The lyf so short

When the Wall began to fall, I was six years of age, and I never realised what was going on until things were already over.

I remember that I knew what the GDR was while it still existed, because I remember expressing the (as I then thought, ingenious) opinion that the "D" was obviously for "dictatorial" rather than "democratic" (I was a weird child); but I do no longer know just how I learned about the existence or nature of the GDR. Looking back, I assume that it popped up in discussions and in the news a lot, and thus I may have picked up on a thing or two; but it was all very abstract. My parents did not believe in teaching their kids things about politics at that tender age, so all I knew was either overheard, conjectured, or told to me by friends. It must have been a big muddle.

I remember that I thought that Berlin was right at the border, because I could not imagine that a whole city should, like an island, be lodged in the middle of a different country - and parted in two. In my logic, Berlin must be at the border, half-way across.

I remember that my elementary school teacher told us, a few months into my first school term ever, how her daughter had been to Berlin, and how people had crossed the border "to the East" unchecked. I think she also mentioned cold weather and sleet, but the memory is fuzzy. It did not seem important to me at the time. Piecing things together, I must assume that this was in early mid-November.
I remember that the daughter was called Astrid.

I remember that we had an activity week in school, in early October, when I was in second grade, almost a year later. During that week, there were no classes; instead everybody got to choose a project in which to participate for that week. I was in an "art" project group, because the topic had sounded interesting, but on the whole it was disappointing; instead of drawing and painting normally, which I liked to do, we had to experiment with different infused plants (an experiment the teacher leading the project had never tried before, hurrah) and paint with finger paints and other things I didn't enjoy at the time. I remember that clearly enough.
I do not remember how exactly it happened, but I remember that the teachers were all entirely useless one day - close to hysterics, and randomly saying things like "The Wall is gone, it really is gone".
I did not know what wall they were talking of. The only vaguely remarkable wall in my village was the wall at the back end of the school grounds, which we were not allowed to climb and accordingly climbed all the time.
I do remember that my mother ceremonially and with great satisfaction took our family atlas and crossed out the border between the Federal Republic and the Democratic Republic. This was something we had to do frequently in our school atlases, later on, because our schools rarely could afford new books, so our books were usually 5 - 10 years old, and often obsolete.

I remember being asked, when I went to school in Canada, what I remembered about the Unification; and I had to give the unsatisfying account I gave above, with the apology that, having only been six to seven at the time and, on the whole, a very unpolitical child, things had mostly passed me by. Being born and raised in Western Germany, things hadn't change for me anyway. Only years later did I actually get to "the East": for a family reunion in Eisenach, and for a short fall vacation to Leipzig (where my grandfather on my mother's side had originally come from, but when he returned from war captivity he had wisely made for relatives in Swabia) and Weimar.
There were two other exchange students from Germany at the time - Max from Baden-Baden and Inken from Hamburg - and both remembered as little as I, so I felt a little less badly about it.
The girl who had asked us had asked because she was going to do a presentation on the Berlin Wall, and she had made a little cardboard model of the Wall, and asked us to decorate the "Western" side with authentic German graffiti, which, during lunch break, we did.

I remember, a few years ago, a visit from Jörg's American cousin Kurt and his boyfriend Richie. I do not remember how we came to talk about the fall of the Wall, but it turned out that (unlike Jörg or I) Richie had been in Berlin in late 1990, and of course he'd gone to take a look at the Wall. Enterprising young Germans had put up stalls, selling either (relatively expensive) chunks of Wall or renting out (relatively expensive) chisels and hammers to people who wanted to have their own go. Richie of course rented chisel and hammer and enthusiastically chopped away at the wall..... and about an hour later brought the chisel and hammer back. And bought a chunk of Wall.

Almost everything I know about the fall of the Wall is pieced together in hindsight, or acquired via collective memory. Which is not surprising, I suppose - I was, after all, only six years old - but it's still a pity.

My mother's middle brother is professor of pharmacy at the University of Jena, which is in the East. We rarely see him and his family, except once or twice a year. His wife likes to point out that the way from East to West is no shorter than the way from West to East, because it's almost always them who have to drive here, rarely us who drive there. Somehow my family still seems to feel that it's more natural for Easterners to want to come West than the other way round.

These days the Unification is mostly seen - at best - as a mixed blessing. It is still expensive, see, and idealism always dwindles when it takes its toll on peoples' purses. Unification Day - in celebration of October 3rd, 1990, when the process begun on November 9th, 1989, came to full bloom - is officially our national holiday; but it is not generally celebrated much (except by politicians or, this year, because of the anniversary). Germany are no longer comfortable with anything that even vaguely looks like patriotism, unless it pertains to football.
Sometimes physical walls are easier to tear down, after all, than the walls in the heads of people.

But the Unification still was a proper real-world miracle, in my own lifetime, and twenty years ago was when it began for good, when the first two letters of the big, fundamental "impossible" suddenly started to flicker.
And I wish I remembered more about it. I wish I could say that I danced in the streets, burned off fireworks, lit a candle, cheered and clapped, anything. I wish that I could at least remember heated and hopeful discussions around the kitchen table, or requests to pray for a peaceful solution, or anything of the sort. But I don't. Instead, 20 years ago, the most important thing for me was (likely) a) the impending St Martin's wassailing and bonfire, and b) my brother's birthday.

And now, 20 years later, I still cannot quite grasp it. But even though I feel that I am not properly a part of it, I can't help being just the tiniest bit proud. Generally, by association, just because it was Good and it happened in my lifetime and it changed, in its way, the country and the world.

And that's that.

Have a little anecdote.

Not quite a year ago - 11 months, more like - my Japanese host mother, after watching the news, turned to Peter and me and asked, "Who do you vote for, Hillary or Obama?"

Japanese television is notoriously bad and focuses, even more than television anywhere does (or so it feels), mostly on what happens within the own borders (the only news from Germany I got there was something about "Kunuto-kun", i.e. Knut the little polar bear who was no longer quite so little). But the American pre-election hassle made it into the news even then. And so Kazuyo said, one evening, "Who do you vote for, Hillary or Obama?"

I pointed out that I was not American and thus didn't have any say in this, and Peter said that he wasn't registered to vote, which made for a short distraction because neither in Germany nor in Japan do you need to register in order to vote: When you reach voting age, you're registered automatically.
"But if you got to vote," Kazuyo then said, "would you rather vote for Hillary or for Obama?"
And then she added something surprisingly blunt and decisive and un-Japanese: "After all, young, intelligent people like you wouldn't vote for McCain, no?"

...
So the big day (for better or worse) is almost upon us. I am not going to stay awake and watch the big N24 election night coverage - why should I stay awake all night in the middle of the week if, come morning, the decision still hasn't been made? Just for more documentaries and arguments - that we have been subjected to for the past two years anyway?
But I will cross my fingers.

I am not entirely starry-eyed, and I do not honestly believe that a victory for Obama would ring in a new golden age for the world. But even so it would be so much better than the alternative.
Well, we can always hope.

- - -

In completely unrelated news, NaNo has begun, and at least during these first three days I have somehow managed to be a mean, lean writing machine in between work at work, work on the house, and general cases of real life.

6,780 / 50,000 (13.6%)

I have a list of 36 keywords for the plot. So far I have not progressed beyond the first, which as you can see has taken almost 7000 words. If it goes on like this, the story will need more than 200.000 words rather than 50.000.

Thankfully I don't have to finish the entire story in order to finish NaNo.

- - -

Darcy hasn't returned from this evening's excursion yet. Likely he's just busy doing something exciting and not feeling like coming back inside; but as we had visitors a bit earlier whom we helped loading a lot of our old furniture into their car, we are somewhat (irrationally, hopefully) worried that he climbed into the car unseen and is now on the Autobahn on the way to Darmstadt. >_>

Sooo! Concerning the Drachenfest LARP (Wednesday to Yesterday).

Good parts first: On the whole it was way better than in the past two years. The Grey Camp was back on the road to knowledge and wisdom rather than self-destruction; the backstory has improved greatly, or perhaps the new plots just made it clearer; communication worked way better; we had a brilliant Avatar who really fitted his role; there were lots of plots, almost too many; there was always something in-gamely important to do.

Which brings me to the bad parts.

I know I am probably fairly alone in this; I know I am probably taking the whole thing too seriously; but if I go to a LARP, I am there for LARPing.
Cue sounds of surprise here.

I am not there for quaffing, or gluttony, or shopping, or smoking illegal things, or spending fun time in town. I am there for the bloody gaming. If my character's involvement with the plot means living on a diet of cookies and raw veggies because I don't have time for cooking or walking up to the "town" for supper for a coupla days, so BE it. I know that this is overdoing it, and I don't expect other people do be quite so extreme - but I do expect them to spend more time roleplaying than partying on the whole (unless, obviously, they play characters who party all the time). I do expect them not to sell their characters into slavery just for kicks and because the goblin pirates are OMG SO MUCH FUN. I expect them not to miss a good part of the important briefings, councils, elections and speeches because they spend most of their time elsewhere, unless they happen to play spies or messengers who by nature have to run around a lot. If they miss most of the important briefings, councils, elections or speeches, I expect them at least to have the grace not to kick up a fuss because "nobody told them anything" or "they weren't asked".

Because frankly, if my idea of a good holiday is chilling and drinking alcohol, I daresay I'd be better advised to go to Majorca or Ibiza.

Because if you only see just how many people you shared camp with when people gather for the final battle in which everyone wants to take part, and find out it's not 30 but in fact 120 - something isn't quite right.

Nor do I think it is at all necessary to bash other camps all the time. Of course we all think our own camp is the best there is. Of course we may - privately, OOCly - think that, damn, there's only nerds following Grey, only idiots following Chaos, only Mary Sues following Silver, only tree-huggers following Green - but IC, they still all represent the manifestations of in-game gods, and I rather think most characters, no matter how powerful, chaotic, cool they may be, wouldn't go and insult the manifestations of "their" gods all that easily. Yes no perhaps?

Eh well.
I should just ignore the idiots, but together with people who refuse to take hits even if it's obvious they got them, people who behave like assholes on general principles and people who think they have to assassinate me AFTER the collective OOC signal they're getting too annoying to ignore. Actually the latter instance wouldn't have counted as an assassination anyway, because the rules clearly state that you have to sneak up to your victim without them noticing you, and I noticed him when he was still five meters off. Anyway, everybody was OOC at that point, so sneaking up to people and attacking them in the darkness in the middle of the night is not such a good idea. I, at any rate, was in a bad mood anyway because the abovementioned powerful, chaotic/copper, cool people ruining the final ritual and because of the disgraceful fire dancers (all of them but two dropped their torches or pois at some point; two of them actually set their own beards on fire: I understand people aren't perfect when they start to learn things like fire-juggling, but if I am still that likely to drop my torches, do I have to perform in front of an audience of roughly a thousand people (and that's just because not all of the 4000 participants leave their end-of-LARP parties to join the final ritual)?!); and I was surprised and, I admit, a little scared; and I am really sorry I dealt the poor guy a bruise on his shoulder and a fist to his face, and a little ashamed for overreacting: but frankly I am also a little proud of my reflexes, and of the fact that he apologised profusely, and if my overreaction means one less stupid assassin next year, ON THE WHITE TREE IT WAS WORTH IT! WORTH IT! WORTH IT!
...
...

Finally, after the good annd the bad: The ugly.
There were, for the first time in my Drachenfest experience, the kind of assholes who get kicks out of vandalising, cutting cables and piping and pushing over Port-a-potties. And that after I was so proud that us abnormal people who go to LARPs act, in fact, way more normal than "normal" people who go to Rock festivals. *sighs*
Gah.

- - -

Aaanyway, those people who were not idiots, assassins or away all the time were all the more fun to RPG with. There was a bunch of elemental clerics and a house of Drows who were great company and great players, lovely bards, a dedicated and conscientious night watch, good plots and GMs, and I can't praise our brilliant, funny, intelligent Avatar enough (one of the highlights was the "Discussion of Magical Theory" with him and the Black Avatar, which wasn't strictly IC but so amazingly funny it didn't even matter (and why shouldn't Avatars be relaxed and funny on occasion?): for those who know Ring*Con, imagine Craig Parker as the Grey Avatar and Mark Ferguson as the Black Avatar and you roughly get the idea). There wasn't a moment in which I could've felt bored. By the end of it I was really missing clean clothing, and water that didn't taste slightly murky, not to mention proper toilets and showers: I am after all growing old and hamfæst. Jörg and I already noticed that in London last weekend: although London was nice, and we did lots of interesting stuff, we missed our construction site and the woods, in only four days.

There, 'nuff rambling for one night!

It's a wonderful, balmy, not-quite-dark-yet night in June, and the kittens don't want to come inside. The garden is full of hovering fireflies and the cats can't take their eyes off them. Insects with shiny butts! How exciting!

On nights like this I don't want to sleep but sit outside with a campfire until the sun comes back (which is soon, anyway).

We should be having lengthy midsummer feasts again.

- - -
( Wenn die Johanniswürmer glänzen/ darfst Du richten Deine Sensen )
- - -

Just because I'm not at home doesn't mean nothing's happening there.

You may remember that when we started restoring the roof, we found all kinds of funky things, such as a mummified cat, a mummified rat, a bird skeleton, a ROUS skeleton, an egg and a box of old photos. Also, Jörg noted that there were some wires sticking out of a disused chimney.
In joke, he said something like, "Probably they chucked their WWII memorabilia in there".

Now apparently the renovation came into the vicinity of said chimney, and out of curiosity, the wires were pulled.

Which brought this to light.

Now I don't know how you'd feel about that, but I was sitting some thousand kilometers away and ellipsing. A lot.

This is what the contents of that bag looked like.
According to the boyfriend (whose father was in the police force, and who was taught to handle weapons with said police force and during his military service) this was a Walther P38, the official Wehrmacht handgun (it had a Wehrmacht registration stamp, too) which remained in use with the police and the military until the 1980s or so. With ammunition. And, most likely, in full working order. (No, he did not try that. The holes in the boards were there already. For serious.)

Now of course when something like this happens you have two options: The legal way and the illegal way.
The illegal way is don't say anything, keep it or sell it, and hope nobody who's not supposed to find out ever finds out.
The legal way is take it to the police and turn it in.

Since my boyfriend is, on the whole, a reasonable man who has too many projects on his hands to go to jail for two years or more in case anything who's not supposed to find out does find out, he turned it in. (Remember, this is not America: Obtaining the permission to own a gun is a lot harder and a lot more regulated.)
Turns out they're not just going to disarm it and give it to a museum or something.
It's going to be destroyed.

That makes me strangely unhappy. It's a dangerous thing, no question about that, but it's still a kind of historic artefact. I mean, it's even aesthetic in a kind of lethal way. Look at that design. I'm all for disarming it, but the legal situation is that it's going to be put into a compactor and turned into a blob of junk. Which I think is a shame.

You could have it disarmed at your own cost (which would be at least 200€ for something that could technically be done by anyone with a Dremel and a working knowledge of physics), which would allow you to keep it. Hah.

Accordingly, the police officer who filed the whole thing said something along the lines of "As a police officer I have to congratulate you on having done the right thing. Anything else would have been illegal and would have led to a lot of trouble. ... As a pal, however, I can only facepalm. Why the hell did you do that? You could have sold that one for 700€ at the very least. A gun that's no longer produced, with unknown ammunition, unregistered - that's the perfect murder weapon. There's a real market for that kind of thing."

Yeah. That a real invitation to be a good lawful citizen, isn't it.

Actually I think 700€ not worth the knowledge that I might have abetted murder, but I imagine many people would be tempted, or rather are tempted.
And while I'm glad not to have the thing in my house, because no matter how well it might be hidden some child is going to dig it out in ten, fifteen years time. I wouldn't want some teenager in his emo phase to find a gun. I couldn't sleep easy with something like that in my house. But I have to admit that a piece of history being turned into a block of matte metal makes me rather unhappy nonetheless.


And this, my friends, is a true story. Rabbit Hole Day is only on the 27th after all.

- - -

( Sowas passiert doch nicht in echt. )

If Prof. Adone keeps overrunning her classes with nothing but totally pointless talk ("Ok, let's go through this again. Anyone got a question about the first part of the presentation? No? Are you sure? Nobody?" until someone asks some totally pointless question that has been answered during the presentation already. UNTIL every paragraph of the presentation has been talked through. AGAIN.), I think I'm going to hate semantics by the end of the semester the next class.

But I still managed to be at our local gothic monstrosity a.k.a. the Cologne cathedral in time to meet nimielle. We went to Starbucks for a hot beverage and a sandwich and talked about a lot of random stuff, which was fun.

Afterwards I had to go to my museum class, but I wanted to visit the Schatzkammer before that to buy some mead. That turned out to be a good idea inasmuch as they're having bargain prices on mead this week (which I didn't know before). I bought four bottles, two of them the expensive kinds (made from lavender honey and linden honey, respectively) and two of the regular, for a bit under 20 Euros. (The lavender mead alone usually costs 9 Euros. Or 13 if you buy it at the Byzanz store in Bochum, which, logically, is not a smart thing to do.) But I missed my class afterwards because I got stuck there; firstly I ogled some nice LARP swords but couldn't decide for one (but discussed the advantages and disadvantages of them with the shop owner and the visiting owner of another LARP forge), then some guy told me everything about his mercenary character (I think he was hitting on me; I was the only girl in the store, after all, who was not there for a last-minute Halloween costume but by virtue of being an actual live girl geek), reminisced in some Urukfest memories, and then it was too late for the seminar. >_> Ah well. It wasn't my group's turn anyway, so it would've been more sitting around listening to boring discussions.

Getting home took ages and I didn't find a sufficiently large pumpkin for stuffed pumpkin. Boo. Admittedly, trying to buy a sufficiently large pumpkin on Oct 31st of all days may be a tad stupid, even in a country that doesn't actually observe Hallowe'en (except for those that jump on every bandwagon, little kiddies, and Wiccans, who at least have a reason to celebrate - happy Samhain to them, btw!).

Speaking of Oct 31st: nimielle shockingly didn't know anything about NaNo, so here's the link for her (and anyone else interested in joining before it kicks off in this country): NaNoWriMo.

I'm desperately trying to put my Ring*Con costume together before midnight today. Real life keeps interfering.

Our landlord has decreed that we may only have two cats in our flat. The brothers we didn't want to separate, but Shakira had chosen us herself, so giving her away seemed rather like a betrayal. Then again, the kittens have been annoying her for quite a while - they're growing up, playfully attacking her, being noisy whereas she likes things calm, etc. So instead of Darcy - as it was originally planned - Shakira now lives with Jörg's mother. ;_; We brought her there on Sunday; after an hour or so of exploring the new surroundings, she actually seemed quite relaxed and snuggled against Jörg's mother, too; but she says the cat isn't eating, and walking around mewing all night. I hope she'll eventually accept the new place. It is calmer and more comfortable than our flat, and Jörg's mother is more attentive than we can be, but of course it's not the place she chose back in the day...
*sighs*

Gnah.

Jörg turned on the heating. As it is the way with men, they tend to exaggerate; it's now too hot. I think it's entirely unnecessary to be able to sit in front of your computer in a t-shirt when it's November tomorrow. Especially with our energy prices. But perhaps that's just me and my having got used to 16°C room temperature during the last week. >_>

Lookee, the ugly elf (@ladyelleth: Ugly ugly ugly! Sucks sucks sucks! ;)) got a companion! No, not a Companion. Shut up, Inara.
Vaguely humanoid-shaped lump of clay...
... and side view

Pottery is not only addicting but also very meditative. You get the most random thoughts. Today I randomly remembered how back in the day when I was in grade two or so, it had snowed. And I was really happy because I loved snow, and was accordingly gleeful.
Said one teacher: "Oh, but don't you feel sad for all the people who have to go by car in this weather? Like your parents! Surely they aren't happy about the snow!"
People kept saying stuff like that.

Another year, we had the first snow, and when we came to school, one little girl was running around with an umbrella saying "Sauwetter" (roughly translated: "crappy weather").
Now my brother and I used to be rather sensitive about how things might feel (I'm serious - I always felt bad about having to put something back on a shelf for fear that the poor thing would feel unloved and neglected!), and we muttered that hopefully the lovely snow wouldn't go away because it felt hurt by the "Sauwetter" umbrella.

All in all: Great job, people! Teach the children to be discontent about the weather at an early age! A good German always has to complain about the weather. Teach'em while they're young!

Actually, this may not be quite so random. We're having a mellow ~20°C here these days, which if you ask me is the best kind of weather you can have. But - now even I run around in long pants and long-sleeved pullovers without suffering over much in 20° warm weather. I never could have done that in the "olden days". Back then, I used to feel too hot very easily - being a child of the Bergisches Land will do that to you, I suppose - and was comfortable even in fairly cold weather because of what my mom used to call my "internal oven". And now - I run around in jeans and a pullover in temperatures that would've had me in shorts and t-shirts not too long ago. These dreadfully hot summer days have, apparently, spoiled me.

Not as badly as many other people, though, apparently. Because, as I said, we have a mellow ~20°C, and people are - get this - complaining about the cold. The cold! *cries*

Um. Yes. Shutting up now.

There was a meditation practice thing we once did, in the olden days, when I regularly went to church service.
Before I was old enough to join the dreadfully boring adult group, and after I was old enough to leave the easy-peasy kid's group.
We were to imagine ourselves in nondescript surroundings, without light or something to orientate by except by the land and the stars. (We were to imagine ourselves in the dead of night). We were to visualize ourselves all alone.

I always ended up in an Arctic environment: Nothing but ice and snow around me. But the stars, the pale white cold stars, were always very bright: Because they were the only source of light, and because they were reflected easily by the white surface around me. It was cold, but at the same time, that made the air crisp and clean, pure, unpolluted.
Despite the cold and crispness, despite the loneliness, I felt different from the others doing the same exercise: The others would report how they felt abandoned, afraid, alone: How they longed for company and bright light: How the felt utterly desperate in that environment, which, usually was far less hostile than my arctic icefield. Not I. I felt safe. Alone, yes, but safe: All the more safe for being alone. I was in the cold, in a desert of ice and snow, but the stars were reflected, and reinforced, and reassuring.

We did that meditation exercise in a time when I was being mobbed for being different, when I had few friends and more antagonists, where I was so desperate for acceptance that anyone who did so much as smile at me was my friend, when I knew that I would never be able to satisfy people. That was why I felt happy in the dark, the cold, the solitude. It was safe, more safe than light and warmth and company could ever be. It was only me, me and the darkness, and I knew myself and didn't fear the darkness, for I knew that it was never absolute.

Sometimes, today, I still feel that way. Sometimes, visualizing happiness, I get the image I had back then: Myself, wrapped in nothing but a blanket, with no light but the stars high above - but more stars than one single sky could hold - and that is the only way, the only single way that I could ever be content. Me. Cold. The stars.

I realized today, for the first time, just why it is that my family expects me to finish studying and become useful (at least), rich (at best) and famous.
This year - in four months and one week - I will be 23 years old.
In the year my mother turned 23, she not only finished her studies magna cum laude, but also did her doctorate.
Of course, I am expected to do her proud and do the same. Instead, the only thing I manage to accomplish in this year of turning 23, after seven semesters of studying, is finishing my intermediate exam.

But I am not my mother. It will take me at least two more years to finish even one of my subjects. And unlike my mother, who knew that she wanted to be a medical doctor, and whose course of studies was neatly structured and clearly organised, I have no idea whatsoever to do with myself, my interests, my life. Right now, I am hanging in a vaccuum. Right now, I feel more lonely and in the dark than I ever felt when visualizing myself on my knees in the ice, with one single blanket and the stars. Right now, I understand that passing or not passing an exam is altogether meaningless, because it doesn't guide me either way.

Right now, I long for the simplicity of a life where everything has been preordained.

Sometimes, I miss the grinding ice and the cold stars. Today I am blinded by lights that I cannot trust, in a land of intellectual achievement. I miss the simplicity of the illusions of my adolescence. I miss the clarity of feeling that the odd girl, visualizing herself in the snow under the stars, felt so keenly. I miss a feeling of purpose, or safety.

Of course I know that I will find my way. I will, because I have no other choice. I will, because it's only natural, because it is my life, because I am not living it for anyone but myself.

But I remember the snow and ice and stars. And I remember that I didn't dare to tell others how I felt after that exercise, because the others would report how they felt horrible, painfully abandoned, desperately longing for others, whereas I would feel, just for the brief time of the exercise, just for a few minutes, safe. Not in spite of being alone and in the dark and cold, but because of being alone and in the dark and cold. It was me. I knew myself. I was safe. I was alone, but alive.

And there always, always were stars.

On our way home from the Christmas party with my parents and family and, afterwards, Jörg's mom, brother and sister-in-law, we stopped at the graveyard and lit a candle on Jessika's grave.

Jessika was the woman Jörg meant to marry until she died, while I was still making my way through high school.
Jessika meant for her ashes to be strewn off a cliff in Scotland, but her mother insisted that it would be laid to rest with her grandparents, and there it is. It means that there is a grave to come to, but it also means that she didn't get one of her last wishes.

As always, the visit proved that my tearducts open far too easily. And I can't help it: Standing there, I can't help but feel a certain presence, like someone looking over your shoulder: 'So you are with my intended now? Are you good enough for him? Are you doing him justice? Can you fill my shoes?"

As always, we talked about mortality and ways of death, of the death of our grandmothers and of Jörg's father on our way home. As always, I couldn't help but get lines from John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning in my head. When Jörg tells about the whole family gathered around his grandmother's bed, wondering whether this was her last breath now or whether she is, after all, still keeping on breathing: Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no...

I love the final image of the compasses: The dead or dying person the fixed foot in the middle, around which the living, the left behind, circle until they reach their point of origin again: How, although the dead one is dead and beyond movement, they still lean to one side or another with the movement of the living. It's beautiful. It's consoling. And although I'm too tipsy to remember all the words, the poem rises up inside me and strikes a chord and another.

When we reached Solingen again, there was a spot check on traffic. Jörg was driving - I have been drinking the wine today - and behaved professionally (he claims that it's all a matter of common sense, but I am sure that the fact that his father was with the police force helps a lot more than mere common sense): Good evening, yes, he'd drunk a glass of wine during dinner, which was when, Christiane, around 8 or 9 during dinner with my parents (which meant, 5 hours ago at that time, and therefore, completely harmless), good heavens no, just a glass. And the young officer, equally professionally, nodded and said he'd believe it, and drive safely and have a nice Christmas.
So home we are, and I found the Donne poem, and wrote this. And now I should go to bed, for the celebrations aren't over, and tomorrow we're expected with my father's youngest brother (along with the rest of my father's family). So, goodnight.

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
His breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

I re-read The Flying Classroom today. I am always so very happy to find that I still love a book on re-reading that I loved as a child. Too many books that I positively adored when I was younger turn out to be rather trite when I look at them now, fifteen or ten or even just seven years later. Mallory Towers or St Clare's or Secret Seven, for example, or most of Enyd Blyton's writing, for that matter. I'm almost embarassed to admit how much I was obsessed with those books (although I still like some of the Adventure series), because, when I read them now, after (at the max) one hour of reading I am nothing if not disappointed. Serial work, always the same characters, always the same events; not only in between the different series, but even within one series; without, actually, something to tell (save 'be good and selfless and humble and obedient') and without soul. I didn't notice that as a child, but I do notice it now.
Or Vicke the Viking (so, little Wickie DOES exist in English! Only the anime apparently never made it to the English-speaking world, so nobody knows the books...). It's... okay, but Vicke was my first literary crush (and I SWEAR IT WAS NOT THE RED HAIR) back in the day, I read the books several times and watched the anime with a kind of religious obsession, and now... well. Disappointment.
Or there are series like Wolly Cosmopolly. Never heard of it? You didn't miss a thing. Totally worthless. And yet, I loved these books. I could name many others, but it would be depressing really. We all know that our taste changes, but to come to the things you looked to as some sort of model ("I want to write books like that when I'm grown up!") and to find them entirely disappointing is... painful. Did I really have such poor taste and feeling for words when I was a child?

It goes like this with several books I admired as a child and re-read now. And it makes me cringe to find yet another childhood love crumble to ashes under the merciless gaze of the obsessed literature student I have been turned into (although it does soothe me somewhat that the same happens with some works of world literature that I read now *cough*ScarletPimpernel*cough*). So, whenever I rediscover a once-favourite book that I can read now and still get absorbed in and still enjoy, that is written in a way that isn't patronizing and not downgrading and not in the least childish. Astrid Lindgren is, of course, a paragon, the best proof for books that are children's books through and through AND excellent books as well. I don't know who decided that children's books don't have to be well-written. THEY SHOULD BE. (Again, I'm aware that many grown-ups read books that are written even worse than Mallory Towers with glee, but I must admit that these books generally make me want to live back in the Middle Ages when books were hand-written and precious and not abused for penny dreadfuls.)
Tonke Dragt's books are of the same category - at least some of them; De brief voor de koning ("The Letter for the King"; but I couldn't find out whether there is an English translation or not, so I'll go for the original title) wasn't quite as good now as it was back in fifth grade when everybody absolutely had to have read it, but that's just because the boring place names annoy me now (blame Tolkien), the story is still gripping and good. And now, Erich Kästner. I shouldn't actually be surprised to find out that his children's books are actually good books, after all, that was what he meant to do, but well, it makes me happy to find now that he succeeded.

Is there a point to this rant? Probably not. I'm just musing.
But I guess it comes down to my beloved jewels-glass-and-sand image.
It is good to find some of the jewels that I collected when I was a child still shining, not turned into cheap coloured glass.

[But I do have to say, with my mind of today, that there is very obviously Justus/Nonsmoker, and, quite possibly, Johnny Trotz/Martin Thaler.]

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( Mut ohne Klugheit ist Unfug; und Klugheit ohne Mut ist Quatsch... )
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