Running Shoes

A few weeks ago, Sven finally bought himself a new pair of running shoes. It is very difficult for him to find shoes, because of his big feet. They are size 48 or 14. When our children were little babies, they had their beds in one of his shoes, because we were too poor to afford a proper one.

Usually shoes are only available to size 46 or 12. So he was overexcited having found this new pair (on the right). He took the fotos to mail them to our dear friend Ludger, who’s feet are almost as big and who gave him his last pair of shoes (on the left and below) 7 years ago. They are gone now, but I think they served their purpose more than well and until their very last breath.

Family Life

After Anton has spent the last two days at home because of a strong headache that occurred primarily shortly before he went to sleep and especially in the morning when he woke up, Luzie took a day off to catch up with her school projects. One about Malawi and the other one about Robert Sobukwe, founding leader of the Pan Africanist Congress.
She had little breakdowns from time to time which brought Sven to the edge of his nerves, who had to finish a radio play.

While I had breakfast in the sun to warm up, I discovered this little path, made by our animals in the garden.

Later these children in their school uniforms knocked at the door to ask for permission to pick the fruits from our trees, which are yellow and very sour and I forgot the name.

Miss Selfrighteous

Today I was again the bad guy. The really bad guy. I am again confronted with myself confronting people in a not so friendly way, because I can get very upset and when I am upset I can hardly control my feelings and so I upset the feelings of people who upset me.

It doesn’t happen often and maybe this is the reason why I have difficulties to get too close to people, because if I see something wrong it is hard for me to hold back and I can not really discern whether it is controlling or caring, but most of the time there is a caring aspect, even when it comes across quite controlling. And selfrighteous.

I have a very limited imagination. I can’t even imagine to ever eat again when I am full, and after a hot and sunny day I am almost startled when it is rainy and cold. How should I imagine how other people feel? Most of the times I am not even trying, because I know I will fail. I believe things that work for me also must work for others.

It irritates me and I want to see myself clearly. I know I have little empathy. And my homeopath once told me I lack grace. That is true. Aber woher nehmen, wenn nicht stehlen? Where to get from and not steal it? I am praying for it, but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough.

I am not very compassionate, nor understanding. I try to be more tolerant, but I can’t hold back because it makes me sick. What I obviously have to learn is to confront people in a loving and understanding way. To get my heart right first.

I hate to know that I didn’t do things right, that I failed, that I could have done much better. I am not even a perfectionist. I am confused not knowing what is right or wrong, but I am getting more at ease that it is ok to mess up, admit my mistakes, try to learn and hope to do better next time.

Wishful Thinking

After the last few beautiful hot summer-days, today was a cold, windy and overcast day. I already forgot that it could get cold so I didn’t bring a jacket when we drove early in the morning to Kleinmond, because the girls had a netball match again and the school needed a driver.

I had imagined a nice stroll at the beach but it was freezing, so we did it the South African way: we sat in the car and looked at the sea. Two surfers were out and we saw a whole whale family waving their tails at us.

After 30 minutes sitting and watching, Sven considered to get out in the surf on his body board. I told him it was already too late because we had to pick up Luzie in 10 minutes time and he was cross with me that I crossed his plans, wanting to believe he could have made it easily in time.
I told him it will take him at least 5 minutes to get into his wetsuit, another 5 minutes to get to the beach, same time back or even longer because he has to shower and to dry, and the guys on their surfboards caught only one wave in this half hour we were watching.

Only yesterday we were talking about people who always tell you how stressed they are and at the same time they are always late and most unreliable. Sven admitted that he used to say that he would be there at a certain time, just because he wanted to. This was a big issue between us because I have got an inbuilt clock. I can wake up without alarm, I know exactly when to leave the house to be somewhere at a certain time, I know how long things take. Now I do my own estimation of when he will be back and don’t rely on what he tells me. He calls me pessimistic and I call him unrealistic. Fact is: I am right, this time.

If you look really hard you can see a whale-tail. About in the middle of the picture.

The sky and the light were so beautiful. They changed every second. I can’t get tired to look at the sea on those days. It’s my favorite light.

Loosing Myself

Sven found our video tapes the other day and I looked through all of them. The kids dancing in our Berlin apartement, on rollerblades on the Gendarmenmarkt, Luzie missing her upper front teeth and so much blonder than now. 5 years ago, before we moved to South Africa.

I enjoyed going back in time but it also made me sad. I thought it was because these children are gone forever, these times will never come back, but I also remembered how desperate I was at that time. I saw all these happy moments on camera, the beautiful children, summer in berlin and remembered I wasn’t really there. In my memory, I am absent and I remembered how much my life was determined to wait for something to happen: A new book, a new place to live, the children to get well again, winter to finish, summer to start, the children to grow up.

It seemed as I was always at a place where I was not. Was not or if not. If only… I could be happy, if not… I would feel much better. I had an overwhelming feeling of regret not having enjoyed every moment, realizing how happy they were and that they will never come back. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy my life, we had a great time together, but my underlining feeling was that of being somewhere else in my mind, not being where I should be, not enjoying what I should have enjoyed as much as possible. I worried too much. I looked into the future or into the past while I missed the moment.

It was painful to realize that, but it is also freeing to know that I live differently now, that I have learned to be in the moment and appreciate more what I have.
It was so sad looking back and realizing what I actually had and how little I was able to enjoy it. What a waste. At the same time I was grateful for everything I have right now and I told my husband how much I love him and appreciate him and I know how much he missed me in all these years where I withdrew myself.

Life now feels so much more real to me, I feel soaked, drenched with life. I stopped waiting for things to happen and I think it is because I came out of my snail house, where everything was about me and where I thought I had to take refuge to not loose myself, and instead opened myself as I never did before. And taking the risk of loosing myself, I did find life.

Scary Memories

The weather is great. It is almost summer-hot. I spent a lot of time outside.
Our dear friend Olga was here for the weekend. We had a great candlelight dinner with friends, fresh fish and wine, and Michael read his poems and even I never enjoyed poetry, I was taken to a different place by his words and they became real. Magic.

On Sunday morning, O. and I went for a long walk and we talked about parents. I told O. that I stopped having a relationship with my parents when I was 16. We still had polite conversations every now and than, but they didn’t know what was going on in my life. Now they still bring out the rebellious teenager in me, because I had to continue from where I stopped. Maybe that is the reason why it takes me so long to grow up.
O said, how can we expect our parents to understand us if we don’t share, and we should make peace with the idea that they don’t agree with everything in our lives, because they see things differently.
It is difficult not to hold on to the things they did wrong, but to see the good and to remember they only have the best intentions, even they might not come across like that.

When we went home we bought ourselves pies for brunch. And a quiche for everyone. Only Anton was at home and he was also hungry and he doesn’t like quiche. He was disappointed that we didn’t bring him a pie, and I thought, well he didn’t go for walk, so he doesn’t get a pie. My Prussian work ethos came through: Wer nicht arbeitet soll auch nicht essen.

We sat outside and ate our pies and Olga said, don’t you think we should get him one? Just imagine he will hold that against you, many years from now.
I jumped up immediately and apologized and asked him, if we should get him one and he said yes please, and we did.

Olga said, she still remembers when she had asked her mom to bring her a chocolate milk or something from the shop and her mom came home and she went through the bag in anticipation and there was no chocolate milk. She was so sad, that she went into her room and cried. Her Mom came and took the chocolate milk out of her handbag, where she had hidden it, and gave it to her.

Scary which seemingly unsignificant moments a memory can hold. I’ll better start forgiving my parents, so I will be forgiven. I still believe I have a chance as a mother as long as I am willing to admit every time I have made a mistake and apologize to them. At least, that is all I can hope for. Please forgive me for not buying you a pie!

Truth Hunter

I woke up tonight with the sentence: I am a truth hunter. A truth collector.
I don’t remember the exact words. I didn’t write it down, because it was so clear that I thought I wouldn’t forget it.

But it is true. This is what matters most to me. This is the purpose of everything I do. Finding truth. Collecting pieces of truth, looking for them wherever I go and putting them together like puzzle pieces, hoping one day the picture will be complete. And what a picture this will be. That’s what my life is all about.

Nothing gives me more joy than finding truth. Nothing leaves in me in greater desperation than walking in the dark, not knowing right from wrong.

Maybe this is the reason for my “fiction crisis”. I am still searching for a way to put truth into a made up story.

That night I had another dream: Sven came into my room and walked with his big, dirty boots across my sacred carpet, leaving heaps of sand. As I mentioned it to him, he didn’t care at all. It’s true. So much about fiction.

The Ramification of Procrastination

I finally filled in my vocabulary book. I started to write down the words I don’t know and looked them all up today. I know, it sounds boisterous (angeberisch) and I hope you don’t find that repugnant (abstossend) but I am quite proud of it.
The other resolution I followed through is to carry a notebook around and to write down every thought or insight that seems important to me. At the end of the week (I am at week two now) I went through my book and told Sven what I had learned. You know already, because I wrote it here.

It is enthralling (spannend) and invigorating (anregend) and creates indelible (unauslöschliche) memories. But it is also a sort of procrastination (Hinauszögern), because I sheer (ausweichen) to do the writing I am supposed to do. Hopefuly without insinuating (böse) ramifikations (Konsequenzen).
Now I used almost all my new words and haven’t got any left.

Honor your Parents

Today was a beautiful day again. The air was warm, no wind, very mild, not the typical crisp sea air. Soft and gentle and the smell sweet with a hint of fire. How I love this smell. I wish I could post it. It smelled like Thailand.

K. told me about the healing course she was doing last night. It was about honoring your parents. In Ephesians 6 it says: “This is the first commandment with a promise: If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you and you will have a long life on earth.” This is a promise!

No matter how good or lousy your parents were, you must honor them, because everything you will hold against them will come back in your own life as an unresolved issue. For example if they disappointed you in a way, people will keep disappointing you in that area or you will perceive them doing it even if they don’t.
This is the relationship of all relationships you have to get right, before the rest of your life will become right. That makes complete sense to me.
The good news is, that even when they messed up, you can still heal by forgiving them. Instead of blaming them.

Found this one-night teahouse in a book I bought the other week. It is called Space Craft. Fleeting architecture and hideouts. Such a great book. Only at home I realized it was German. From Die Gestalten Verlag. Germans are great!

The German in Me

What I love about Cape Town (huhu Taschi) is city next to nature. The city ends and the mountain starts. The ocean on one side and the mountain at the other. You just walk out of the city into the mountain. Or into the sea.

We spent a beautiful quiet week-end on the country side. Met long missed friends, looked at self-made cob-houses and enjoyed the spring.

On Sunday I got unrationaly upset about something. I couldn’t stop talking about it, even in bed. Sven was slowly dozing off while I was still talking to him, he mumbled “maybe it has got something to do with you” and started snoring, while I was still turning the thoughts in my head upside down.

I had a great picture for unpleasant thoughts though, the other day. I would take them and throw them into a big black dustbin and put the lid on top. I would watch the thought rageing in the dust-bin, banging and jumping up and down until it finally calms down and than there is peace.

But this was different because it really bothered me and I had to figure out what I had to do. If I would tell that person that she was wrong or not. I hate doing that. I hate confronting people and because I hate it so much I thought it might be something I should do.

It was still there the next morning. I went for a walk on my own because that it the best way for me to clear my thoughts, and the whole way I held a speech. All these arguments came up and they seemed so right and convincing. I was on fire when I came home, couldn’t wait to fire my speech and suddenly I could see with a clarity I never had before, that I had held the speech for myself. I had to convince myself about this issue. Sven was right, it was all about me.

I laughed out loud. Immediately I felt peace and again understood I can only get myself right. I hope the right and wrong issue is finished for now because I almost got paranoid thinking about being wrong.