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Dear You,
it's time to travel for a while. I need new vistas, I need a change, I need world.
Look at the photo above: it seems ages that I took it at the V&A.
In front of my huge balcony window the swallows are gathering, still exercising their young ones to fly. Soon they will be gone.
As I. Only for a few weeks. Then I will be back.
Take care!
Yours Truly, Britta
Dear You,
I know, I know... it is fashion now, and deep in my heart I should be thankful that it is so ... instead of grieving Highheels (oh my poor back!) - where you needed a man at your side to grab his arm if you walked on the slippery Jungfernstieg in Hamburg where they had the extraordinary idea to put marble slates as pavement - in a city which has as often rain as London...
Yet I look disapprovingly into the mirror. My skirt is still wonderful and fitting (I bought it 17 years ago in Hamburg, though didn't wear it very often - most time I am a Jeans-type, so practical, especially now with grandchild-triplets).
Normally I never tell if a garment is new or old - I take a compliment and smile.
But those awful looking comfortable plump shoes...
I hunted through Berlin for something cozy AND a bit more graceful. Well - at least a tiny weeny bit.
I found a less ugly version - French, of course. Sort of tennis-court shoes, small, no high plateau sole (the photo is not correct here).
Yours Truly
PS: Do you remember about ten years ago, when I had those wonderful light white leather ballerinas? By Jeremy Scott for Adidas - they have little white wings at the heel - I floated through Berlin.
Dear You,
I am back from Berlin - and have enjoyed my friends and the beautiful big flat, the fine weather and breathed culture in the capital.
The gaps between my visits are still long - sometimes I float in a feeling of unreality: in the kitchen I grab for a pitcher - and it isn't there, it stands on another board (though I tried to make arrangements in both flats as similar as possible) - I feel a bit alien in a place where I live for more than ten years. So reassuring that I still can enter - do you know the weird feeling when you pass a house in a city where you once lived - and now are standing "outdoors", no way to get in?
In the Bavarian village I see the opposite way of life - which also has its charms: families living in houses their ancestors built hundred of years before, never moving, and almost all of them know each other quite well and are often related in a remote way.
Now to the zucchinis above: I planted one on my balcony (escorted by a cherry tomato) - and am happily surprised: too late I had read that you need two of them to get "fruits", but this one seems to "Live Alone And Like It", as Marjory Hillis called her very sweet book.
The zucchino (shouldn't be that the correct term? - but the spellchecker refuses, having no Italian connections) spreads its huge leaves and enjoys parthenogenesis - with convincing results.
Yours Truly
Dear You,
when I looked out of my window this morning I saw that the farmers were very busy - and one of them is a landscape-artist.
The view is changing rapidly: it seems to be yesterday that we saw lovely yellow fields of rape (many fields - rape-oil is in demand now because of the sunflower-oil-shortage).
In my direct neighbourhood I spotted a nightingale - I am so thrilled, never heard one before.
When I met the woman in whose garden&wood the nightingale lives, she looked slightly unnerved. "I would like to rehouse her", she said. "That bird is nestling directly under my bedroom and sings very, very long. And loud!"
"And beautiful", I added, but she hastily changed the topic...
Moral: "Was dem einen sin Uhl is dem andern sin Nachtigall" we say in Northern Germany - roughly translated: "What is an owl to one person is a nightingale to another."
(You might say: "One man's meat is another man's poison")
Yours Truly
Dear You,
tomorrow Amazon promised to deliver a book on "Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition" by M.H.Abrams. In a lovely comment this author was recommended to me - thank you!
I am fascinated by the title. Makes me think about my life. At work, being a counsellor, I had to be the mirror, as they rightly taught us - though I tried to bring a little bit of light too.
At the moment, regardless of how I turn, I feel stuck - you might hear me mumble "Rule 12: "When You Don't Know What to Say...Say Nothing!"
That stuck-feeling can change soon. If I get more control over my life (do I hear a gigantic laughter in the clouds?) I might put the mirror on a table and - for a while - be the lamp.
Yours Truly (training hard to become a firefly)
Dear You,
today was the first time this year that I used the sun-roller blind of my large balcony. I think they put it up in the year the house was built - it gives me a certain 60s-feeling.
We had 21° degree Celsius, and sun. In the morning I was very active: made a chocolate pudding for the triplets, my daughter-in-law and me - Thursday is the day I cook for all of us, and I had prepared Ratatouille and fillet of pork and noodles, and because pots and pans were heavy, I drove them up the hill to them, though we are only one road apart.
Before I went to the fitness center - so, this morning I had a lot to do. Surprise: the chocolate pudding was devoured in no time - the main meal was appreciated, but not that rapidly eaten.
Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Erlangen at the university - each Wednesday I am a guest student (you see a lot of silver hair :-) and it was really interesting: a young professor talked about the psychology of perception, and I learned something (which I wouldn't have believed if you had told me, but I experienced it and thus my believe in being a very good observer was a bit shaken. I fulfilled the task 100% (ha!- so I AM a very good observer) - yet they had smuggled something else into the little video which normally would never have been overlooked - we did because we concentrated so hard on the task.(And Yours Truly felt a bit cheated - I mean: if you ask me to give you apples and then say: "Haha, but you haven't given me a banana!" I would look at you a bit petulant...)
But it made me think of witnesses and universal truth, of my own belief in being right (of course...), and perception in general. And of the highly delightful pearl of wisdom which (sometimes!) comes with age: sometimes (to be honest: only sometimes, but I hope it will grow with even more years in front of me) I am so wise to choose happiness instead of being right.
Well, the uni-lecture was refreshing.
The fine thing is that after two hours of intellectual nourishment those who wanted (about 30 of 120) went to a very nice café, and there we laughed a lot discussed on a high intellectual level.
Yours Truly, Britta