sad days

I've spent some time - years to be honest, many years and I am not finished - trying to understand the war trauma of my parent's generation, the people who were kids during the nazi years, who became adults when WWII was over, started careers, a family, a life with modest luxuries, healthcare, safe pensions, the lot.

One of the many books I have read on all of this and one that I have come back to repeatedly deals with the silent ruins the war left behind. The unspoken guilt, shame, loss, fear and so on that was passed on to the next generation. The way we were made to finish what was on the plate no matter how long it took, whether it made you gag or whether you were sent to eat it on the back door steps, the way we were never allowed to be idle, not allowed to waste time, always showing to the world that we were on the way to achieve something, shape something, make something of ourselves, the way we were told that "a real person does not feel pain" and sent to school with a fever, the way we were to suffer the strange unreasonable punishment procedures, the silent treatment, the never ending fear of your mother falling apart.

The war experiences of our parents as children, as teenagers were never really shared, only sometimes mentioned in passing or when we were given what my mother called "war food", soup made from old bread, potato peel, or the dreaded turnips. All we got was fragmentary knowledge, diffuse impressions that we tried to understand and fit into our own childhood experiences. 

I know now, many years later, that all this, the unspoken, the unspeakable, the things nobody wanted to remember and yet could never forget, has seeped into my own unconscious, has shaped my generation's fears and nightmares. 

In a conversation, a friend who is about my age mentions that the first thing she did after it became apparent in the last week that the US government is handing matters to Putin was to stock up on food and water and check all the locks. She laughs and shakes her head, what on earth did I do that for? And yet, I did the same, and more. 

I watch videos where seasoned army generals explain what to expect in case, when and how the next Russian cyber attack may hit, the electricity networks, water supply, railway systems? I check the distance between the US troop bases in Germany and my city, my mind swirling with movie images of invading soldiers. 

Below is a photograph by Lee Miller, the famous and courageous war time photographer, taken on this day in March 1945. What you see is the ruins of the Münsterplatz, one of the main city center areas of the city that has been our home for over 30 years now. You see a large bronze statue of the city's famous son, Ludwig van Beethoven, erected on his 75th birthday in August 1845. I wonder if the GI in this picture knew any of Beethoven's music. But who cares, what matters, then and today, is that he and all of his fellow troops came to this dreadful country that had caused such unspeakable horror and death, so that it once again could become a democracy, where my parents could live their adult lives without war, where I could live my life in peace without ever wasting a breath questioning it. So far.

When I walk down to the river, as I do on most days, I pass a memorial plaque for the Hodges bridge, a pontoon bridge the US forces built between March and April 1945, enabling US troops to cross the river Rhine, enabling a ceasefire and thus eventually within weeks, the end of WWII. 

If I cycle south for maybe a half hour, depending on the direction of the wind, I'll reach the remains of the bridge at Remagen, which was a critical strategic river crossing captured by US forces in March 1945 . Maybe you have seen the 1969 movie version of the battle and the dramatic collpase of the bridge.

 

I have never been to the American continent, despite the fact that many members of R's Irish family have travelled, worked, lived there, several are still living there (and elsewhere on the planet). But traces of the US are everywhere in my country, so many ties, so much to celebrate, enjoy, share. Travellers, students, colleagues, companies, so many friends. So much we have taken for granted and with gratitude, endless inspirations, thoughts, words, music, fun. Oh the fun!

On now, people have started to check out #UnplugTrump suggestions, beginning to say goodbye to US big tech, looking through the surprising selection of ad-free, independent apps and open source platforms. I watch people scanning items with madeometer.com and in the shops, suddenly we have become careful and discerning customers. A twelve step program for independence. Digital and beyond.

It feels strange but at the same time, so obvious, so easy, so weird. So sad. So very sad.

 

 

spring

After our recent outings in fog and wind and rain, we finally managed to have a walk in sunshine. Reasons to be cheerful.

There was still frost on the ground when we set out, walking steeply uphill, towards the rim of yet another extinct volcano.

The different layers of the soil told an ancient story. 

 On we climbed up for an hour to the top of the rim.

 

And finally looked down into what once was a crater full of hissing lava, cultivated into rich farmland for centuries.

By now, the sun was warm on our faces, the air was still, a single thrush was singing her heart out. We sat down and drank the coffee from our flask, leaning back, looking around us, feeling alive.

 

 

I could have fallen asleep there for hours but on we walked, down through the fields with old apple trees here and there.

 Until we found a lake.

 

And decided it will be a good place for a swim come summer. I timed the drive home and checked the water use permits, it's a deal. We'll be back. 

You never know which small, endearing, perhaps even bizarre gesture will be the one that gives you power. But it is there. It's waiting for you. (. . . ) After all, they only have the power we give them, and we can take it back at some point.

The killer clowns try to sound like comedians or preachers, but they only utter obscenities. At their core, they remain unloved teenagers, desperate for attention. They have nothing to offer, neither joy nor spiritual insight. If we look dispassionately behind their chaos, if we undermine them at every turn, not only will it be fun, but it will one day shake their house of cards. Proving that fear doesn't have to make us cruel and that we don't have to join in blaming others for things they never did to us is amusing and triggers the fascists at the same time.

Right-wing extremism attracts the inadequate, who can only feel superior when others are terrorised and disappear. Fascists reassure themselves with magical thinking, and fascists are, it cannot be emphasised enough, dumb as bricks.

A.L. Kennedy

remember, don't forget

 

But it is illogical, to say the least, for Americans not to thank Ukrainians, or to treat their courageous president as an object of contempt. The coercive ritual of gratitude hides from Americans the basic reality of what has happened these last three years. During this war, Ukraine has delivered to the United States strategic gains that the United States could not have achieved on its own. Ukrainian resistance gave hope to people defending democracies around the world. Ukrainian soldiers were defending the basic principle of international law, which is that states are sovereign and that borders should not be changed by aggression. Ukraine in effect fulfilled the entire NATO mission, absorbing a full-scale Russian attack essentially on its own. It has deterred Chinese aggression over Taiwan, by showing how difficult offensive operations can be. It has slowed the spread of nuclear weapons, by proving that a conventional power can resist a nuclear power in a conventional war. Throughout the war, Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and the Ukrainians have resisted the nuclear bluff. Should they be allowed to be defeated, nuclear weapons will spread around the world, both to those who wish to bluff with them, and those who will need them to resist the bluff.

By abandoning Ukraine, Trump is risking a terrible escalation and, indeed, a world war. Everything that Ukraine has done these last three years can be reversed. Now that the Trump administration has chosen to throw American power to Russia's side, Russia could indeed win the war. (This was always Russia's only chance, as the Russians themselves well knew, and openly said.) In this scenario of an American-backed Russian victory, opened yesterday by American choices in the American capital, the horrible losses extend far beyond Ukraine. Zelens'kyi quite sensibly made the point that the consequences of the war could extend to Americans. 

 

Timothy Snyder

 

boycott

Many years ago, my daughter had to write an extended essay on civil liberties and how seemingly small or arduous actions can influence politics. She was not amused and left it to the very last moment to start. Luckily, her mother had been active as a trade union member in the Irish boycott of SA goods while she herself was just a tiny toddler. On top of that, there is a weak and distant family link to the 19th century Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell who basically invented, some say re-invented, the idea of an effective non-violent action - the name derives from a cruel landagent, Charles Boycott, but surely everybody knows that. Anyway, she gathered enough inspiration and wrote her essay, it's somewhere in a box in the attic I think.

Today, our local paper published a list of goods to boycott, many of the large retail shops, several local restaurants have signs on their doors telling their customers, which US goods will no longer be available, no coca or pepsi cola, no ketchup, no almonds, no Kraft sweets etc.

Click here to watch a little video from far away Australia. Does it matter if it will have any effect? See for yourself.

However grim things look, whatever the overwhelming odds you face, you will not face them alone. I will not be complicit in the tyranny of the USA. I will not buy into the tyranny of the USA. Because when this is over, one way or another, I want my name to have been recorded, in my memory if nowhere else, in the column of the names of the people who said "I will not be complicit." and not among the names of those who sneered and sniggered; or worse, who cheered the tyrant on.

eat the wild strawberry

 

 a stormy wet day in 2009, Killary Harbour, Ireland

 

 It's all dreadful, the future looks so bleak, a friend tells me. Every day another blow. And so on.

Later, I read this in Rebecca Solnit's excellent newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency

 

I think of all of this while I walk along the river and the wind is so fierce in my face that I move faster and faster. My cheeks sting from the cold and suddenly, there's the thought of my big blue mug, filled with steaming tea, in my hands. And this small thought of a pleasure awaiting me back in my warm kitchen brings on a sudden cascade of happy memories, so much so that I start to hum. These moments in my life of pure joy, the knowledge that something vague and very good is going to happen. I realise, once more, that this expectation of joy is what has directed and surprised and comforted me all my life. Looking at the river glittering grey and blue in the cold winter afternoon, the barges gliding by and the sun about to set behind a small bank of clouds and all along, I feel a sense of being safe. Despite it all. The bombardement of bleak news, the ever changing diagnosis, the daily conundrum of gaining and maintaining a semblance of health and wellbeing, the fearful future outlooks. To not let it overtake me. Not allow myself to lose It. My soul. My self.  My happiness, and how can I even think of happiness with all the horrible things going on. Do I, do we, even deserve feeling happy, feeling joy, feeling good? Whatever type of happiness the future will hold, it can only be a lesser one I think, or maybe I'm wrong and it will be a deeper one? 

The thing is, I have never been in real danger, never experienced poverty, never been unable to seek medical help. I always had access to education, have been encouraged to learn, to study, to read, to visit, to debate and speak without any restrictions. In every place I ever lived, I had access to libraries, big and small, news media, gossip, rumours, jokes, satire, critical opinions, science. And while there have been times, years in fact, when money was short, very short, my fridge has never been empty. There has always been a garden or at least access to land where I could grow food. My existence has never been at risk. Nobody in my immediate family has suffered hardship since I have been alive. All my adult life, I have experienced companionship, friendship, support, I have never been abandoned, betrayed, ridiculed, cheated, deserted. Like most of us, I have experienced loss and grief and found ways and help to cope.

Yes, I have known fear, dread, anxiety, panic.  Some times, like now, to an extent that affects my sleep, my peace of mind. My vivid imagination is a blessing and a curse. In a recent exchange somewhere on social media, I wrote: I've been panicky since Chernobyl, more or less. And yet, I am still blown by how happy I can feel.

Relax

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat—
the one you never really liked—will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice—one white, one black—scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth. 

Ellen Bass

 

need to get birdfood

 

Don’t Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world. It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.

Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid

of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

 

 

Another frosty night, another cold day ahead of us. At least it's sunny. And very windy. I may have mentioned at some stage that I dislike winter. I herewith confirm this strong dislike. My lower arms are recovering from the infection but it still looks like an angry red case of scabies. The grandchild was impressed. Was there lots of blood, they asked? Tell me again Granny, did it run down to your hands?.

Various events in the near and far make me anxious. On Saturday, I visited all the party stalls at the farmer's market and pretended to read their hand-outs while I waited until the respective candidate had noticed me. I then asked each of them the same set of questions. After they had produced their helpful/empty/instructive/off-topic reply I told one of them that I think him completely unsuited for representing me in the national parliament and urged another to get her act together for goodness sakes and a third one gave me a bunch of tulips before I could even open my mouth but we agreed that a bunch of forcefully grown flowers from a Dutch greenhouse will not buy my vote. I gave the tulips to the guy from the coffee truck, as he had just passed his German language exam and can now apply for a German passport. He said he intends to vote at the next general election, not this one and I promised him that I do what I can so that he will be able to.

We have exactly one snowdrop flowering in the herb bed of all places. Thankfully, the eranthis has spread all over the place and is flowering to abandon. I am now off to get more birdfood. Also, more coffee. 

 

Resistance is not a moment, but a process.

This morning, first thing, a message from a friend, in panic mode, she tells me, everywhere I look, nothing is right anymore. I lean back and check myself for a while, try to figure out when what has been right. I think I have been in panic mode for a long time, more or less. Funny that. 

These days I often miss my father, want to call him and ask, what was it like for you? How long did it take you to look behind the facades of lies and deception? The empty promises? What was it like to just get on with life? Birthday parties and climbing trees and picking raspberries.

The past week was pretty meh thanks to (what should have been) superficial actinic keratosis treatment resulting in sepsis requiring a double dose of antibiotics. I swam around for three days with chills and fever and disorientation but hey, antibiotics do work miracles. Regretfully, they also create havoc in the digestive system. A work in progress.

Anyway, small fry compared to what's going on here, there and everywhere. And unexpectedly, in the couple of days of sepsis-induced exhaustion, I felt a strong sense of impatience. Do not render me inactive, I hissed at my ill self. We have work to do. Below is a jumble of thoughts and quotes I collected in my fever days. I still hold on to the thought that we can do our bit and that our bit is enough. Because we can do our bit with all of the others doing their bit. It may not be enough to save us individually but it is enough to show that maybe we are all worth saving. And maybe that’s enough.

The Defenders

I love the courage
of the little black ants
who when disturbed
come out of their old
fencepost as big dogs
come after a rat,
take hold of me,
shake me, and growl.

Wendell Berry

The world is held together, I think, by a million ordinary encounters that occur between the millions of people each second allows itself to hold. And the world is broken, I think, by whatever doesn’t understand or appreciate the ordinary.

Devin Kelly 

So let's concentrate on the truth. The promises of fascism are always poisoned, contagious, absurd. They cannot thrive in peace, never want to be scrutinised. For this reason alone, we must create peace - mentally, spiritually, physically - we must create peace wherever we can. We strengthen creativity, fluidity, mutual support. Why does the far right hate nature, art and beauty? Because strength, clarity, unity and imagination are a threat to them to the same extent that they help us. Why are they trying to erase history? Because those who plan to repeat the worst mistakes of history do not want us to foresee how many people will perish in the process. 

A.L.Kennedy 

We are all one. And if we don't realise that, we will learn it the hard way.

 

when you are German

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Anne Frank

At age 14, I went on a school exchange to the UK because my grades in English were abysmal but also because I wanted to get away from boring Germany. I ended up in an incredibly dull town on the east coast of England and had a miserable time. My English improved but not to the expected standard, also I had picked up the local accent. So it was an allround failure. (I did, however, come back with blue nail varnish and some excellent memories of a week in London.)

From day one of my time in England, I was told in no uncertain terms by the good people living there that I was a Kraut and that Germany had lost the war. Some people had a good laugh, showed me funny tv sketches, others decided to provide history lessons and occasionally, I was asked, how come the Germans allowed hitler to do what he did? What did your family do? Why did the Germans let this happen? 

I am grateful for this experience. I returned home and started to ask questions - which were not answered. Anyway, life interfered and it was not until much later, that I began to take longer and harder looks at my country's recent history.

Where to begin. There's the guilt, the shame. To face it, even when you are second and third generation. The responsibility I have felt at times is overwhelming. 

Some milestones along the road.

There is my obtaining of my maternal grandfather's files from the national archive and while there is so much that I cannot reveal or even locate, the knowledge of his involvement.

There are relatives of my parent's and grandparent's generation who are angry with me, who want me to understand that there wasn't a choice, that one had to remain silent, not attract attention, that it was all too much to cope and understand.

There was Daniel Goldhagen's book about hitler's willing executioners (2012) that sparked months of public debates and heated discussions, and not just regarding the historic German anti-semitism but the  Mitläufer (follower, hanger-on, collaborator), ordinary (?) citizens who basically did nothing, failed to rock the boat.

There was a long cold day spent in Dachau concentration camp, a short distance from where my parents met and where I was born. It was the first camp established by the nazis, used - especially in its early years - to imprison and intimidate political dissidents. The camp, which is massive, was built in the first months after hitler came to power, i.e. years before Auschwitz.

I could go on. There are days, when I am still hoping with all my heart that I will find one, just one distant relative who may have hidden someone in their basement or attic, enabled a family to escape, participated in a secret resistance group, printed leaflets, developed even the smallest form of sabotage. 

Nobody did, they all felt too exhausted, too shocked, too worried about their own family, status, well being, survival. I could call them all cowards but what do I know. The 12 years of nazi regime, the six years of war that ended it. It was never a topic of conversation in my extended family. And if the subject came up, rarely and by accident, there was often silence, people would leave the room, my mother shaking and smoking.

When you are German, to this day people from other countries feel obliged to remind you of what your parent's and grandparent's generation did. They tell you stories of how their father fought against the nazis, of how their politicians helped to end fascism in Europe. And they tell you that they would never  let anything like it happen in their own country. That it's a German curse, and that these Germans, these lazy, idiotic Germans did nothing to stop it. 

On national tv last night, yet another expert explained that in the US there surely will come a point when Trumpism has exhausted itself and people are tired of it. That much is certain, he said. I wonder at what price.

imbolc

This day means a lot to me, I often call it the most hopeful day, the day, when the light comes in. And I still do, even after watching and raging for the past three days at what has been going on in my country and what is going on elsewhere. I could list all the angry and insightful quotes and statements I have collected, the memes and the poster images and the cartoons, thank goodness for nasty cartoons. But instead, I look out over the hoar frosted garden, bright sunlight, the birds picking through the handful of nuts and seeds on the patio table, the squirrels racing across the lawn and into the hazel bush.

Before sunrise, I hear the blackbirds singing out their mating songs. And this is my song for today.

 

 

Today, I want to whisper in people's ears: Don't be afraid of change, because the current situation means a climate crisis, wars, inequality, noise, oppression, species extinction, oligarchy, lack of education, violence ... Nothing that is worth fighting to preserve. So you have nothing to lose by embarking on the adventure of improving the world. Do your best to separate the signal from the noise.

We exist together. We don’t have to do any of this alone.

Perhaps this is all we can give each other right now—the promise of support and camaraderie and love. There are things that will not get better—things that will be irrevocably lost—but then there are things, hopefully, that will: our care for each other. Our care for the land. Our involvement in our communities. Our capacity for love.

Getting better at loving, I think, means sitting with the hard stuff, not being afraid of it, not turning away. Maybe we can learn to undo the language of betterment in favor of something more honest and true: not I hope you feel better but I’m with you as things get worse.

Nandi Rose

Tomorrow is my sister's 70th birthday. She has been mad at me since forever, we are in a constant competition of who can come up with the best, veiled insult, the sharpest sarcastic remark, the nicest grandchild, the worst chronic pain and so on. We are both carrying wounds that will never heal. I know I owe my life to her. I knitted this pair of mittens for her. The pattern is from a book I found in a second hand shop ages ago, it's an old Estonian pattern. The book is full of wonderful mittens and socks in these traditinal techniques and patterns. I've copied every single one of them over the years. A long time ago, I knitted one of these mittens for a therapist I went to for a while. I carefully chose the softest wool and fretted over the pattern a good deal. She refused to accept them, something about professional standards, about not allowing client's work on her skin and so on. I dropped the mittens in a bin on the way home.

Anyway, that was a very long time ago. These here are the ones I sent to my sister.

What is more remarkable: our capacity to forget suffering and darkness, or our capacity to remember it?

 The good news first.

We are approaching Imbolc/St Brigid's Day but more on that on the weekend. Needless to say, it lifts my heart to hear the blackbirds singing before sunrise.

Things are looking rather messy in the vegetable garden. It's the time of the year when we've lost the will to harvest even more Brussel sprouts and turnips. Although the latter did taste great when I roasted a few of them yesterday. But my taste buds have begun to hanker for rhubarb, asparagus, freshly picked radish and so on. All in time. Anyway, apart from the green manure growing in the front right, all the rest is for the birds and the squirrels and will be dug up soon enough.

Meanwhile matters are coming along indoors . And this is only the beginning.

As for the covid patch, we've cleared all the self seeding wildflowers and various grasses/weeds to turn this into a patch for a variety of caterpillar food plants. It's all very well to enjoy butterflies in the summer as they feed on buddliah flowers, we need to think of them as caterpillars. I sat in a workshop some time last autumn and have now managed to find a seed bank sharing local seed for suitable plants, got the soil tested and found to be too rich in nutrients. So we are mixing in sand and stuff to reduce the nutrients, which is supposedly allowing the soil to be more welcoming for these plants. I am actually very excited about this, the seed packet includes over 50 species.

The dead wood hedge around it will grow in time and is currently home to wild bees and at least one hedgehog.

This morning we attended our city's memorial event for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A large section of the program had been prepared by local high school students (year 10, 15 years old) who had studied the life stories of ten local persons who 80 years ago were liberated from concentration camps and prisons or who were able to leave their hiding places at the end of the war. The students had contacted consulates, schools, museums, archives, universities, churches and relatives worldwide and presented a very moving collection of images, memories and eye witness reports. In between, there was live music, and as expected, I had to cry during a Beethoven cello piece that I would normally probably never even listen to. I am sure I was not the only one in the dark auditorium. Not even hitler and his henchmen could survive on hate and terror.

two quotes for the day

The president is currently selling caps, wrapping paper, blankets, football jerseys, boat flags, pickleball paddles, necklaces, earrings, silk ties, chopping boards, Christmas decorations, slippers, tie clips, door mats, aprons, pyjamas, socks, Advent calendars, Christmas stockings, mugs, keychains, sweatshirts, note cards, bracelets, scented candles, beach bags, flip-flops, bathrobes, towels, sunglasses, corkscrews, water bottles, stickers, jogging pants, wine and champagne glasses, earbuds, hoodies, jelly beans, cookies, chocolates, honey, jewellery boxes, whiskey decanters, trays, wallets, flasks, wines, coasters, umbrellas, golf bags, plates, ashtrays, sports bras and dog leashes – all with his name on them.

Also available are a $100,000 gold watch, a $11,000 autographed guitar, digital trading card NFTs featuring the  president in heroic historic tableaux, God Bless the USA Bibles, Never Surrender High-Top Sneakers, Fight Fight Fight Cologne for Men (‘For patriots who never back down’) and a celebratory Victory Cologne, which comes in a bottle in the shape of the president’s head.

Eliot Weinberger

If you’re feeling despair over Trump’s second regime, which begins today, I understand.

Yet I remain hopeful about America. Let me explain why.

Not since the gilded age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into such conspicuous displays of political power. Unapologetically, unashamedly, defiantly.

This flagrancy makes me hopeful. Why? Because Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover.

The backlash will be stunning.

I cannot tell you precisely how or when it will occur, but I expect it will start with average Americans helping their communities and protecting the most vulnerable.

It’s unfortunate that America has come to this point. But, as a friend put it, the authoritarian forces that have been building for years are like the pus in an ugly boil. The only way we work up enough outrage to lance it, she said, is for the boil to get so big and ugly that it disgusts all of us.

Robert Reich

more than halfway through winter

The other day I walked in thick fog past the Spanish creche and through the park behind the UN buildings and as I came out by the river, the world looked like this.

And right there and then thanks to the magic algorithm of my cellphone's playlist Jeff Buckley's voice started to sing inside my head.

 

Today, the fog has disappeared and I cycled into town to exchange my library books, R refused to come along, too cold, he shrugged. In the library, I stuck to my list of selections and preorders, and with great willpower stayed well away from any of the interesting covers and titles that seemed to call out, pick me and me and me, too. Back home, I stood by the kitchen window, warming my hands on a cup of coffee, watching the jays pick up their daily dose of peanuts. The sky today is wide open, a perfect clear blue. In six weeks, there will be leaves on the trees. 

 

Last night I could not fall asleep and finished reading "A Woman in the Polar Night" by Christiane Ritter, the account of an Austrian painter who accompanied her husband on a year-long hunting trip in the Arctic islands of Spitsbergen, Norway during the 1930s. "Our hearts are light, our thoughts are in a permanent state of upliftment. Nature seems to contain everything that man needs for his balance." She wrote during the darkest weeks of eternal night.

 

This morning, I heard woodpeckers.

heated mittens

Yes, there’s darkness—in this world and in your one, small life—but there is also light streaming in from many directions. Some is coming from so far off, it hasn’t reached you yet. Turn your face to it as often as you can. No darkness deserves your full attention.

Maggie Smith

This was the snow situation three days ago. We had a pleasant walk, the way pensioners amble around the forest and climb a hill to marvel at the view.

It's all gone now, today we are enveloped by a thick mist, just as cold, and the ground is frozen, which makes walking a tad risky. I will gather my inner and outer strength eventually to brace the elements and get a move on, partaking of the sticky foggy air and so on. Yesterday evening we went to a public lecture on democracy and how it can fail and it took me several minutes to warm my fingers so that I could put the key into my bicycle lock. R looked on impatiently and has now ordered an expensive pair of heated mittens that apparently charge via usb stick. 

The lecture was in one of the big lecture theatres at the university, packed to capacity. It was a weird deja vu experience sitting on these fold up seats, wooden desks with that neat groove for the pencil and faint scratched graffiti. And so we listened and were told that democracies are delicate structures and that not everyone likes them. This is because it is not the strongest who wins, but usually the community in the form of majority relationships. And the wheeling and dealing of politicians and lobbyists and that you cannot sue politicians for not delivering on their promises. The positive message for me was the large audience and the mix of ages and the lively discussion at the end.

Cycling home in the cold and dark was another story. Hence the heated mittens.

This weather makes me slow down, not in a nice way. In fact, it makes me feel my age, also not in a nice way.

The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.

Albert Einstein

snow is shit

 

We cannot know the future, but remembering the past with care and accuracy equips us to navigate it.

Rebecca Solnit 

not my snowman

 

It's been a tough week, winter doesn't help matters at all. I don't care about the brilliant intensity of the sunshine on snow and however blue the sky is to some when the ground is crunching and slippery with refrozen slush and also it's too damn cold. On the worst day, I had an early appointment with the regular experts and after carefully following the predictions of the weather app, I had concluded that it would be ok to cycle there provided I wrap up and put on the reflecting gear as it involved starting before sunrise. Well, the weather app, in fact all the weather apps, got it wrong and I woke up to roads frozen solid after a rainy night. To add some excitement, snow was starting to fall. In this part of Germany, this kind of weather always comes as a complete surprise to the road traffic departments with predictable results. My initial reaction was to just stay home but after much deliberating, I remembered the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism which emphatically state time and again that we must accept another’s generosity otherwise we are interfering with their ability to generate good karma. With that thought, I joyfully accepted R's offer to drive us there, knowing that he simply loves a challenge. (This is a man who in his younger days drove a dilapidated Austin Minor across East Africa.) Let's just say, he had fun. And after he spent an interesting morning sampling the various coffee options on campus until I had been told what I knew they would tell me, we crawled back home on the icy roads.

 

Apart from that, things could only get worse better, and so they have. As the saying goes, modern day fascism is not shouting: Look here, it's me, fascism. Modern day fascism grins and says:  Come on, it's freedom of speech.

Modern day fascism wants you to think that it's the new, fresh way of understanding the world and the people who still insist on issues of justice and human rights are just yesterday's fluffy goody-goody bores who haven't heard the shot. We have a general election in eight weeks and it looks grim.

All I can come up with that I need to stand sturdy, holding onto my morals and my humanity, to live as I feel we should be living, to remain defiant. To not go into internal emigration. To be aware that in a dictatorship, you are not allowed to tell what you see, you are not allowed to say what you think and you are not allowed to write what you want.

Open our eyes to the beauty of things, however imperilled, degraded, or difficult to love the world may appear to be.
We do not look away from the world, we look directly at it and allow the spirit of hope - the necessary driver of change - to inspire us to action.
Hope has an earned understanding of the sorrowful or corrupted nature of things, yet it rises to attend to the world even still. We understand that our demoralisation becomes the most serious impediment to bettering the world. In its active form, hope is a supreme gesture of love, a radical and audacious duty, whereas despair is a stagnant rejection of life itself. Hope becomes the energy of change.

Nick Cave

Spring cannot come soon enough.

there's a power in hope

In hopeless times, we can never afford to lose hope. When we feel beaten, we can take a breath and love: a word, a view, a dog, a dream, a person, a hope. We can act and work and hope like citizens of a better country, a better time. We can make 2025 find out there’s a power in that.

 

AL Kennedy

Knackered. I am starting this year knackered. Spent too many hours sitting down with siblings talking, talking, talking. Trying to sleep in unfamiliar cold rooms and to crown it driving four hours through swirling snow, aka mini blizzard, on the motorway in Germany. This in itself is madness even without snow as speed limits are minimal and even when they are, nobody pays any attention.

Before the snow started to fall so furiously, we stopped for a while in another small Franconian town, dating back to the 11th century. Everybody was asleep, every door was closed, no food was available, just pertrol on the way out.

 

It took me several years to actually get the meaning of the word 'knackered' despite the fact that I used it regularly. Actually, there are many words I use in English that I couldn't translate into my first language. In the early days when I was introduced to R's family, when my English was really limited, they had great fun playing charades on a Sunday after lunch and my first test was to act "Deliverance". To this day, I haven't a clue what it means in German and I haven't seen the movie - I think. Of course, I failed, there was much laughter but somehow I must have passed the test because my next clue was "Casablanca" - which I delivered with great skill. They were just as rough with each other. This was a long time ago.

 

I have cleared the paper stacks on my desk, I have defrosted the freezer and got rid of the out-of-date stuff from the medicine cabinet. I am ready for 2025.

    So hope for a great sea-change
    On the far side of revenge.
    Believe that a further shore

    Is reachable from here.
    Believe in miracles
    And cures and healing wells.

Seamus Heaney

And a hopeful lecture to listen to, here:

so this was xmas

We opted for xmas day as the perfect day for a hill walk and it did start out nice and mostly sunny, albeit cold. By the time we had parked the car and put on our boots, however, a big bank of fog moved in and decided to stay for the rest of the day. So, instead of grand vistas, we were surrounded by mysterious blankness.

This kind of cloudy presence created a deep silence around us and at times, all we could do was stumble through it, never sure what was around the corner. Yet, we discovered ancient sulphuric springs dating back to the Roman times.

 

And suddenly, a bit of clear sky to cherish the deep beech forest.

 

With thick mosses and lichens.

 Volcanic remains from an eruption dating back 200,000 years.

Eventually, we settled down for our xmas dinner in an old hunting shed.

And arrived back at the car with much mud to clean from my boots bring home.

The next morning, we woke to brilliant blue skies and not a trace of cloud in sight. Ah well, I suppose we can have a walk in sunny weather any time, whereas climbing and sliding through foggy mud is exceptional. 

Since every commercial aspect, such as shops and restaurants, comes to a standstill for three days here over xmas, I am only slowly getting my orientation back, reminding myself what day of the week it is and so on. Suddenly, I am noticing that pile of papers and files on my desk I think I may have to sort through before the (tax) year ends and I get the tiniest inkling of stress but only briefly. But then, a shrug, who cares.

 Here I am. What happens now, happens to me.

Anna Seghers

one day past midwinter

 

This is an old picture. Today, the view was still the same, a few more clouds but the wind just as cold. 

Yesterday, we watched the light beam make its way into the chamber of Newgrange and luckily, it was a sunny morning. We watched it on the tiny screen of R's cellphone and it was ridiculous and wonderful at the same time.

This is an older video but it looked just like it. Those ancient Celts knew their stuff.

 

 

When walking in the cold, I usually end up counting my steps, pulling my knees up and rolling my feet with every step to stay warm. This eventually sends me into a kind of drowsy absentmindedness, just functioning, for a while and then a string of thoughts starts up, sending my mind all over the place. Today, there were snippets from a podcast on the end of civilisation (Margaret Wheatly in conversation with Sarah Wilson), the new school the grandchild with go to after the xmas holidays, my brother's birthday coming up, how to use all of the leftover wool for one big project so I start from scratch, how reading thrillers is like "eating chocolate in bed" (a quote by Siri Hustvedt) and that I have actually read 99 books this year - most of them thrillers I don't even remember.

As usual, R had announced that his new year's resolution is to not have any resolutions, while I silently started to make a list. Or two. Out loud, we compared our lists of the number of doctor's visits we need to schedule, strictly check-ups and vaccine updates. It's going to be an exciting year. Watch this space.

 

No matter what times we live in, no matter who holds power or who is being oppressed, we all have to hang onto ourselves, to what we know to be right and good, to not sacrifice those values even for our own skin, much less our own power, success, or status.

The moral codes we live by do not have to be immaculate. They do not have to check every box of what we think is expected of us, or what we expect of ourselves. All they must be—and this is harder than it sounds—is sturdy enough to withstand the wreckage of history.

Antonia Malchik

Almost midwinter.

the apricot tree asleep

The sun set at 04:28 pm today. The wind is fierce but we enjoyed an almost blue sky when we went out for the afternoon walk. Earlier, R insisted on going up on the roof to nail down the zink top of the chimney that was blown down. This was accompanied by me complaining hysterically about him taking risks while these kind of events and repairs are covered by the expensive insurance we keep on paying and never claiming. But there are things a man must do. Or so it seems. Anyway, he noticed my distress and voluntarily joined me on my walk.

The garden is more or less dormant. This is the vegetable area with a stretch of sprouting broccoli and Brussel sprouts in the top right, some chewy green leafy stuff from a Chinese plant in the top left, a last bit of hardy spinach and couple of parsnips in the front left and green manure (phacelia) in the right front. The rest is a neglected mess. We share the parsnips with the magpies and the squirrels, strictly on a first come first serve basis.

In the greenhouse, I am nurturing two surprise avocado plants from stones that started to sprout while sitting deep inside the compost and two pots with next spring's new lilies or maybe iris. I forget.

I have again been odered to document my food intake (energy, protein, B12) for a couple of days and this has been today's fare. You are welcome to skip this bit. And I won't do this every day.

• Breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal porridge with low fat milk and a delicious clementine fresh from Spain. Two cups of black tea, each with a drop of low fat milk.
• Mid-morning snack was a slice of spelt toast, with a bit of that vegan butter stuff that's meant to be rich in omega 3, topped with a slice of fol epi (French cheese from the Loire valley) and  another cup of black tea with a drop of milk.
• Lunch was a soup I made from a large fennel bulb, a chunk of cauliflower and two small potatoes, all of which I first roasted in the oven with a generous dash of olive oil, salt, pepper and baharat (Middle Eastern) spice mix before I whizzed the lot with an added handful of Thai basil and some left over feta cheese in the blender. Ate it with another slice of spelt toast with that omega-3 spread on top of it. Followed by a large cup of coffee with hot foamy milk.
  
• Mid-afternoon snack was the daily dose of protein powder (pure whey) mixed in a cup of Greek yoghurt and a handful of fresh raspberries - they come from Morocco these days.
• Dinner was cottage cheese mixed with cherry tomatoes and Thai basil. More black tea with a little bit of milk and three slices of Zwieback. 

I enjoyed all of it, most of these are from my favourite foods list anyway. As long as I can remember I have been a big fan of Zwieback, which is sometimes translated as rusk but that's not quite it. At some stage, I even baked it myself but it's a bit labour intensive (Zwieback translates as baked twice) and much easier to just buy it. The variety of Zwiebacks is vast, I am currently partial to the "whole spelt with butter" version. It must be dipped into tea or coffee. My mother and women of her generation made a baby dish of Zwieback soaked in some hot water or milk - depending on the age of the baby - and then mashed with a banana. It is also excellent in a decent sherry trifle.

Here is a picture I have borrowed from Wikipedia.

On our walk we talked about the state of the planet, we always do. We covered fake news, our own set of blinders when it comes to how (not) to avoid fossil fuels, plastics and other comfortable stuff that we are too lazy to change. We talked about the civilization collapse and the roof skylight that needs repairing. Also, Black Doves on Netflix.

 

What motivates us to act is a sense of possibility within uncertainty – that the outcome is not yet fully determined and our actions may matter in shaping it.

Rebecca Solnit

when we were gods

These are the days of darkness and cold. It's barely above freezing outside. While I was cleaning the downstairs windows (I enjoy cleaning windows BTW), I notice that something or someone has been gnawing away a bit of the frame from the patio door. The door is made from very hard hardwood and has been unblemished until six weeks ago when I last washed the glass and the frame (I take window cleaning very seriously). We decided that it's not the end of the world and that for now we shall observe hoping that the door will not collapse. Maybe the termites are coming to take over the house. Last night I dreamt of being back in Africa fighting with never ending columns of red ants.

My mind is otherwise blank and blissfully useless. I got yet another letter from the pension people in Ireland promising even more arrears to be paid shortly. As a matter of fact, shortly could mean anything and R thinks it's a scam anyway. 

Here are some mostly anonymous bits from the wise internets. That's all I have the energy for.

History has shown time and again that defeating injustice is much easier than achieving justice.

 

You can relax. If you decide against climate protection, it does not mean that you are selling your soul. You are only selling those of your children and grandchildren, and if things go well for you, you won't even have to watch.

 

Lauren Hough

For all the mothers out there, I wish you would read this post, it's longish, so take your time. I admit that I got quite emotional reading it. And I am a hard nut as the saying goes.

https://katywheatley.substack.com/p/a-very-long-post-about-maternal-burnout

diagnostic dead end

 

In fairness, it was kind, the way he told me over the phone. In my mind's eye I could almost see him shrug. We have reached the end of diagnostic options. And I replied that I understood, obviously. I almost laughed. After four experts and I lost count how many procedures, it has been agreed that the displacement of various bowel segments due to chronic inflammation scars and whatever else could - in theory - be surgically repaired but what's the opposite of in theory here, maybe in fact. In fact, surgery is not an option because of the compromised immune system due to the past 10+ years of immune suppression therapy, which most likely saved my life or at least the life expectancy of my liver, kidneys, heart and lungs. Also eyes and ears. And ayway, surgery in otherwise healthy people without an autoimmune disease has a success rate at only around 50 percent.

In short, this is the shape of things from now on. Me, hoping in the morning that the small bland yet pleasant breakfast portion will not cause a wave of painful bloating that could last until evening, while creating an Ottolenghi style lunch with said bland ingredients.

I have long ago accepted how limited my personal autonomy actually has become with a body that's a site of complication and now that eating has become a trial-by-error assault course, I can only shrug.

As Virginia Woolf said, in illness, the mind gives way to a thousand fantasies we don’t find time for in health.

Other than that, it's winter and cold and wet. I push myself outside, well wrapped, listening to a gruesome thriller, feeling slightly embarrassed for doing so when this is the view.

I could share my thoughts on stuff, like how the more feminist achievements there are, the more patriarchal violence increases. And how the crisis situations we are living in - climate crisis, wars, increasing poverty - motivates men to abuse and humiliate those who are below them in the hierarchy and how this behavior is increasingly accepted. How global right-wing extremism celebrates a traditional, alpha image and how religious fanaticism, whether evangelical or Islamist, celebrates the oppression of women. But then what? Right now, I just want to get from one day to the next, have a decent walk, digest my food without too much pain and find out who did it (in the thriller).