Defeated

As a friend reminded me last week, it has been close to a year that I have not blogged on this blog. My excuse so far has been that I wanted to finish the last days of my travel blog first and never seem to get around doing so. But that is really just an excuse, though not far fetched, as I am a skilled master of the art of standing in my own way.

But I think the reason I have not written lies much deeper and it struck me this week that the truth is, I feel defeated and I feel so down on me and my life that I feel like there is nothing to write. No, actually, there is a lot to write, but it is all negative and who wants to read that anyway. I advise you to stop reading any further and if you do so, you do at your own risk. But I don’t want to talk things up anymore and hide my feelings and pretend everything is marginally okay. I am being candid.

I have been reading a lot lately, the best diversion there is, escaping into the worlds painted by other people, some very skilled ones and some not so much. But I have not been able to even write a short review of anything I read. I have a graduate degree in literature for crying out loud and I cannot write a few sentences about a book? Quite baffling. I could write a brilliant thesis, but not some f...ing little review? Doubts are creeping in that maybe, possibly I might not be capable of any original thoughts at all? All my life I really just wanted to be a writer and yet I do not write. I am too afraid to fail, too afraid that the assessments of my teachers and professors regarding my talent in writing were somehow misguided.

So here I am not doing anything with my life. I gave up my chosen career of writing for the radio for my own misguided reasons and moved to this country and since then had nothing but great ideas and feeble attempts. I find myself having reached a midlife full of self loathing. I cannot stand living in this seemingly shallow and meaningless suburbia, where we pretend everything is fine when the world is really a catastrophe. Or maybe I really hate even more that my own life is devoid of meaning.

When my children were both denied services at school last spring - after all smart children with handicaps are not worthy of help, they can muddle through well enough and school is only accountable for getting the bottom kids up - it felt like a huge blow. I had to put all my books and papers and research away and just forget about it as much as possible. But somewhere inside me it festered and my anger and resentment cannot be forgotten. The moment of failure to get help for my children has strangely been a pivotal moment for me.

Since having children, my life has mostly consisted of keeping them healthy and functioning as much as possible. Most of my energy have been spent on this. I have read so many books and articles and posts, I have been to workshops and acquired quite some knowledge regarding anything in the direction of Asperger, ADD, Sensory Processing Dysfunction, mood disorders in kids, difficult children, spirited children, fussy children, negative children... you get the drift. I know special education law, I know how to survive a baby that does not stop screaming, a child that can go into respiratory distress any moment... I know I could have done a worse job, I am not sure if I could not have done a better one. For a decade I was a pretty good advocate for my children and the hope to get help and to make things better were enough motivation. Supporting my children and working so hard to make them function well enough brought us to the point that they were denied help. Oh the irony of fate. This little, tiny meeting was enough though to deflate hope and motivation. Since that day, I have not been the same, it is like something inside me broke. I cannot explain why this small detail brought down the whole house of cards. Maybe I was just tired of pushing and holding it up?

I think there is another dimension contributing to the feeling of defeat. My children get to do all the things I always wanted to do and never got to do. Should this not make me feel so happy? Should I not feel some kind of satisfaction? It does not, because my children are not me and when I watch them having these opportunities, it brings back the childhood desperation I felt when being denied exactly those opportunities. My children are not at fault, but their childhood is the catalyst in bringing back to mind mine. I had a lousy childhood, extremely lonely and filled with anxiety. I was a brilliant child with many talents, but without guidance and opportunities, it got all wasted.

And now I feel like I have wasted my life, the light bulb reached the end of its life and burned out. Apparently too late to develop my talents, midlife hormonal upheaval has now also robbed me of my superior intellect. I am scatterbrained and forgetful, seriously, it feels like there is a bad batch of mashed potatoes sludging around where my brain should be. My emotions are on a roller coaster, I can go between laughing hysterically to non-stop crying faster than a raccoon gets to our cat food. Despite my busy social life, I feel incredible lonely and lost. I don’t know what to do, where to turn and how to keep going. I feel defeated. Because isn’t that what defeat is, being devoid of hope and motivation?

I have no reason for self pity and I don't feel any, do not misread my lines, I am rather cross with myself actually. I know there are many people out there who have reason to bitch and moan and complain. Anyway: here it is, this is why I am not writing, because I am living a gray cloud of defeat and despair, trying every single day to pull myself out of the mud like Munchhausen and failing more with each attempt. So here I sit, on a cloudy February afternoon, staring at the button 'PUBLISH POST' I need to click to publish this and I am not sure whether I really want to invite people to share my view into the abyss of my dysfunctional self.

But what the heck, at least I wrote something.

We are in Germany!

We are in Germany for 8 weeks and will also visit fantastic places like Copenhagen, Prague and Salzburg. Follow us on our travel blog Geremania: http://geremania.blogspot.com/

Between concerts, excursions and talks, no time for blogging

I have been quite busy lately, as somebody noticed on Facebook "You've been off doing some pretty fun sounding stuff lately."

Two weeks ago I went to a Paul Winter solo concert at the Central Connecticut State University and it was quite wonderful and worth the long drive. They moved it to a smaller theater than planned and I was sitting right there in the front and listend not just to the wonderful music, but also his stories about making music in the pitch dark in some park out west or in the Grand Canyon. I was so fortunate to attend another concert a week later called ONE Earth featuring the Orchestra New England and the Paul Winter Consort in Woolsey Hall at Yale University. This was such a treat, the organist from St. John the devine was there playing that amazing organ and Paul Maccandles and Eugene Friesen (yeah :)!) were there as well. It was so neat to hear this music with a whole orchestra, how different and wonderful. I also got introduced to some music by Charles Ives, which I thought was very interesting. Of course we got to enjoy a lot of very lovely music at All Saints in Worcester, J had to sing a lot lately and she loves every moment of it (and so do we). My concert is coming up in just 2 weeks and I was finally able to pick up my voice lessons again.

But music has not been the only fun and interesting thing lately. We had two other meetings of Germans in Massachusetts and there are some really nice people in that group, I am happy I have met them. We are planning a picnic in May and maybe there is a slight chance some of us will meet in Germany this summer. A lot of them live in the northeast corner and so we seized the opportunity and spend a wonderful day at the beach in New Hampshire. Being at the beach makes all of us feel better and I wonder why we hardly ever go. When we moved here, I thought we would be making a run for the shore all the time. We are all looking forward to spend a whole week on the most beautiful island in the North Sea.

I have also been jumping into action with the process of getting help for the kids in school. It is a very difficult thing to have dual exceptions, meaning neurological problems while being gifted. It is hard for teachers to see that these children need help, they seem to do fine, but at to high a cost emotionally. I joined multiple organizations and online groups and I went to yet another whole day seminar on special education law and even though I went home with a head swimming in paragraphs and laws, I think I did learn a lot, espescially how to interpret test scores, which is not straightforward, but very important. Tonight I will attend a talk about Asperger Syndrome and the whole body, which is also a very important topic and just thinking about it reminded me how I need to put much more thought into S's sensory diet, which we have been neglected since we stopped occupational therapy. Almost everybody in this family is seeing some kind of therapist, so there are a lot of books to read, things to learn and new approaches to be tried. Sometimes it is hard for me to keep my sanity in all this, but I try.

The struggle to be happy has been with me all my life and that is not surprising if you know about my strange life. I hope to gain some insight this weekend, since I am going to see the Dalai Lama for two sessions at Foxborough. Yes a stadium is an awful spot for something so mentally important, but at least I got tickets right up front (not like the U2 concert in Septemer, which will be more a soaking up the atmosphere than really seeing the band itself). Work has always made me happy - go figure - and I have been working like crazy for our school TV show. If this would be paid, our 8 week Germany trip would be less scary, but it is not. Well, I am gaining more and more experience. We have been filming at school almost daily. I went on a fieldtrip this week to Concord/Lexington with the third graders and it was so much fun. Seeing children at my favorite spots while making it into a 30 minute stand alone show, how much fun. And we can put the stop motion stuff into this, because S will do some artwork and we will reenact Paul Revere's midnight ride with paper puppets!

I have also been working on a short film with fourth graders that will be shown at the fourth grade concert in May. Even though this was a tiny in the school production, it is still fun to shoot and edit and come up with a little fun 4 minute film. It seems that lately it has all been about photos and filming and editing and I still find no time at all to write my book. I am constantly working on it in the back of my head and I will have to put some time aside in the fall and winter. I should not even write this, I know that is so silly to write.

Can somebody just give me some more time please, pretty please?

post holiday paralysis and stop motion animation

Instead on writing about my connection to lent, I have been talking with a lot of people about it and have been way to busy to write something meaningful. Now I have this strange kind of after-the-holiday-paralysis, where I should be working on putting the house back in order, finish taxes and take care of things before this week crazy schedule takes off. Last week was nuts in regards to J's singing schedule and having 2 parties to prepare and this week will be equally nuts with me having to lug my cameras and tripods to school for 4 events, one being a real scripted little film I got myself involved in.

So how does this paralysis look like? I spend the better part of the morning hanging out with my visiting MIL talking about this and that and by the time she has to leave, it is past noon. Noon is my cut-off time, if I have not gotten anything accomplished by then, forget it, it ain't gonna happen. I blame this on the protestant work ethic that was hammered into me as a child. Also hammered into me was not to do anything on Sunday and I worked hard yesterday like any mom and hostess on a holiday - so I just consider this my day off, well half of it anyway.

Last night somebody posted a Playmobil stop motion animation on the Playmobil board. Even though the production was not that captivating, it got me interested in what equipment I would need to do this with the kids and so I got into researching it and finding all these cool little videos and since I have a Firewire DV camcorder, I might be all set outside of the software, which is quite cheap. We have so much Playmobil and the kids are very creative, I bet they would love a weekend project like that and I can teach thema bit about project planning, story boarding, camera angles, how film works etc... Maybe we can even work with blue screen (which is usually green nowadays).



This is somebody's first attempt and I think the motion is very well made.



So hopefully sometimes this year the G-Girls can make a fun little stop motion animation video using our plethora of Playmobil supplies. We just need to come up with a fun little story, I am convinced though that it will be something fantasy like.

Maundy Thursday

Sometimes a day just feels different than other days, like there is some significance to it, without being explicit. Today I had such a day. It is Maundy Thursday, the day of the last supper and J was singing at church. I am still wondering why I experienced lent so differently this year, actually experienced it at all. Maybe it is the music, or maybe it is because the full moon is shining while Passover and the holy week an Easter fall together. It feels as if my heart and soul are wide open.

I do not believe in god, I have tried, but I just don't, no matter how much I wish I would. I think it would be wonderful, there would be instant purpose and meaning and so much more hope. Instead I am a sort of existentialist, even if I do believe in more than the apparent world. Still though, going to the service tonight seemed so important and the words had so much meaning. I did not have the usual feeling of being an intruder, or an impostor, instead it felt right. The drama of tonight's service, the music, the movement, the stripping of the altar, the slamming of the cross while turning off all light, of course that all has an emotional impact. This was deepened by the choir singing Ave verum corpus by Mozart (KV618), which I sang in chorus as a teenager and it is very special to me.*

And while I was sitting there in church, listening so closely, it occurred to me why this felt so different. I might not believe in the divine, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, not necessarily as the son of god, but as a charismatic leader and reformer. It always has been strange, because I have always liked church, the rituals, the music, the meaning. I like the social structure it gives, the morals and ethics. I have met so many people who were believers, but wanted nothing to do with church, I also have met so many people that are deeply engrossed in the church and did not really live as very good Christians. For many years when this topic comes up, I have told people that I believe a person can be a good christian without actually believing in god and most people don't understand it. I suppose I see church from a sociological standpoint as a concept and as a way to build community. This probably stems from the way I grew up. I grew up in the parish, the church buildings were my home, the cantor and custodian people I saw daily. Since my mother worked for the church, our life was centered there, yet is was completely devoid of any religious deeper content or connotation. My whole family is as non religious as they get. As a young adult, I became very involved in another church (all Lutheran anyway) and found a wonderful community there, that I still miss. And when I left home for University, it was the university's church group that gave me the same 20 years ago.

When we became parents, we wanted to give our children the chance to find faith and decide on their own what they believe or not, but I got to a point where it did not seem to make much sense anymore. There was no presence of god in our lives, save for some prayers at mealtime and it felt truly wrong to me to participate in the communion and to say I believe in the trinity, which I know to be a man made concept from early church history. I cannot suspend disbelief and I had to stop going to church. There were a couple of other factors that contributed.

But tonight I did feel some sense of belonging, maybe it is because I spend so much time there bringing J to choir, maybe it is that it is not my church and they have no expectations or possibly it is because they welcome everybody with open arms. Whatever it might be, I think I have accepted to be without faith in god and I embrace the believes I do have. So therefore, it has been quite a meaningful day and of course, it was full of music :)

* My friends and me would sing it a lot when out and about - our other two favorites where the Marsaillaise and Ma na ma na from the Muppets and I admit it is a very eclectic mix.

Music and Lent part II: Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen

A few years back, right after Christmas, we were driving from Connecticut back to our home in Pennsylvania and crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge late at night. Our radio picked up these deep and ethereal vocal harmonies transitioning between gradual elevation, abrupt changes and returns into complete calm while staying in a consistent mood. There was a tonal quality almost like bells or organ pipes, so pure, not in the sense of innocent, but in it’s perfection. The music transitions between quiet and full, high voices against the dark voices resonating on the bottom. Listening to the powerful and stirring music was an experience of meditation.

I was introduced to the mesmerizing, beautiful and cathartic Kanon Pokajanen by the estonian composer Arvo Pärt, which was commissioned for the 750th anniversary celebration of the Cologne Cathedral in ‘98 and was recorded in Tallinn/Estonia in Niguliste Church by the outstanding Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. It took Pärt two years to write this very long piece that has tremendous meaning to him.

When the human voice transcends something higher, transforms into a pure instrument and the frequencies, the movement and synergy of the voices in a minimalist cacophony create an emotional state which spoke to something so deep within me, something no thoughts can reach. It was like an auditory epiphany. The music conveyed to me a point of connection between earth and heaven, between reality and spirituality, between dark and light and it touched me in a profound and unforgettable way.

Quite often I would listen to it, wallowing in the immense beauty and the feeling of it, but I never tried to analyze it. I had given the CDs to a friend who was interested and she returned them to me and since they were in the car, I started listening again and a lot (driving hours every day). It was as if the music allowed me to be inside it and at the same time was inside me, speaking from the composer’s to my innermost being and I recognized that this music symbolizes and expresses my feelings of repentance and lent. I decided to write about Kanon Pokajanen and started with reading the CD’s booklet, just to find out that the music had told me all along.

The text is based on the canon of repentance of the Russian Orthodox Church and is sung in the old Slavic language. The text was very important to Arvo Pärt, he said: “In this composition, as in many of my vocal works, I tried to use language as a point of departure. I wanted the word to be able to find its own sound, to draw its own melodic line. Somewhat to my surprise, the resulting music is entirely immersed in the particular character of Church Slavonic, a language used exclusively in ecclesiastical texts." What I consider amazing is the because the text is phonetically so foreign to me that I do not hear recognizable words which allows me to forgo my rationale and reach a spiritual depth that allows me to feel and understand the meaning without even attempting to make a connection to the text. When music can speak that universally, it is genial.

From the booklet notes by Marina Bobrik-Fromke: "It is a song of change and transformation. In the symbolism of the church, it invokes the border between day and night, Old and New Testament, old Adam and new Adam (Christ), prophecy and fulfillment, the here and the hereafter. Applied to a person, it recalls the border between human and divine, weakness and strength, suffering and salvation. In the canon of repentance, the text is devoted to the theme of personal transformation. Repentance appears as a necessary threshold, as a kind of purification on the way to salvation in paradise. The difficulty of following the way is shown by the inner tension between the respective eirmos and the following stanzas, that is, between the praise of the Lord and the lamentation of one's own weakness."

There is a very good editorial review by Evan Cater here.

Next: Why is lent so important for an agnostic like me?

Music and Lent part I: Music is my religion

A few posts back I mentioned the brush fire of thoughts regarding lent and music and so here we go with my little series. It became pretty clear to me that music - the highest achievement of humanity in my view - is my religion, since it is close to the only thing that reaches that very deep spiritual spot inside me. I am not sure how to describe this internal place. It is a place of complete harmony, where everything is connected and energy flows, where the physical world stops to exist and gives room to something much bigger. I had a few key experiences when music brought me to this spiritual place, in a way a feeling of total bliss and etheral existance in that moment alone, where everything else falls away.

If somebody would talk about my early childhood, they would probably mention that I seemed to sing and dance through every moment of the day, music was with me at all times. The first time I was deeply touched by a specific piece of music was as a six year old listening to Schubert’s 8th (the unfinished one). Actually my mother had this compilation record that she was playing over and over and introduced me to some fantastic music. It is absolutely ingrained in my brain. One or two years later we went to a concert in our church St. Johannis on Maundy Thursday where Claus Bantzer was playing the organ and I deeply felt the passion of Jesus, it was like a revelation to have experienced such a profound expression in the music and scary as well, because of the depth of the emotion that I had not felt that way before. I kind of grew up in that church, since we lived in the parish house and therefore had the luck that he played at our wedding in that church.

Another musical moment of perfection happened to me on a month long bike trip through Sweden with our youth group. We camped in the yards of the parish houses. In the church building in Sätila at the end of the Lyngern Fjord (the photo is from the Sätila kyrka website) south of Gothenburg stood this brand new wonderful Steinway grand that had been tuned to absolute perfection. I sat there forever and just played a note at a time, listening to it resound and fade and it’s reverberations. The sound was beyond striking the strings with a felted hammer, it was incredible and unforgettable. Later a member of our group - who was a brilliant player and an arrogant prick - could with his harmonies not get the same reaction as just one note had did for me. I am convinced that in order to experience these moments, we need to open our soul all the way to let this indescribable synergy of music in and touch us.

Many years later I threw myself into the youth ministry at one of our churches in the hope to somehow find some kind of faith. Some of my friends and I used to attend Taize* evenings and so I found myself one evening sitting in a circle and the burning light of the setting sun threw itself threw one of the stain glass windows into my face while I was chanting and I had this sudden epiphany, this certain feeling of the existence of something higher and bigger and something that just cannot be put into words, I would not define it as define per se though. I had just lost my god father and uncle and maybe I was just seeking solace, it is hard to say.

I once was on the road to pick up my husband (then boyfriend) and the radio was playing Antonin Dvorak’s 9th (New World) Symphony. I had listened to it many times, but at that moment, it reached much deeper. I had to pull over and stop the car. I sat there in our little red Peugeot in a complete trance and did not even have any thoughts, it was like a meditation, but at the end I was crying and could not stop. It was truely amazing. Isn’t it incredible how art can touch us in these ways?

One of the most influential musicians in my life has been Paul Winter and the first time I attended the solstice concert with the Paul Winter consort in the cathedral St. John the Devine in New York, it was to me like a religious experience. When he came out on the stage and started playing his soprano sax, it hit me. I sat right in front of the stage. What an amazing feeling, I am unbelievably grateful for that. Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen touched me in such a profound way, that I will give it a whole post by itself. And anyway, this post is already a bit too long for a blog entry.

* The Taizé Community is an ecumenical christian monastic order in Taizé in Burgundy/France. The music is chant like with repetitive and beautiful lines (often from psalms), sometimes sung in canon and bringing the singers to a different meditative state.

Second hand children's clothing is illegal

This morning I had the bright idea to stop at a thrift store and look for some high end used kid's clothing, since my muffins are growing so fast. Anybody who knows my children also knows that they always wear cool and funky clothing. I am a very thrifty shopper and can find good deals, but I also rely on second hand clothing through church sales, ebay, garage sales - you name it. This way you can get the best, already broken in and comfy, for a fraction. I am very persnickety about what my kids wear and it is so awesome to find a Ralph Lauren dress for $4, a Hanna Andersson outfit for $5 or a Patagonia jacket for $3.50 (the kids had that for 4 years!)

To my surprise, there was no clothing for children anywhere in the store and upon my asking why, I was told that there are no more thrift stores with children's clothing, because a new law is in effect. I was standing there completely dumbfounded. Not for a second did I question even that there is a law, after all, we need a law for everything, since we all are incapable of thinking for ourselves. For example pyjamas, because there is law that they need to be fire retardent, most sleepwear is made from artificial fiber and just for the fun of it, doused in flame retardent chemicals - I am sure that is great. When made out of cotton, they are made so snug fitting, that only children that are extremely skinny can actually fit in them. My children only sleep in organic cotton pj's that fit them just right and I have to spend a fortune on them. Most children though sleep in big, loose t-shirts anyway and they are all doomed to burn - even though more children die of carbon monoxide poisoning before the flames reach them anyway.

So now I cannot buy cool, used kid's clothing anymore and I also cannot sell huge pile waiting downstairs to be sold... I can also not donate it anymore - all children's clothing will end up in landfills, what a complete waste. This article in the L.A.Times explains it all. And here is a petition to revise or change the law. This law was put in effect because of lead in clothing, which now can only be sold if tested. This also effects small companies making clothing for kids that cannot afford the testing, or people who handcraft anything for children and sell it on etsy, at craft shows or the likes. I am all for removing toxins out of children's clothing, but this law seems to go about it the wrong way.

We live in tough economic times and it does not look very promising for the near future. A lot of families rely on thrift stores, I guess second hand Ralph Lauren pure cotton just won't be available anymore and has to be exchanged for low quality Walmart clothing, fresh from China and still outgasing... this is completely insane and I am really mad! I already wrote an email to Kerry, Kennedy and McGovern and also a real letter and in the meantime I will just buy from ebay in England and Germany then. I just hope that our episcopalian church has not found out about this and I can find plenty of clothing there at their annual sale, because they have this family with children that are just a bit older than mine and we buy all their donated Gap and L.L.Bean seonds.

Palm Sunday, Bach, Venice and Fish Poisoning...

This morning, as any other morning, my alarm clock dutifully woke me up. In contrast to other days though, Sundays are so much nicer, bad news are replaced by lovely music. And oh lovely it was today. Usually I just snooze a few times, but the beautiful music this morning, made me head straight for the computer to find out exactly which Bach piece (that was obvious) I was listening too.

It was the Bach Cantata BWV 182 "Himmelskönig, sei willkommen", which Bach wrote in 1714 for Palm Sunday. It was performed by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists under direction of John Eliot Gardiner. The recording is magnificent and bright, just brilliant, unfortunately rather expensive though. I am contemplating if I should make my own Bach cantata of the month club and study a different one every month. I have always wanted to dive into the works of Bach for a deeper understanding and broader knowledge.


And of course, today was Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, which commemorates the triumphant return of Jesus to Jerusalem before his Passion. Last year on this day, I was in Venice with my mother. We had a little apartment around the corner from the church of Santa Maria Formosa and when we turned onto the church's square, we noticed everybody was preparing for the Palm Sunday Procession with music to the St. Mark's Basilica. Many young men were playing guitars and everybody was holding up palm tree branches and it all felt festive, jubilant, sacred and ritualistic at once. I wanted to watch the procession, rather than participate, so we kept taking parallel paths, which is actually not that easy in Venice and all of a sudden we lost them. But the moment we reached St. Mark's square, they arrived at a different corner and we got to see them all pass by again and make a big detour around the square to march directly into the beautiful Basilica. In a very strange way it felt special to us, because of all the churches in Venice, it was "our" church after all.

We spent some time at the Museum Correr in the Napoleonic Wing until our feet gave out and we proceeded to our highly anticipated visit of Cafe Florian, one of the oldest and probably most expensive cafes of the world and absolutely worth a visit. My tea sandwiches had caviar on them, which I do not care for, but ate anyway. This was rather unfortunate, since it gave me fish poisoning and a gut wrenching night, not quite as triumphant as the procession, just a good story to tell. (Hey, I went to the worlds most exquisite cafe and got poisoned - what are the odds?)

But back to the Bach cantata 182, listen to part V, the alto solo "Leget Euch dem Heiland unter", isn't it very interesting?

A little spark that started a brushfire in my thoughts regarding music and life

If you read the previous post, you already know my new found love with Facebook. So while I was checking what a friend was up to, he had been tagged to write a list of 25 records/CDs that were most influential in his life. I thought that might be an interesting thing to do as well, even though I was not even tagged. So I started compiling my list and of course was completely unable to narrow it down to just 25. As a piece of useful information I might add that it is very difficult for me to put things into a list, to pick favorites to make a rating of one over the other. The problem is, that everything has a different meaning depending on the context. A friend suggested to take out classical music and maybe make 2 lists, but then there are all these cross over genres so to say the least, I was overwhelmed with the task of deciding. Even though I knew I could take some CDs out of the stack, there where also some that were somewhere else in the house and then there were 5 years of iTunes downloads and hundreds of LPs in boxes. So I never did my list, but kept thinking and analyzing.

Then a friend returned Arvo Pärt's 'Kanon Pokajanen' CD to me, a very important piece that would definitely end up in the list and I started thinking about it while listening to it for hours on end. So I decided to write about it, because it represents lent for me and it is lent. Just writing about and analyzing that genial music alone is a huge undertaking. Following those thoughts though came the question why lent is important to me, if I am really an agnostic of some sort. So now I am thinking about my spirituality and my faith, if that is the right word for it. There we have it, I wanted to write a blog entry about a piece and then it became more and more and is turning into this whole essay. Isn't it amazing what one thought about music can do to your brain. I think I need a catchy psa video: "your brain on music". So hopefully within the next days I can start posting this kind of essay piece by piece, day by day, like a series. Anybody got a good title for the series for me?

Why I love Facebook and you should too...

Obviously my blog has been shamelessly neglected. Even though I do find a lot of time just sitting here and waiting to get better, it is relatively hard to have coherent thoughts on valium. But that is not the whole story. I have been cheating on my blog and have spent my time on Facebook. I don't even recall why I did sign up, I just did and in no time got a good roster of friends. Being kind of glued to my back chair, I have spent hours on Facebook and have also pondered the question that is looming inquiring about it's popularity.

There are several reasons why I like Facebook so much. The most obvious is that it is social networking. I used to think that social networking websites are a very sad occurrence of modern life, leaving us even more isolated and contributing to the artificial and superficial components of our life. I have learned quickly that it is not so. I have been way more in touch with people that live around the corner than previously. But I have also reconnected with people in Pennsylvania, California and Germany. Of course I could have just send them a letter or an email, but after years, that is something that is just being put off. It is also very tedious to write many letters about all the same. And when I run into another mom at pick-up time at school, I am not going to tell her something like: "Hey my friend said this to me and then I bought a cookbook and did not want to get up this morning and my throat hurts and did you know I beat somebody at scrabble and then with a glass of wine watched American Idol."

Facebook allows me to participate in the little things of other people's life and vice versa. I do not only directly connect to people, I see their interactions with others and therefore get a much broader view of the web aspect than under conventional circumstances. When I signed up for twitter a few weeks ago and linked it to my blog, I had meant it as an experiment. I was and I still am uncertain of my opinion. Somebody wrote a great essay about it and that it seems so silly that people share these completely inane and uninteresting daily life facts. Even thought fascinated, I did agree with that at first and then it occurred to me within the last days,that this is where the strength is. It is not the extravagant and out of the ordinary things, it is the everyday life of all of us.

When we used to live more communal, with extended family around us and in close contact with our neighbors, everybody kind of knew what everybody was up to and that got completely lost with our modern life styles. This sense of community is brought back by facebook, I get the little details of friends and their friends and I can comment and they can comment. Where twitter is a one-dimensional one task network, Facebook allows about everything. I can play scrabble with my sister in law, or all sort of other games with other friends or play solo, trying to beat their scores. I can send messages, I can see other peoples messages, there are notes and links and tags and photos and videos and fan groups - so just about everything one could think of. It just wraps everything in one and makes it easy for people to be inside the network.

So yes, I am addicted, because I am shown that we all have an interest in each other and that we all care. In this sense Facebook does not isolate us more by only virtually pretending to be linked in, it actually does it. This puts communication on a different level that any other communication outside of really sitting at the kitchen table together, which is not possible with the way we live scattered all over the world.

The only issue I have is with the people that are not on Facebook. They are missing out, they will not know that I bought a Tapas cookbook and that I just beat Sophie at Carcarssonne.

It's very dark in the tunnel!

I have never liked tunnels. I am a person who likes to be in control, I need to know where I am and where I am going, so natural tunnels are not a spot of joy. The whole idea of having tons of water or mountain above you is quite disconcerting to me. I am sure that a lot of people feel this way about tunnels, why else would we have the lovely metaphor of the light at the end of the tunnel. I might be wrong, but I think originally it was really a symbol for our life on earth and the light being heaven. As an agnostic not my an interpretation that fits for me.

I feel like I am in a very deep and long tunnel, maybe a tunnel maze, so who knows if there is a way out. Each time I see a light, it disappears and things seem even darker. When talking to friends, a lot of us feel the same: everywhere we look and listen to, things are bad and keep getting worse. Life like we knew will not be here again. The laundry list of things going wrong in this world is so long, one could write a trilogy and not finish. The economic crisis is weighing on everybody, trying to get by financially, schools loosing funding to the point of absurdity, healthcare being ridiculous, violence and starvation in so many parts of the world, climate going to hell, food being incredibly expensive while lacking nutrients, a general disconnect in many aspects of life... I could go on and on and bore you to death.

My ten year old has anxiety and is stressed, my younger one with AS feels frustrated because she desires nothing more than making friends , my husband feels the burden of having to provide for us in these times and must fear the fate of many around us ( layoffs). My professional life is so tiny, my life as a caretaker gets no validation... you get the drift, we all feel the tunnel and cannot see the life. I am no stranger to anxiety and depression and my best remedy has always been hope, optimism, planning and: music. Now my back problems are so huge, that I had to make the decision not to sing the coming concert with my chorus, this has been a very difficult decision and it has taken away the little light I was seeing, the little Felix (luck) Mendelssohn light somewhere ahead. Of course this is the right decision, my husband has been my compass in this and just laid out the facts. It still feels awful though. At the same time I have to wonder why I am sitting here with my 43 years of life experience and a very big heap of difficulties that I mastered and I cannot stop crying just because I cannot sing in a concert. Maybe there is actually a light and I just cannot see it because my eyes are so wet?

I am not proof reading, editing and constructing this entry, I am just writing it as it is coming out of my finger tips , it is a new experience for me as I am trying to be less of a perfectionist, isn't a stream of consciousness closer to the idea of a blog anyway?

I feel really silly sitting here and crying, when there are a million worse things in the world. It is so selfcentered, something I despise, so then I have to despise myself and cry even more and this is getting so absurd and I actually had to laugh out loud now.

Thanks for listening (in a reading sort of way)

Bowling, the three sentence limit and no kumquats!

For a while there I was doing pretty good with posting on this blog, even though I have to admit that the whole compass thing is not really enough of a focus.

I have learned a few things in the past days. For one thing it is very funny to have a phone conversation while having the hick-ups. Also, two Valium work better than one. Whenever children see therapists, they turn into very mature, reasonable and responsible little citizens making their mother looks like idiots. This country is obsessed with superficial values. Health insurances make medical decisions. If you feel rotten and are in pain, a lot of people offer their help and that feels really great. I wish I had magical powers.

Okay these were all random insights into my the momentary lapse of normalcy in my life. I am banned to the red chair, a zero gravity recliner, that used to be my best friend and now I loathe it as it's use means I feel lousy. So here is the story: My little one has Asperger Syndrome and even though she is amazing and wonderful and extremely bright, she lacks in the friendship department. She has 2 friends and I need to make sure to foster interaction. So when we invite a friend, I try really hard to make it very special and fun. It really is a bit like bribery. So I went bowling with her and her friend and as my mom says, that was STUPID! Apparently it should have been clear to me, that 3 herniated disks and bowling do not mix.


The result has been a heavily medicated, miserable me, sitting in my red chair for almost 2 weeks now. At one point I was in so much pain after a chiropractors visit, that driving the van into the next tree seemed like a pretty good idea, but I got myself home with LaMaze breathing (at least the class was good for something). So when you have nothing to do outside of trying to stay in control as CEO of family by being stationary secretary, it seems like a good idea in theory. Silly me, I thought I could blog away, write a bit on my novel, learn Adobe Dreamweaver, watch wonderful chick flicks, read a couple of books, play carcarsonne with S, mend a mountain of hurt clothing etc... you get the drift. And then I find that the cocktail of meds I am taking, kind of turns my brain to a mushy cloud. And a mushy cloud gives me a three sentence limit, which works wonders on Facebook, but not on Blogger.

I had planned to write this entry with three sentences to prove my point and for some reason made a rather long entry. I am contracting myself, this is confusing. I really wanted to post something about Kumquats anyway, but the computer kept crashing when I wanted to edit the photo for that post. Sometimes I don't get myself, is there somebody out there whi gets me?

Just blame it on the Valium :)

I have not laughed this hard in a while

I am addicted to the Daily Show with John Stewart, nothing better than intellectual, political fun. Watch this clip where Jason Jones talks to a pastor who believes Obama is the antichrist and another who believes he is a second Hitler. It is so absurd that I cannot stop laughing.

Can pants be a mistake of epic proportions?

I am out of commission and cannot move, my medication makes me dizzy, so reading is not really an option, so what do I do: Day time television - ugh, I'd better be sleeping, really. So I happened across this show called 'What not to wear' and I am disgusted. Some people called in the TV crew because they thought their coworker was looking to frumpy. They filmed her secretly and while looking at the footage laughed their head off. The only thing evaluated is what this person is wearing. I cannot stand the attitude of the co-hosts making fun of their victim. She gets brought to New York for a overhaul and she has to throw out ALL her clothing, while she is on the verge of tears, because she loves some of it. She gets some rules explained and has to head out finding clothing for herself. I think this show is unbelievably shallow and stupid, this persons personality, likes and dislikes are thrown overboard, made fun off and she is has to conform to some external norm. Of course the show justifies itself by every people being so happy with their transformation. And if they can stick to the new rules, the hosts are 'so proud', though they have to scaled her for wearing sensible shoes once.

If somebody feels unhappy with their wardrobe and actually wants and seeks advice and somebody who has a good eye and good people skills takes this person shopping, that can be great. I had an optician pick perfect glasses for me that I would never have picked up myself, but that did not include ridicule or ambushes by camera. There is absolutely nothing wrong with make-overs in general. How about collaboration on a clothing analysis instead of shaming people into change and using words but awful, ugly, hideous and laughing stock? Do unflattering pants really fall in the category of 'mistake of epic proportion' or would not the Iraq war fit better into that category?

A show with sensitive nice hosts that really find out who the person is and work out together what lines, silhouettes and colors work, what looks good, but also feels right. I take issue with making fun of people and making a show out of it, validating such shallow behavior. It is not that I cannot see some value in looking appropriate, after all that is the first impression we give to people and there is always some kind of judgment involved. For me it is actually very important what I wear, because it has to do with how I feel. Clothing is an expression of myself and I spend time and money on it, it is my very own unique style though and rather quirky - it is me. I can just picture what these superficial people on the show would want me to wear and I would absolutely hate it, because it would not be related to the person I am inside.

At the moment I am annoyed by beautiful people

As I am sitting here and watching the Academy Awards, I cannot help but think about something that was mentioned in the show "the human face" that I watched on PBS a few years back and saw a bit of it again this week. They were talking about beauty and the golden triangle and one very interesting fact was mentioned. It used to be that when we had relative small and constant social circles around us and no mass media, there would be few 'perfect' people - in the sense of beauty - that we ever would encounter. But with movies, television, magazines and other mass media, beautiful faces surround us everywhere. The problem is that this becomes a norm, a norm that normal people can actually not reach and therefore is rather absurd. This leads to most people feeling inadequate and people go to great length to try to be more beautiful, well at least on the outside. I am very happy that my children so far do not seem to waste even on tiny thought on this, even though there are a lot of children around them who think fashion and fame are very important topics.

I have made a very conscious effort to never show my children any kind of unhappiness that I feel in respect to whatever shortcoming is feel I have regarding my looks. I was raised with a mother that was always dieting, always wanted me to do the same and was who was successfully instilling in me the conviction of being ugly. It was very important to not do this to my children. Of course there is nothing wrong with beauty, beauty is beautiful, what can I say, but when did it become a virtue, something that we need to reward and aspire to? Why is it a value placed about things like integrity, intelligence or creativity? I am actually getting to the point where the multitude of beautiful people is getting annoying. I simply cannot stand the fuss about models, the pretty faces trying to sell you beauty products, the huge interest in what these beautiful people are up to. Why is this so important? I think this is one of the reasons I am so drawn to british television shows, which seem so wonderfully normal and real. Interestingly, while I watch the Academy Awards, it seems that all the people behind the camera just look like very normal people as well, I like that. Well, gotta go back to the show and see how many Oscars 'Slumdog Millionaire' can sweep. What a wonderful movie!

Nutty Vanilla Muffins

This is life, one day it is about death and the other about muffins - the bizarre absurdities of reality. Once I was the queen of muffins and before one could decide what kind they wanted, I already had them done. Never the same and often adventurous, my best sweet muffins were triple chocolate muffins with fresh raspberries, I made them for a picnic in the park while enjoying the Glendale Orchestra and champagne. On the savory spectrum the yummiest is probably the bacon/blue cheese muffin. My children have a new favorite though and I had to make them a few times now: Nutty Vanilla Muffins. Here is the recipe for 24, because I bought this wonderful professional heavy duty muffin pan at the Williams Sonoma outlet.

Mix 2.5 cups of milk, 3 eggs and 1 stick of melted butter and add to a mix of 2 cups whole white wheat flour, 2 cups all purpose flour, 1 cup ground almond, 1/2 cup ground flax seeds, 1 1/2 cups whole hazelnuts, 2 Tbsp baking powder, a good dash of salt, the vanilla of one vanilla bean and 1/2 cup of homemade vanilla sugar*. Don't overmix, fill into (unbleached) muffin papers, about 3/4 full and bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes. They are perfect with a vanilla infused black tea, really!

* I have a jar filled with fine sugar and whenever I scrape vanilla out of a vanilla bean, I put the sticks into the sugar and every now and then I fill up the sugar again. I keep this going for years and it makes amazing vanilla sugar. Vanilla extract works well too, but it needs to be mixed with the liquids. Any form of vanilla works, as long as it is real vanilla and not some artificial flavor.

My uncle

Last week an uncle of mine died. I had not spoken to him in 5 years, since we had a fall out regarding inheritance questions, like many families experience. In the fall, when his bad health was taking a turn to even worse, my mother decided to let bygones be bygones and visited with him. Even though the things of the past were not resolved, it is important she got to see him, as they were very close as children. My mother was just 1.5 years older and felt as his protector. She is holding his hand in the picture below.

My memories of him hark back to my own childhood. He lived with his family upstairs in the house of my grandmother, where I spent a lot of time and consequently upstairs with my cousins. He worked at the local bank, where I sometimes went to visit him and he would take me downstairs and hand me a coke. remember the small greenish glass bottles with the real taste of coke before recipe changes and corn syrup? I liked visiting at the bank, he always had freebies like fantastic ball point pens and all this materials for house and interior design. His workday was like clock work, coming and going precisely and I remember the sound of his steps on the stairs, because his prosthetic leg made a certain noise.

He was not a man of many words, when I would come and visit after having been away at school for a while or maybe a year out of the country, he would mutter something like "ah, back in the area" and that would be it and it would be enough.

My uncle has been quite sick and in and out of the hospital for a while. Strangely, he died on my aunts 60th birthday, as if he decided it was time to go, time for her to care for herself and not him, which she has done for so long. Sometimes it just is time for people to go, knowing it does not make it less sad, but easier to accept. I do not know if I ever would have seen him again anyway, but even so, his death is bringing back little memories of my childhood and reminds me of the deaths of my other uncles and so I do feel some kind of melancholy and sadness. And in a weird way I am sad about having a family in which members are not really emotionally close, where love, loyalty and selflessness are not daily occurences.

"incorrigible negligence" - Bohuslav Martinu

The Worcester Chamber Music Society gave a wonderful concert at Assumption College in Worcester. It was a very interesting concert with the following program:

Martinu: Trio for Flute, Cello & Piano



Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 13 in C Major
Ravel: Chansons madécasses
Mendelssohn: Octet

I had never heard of Bohuslav Martinu, a Bohemian czech composer, but was enthralled when I heard the trio, a very lovely piece, written in 1944. It is a very melodic neoclassical piece with a hint of modern. Even though I cannot tell why, it did sound very czech to me. My friend and I were reminded - in a roundabout way - of writers like Kafka and Kundera and their wonderful way with words. I never gave that much thought, but of course music and literature have quite a lot in common in the sense that there is melody, rhythm, timing, voices and the likes.

Martinu was born in 1890 in Bohemia in a bell tower - how fascinating. He played with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra until he left for Paris in 1923. In 1941 he came to the USA. What struck me as most interesting though, that shortly after enrolling at the Prague Conservatory in 1906, he was thrown out for "incorrigible negligence", what ever that actually means for a violinist. Being 16 years old and coming to Prague, maybe he partied to hard and was always late for class? I have no idea and can only guess. He kept on going with independent studies though and persisted. That is a lesson right there.

Valentine's - I can't help myself

Growing up Valentine's day seemed to be something made up by some association of flower shop owners. When winter was slowly winding down, signs and ads for Valentine's would show up at the florist shops. I remember buying flowers for my mother once or twice. Even as a child I had a dislike for holidays like Valentine's Day or Mother's Day, they seemed contrived and marketing driven. My mother and I would often surprise each other with little tokens of thoughts for the other, a little chocolate, a flower, some licorice, a nice candle - whatever we came across and thought the other would like it. We never needed a special day. How much meaning does it have anyway, when it is mandated by a holiday that comes across as being invented by Hallmark to boost sales. Flowers on Valentine's are obligatory, any normal day of the week, they are much more special in my view. Yes, you guessed it, no red hearts celebration in this household.

That works pretty well until children go to school and have to bring a Valentine for each child. In theory that is actually a nice gesture, children have to learn this somehow, but it turned out to be an exchange of yet-more-candy and ugly little mass-merchandised cards with superheroes and Disney characters, outside of few exceptions. I have a rather difficult time seeing something meaningful in that. So every year, my children had to craft Valentine's cards and put thought and love into it.

Last year I had found marble hearts and had the kids write the names of the kids on them, they were a huge hit and truly nice. So with that precedent, I found myself last night in the store, trying to get something for S to take to class (J had already crafted something a while ago), I absolutely could not get one of those boxes with cards, I was physically unable to pick it up and purchase it. Well, I am a bit of an all-or-nothing person and I can rarely do something that is not up to my standard. So even though I was very tired and had hardly any time left, I had to do something nice. So when I saw the rack with flower seeds, I knew that was what I was looking for. Admitted, it was expensive compared to a box of generic cards and it still needed me to do design, print and assembly, but I loved the outcome. I just cannot make it easy for myself, I just can't. It is worth it though, because I am sure that there are always a handful of children that remember these out of the ordinary Valentine's.