Jeans

Once I went shopping with my friend B. We tried on Jeans at the Levis Store and I complained, that Levis Jeans are really badly cut. They don’t fit me at all. My friend looked at me and said: “You see, that’s the difference between you and me. I would think, what is wrong with me that I don’t fit into Levis Jeans, while you think what is wrong with Levis.”

Tonight my mother had invited us for Fleisch Fondue. I haven’t eaten Fleisch Fondue since childhood. We usually had it for New Year. To kill time, because it takes so long to eat. Later we ate it at Christmas after it finally had turned out that everybody hated Königinnenpastete which we had for years, because my mother thought we loved it so much and we were to polite to tell her the truth.

Anyway, my mother gave me a pair of Guess Jeans which were to tight for her, and I tried them on and they fit perfectly. I mean PERFECTLY. I don’t even care about the style or the brand, because they fit that well. As if they were made for me.

What does this say about me? That I fit perfectly into a pair of Jeans, which are slightly too tight for my 75-years old mother? I ask her.
My mother said: “That you will still look great when you are 75.”

Through God’s Eyes

Today I was praying for a woman who was sleeping. She has been in the hospital for quite a while. She is huge. I was shocked when I saw her the first time; half naked on a blood stained sheet. She moaned in her sleep. When I finished the prayer she opened her eyes and looked at me. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were praying for me”. She thanked me and smiled at me. Her face was bloated and she had no front teeth. But her eyes were soft and her smile was beautiful. She was so grateful, she was so helpless, in pain for such a long time, but she was smiling at me, as if I had done a great thing for her and when I looked at her, I only saw the beauty of her humility and gratitude. It was, as if I looked right into her heart and all the sickness and ugliness disappeared and I thought, this is who we truly are. This is our innermost core. This is how God sees us, each and every one of us, and for a moment I could see her with His eyes.

Happy Holiday

Sven and I went away this weekend, because on Sunday we had our third wedding anniversary. We married on the 25.5.2005 without even knowing the date. Our friend Margaret who gave me the wedding-dress, which was sitting in the closet of her holiday house, only realized later that she had married at the same day, and that she had spent her anniversary attending our wedding.

We left our kids with friends and our dogs and cats with a house-sitter and went to Stellenbosch. An University town only 100 kms from where we live into the mountains. We drove the scenic route along the coast, always stunning and breathtaking.
Our first stop was at a used bookstore in Gordon’s Bay. We spent an hour there and I bought a Madonna Biography. Of all books! But I don’t like used books and that book was brand-new and ridiculously cheap. I am not even a Madonna fan. Never have been. I only liked the song Holiday when it came out and never understood the Madonna hype. Maybe that’s why. To finally find the secret of Madonna’s success and apply it to my life. Definitely not after I started reading it.

I choose the guesthouse with the best bedding. Feather pillows, of course, and starched white linen. It was a beautiful colonial building, very tasteful, but all the door handles were in knee hight. Asking the manager why that’s so, she said there used to be an orphanage that burned down. A lot of children died, because they were locked in and couldn’t reach the door handles. In respect of those children, the architect placed the handles that low, when the house was rebuilt.

The weather was beautiful in spite of the weather report who predicted rain. We ate sushi, steak and fried noodles at a japanese restaurant sitting in the sun on the street, watched a wedding crowd at the botanical garden, went to see a movie, which I already forgot, and ate the best pizza of South Africa.

Sven loves to take me out to restaurants and I hate eating my food among strangers. For me eating is a as intimate as sleeping and I prefer to do this with people I love and I feel uncomfortable doing it at a public place. Especially a dinner for two. I would have taken the pizza home to eat it in bed. That`s my sense of a romantic dinner. Sven is more civilized and grown up. I played along the grown up part and he agreed to spend the rest of the evening in bed and not in bars.

The next day we drove into a nature reserve. I didn’t bring proper hiking shoes so we just drove trough, which was fine with me and still very beautiful. When we got out of the car to walk a few steps up to a waterfall, there were little insect flying around. Soon we were covered with lady birds. I have never seen that many. They were everywhere. Even back in the car while we were driving, I had to release them trough the window.

When we went back over the mountain in the late evening sun, the valley had disappeared behind clouds. We immersed into thick thick fog and it felt, as if we had come from a very special place, not from this world, where the sun had been shining just for us.

Wrong Number

This morning, it was still dark, my phone rang. My cell phone hardly ever rings. Nobody I know would call me at six o’ clock in the morning. It was a male voice with a heavy accent. After a short conversation in which I tried to figure out what he wanted, he said “you gave me the wrong number.” He apologized and hang up.

Funny

Looking at my English it turns out that I end up using it turns out and I end up a LOT.

My favorite expressions are those which don’t have an equal in German. Like to end up.

I wonder if my limitation of the language will end up to turn out to be an advantage.

My clever daughter wrote the best Afrikaans poem in her class nevertheless her Afrikaans is the worst of all. q.e.d.

The Beauty of Limitation

Hot Rod

We live in this little village, where they rent out only a few dozen dvds at the petrol station. So we end up watching movies that we normally wouldn’t watch if we had a bigger choice, but that turns out to be a blessing. We laughed tears yesterday watching “Hot Rod”. A stupid but charming loser-becomes-hero story.

In my life I often experienced limitations as my greatest freedom. Not having all options open but having only very little choices and use them in my best ability.

It changed my attitude when things don’t turn out my way or when doors close. Instead of seeing it as a crisis, I see hidden opportunities.

I first realized this, when I had my baby, 14 years ago. That was when I started writing. I had less time for myself than ever, but I accomplished more than ever before.

I finished a book in three months, writing not more than two precious hours every morning. I never felt a greater satisfaction and relief to be limited to these two hours. That was all I needed. Everything had to happen from 9 to 11 or from 10 to 12.

I looked back on times when I was on my own and had all the time of the world and hardly got anything done. I was paralyzed by having all this time and all these options and possibilities and not knowing which to choose and where to start. I don’t want to go back to this place.

Quite early in my life I realized, that I wasn’t made for 8 to 5 work. I wasn’t build for any employment at all. It almost killed me. So it wasn’t an option and I had to look for other ways to make a living. I became a writer. Maybe I wouldn’t if I would have had other options. But I didn’t.

I also limited myself to this one man that I love; the father of my children. And I know it would be stupid to jeopardize this love in any way. So I don’t, and instead try to do everything to sustain it.

I found out, there are not many ways to live a successful and fulfilling life. There are actually only these: Follow my heart and do the right thing at the right time without compromise, even when it seems stupid or not to my advantage.

More Coincidences

We were supposed to drive to Franschhoek for another netball match, but than it turned out that Luzies age group wouldn’t play, but the principal asked if we could drive anyway because they desperately needed transport and they would pay for the diesel. So we all went for an outing on saturday.

It was such a beautiful day. A picture book day. The drive was stunning. We left early in the morning. Clouds hovering over the valley, passing the giant Teewaterkloofdam, winding up the mountains on steep narrow roads.

We dropped the girls at the school and went into town to have breakfast. There was a small farmers market where we sat in the sun and ate the best boere worse rolls I ever had, and butternut muffins.

It turned out, there was a literatry festival taking place that weekend. The little town was cooking. Even Richard Ford was there.

Franschhoek is a beautiful small town in the middle of the wine-land, nestled between the mountains, white colonial buildings, big and small, street cafes, lots of trees, colored leaves, blue blue sky, a very european feeling.

I met a young poet from Kongo. He had started to write in English only half a year after he came to South Africa. He didn’t know English at all. That amazed me. I admired that he so radically gave up his language after leaving his country. Maybe that is because he has less to hold on to.

Now I regret that I didn’t buy his book, but I am not into poetry at all. I just don’t understand it. It doesn’t speak to me. But when I read his poems, so clear and simple, they actually gave me goose bumps. There was a feeling about them and I guess that’s what poetry is all about.

I asked him how he can write in a foreign language and he said, it is all about rhythm. There is a picture behind every word, even when he doesn’t understand it’s proper meaning, he will have his own understanding and that is the strength and the beauty about writing in a language that is not your own. Coming from a different understanding, a different culture, you add something to the language. In writing and using the language, you take ownership.

He confirmed exactly what I was thinking for quite a while. The more I think about it, the more I can see the advantage of my disadvantage. It is challenging and exciting.

He also said, that it doesn’t work to first think in French and than translate into English. It is a complete different process. You have to start with the words and even though I am not a poet, I agree completely, because rhythm has always been an important element of my writing. Maybe I am closer to poetry than I thought.

I asked him why he came here and he said, Franschhoek sounded so familiar. We both laughed. There is nothing French about Franschhoek.

Mysterious Random Encounters

Have you ever been to an event or a place and kept on running into the same stranger time after time? These coincidences always startle me by their exact preciseness and total meaninglessness at the same time.

Today there was this girl that caught my attention because I liked the way she dressed. She reminded me very much of some Berlin Mitte girls but in a very modest, down to earth version. I am talking about this pretentious unpretentiousness, this voluntarily carelessness about dressing. An overstated understatement, if you know what I mean. Pieces that seemed to be thrown together without any second thought but which correspond surprisingly well, and it feels as if it is only you who can see the stylishness, because she seems to be completely oblivious to it. It is like this kind of style I saw on fishermen in Thailand or rural women on the streets of Bangkok and here as well, the African women are sometimes incredibly stylish in a very ethnic way. But this girl was neither over nor understated. She was just stated. Completely unpretentious and aware at the same time.

I saw her on the market in Franschhoek where she chatted with one of the shop ladys in Afrikaans. I saw her an hour later at a different place where she handed out flyers for an art exhibition. She gave me the flyer and explained what it was about. I didn’t tell her that I liked her style. Again later, another place, she walked past while I was sitting in a cafe’. She almost brushed my chair. Three seems to be the magic number of these random encounters.

There were also three men to whom I refer as the fat men, though only one of them was actually fat. We passed them while they were sitting in a restaurant, eating. There was a lot of salad on their plates, that made me wonder. Later they passed me on the street talking loudly and the fat guy said, “at least now I know, what I can expect from her”. They got into a a fancy car, the fat guy climbed into the back. That made me wonder too, because there was much more space in the front. While they drove away I noticed it was a BMW. I pay a lot attention to cars recently, since we were wanting to buy one for such a long time. Again later, on our way out of town, at the petrol station while I was waiting for the car to be filled, I saw them walking past. All three of them and there was nothing, no shops or anything, no reason to walk around at all. Especially when you have a fancy car. Made me wonder again.

On the road to Franschhoek

Early morning fog

Tweewaterskloof Dam

Franschhoek High School

Tree

An Ex-Presidents car

House

Franschhoek

All my Treasures

I don’t posses much. I moved so many times all over the world and never carried much. Everything we moved, we moved in suitcases. A lot of things had to stay, got lost or are buried in boxes in someone’s cellar.
There are only a few treasures that are valuable to me, and I know I can only keep those peaces that fit into a suitcase.

I love this postcard. I have it for a very long time. It always meant Heimat to me, the first years when I lived in Berlin and it still does. Even I am not from Switzerland, but I am from Bavaria and I grew up next to the mountains. Now I live close to the mountains again. Tiny mountains though. Compared to the Alps. The funny thing is, I didn’t get the joke for quite a time and when I realized it, I liked it even more. For those who don’t get it either: The mountain on the picture is the famous Matterhorn.

My husband brought these stones from Dyer Island, an Island where penguins live and bread under observation and protection of the nature conservation. No one is allowed to go there, but our friend Lauren is a Penguin Forscher and she took him one day. These stones are completely smooth, polished by penguin feet and asses for years.

This is a drawing of myself (not very flattering) by great artist Martin Kippenberger. He made it one night at the Paris Bar. My friend A. studied with him and every time he came to Berlin, he came to see Kippenberger. A. stayed at my place and therfore he took me to the Paris Bar oder Exil, where he met with K. The evenings where exciting but became quite ugly almost every time, when everybody was very drunk and K. ended up insulting people. Usually there were a lot of people around him. The night he made that drawing it was only us and B.
K. also made a drawing of B. and when he handed it over to him, B. couldn’t believe it and asked: Is this for me? Can I keep it?” As an answer K. took the picture, crumpled it into a ball, threw it away and said: “You Galeristen, all you think about is money”. B. immediately got on his knees and crouched under the table to get his picture.
I am still pondering on the meaning of the sentence he wrote on my drawing: “Frauen können weil sie wissen gut sein.” Women can be good because they know.

I will update my treasures on a regular basis on a specific my treasure site that you will find under pages on the sidebar.

Proteas, Pond, Guavas and Puppies

Autumn is beautiful. It is still warm, almost hot. Summerish. Only the light is soft and the days are short. There is this hint of Wehmut in the air, the end of summer, but still there are flowers blossoming and even as the vine and some trees loose their coloured leaves there is always enough green left. Not like Berlin, where in winter the city fades away into a rainy mud-grey.

Our friend Andries farms these beautiful proteas and exports
them to England. Look out for them!

The birch “hedge”

We have three huge guava trees and tons of guavas rotting so
dahin, because nobody wants to eat them

The pond

Still looking for loving homes!