The March Storm

It was a tough winter, lots of snow, and each storm was always forecasted in greatest detail for days ahead. So there was another forecast talking about rain and strong winds. How much attention does one pay after all? But there it was with incredibly strong winds that whined endlessly, turned over any umbrella and rain, rain, rain non-stop for two days. The damage was incredible — all around us  we saw the felling of huge old trees; they landed on roofs or cars or in middle of the streets, it resulted in lack of electricity for a few days and similar inconveniences; the Hudson was roaring with wildness and was topped by white caps; my neighbor's window on the 21st floor was pressed in and I sure enough had more than enough leaking damages from the ceiling. And then as always followed the  clean-up.

And like a miracle the weather turned around again and a few days later it was mild and sunny, yes, springlike! Nice. Heidi, my friend, called up to visit and both of us are nature lovers and we decided for a walk alongside the river on the Hudson Walkway. Surprisingly it was closed up with one of these yellow crime scene tapes.

We crossed through to look at the damage. The beautiful rust red brick stone walkway was partially gone, the water had risen all the way to the houses alongside the river, the huge rocks from the banks had moved, and cars in the shopping center parking lot were still sitting in the water! Not a nice scene. The walkway looked one hundred years  old now and dilapidated and sad. What damage! It will be weeks until this is all cleaned up again!

Awed by all of this we continued our walk and had a cup of coffee outside in the sun at the river in a restaurant not affected by the storm. This early spring day brought back this long poem that we had to learn by heart when we were kids:

Der Osterspaziergang

Vom Eise befreit sind Strom und Bäche

Durch des Frühlings holden, belebenden Blick,

Im Tale grünet Hoffnungsglück;

Der alte Winter, in seiner Schwäche,

Zog sich in rauhe Berge zurück .......

Von dort her sendet er, fliehend, nur

Ohnmächtige Schauer körnigen Eises

In Streifen über die grünende Flur.

(In short it talks about an Easter walk in Spring describing the wildness of the winter and the glory of a Spring day giving us an inkling of summer. This is a very poor translation, the poem is very dramatic and very beautiful, well ... it's by Goethe).

The Amish

Jay wanted to go to Philadelphia to see a movie about the noir writer Davis Goodis http://www.allanguthrie.co.uk/pages/noir_zine/articles/hardboiled_philadelpiha.ph He had been interviewed for this and of course wanted to see himself. I was also curious and decided to go along. It was a documentary that was interesting with lots of interviews and a review of the writer's life. Since it was only Friday and there was plenty of time we decided to take a ride the next day and drive around and do some sightseeing in the Lancaster area. We ended up in a town called Intercourse with a large concentration of Amish people. It was a great day, cold all right, but not too icy. I looked around in a handsome quilt shop with the most colorful quilts,  and sure enough I ended up with a quilted jacket! Afterwards we took a horse driven buggy ride through the countryside, looking at the huge barns with their spotless windows, the white farm houses, now at night time all dark and without a light peaking out from inside. The driver was extremely talkative; he told us that of course the Amish don’t have telephones, but if they need a telephone they will send somebody to call for them. Of course they don't use electricity but they milk their cows somehow with the help of a Diesel motor. And we heard the summing of the Diesels all around us. Or he showed us the one-room school houses with their green shutters for approximately 30 children (they only attend school up to 8^th grade.) Plenty of information was squeezed out of him about customs and habits. He grew up Amish, but married a non-Amish women whom he divorced later. And of course he was informed that this happened only because he had stepped out of the Amish circle.

Anyway, it was a good day again and so we decided to have dinner in one of these roadside restaurants offering Mennonite and Amish cooking. Since there was a bit waiting for a table involved we went upstairs to look at the books in the gift shop. Reading about Amish customs I suddenly realized that my sight was sort of "cloudy" . I did not pay attention to it, but later on when we sat at our table to start our dinner I covered my left eye and realized that I could see Jay only as a shadow and with a halo around it. A few minutes later I realized it was completely dark, no vision at all. That's how it was, 1-2-3 and my eye sight on the left eye was gone. Jay had to drive all the way home and suggested that we go to a hospital.  I hesitated, but when we finally reached home Stefan also strongly suggested to go to Englewood Hospital. All sorts of doctors poked around, tests were done, an ophtalmologist came around 2:00 AM. Enough. I stayed in the hospital until Tuesday and now I have only one eye with vision! Altogether I was lucky, it could have been much worse. I can drive (carefully) and fortunately don't look different from before! That counts also. But the fact remains, I am blind on one eye from now on.

Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester

A while ago we went to the MOMA to see a movie and to our surprise the admittance to the movie theater was quite delayed. We finally detected a row of policemen, dressed in black, with their ready machine guns standing there outside the museum — we assumed this maybe was in connection with our delay. But we never found out. Sitting around and waiting, I got to talk to a lady next to me and learned that Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester http://www.palastorchester.de/en/home/ were in town. She talked about this in such an animated and charmed way that I was hooked immediately although I had to admit that I never heard of him. But when she mentioned that this included music and cabaret from the time of the Weimar Republic I was completely sold. And so Jay and I went to Carnegie Hall www.carnegiehall.org/article/the_basics/art_overview.html.

Mr. Raabe and his gifted musicians performed in immaculate evening dress—tailcoats and double-breasted black or white dinner jackets, with shirtfronts and batwing collars starched to a board-like stiffness forgotten by us very casual present time dressers lacking any formality.

If he was not singing romantic ballads and "pop" songs of the twenties in his “schmaltzy", beautiful and oh so flexible voice he was just leaning against the piano, one arm on top of it, looking incredibly elegant and bored. One was just transported for a moment into the twenties sitting in one of these sleazy night clubs. The lady next to me breathed “Oh there is Max!” Some of the songs were quite familiar to me from my father singing these tunes ("Wenn die Elizabeth nicht so schoene Beine haett' etc.) and there was also some Brecht — just great! One felt like humming along. The musicians sat behind individual old fashioned podiums and each of them got up here and there for a solo or a special performance, yes, great entertainment and even clowning around in Carnegie Hall! What an enjoyable evening. The theater was sold out completely and the audience was extremely enthusiastic.

The ocean in winter

Today I went on the spurt of the moment to Spring Lake, NJ to visit with my good friend Dimi. She was not home when I arrived and so I decided to go to the beach and walk on their famous boardwalk which I remembered well from the summer. Today all was different. The wind blew from the North and hit my face with great force and I had to labor against its force. The ocean was completely white capped into the far distance and the most incredible waves collapsed over and over rolling in from all the way out, spilling over the jetties non-stop until they disappeared for a moment before hitting the beach. The boardwalk was windblown and layered with beach sand and, of course, there was not a single person idly walking around. After 15-20 minutes I had enough also, but the beauty and wildness is still in my mind, and I guess this was the best part of the day!

CARMEN

"Whatever, the woman is a goddess in the untamed, reckless style of the outcast outsider, and as such, threatening as well as irresistible." (quote by Jay)

Bizet's brilliant and exciting music and CARMEN in a new production had opened at the Met! We could not get tickets and “ended up” seeing it at the tenplex movie house — a life performance in HD. And these tickets also sold out quickly. What a performance — great, overwhelming, sexy and mind blowing! It is like sitting in the first row at the Met, looking directly at the singers, seeing the pit, the conductor, and staring directly into the faces of the performers. The sound was overwhelming. Great interview with the singers at intermission and a good peek at what happens behind the curtain once the singers leave the stage. Oh so great. Carmen (Elīna Garanča) is very beautiful and she put all her artistry into her Carmen. She also dances the Flamenco while she sings (yes!) If you love opera and cannot get tickets at the Met, go to the movies! It's much better than sitting at Family Circle all the way up there where we normally are. No wonder that the movie house was also sold out.

Jay alerted me to the original story of Carmen written by Prosper Merimee in 1870 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_Mérimée. I always found the Carmen character fascinating, and I loved her spontaneity, her selfishness and her lust for life. I think this was the third time that I attended a Carmen performance, and this to me was the best! The original book story is vaguely the same as the opera libretto, but ever so vaguely. The book is much more detailed and focuses on Carmen, the gypsy, exclusively. Don José’s crazed attraction and love to her is described in greatest detail, the different ways of gypsy life and their thinking, their thievery, and their love to move around. But in the end it all comes together, there is of course the Picadore who has a love affair with Carmen and then dies in the bullfight; Don José kills Carmen to free himself from her before he also dies.  Oh boy, oh so great.

I looked up the history of “gypsies” on the internet, read about their flight from from India and their moving all over the continent, their own languages, their holidays, their violence, their habits, and the world's many ways of pursuing, exploiting and killing them. All this made the Carmen opera more alive to me and together with Bizet's music it is hard to dismiss from your mind. 

DER TURM by Uwe Tellkamp

When I was in Germany my girlfriend Annette gave me this book as a farewell gift and she mentioned that it was presently the rave in Germany. It takes place in Dresden, formerly East Germany, in the 1980s before the Wall came down. The time set is the last ten years of the German Democratic Republic. And as Annette told me many people who had lived through that period confirmed that this what exactly how it was in East Germany.  The style, heavy at first sight, reminded me somehow of Thomas Mann; the story moves from one episode to the next in quick jumps, back and force, erratically it seems.

DER TURM (tower), situated in a formerly very good part of Dresden, is where most of the characters of the story live— now not a very impressive dwelling anymore.  It’s gray and old and tightly inhabitated by  many various characters. The main character is Christian, still in school, at the beginning of the story. He wants to study medicine like his father and he is quite serious about it. The party favors a worker’s class but  the group of people living in the "Turm" (tower) do not exactly fit this line. There is Christian’s uncle, an editor for a publishing house. Everybody is keenly aware that the polical allegiance to the party and nation is essential and must be upheld.  

Christian lives with his family in the TURM. Living conditions are crowded and at times new people are assigned to move in. The story starts with his father Richard’s 50^th birthday and the attending group of intellectuals seems fairly comfortable; they even enjoy a few privileges. Doctors are held in considerable esteem. The uncle, Meno, is part of the local literary establishment and his meetings and conversations give a frank overview of the difficulties that exist with censorship. But discussions about this are always very open and then limits are set.  But you feel the heavy weight and demands of the official party line.  In addition, there is a good glimpse at the truly privileged — an entirely different world!

Ordinary living styles and period details are described, like standing in lines at shops endlessly for each individual item and then buying whatever you can get your hands on. A long queue forms somewhere and is immediately joined simply because one never knows,  and it might be something that is hardly available.  It is all very tedious and lots of time is spent also on the smallest pieces of bureaucracy. It seems laughable when you are sent to the end of the line again and again because you had filled out a form not quite correctly, or forgot to mention something/anything! This is the way it is, and nobody complains much about it!

Christian himself is a very self-conscious, acne suffering teenager with incredible ambition and drive. He buries himself in books; his dream is to achieve fame and adulation. With all his ambitions though Christian runs into trouble many times with his outbursts; he is found with a Nazi book and there are many other grave "missteps." Only “good behavior” will guarantee an university spot to study medicine He decides however for some reason to sign up for military service which is completely opposite to his intellectual make up. He barely scrapes by and his future is hanging in the air and finally ruined. The system does not tolerate a lot. He completely loses all his idealism and it is heartbreaking to see him get lost and losing his focus. I had the distinct feeling that the author Uwe Tellkamp identified himself with Christian. Or maybe he writes about himself? 

A wonderful epic or, even better, a historical documentary close to a thousand pages and it is sometimes towards the end tedious to follow. There are many characters involved and the story goes back and force — in a confusing way. The drab limitations of East Germany and the grayness took me back to the first time when I visited East Berlin through Check Point Charlie: it looked shockingly colorless, the smell of coal burning stoves was hanging in the streets, the lack of flowers was obvious,  the stores were boring and the quiet streets lacked energy. The story ends when in 1989 the Berlin Wall comes down. 

Movie

The Last Station

http://www.edgewateronline.com/

I live across Manhattan with a beautiful view over the Hudson and the skyline at all times. There is the George Washington Bridge to cross into NYC very near. And that's what we normally do when we want to see a movie, go to shows, see dances, or end up in any one of the many museums. I have always the distinct impression that we are supposed to chuck your  brain once you head back — what I mean is that it seems that culture stops the very moment that you cross the GW Bridge back to New Jersey. The movie houses in NJ are all big and loud, and popcorn infused ten-plexes with mainly Hollywood movies. But then again, surprise, there is one old movie house from the 30's left  in a little town, Teaneck, NJ offering great movies at a very decent price, only $4.75. They have divided this theater into four separate theaters and  kept the old charming style, including one of the old ticket selling boxes and lovely posters and wooden sparkling stairways —  it all transports you back to another era once you enter the theater.  And this is where we go when we are too lazy to run to NYC. So on Sunday we saw:

"The Last Station" is a movie about Leo Tolstoy dealing with the very last part of his life featuring  Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. I think it is a Oscar nominated film. I had read Anna Karenia  but knew relatively little about Tolstoy. The movie was perfect and transported one immediately into Tolstoy's very stately estate, Poliyama.  His wife, the Baroness was played by Helen Mirren. Boy, she takes over in her crazy love for him. I looked it up on the internet later and the movie follows their real life story pretty accurately.

Tolstoy became very liberal at the end of his life. His wife and muse, the Countess Sofya disagrees with him completely and uses every trick of seduction on her husband's loyal disciple whom she believes was the person responsible for Tolstoy signing a new will that leaves his work and property to the Russian people. Tolstoy finally decides to leave her — and ten days later he dies at a train station in Southern Russia. The sorrow of the Russian people who adored him is well displayed. The Countess gets what she wants which is the rights to his work. I looked at photos of the "real" Sofya who bore 13 children but she does not look anything like Helen Mirren who is very regal and exciting in this movie. What an actress. And, oh boy, what a brilliant tour-de-force it was. Sofya  is crazed at the end (if not crazy),  but it must have been once a very tumultous love affair that deteriorated over the years and ended so sadly.