About mid-way through yesterday afternoon, I was beginning to feel exhausted. I had worked until nearly midnight the night before, and continued all morning at full speed. Even my lunch break had only been short.
So I decided to take some time off and go for a stroll. There is an Italian ice-cream parlor about 10 minutes' walk from my office, so my plan was to go there, fetch an ice and then walk around the city for a little while before returning to work.
It was a beautiful day, very hot and just right for ice cream. I got two scoops in a cornet and then, instead of going for a stroll straight off, I decided to sit on the bench outside the ice-cream parlor and eat my ice there.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
France Is A Different Place
Yesterday, an old friend came to visit me and she stayed the night in my appartment. Today, because neither of us had any plans, we decided to go to France for the day, to the Alsace.
It really does not take very long for us to get to the Alsace. Quite honestly, I don't think it even takes 20 minutes. And we can get to the famous pottery villages of the Alsace in about 35 minutes.
We had barely reached the Rhine, which is the divider between France and Germany, when the Difference that is France started to become apparent. At one junction, a makeshift traffic light hung from a similar makeshift and rather rusty traffic pole and my friend said, "Oh, it looks like we are in France already, judging by that primitive apparatus".
There is no doubt about it, France is a Very Different Place. Many things do not seem to work so well and if they do, they often seem to be on their last legs. However, everything looks beautiful and romantic, even when it is falling to bits. And it definitely looks French. Even in the (multiple) cafés and restaurants we visited (at least 3, yes we were a lazy, not to mention greedy pair!) the waitresses and other staff were instantly recognizable as French.
In one pottery, we started off by speaking French to the owner, but he obviously heard our accents and so replied in English. We ended up speaking German to each other as it turned out that was the language we could all converse in best. And he spent at least half an hour giving us a very interesting history of the Alsace, with the help of historical art books on the region, which was very kind of him and also in a way very French.
It is strange how you sometimes only need to travel a very little way to experience a completely different culture. I think the only possible explanation is one I learned at University, when I was studying politics and social institutions - a country always looks to its central place of administration for its direction, and this influences every part of its daily life. So that even at the country's borders, life is essentially oriented to that which radiates from the center.
This is why the Alsace in France is French, and so different from Germany (with the exception of some remnants of the language from the times when the Alsace was occupied by Germany), while on the other side of the Rhine, the influence from France is negligible, with the exception of some German dialect words that are French spoken with a German accent.
It really does not take very long for us to get to the Alsace. Quite honestly, I don't think it even takes 20 minutes. And we can get to the famous pottery villages of the Alsace in about 35 minutes.
We had barely reached the Rhine, which is the divider between France and Germany, when the Difference that is France started to become apparent. At one junction, a makeshift traffic light hung from a similar makeshift and rather rusty traffic pole and my friend said, "Oh, it looks like we are in France already, judging by that primitive apparatus".
There is no doubt about it, France is a Very Different Place. Many things do not seem to work so well and if they do, they often seem to be on their last legs. However, everything looks beautiful and romantic, even when it is falling to bits. And it definitely looks French. Even in the (multiple) cafés and restaurants we visited (at least 3, yes we were a lazy, not to mention greedy pair!) the waitresses and other staff were instantly recognizable as French.
In one pottery, we started off by speaking French to the owner, but he obviously heard our accents and so replied in English. We ended up speaking German to each other as it turned out that was the language we could all converse in best. And he spent at least half an hour giving us a very interesting history of the Alsace, with the help of historical art books on the region, which was very kind of him and also in a way very French.
It is strange how you sometimes only need to travel a very little way to experience a completely different culture. I think the only possible explanation is one I learned at University, when I was studying politics and social institutions - a country always looks to its central place of administration for its direction, and this influences every part of its daily life. So that even at the country's borders, life is essentially oriented to that which radiates from the center.
This is why the Alsace in France is French, and so different from Germany (with the exception of some remnants of the language from the times when the Alsace was occupied by Germany), while on the other side of the Rhine, the influence from France is negligible, with the exception of some German dialect words that are French spoken with a German accent.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
A Biodegradable Urn In The Forest
My friend Renate was buried yesterday in a biodegradable urn beneath a tree in the middle of the forest. There must have been well over a hundred people there, perhaps a hundred and fifty, although nobody had been told about it and it had not been announced in any newspapers.
Many people cried, even the men, but I did not cry at all until the minister said the bit with "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and even then I only cried a little bit because I realized that that really was Renate inside that urn and she really was going a very long way down into the earth, where the biodegradable urn would eventually disintegrate and she would become one with nature.
We stood in a very large circle for about an hour, while the minister, who was a lady, spoke about Renate and read verses from the Bible. Next to her was a small shrine with a large picture of Renate, some flowers and the urn. Then many of Renate's friends of the last few years read out their favorite memories of Renate, and described her character. And some of the children played music, and her brother-in-law played two pieces (I think of his own) on the guitar.
While we were standing in the circle, I watched two shiny beetles scuttling over the wood shavings that covered the ground. They were so busy and so purposeful and I thought, I wonder if one of them is Renate? Is Renate now a beetle? And then the sun fell in a certain way through the trees and caught the dust in the air, and just at that moment a butterfly flew into that beam of light and I thought, is that maybe Renate?
Renate was a unique person and a talented painter, dancer and artist in general. She was also very spiritual and esoteric, and believed in all kinds of magic, healing and non-earthly matters that more down-to-earth people found hard to relate to. In fact, in the end, this did not seem to help her but had the opposite effect. She gave up her chemotherapy, which had been helping her greatly, and took to relying on more spiritual and natural healing.
Renate and I were inseparable friends when we were young, we met when we were 25. We stayed inseparable for 12 years. Then suddenly Renate ended the friendship. It hurt very much and I didn't understand what had happened or why. But I stayed good friends with her sister and her sister's family. When Renate became really ill, she moved to her sister's house and her sister took care of her. And six months ago, her sister broke off the friendship with me, after 26 years.
Unlike me, Renate was not close to any of the friends we had both had in our 20's and 30's. So all of us, 8 of the old guard in all, went to the funeral together yesterday and clung close by each other. Afterwards, we went to an inn and had some food and drinks and laughed and joked and had fun and comforted each other.
What I realized yesterday was that really everybody dies. Every single one of us is going to be confronted with this one day. Some people go earlier than others. We are all shocked and surprised when someone close to us does leave us, but it should not come as a shock or surprise at all. Never in the history of mankind was there were one person who just kept on living.
We spend so much time worrying about things when we are alive, concerning ourselves with all our earthly problems, when in fact what we should be doing is making the time here matter. We should be making the most of the time allotted to us, because we don't know when it will end. We should make a positive, good impression in this world, so that we will remain in people's memories and thus live on.
Although I was hurt by Renate's rejection of me so many years ago, my memories of her are the ones of when we were younger, during those 12 years when we were inseparable, and with that she will live in my memory for ever and I will always love her. And clearly, she touched many people in a similar way over the various stages of her life. If even one-tenth of the number of people that were present at her funeral yesterday come to say goodbye to me when it is my time, I will have achieved much.
Many people cried, even the men, but I did not cry at all until the minister said the bit with "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" and even then I only cried a little bit because I realized that that really was Renate inside that urn and she really was going a very long way down into the earth, where the biodegradable urn would eventually disintegrate and she would become one with nature.
We stood in a very large circle for about an hour, while the minister, who was a lady, spoke about Renate and read verses from the Bible. Next to her was a small shrine with a large picture of Renate, some flowers and the urn. Then many of Renate's friends of the last few years read out their favorite memories of Renate, and described her character. And some of the children played music, and her brother-in-law played two pieces (I think of his own) on the guitar.
While we were standing in the circle, I watched two shiny beetles scuttling over the wood shavings that covered the ground. They were so busy and so purposeful and I thought, I wonder if one of them is Renate? Is Renate now a beetle? And then the sun fell in a certain way through the trees and caught the dust in the air, and just at that moment a butterfly flew into that beam of light and I thought, is that maybe Renate?
Renate was a unique person and a talented painter, dancer and artist in general. She was also very spiritual and esoteric, and believed in all kinds of magic, healing and non-earthly matters that more down-to-earth people found hard to relate to. In fact, in the end, this did not seem to help her but had the opposite effect. She gave up her chemotherapy, which had been helping her greatly, and took to relying on more spiritual and natural healing.
Renate and I were inseparable friends when we were young, we met when we were 25. We stayed inseparable for 12 years. Then suddenly Renate ended the friendship. It hurt very much and I didn't understand what had happened or why. But I stayed good friends with her sister and her sister's family. When Renate became really ill, she moved to her sister's house and her sister took care of her. And six months ago, her sister broke off the friendship with me, after 26 years.
Unlike me, Renate was not close to any of the friends we had both had in our 20's and 30's. So all of us, 8 of the old guard in all, went to the funeral together yesterday and clung close by each other. Afterwards, we went to an inn and had some food and drinks and laughed and joked and had fun and comforted each other.
What I realized yesterday was that really everybody dies. Every single one of us is going to be confronted with this one day. Some people go earlier than others. We are all shocked and surprised when someone close to us does leave us, but it should not come as a shock or surprise at all. Never in the history of mankind was there were one person who just kept on living.
We spend so much time worrying about things when we are alive, concerning ourselves with all our earthly problems, when in fact what we should be doing is making the time here matter. We should be making the most of the time allotted to us, because we don't know when it will end. We should make a positive, good impression in this world, so that we will remain in people's memories and thus live on.
Although I was hurt by Renate's rejection of me so many years ago, my memories of her are the ones of when we were younger, during those 12 years when we were inseparable, and with that she will live in my memory for ever and I will always love her. And clearly, she touched many people in a similar way over the various stages of her life. If even one-tenth of the number of people that were present at her funeral yesterday come to say goodbye to me when it is my time, I will have achieved much.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Where Do People Go When They Die?
Today is the funeral of my one-time best friend Renate. We met when we were 25 years old and were inseparable for most of the next 12 years. After that Renate changed a lot and we had very little contact. I stayed friends with her family and especially her sister, who looked after Renate in her last year of life. She died last week.
Everywhere I look in my life, in my home, in my office, I see Renate. All the presents she gave me: the pictures she painted, the funny feather ear-rings, the guest-book she had her sister make specially for me and all her entries in it, the porcelain swan in my glass cabinet, the decorations for the surprise 30th birthday party she gave me, which I still keep at the bottom of my wardrobe, the clothes she gave me in size 36 when I was ill 15 years ago and lost so much weight, and still kept in case I got down to that size again, the nameplate for my front door that she hand-made, all the many, many photos. And countless other things, too many to even start listing.
When I first met Renate, she desperately wanted a large brass bed. When I left my husband, one of the first things I bought was a large brass bed, but only because Renate had made it sound so attractive. I still have it and of course sleep in it every night. We were two very creative young girls with all kinds of crazy ideas, and we grew up into two very creative women, probably both a little eccentric. And even when she didn't want any contact any more, I still loved her.
I will always love her and think of her a little every day, and that is why I will go to her funeral today. I will take the funny feather ear-rings, and maybe try to leave them there. So that she will take a little bit of me with her, wherever she is going now. I wish I knew where that was.
Everywhere I look in my life, in my home, in my office, I see Renate. All the presents she gave me: the pictures she painted, the funny feather ear-rings, the guest-book she had her sister make specially for me and all her entries in it, the porcelain swan in my glass cabinet, the decorations for the surprise 30th birthday party she gave me, which I still keep at the bottom of my wardrobe, the clothes she gave me in size 36 when I was ill 15 years ago and lost so much weight, and still kept in case I got down to that size again, the nameplate for my front door that she hand-made, all the many, many photos. And countless other things, too many to even start listing.
When I first met Renate, she desperately wanted a large brass bed. When I left my husband, one of the first things I bought was a large brass bed, but only because Renate had made it sound so attractive. I still have it and of course sleep in it every night. We were two very creative young girls with all kinds of crazy ideas, and we grew up into two very creative women, probably both a little eccentric. And even when she didn't want any contact any more, I still loved her.
I will always love her and think of her a little every day, and that is why I will go to her funeral today. I will take the funny feather ear-rings, and maybe try to leave them there. So that she will take a little bit of me with her, wherever she is going now. I wish I knew where that was.
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