It apparently has been shown in brain research that when you keep a positive stance, i.e. straighten your spine and hold your head up etc., your brain over time translates this into a general positive attitude which is in fact reflected by an increase in certain hormone levels. I just heard this on the radio in the car, waiting for a green light, on a very hot day, eating strawberries, unwashed strawberries straight out of the punnet spilling on the passenger seat. Must be true.

I remember one miserable day last year in March after my month in the RW clinic when I sat in my GP's surgery and wanted to fold myself into a small crying bundle and it was so hard to speak up that he had difficulty hearing me. Where was Charlie Brown when I needed him?! 

(I have eaten so many fresh strawberries in the last 48 hours I think I am all gooey sticky sweet red inside.)

too early, much too early

C

A friend from long ago visited me last night while I was watching the box. I saw him in the faces of the men on the screen, heard him in their voices, recognised his shy smile in the way one of them turned his head  just a small bit to one side, looking down as if to avoid looking fully into the camera while he spoke of being sexually abused by his teacher. One of at least 18 teachers at this progressive secular co-ed boarding school. He was there, at the time when it happened, these were his schoolmates, I know that. I can imagine him, a shy, beautiful waif-like little boy. I don't want to imagine anything further. But he stayed with me all through the night.

We were close for a while, sharing music (JJ Cale) and poetry (Erich Fried) and films (Visconti's adaptation of Camus' The Stranger), spending more time in the Hohe Strasse cafes and pubs than at the university. Everything was so important, intense. Heidelberg, so beautiful and so many angry young students.

He lives somewhere south now, a sculptor, with a family, a quiet life - I hope.

there should be more songs starting with happiness

You wouldn't think I could forget that I am ill? I can. And when it happens it is so sweet, so gentle and soft.
And, no, it is not just getting used to being ill. But maybe it's to do with me not dwelling on it so much.

Wait a minute.
What was that??
Only joking. I know how to dwell, seriously dwell on it. Self pity is my middle name.

reading Joyce Carol Oates

When there must be a choice, a girl will choose Daddy. Even if you are Mommy, you concede that this must be so: you remember when you were a girl, too.

I ran from both as soon as I could.

the grapes

May morning

breakfast on the veranda, cat in hiding, birdsong, bumble bees in the poppy blossoms, peonies just starting... my man is a serious gardener.

I don't get it. I mean, maybe I am seriously naïve or too detached from the real world. Some weeks ago I finished a translation of a lengthy scholarly essay on the traditions of giving, gift vs exchange paradigms etc. The author - university professor with a tight schedule of global lectures and conferences - wrote in depth about anti-utalitarian concepts and gift traditions in peasant communities and urban settings and so on. Very committed and detailed. 

Her research and with it my fee was funded by a generous gift from one of these philantropic billionaires, who is also a friend of the author. In a footnote, this gift has been praised as an example of some ancient human gift giving spirit, bla bla and bla.

Today, I get a request from the author for a taxable invoice, i.e. to set off against her personal income tax. No joke.

Well, you can stuff it!

headache

My head has not been ok since this weird massage treatment on Monday. That was an impulsive move, I know. Lesson not learned. 

Yesterday was all hazy fog and more roaring than usual and today is headache day, plus it's close and damp outside, hot.

Funny (?) how I can vividly remember some headache episodes, like that one unseasonally hot Sunday with Mona insisting on a proper Sunday walk with grandchild and UH turning up out of the blue and so much showing off and many unresolved conflicts in the air and the sunlight unbearable and of course the constant remarks like this is what you do back in your country? Really, with children that age?

Or my good-bye lunch in paradise with the minister and the board members and someone from head offices who had come over from Mauritius and who kept on topping up the cheap white wine. I remember sitting through the speeches thinking, soon I must drive over the winding cliff road to pick S up from school. I laughed too much when I got the cheque because we all knew that my chances to change it into dollars or sterling were slim.

still the best

Maybe there will be a time when I look back and remember that in spring 2011 my menopause started. For the moment, I am quietly elated. When I mentioned this to U today, she laughed in disbelief. 

Dr B told me that hot flushes are child's play compared to the fever episodes I had during the early months of getting ill.  And right she was. She also told me that a hot flush usually lasts not longer than 90 sec max.

Well actually it's nice to experience something so normal. So predictable and natural. There I am sitting behind the steering wheel in a traffic jam and this hot wave is gently washing over me tingling and leaving a soft dewy feeling on my face. And all I wanted to do was roll down the window and shout, hey, I am alive.

Sunday's child

I know, I know, this is the life we showed her and what with our living and working in many places, her six different schools and all the stuff about third culture kids. The positive stuff, the enlightening stuff. The wonderful fact that she can step off a train, a plane, a boat and walk down the road and before you know it she is somewhere in a crowd of friends sharing food and laughter and, guess what mum, this is so amazing.

But when I start seeing her in Julia Robert's smile for goodness sake, this is serious withdrawal.

So what do you do when a 'friend' brings you a gift of two bottles of wine, nicely wrapped, and with her sweetest voice tells you, I know sweetie that you cannot drink any alcohol but I had no idea what else to bring you.
Well, I 'smiled' and when after about an hour of patronizing I closed the door behind her, I said to myself, good riddance.

Inside of me is there is this stranger, something that eats my energy, my good intentions, my wishes and plans. Most mornings I wake up and I am myself, all over, inside and out. These mornings are wonderful, there is a whole day unfolding and eagerly I am welcoming it. I have come to cherish these slow and peaceful hours and I make my plans carefully, holding back the avalanche of creative ideas and projects that my mind is so endlessly producing. With as much mindfulness I can muster I step out into my day and get on with my tasks. And as I move through the day, the stranger wakes up. At first I notice it just like an insistent nagging, an itch, something trying to get my attention. But soon it is getting tougher, louder, snapping at me. And before I know it I am running, running, trying to stay ahead of this stranger and I am using whatever coping strategies come to mind to keep it out but all my efforts are as useless as trying to bat at an irritable insect. And eventually, exhausted, I give up and there it is, the stranger, the woman with a disease, a pitiful level of energy, shakes and vertigo, nausea, roaring ears and and and and 

This stranger scares me no end.

Scottish poem

I give you an emptiness,
I give you a plenitude,
unwrap them carefully–
one’s as fragile as the other–
and when you thank me
I’ll pretend not to notice the doubt in your voice
when you say they’re just what you wanted.

Put them on the table by your bed.
When you wake in the morning
they’ll have gone through the door of sleep
into your head. Wherever you go
they’ll go with you and
wherever you are you’ll wonder,
smiling about the fullness
you can’t add to and the emptiness
that you can fill.
Norman MacCaig

If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool

smells and sounds

Sitting on the veranda
reading a very good very British novel
munching on the last bit of the chocolate Easter bunny
poplar seed dropping around me
very still except for birdsong and that lovesick woodpecker
someone next door is roasting something dinner-ish
and I am transported back to Jack's garden in Blackrock
with M in the kitchen preparing Sunday Lunch - meat, two veg and spuds with gravy -
calling out, will you switch on the Hostess trolley love
and Jack, glass of sherry anyone?

rainy morning

guess what

She stands in front of me full of energy, her hair all wild damp blond curls. Her shorts are wet and dirty, she pulled them on quickly over her swimsuit. With one hand she holds out a bucket of crab she collected and in her other hand she carries a hastily bunched up lump of damp towel, T-shirt and flip-flops. 

She is all excitement and laughter and her tanned little body simply cannot keep still. She has been out all day on a boat with our neighbours, anchoring at a small outer island to grill the catch and mess about the mangroves. My neighbours have come to stand around her and smile and the oldest daughter hands me a bundle of small fish and in her shy voice and school room English reassures me that all had a good time.

And guess what, shouts my little Irish daughter delighted with herself, jumping up and down below the breadfruit trees surrounded by this friendly African family, I spoke Creole all day and everybody probably thought I was from here!

coral

Very tired at the end of a long day I sit with my cup of tea and watch a documentary about a gentle tortoise's travel across the Pacific. Images of whale and dolphin and big schools of fish expanding and rolling into tight balls, impressive sharks and dramatic manta ray and yellow fin tuna. And fragile coral with teeming specks of little fish like pieces of coloured glass.

And then the miracle of mass spawning. Every year, in one night usually a couple of days after a full moon corals release their eggs simultaneously. And within a short period of time the dark ocean is filled with an incredible amount of shiny pearls, all life.

If you are looking for hope, you find it here.

colourful signs

Three days ago I noticed a large bruise on the outside below my left knee, it's about the size of my palm and blackish purple. I feel no pain and the skin is smooth and firm. We went through the last couple of days and all I can come up with is that I stumbled and probably twisted my left leg a bit last Thursday. R took a couple of pictures to show the immunologist - maybe.

And since yesterday I get blobs of blood when I blow my nose. They seem to come from my sinuses. Not much, but increasingly so. If my head didn't harbour all these potential scenarios for an eruption of my autoimmune volcano I would guess it has something to do with the dry air with its massive load of stingy pollen, but then again I know that a runny nose with blood can be a classic symptom of autoimmune vasculitis. 

Wait and see what happens next. The earth has not stopped turning. In fact, all is glorious colour and sound and smell outside. Too dry, much too dry and still too hot for April but a feast, really and my bits of red and purple fit in quite well.

reading Hilary Mantel

All of us can change. All of us can change for the better, at any point. I believe this, but what is certainly true is that we can be made foreign to ourselves, suddenly, by illness, accident, misadventure, or hormonal caprice.

siblings

For my father's 80th birthday we attempted to do something meaningful. At least we spoke about it on the phone. At least my brother and my sister told me that they had spoken about it on the phone. 

I suggested we each come up with three things he has taught us that have been meaningful or helpful or even had a wonderful influence on our lives. And that we speak about it in short sentences one at a time. Make it snappy if we need to.

Oh no. Three things? What? We'll get back to you.

So instead my sister copied a "funny" poem she found on the internet and in her primary school teacher mode she copied out the relevant sections and distributed them to (her version of )  all of us to learn it by heart.

Well I was stroppy and just read it from the page when it was my turn and later when I finally managed to sit next to him for a brief moment I told him that there are three things he taught me:

1. panta rhei (everything flows)

2. avoid the crowds

3. don't act impulsively if you can help it

Well, he was delighted and my brother and sister shrugged, here she goes again (sigh).

Glorious sudden spring has mutated into a freakish summer - we know it won't stay like this and at times it's hard to realise that this is April for godssake. There is this smell of hot dry tree bark which reminds me always of endless hot summers and insect bites.

The air is full of yellow dust covering the world inside and outside with a sticky layer. Brings me back to the Golden Desert in Rajasthan, only there it was fine sand, this here is pollen and it stings and sticks. We cough up yellow cake and our nostrils are dry and eyes hurt from it. The river is very low. The five drops of rain the night before last did nothing.

Yesterday the tall red haired guy from the bicycle shop without a second thought gave me a free loan of one of these snazzy e-bikes and so I have been cycling uphill, really steeply uphill for the first time since Sept. 09 and I sat on my bench up in the forest and felt pretty normal for a short while. I can have it until Tuesday morning which should give me enough time to get rid of the feeling that I am cheating. 

And there is this over eager woodpecker which - as I've read -  is normally a shy and wary bird but this one has an unusually loud call, a VERY noisy and loud series of 10-20 'klü' sounds which get slightly faster towards the end and fall slightly in pitch, but not in volume. He starts at 5:30 am and is busy with it throughout daylight hours. I think he is lovesick, looking for a mate, but maybe just defending his realm. But lovesick explains it to me better.

full moon music

I want to

forever stretch myself in bed with birdsong coming through the open window in the morning
forever stay under the hot shower
forever sit in the kitchen listening to a documentary on the worldservice
forever walk through the garden with a cup of tea in my hand
forever hear S's voice on the phone
forever watch my silly cat mess with the valerian plant
forever feel the wind on my face cycling along the river
forever smell R making coffee

the present is now

on the walls of the cathedral in Metz

Metz

last Thursday

A very still and mild morning on the Mosel river just short of the Luxemburg border. The air was full of those tiny insects you see around fly fishers. Not a sound and not a ripple on the water's surface.

lilac season

It is a total surprise every spring, again and again. Almost unbelievable that only two weeks ago we were counting every teensy crocus and daffodil and now the garden is a sea of flowers and after dark this incredible smell from the lilacs, almost too good to be true. I feel like pinching myself.

serious Icelandic music

I remember when S called after she had seen them live at an open air festival and how she described the atmosphere as incredibly peaceful and really good, you know, and R just laughed and said, come on, you were all stoned out of your heads.

18 months

take a seat here
stand over there
lie down here
hold your arms above your head
turn onto your left side
make a fist
touch your nose with one finger
and now with your eyes closed
breathe in
hold your breath
put this clip onto your nose
do not move
press this button if you need to come out before the end of the procedure
bend forward and try touching your toes
take off your shoes and socks
take off your jeans and sweater
read this
sign here
I will now rinse your left ear with cold water for 30 seconds
you will experience vertigo
these drops will dilute your pupils for eight hours
press here
do not blink during the test
the camera is inside the lens
you can pick up your blood test results tomorrow
your ear lobe will sting for a while

press this button as soon as you hear a sound
these electrodes will feel cold
how do you sleep
how is your digestion
when is the nausea worse
bend your neck forward
turn your head rapidly from side to side
stand upright and close your eyes
what is this scar from

before you go leave a urine sample

spring

an explosion of colours in the garden
the soapy smell of the flowering pear trees
the riot of birdsong with the almost obnoxious woodpecker's call
a jug with a fat bunch of lady's smock on my table reminds me of picking flowers on my way home from school half a life time ago

dreaming again

In this dream I was forever filing my fingernails and they just grew any old way and this was so distressing. There was no way I could stop them growing.

Another dream and I am sitting in a crowded A&E hall, like a drafty airplane hangar, trying to stop some nurses from getting me into an operating theatre yelling at the top of my voice, it's a chronic condition, an autoimmune disease, surgery is not an option.

And I wake up and think, oh to hell with it, I must get out of here and well again, back to having weird and wonderful dreams.

and a bit more Rilke

Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.

reading Rilke

We, however, are not prisoners. 

No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. 

We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. 

We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. 

Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. 

And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. 

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. 

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

(Wir aber sind nicht Gefangene. Nicht Fallen und Schlingen sind um uns aufgestellt, und es gibt nichts, was uns ängstigen oder quälen sollte. Wir sind ins Leben gesetzt, als in das Element, dem wir am meisten entsprechen, und wir sind überdies durch jahrtausendelange Anpassung diesem Leben so ähnlich geworden, daß wir, wenn wir stille halten, durch ein glückliches Mimikry von allem, was uns umgibt, kaum zu unterscheiden sind. Wir haben keinen Grund, gegen unsere Welt Mißtrauen zu haben, denn sie ist nicht gegen uns. Hat sie Schrecken, so sind es unsere Schrecken, hat sie Abgründe, so gehören diese Abgründe uns, sind Gefahren da, so müssen wir versuchen, sie zu lieben.
Und wenn wir nur unser Leben nach jenem Grundsatz einrichten, der uns rät, daß wir uns immer an das Schwere halten müssen, so wird das, welches uns jetzt noch als das Fremdeste erscheint, unser Vertrautestes und Treuestes werden. Wie sollten wir jener alten Mythen vergessen können, die am Anfange aller Völker stehen, der Mythen von den Drachen, die sich im äußersten Augenblick in Prinzessinnen verwandeln; vielleicht sind alle Drachen unseres Lebens Prinzessinnen, die nur darauf warten, uns einmal schön und mutig zu sehen.Vielleicht ist alles Schreckliche im tiefsten Grunde das Hilflose, das von uns Hilfe will.)

from: Letters to a young poet

colonoscopy prep day

She told me to bear with unpleasant experiences and to just see what comes up and if possible to write down the first thing in my mind as I am bearing with it. So there. The first thing that comes up is that she told me to write down the first thing that comes up. And that my gums are bleeding a bit and that I am dreading the next litre of trylite which is due in two hours. And that by midday tomorrow all will be over and done.

I swear I'll never do this again.
But that is what I said the last time and actually, I have no choice. It's not as if I am doing this voluntarily. So, get a grip, and down with the next pot of herb tea to stop the gagging.

digging

R put down the spuds and there are now two neat long rows with the characteristic furrows to prove it.

meanwhile

The entire affluence-based economic model of the postwar era [...] is based on the idea that cheap energy and rising material consumption are supposed to make us happier and happier. This is why nuclear power plants are now being built in areas that are highly active geologically, and why we consume as much oil in one year as was created in 5.3 million years. We are looting both the past and the future to feed the excess of the present. It's the dictatorship of the here and now.

HJ Schellnhuber

old tapes

Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday von jpdc11

When we lived in paradise we had about 60 cassette tapes of music, some we had brought ourselves, some we inherited from expats who left and some were presents from visitors or had arrived in the mail - eventually.  This song reminds me of an ordinary evening with a gang of kids messing about on the big hammock between the mango trees, dogs running around them and the kitchen noises of cooking dinner from the houses around us. Our neighbours suffered our musical tastes with polite smiles. The kids just danced to anything with rhythm.

cherry blossom trees

On my way to work these days I take a small detour down a rather awkward narrow side street where oncoming traffic calls for skilled manouvers. But because this street is lined with cherry trees on both sides which are now in full bloom ranging from frothy white to the deepest pink I inch my way through it as often as possible.

A friend lives here with her husband and their three now almost grown sons. Her and his parents came from Greece during the time of the military junta. 

I remember the days after her second boy was born. She had asked her husband to take pictures of her during labour standing upright and fully naked and together we searched these pictures for any signs of how hard her body was at work. And all we could see was a beautiful strong woman with a touch of urgent madness in her eyes.

Some years ago her husband asked me to translate several German documents and articles into English for a business friend of his in Greece. He insisted that a contract was drawn up. It was a lot of work and there were many calls to and from Greece before all were happy with the outcome. But I was never paid. There followed lengthy explanations of various reasons for the delay, stories about bank drafts gone astray and commissions not approved and so on with promises of delicious Greek dinners, barrels of fresh olives, case loads of wine once the money had come through.

It never came through. It didn't matter, really. Maybe I should have offered to do this for free. So what, no hard feelings, I told them. Come on, I don't need this money. We are friends.

But no. When I meet her now, always by accident, we hug and laugh and quickly exchange the latest news about our children and our health and so on and then she tells me how her husband has just last week spoken to his business friend and that he can now guarantee that the payment will come next week, next month the latest. And I tell her that this is all water under the bridge and let's forget it. And so we laugh again and we promise each other to meet soon for the Greek dinner before we say good bye because we must dash. 

And when I occasionally see her husband in town he quickly changes to the other side or turns his head as he passes me.

too beautiful to be posted only once (well twice and now three times)

Today is one of those days where I feel a bit lot like one of those ancient gadgets they used on ships to stay on course. Obviously I know next to nothing about ships. But I have this image of an elaborate and beautiful wooden box with a glass window revealing various complicated looking dials inside and a couple of handles and screws on all the outsides that need to be adjusted steadily and with great care to hold the most delicate compass needle in one of the dials in place.

It requires enormous concentration and one lapse will send the whole ship rolling to one side and there are crashing noises and bells going off and stuff like that.

Needless to say that I am not doing a good job here and so I am just glad I didn't have to save the world today because I was just too preoccupied with being miserable all day.

While totally miraculously, the lilac is about to flower. Just like that.

full moon music

pity/compassion

Let pity, then, be a kind of pain in the case of an apparent destructive or painful harm of one not deserving to encounter it, which one might expect oneself, or one of one's own, to suffer, and this when it seems near, said Aristotle

Lessing wrote, we are prompted by the fear that a similar fate may befall us; thus fear is pity transferred to ourselves.

and Schopenhauer said that we are moved by the suffering of others because we can imagine that we ourselves may suffer the same, that it can also happen to us and that in the fate of the ones who suffer we see the fate of all mankind and thus our own. And so, when we feel pity for those who suffer, we really feel pity for ourselves.

Some man, an expat working in Japan, mentioned on the news, the endless news, today how horrible it is when you go to a supermarket and almost all the shelves are empty. He said, for a moment I was afraid I might starve.

I don't know what to make of this. No, I want to say, you will not starve. You are living in a technically highly developed country and eventually your supermarket shelves will be full again. You will put money on the counter and get food in exchange and you will never have to find out what subsistence really is. And then I think to myself, aaargh you arrogant woman on your high horse, get lost. This man is scared to death by what has happened to him. Give him a break.

from the wise man

Dear friends in Japan,

As we contemplate the great number of people who have died in this tragedy, we may feel very strongly that we ourselves, in some part or manner, also have died.

The pain of one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind. And the human species and the planet Earth are one body. What happens to one part of the body happens to the whole body.

An event such as this reminds us of the impermanent nature of our lives. It helps us remember that what's most important is to love each other, to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive. This is the best that we can do for those who have died: we can live in such a way that they continue, beautifully, in us.

August 1968

Nightime, I am woken by voices and creep downstairs. My parents are sitting on the low wicker sofa in the little holiday home on the Danish coast. There is something wrong about their postures, huddled forward, hands clenched, tears on my mother's face as they listen to the voice on the radio. A male voice, a man somewhere in a radio station cubicle, maybe with a steaming mug of tea or coffee next to the piece of paper he reads from about Prague and demonstrations and Russian tanks and uprising and bloodshed and more and more words that make my mother cry out, while my father tries to comfort her: they won't come here, now, now, don't worrry, we are all safe.

I climb into my sister's bed and we cannot make sense of this. The next morning, after breakfast  we are off to collect shells on the beach, my parents hiding behind their sunglasses reliving their war time traumas in the midst of this perfectly ordinary family outing. Two young vulnerable people trying, all the time trying their best to move on.

a thought while watching the news on TV

But where the danger is, grows the saving power also. 

(wo die Gefahr wächst, wächst das Rettende auch)

Friedrich Hölderlin

Patrick's day can be just that little bit too oirish but what the heck I love this country so it's a day for cherishing it and all my ties with it and tons of memories.
This song is really all about the one delicious fabulous rainy August day we were hitchhiking to Roonagh Quay to catch the ferry to Clare Island, home of the magnificent pirate queen Grace O 'Malley.




Oh, the water
Hope it don’t rain all day

And it stoned me to my soul
Stoned me just like jelly roll
And it stoned me
And it stoned me to my soul
Stoned me just like goin’ home
And it stoned me

Then the rain let up and the sun came up
And we were gettin’ dry
Almost let a pick-up truck nearly pass us by
So we jumped right in and the driver grinned
And he dropped us up the road