Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The poor cat finally got sick enough to need to go to the vet.
Of course she had a bladder infection peak during the blizzard of 2010. I would have walked her over the bridge to the vet, if I had to.
I took her drugged body out of the cage, to fly her back to the US.. it was horrible because none of us wanted to go, and here we made this great sacrifice to go the wrong direction, as far as we were concerned.
This time, we were lucky enough to get to bring her back home.
She is napping on the couch cushions after docilely accepting her antibiotics, and enthusiastically nomming the treats I put down for her after that.

We get so attached to our family, it isn't a bit wrong, to take such pains over two legs and four.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

You know, you might be following in my footsteps, if you aren't paying attention..

First of all, don't ruin your body. Repair it, keep it, sustain it. You live there.

Second of all, know when to quit,
Know when to rest.

The answer is, as early and often as possible.
The fight will wait for you.

Trust me, it will..


I miss Brie that does not taste like piss!
What is wrong with marketers, that you think we will eat that shit? next time, I will come back and feed it to them .

I love Trader Joe's for their Mimolette, a cheese I discovered on a morning's walk in Alsace, and fell MADLY in love with.. I will buy the oldest, most diseased-looking Mimolette and have a crazy love affair with it and some damn good red wine.

The mulled wine I am sipping is Catalunya, mulled with German spices and plentiful slices of fresh peeled ginger and Deutsche Glueheweingewuerz..

So it's all wrong, but it's delicious.

John Mayer says that when you are dreaming with a broken heart, the giving up, is the hardest part.

I do not, and I never will, give up.
It is not in my nature.
I do not give up on anything, on any issue, ever.
I may change my mind, but I never surrender.

Anything I decide on, or decide to fight for, is well considered, and immutable.

Part of my great, terrible heart's loyalty, lies forever in Bavaria.
I love that land's great independent spirit, their loyalty, their indomitability, and their deep, crazy enjoyment of life in the extremes their environment offers.

A Texan of Irish and German descent, I am extracted from, and thrive on, extremes.
I am ruled by one thing.. a steady pull to the rational.

This is one of the things I love about my German roots: A real examination of reality.
The balance is my lyrical, intuitive leap Irish side, that I can make these intuitive bounds to understanding of things no one has seen, or has thought of grasping.

Then I am the norm of America, I am the median of our inspiration.

Measure intuition with reason.
Find the answers, and leap again.

What I miss, is a land where it all works together.
I miss the land of Robert Schleip, of Jean-Pierre Barral and my dear teacher Peter Schwind.

I'm living in a half-life land, where I'm pushing the boundaries of my own profession (and they need pushed in a big Zamboni kinda way) and I am having this conversation with a PT I have found who is basically going to save my ass... because he has trained with the osteopaths and he does nerve and visceral work, and no one in this area has elevated to that level I am so used to).

I had to raise my profession for myself.
I listened quietly.
I took it in, I received. I also received some extremely badass nerve and visceral work, full of Q&A.
And then I told him, that yes, I took the classes for the PTs and the osteopaths, but I took them in German.
As long as he wasn't teaching in German, I told him.. while holding his quite honest, very level and interested gaze.. as long as he wasn't teaching in German, I could follow him.

I am terribly ashamed, that he would ever mistake my profession for massage therapy, or assume that Rolfers couldn't keep up with PTs and osteopaths.

I kept up with them in German, and French-accented English. I learned about the Falx Cerebri and cranial nerves..
I encourage my colleagues to continue to improve their reputation, until I don't have to deal with this particular hurdle.

In other words, most other professions think Rolfers are cultists, narrow-minded morons, and not able to keep up with basic physical therapy principles, nerve paths or basic anatomy. This makes me so very sick..

I kept up with classes with professional osteopaths, physical therapists, and other professionals, in a language not my own.
German.

If you could do the same, then you can talk about me.

Otherwise, sit down.

Ich hatte es gelearnt. und Du?
Ja, aber nein.

Keine Frage.
Und Mehr?
Hasst Du NICHST..

There are some terribly rude things I can say at this point, at which I will take a moment of grace.. and silence.. then I will speak my mind.

I miss COMPETENCE, RESPONSIBILITY, and INTELLIGENCE.
My ex-pat friends get me..
We miss things at varying levels, depending on our attachment to them.

I couldn't care less about that football thing this weekend.
It's so not a part of any relevant, measurable reality.
I have NO use for anything they are selling.

I miss our great warm German house with the huge thick walls and capacious basement.
Our house here is Exactly the Right Size for us, and my best investment last year was a beautiful, efficient soapstone wood stove. This stove is right now keeping us a cozy 70F with virtually no effort and only a couple substantial logs.

It's so hard to talk about this displacement.
It's so hard to say how dishonest, how careless, how uselessly aggressive and stupid Americans seem, after participating in European society.

The vultures stink and hang about our house, and we have to find a way to banish them.

I have pretty much Had It.. it's bad enough, to get transplanted into rude society, without society being all kinds of intentionally rude.