Ponette.

If you've never seen this film, I urge you to do so. But be warned - you better have a big box of tissues ready... I double dare you not to cry for and along with that little girl. How they got four-year-old Victoire Thivisol to act like that is simply beyond me!

Bread and tulips.

A cold, crisp, sunny Saturday, blue skies,
coffee, a walk along the river and a chat with a friend,
buying warm, fresh-from-the-oven bread and a bunch of red tulips on the way home, walking, flowers in your arm, along sun-filled streets
gives you a sense of sophisticated, feel-good, well-adjusted self-suffiency in manner of Meg Ryan in "You've got mail" or similar.

Balancing bread and tulips on top of a load of laundry that you're carrying up three flights of stairs to dump them, the washing and your coat in the middle of the pandemonium that is your flat
= sliiiightly less sophisticated.

...über den Fluss.

...so oft gehn die, die noch nicht weggehn wollten...

Der mit dem Hoffnungsglück.

Die vergangenen drei Morgen waren trotz allem Chaos in mir drin recht friedlich und malerisch und verlangen, wie ich finde, nach einer Portion Erbauungsliteratur. Soll ja keiner sagen, dass der Deutsch-LK damals keine Spuren hinterlassen hat...


"Schon verloschen sind die Stunden,
hingeschwunden Schmerz und Glück;
Fühl es vor! Du wirst gesunden;
Traue neuem Tagesblick...


Wunsch um Wünsche zu erlangen,
Schaue nach dem Glanze dort!
Leise bist du nur umfangen,
Schlaf ist Schale, wirf sie fort!
Säume nicht, dich zu erdreisten,
wenn die Menge zaudernd schweift;
Alles kann der Edle leisten,
der versteht und rasch ergreift...


Tönend wird für Geistesohren
schon der neue Tag geboren."

Goethe: Faust II, I, 1

Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus.

"We're all out of hope, I'm afraid", Pandora cried.
"Oh, and how do I get all this evil crammed back into the jar?"

* * * * *

This morning I was still lying comfortably in bed, pondering whether to just turn over for another hour, when - unannounced and most certainly unbidden - the monster under the bed blinked, yawned copiously, stretched its slimy tentacles, smacked its lips and crawled out of its lair, looking for trouble. We eyed each other warily for a couple of minutes as we usually do. But, unusually, it didn't blink first and retreated, nor was it to be appeased by the prospect of plenty of dust bunnies to play with (or chase and torture, if you will) back under the bed. The monster was bored and hungry for a few frayed nerves of mine and not to be brought around.
Bad news, that. But long overdue I guess.

So I eventually faced the unfaceable, did the undoable and touched the untouchable. Untouchable piles of paper, that is. About 13+ of them sprinkled about my flat - desk, shelves, kitchen table...

See, the obvious Plan A (i.e. simply tidy the whole sorry mess up and file away properly the important/useful things in neat, orderly folders for school, university, insurance and other bureaucratic stuff resepctively, then never allow similar pile-forming ever again) was simply so, so, so impossible to embark upon!
The mere thought of going through those paper mountains and not finding that one most important lost-presumed-dead "document upon which my ever graduating hangs" among them has proven horror-inducing and caused heart racing, stomach-clenching petrification...

Because of all that I had come up with a Plan B, and a straight-forward but marvellous one at that. I would simply not touch those stacks of horror. Instead I would pile stuff on top even higher, thus causing (in the very very long run, admittedly) the pressure and weight from the top layers to compress and condense the lower layers until they would finally turn into coal and crude oil.
Ingenious plan, I know. True masterminding.

But somehow the world around me doesn't seem ready for that much innovation and stubbornly insists on its old ways and on my coming up with said document (I won't even tell you what it is, it's too sad. Suffice to say I'm the world's biggest eejit.)
So here I am, three-quarters through those 13+ piles, after 4 hours of meticulously uncovering layer after layer archeologist-style, piece of paper after piece of paper with a symbolic little brush. And that one most priced piece of paper is not among them.
Which I suspected all along.
And, yeah, sure, you'll say that something doesn't just disappear. That it's bound to turn up, that it has to be there 'cause you wouldn't have thrown it out, would you?
No, I certainly would not. At least not knowingly. But things have got lost and stayed lost in the past, so I'm humbled by precedence.

Anyone any good at coming up with a Plan C (which obviously encompasses the persuading of university personnel to issue the bloody document again. Huh, fat chance! Think blue moons, camels and eyes of needles.)?


Oh, and what do I do with those 22 new, albeit very well-assorted, piles I created in the course of this morning's quest???

Do what you must do...

Long days,
even longer days ahead,
work piled so high that it seems almost useless to start at all,
a sore neck,
a twitchy eyelid,
palpitations even when lying down (especially then, really),
the head having no influence whatsoever over the body
once the body decided to be a big, fat drama queen.
And all over nothing.

So, time for bed I guess.
(And I've been meaning to watch that Doctor Who series with David Tennant anyway...)

...Und wie sieht's da aus!

Ich würd ja 'n Lied oder 'n Blogeintrag schreiben über diese meine verkorkste Persönlichkeitsstruktur. Die mit dem flauen Gefühl im Magen und dem zuckenden Augenlid und der absoluten Unfähigkeit, Dinge, die anstehen, einfach mal anzugehen. Aber wozu, wenn doch der Rainald schon alles gesagt hat?

Simplify your life!
(hysterisches Kichern...)

In den Schnee geschrieben.

Soso. Weihnachten ist also schon wieder vorbei.
Schade.
Sch(n)ee war's.


Dann bleibt dem grinsenden, verschneiten Pferdekopf...

...wohl nichts anderes, als euch allen ein fröhliches, gutes, neues Jahr zu wünschen.

Eins mit vielen bunten Farbklecksen im blassen Alltag,

reichlich Zeit für Erlebnisse dieser Art

und am Besten völlig frei von welchen, wo man sagen möchte: "Ha, du..."

(Wie es meine Schüler geschafft haben, mir in diesen Vorgarten in meinem Heimatort zu folgen, bleibt ein Mysterium...)

Na dann, auf geht's!
(Sprach's und klickte auf youtube.)

Seals and angels.

So we had a fair bit of snow over the holidays. Which reminded me a) what fun it is to make a snow angel in an untouched field, b) how utterly impossible it is to get up again from said field without spoiling the angel and c) how long it takes to defrost a wet, frozen backside. Ah, the price of art!


I also got a bit obsessed with icicles. I took at least 30 more photos of just these. Which taught me once more just how much better than any camera the human eye is. Or just how inadequate the duo Camera/My Photographic Abilities is when up against the unbeatable dream team Beauty of Nature/Human Eye, depending on the point of view.


I think these are my favourites. If the roots look like this, what will the whole icicle tree be like?



The holidays were also filled with roaring tigers and lions, giggles and laughter, jigsaws and picture books. And once all the horses had alighted from the bus, they eagerly proceeded to join the rhino on its pilgrimage to follow the big and the small seal on their adventures. (I suppose the sheep was dragged into the whole thing involuntarily. It doesn't like swimming in polar water methinks.)


So, say your prayers that 2011 will be filled with days (or at least countless moments) as peaceful as this!