on the art of writing and eating haribo smurfes.

my friend julia told me on skype the other day that i was very funny after i made some sort of clever remark and she burst out laughing. that was nice to hear. i trust her judgment above most; definitely more than my own and lately i have not been feeling very funny. i have not been feeling very ... anything at all really. most days i would prefer to stay in bed and once i am out of bed i would prefer to be back inside or at least have a blanket with me that i can pull over my head. not that there is a good reason for it, because everything is just freakin' fine.

the past month has been rough. while my dad is recovering nicely and i managed to get from feeling freaked out and completely overwhelmed to pretty normal, i now struggle to get from feeling okay to feeling excited. excited about what? well, to tell you the truth i am not picky at the moment, i would like to feel excited about anything really.

yesterday was the first day i was getting somewhat excited about writing again. i didn't exactly have a writer's block, but i was definitely unenthusiastic about writing the last few weeks. but now i had to get down and dirty as i had some assignments long overdue for the travelettes. i found my excitement while writing about the khmer rouge and the killing fields and while that is undoubtedly a bit weird to get excited about, i was happy to have the mojo back. and though it may sound even weirder, i think i wrote one of my best stories yet.

now i feel like all i want to do is write. funny stories, sad stories, fragmented words, coherent dreams. okay, well i don't think i ever had a coherent dream in my life, but you know what i mean. i write right now after too much rosé, i think about sentence structure in the shower, and i felt happiest today when i wrote a little blog post for my company in german. yes, me, happy to write in german! i know it is unheard of, but seeing my fingers fly over a keyboard is the only thing that has brought me some level of positive emotion lately.

i never really told anyone but i was supposed to do nanowrimo in november. that is basically an online program with an online community that anybody can sign up for who has the plan to write a book.

i hate to admit it, but yes, i am one of these bloggers - i want to write a book. there is a handful of people who read all my stories and who keep on telling me that i should write a book. complain to them, but for some silly reason i eventually started to believe it. yeah...i'm a sucker. the only thing that has kept me so far is my own lack of discipline and nothing else. so i thought nanowrimo was the perfect outline to help me get organized and commit to writing 50.000 words in november come rain or shine. well my november came with my dad almost dying and that made me less productive than sunshine and no wind on a saturday afternoon.

i already had had a post planned about my workstation at home. then i adapted and prepared a post showing you my newfound workstation which was a fancy desk at my radisson hotel room. but i realized that all i could manage to do was to eat wiener schnitzel from room service and haribo smurfes and of course wash both down with copious amounts of wine while watching gute zeiten, schlechte zeiten. all i wrote in two weeks was text messages to my sister, my brother, and my three best friends and sometimes even these were copied and pasted.
i wasn't able to do anything else and i felt bad for it. i felt worse for it, because i had signed up and tried and realized i couldn't cope. maybe some people can find an input, an inspiration in absolute misery. i think it would actually be quite great. but that wasn't me. my book wants to be funny and witty and clever. it will need the right kind of light inspiration. seeing as my fingers are flying right now, maybe it needs to be wine fueled, maybe it needs cape town sunshine, and wind that drives me a bit mad.
i am actually not sure yet. but i know it will come when the time is right. till then i will enjoy eating smurfes and just be happy that my dad and i both coped, even when there is no funny story to prove it.

the story of how i killed my fridge with stillness.

i'm not particularly good at sitting still. this is one of the reasons why i never go to the movies and why i don’t meditate. i have tried a few times unsuccessfully to do it and still body and my mind. i either end up with roaring back pains which seems to make the semi-still mind not very worth it or i fall asleep when i attempt to do it lying down. bikram yoga was probably made for people like me as it is also called a moving meditation. however even with all the movement, my mind still manages to go elsewhere; think about cupcakes or how cute the boy behind me is and how i should pull in my tummy  more or how i envy the girl in front of me because she doesn’t have a tummy to pull in. so all in all not very meditative either, but at least i’m working up a sweat.

on sunday i came out the shower to find my yoga mat on the floor drenched in sun and i had the sudden urge to just sit still for a moment and also drench myself in sunlight. even though the german in me is enjoying the cold and the rain and uses the weather as reason to stay gemütlich inside, the sunlight appealed most to me about the idea to sit on my floor and do nothing. i needed sunlight on me immediately. i am not sure if it deserves the term meditation yet, but i enjoyed sitting quietly for about 25 5 minutes, didn’t mind my wet hair dripping and had fewer thoughts than i thought i would. overall it made me feel quite peaceful and just when i started to rethink my whole approach of meditation-is- stupid-and-for- eremites-in-caves-who-have-nothing-better-to-do-only, the fridge died. i basically meditated the fridge kaput. so much meditative energy  coming out of me and boom! – electricity tripped, me still and fridge still. great.

i conclude: meditation – good for you, bad for your home appliances. just like the bacon which set my oven on fire last month.

Sunshine soaking.

With all my recent moping about pretty much everything, I realized today that actually I’m very easy to please. It doesn’t take much to make me silly happy.

It takes 5 to be exact:

1. A really yummy sandwich. Which I got from Dear Me where I finally ventured today. After being a tad bit disappointment that they couldn’t seat me, I decided to take my sandwich for a picnic lunch. Bresaola, gruyere, and pickles – which I almost asked them to remove, luckily I didn’t! – on rye. I don’t understand why not every sandwich can be this good. It was so good that it almost didn’t survive the drive to the picnic lunch location as I was taking a huge bite at each red robot. 

Isn't it pretty? Luckily it made it till picture taking time.

2. A cute guy, who looks like the guy from Lost, driving in the car behind me who a) wears cool Aviators b) drives a really beat up Fiat (I am a sucker for guys in crappy cars, drive a Z3 and I’m already less interested) and c) bought The Big Issue.

3. Driving with my window open, singing along very loud to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream and then seeing the Quaggas at Animal Camp.

4. Sunshine-soaking. Term of the day, speaks for itself.

5. Gardening. Or my version of it. Strolling through and having my picnic lunch in a garden. Found the perfect spot at the gardens of Hohenort Cellars in Constantia. More sunshine and also soaking up good green energy as the trees gobble away any negative. The term comes from my aunt Kathy, who tells me the trees gobble whenever we go to the forest. What can I say other than gobble away! It’s working.

As per usual macro shots for Marie.

Picnic lunch spot for Schildi and me.

Part 2: Tales of the weather.

Bad Hersfeld

Your average mid-Germany mix of sun, snow and everything in between. Mind you, one time it snowed so much that I managed to lose my neon pink gym bag on my way to school in a snowstorm and it was never seen again after. I must ask my mother some time: What was she thinking to let me walk in this weather?

New York

The time of the big black out comes to mind when my friend was doing Bikram yoga in our lounge as it was about 40 degrees without air conditioning. Or the time I was stuck in crazy cat guy’s flat, because there was so much snow. Or how August in NYC is still the best smelling month ever to me, though everyone who has been will call me crazy for it.

Cape Town

You know these rainy days when you just want to cuddle up in bed, watch movies, eat chocolate and not leave the house at all? In Cape Town they are usually spoiled by some sunshine coming out sooner or later making you feel guilty for not spending the day outside. When my aunt has a day like that she will refer to the sunshine as the yellow piggy, I will simply be thankful for my heavy, dark curtains and the knowledge that there is never a shortage of more sunny days just around the corner.