The Wild Washerwomen

In the late 1970s, John Yeoman and Quentin Blake, an amazing, gifted team of author and illustrator, wrote the tale of The Wild Washerwomen. 

This book came into our lives in the late 1980s when my then five year old daughter brought it home from school for her reading diary. The school, a small international school, was located in an old, slightly disheveled plantation house in the African country we call paradise. My daughter's classroom was on the first floor and could be reached by an outdoor staircase that led up to a large veranda behind which, separated by a row of louvre windows, the classrooms were located.  Directly below the veranda were the rabbit hatch and chicken run, in the adjacent courtyard under several large jacaranda trees, was the dining area and the stage for theater and music performances.

Her teacher was Miss M, a young woman from the English Midlands, on her first teaching post, sent by an Evangelical organization which was mainly involved in running a Christian radio station, up on the hills overlooking the harbour and small airport, from where missionary messages were broadcast to the heathens in the far away places across the Indian Ocean. The school was not part of it but qualified teachers were always welcome and Miss M was a dedicated teacher full of ideas and energy. Her big project was reading. She believed, as she informed us parents in the first week, that every child eventually loves reading, be it books, newspapers, instruction manuals, gossip pages or the bible. But that this love of reading has to be instilled with real books, not silly meaningless "readers" about "Tom and Sue helping Mummy in the kitchen" or worse, reading cards, reading tests and so on. Real books, she told us, have a story, one with a beginning and an end, with a story line and - importantly - a title and an author. A real story, so she continued, captivates, positively or negatively, the reader and encourages to talk, draw, write, complain about or praise it. For this purpose, she created big reading diaries, one for each of her pupils. And every book a pupil read was to be documented in it, complete with a proper review. Every school day, each pupil selected a book to bring home to read. Reading could mean many things from listening to the book being read, reading some of it, recognising some of the words, telling the story simply by looking at the illustrations because all books had illustrations, some even had no written words. But books they all were, with title, author, story line. And so, every day, we recorded in the big diary what was read and how, but most importantly, what the reader liked or disliked about the book. In a corner of the classroom, Miss M had created a library with whatever children's books she could find. Hand-me-downs, donations, old school stock, very few newly purchased. Many books made the rounds over and over, were read several times again and again. Some books were loved so much they were only reluctantly returned. Every day, in class and at home, there was a lot of talking about the books, sharing of reviews and opinions and regular votes for best book etc. Obviously, other stuff went on as well, clever educational stuff, words, writing, singing, rhyming and so on, to help the process.

Briefly, the story of the Wild Washerwomen is about seven unhappy washerwomen, Dottie, Lottie, Molly, Dolly, Winnie, Minnie and Ernestine, all working in the laundry of Mr Tight, a most dreadful and mean individual. So they decide to go on strike. No spoilers here, if you can, find a copy and read it for yourself. It is a triumph of feminist determination and the spirit of co-operation, no less. When the book was voted book of the week, the class sat down to draw the story while listening to it being read once again by Miss M.

Above is my daughter's painting of the Wild Washerwomen, well, three of them at least. It hangs above my desk, reminding me every day that reading is power and that a book is a gift you can open again and again.

Miss M stayed in my life for many years. In paradise, I had persuaded her to come along to the weekly women's group where we, a group of Peace Corps, NGO, immigrant, posh expat and local women, discussed feminist issues, local and world politics, music, men, sex and rock and roll, drank plenty of cheap South African wine and danced wildly into the night - in that order. She did not miss a week but remained sober and rarely danced. Later, her organization moved her to India where she still lives, teaching, sending the occasional round robin newsletter about rural living, food and water shortages and prayer requests. As far as I know, she has never been paid a salary.

 

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you. You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.”

- Alexei Navalny

rain

On days like this one, I feel incredibly lucky. Lucky to be retired, to have a home, to have good company and reliable support, access to information and also, living with a someone who makes excellent coffee.

 

It has been raining, mostly, for days. I managed to sneak out for a walk during some of the few dry patches but yesterday, it hit me head on halfway and I sloshed back home, soaked and cold. When I sat down on the stairs in the hall to take off my shoes, the first wave of vertigo hit me so hard, I actually had to laugh. There you are, you fucker. Who cares, I don't have to go anywhere. Missed your chances.

The day before, I was trying out walking with headphones. I have never done this before, it's a mixture of wanting to hear the sounds around me and being scared that someone will sneak up from behind and clobber me over the head. Anyway, it was foggy, I was halfway through an interview with Terry Waite about his time as a hostage in Lebanon when someone tapped my shoulder. From behind. It was A, my neighbour from across the garden. So of course, we walked on together. I have a complicated non-relationship with her, long story to do with watching her raise her daughters, getting a divorce and also, how she always cuts her hedge at the wrong time of the year chasing the nesting birds away. In short, I usually stay out of her way. She is lonely. I listened. To the long story. I still have complicated feelings. The next day I purposefully did not pass her house when I set out. Anyway, it was raining. Maybe I feel bad about it, not the rain but avoiding being seen by her. Not sure if I have another go with headphones.

In my inbox, a brief message from a doctor, matter of fact and so on, in a last sentence mentioning BTW the option of removing an entire section of my intestine. Possible improvement of quality of life. I ponder the words in order: possible? improvement? quality? life? and it's a riddle. 

Thank you for your comments and your concerns about me cycling to the hospital. Rest assured, I am a careful cyclist, a skilled cyclist and a very experienced one. Maybe the word is seasoned?  I would never attempt to endanger my or anybody's life or the condition of my bicycle by reckless behaviour. I have been cycling for the past 60 years, pretty much daily, at least weekly, on four continents, as a means of getting from A to B and back. It's not a fitness or sports activity for me. Some days, I am better on two wheels than on two feet. 

This also happened. Spring.

get ready

Get out of bed, tidy your room, do a bit of exercise, eat something and, as Leonard Cohen sang, in his characteristically world-weary way, ‘get ready for the struggle’.

Nick Cave 

I cycled to the hospital. I was really wobbly, having not eaten anything solid for 48 hrs, but the geese and the duck in the park at this hour didn't mind. I hid the bike behind the front entrance hall because I had signed this paper that since it would be unsafe to drive or cycle, I would have someone picking me up to chaperone me on my home journey. Then they made me wait almost another hour and I got grumpy. As if not eating anything wasn't enough. 

The procedure was the easiest bit. First, I panicked because the doctor told me he could only give me a homeopathic dose of diazepam due to this being a dynamic MRI which requires my co-operation, not dozing my way through it. Thankfully, the dose was enough for the usual butterflies-in-my-mind feeling, equally pleasant and unpleasant, and as always, I tried to imagine how on earth my mother managed to get through her days with housework and lunch prep and three kids while on that stuff every day. She also drove a car almost daily, often with more than her three kids in it. All I managed was wobble cycle back through the park.

Anyway, it has a name, my condition, as expected, and the verdict is surgery. Because in the long run, this will do you in, the nice radiologist said in as many words. More appointments are due and while I waited for the radiologist findings to be written up, I emailed my favourite gynecologist to help me with a second opinion. She called within minutes to arrange a meeting, which lifted my spirits even more than the drug did.

I arrived home in best diazepam spirits, had two cups of coffee and some of the almond cake friends had brought back from Holland yesterday. Also an apple and we sat in the spring sunshine on the patio, with the woodpeckers and robins and wrens making a racket. I looked at the tulips pushing up through the soil in amazement until the drug started to wear off and by that time, the almond cake made its presence felt in the shape of painful bloating. 

And now, the shit will hit the fan, as the saying goes. Or not.

Down the hall, R is talking to yet another plumber, builder, tiler or otherwise highly skilled person about our dream bathroom. I am hiding in my study with a heat pad on my bloated abdomen. I can hear laughter and snippets about moisture resistant tile replacement and retractable shower heads (I may have misheard here). R has done his research, stacks of catalogues sit on his desk, measurements transferred to 3-D software. We have nowhere near the money required and I have given up weeks ago. But he is persistent, in fact, downright dedicated (quite a fitting alliteration here). In the end, I just look at the figures of the latest cost estimate and do a quick calculation including our life expectancy, the energy required for cleaning the inevitable mess during renovations, the plans I have for spring and summer and shrug my shoulders, which is a kind of no but I think it only reinforces his determination. As long as we won't starve, has become our mantra here. I could add a handful of other ones, mostly involving costs of caring when we have to succumb to ill health in our very old age when we won't make it up the stairs to this fancy bathroom any longer, and sometimes I say these out loud, which is when he explains about the walk-in shower and the handrails. And in turn, I want to feel young and foolish and so I give another shrug, this time as a kind of yes.

Nothing is decided yet. There will be more visitors with cost estimates and I'll make coffee for each one of them while R does the talking.

Initially, this was my idea. A good 12 months ago. And while I was selling it to R, the long string was set in motion, of diagnostics and possible surgery and weight loss and more weight loss and not being able to eat properly and ah well. We are helpless in our boring waiting period here, so now, a mission in the shape of a bathroom.

I stop eating early afternoon because it takes so much energy to digest and as most days, this is painful, I want get the worst behind me by the time I go to bed.  During the night, if I cannot sleep or wake up, I can feel my intestine trying to get the job done and I can place my hand on the bloated, slowly shifting  lumps here and there. I jokingly told the gastrologist that it reminds me of the time when my unborn baby was kicking. He nodded, told me he has heard that description before. Anyway, guess what I have been dreaming about. I woke in a sweat. 

On Monday, I have what is called a dynamic MRI where my intestine will be examined in action. As I often say, I'll try everything once.

But what I really wanted to write about was why on earth do I blog in English when my native language is German.

When I met R, my English was limited, seriously limited. He politely claims that it was great but we both know better. As mentioned before, I was not a good student of modern languages in school and the only need for a basic knowledge of English was to pass the tests and to understand what the lyrics of my favorite pop and rock songs were all about. Mostly though, these remained mysterious riddles I could not figure out. Take "troubled water", I mean, what on earth? 

Within a year of meeting R, I found myself in his family's dining room after Sunday lunch asked to perform "Deliverance" without words - this particular version of charades, acting out film titles, is a family favourite. To this day, I could not tell you what deliverance means in German and I still have to watch that film. I failed but everybody chipped in and I did much better with "Casablanca".

It went on from there. English became my emotional language, obviously, but R's family was so different from my own, so loud and active and welcoming, not always pleasant, not always kind, but a challenge I was eager to accept. I have never looked back.

Now, after so many years, we are both bilingual and occasionally, try to switch to German, but we are too used to speaking to each other in English, we never last for more than a sentence.

For me, English and German are good for expressing different things. Everything that has to do with love I find better expressed in English. When my child was born, I sang mostly English lullabies to her. Everything that is intimate for me is in English. The only exception is translated poetry. That's a hopeless area. No way. Rilke cannot be read in English. I know that Brecht tried while in exile in the US but it's not for me.

Currently, R watches German tv shows downstairs while upstairs, I watch UK channels and netflix. We meet afterwards and report on the shape of things.

Yesterday, he watched some heavy duty thriller about corrupt Swiss bankers while I reported on Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson writing "We are the world" and how they kept on talking about starvation in Africa and how this song will turn life for the children of Africa around. We then had to shake our heads and lamented because, Africa, in case we forget, is a continent with close to 1,5 billion people, living in 54 countries, speaking close to 2000 different languages. The Ethiopian famine took place in Ethiopia, an East African country the size of France and Spain combined. The famine was a result of drought combined by wars between various anti- and pro-government factions. At the same time, many African economies were thriving and continue to do so, broadly speaking. But that's another story. Anyway, the song is stirring enough and I admit I have sung it many times, sometimes even together with others. However, the last choir I was in decided against it and opted for Something inside so strong (Labi Siffre) instead.

the monster

Vulnerable, no, not vulnerable, what's the word, fragile. Yes, fragile. I would have never before used this word - fragile - in any context to describe myself. Not ever. But there's always a first, isn't there. And so this is it now while I am on the red sofa looking out into then garden, the trees bare, the bright sunlight on the hazel catkins, the sky a cold frosty blue. I want to close my eyes and wake up on another Sunday afternoon in, say, May, with lush greenery and roses and insects and budding pears and and and. Instead, I fall asleep and wake with a start, a bad taste in my mouth, disorientated, telling myself, this is Sunday afternoon, January, you are on the red sofa, looking out into then garden. Waiting for it becoming real I am still in a fuzzy state, could be anytime, anywhere. Is this what dementia feels like? Not knowing where you are, what you are looking at? Slowly, very slowly, I swing my legs over the side of the sofa, lift myself up as if my body was ancient wood about to crack and surprise myself by being able to stand, swaying, yes, but solidly nevertheless. My feet moving forward. Coffee? Should do the trick.

Once upon a time I used to feel invincible, reckless even, thinking it was all down to choice and willpower. You are just exhausted, I tell myself. Give it a few more days of rest. This day last week, I begin to say and cannot remember or rather, cannot begin to imagine who that person was only a week ago, walking through the snow, laughing and talking, cheering, chanting and clapping, at the end of the the anti-nazi rally in our quiet town, singing Beethoven's Ode to Joy with 30,000 others.

Now. That feeling of being hungry, very hungry, and nauseous at the same time. Too tired to eat.

All I do manage is to read, to listen. Even to laugh. For now, enough. Focus on what I can do. So much.

I hear a monster breathing, I hear the breath of democracy weakening. I am glad that you are all here and want to blow its new life into it. I hope it is not too late.

Elfriede Jelinek, (Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004) this week when tens of thousands were demonstrating against right-wing extremism in Vienna, Austria

15,000 to 900

You wake up in the morning and while you are still delighted that being retired means no pressure, no rush, you get up anyway. You are so used to not staying in bed. And then there is this morning stiffness. You know it will pass more rapidly if you get up and move.

Over breakfast, you listen to the news and your heart sinks, the familiar dread begins to come to the surface, together with this urgency of what you should, need to do. You wait for the first bit of music between two features. Your rule, dance to the first bit of music you hear in the morning, still applies.

Next, emails, messages, a new commission, work. You agree on a deadline, tell yourself that you do not need to start right away, but then you do it anyway. By lunch time you realise that you have been sitting and working in front of a keyboard for hours. You stretch your stiff back and neck. All good. After lunch, you quickly sort the laundry and tidy up a bit, make the beds, that sort of thing. You check the bird feeders and spend a while clearing stuff in the garden. You go for your walk, you turn on the 1000 hrs outside app. You come back just before sunset and after dinner, you make some jam before you go back for a re-edit of the new commission.

You attend a zoom meeting on how to handle racist agitation and neo-nazis in public. You share your experiences during the recent rallies you attended. You note down the dates for more of these meetings, public debates and upcoming rallies in your area. You clean the kitchen before bedtime, put the dishwasher and the washing machine on timer for early tomorrow morning attention. You sort out some paperwork for an upcoming doctor's appointment. It is after midnight when you finally got to bed.

You repeat this, with slight variations, library visits, shopping, meeting people, another rally against neo-nazis, cycling into town along the river, cleaning the house, long calls with friends and family, the odd medical appointment, stretching and quick yoga sessions, for the next couple of days, weeks, every day. You are amazed how much you can do, retirement suits you, you tell yourself, you are getting fitter every day. You increase your daily steps to 15,000 because it feels so good.

And then one morning, you have lost the ground beneath your feet. In fact, you are so exhausted, you cannot get out of bed. You sleep the best part of the day and the night. And the next day. Your ears are ringing, your head is throbbing, your eyes ache, you want the blinds down. The room is turning when you try to get up. You have been here before and before and before. You know what this is, you have overdone it. You need to rest.

But first, you really should rewrite this replacing all the you with I.

On a quiet day you have to develop your imagination of enduring love.

 

 

There I was, traipsing through the snow, searching for winter wonderland, for beauty and calm and yes, meaning. But all I came up with - at first - was, when will all this shit melt away (spoiler: by tomorrow midday)? Why are people driving on roads packed with snow? Who invented these tiny sledges? What happens to kids when they lose one mitten, do they go home and get another pair, do they go on making snowballs with one hand? And importantly, will all the single mittens I have picked up and stuck on fences and gates be found and reunited with their twin? 

Eventually, I got used to the sound of my crunching feet and the swishing fabric of my parka, some of which, so the label says, has been made from recycled plastic bottles. This is when my mind begins to float freely.

The power of quotes, the power of snippets, short sentences, paragraphs, often taken out of context. I rely on it heavily, I copy and paste and collect them in blog post drafts for future use - but then I forget, they just sit there, too many. Occasionally, I read them and ask myself, why did I save this or what does it mean now. I also used to cut out bits from newspapers, collect them in a heavy concertina folder. But since we read the news online, this has become dated. I looked through that folder recently and chucked out stacks of reports and reviews and opinion pieces on the Iraq wars. Even longer ago, I used to be one of these mothers who would send newspaper cuttings and handwritten quotes on postcards to her daughter away at uni, lest she forget about the importance of life's meaning according to mum. 

Sometimes when I am clueless or sad or lost with it all, the big shebang of living and coping and understanding, there can be just that one quote, one short sentence from a writer, a poet, a blogger, an artist, peasant farmer, politician, priest, thinker or non-thinker, that lifts me up, enough to feel, yes, here it is, this stream of understanding, connecting me to others, some dead for thousands of years, some far away, but human nevertheless, then, now and in the future.

As I walk I look at these neat houses, wonder who lives behind these windows. I am four streets from my own, so in good German tradition, this is foreign territory, where you nod politely but otherwise mind your own business. 

Most of these houses are well over 100 years old. With one or two exceptions, renovated with great attention to detail and history. I am watching the exceptions, some have been empty for years, one is slowly disintegrating and I am reminded of Mary Moon and the falling down house she observes on her walks.

The wish for permanence, that things should be as they used to be, always were, is perhaps just a childish reaction to the human experience that change is the only constant in our lives. My life has been marked by many changes since I left my (3rd) childhood home at age 18.  My current address is the overall 14th so far, or maybe the 19th, depending on whether I paid rent/mortgage or squatted for a while. When I filled out my pension application, I was asked to state my address as of May 1990, which was at address number ten, in country number five, on continent number two. It has no bearing on my pension. The question is merely to ascertain whether I lived in the east or the west of Germany before reunification. But I wonder what they make of it or whether someone in the pension office even knows where that country is.

But now I am here, have lived here for the longest period of my life, in a place I would have called a boring suburb in a country I once left in disgust for good. As I walk on to where the winter version of the farmer's market is happening, I am approached by a group of cheerful young people handing out leaflets about their housing co-op project. We talk for a while, I eventually tell them that I was involved in setting up and lived in a housing co-op many years ago and that it's still going strong. They scrutinize me with polite disbelief, how come, they seem to think, she looks like a middle-class old woman.  I smile and leave them to their leafleting, dream on, I think, but also: good luck to you.

Where was I? Quotes. Here is today's selection:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Arundhati Roy) 

You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors. You have to have at least enough imagination to understand that if you want the benefits of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you want forgiveness, you must be forgiving. It's a difficult business, being human. (Wendell Berry)

Enduring love comes when we love most of what we learn about the other person and can tolerate the faults they cannot change. (Louise Erdrich)

dreadful white stuff

 

This was yesterday. Benign scenery, we walked for a while and it was sort of nice. 

Right now, it's snowing heavily. The more serious snow, the kind that stays on the ground, which is frozen. I grew up with long winters like that and always disliked it, all of it, the skiing, the tobogganing, the ice skating, the snowball fights, the wet mittens, the frozen toes, the runny nose, the amount of time needed to get ready to go out, to come back in. In this part of the world, however, the valley of a very large river, snow doesn't come often and never for long. But the people freak out nevertheless. Schools are closed, public transport shuts down, that sort of stuff.

The strangely good news, the forecast for next week is almost tropical, with temperatures way above even for a normal January. 

I had the pleasant experience of yet another colonoscopy, this was number 10 over a period of almost 20 years. It's not my favourite pastime but needs must etc. I was introduced to a new term, the so-called burned-out stage of this chronic inflammatory disease. Apparently, after 20 years of coping and struggling with inflammation in the various regions of my formerly healthy physical self (ears, eyes, lungs and colon) my body has handed over the large intestine and basically said, there you go, I've done my bit, taken all the drugs, followed all the guidelines, you win, I give up. 

End-stage or “burned-out” ulcerative colitis is characterized by shortening of the colon, loss of normal redundancy in the sigmoid region and at the splenic and hepatic flexures, disappearance of the haustral pattern, a featureless mucosa, absence of discrete ulceration, and narrowed caliber of the bowel.

So basically, the days of careless eating whatever and whenever I want to are over for good. In fact, they have been over for a good while but now I've got it in black and white. I am still eating food, I still enjoy it, but I have become one of these tiresome fidgety eaters, picking and separating food stuffs on my plate. R has started to make cooking for me into an art form, will not accept that I could happily survive on porridge and various other gruel-type things, alphabet soup and apple sauce. 

There's still more diagnostics to come, a couple more suspicious symptoms to clarify, and there's still talk of surgery. This is not something that scares or surprises me. I am an old hand at this.

My sister send me a book to read for distraction in these, as she finds, trying times. You will find this book is very moving and eventually uplifting, she claimed. She is serious. The main character, a successful young writer, is coming to terms with a diagnosis of terminal colon cancer and hides from his partner in a retreat center (scenic, forest, lakes etc.) to search for the meaning of his life, while she, the partner, suffers a miscarriage. When I got to this stage, I skipped to the last page, where she has left him for his best friend and he is moving to a houseboat for his final peaceful days, but with a potential life saving cure on the horizon or something like that. I read it diagonally. You've got to hand it to her, my sister knows what it takes. 

Olaf says hi!

 

frost on the ground

 

Today just after 9 am, the sun was just coming up from behind the hills in the east, the temperature was -8 Celsius. I was cycling back from a doctor's appointment with the icy wind in my back, thankfully. Back home, it took close to an hour to regain feeling in my fingers. There was much howling and gnashing of teeth while R dipped my hands back and forth into warm and cold water the way my mother did when I was a child. I never liked the cold. And I had slept badly with weird dreams, there are a couple of medical tests ahead of me that I try - not always successfully - to keep cool about. 

Meanwhile. Thoughts.

All these angry recreational activists who take themselves so seriously and think they have to be angry all the time get on my nerves. Nelson Mandela was not angry. He said that the moment he lost compassion for his guards was a difficult moment. He always remained human, even in prison. Many activists today no longer understand that. They think it's enough to be upset about something. It's a huge misunderstanding that activism is all about the activist's state of mind. Anger can be a driving force, but otherwise it tends to get in the way because it clouds the view.

Düzen Tekkal

When you think of it, my brother told me on the phone, things in Europe have been positively medieval in recent years. We've had the Plague, the death of a queen, rising bread prices, now the peasants are revolting in Germany, religions battle against each other,  if we don't watch out, we may have to go to war against Sweden for 30 years again (the Thirty Years' War was a series of wars fought among numerous European powers in the 17th century, caused, inter alia, by peasant uprisings and religious dissent with the Swedish ruler Gustav Adolf a main driving force).

I think it's important to remember that a decisive factor for the functioning of a democracy is the opposition - inside and outside of parliament. The challenge of democracy is that even those who would have voted for a different party, wanted different decisions or different personnel remain loyal to the collectively binding framework, the constitution, the legal rights of citizens. Loyalty does not mean agreeing with everything, it means recognizing things for what they are: politically legitimized decisions against which, if you disagree, there are ways of taking action, at least in democracies, both inside and outside parliaments. We can vote, we can take to the streets, we can argue, we can write, we must do all of these. Early on, when I was maybe 12 years old, my father explained to me what he called the cycle of power. A democratically elected government enforces decisions, applies them administratively, is reflected in the effects of these decisions and has to work its way through them. In an autocratic state, the power cycle runs on privileging certain groups and on violence and intimidation. In Roman times - and my father was a fan of early democracies - there was the Forum, an important public place for debating and arguing during democracies - and for hangings during the times of tyrants and dictators, no less. And before the Romans, the Greek had the Agora, same thing, a central public space for all to debate, buy and sell their goods, make art, share ideas, test theories, explain and teach (never mind the public role of women at the time). Novices in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries must learn the art of debating and listening. You can watch them here. I, on the other hand, simply post something on a social media channel and think I have made a serious contribution to world peace.

And after all that, I was foolish enough to go out again into the freezing cold because R insisted. The light, the light, he called out to me. We walked uphill this time, real snow on the ground and caught the last bits of sunshine way over the hills to the west.

 

 

 

 

books 2023

I am a reader, I've been reading forever and I read everything, cereal boxes, advertising flyers, bus ticket stubs, novels, science manuscripts. For many years, I also sold books and to this day, I haven't been able to stop slightly rearranging and tidying shelves in bookshops I visit. (But from observation, I know I am not the only one.)

This here is weird and I don't think I'll do this ever again, these graphs and stuff, but intriguing nevertheless.

Library Thing is my digital library, R gifted me a lifetime subscription when I was first diagnosed with the shitty disease. It's now free for all.  

According to my yearly reading review, a new feature, I've read 71 books in 2023, 15 of these thrillers. My mother would be disgusted.

Admittedly, I did not finish all of them, but that's my prerogative. The time when I would feel guilty for not reading a book to its end are long over. 

Like all other sensible people I decided to not do the thing with new year's resolutions. I am old enough to know that it'll never work, I'll never stick to any of it and by week two the latest, won't remember a thing.

Then my rebellious streak woke up and here we go:

• Listen to one Bruce Springsteen song per day, starting with his oldest release and working your way through to near present day.
• Read one poem every day. Currently following Pádraig Ó Tuama (Poetry Unbound transcripts).
  
• Read, not listen to, printed not online pages every day, a chapter, a short story, whatever. Currently one story per day from Antarctica by Claire Keegan. 
• One to two hours outside, walking, cycling, gardening, whatever, at least every day, come rain or shine.
  
• Keep the daily food intake record the gastrologist asked for months ago. 
• Keep the weight record the gastrologist asked for months ago. Weight loss record.
• Reply to missed calls, emails and messages asap, not months later.
• Reply to blog comments.
  

In past years, I chose one author I was interested in or liked or was curious about and read all their work in chronological order over the year. I haven't yet decided for this year, Margaret Atwood or Joseph O'Connor or Janet Frame, not sure.

It's a work in progress.

We need to desire, not fear, the future.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

from a longer poem by Mary Oliver

Here we stand at the beginning of another year, an open book in front of us. We think we know most of  what it holds. After all, we are elderly, we have seen it before. And yet. Isn't it terrible that the only utopia we can offer the younger generation is the prevention of a catastrophe. Pretending all is well we wrap our world in absorbent cotton that leaves out everything that contradicts it. 

We need to remain sober, patient people who do not despair in the face of the worst horrors and do not get excited about every stupidity. And we have to want to win. We need the best strategy, the best people, the best policies, we need all our strength, resistance energy and must not shy away from getting our fingers dirty.

There is hardly a group that has as much influence on world history as the indifferent. And the remarkable thing is that nobody speaks of them. Their passivity has made the most radical upheavals possible. The indifferent accept everything as it comes. They are neither in favour nor against.

The indifferent are almost more dangerous than  ideologues because they are difficult to predict and just as difficult to track down when they disappear after a disaster they have caused.  It is often said that the indifferent make it easy for themselves by looking the other way when things become inhumane and then playing the innocent lamb afterwards. But as an indifferent, you have to make an extreme effort to repress and fight against all the humanity within you that has not yet died off.

Being committed is not synonymous with a dangerous, pleasureless life, quite the opposite. It is a dynamic life in which boredom has no place, the brain is always active and the antennae become sensitive to a better future, which helps not to destroy the present, the mother of the future. We all know those moments when we want to say: As an individual you can't do anything anyway, and anyway I can't see through it any more...?! These are excuses. Of course the situation is confusing, and anyone who gets involved can also fail. But this risk,  is simply part of it.

Rafik Shami

 

These days, I don’t imagine a different planet; I imagine what ours could look like if we collectively acknowledged its loss. To clock what is gone is to clock all we can still save. A world where we are mad, but we’re working out of love.

Erica Berry

 

If we save the world, a big old hypothetical ‘if’, what was the reason that we did that? If we did it because of fear, what happens when the fear is gone? But if we save the world because of wonder, wonder persists after the danger is gone. We’ll be more likely to protect future generations again and again afterwards.

Dara McAnulty

   

 One of the few things I have learned in the short time I have been alive is the reliability of patience.

Devin Kelly

 

It needs to energize us with a rage
that roars unchecked through the blood
and bring us begging to our knees;
this planet is the only place we have to live,
this one small foothold
we need to fall in love with it again.

See it exotic and wonderful,
pick up the loose stitches, tether ourselves
even tighter to the sky, perfume the wind
with the smell of lust, pour ourselves
into the sea. We must take root
in the aquamarines, the greens, and endless
violet sunsets living at the end of love.

from a longer poem by Jean O'Brien

 

 

the apple grater

In this part of the world, the show started as always on Christmas Eve at 2 pm when the shops closed. Until Wednesday morning, 27th December, no real live consumerism.

There's the usual string of services (we abstained from) with various themes, for the children, the pets, the elderly,  the homeless and so on. Mixed in were recitals, Händel, Bach, lots of choir singing and a couple of nativity plays. Also without us in attendance.

We did our best. On Christmas Eve, I cleaned most of the kitchen cupboards and we argued discussed which useless gadgets we should get rid off. R made cauliflower cheese and we watched that apocalyptic movie with Julia Roberts. On Christmas Day, we cycled where possible along the flooded river, it was quite spectacular. The third flood in so many months. R cooked the goose and ate it, I stuck to a slice of toast with a ripe Spanish avocado as I was mainly still working on yesterday's cauliflower cheese. Then I finished cleaning the kitchen cupboards and found my father's glass Bircher apple grater, which was sitting in the box with my grandmother's wine glasses, the ones that took on a greenish tinge and according to R. contain uranium. They will have to go.

 

That apple grater has been in use in the household of my childhood. I vividly remember watching my father grating apples into our muesli while my mother was breastfeeding my baby brother.  

When I was finished with the cupboards, I washed the floors, listening to the Rolling Stones new album. In the evening, for lack of another apocalyptic movie, we settled for a Swedish thriller. 

Today, Boxing Day, 26th, I used the apple grater with my porridge and got sentimental.

In between there were zoom calls and old fashioned phone calls with family and friends and we shook hands with various neighbours the way you only do once every year.

In the afternoon, R checked on the river once more, still high, while my abdomen started its merry game of bloating and cramps and colicking and I resorted to the blessings of a heating pad and distraction aka reading the news.

This is what I found out.

The Kremlin is ruled by an autocratic gang led by Vladimir Putin, who has declared war on the entire West. Iranian-backed militias are attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea, Israel and Hamas are fighting a brutal war in the Gaza Strip and a conflict with the potential for world war is looming in the South China Sea. The drones and cruise missiles that are currently falling on Ukrainian cities could also hit Tallinn and Warsaw or Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt. An unlikely scenario? Two years ago, a major war in Ukraine still seemed unlikely.

On New Years Day, I'll clean the oven and the fridge.

christmas tale addendum

Thank you so very much for your comments, all very much appreciated.

Some points you raised:

To sue or not to sue. That was a difficult issue for me. The reason for suing would have been the fact that the actual surgery that was performed was not what I had agreed upon and for which I had signed the requested legal document. When I finally received the photocopies of my medical file - months later - that document was missing. I could have started my claim there. But as the lawyer explained, the document may have been changed, lost, misplaced, whatever, and still, I would need witnesses to prove what I had signed just as much as the hospital could dispute that. The same for the fact that hysterectomy was never mentioned to me, not even as a possible risk in case of an emergency during surgery, which again the hospital could dispute. Here, hospitals have watertight insurance cover and legal representation. It is extremely rare for patients to win any case and if so, usually only malpractice ones, like botched surgeries or wrong medication. I did not even have access to legal aid and although friends and family offered financial assistance, it was explained to me that a case like this could take many years and if I lose, it could bankrupt us all. Also, having to reiterate the whole story several times and answering a million questions, possibly mostly to and from men, was/is a harrowing prospect. And the best possible outcome? Maybe money, a sense of revenge, a dent in someone's career. This may look amazing in a Hollywood court room drama with Julia Roberts. I did not want to have this fight in my life. I am not that kind of person and I am glad I am not. 

There were two men involved, the head of the gynaecology department at that hospital and the gynaecologist who referred me to him. The department head was an eminent authority, a demigod of gynaecology.  He was a champion of natural birth, non- and minimal invasive gynaecological surgery methods, author of many books and articles. When he died in 2017, the national media was full of eulogies, midwives, doulas, women's groups, all praised his work. I was so convinced that I was going to the right place. I never met him, only doctors of his team and the gynaecologist, who referred me to him, used to work in his team.

By chance, many years later, I met a scrub nurse who worked in his team. When I told her a bit about my case, she nodded and said, yes, it figures, he's an asshole. 

Another aspect is that during specialist training in gynaecology, junior doctors have to perform a certain number of hysterectomies. Thirty years ago, this was at least 20 hysterectomies per year. I don't want to suggest anything that hasn't been suggested before. But you may be able to put two and two together here. I don't think I was mixed up with another patient. In the early 1990s, unlike today, a woman in her mid/late thirties who wanted to get pregnant was advised about age and health risks. As it happened, I was told that another pregnancy may result in a C section and/or eventual hysterectomy after the birth. So someone may have felt the call to speed up the process for me. I still think that.

As for the autoimmune diagnosis and a possible connection, no. That diagnosis was actually quite obvious. I had a clean bill of health in January, cut my foot in March, infected wound turned into sepsis, lots of penicillin April/May, elevated liver values by July, was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis by the following January. 

Therapy, yes, I've seen two therapists. Basically, the outcome, this is something I needed to learn to live with, not to fight. And yes, if I must have abdominal surgery, I will have every fart in writing, signed copies, the works. I will interview every person involved until I know their children's names and date of birth. I know my stuff now.

As for trusting the medical professionals who look after me? Yes and no. Some have been wonderful and I stick to them but there's always that arrogant odd bastard once in a while. I am fortunate that due to my work - which I started some years after this experience - my clients are mostly excellent medical researchers and experts, many have become friends over the years and often help me understand new aspects of my own medical history.

But the forgiving myself part? Maybe one day. Not yet. Maybe never.

And so to this xmas, here is some xmas-sy kind of music, recorded in the city where J.S. Bach lived and worked.

a christmas tale

I have never written about what I am going to remember here and I have only ever told this story to one man, my husband. But over the years, I have told it to several women, friends, doctors and even to strange women in those special moments of sudden intimacy, when we can exchange true stories and know why. An empty waiting room, an endless train journey, outside the cinema after a film that has awakened memories. 

In a roundabout way, this post also explains why I blog in English, at least it does that to me. But more about this another time.

To begin, a warning, this is long and it deals mainly with issues of gynaecology.

Thirty years ago, in the weeks before Christmas, something was done to me. I can't find any other words to describe it. Something was done to me while I was having surgery under general anaesthetic for the first time in my life. It was not a botched job on the operating table. I was 36 years old and after lengthy examinations, discussions and even a second opinion I was promised minor surgery to reposition my uterus.

We had postponed any attempt to get pregnant for a second time long before. Miscarriages are painful, physically and mentally, and the ones I had experienced had been exhausting. While I had no problem getting pregnant, I could no longer carry a foetus to term and I wanted to know why. My first pregnancy was easy but our daughter was born suddenly eight weeks before her due date. So when we moved to Germany in the early 1990s and finally had reliable and affordable health care, I found out what the problem was and that there was a way to remedy it. It wasn't necessarily our plan to have a second child, but the idea that it might still be possible and that my other nagging abdominal problems would disappear at the same time was a relief. We were even a little excited and thought that something good was coming, for me, for us, maybe even for us as a family.

About ten years later, I came across the term PTSD for the first time. I had been commissioned to translate a review paper for a scientific journal, comparing research data on the effects of war trauma. It made me think of my mother a lot, but there was also this list of typical symptoms that are part of the diagnosis of PTSD: nightmares/recurrent dreams, flashbacks caused by triggers such as smell, taste or touch, and feelings of guilt. I remember that I reassured myself over and over that I certainly never experienced any war trauma.

When R dropped me at the hospital that December thirty years ago, we found everything very impressive. It was one of the university's teaching hospitals and lots of young doctors in white coats were scurrying through the corridors. In the afternoon, when all procedures had been explained, all papers signed, I was allowed to go for a walk in the park, it was starting to snow. The night nurse helped me get into the surgery outfit and around midnight, gave me a sedative. Routine, she said, so that you can sleep well and not be nervous in the morning. My surgery was scheduled for 6:30 a.m. I was the first one that day.

I've had this dream for thirty years, sometimes several times a week, sometimes not for months. It's not really a nightmare in the strictest sense. I am in a tiled basement room, lying on a hospital bed. I can see a payphone on the opposite wall and I know I have to get up and phone R, he needs to come and get me out of here. But I'm so tired and somehow tied to the bed, I can't get up. When I try to call for help, I have no voice. Sometimes in the dream, there are lots of other people on beds in the room, sometimes I'm alone.

When I woke up and for the first 24 hours after surgery, I kept vomiting, which I was told was a typical reaction to a specific anaesthetic gas. On the second day after surgery, the young trainee nurse who had brought me the medication for the day came back and apologised because she had accidentally added this hormone tablet. But you don't need that any more, she said with a laugh, no more monthly periods, that's actually great, isn't it?

The ward doctor, who eventually responded to my incessant pressing of the alarm button, read to me from my patient file: successful hysterectomy.

I still remember this: we were five women in that room, with various gynaecological diagnoses, cancer, miscarriage, pregnancy complications and me. It was the week of the Rhine flood, the great Christmas flood, the flood of the century, and at night we were lying in our beds watching live on TV as the historic center of Cologne flooded and people tried to get into the cordoned-off alleyways at the last minute to move their cars. I remember my friend Y furiously kicking the ward doors when she heard. When I was asked if I wanted to contribute a nice song or a favourite poem to the upcoming Christmas party,  I walked into the doctor's office, pulling the iv stand behind me and told her to remove all the tubes, while R packed my bag. I had to sign something I didn't even read, nobody said goodbye to me. In the car I leaned against the window and looked down onto the floodplains below the motorway bridge, water everywhere. The next day was Christmas day. We told R's father on the phone, he started to cry.

I find the smell of latex gloves hard to bear, the colour of the red rubber tubing used on ventilators in the 1990s makes me nauseous, only briefly but so severely that I have to leave quickly, and if I touch a balloon or a rubber band I get a splitting headache. Sometimes I think, maybe it's always been like this, you just didn't realise it, don't make an issue of it. But I think I know when it started.

In the months that followed, I functioned surprisingly well, the operation was a complete success, I was told.  My gynaecologist was delighted with how neat everything was healing and what an excellent outcome, really, for me as a woman because after all, only the uterus was gone, everything else still there, he said triumphantly.

Then I got sick, small things at first, herpes blisters, bursitis, UTIs, conjunctivitis. One after the other. Then pneumonia. No end to it.

At some point during those feverish months, I wrote a letter to my gynaecologist, the hospital, the head doctor whose team had operated on me and the ward doctor. I kept a copy of this letter for a long time. It wasn't until this summer that I finally tore it up, because every time I read it, it felt more foolish, much too emotional. My gynaecologist replied immediately banning me from his practice. The hospital sent me my an incomplete version of my patient file only after I had transferred an excessive amount of money for copying and postage. I don't remember when I threw all of that in the bin. I never received a reply from the doctors at the hospital.

To this day, there are times when I am convinced in my heart of hearts that I brought this all on myself, that I knew or should have known what was going to happen, that I was simply too lazy to get out of that bed and walk away. That I was fed up with painful periods and that perhaps deep down I didn't want to have a second child anyway. That I am just making all this crap up because I want attention. And that I certainly never had any traumatic experience but would have liked to have had one because, oh, the melodrama. Stop acting like a helpless ninny, says a voice in my head, it wasn't anything really. Other people experience real trauma. Not you. The voice sounds like my mother's.

I don't remember how or when, but one day I was sitting in front of a doctor I didn't know. I had yet another UTI and needed a sick note for work while our family doctor was on holiday. She asked me the usual one or two questions and somehow I started talking. I know I was very calm, determined to tell all this once and for all and then never again. She stood up, walked round the desk, took my hands in hers and held them for a while. Without asking, she called a lawyer and made an appointment for me, then she called her friend, an older gynaecologist, and made another appointment for me.

The lawyer didn't give me any hope, but the older gynaecologist was my doctor for many years afterwards, and now I'm seeing her successor. 

All that was a long time ago. It has become a chapter in the long story of my life, our lives. A lot has happened since then that made and continues to make me, us, happy and content. I also make sure whenever possible that any doctor I need to consult is a woman.

Some years ago during a routine ultrasound check-up, I was shown how my colon had begun to shift into the space where so many years ago my body had grown a baby and two months ago, I was told that in its new place, this bit of the colon has developed a twist that may need to be treated surgically. I was told that the eventual surgery was easy and that there was no reason to believe I would not recover rapidly.

Since then, I've been dreaming this dream more often. It does not surprise me. I am not afraid of surgery, but I am still not able to forgive myself for not getting off that bed and run from that basement room.

 

This is the shape of things to date.

There is a new rash of sores inside my mouth due to the immune suppressing medication, something I have experienced on and off for years. I am used to it, my tongue counts the spots.

We haven't seen much real sunshine for weeks and all the trees and hedges are now bare but early this morning, before 5 am, I heard birdsong. Not a dawn chorus yet, more like a conversation between two or three birds. I was too sleepy to use the app on the phone that identifies bird song.

Most of the days, I am bloated and carry my swollen abdomen almost like a pregnant belly. At times, the corresponding pain can feel like labour, lasting hours. After so many months of this, I am used to it and ride it out. I carefully time my food intake, cut out almost all food groups that seem to have a negative effect, but it really makes no difference and so I wait for the final diagnostic step, scheduled in four weeks, to confirm what will most likely result in surgery. I like to think that I am at ease with this, see it as a problem that has a solution, but who am I kidding. 

A while back, I told R that I will not cook any more dinners or lunches until this has been sorted. I have little appetite anyway, breakfast is the best meal, but even the lightest of lunches can make it all go downhill. Thankfully, I am happy with porridge and semolina gruel and rusks dipped in tea and such like. The Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy lived all her live on one meal a day - breakfast - and a few beers in the evening. I'm not doing the beer thing but other than that, I am functioning surprisingly well. I decided a while back that having a bloated colicky abdomen will not stop me from walking and cycling and shopping, cleaning the bathroom and doing the laundry and so on. It's somewhat restricting social involvement but I am still confident that things can only get better.

I am still waiting on my pension. Whoever said that German bureaucracy was reliable and that Germans are always on time. Could we meet?

This evening, we wanted to join the good neighbours of this suburb by standing around an open fire, singing seasonal songs and sharing a hot beverage afterwards. Instead I hung onto a door frame breathing into my abdomen as if I was in the later stages of childbirth while R rubbed my back. Eventually, things started to shift and I got a good cup of tea. Then we watched cooking shows on social media. The best is this guy here, karadenizli.maceraci, which translates to Black Sea Adventurer. In my opinion, the best cook around, simply for effects, not that I would or could eat most of his food right now. 

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A post shared by KARADENİZLİ MACERACI - Rıdvan (@karadenizli.maceraci)

a day that went sideways

Two weeks to midwinter. Reasons to be cheerful. Other than that, it has been overcast for ever it seems. Today, I got up with great determination and housework intentions, nothing too fast or dramatic, I am retired after all. But in the end, we left after breakfast to bring all assembled sleeping bags and iso mats and the camping gear found in this house to the help-for-the-homeless center. I felt like a piece of shit, with my superwarm coat and my thermo gloves and insulated boots, handing over stuff so others may get a tiny bit less cold when sleeping on the streets. Now, according to official news and the social worker friend we have, nobody has to sleep on the streets in this city but many do not wish to sleep in the emergency housing, various hostels etc. for so-called private reasons. I don't handle these scenarios well or even wisely. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. 

We then called into a furniture store and purchased a new red sofa. This is how capitalism works. The sales guy was very nice and keen and we did not ask him where he was from because what does it matter that his German wasn't quite there yet and also, asking the "where are you from" question is racism, I have been told. His jacket was the most gorgeous soft tweed and after the sale was done, I asked if I could touch it and he laughed and said, oui madame. (So my guess is Northern Africa, not said I asked for that reason.)

And now we are looking for a good home for my great grandfather's sofa, which looks a bit like this here 

 

but somewhere along the line, my grandmother chopped off the legs, removed the back and remodeled most of it. About 20 years ago, I redid the covers - same colour, velvet - and replaced the springs in the seat with hard foam. So nothing like this after all. I have loved this piece of furniture for as long as I can remember despite the fact that it is too low and angular to sit on it comfortably. Everybody in my extended family always disliked it, mainly because my grandmother chopped a potentially valuable antique to bits. That was her way of doing things. When my grandfather died (I was five years old at the time), she reportedly attempted to give away his supposedly most valuable stamp collection by handing out one stamp each to various friends and acquaintances after the funeral. 

My father used to smile and shake his head whenever he came to our house but I thought that secretly, he was happy that I had room for this sofa. But now, my father is dead and a few days ago, I said to R, let's get rid of this thing and here we are.

As it turns out, we do have a picture of the sofa, look here:

 

Next, we stopped at the art museum bistro for lunch which was awful (mine) and good (R's) and when we got home, my intestines were starting their usual cramp colicky routine and R straight away steered me out of the door for a long walk of distraction before the sun set just after 4 pm. I try not to think too much about the upcoming diagnostic to confirm the gastro expert's suspicion of damage resulting from something that was done to me 30 years ago. Walking helps. We looked into the windows of the grand houses further south, their impressive overpowering but ever so stylish xmas decorations and returned with relief to our under decorated small homestead. 

In good news, I have watched all episodes of three seasons of  Reservation Dogs and have found it be moving and funny and goofy but also heartfelt, honest, emotional and educational (to us here).

I was also introduced to the work of Ukrainian photographer Zoya Shu and in the past days, have spent a long time looking and discovering human life and love and pain in her work. Have a look here.

And now I am sitting here with a cup of tea and a heating pad on my abdomen and R is coughing a bit next door and in two weeks time, we will celebrate the winter solstice.

Santa

We were going to be different parents. Or so we thought. It started when we got married in a London register office when I was already pregnant, the briefest of ceremonial stuff, no party, no family. The baby was not to be baptised (although someone did that behind our backs when she was 10 years old, different story) and definitely no stupid Santa or Easter bunny rubbish, no lies, ever, all questions answered truthfully and so on, we lived in a commune.

Of course, grandparents intervened. Generously, yes, with a twinkle and lots of fun. But in due course, we were left with a toddler who was firmly convinced that Santa existed and that letters had to be written etc. etc. One year, her one and only wish was to be awake at night when - as she was convinced - all her toys become alive. She only asked for it to happen once and specified that she did not want anything else at all. Santa of course failed her. We were all quite upset and disappointed that year.

Then there was the moment when she stopped believing. In hindsight, it was worse than the entire crappy Santa story telling that went on before. I had just picked her up from school, together with a friend, Natalie (whose name to this day is only angrily hissed in this household), and both were sitting in the back of the car talking while I drove. Natalie (hiss) had an older sister and was somewhat more advanced in worldly things. And there she was, telling my daughter, do you know Santa doesn't exist, it's just made up stuff by the adults. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw the shocked expression on my daughter's face. She almost cried but recovered just in time to respond, with a firm voice, so what, I've known that for ages anyway. 

Later that evening when Natalie (another hiss), was collected by her parents, my child turned to me and said, she's an awful liar, that Natalie, isn't she. She always makes up stories about everything. 

And then she cried a bit and we had one of these decisive parenting moments we still talk about to this day.

key moments in human evolution

The cold is fierce, barely above freezing for a few hours before sunset. The winds are even fiercer, turning from north to west and back to north again. Most of the country appears to be inundated with snow except of course for our stretch of the Rhine valley. As usual. Like the fools we are, we go for long walks hoping for the wind to turn in our favour as we head out. It rarely obliges. Back home, I rub my white numb fingers to get the blood back into circulation. There's mention self heating battery powered gloves but it's only a few short weeks - I hope - and not worth the purchase.

My daughter sent me this late in the night:

It's from Eve, how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Cat Bohannon.

Also, it is the time of year when the mind wonders about another key moment of human evolution. To be living in a world where society thinks it is a good idea that it is economically possible to make a substance, which nature has taken an eternity to produce and of which we have only a very limited amount available, explode it under controlled conditions with great noise in a fraction of a second to drive an engine that whirls leaves and small animals around, turning the valuable, limited available raw material into mostly particulate matter so that our driveways look neat. This morning there was a lovely bit about the different types of dead leaves on the radio. Just five minutes long. I enjoyed the bit about the beech leaves dropping in one go as if called to give up all hope and abandon ship. For more click here (5 m in long).

November almost over

Aging is another word for living, so it has been said and wise words etc. but somedays the living is bloody hard. I say this from my comfortable home with great privilege, of course. After a 24hr colic attack and nausea, which felt like labour without the breaks between contractions. Anyway, it's over for now.

We are in the dark grey rainy, sleetish, dull November phase of the year.  Feeding peanuts to the jays from the kitchen window every morning is the highlight of our day. After that, we withdraw into our grumpy selves. I cleared out some of the paper files that crowd my desk. How exciting. Last week, the pension people called to tell me that my pension has been finalised and that the statement is "in the post". I forgot to ask what they actually mean by "in the post" and whether this means I will actually find out - if anything - how much I'll get and most importantly, when? But everybody was extremely polite.

I've been thinking about this here for a while. My early childhood was pretty wild, I ran after my sister with a gang of kids around the neighbourhood. We were in and out of each other's houses and gardens, building dens in the forest and climbing trees on good weather days, playing in basements and garages and barns when it rained. School interfered to some extent, also the piano and sports stuff my mother insisted on, but nobody really cared where we went in our free time as long as we were back for dinner.

When I think back to my daughter's earlier years, living with others involved also other kids that were around all the time, big messy gardens and trees to climb, later in paradise, life was always outdoors, many children every day, lots of paddling, swimming, snorkeling, catching fish in the estuary, collecting breadfruit and making charcoal from coconut husks. Years later, when we already lived in this city, a visiting friend from Denmark looked out over the endless rows of cars parking along the footpaths and asked quite perplexed, where do the children walk and play. Later that year, we visited her in Copenhagen in her small suburb where the cars must be parked way outside the living areas and the streets were full of children playing safely.

Modern loneliness masks itself as hyper connectivity. And so people have easily 1000 virtual friends, but no one they can ask to feed their cat. That loneliness, which is really a depletion of the social capital, is extremely powerful. […]

One question I keep asking that I had no idea was going to be so pertinent: When you grew up, did you play freely on the street? … And the majority of the people learned to play freely on the street. They learned social negotiation. They learned unscripted, un-choreographed, unmonitored interaction with people. They fought, they made rules, they made peace, they made friends, they broke up, they made friends again. They developed social muscles. And the majority of these very same people’s children do not play freely on the street. And I think that an adult needs to play freely on the street as well.

For us as adults, that means talking to people in the queue with you, talking to people on the subway, talking to people when you create any kind of group. Book club, movie club, sports club. You stay in the practice of experimentation, doubt, of the paradox of people: You need people very much but the very people that you need are the ones that can reject you.

We do not have the practice at the moment. Everything about predictive technologies is basically giving us a form of assisted living. You get it all served in uncomplicated, lack of friction, no obstacles and you no longer know how to deal with people. Because people are complex systems. Relationships, friendships are complex systems. They often demand that they hold two sides of an equation. And not that you solve little problems with technical solutions. And that is intrinsic to modern loneliness.

  Esther Perel

limited energy levels

The river has flooded all the pathways along its shore and now I am bereft because it means I have to use the hideous street lanes and back roads for cycling and walking. For the time being. We walked as far as possible yesterday watching the driftwood flowing past and by the time we turned back, the water was lapping across the path.  I had this sudden image of the ground being washed away, which is not something that could happen any time soon. Still more rain to come.

The sun sets before 5 pm now, six more weeks to midwinter. 

A few things that have come my way.

Amazing cats:

 

A short film:

 

 

 An interesting quote:

I think the world is pretty awesome right now – not in a good sense. I mean awe in the sense of just being awestruck by the weight of our historical moment. We really are alive on the knife’s edge of whether or not this earth is going to be habitable for our species. That is not something that we can handle just on our own.

So we need to reach towards each other. That’s really tricky work. It’s a lot easier to come together and agree on things that are not working and things that are bad than it is to come together and develop a horizon of how things could be better.

That’s the only thing that’s gonna let us get out of the mirror world and the reactivity of dumping everything that we can’t stand about ourselves on to other people.

Things could be beautiful, things could be livable. There could be a world where everyone belongs. But I don’t think we can bear the reality of our moment unless we can imagine something else.

Naomi Klein

 And an amazingly skilled and sharp short story to listen to: 

So late in the day, by Claire Keegan