the way home. I saw it in the rear view mirror.

Treat every crisis as normal and soluble.

John le Carré

In the early 1990s, I was working in a large bookshop in Dublin, one of these temples of print and publishing, spread over several floors, classical music, children's activities, Sunday opening hours, free coffee and red wine, readings, the lot. This is where families would go for an outing on a rainy weekend. Those were the pre-latte, pre-kindle days. My family occasionally visited me at work but I never really had the time for coffee, let alone reading or browsing. Show me a bookseller who then had the time to read anything apart from sales figures, bestseller lists, blurbs on the back covers and all the invoices and I'll tell you he/she is a fraud.

For a couple of months we had one of those strange bestsellers. It happened every so often. A book would sell like hotcakes without any advertising, anything in the media, often a title from a small, even obscure publisher without a sales rep. 

Anyway, we sold stacks and stacks of The healing power of illness: the meaning of symptoms and how to interpret them. We sold it to young parents, ageing hippies, elderly matrons, priests and nuns, journalists, teachers, even the odd medical person.

The concept was intriguing and at first glance even convincing. Take the common cold. What do the symptoms - coughing, sneezing, sore throat, runny nose, blocked ears etc. - tell us about the patient? Yes, the message is obvious: stay away, keep out, leave me alone, I cannot talk, I cannot listen, I want peace and quiet and so on. Look deeper and bingo, the diagnosis is staring you in the face: too much stress, too much involvement, too busy ignoring what is really bothering you and so on. In other words, you, the patient, have a minor psychological drama at your hands, but luckily, you now have the power to overcome this. 

This nice little pattern is put to work for almost any health issue and reading it you will find yourself nodding your head here and there. Gosh, how obvious. 

I admit I was pretty hooked - and I have a much leafed through copy somewhere to prove it - until I came to the chapter on migraine. Now, I have never - touch wood - suffered from migraine myself but to diagnose migraine as a misguided orgasm in the head? Good grief. 

Illness and health a far more mysterious. And the riddle never ends. Count your lucky stars for every day, every night of well being, no matter how relative in comparison to whatever. And when the shit hits the fan and you cannot get one foot in front of the other, try to remember that your body with all its billions of cells is programmed for recovery. Which takes time and maybe the outcome is not what you expected. Don't get mad. It's hard work.

It's not that I am desperately missing coffee, after all I have had three cups since January and the last one in particular made my life pretty miserable, but this is spring and there are all these cafes with outdoor seating under the flowering chestnut trees. Try getting a decent cup of tea in any of these. Not. Possible. Sigh.

On the whole the entire health situation is pretty shoddy at the moment. In other words: I feel like shit. Without getting into too much detail.

So today being a public holiday I did all the sensible things I could come up with, such as driving through gorgeous forests, climbing up on the ramparts of a 12th century castle, eating fried green asparagus with too much chili, clicking my way through videos of sleepy kittens online, booking our short October holiday on an Italian lake in a seedy hotel a stone's throw from George Clooney's villa (wishful thinking, it's not even on the same lake), cleaning up what the cat brought in, and now fennel tea, hot water bottle, bed, keeping finger's crossed etc.