How to make your Life more exciting - with Blogger's new Word Verification!

Sometimes (but seldom) I use word verification for my own blog.
But YOU use it often. The last days I thought: what has happened? Has there been a conspiracy of the opticians to force me to buy a pair of specs? Should I take out the interesting booklet from Alduous Huxley (yes, Him) "The Art of Seeing"? Had those How To-Books lied to me when they said that with the beginning of getting older your sight will improve? (Come to think of it: they must have. Lied. Because getting older starts in the craddle).
I rubbed my eagle eyes when I looked at the strange hieroglyphs under your texts. But was still to proud to use the hearing-aid they offered at the side of it - mind: I must have something hopeful to look for at my Old Age.
But: I found a cure! I read in Nutty Gnomes post a recommendation, the blog 'The View From Bag End':
http://theviewfrombagend.blogspot.com/2012/02/bloggers-latest-improvement-word.html?showComment=1330504700507#c2711131748199240680
- and there was a soul who was not only sharing a problem with me, but also offering a solution!
Thank you for that!

Here we go again (speak for yourself, girl!)

Spring is in the air, definitely - and Yours Truly starts to become restless. Looks out for a new blog (homemade, of course) as others look for a new wardrobe. (Well, she's doing that too - I'm fed up with articles about The Savvy Life, How to Throw out and Streamline your Clothes, etc)
But technology keeps me at bay. Even when I deleted one blog I was not allowed to create a new one - maybe the Google-Watchdog has fallen asleep over my third post about Ol' Frederick... or maybe it is just his springtime lethargy hindering him to read anything "witty" anymore.
Anyway - I skip the idea of a new blog and look at what I have. (A very good idea in Life as such!)
"Gardening in High Heels" slumbers peacefully - it became a victim of my Prussian honesty. I have to face it: my grand beautiful garden no longer exists (for me) - that's why I had the idea to write a blog called "Balcony-Gardening in Kitten Heels". (Sometimes Life reduces me to normal height).
I pondered, vexed. I was upset. No other blog? No new clothes?
But then: I am versatile. One of my best character traits - as I see it - is being able to adjust. Sometimes it takes a little longer - when the grief about a loss is very deep - but even then: Spring will come.
So I use what I have: 'Gardening in High Heels' will take my new kitten heels on board and must accept gardening on a balcony; and on "You are Witty and Pretty" you'll find a new section - to be recognized by the picture above with the happy drawing of Janosch. That signals: just plain Everyday-Life as seen by Yours Truly - not especially witty, not especially pretty, (mind: I'm speaking of the post!) but hopefully as fresh as a daisy.

Ishimoto Yasuhiro: Katsura

"Dear Corbu, everything we've been fighting for has parallels in ancient Japan culture. The Japanese house is the best and most modern I know and it is truly prefabricated."
Walter Gropius, who visited Japan in 1954, wrote these enthusiastic words to his friend Le Corbusier. As a founder of the Bauhaus School (along with Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier) he aimed at "standardisation, prefabrication and simplicity" - and was surprised to find all these principles in Japan.
In 1960 a stunning square book, "Katsura. Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture" was published, with essays by Walter Gropius, Kenzo Tange and 140 photographs by Ishimoto Yasuhiro, the book coverered in blue silk with a white circle in the middle, intended as a reference to the Japanese flag.
Now the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin shows an exhibition of 50 photographs of Katsura by Ishimoto Yasuhiro.

Everything I quote here I learned from this exhibition.
Yasuhiro was born in 1921 in San Francisco and spent his adolescent years in Japan, then returned 1939 to Chicago to study architecture.
Two times he took photographs from the Villa Katsura, a building that Prince Toshihito had started around 1620 at the Katsura River west of Tokyo, on a ground with a particularly good view of the moon.
In 1883 the villa became the property of the Emperor, and was restored in the 1980s. Its gardens extend over 50000 square metres.
The black and white photographs of 1960 are very impressive, almost as if nobody ever lived in the buildings, the three dimensions of a room are reduced to flat patterns. In 1983 Ishimoto Yasuhiro published coloured photos of Katsura with "all of the elements which had been omitted from the extremely purified photography of the 1960 volume" (Kuraishi Shino).
Ishimoto Yasuhiro himself asks:
"I suddenly began to realize that what I had previously sought as beauty was in fact nothing more than a reductive beauty. I sought the extreme where all surplus was completely avoided, and yet the extremely correct form that resulted - wasn't it a completely narrow amount that did not allow any additional baggage?"
A very interesting question. Photography is always a subjective way to see the world, it is an art - you think about your composition, you omit, you choose a special detail, a segment or angle -
in short: you create.
The great photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro died on 6th February 2012.

You're Only Young Twice

Whenever you get the February-Blues, or start whining about getting older: have a look at this funny little book!! 
I adore Quentin Blake - (especially "The Hermit and the Bear", written by John Yeoman). 


Look at this: 

and then do it yourself: 

Feel good again? 

That's good! 

Frederick the Great and Bill Clinton

Harry S. Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.

Or, if you prefer a more ancient version: Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Victoria, Mahatma Gandhi.

What do all these have in common and share it with Fredrick the Great? Besides being statesmen?

I am quite proud that I found that link all alone, when I looked at a wood engraving of Adolph Menzel (who in 1840 illustrated the “History of Frederick the Great” written by the historian Franz Kugler with about 400 wood engravings). 

What do you see?

That the relationship between father and toddler son seems to be quite OK at that time – spending ‘quality time’ together?

Well, that was not what I meant. Please look at the picture very closely.

Yes: Little Freddy stretches out his left hand to get the ball.

Right away I pounded my search into the internet (http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/forms/hand.html)  – and it is true. Frederick the Great was a left-hander. The statesmen mentioned above were it too. As Queen Victoria.

Now there is a lot written about left-handers. Smart things and absolutely balmy things.

I didn’t enrol our child for the Waldorf Kindergarten when by absolving the required ‘Mother-preparing-courses’ (fathers don’t need courses) and by reading Steiner I found out that even today they 're-educate' left-handers to write with the right hand (“If the child loves his mother”, they told me, “it will do that lovingly”), but, even more bizarre, they see left-handedness as a karmic punishment: “One is re-born as a left-hander because one has lived a debauched, voluptuous life in former life.”

Oh!

They said that to me literally in the Hildesheimer Waldorf-Kindergarten – it is possible that other Waldorf institutions have a more liberal concept, but even now an Austrian left-hander adviser writes:

“Especially cautious parents should be who want that their child should visit a Waldorf school. Left-handedness was seen in original Waldorf pedagogy still as a karmic problem (…) (www.kindaktuell.at)  

My father was a left-hander, whom they „re-educated“. I am ambidextrous (very convenient – though I am very sorry to say I cannot remember my former life). And our son is a pure left-hander – never having any problem whatsoever with that.

I don’t know what it meant for Frederick II.

I hope at court they knew this quote by John Donne (1572 – 1631):

„Reason is our soul’s left hand, Faith her right.“

Both are important. 

A Beggar's Bowl

Berlin is a big, big fridge: Siberian temperatures, minus 17°C at night and icy east wind. 

But Yours Truly stepped outside (well: my pedometer forced me). My aim was the Castle Charlottenburger Schloss, to look at a special painting of Freddy’s father (The Horrible).

Well – I abandoned the plan, though I could already see the castle at the end of a long, long alley. But the frost was biting into my nose and fingers, and  a stilled thirst for knowledge is not worth a ruined complexion. Down these mean streets a man must go, but as a woman I sneaked into a little backstreet, where I had once passed the shop window of a goldsmith.

And there I found it: my Beggar’s Bowl.

“There’s nothing like going out in style”, my late father sometimes remarked ironically when he thought I overdid something. So: I do know that this is a very posh Beggar’s Bowl.

But the intention why I bought it is pure.

First: it shall remind me that a day gives us so many presents – and I want to have and keep a grateful heart. It is so easy to overlook all the goodness a day puts into our bowl. I had a warm bed tonight. I had a wonderful breakfast this morning (really strong hot tea, an egg, porridge with real blueberries, half a grapefruit) – shelter and food, I am thankful for that.

And the bowl shall remind me of something else:

As I told you before, I am a person with a very vivid imagination. I read the complete “Pamela” (in English) with 15. I read Colette – my absolute favourite (my parents forbid me to read it – too young, they said – an excellent way to create an ardent reader).

Result: I am great in picturing to myself how an experience will be in future.

And this is not a clever way to live.

The bowl shall remind me:

Life/the Tao/God is putting the events and surprises into my bowl – and I shall take them as they come. Without rating “This is good” and “This is bad”.

Difficult for me. Very. But I try. And learn. Sometimes.

(Now comes a bit of stream of consciousness for you. “The bowl is beautiful – but these are definitely not my colours. I love pink, I have a problem with orange and lime green”, I thought. My Inner Voice talked back: “But it is beautiful! If you always walk on ways you always walk – that will become boring!”)

The Goldsmith wrapped it up. In (beautiful) orange crepe paper. (“But I..” Oh, shut up!” said my Inner Voice). And just as if to mock at me the goldsmith put a pink ribbon around it. (“Pink and Orange don’t harmon…” SHUT UP!”) 

I gave in to my Better Self (and even put that present on a lime green bench to take a photograph of it, I told you I exaggerate sometimes) 

“Have you already seen the Lietzensee?” asked the goldsmith. “No.” “If you go to the left on your way back to the underground, you’ll pass it by: a little park with a pond – and a beautiful atmosphere.”

“That’s good”, I thought. (I know!)

And went.

And it was a marvellous surprise!

A present in my bowl.