I Am HERE

When I was in Nürnberg last Saturday, I lost my way. 

Google map and I never are on good terms - though finally, after walking many kilometres, I found my goal.  

Same happened on my way back. 

It was a very long way, it was very cold (though bright sun), and I had to tell me (stern voice): Go on! 

Suddenly I saw that stone on the pavement - "Hier". (= Here). 

And I thought: true. 

I have to remember this: 

I am HERE 

The last days I was NOT with me - I felt like drowning in a sea of compassion for the refugees from Ukraine, asked myself in the middle of every night if I could do more for them, and at four o'clock in the morning whether it is OK to be happy when others fight to survive. 

And my best friend is struggling for life too. And seven years after my private tsunami I am not fully over it, though Taoists tell me that every 7 years your body cells are exchanged completely and you are "new". I didn't feel like that - I felt my cup is full to the brim, overflowing. 

Then I saw the answer on the pavement. 

(And took a photograph to be sure that my mind didn't make it up - I have never seen a stone like that before). 

But I feel it is the solution.  

As those instructions in an airplane say: 

"First put the oxygen mask over your nose - only then you can help someone else." 

I decided to do one step after the other. Try not to see only black and white. There are many people who can and will help. Together we will succeed. 

A few minutes after those thoughts I went round a turn, and I saw this, and suddenly knew where I was: 

HIER. 

Why I chose the - UKULELE

WOW - you've got it! 

And why did I choose the ukulele? 

1. With all the bad news of the last two years and the very bad news now, I needed something lighthearted, funny, a little bit of Marylin's pep against all this dark seriousness of the world. 

2. The best remedy against rumination I know is to move and/or do something where I have to concentrate. 

3. The grip on a guitar was physically too complicated for my small hands - the ukulele has only four strings, as Rachel remarked. I am not trying to enter the stage, I want quick results. The triplets too (though all family here in Bavaria does not know what I bought. Being me I practise secretly before I "perform"). 

4. This wooden ukulele looks so sweet and beautiful - it is shiny and lacquered in emerald green with mother-of-pearl inlaid work. More radiant and glowing than on the photos. 

5. I hope it trains brain and fingers, and know that it does not overawe my professional musical bunch of friends on the narrow boat trips. Or anyone else :-)   

6. I love to follow instant inspirations - this was one.  

7. And I love challenges. This might be one. 

 

Can you guess what I start to learn?

 

In spite of it all...

 

The morning-view from my window leads to thoughts about all the grief in the world, and the feeling like cats on a hot tin roof: 

 

But there is always something that is beautiful too: 

            In spite of all I wish you a beautiful weekend!

                Britta 

A quote of Steve Jobs

 Yesterday I saw the weekly German Sunday institution "Tatort" = "Scene of Crime". 

It exists since 1970 (!) and till today broadcasted more than 1200 episodes - the very special is that the detective superintendents are representatives of one of each federate state - as Bavaria or Nordrhein-Westfalen, scene always in the same city. 

Yesterday it was Munich's turn.

It fell into the category of: "Everything was better in the old days" - a sentence I disgust, but here it was true :-) 

Yet you also can learn by junk, and a little marvel I found in this scrap was a quote by Steve Jobs: 

"You are the intersection of those five people with whom you surround yourself" 

(as my translation sounds somehow bumpy I will quote the German version: "Du bist der Durchschnitt der fünf Leute, mit denen du dich umgibst."     

I look into the beautiful cold sunshine and brood: Do I believe that? 

And: Who are those five?  

Snippet: Quote by Dennis Meadows (The Limits to Growth)

Süddeutsche Zeitung (February 18th, 2022) : 

What do you think nowadays about the Club of Rome? (...)

Meadows: 

"I grew older. More and more I understood that most people rather do not need that I have an opinion of them. So it is irrelevant for me, what the Club of Rome thinks about me, and I am sure , that they do not bother what I think of them, so I did not trouble myself to form an opinion."

and: 

"One of the guiding principles (maxims) of my life is: 

"Play the cards you've got, instead of wishing you had got different ones."

(The article was in German, so I hope my translation to be correct). 

No milk today...

 

No, that's not true. I drink milk - in my coffee and in my tea (though for three days I followed the advice of a well-researched study to NOT drink milk in tea or coffee, because it stops the beneficial "clearing things" of coffee or tea - I forgot which, must be the result of my stubbornness ). 

I have discipline - but as the bitterness of the coffee soured my face, after three days I said: 

"Mumpitz! Balderdash! Poppycock!" or something like that . "I did not become ... mumble, mumble... a glorious ripe woman (that periphrasis might be the result of the three days fast...) to start with that nonsense!" That I said while I did some MIF or TIF - I do not tell you which... 

I am a person who ate butter when the world recommended margarine, and every morning I eat an egg. And add milk to my porridge. Oh, oh, oh...  

The cows you see in the picture are living on a farm near by - and life for the triplets is adventurous: there are also cats, hens, rabbits, and tractors. All equally exciting.