"I haven't told my garden yet" - a novel by Pia Pera

 

I seldom recommend a book, and this one from the late author Pia Pera I haven't finished yet. But I am utterly fascinated - though it is a kind of literature I seldom read - as you might know by now I most often prefer novels with an optimistic ending, something that lifts my mood, and if it makes me laugh: all the better. 

In the introduction to this book Pia Pera quotes a poem by Emily Dickinson - "I haven't told my garden yet" (I will show it in my blog "Happiness of the Day" under www.burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com)  As I do not love the German translation of Emily's poem in that book I dare to give the German readers of my blog a new one. 

Pia writes that the change of perspective towards death in that poem has impressed her. 

"The care about the animated and the unanimated beings, whom we in a certain way have deceived by making them used to our presence. Without warning them of the unavoidable défaillance: that we are here and now raises the expectation that we will always be there - an untenable promise.    I liked the idea that by such a reversal the egoism would be subdued, that when thinking of one's owns death one quasi wants to apologise for the involuntary disappearance. And that instead of worrying about oneself one should ask how it will be for the others, not for us."  

The book of Pia Pera is so full of wisdom - so comforting in face of her nearing death - I really recommend it - at least to all lovers of gardens. 

So - maybe I should have put it on my blog "...sunshine, freedom and a little flower"(www.blumenundgarten.blogspot.com) - but I think it is much more than a good garden book. 

It starts with the sentence: 

"On one day in June some years ago remarked a man who said he loved me in a reproachful tone that I limped." 

As above it is my translation from the German version - but look at the distance, coldness and the contempt in "a man who said he ...". 

But don't get me wrong: 

it is a book without hate - it is warm and relaxed and relaxing in face of an incurable illness. 

Yes!!! A Breakthrough!

Dear You, 

Thank you for crossing your fingers! It helped me and all those with tickets to cross the street. In the first photo you see only the start of setting up...) The Zoo Palast showed the movie at 12:30 a.m. (in the evening you had to drive -- well: sneak - through half the city to Friedrichstadtpalast).
They even put protection around the groundfloor windows of the Waldorf Astoria. Normally I visit after a film their Romanisches Café (you can eat there too) - but this day was everything except normal. I thought about the guests who had booked their expensive rooms long in advance - strange surroundings for them. President Netanjahu's visit came quite as a surprise. Mrs. Merkel and he will talk about the problems between Israel and Palestine.

Being quite early (to be still able to dash to the Friedrichspalast in case of need) I got a wonderful seat: horizontal and vertical middle - and an aisle in front of me, so I could stretch my long legs during the movie comfortably.
The movie "A Quiet Passion", which depicts the life of Emily Dickinson, was really good (in my opinion - some people left the cinema - maybe the last third was a bit weepy). Beautiful décor (I instantly decided to upholster two armchairs with a fabric they used and which I once had); of course little action, because we all know that Emily was a sort of recluse; wonderful recitations of her poems.
But the cinema operators must have misunderstood the movie's title - "A Quiet Passion" - they ghetto blastered the sound to my threshold of pain.
Well: the very young are often aurally handicapped nowadays, "thanks to" headphones and discos.
I hope I remember to take my earplugs for todays movie with me!

"Cocoon above! Cocoon below!"

Dear You, 
I am a bit suspicious by now. Don't trust myself. Or know myself all too well... which might be the same thing, in the end. 
Meaning: Look at those few posts in the July, (few?!? - I'm fooling myself: only one!), dribbling like tired water from an old hose. I know: we have July - it is hot - very hot in Berlin at the moment, they foretold us 36°C... I love it, but it doesn't turn me into a Mexican jumping-bean... 
A lot of other bloggers seem to be a bit under the weather too. To check myself out I looked at my old blog, "You are witty and pretty". A lot of the dear followers there - of course all bloggers too - have thrown in the towel. Some changed their blog-address. And I want to find out when I gave up my blog - aha: December 2012, BUT - it started much earlier, the retreat - about August, I would say. (Why does Edna O'Brians title "August is a Wicked Month" springs into my mind?). 
I changed my blog after two years - regretted it, because I had more followers then - and hope I have learned from history (hahaha, every historian gives a hearty laugh). Change isn't the answer (that will always happen without my doing). Concentration might be. 
(In this heat? You bet...) 
What do I want to tell you? I am utterly clear in my German blog about cafés and culture in Berlin; quite clear in my blog "Britta's Happiness of the Day" (www.burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com); also clear but - reduced to a balcony instead of a garden - a bit restrained on "Gardening in High Heels"(www.gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com) - but here? 
A little dab of culture, a little dot of everyday life, a whiff of this, a tattle of that. 
But still I think I won't do what I did yesterday (at last!): I planted a new rose on my balcony, "Augusta Luise", beautifully scented, adorable apricot, wonderful form. I brought her "successor till yesterday, Augusta Luise I." from my garden in Hamburg to the balcony in Berlin; she flowered in the first year, mumbled in the second - then was cautioned by me in the third and fourth year (when she didn't produce one single blossom) - and then I cut a long story short, or, as we say in Germany: "He that will not hear must feel" (come to think of it: that saying dates me - nobody seems to even understand the meaning of it anymore today - but that might be a good thing, too). But poor Augusta Luise I. was banned into the Hinterhof - and I bought a successor, "Augusta Luise II.". (And I do hope that "Getrude Jekyll", "New Dawn", "Iceberg", "Hans Gönnewein" and the other two are willing to draw their lessons from that!)  
And decide languidly: I will stay with this blog. It is much too hot to change it now. 

Britta  
(fickle and a bit vague as the photo above). 

PS: Just to give you at least something of substance: 

Cocoon above! Cocoon below!
Stealthy Cocoon, why hide you so
What all the world suspect?

An hour, and gay on every tree
Your secret, perched in ecstasy
Defies imprisonment!

An hour in Chrysalis to pass,
Then gay above receding grass
A Butterfly to go!
A moment to interrogate,
Then wiser than a "Surrogate,"
The Universe to know! 

Emily Dickinson