EXPRESS your Gratitude

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that you are happier when you feel grateful. 
I found out that I feel even happier when I express my gratitude. 
It is so easy to overlook the many incidents one can be grateful for - sometimes on a single day I feel that I get more 'presents' without a special occasion than I got as a child on a birthday! 
We all have a lot to do - so we might overlook the things we can be grateful for. 
- That's why I have a diary into which I write almost every day at least five things that made me happy and thankful - you will have read about doing that in many books on Happiness. Just try to do it!  
- And I invented for myself a sketch-book into which I draw one of those lucky reminders. It is not important whether I draw them artistical or not - it is the time I spend really looking at a thing. It is so easy to grab an item one got as a 'gift' - and then, like an overeater, swallow greedily the next. 
When I draw the lines of a cup of coffee, or a blossom of a magnolia, I look intensely, and thus value what is before me more than by just mumbling: "Oh, great, thank you - what next?" 
By the way: Only a few people know the Art of Saying Thank You. I remember those young people who did after advising - by e-mail, letter, telephone-call - better than those who intended to, but forgot. And though I work for all of them correctly, as I remember those others who said 'Thank you!" better I might sometimes find an extra for them weeks later. 
So: if your professor took the time to read your paper very carefully/ or your dentist gave you quickly an appointment/ or your haircutter did a special job - though they all get paid for it, it doesn't harm to acknowledge your gratitude by saying 'Thank you' (when you mean it). 

Let softness be my motto.

When I look back over the last two years, I get the impression of a constant battle. 
Nothing to do with our move to Berlin: that was my idea, my wish - (even a  prediction: as a teenager I wrote into my diary "Berlin is the town I want to grow old in.") It was the right move. 
No, I fight on another field. And though there are 'host of heaven' with me - I am part of the Baby Boomer Generation - it is a lonely fight. The inevitable fight: growing old. 
At first I did the obvious: I closed my eyes. 
"Not me!" I thought, seeing that I do very well in comparison. (Comparison is a vice in the books of the Wise!). And a lot of people, among them beautiful men, say gently: "But you don't look old!" Thank you. 
But: It's Lombard Street to a China Orange. A look on my birth certificate... 
What is worse than a number: to go through the world with closed eyes is really stressful. 
I never photoshopped or botoxed or had a nip and tug, never, and I never will. But I do quite a lot to keep my figure  health. And my stamina. My brain. My joie de vivre. And Verve. 
I will talk about that in posts following this. (Not Elvis, but half of the 'blog members' have left the building by now :-) 
But first I will do the most important thing: accept and admit it: Ageing. 
Of course I do it in the wayward Taoists way: by embracing the enemy. Trying to foresee the blows and thus avoid them as good as I can. 
All that in order to thrive, not just survive - balanced in the very midst of events. 
Let softness be my motto. 
  

Collecting Berlin's Underground

I might have told you: I am a collector - with my camera. I collect sun dials, balconies, shop window dummies, beautiful cars -- to name a few --- AND photos from impressing undergrounds. 
The first year in Berlin it was a bit difficult for husband: I always jumped up and down and cried: "Wait! Wait just a minute! I have to ..  click...click..." 
It is so utterly fascinating that they are so very, very different! As a true collector knows: one becomes boring offering too many snapshots -- so here only a few... 

Biedermeier Currant Bread

You need an iron constitution to get over so many festivities as in the last four months. So: Happy Easter! 
When I came back from a wonderful weekend in Munich (happy that each time the flights were only one hour late because of the snow), I had to enter the place where in ye olde days a woman had her place: the kitchen.  
Son & DiL had hinted politely but firm that they were longing for the annual "Biedermeier Korinthenbrot" - a speciality that it is so called because it is modest (not too much sugar, not too many currants - though I throw a few more into it :-) and aromatic (by vanilla sugar and  lemon peel, but - you guess it already: not too much). 
The bread as such does not look modest: it is enormous, shockingly voluptuous (no, I didn't mean volumnious, which it is too) : 

I always cut it in two parts - and half of it goes to Munich. 
But I have to plan like a Prussian: on Good Friday (almost) nobody is working. 
And the post nowadays is not as reliable as it - once upon a time - had been. So: if I take the risk and send the Easter-Bread on Thursday it might happen that it will not arrive on Saturday - and then - oops - they will get an After-Easter-Bread; because Sunday and Monday (almost) nobody is working. 
(Crumbly dry cake reminds me of of a typical story fabricated by my sweet grandma - the working(wo)man - : with the best intentions she sent my father a parcel with home-baked cake from Göttingen, Germany, in war-time, to Madagascar, his first POW-station before England. It took some time... :-).  
So I baked on Wednesday. Packed it. Paid extra postage to be sure that it will arrive in time. 
And - after a few difficulties too laborious to tell (here I cut the story, not only the bread) it arrived in good condition.   

Happy Easter! 

Happy Easter!

"It is winter proper; the cold weather, such as it is, has come to stay. I bloom indoors in the winter like forced forsythia; I come in to come out..." 
Annie Dillard 

You can keep your hat on!

Tomorrow I'll fly to Munich - to visit Son and lovely Daughter-in-Law. 
AND to go to Ina Böckler. http://www.huete.de/ 
Ina Böckler is one of the few Grande Dames of milliners in Germany. She made hats for the stars and starlets. And one for me. 
It looks much prettier as in the photo above (and I hope me too - I pout - not very becoming at all, not becoming for the chin). 
But I had a reason. 
There are times when one should try to conform oneself a tiny weeny little bit to one's age. No danger that I will exaggerate that (if - then more into the other direction:-). 
Above I am in the pouts because Son had used an example that convinced even me: 
"Mama", he said, "per se it is a lovely hat. But if I drive a Pontiac Firebird (which he did at that time - the apple never fells far from the tree) I do not paint it pink as an extra." 
Home truth. Now - I think very highly of his advice. So I put the hat in its beautiful blue hatbox. Away. Grinding my teeth. 
And then last summer in Munich I saw that Ina Böckler's hat-atelier was sold to a new milliner. And they do alterations. So yesterday I telephoned. 
And will bring her the hat to change the pink fox ("We'll make a nice collar of it!" she chirped) for a silver-grey fox (my idea). 
I'm really curious if it will work out. 
But I "see it". 
And to be forearmed I will read a book on the flight which arrived yesterday: 
"Going Gray. How To Embrace Your Authentic Self With Grace And Style" by Anne Kreamer. 
Ha - never any problem with that. 
So: the fox will be silver - but the remainder of the hat will stay -
                                             PINK! 

Franz Theodor Türcke - and a bit of luck

I cannot remember the subject :-) , but a few weeks ago I read on someone's blog the comment: "If you have seen one, you have seen them all" - and I thought: "Oh no, you are absolutely wrong - and either you don't have any experience at all but want to appear blasé - or you are going through the world with eyes closed." 
I don't appreciate the one or the other. 
If you open your eyes - and, even better: your heart - you see that the world offers a gorgeous orchestra of choices of apparently (!) the same thing. 
Now people are whining about the snow. 
OK - I would prefer spring too - but: "It is as it is." So on Sunday I put on warm clothes and went outside into frost and snow. And found at a Berlin flea market a little picture which I liked. 
"Many people have looked at it but put it back", said the man behind the table. 
"Maybe because of the subject", I said, "nobody wants a picture with snow now." 
But as I liked it, I asked "How much?", and the sum was so small that you wouldn't have got half a ticket to the Astor Lounge cinema. 
I bought it (and felt a bit silly), because it looked simple, naive, childlike - but I liked the atmosphere. 
A signature was scribbled with pencil beneath it (same writing as the words "Original Drawing") - that was beautiful, but almost unreadable. 
Almost. 
At home I looked with a magnifying glass - I am good at deciphering (and have a sort of eidetic memory) - and after a while I found out: the signature was F. Türcke. 
The Internet informed me: Born 1877 in Dresden, deceased in Berlin 1957. A landcape painter who studied at the Berlin KA at Eugen Bracht. 
Pictures (mostly oil) of him were sold at Christie's, Burchard Galleries Inc, and there are a lot of Americans who collect him. An auction house in Dresden offers to take anything of him to sell it. 
I don't know whether that includes a little drawing like the one I have found. And I will not sell it. 
I just want to look at it and feel happy because I like it - and had my eyes open.