what has poetry got to do with my iphone

Guo Jinniu was born half a century ago somewhere in rural China. Jinniu means golden bull or maybe golden ox, excuse my ignorance. Like so many before him and since, he eventually found his way to one of the new cities, Shenzhen, where he worked on an assembly line making mobile phones, 17 hours every day. 

Someone like me is not allowed to live the life I secretly long for. But I can write what my inner voice tells me to.

Today, he lives with his wife and two children in a windowless room, 12 sqm. The family owns exactly one book, Selected Poems in World Literature. He no longer works at the assembly line, he now works for the local authorities registering the streams of migrant workers. All this I read in one of our daily national papers. 

Guo Jinniu is a poet. This is one of his poems. It just won the International Chinese Poetry Award.

I shy away from translating the German version and find this on an obscure Chinese site:

Gone Home on Paper

1. 

The teenager on a dark morning counts from 1st floor to 13th 

by the time he gets there, he’s on the roof. 

Him.

Fly, fly. The motions of birds, inimitable. 

The teenager draws a straight line, immediately 

a line of lightning

could only see the nearer half.

The Earth, a little larger than Longhua Town, rolls up to meet him

Speed  carried the teenager off;  rice carried off a minuscule white.

 

2. 
Mother’s tears jump from the tiles’ edges.

This is the 13th jump in six months. In the past, those twelve names

dusts just settled. 

All night autumn wind runs through Mother’s pearly everlasting

His whited ashes, frail whites  heading home on the train

he’s unconcerned with rice white   pearly everlasting white

Mother’s white

Frostfall’s.

Such an enormous white buries a minuscule white

like Mother burying her daughter.

 

3. 
On the 13th floor, a suicide net is closing up

this is my job

in order to make a day’s pay

I gradually turn down a screw counter-sink it clockwise

it struggles and fights me in the dark

the harder I push, the greater the danger

 

Rice lips of fresh water, tiny dimples hide two drops of dew, she is still worrying

Autumn loses

one set of clothes a day

My friend gone home on paper, besides rice,  your fiancée,

rarely does anyone recall that in Room 701 of this building, 

you occupied a bunk,

ate Dongguan rice noodles. 

Someone jumps. From the roof of a factory. He wanted a better life and he came to this city. These jumps are reality. I think,  it was 18 young workers, within the span of a few months in 2010. From the roof of foxcon where the iphones come from, our wii, our xboxes, the biggest electronics manufacturer in the world. I read on: 

We are kept like robots, not allowed to speak, for 12 long hours. If you need to use the toilet you have to apply for a number. I fixed the net. Nobody is allowed to jump anymore.

Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times in today's China.

I live by the river

 

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief.
Pema Chodron

Another frosty night and the sky this morning was a cold sparkly blue, so innocent. I was looking out at the contrails up high behind the bare trees listening to my GP making arrangements for a couple of tests (just to be on the safe side, don't you worry) while his receptionist was filling out the forms I need to send to the insurance so that we get a refund on the money we paid for the - by now cancelled - trip to Vienna. 

What if I just get my coat and leave. What if I never again sit in a waiting room trying to remember the list of symptoms and observations I had been composing all night in my head. What if it doesn't matter at all what I say. What if I just step out into this beautiful sunny morning air and walk away.

This has been a difficult week. 

Here in my lovely warm home. 

I look out over the soggy lawn and the limp nasturtium killed by last night's frost, turning my face towards the briefest glimpse of sunlight. On Tuesday I packed it in, stopped pretending and everything has become hard work. When asked how I feel, I change the subject. That's the easy part. I want to do it right this time, or at least better, more dignified than four years ago. 

Because it's big, this one. Oh yes. 

A veritable eruption. 

This time, however, I want to be grown up about it. Not so insulted, so angry, so childish. 

None of this drama queen stuff. 

The worst case scenario is as ever: unbearable pain, loneliness, death. And of course, nothing could be further from the truth. I am comfortable. This being winter makes it harder, I think. But maybe not so. The early hours are still dark and silent when my mind begins to roam and speculate, when symptoms spin out of control and my breathing becomes shallow - until I catch myself and slowly begin to pull myself up from the deep hole of everything and nothing.

In my dream last night I was being poisoned. And while I was carefully examining all the food in my larder, suspiciously discarding one thing after another, I realised that the poison was me.

empathy is feeling with people

Grey December morning, the sun must be there somewhere. Maybe here.

my mind can feel

One of the awful things that living with a chronic disease brings - wait, that's not the way to start this, because to be honest, living with a chronic disease in my experience has so far not exactly been not awful despite all that endurance and enlightenment stuff and the positive living and acceptance shit and oh yes, the good that theoretically comes out of the dark times. 

Well, at least I haven't figured out what should be so great about it. But then again, who knows what kind of middle-aged woman I may have become without this. I wonder if my child would dress up in a life size giraffe costume on skype to cheer me up if I had remained fit and healthy. So, ok, one great thing about it. Probably a whole lot more. Must think about this another day.

Anyway, another uninvited aspect of this state of things is that any symptoms which in theory could stem from a common and garden virus or a stomach bug or whatever, that is anything from a runny nose (which I haven't had for ages) to feverish abdominal cramps with arrhythmia (of which by now I have had my decent share thank you very much), feel like another nail to my coffin. 

No, not really. Only joking. Why is this so complicated to explain. I always think another thing has started and is here to stay for good. As in, a runny nose for the rest of my days so to speak. Which is daft. Or as my GP once said: why not have something normal for a change. 

At present, things are a bit complicated because I have beautiful lab results, mostly (apart from the anca shit but we all know that this is here to stay) but a couple of symptoms screaming to high heavens. Nothing unusual and nothing I could not manage (she declares bravely) but this time I want to be well enough to travel in nine short days. Fingers crossed, light your candles.

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after 27 years. On that day I was working in my air conditioned office in a tiny African town - you really could not call it a town but it is in fact the capital city of this tiny state which we call Paradise.

Here, I was reinventing the wheel every day anew with a group of friendly but cautious young men and women who I am sure mostly laughed at all my efforts but greatly enjoyed my tales of life in Europe. I loved them all and some of them actually liked me back. When the news finally made the rounds - remember, no internet and no daily newspapers, just two hours of daily radio messages in the mornings (if you had a radio) and three hours of Cosby show reruns for the wealthy with TV sets on Sundays - it was like a wave. Small first, whispers, incredulous looks, shaking of heads etc. until eventually one of the embassy drivers pushed open the big glass door to the building and marched right up to my desk shouting: Mandela is back, heh you, what do you say now? And people started smiling, shyly, never showing too much emotion in front of a white woman, but when I let out my great cheer, we all clapped each other on the back and even hugged and sure enough, some Bob Marley tape was found and I went out and organised beer and samosas for all.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
Nelson Mandela

After two weeks of whatever, I was back at work today. There, I did it. Other people go to work - have to go to work - with more dramatic symptoms. I had forgotten to what level fatigue can rise and how it can knock me over once the door has been opened. But I made it. Frankly, I have no idea how but never mind.

And the sun was out today after such a long time. 

Last Thursday I sat with a friend who is having a hard time coping with the sudden death of a young niece. Now, that is what I would call a hard time and she is struggling but underneath she has this tremendous trust, in life, in recovery. We sat close and hugged and held hands and I wiped away her tears and I was hoping that some of her trust will rub off on me.

But in the end I just felt sad. And a bit afraid of dying. But only a little bit, for a short while.

I read about this study with the 75 healthy male volunteers at the University of Hamburg. These happy and healthy men were randomly assigned to two groups and half of them were given a nasal spray with oxytocin and the other half were given a nasal spray with salt water. But of course, nobody knew who got what. Some time later, a nice male doctor comes along and rubs two identical ointments on two sites of a participant's arm all the time explaining and identifying pretending that one of these is an anaesthetic ointment that reduces pain and that the other one is just a control cream (but we know that they are both the same). Then the doctor does some elaborate mumbo-jumbo setting up something to measure pain stimulation. Next,

 a series of 10 stimuli of the calibrated intensity was applied to each of the 2 sites in pseudorandomized order. Each stimulus lasted for 20 seconds, followed by a rating procedure and 40-second rest.

 And here's the thing:

Despite identical thermal stimulation on both sites, pain ratings for the placebo [anaesthetic ointment] site were significantly lower compared with the control [ointment] site across both treatment groups.  

So just because they were told that the cream was reducing pain, they felt less pain. Well, yes, I have been a mother to a small child, I know that trick. But there is more:  

The placebo analgesic response was significantly higher in the oxytocin group compared with the saline group.

In other words, the participants who got oxytocin trusted the doctor's instructions, believed him and felt less pain. 

I've got a long way to go here. Obviously, no oxytocin is coming my way and thanks to all heavens and skies, I have very little pain. But still, I wish I could trust my doctors, just take my meds and do as told and rest assured that they know what's happening and that I will be ok - whatever that is - and never once let any or all of these nagging worries and questions enter my mind and spread through my body like an electric current. Being unwell can turn into an endless session of existential questioning and struggling to hold back the what if scenarios. All that stuff that theoretically I have long left behind.

So what else is new.

 

My mother's body was tiny, she was by now extremely thin, her skin so very pale, smooth and translucent. Her head was turned to the right at an odd angle, her eyes seemed to be staring into the distance and her chin had dropped, leaving her mouth open. Someone had tried to close it with a strip of muslin dressing but it must have slipped when they pushed her bed into the small storage room. Here, in this quiet stuffy windowless corner, without the feeding tube stuck in her throat, she looked strangely restful. Finally. 

But I was not there. My brother told me all this. Or maybe he did not, maybe he mentioned some of it and I have fabricated the rest over the years. He was trying to sound calm, his voice on the phone going on and on, about the dressing, the eyes, the cold room. About the one arm hanging off of the side of the bed, almost touching the rubber wheel. He apologised that he waited until sunrise before he called us, his sisters. He could not bear to stay in that room which in my imagination was crammed with the spare things of a hospital ward, stainless steel things stacked on a trolley, drip stands in the corner. He sat on a bench by the car park, smoking and waiting for the first light before he made the calls. But even that I don't know for certain. When I asked him, some weeks later, he could not remember.

I did not see any of this, her lopsided body, her limp hands, the room stuffed with clangy metal. The last time I saw my mother, maybe two weeks earlier, she was very agitated. At least that is how it seemed to me watching her shrunken body strapped onto the bed, with the humming noises from the monitors, the quiet hissing from the respirator. It had been months since my last visit, when my sister had picked me up at the train station and we had started to argue straight away. Not in so many words, of course. But in the best family tradition of snide remarks, little patronising gestures, tripping each other up. Look, I can hold her hand so gently, almost the loving daughter. But I brought a tape of what I guess is her favourite music. Wait, smell this gorgeous massage lotion I got her. And so on.

And again, that last time I wanted to be the one who really understood her, who could finally read the urgent messages that I thought I could fathom in her eyes, darting here and there, staring at the ceiling. But I could hardly speak, afraid to say the wrong thing. As always. So instead I sobbed. Knowing that in her good days, she would have been disgusted with me. When I did freak out, it was purely for my own benefit. 

I left the room, her bed, in tears, furious. By the time I had calmed down we were already on the  motorway. Four hours later I was home and she was once again out of my life.

Sometime last year when I realised that I had forgotten not only what year but also what day she had died I found out that it was actually the same date when I met R, twenty years earlier.  It never registered. But then I am not big on significant dates.

Right now, I don't seem to feel any of the old anger. We had abandoned each other long before. But I feel curious, when did it start, when did we stop being mother and daughter, when did the space between us become this dark and ugly distance.

be patient - listen

Today is a beautiful day. Beautiful.
Not because of the weather, the grey fog that has now turned into rain and sleet.
Not because of the blue jays sitting in the trees, although they are very impressive.
And certainly not because a total of three immunologists discussed my symptoms resulting in two of them speaking to me over the phone. And definitely not because I am back on the cortisone mountain for a couple of days.
Today is absolutely beautiful because it's her birthday. My girl, this young woman, so alive, so at home in the world. Skype-laughing with us, the antipodean summer all around her. Always lucky, eating fresh strawberries on her birthday in November.

Day seven of my latest adventure into the realms of ill health. The general theme here is boredom. And trying not to fabricate something grave and serious out of my quirky little mix of symptoms. Still, after much hesitation, I have booked a telephone meeting with the immunologist. But she is not calling back. Is this a sign? Let's get all worked up about it, shall we?

Hang on, this is only day seven, much too early.

I listen to my father's voice on the answerphone. One of his heroes, a sharp and much admired political commentator, actor and writer died last night. Of course, my father would not speak about this, death is never mentioned. Instead, he informs me of his various plans, a dinner with so-and-so and a concert tonight. I roughly calculate that this means he'll be driving for two hours home in the dark close to midnight. I check the forecast, yes, snow. He thinks he is invincible, in his big shiny car with all its multiple front and side impact airbags and whatnot steering. With his one blind eye, deaf ears and his walking sticks safely stored in the boot. Of course, no mobile phone. He thinks he has the lucky gene of longevity and endless health. The thing is, my brother tells me, that he'll probably take someone with him when he crashes. Could be a bus full of people.

I stop the answerphone but I don't delete the message. Not until I speak to him in person again. Just in case.

good bye Doris Lessing

picture by Jane Bown

She may not have changed the world in quite the way she had imagined when she set sail for Britain all those years ago, and it may be far from the beautiful place she envisaged, but she has changed the lives of countless readers and, whether she liked it or not (and it's a fair bet that secretly she did), she helped change the way women are perceived, and perceive themselves.

The Golden Notebook was the second English language novel I read in my life, hunched over at the university library in Heidelberg, pretending to study for my exams, while at the back of my mind I had already started to change my life. Thank you.

This is what happens when you brag about cycling and fresh cold air, when you paint this picture of a healthy active woman. Which you are no longer and will never again be no matter what. 

It starts with a slow feeling of something crawling up your neck, something hissing in your left ear, you break out in very cold sweat, shivering, and then the earth moves under your feet, the room tosses about and around and the nausea begins. 

You breathe in and out, you try to concentrate and slowly start to count and before you know it, you are on the floor and you hear yourself cursing. And you really know how to curse.

Some time later, you are not quite sure how, but you are on your bed, holding your head in an akward position because for now all you want is that the room remains still for a while, you start to hear music. 

This is the future.

Not only is Amsterdam one of my favourite cities, I am also a cyclist - have been since my father put me, aged maybe not even 12 months, in the little seat behind the handlebars of his big black bicycle. I have cycled wherever I have lived so far and I plan to do this for a while longer. Daily, if possible, like right now once I post this. Today is cold, just above freezing, but the sky is clear and blue and I'll put on a double pair of thermal mittens. I don't cycle for fitness or as a recreational sport thing, I cycle to get from A to B and back again. Sometimes, this can take a couple of days or even weeks. And I don't wear a helmet. Don't ask, I would only get worked up about risk assessment and behavioural studies and I have the statistics right here somewhere.

On a day such as this with its jumble of bad sad news and fog and the effects from maybe something I ate it makes sense to go to the vet. 

This vet specialises in pets, so no horse, cattle or wild bird in the waiting room. Instead, there is an elderly lady with perfect blue-rinse perm and the obligatory string of pearls and her two grey greyhound-like-poodles. She is doing something elaborate with flash cards and little treats. Corn, she says, moving the flashcard with a painting of corn in front of the dogs' milky eyes. Car, cat, sunflower, and so on. I try not to stare. The door opens and a large man starts bringing in seven (7!) transport boxes. He stacks them into a neat tower and eventually sits down wiping off the accumulated sweat from his face. Time for the annual shots, he informs all and sundry. Today the cats, tomorrow we bring the dogs. Nobody asks, how many dogs, but we all begin to speculate quietly. 

On my way out, clutching the box of flea drops, I almost crash into the toddler with her pet rat in a Barbie box.

Nothing unusual, I tell my little cat when I get back in, you know, just the odd nutters. She yawns and goes back to sleep.

An age is coming when machines will be able to do everything. “Ah,” you say, “but they will not be conscious.” But how will we know a machine is not conscious – how do we know another human being is conscious? There is only one way. When it starts to play. In playfulness lies the highest expression of the human spirit.

This is the stuff kids teach us.

Days like this one are what gives November a bad name. Seriously. 

Phone calls, mails, the cranes heading south all day in their large v-shape formations, the news. 

That hollow feeling in my chest because I miss my child too much today. My grown-up woman child.

Sometimes I think I was a good mother. She tells me so, often. I know R has been a great father, I watched him, I learned from him. It was like playing house, we walked into this without a plan, no school of thought, no rules, our confidence so brash it echoed off the walls. 

Just show her the tools, teach her how to use them, love her, praise her, cherish her always, roll out the carpet of trust wherever she goes and let her go, watch her being authentic, always generous, curious, independent.

And now I find myself studying her face on skype, counting the freckles on her forehead, quite unable to comprehend. Where has the time gone.

happy birthday Joni Mitchell

This is it what it will be like for the next four months, dark. Probably mostly wet, hopefully not too much ice and snow but things have been changing, winters have become unpredictable in this mild river valley.

I really want two handsome and strong torch bearers to run ahead of me when I cycle home after work through the dark forest. All afternoon I tell myself that I will take the road, never mind the detour, the tram lines, the traffic lights, the big black cars without indicators etc. but then I go out there into the dark bicycle lock-up and I feel like some sort of Arctic explorer and by the time reason hits me it's too late. I am in the dark tunnel with the dripping dark trees, the path covered in slippery leaves. And I tell myself that nobody in their right mind - and certainly no creep or criminal - would want to be here, getting wet waiting to attack a lone middle aged female cyclist. At times, I have to sing at the top of my voice just to make sure that all the ghosts and fairies get the message, too. Mostly, I just curse my stupid stubborn self.

Another stormy day. I cycled for about two hours, leaning into the wind, pushing and forcing myself to be fit and healthy, my hands and face stinging with the cold air. Now of course I am exhausted, my arms and legs like lead.

When I met my immunologist last Friday she would not hear my polite pleas of lowering or maybe - please - try to go without one or even two of the cocktail ingredients. She explained it all very nicely but still. There are days when I really really want to be the fool who believes it's all in my head. After all that time, yes.

There is always the option risk to close in on myself, like a soft animal withdrawing into a small, dark tunnel. Nursing my fears, my losses, my ill health. Well, it's November, what do you expect. My sister has been going on about it for weeks, with every hour less of daylight she prepares herself for mental breakdown. But what if it doesn't happen this winter, I want to ask her. What if everything will be fine for a change? Maybe we are completely sane!

Someone mentioned last week, as a sort of by the way thing, that death is really easy, that he is not afraid of it at all because people all over the world manage it. Sick and healthy, stupid and clever, young and old, rich and poor, and so on. And for a split second I had this reassuring sensation that maybe even I will eventually achieve some form of calm and age appropriate insights. 

Whatever. But not yet.

market day late October

In 1973 I was mostly bored and lonely. My grades started to drop and I think I spent a lot of my time after school listening to AFN, pretending to do my homework and fighting with my sister.

Copying someone's homework on the bus in the morning, trying to stay awake during lessons and so on. All that time wasted on Latin irregular verbs, the finer aspects of the Thirty Years' War, morphological traits of the European swifts and that black hole called maths. Never enough money. 

Lou Reed's Transformer was one of the first albums I bought and I remember holding it in my hands on the bus home, reading the track list on the back cover and the curious looks from the person sitting next to me. Well, I was 14. And since my English was very poor I hadn't a clue what he was singing about. It was the doo-doo-doo, doo-doo chorus that got me hooked. But within a very short time, Lou Reed provided education, valuable, seriously needed and liberating education. A glimpse of a strange, mad, wild freedom. 

my life of luxury

The week that started with rain (here and - more importantly - on the Italian slopes of the Alps) and a variety of physical calamities which I will not dwell on as a matter of principle but which for a change affected R more than me (and when I say affected I mean affected because that man is hardly ever sick and clearly hasn't developed my superior suffering skills - nor will he ever do so) has been full of wonderful twists and turns. First, we cancelled our trip to the upper Italian lakes. Obviously. It would be far too straight forward for us to actually travel to the fancy destinations we book weeks and months ahead. And as I mentioned some time previously, I am quite good with all that cancellation business. This time, someone called Paola from the Italian hotel apologised to me and promised a discount should we want to come when the weather forecast is a bit less rainy and stormy. Maybe she confused us with someone rich and famous. Or maybe she is simply a nice person. 

And so we sat over breakfast, contemplating the possibly rainy week ahead, midterm break, no work, a cancelled Italian holiday and cheered each other up with nice little suggestions (museum, maybe a short bicycle trip, composting, library, jam making and general anarchy). 

And then...

Less then 24 hrs later, this is what we looked at: 

 

And all the Bavarian cliches were in place, the blue skies, the white clouds, the clear water, the people so full of themselves. We talked our way into the opening ceremony of a local film festival, were offered fancy drinks and even fancier finger food and when one of the local head honchos in his traditional Lederhosen gripping his Porsche key ring began to wax lyrical about this being the best place on earth, we ran, giggling, into the night and the head lights of the fast cars in endless traffic jams were shining all along the lake like a string of pearls. 

The rest of the week involved a good bit of cycling, a panic inducing trip ontop a mountain in a tiny two seater swinging (!) gondola which took almost forever (and I seriously contemplated walking back down until someone pointed out that it would take me four hours at least), more lakes and tiny Baroque chapels, cows with bells grazing on very green meadows and all the hills were alive with the sound of music. Well, almost.

vine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

aptronyms

In the early 1990s, the New Scientist asked its readers to send in examples of aptronyms, or so-called nominative determinism (when people have a name that fits their profession) and it was always a good read.

"We recently came across a new book, Pole Positions - The Polar Regions and the Future of the Planet, by Daniel Snowman. Then, a couple of weeks later, we received a copy of London Under London - A Subterranean Guide, one of the authors of which is Richard Trench. So it was interesting to see Jen Hunt of the University of Manchester stating in the October issue of The Psychologist: "Authors gravitate to the area of research which fits their surname." Hunt's example is an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology by A. J. Splatt and D. Weedon. (This really does exist. We've checked it)."

Think of William Wordsworth being a poet and you get the idea. Obviously, there is Freud (joy) and Jung (young) and Adler (eagle).
And today I found a paper by Dr. Doolittle and Brumm (hum) on the musician wren (cyphorhinus arada) which is this shy and gorgeous bird in the Amazon rainforest. (I know, a bit far fetched, but listen.)

Nobody owns life but anybody who can pick up a frying pan owns death.

William S. Burroughs

As quoted in a death notice (for nobody I know) in one of big national newspapers. Maybe a cook?

the last blueberry for this year