'Love after Love' by Derek Walcott

Dear You, 
today I send you a beautiful poem by Derek Walcott. Normally I would put it on "Britta's Happiness of the Day" (www.burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com), where I usually combine a photo with a poem (or rarely a quote) and then put in my two cents.
But you, Dear You, seldom find the time to look up that page - though it might bring more insights then my "little dabs here", as Miss Mapp would 'humbly' say.
This poem means much to me:

Love after Love 

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other's welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

Derek Walcott 

Because I love this poem, I comment here in a much longer form than on 'Happiness of the Day". 
(There are many ways this poem is interpretated - sometimes as religious, sometimes as trying to reconcile the black and white parts in Walcott himself after the colonial era, sometimes as 'Find loving yourself after an unhappy relationship." . 
I will not speak about these possible interpretations, nor about the formal construction of the four stanzas, the enjambement which links the stanzas to each other or the lines of varying length.)  

Here I want to show you what I see in it. 
For me it is a beautiful description of what might happen when you get older. 
When we were little children, we accepted (or mirrored) our self in a direct and unadularated way. We were one with ourself. Then we were educated, learned how to please others, and with puberty we tried oh so hard to love "the prince" or "princess" - looking for the ideal person, the saviour. 
When deeply in love we (often) ignored our self - till we became strangers to ourselves. We became thin. 
"Give wine. Give bread, Give back your heart" - Derek writes. 
When we get older, we (hopefully) find ourselves as worthy as others. We don't need another person to explain our life, shelter us. That does not mean that Love isn't a wonderful thing - it is! - but you will no longer love at the price of the loss of self. 
At first you might be unhappy to get older - maybe losing the "romantic love",missing it with its drama and ups-and-downs. That way of growing-up doesn't seem that enticing - but: "The time will come/ when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving." 
And you might even get more. When I read the line: "peel your own image from the mirror", I instantly think of the book "The Empty Mirror" by Janwillem van de Wetering - he lived for a while in a Japanese Zen cloister.  The motto of his book is:

"The empty mirror", he said. 
"If you could really understand that, 
then you'd have no business here!" 

To me, this means: total wisdom - the letting go of the Ego. 
But till we are that wise, let's follow Derek Walcott's beautiful advice: 

"Sit. Feast on your life."    
.

Today is World's Day of Laughter

I laugh very much - and it doesn't need a huge reason. If a person starts to laugh, it can happen that I hoot with laughter till the tears wash away my Amy-Winehouse-eyeliner. The following videos were quoted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung (with a lot of analyzing text) for the World's Day of Laughter, which is celebrated today. I hope you laugh with me. 

Other languages can be funny:

...and administration- regulations: the Swiss Federal Councillor Hans-Rudolph Merz, who has to answer Parliament a question concerning meat-import:

'Operation Bumblebee'

When I read the last post of Tom Stephenson about bumblebees, I remembered the story about the theft of a complete garden in England.
A man was moving within Bristol, and when later his wife drove to their old home, the 300 square meter garden was gone.
"Shrubs, trees, fieldstone terrace, flowers, borders, the pseudo-antique sun dial, benches, garden table (together with chairs), (...) wishing well, Italian platters, (...) garden fence, (...) all of it gone." As well as trees as tall as a man and two fishponds (with 17 kois).
In England "Garden-crimes" are no longer rare. One million gardens get plundered per planting-season, and the damage runs up to 105 million Pounds Sterling, say the insurance companies. Per year!
The police started the "Operation Bumblebee" - though the fast-seller was the bumlebee-coloured brochure, the thefts go on.
The more I read, the more alarmed I got. (Smiley, smiley!!) Could that happen to us too?
Mostly I would miss Vita Sackville's beautiful bench, the expensive basalt paving stones on which it stands, though the shimmering quartz square stones weren't cheap either. And the plants? Well - the rhododendrons are quite big, the virburnum, the Alpine azalea, the many, many box hedges, the roses, the rose arches and the rose obelisk, and the great perennials...  Gulp - that will amount to quite a sum. How lucky that no insurance agent is near - at the moment I might make an easy victim :-). Garden-household insurance. Everything insured except the the mouseprint - which of course would exclude everything, except the ground elder, the hazel bushes and the elder - and those not even thieves would want to steal.
I remember my neighbour from Kalenberger Moat. Two years ago she stood aghast in her front garden. She had planted twelve expensive precious roses, all along the house. And suddenly, one morning, they had vanished. Thieves had come under the screen of night, had digged out all the roses, put them on a hanger and disappeared , never to be seen again.
The chef of "Gardening Which?" let conceptualise an exemplary burglar-proof garden, "Safe Heaven" (or was it haven?). With hidden infrared-transmitters, bevelled pickets, and blackthorn, holly and berberies - all very defensive.
I ponder over my garden: seen under this aspect Vita's wild rose hedge is at least a success. To surmount the devil sheet might be difficult. Spiky roses all side long to the neighbour at the right. At left spiky common juniper - and how good that I never got a grip on the blackberries behind!
And the old wrought iron fence in the frontgarden has dangerous spikes. Now I understand why there are these ugly shards of glass on the corner wall - maybe in 1902 there was another person afraid for his hostas and his distinguished lilacs?
White gravel I have spread bewteen the box hedges (though there is always a little less for scrunching after each weeding). The only weak point is the garden entrance behind the house. But even at this entrance Husband and Son always complain about the deep-hanging roses on the rose arch. Now I have a new argument: it is part of my "Operation Bumblebee". The bumblebees and the bees have already understood that and mutter and buzz tantalizingly in the blossoms. And the blackbirds wear little caps and feel like Deputy Sheriffs.
"Colin Warburton, Bristol's John Lackland, has only a scornful snorting for these 'plant protection products'." "It's no use as long as nobody intervenes", he says. His neighbours had watched the repotting action as cool as a cucumber - assuming that it was part of the move." (Zeit-Magazin)
In my garden they wouldn't even be able to see anything, the neighbours...

There it is in black and white

Seems I get a bit springtime lethargy, or having so many things to do that unnerve me, like getting the spring-summer wardrobe out of their boxes and put the winter wardrobe into boxes - and decide what is really needless or unbecoming and thus has to go. (I have too many clothes and too many shoes - but they all keep so well, are often really nice and timeless) - but being a woman I sometimes want diversification!
But at least I learned from last year's fault: then I bought a lovely white jacket (in springtime I suddenly develop a crush on White), and when I opened the boxes I found three more lovely white jackets - surprise, surprise...
I just read Elaine's post on Bramble Rambles - she finding a box full of old letters - and suddenly I remembered a very funny accidental meeting with a - let's call him 'a good friend' - a flame from my schooltime, he being a student then.
He became a quite famous TV show moderator (come to think of it: most of my flames became quite famous), and I met him by accident in another town at least a decade later, I having my then five-year old son with me.
The OF (Old Flame) and I recognized each other instantly (on my side not so remarkable, as I could see him over the years on the telly, being glad that Life had parted our ways), and we chatted for a while. Then son joined into the conversation.
"I know who you are", he said to OF.
The famous moderator smiled flattered and cajoled.
"You know me through television?" he asked.
"No. I know you from Mom's diaries", was the answer.
I seldom saw the expression "He got white like a sheet" so exquisitely put into close-up picture...

PS: Of course I only randomly told son that I knew the Famous-One - but it makes me think hard about what to do with my about 158 diaries I have in many boxes ...

My beautiful red Fiat 500

Dear You, 
I have to tell you about my new car (well: I should write 'new', because it is used; never in my life I bought a new car - and I have bought a lot).
You might remember my jeremiad about the perfect old black Jaguar Daimler Double Six - with cream white leather seats, a lot of blinking chrome, a perfect condition, and a perfectly sensible price - being my dream car for oh so long - and then the desaster when I looked into the rear-vision mirror and saw - nothing, behind the window a void - though I felt there was quite a lot there...
Son encouraged me by sending links for MiniCoopers (which I drove by BMW's car-sharing here in Berlin), and then Son wrote: Why not a Fiat 500? 
He sent me a link - and the car was perfect! The owner: an absolutely neat holder of a neat car - and the car being equipped with the special interior-version: not, as most have, grey interior - no, no: red and white, even the seats: red seat, (which are comfortable, even for Husband, who is 1.98m tall), and white round headrests. (I'm not that curious to find out whether the eight airbags are matching).
The number plate (which one keeps in Berlin after buying a used car) is a bit special: "B - TT 6606".
"I would change that", said an acquaintance.
I won't. Why should I?
The old version of this car, the Fiat Nuovo, built in 1957, was tenderly called "Topolino - little mouse" by the Italians. The Germans called them "Knutschkugel - canoodle-ball". Being used to names, this car, the Fiat 500 is the very first of about 12 very different cars I owned, that cried for a name.
I call him "Knut". Like: knuddelig, meaning cuddly.
(He first insisted to be called 'Cnut' - him being a bit on the eccentric side concerning appearances - to put it mildly). Our quarter is very much sought after by gay people - and Knut feels evidently drawn to them, and vice versa, but, as I have many friends among them, Knut accepts me too.
Yesterday you could see me with a car - beautiful, beautiful Ferrari red - filled up with palm tree, flowers and an aspidistra.
And that's our motto of the day:
"Knut - Keep the aspidistra flying!"
"Aye-aye, sir!"  (I told you...)

I promised you...

...to show you how the alteration of my hat (the pink one with pink fur) worked out.
Now that I read that Susan of "Southern Fascinations" still has tornadoes, and see on the header of Joanne's 'Cup on the Bus' that icicles still hang in Canada, I take my last chance to present it (though my friend Anne took me very much from the front - the fine pink cloche is not to be seen, only a small brim).
You might remember that I thought the old version was "Too much pink". Following my own subtle fine logics, after the alteration I bought a pink coat to counter the silver-grey, hahaha.
             It is my stratagem to counteract the doom-prognosis : "From a certain age on you are invisible." I am not. At least my coat is definitely not.
What looks here a bit like winter-fat is the result of a silver feather down-jacket under the coat over a dashy grey felt-jacket over a pullover - you get the message: it was a very, very Siberian-cold day in Berlin.
I could hardly move - and if I had been the sprayer of that cozy entrance of a house in Kreuzberg, I would hardly have been able to do a runner. Life is so interesting between all fronts: the wild Kreuzberg inhabitants might take me for a Member of The Gentrification Gang. The Anti-Fur-Fighters might use their little cans to spray on me - pink again :-)

Let's talk about the weather instead, to be on the safe side: Now we have had some beautiful spring days, warm, though today suddenly we had it cold again.

PS: (I think they call this phenomenon April)

Sweet Violets and Perfume

Dear You,
you know that I love perfumes.
But I had to abandon 'Balenciaga Paris' for a while, because my nose became 'blind' to the fragrance. After being wrapped up some time in 'Shalimar', I could change back - the old wisdom that a little distance to something you love often works wonders was valid here too. (Don't let go - just loosen your grip! Don't try too hard - be patient, be self-sufficient - or, more my style: love yourself, then you will be able to love others for what they are, not out of need. End of Britta's Readers Digest).
           Somewhere I read: "Balenciaga Paris wears like a minimalist's veil". It smells of violets (without being sweet, romantic or old-fashioned - Charlotte Gainsbourgh fronted it, and she stands for urban). It is the perfume where I got the most feedback and praise from men: "What is it? You smell so good!" 
I love violets. So I tried to find the pure version, just as a room perfume. (Looking for a reason to speak of 'my boudoir').
At the stall of the perfumer Jo Malone, the saleswoman said: "I don't have violets. May I offer you bluebells?" I stared at her. We talked. And so I found out that this very young woman never ever in her whole life had smelled the fragrance of a living sweet violet. (It made me think of those poor children who believe that milk comes in beverage cartons from lilac Milka cows).
There are not many perfumes with violets on the market. They offered 'Violets de Toulouse' on the Internet. But I didn't want a mixture, so I contacted my lovely old-fashioned Zieten-apothecary (here I always feel I'm stepping back into another century - old wooden shelves and cabinets and brown glass-bottles that cry 'Drink me! Drink me!" - they sell Chinese medicine and homeopathic drugs too, you get the picture). Yes - they would order violet fragrance for me. The pharmacist read: "Petals of violets". I asked: "Excuse me - are you sure these are the petals of the blossom?" "Yes". 
OK. Next day I went there by underground, happy. I was less so when I opened the little bottle at home. It smelled like - hay. It was the juice from the green leaves. "Oh, I'm sorry", chirped the pharmacist, "bring it back. I will order something else - a violet oil."
Underground again. Disappointment at home - which I almost had expected, because it was too cheap to be the real thing. (I didn't telephone - I just throw it away - it smelled like candy floss).
The next day I passed a very nice little perfume-and-soap-shop. Went in. Talked with the young man about the impossibility to get violet-perfume these days. "Wow", he said, "you are ahead of fashion". (Modest as a violet I thought: I know - often I comb shops for clothes that will come three years later). "They created 'Viola' in 2013', and next year", he said, "sweet violets will be the craze." "Ah", I said, "but I want them now." 
(I'm not always a pure Taoist).
He thought for a long while, and than he made a telephone call to an Italian perfumer, L'Erbolario.
So, with a bit of luck, I might have found it. I will know it next week.

PS: If you want to read more about the sweet violet (and less about me :-), look at gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com soon.