Yes, my birthday came up again, another year added and not to be ever taken away. Since lots of cough plagued me recently we decided for Iceland since this trip also included spa treatments. Off we went for three days which seemed so much longer
once we arrived. I had not seen my nephew Tom for easily twenty years  and had contacted him to meet in Reykjavik, but he left his decision in the open. At the end of the first day in Reykjavik the telephone rang and he had just arrived and he took a taxi over. Well this called for a good meal.

It was a grand trip!

Once upon a time I expressed my observations in a blog.

Spring arrived, Summer arrived, Fall arrived and now it's almost winter again. What happened? I guess I just became bored with it all. But in retrospect many things have happened, many great books were read, lots of movies seen, and I don't know how many heaters and ballets were attended. And it was never never boring. My freelance jobs of creating canvasses or brochures or whatever,  or creating events interfered here and there of course, but since this did not bring in lots of money it is probably better not to use this as an excuse.
What I really miss is doing my book blogs, since I seem to be reading and reading and not always retaining everything. I wish I had written it all  down. Now in a capsule, I just write down what I still remember of the past two weeks:

• Hemingway's Boat: don't like it too much, too uneven and the author is hopping back and forth all the time. But had read "The Paris Wife"  (which I liked) a little while ago. And why not dig a little bit deeper. In addition a friend of mine is working on a Hemingway book presently and she goes to Cuba, yes Cuba, very soon for some research. Vow, I would love that!
• Went to the BAM  and saw BROOKLYN BABYLON — avant grade music by a very young composer, James Argue, who has created a symphony which was accompanied by a painter who drew the story in the background, non-stop, and at the end erases it all. In short, the story deals with the plan of a carpenter who is commissioned to build a huge tower with a carousel on top in Brooklyn. Pretty, fast and charming.
• DANCING AT LUGHNASA, an Irish play, nostalgic about the way how we tend to remember.
• Picked up a new cat, really just picked it up and it was ours. She still does not have a name. Stefan calls her SHEEBA, I call her DIE SCHWARZE. It's not a baby, but a well adjusted cat and it feels fine.
• There was Zucotti Park, an encampment in Downtown NY, the 99% people with whom you can well identify. I said "was" since it was cleared yesterday by the Mayor.
• My birthday came again (like or not like it, it comes and goes). I am proud owner of a new Mac and a complete set of Adobe Design software. Could not be happier and needed to learn quite a bit to pick up. Amazing. A gift from Stefan.
• A trip to Iceland, four days, filled with spa's and Northern Lights and winter. A gift from Jay.
• Endless visits to a dental clinic in Newark NJ for the past months together with Christine where we get patched up by poking into our gums, pulling of teeth, root canal, done by students  — all under the supervision of Professors who we assigned to deal with our neglect. Painful and as I said endless since each session takes almost 3 hours. And once in a while it is two sessions.

This is what comes to my mind presently as a vague reflection of present life. But from now on again, there will be more with more steam. I say.

What is happening to nature?

To live alongside the beautiful Hudson River and stunning vistas to Manhattan with all it's wonderful happenings and light shadings is a constant enjoyment. The whole coast line however has now been built up, first there was one building (mine, good 40 years ago), than two, and now non-stop high-rises and gated communities — many of them  beautiful and tasteful, some are  not,  and they are interspersed with shopping malls and movie houses and many many eating spots and bars, marinas. Everything is at your fingertips.

To reach any of these establishments one needs to take  River Road, which once-upon-a-time was a little innocent road but has now in a frightful way developed into  a highway (almost) with a constantly zooming traffic. Along River Road, on the other side, are the high and magnificently looming Palisades, tall  and towering wooded cliffs — absolutely gorgeous.

Now imagine what I saw yesterday with Stefan — at the riverside tucked between a huge fancy shopping center  and another huge apartment dwelling is a useless and gray looking, fenced in spot which cannot be built upon because the ground is contaminated and unsafe; it is a brownfield area due to the old factories which once stood there and supported this old port town Edgewater. With other words this is a  fenced in no-man's land surrounded by all these new buildings and across from Manhattan.

And here I found them, these three deer, staring at me, standing in this unsafe environment, drinking from the water, picking from whatever is available. How did they get there? Did they come from the Palisades Cliffs, which are also built up a bit here and there, and did they cross the River Road to end up in this little piece of no-man's land not good enough for human beings but good enough for them? Sad.

Molly Sweeney — an Irish tale

I listened to an interview on NPR with the actress Geraldine Hughes about the play "Molly Sweeney."  It sounded so great that sure enough we ended up at this very small Irish Repertory Theatre for a Matinee performance. The stage was tiny and the seats were arranged in front and on the side. It guarantees a close up view and feels very intimate. Three wonderful actors — the husband, the doctor and Molley Sweeney. Molly is a confident, beautiful and life-affirming woman who is blind since she was 10 months old and she is happily adjusted; her head is held always straight up and she "looks" forward, her eyes are partially closed and constantly move up and down. Although she is clinically blind she explains at the beginning that she has her own way of seeing and she has more than come to terms with the world as she knows it.

The story is told by the three narrators in alternating monologues and we learn what happens when the restless husband and the once famous doctor decide to have her undergo a sight restoring operation. The medical miracle has terrible consequences. When the bandages come off, remarkable revelations ensue. Molly is unable to adjust to her new ability to see and ends up in a mental hospital. Her husband moves on and the doctor resigns and also packs up his things. In between there is a moral lesson implying that one should not argue with nature. At least that's what I read into it.

The play was written by Brian Friel who skillfully unfolds this mesmerizing and heartbreaking story in two acts. The stage is bare with three chairs only and large windows in the background. There is no costume change, no decoration, just spellbinding acting by these three actors. Finished writing this I wonder why I called it "an Irish tale" — it's a tale of great humanity that just doesn't belong only to the Irish but to all of us. But only the Irish can present it like this, plain and wordy and thought provoking.

Inconveniences

For almost 15 years I live now in this apartment and almost every year without a doubt a flood comes from the ceiling, starting in light drip, drip, drips and ending up in huge leakages. The ceiling will be opened up, engineers will come and peek inside, this or that will be declared the reason for the damage, and every year, once it is all dried up again, a painter arrives and paints the whole living room again. Nice and new.

This year, or better last year in March it happened again, horrendous floods arrived from the top. Except this year new Management had decided to fix it once and for all and permanently. No objection from my side of course. Two huge plates cover the ceiling holes "for the time being",  two buckets are installed inside the ceiling to catch the drips;  every week, sometimes twice a weeks, these buckets are emptied. A parade of so called "engineers" walk in, climbing up the ladder, taking a good look of the crawl space and the pipes above, photographing it all, but unfortunately until now they could not agree on the cause of the damage.  I think each engineer comes up with  his own but different solution. And I have my own opinion; it is the poor infrastructure of the building which sits on wetlands. But of course I don't know and I am not an "engineer". I am told,  it's the fault of the penthouse owner above me, then it is leaking pipes, then it is leakage from the outside of the building and men are ordered to fix the cracks on the outside, hanging there in their seats above the 21st floor and they are smiling. This or that and nothing helps. I went to the Management today again to show my impatience (what a waste) and I learned that tomorrow another "engineer" is supposed to come up with a new solution — another permanent solution I am told! Am I supposed to believe it? A quite amazing and hair raising story. This is now my one year anniversary living with a damaged ceiling and flickering electricity. I am exhausted and mad, but fortunately I am also more than occupied with other things and problems, and I stay patient. But honestly I feel a great helplessness has crept up in me. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

Jay's Book about Samuel Roth

It's done, after 6 years Jay finished the draft of his book. It's neatly packaged on two disks, one for the text, one for the images and off it goes to University Press of Florida. What a job it is to research and write and proofread and proofread again and again  a scholarly book. Of course this is not the end, just the opposite and the beginning of a new chapter: the reading, the editing and so on will follow now. The headache won't stop. But I think Jay was very happy that this part is done. Congratulations and good luck Jay!

President's Day

Yes the bad economy is felt all over as everybody knows. But here is a surprise. On President's Day, a shopping and day off day, I realized there was splendor out of my window. The side beams of the GW Bridge were fully illuminated; gorgeous, peaceful and splendid.

Is Spring around the corner in February?

I could not resist and picked a few branches of forsythia on one of my walks and yes within a few days the first bright yellow flowers appeared before the green leaves also peeked through. A joy. Looking out of the window and seeing the ice and snow and looking at these flowers is a good thing to do.

More discarded art

On one of our outings I found this old yard with plenty of old and discarded sculptures, hidden behind a fence. "A junkyard  for art". The most striking was this lone and sad rider, so downtrodden and so permanent.

I took this rider and colored him into  a vivid red with a glow and positioned him as background on some ice on the Hudson. Well I thought some lights in the background would add a good contrast and express the doom.

Once finished, I had it put on canvas in an enlarged format. Well, it looks good although, as always, But I am the only one who thinks so.

It conveys the looks of a painting — thanks to some unknown modern technology.

Is this macabre?

I mentioned before that I once discovered this yard.
It was fenced in and all cluttered with old discarded art,
Yes, it was a junkyard with art!
Boy this was a feast for my camera. 

And here it is now and I like it. 

Everybody else thinks it's sad and sick. 

Bad luck!

This same old friend of mine who had many mishaps in her life approached me again a few days ago. She had fallen for a scam and thought to make quick money. Of course it did not work like this. She was requested to do some surveys and as payment received two huge checks. She opened immediately a saving account and deposited the money. She also cashed $300 against it and spent the money. But bingo it did not work of course  and the checks bounced and she had to repay the $300 plus fees. Crooks!

A long long winter it is this time.

The first snow came down before Christmas and ever since then the world is white. The snow is shoveled into big mountains waiting to melt in Spring. The river was frozen many times. And it is plenty cold. One yearns for summer. At least I do. You cannot argue — it's pretty alright — but a summer day is pretty alright also. This here is a sampling of non-stop winter; simply said: "Enough already" (and we only have February. Well.

Winter time. Time to create.

Boy, none of my jobs seem to work out. A few months ago I was invited to make a billboard on top of a store in Weehawken. The owner, it's a Marble and Granite store, wanted to expand his business and he certainly needed some good art on his old building. The most surprising thing was that he offered me some money beforehand, $100. He also promised me the future design of stationery and business cards, etc. Why not, I grabbed it and immediately bought myself a black parka for the winter. Then I went to work. Looked good, I was happy ... and then it got stuck. He ran out of money. I called and called and called and it has been postponed. Apparently... apparently just for the time being. But again, bad luck. Here is the store billboard as I envisioned it for him. But it is still not mounted.

And so it goes all the time. I was asked to help out the last moment at press time of a newspaper, production time. Ok I came, I worked 13 hours and submitted my bill. Never heard from them again. Upon my inquiry I heard that the newspaper folded the next day, this had been the last issue. The end. I was not too surprised to hear that since I was laid off from my job a while ago at a newspaper and knew how difficult it is to survive.

So I do lots of free work to stay with it ... but where are we all going. Sort of frightening.

Books I liked

Once I get hold of a book that captures my interest, I bury, virtually bury, myself in it and "disappear," I read and read. I get terribly involved every time; search the internet, check out the subject matter, look up what this or that person looked like, compare how truthful a story is. Most of what I read is not fiction — and since my brain is what it is —  sometimes a title, the name of an author slips my mind. And for the longest time I jot down a few words what it was that I liked so much about a specific book; for later reference — but honestly now what "later reference" do I have in mind? I never know exactly what carries me on to pick from the many reviews here and there and what my 'red thread' is for picking up a particular book. It definitely is the time of the Twenties; it definitely is the time before and during and after WWII;  it definitely is dealing with contemporary issues and of course it always is about other countries. This said, here are three books that I was unable to put down this month. I felt guilty that I just continued reading when I should be doing something else. So what. Fortunately I have more time now then I ever had before — no commute/work/troubling about business problems/parents/children and similars!

The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun — translated from German, a bestseller in 1932 and  later banned by the Nazis because of anti-German tendencies. Portrait of a young woman in Berlin in the days before the Nazis came to power. Dreams to strike it big of course in Berlin after she arrives from Cologne. She sees the world in pictures, images and perceives the world less in words. The ups and downs, plotting her life towards Hollywood success, the raw realities of life of the lower class in Berlin with the wish to succeed. Below all of it there is the core of a young girl that wants to be good and wants to succeed, but she has her limits. A great picture of Berlin during that time and it fits the world of George Grosz, the painter, and Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Siberia by Ian Frazier — I had read a chapter about his travels in Siberia in the New Yorker and was hooked; maybe this was because of my own father's Siberian story and the many open questions, or is it was just my basic curiosity about such a vast land area practically unknown. The book has hardly any photos, and they are not sufficient anyway, but it holds lots of Frazier's own sketches that underline everything in a subtle way. He also drew a Siberian map,  and once I had finished the book and after constant returns to the map with all these towns with hard to pronounce names, I ended up with  quiet a good understanding about the geography. The country is huge, seven time zones, and he criss-crosses it several times. He talks about summers and  the vicious loads of mosquitoes, the beauty,  and the loneliest and coldest winters imaginable, about the Gulags, about the history and also today's environmental issues. He talks about Russian men and women. My physical therapist Natascha comes from Russia and we discussed her country many times and it always surprised me how strong she was in her opinion to never never go back.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers — now this refers to my recent trip to New Orleans and the great disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Here is the Kafkaesque story of a man from Syria, Abdulrahman Zeitoun and his wife Kathy, both Moslems, idealistic Americans, hardworking and successful. His wife and four children decide to leave New Orleans for a "few days" to avoid the storm while Zeitoun decides to stay behind to look at their properties since he is a contractor and wants to make sure that things are under control. He paddles around in a canoe, rescues some people, lives on top of his roof in a tent, prays five times a day, and feels quiet good about his decision to stay behind. Until he and a few other are taken into custody under gunpoint, from his own house, on account of looting as he finds out much much later. He disappears from the world, is stowed away in a prison, not allowed a single phone call out ever, not allowed a trial or a lawyer, nor does he know why he is in custody. Denied medical care he is only offered MRE rations that contain mainly pork that he refuses to eat. In short, he is caught between America's two policy disasters, the war on terror and the response to the hurricane. Emphasis of the Government is on the National Guards and they are empowered. It takes months and months until his wife in her trips around the country finds out that he still might be alive. She gets him out on a $75,000 bail! It is a sour story that makes you choke. Is this America? Zeitoun has his doubt also but he continues living here to my surprise.

A walk in the afternoon

This is a long weekend thanks to Martin Luther King. Relatively late in the afternoon Jay and I decided to take a walk and since it was getting dark soon, we parked our car at Exit 2 on the Palisades Parkway. Everything was beautiful and shiny and clear and cold! We walked for about an hour alongside the Hudson which was partially frozen; the many tankers and barges who did not make it into New York before the weekend anchored in the middle of the Hudson. So we went, up and down, up and down along the Palisades. Nobody else was there, it was so quiet and lonesome and refreshing. Jay was cold (and he claimed that his fingers would fall off sooner or later) but I was just happy to march along. I am home now and think I should cook a meal.

an afternoon at the opera

How lucky can you be! Luise's grandchild William needed babysitting and of course it was Luise's preference to stay with him, I ended up with her tickets. Hurrah. I never did hear LA TRAVIATA performed in an opera house, and to top it off, this happened to be a European production by German stage designers and producers (Willy Decker and Wolfgang Gussmann). It felt like being in the Hamburg Staatsoper; the stage was bare and stalk white except for a sofa or maybe two through the whole performance! The chorus wore regular suits and Violetta rushed around in a regular sharp looking short dress and high red heels —  and sometimes she did not even bother, and was just whirling around barefoot in a white slip. How daring, how refreshing! All these beautiful melodies and tunes and voices and drama and light effects produced interesting shadows playing against the white. I was in seventh heaven! We sat in the family circle, on the site with partial view but still enjoyed a great sound. I loved it. But to my amusement, I overheard heard a very very old lady climbing down from the Family Circle complaining to her daughter: "Now dear,  the musicians were fine, the voices good, but nobody, I mean nobody can tell me that they liked the stage with these silly sofas!" I smiled;  she reminded me of Mutti once upon a time.  Later we walked in 

New York around Lincoln Center among the lights, in the cold. This was a great afternoon.