"Do as the Sundial - count only the happy hours"

This quote was written ump-teen times into friendship books in scrawly pupil's writing.

Husband is recovering, in tiny steps, and we are thankful.

I have not much access to the Internet at the moment, so I could not read the post which 'Pondside' mentioned (I might have got it all wrong) - but it seems that 'Friko' remarked about bloggers who always write about their happy life instead of showing 'life as it is'. 

First: look at the 'Idiot Gardener' - he uses the hyperbole, exaggerating misfortune and crudeness to make you laugh. 

Second: as I posted about our misfortune to inform you why I can't comment on your blogs I hope I was not wallowing in self-pity. 

Because I am convinced that seeing the world negative (in their eyes = Realism - being positive they call "seeing life through rose-tinted glasses", meaning daftness) is not an expression of 'thinking' and 'being realistic'. In (modern) literature awful unhappiness even seems to be a synonym for being ART. (I am partaking in a Literary circle in Berlin - and every book we read is more depressing than the one before). 

I like to be entertained and amused, superficial as this might seems to the gloomy people without the trace of a smile on their faces - life is so hard! I can't grasp it: they have friends, shelter, nourishment and so on - but nineteen out of twenty look discontent and disgusted.  

I found out that even in the eye of the cyclone I am able to notice a bit of beauty: the shrill chasing of the swallows, the soft smell of the sweet peas, the sun on my skin. Though I feel pain or grief I still have a part of the Tao or God in my soul which thankfully notices that Life as a whole is a miracle and beautiful. 

To notice this, I think, is a sort of discipline that one can learn. 

Lamenting, moaning, complaining - in short: the full monty - can be an unhealthy addiction (the body produces adrenalin in doing so - you give yourself a kick to which you really can get addicted). 

I don't speak of denying pain or sorrow. They exist, and one has every right to be unhappy and full of anxiety. But there are people - who are not even afflicted - who wallow in 'Think what might have happened!' (on the first day after Husband's accident one woman told me -well-meaning, of course - that I might claim a wheelchair for Husband! She also knew that all the hard-working doctors were fools, doing everything wrong, the nurses were lazy, the social system is going down the trubes, and that other people had experienced REAL misfortune (which she depicted in a litany of heard-of gruesome pictures). 

After that I almost needed a hospital bed too :-) 

Such negative people are often also very rude in other situations - they "call a spade a spade" - well, well, well... 

Now give me my rose-tinted sun-glasses again!  

Here and now I want to thank our lot of lovely, helpful, wonderful friends and acquaintances, want to thank you for your support: we are very, very grateful for that! 

"If You Want to Make God Laugh, ...

... Tell Him Your Plans."
Now: I don't think this quote is a very witty one - it seems to insinuate that a cruel God is sabotaging deliberately your plans, and that is not what I believe.
Why I choose the quote nevertheless?
I wrote in my last post about the 'Dolce far niente' that I wanted to enjoy.
I did - exactly till half past four on Wednesday afternoon.
Then my mobile rung and a woman asked: "Are you Mrs. Hügel?"
"Yes", I answered, "and who are you?"
It was the doctor from a hospital in Hildesheim, who informed me in a very kind and sensible way, that - vital functions all ok - my husband had a severe bicycle accident in Hildesheim, where he works at the university.
I sat in the train as quick as I could (very quick!) and rushed in two hours there.
We have been quite lucky under the circumstances - if one can call many broken bones luck.
Yesterday we could celebrate Husband's birthday - he still being in intensive care unit - and we are both thankful that he can think, speak, see, hear, spine and all joints are ok.
Now I will spend a lot of time in Hildesheim (without Internet in the house, but I will find a way - but don't be cross that I cannot comment your posts as quick as I want to) - hopping to Berlin now and then, till he is healthy again to come to Berlin.
It will take time.

Have a seat!

Isn't it nice that you don't have to be a V.I.P. but only a normal, though very tired guest of the Café Tambosi in Munich to be offered these comfortable seats?
I will sit down a bit, the Hofgarten at the back of the Cafè, (of course I will write about it on gardeninginhighheels.blogspot.com)

with a view on the Feldherrenhalle and the Theatinerkirche:

You can see some more photos of Munich at burstingwithhappiness.blogspot.com (like a good cappuccino always covered with a poem) - but here, I fear, you have to wait a while. It is so comfortable! 
And I have to think a bit about blogging on three blogs, and its effects on 'real work'.
The only thing I will do the next days is stirring my coffee (yes, some more sugar, please!),
and enjoy (already back in Berlin) the
                                                  Dolce far niente. 

Just beautiful!

"Ah .. umm ... so-so" - one glance out of the window and you know it is -
WHAT? The first day of SUMMER?? June?? You bet!
13°C in the morning, but the radio cheers us with the promise that it will get up to 15°.
Mmmh.
Might be a golden opportunity to show you the two books I found in London, and make a cuppa and thumb through a bit.
At Foyles, of course, I found them. (As with migrating birds the way to that bookshop is engraved into my brain's navigation system. Kind of magnetism. I went there oh so often - and you are welcome to talk of e-books and clouds and whatsoever: I love to see books presented on shelves, love them humming at me - love to feel them, their sort of paper, their heaviness).
And this year there were two books I always came back to:
"London, You're Beautiful. An Artists Year" by David Gentleman is really - beautiful!

Drawings and sketches as I like them - month by month, and interesting little texts.

I draw myself a bit, because I think a sketch sometimes gets more to the gist then a photo (yes, in my next life I will re-appear as a Geisha: I can do all these Arts a little bit in a good amateurish way: draw, write, sing and so on, whatever is required in that profession - come to think of it I might be a typical "Höhere Tochter", a German term for young Ladies from the Upper Class in the last(!) century). 

So the second book I bought that had caught my eye by it's design AND its content is on a subject that always fascinates me: "The Perfectly Imperfect Home" by Deborah Needleman. 

 Decoration - with the promise of "The perfectly Imperfect" - my motto - and again light sketches the way I love:

Not "Art" - just "witty and pretty".
"Any house or room remembered with pleasure has the look of being loved by those who live in it",
said Billy Baldwin.
And he is right. Today, I think, I'll spend quite a lot of time in our home.
Ah, and don't forget: switch the light on - that makes even a dark 1. June look bright :-)

The Queen. Art & Image

I love to look at people. You find me in (almost) every exhibition of portraits I can get to – so it was a very special treat to see “The Queen. Art&Image” in the National Portrait Gallery (curator Paul Moorhouse).

The “Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II” by Pietro Annigoni, 1954-5 impressed me: A very upright young Queen with a Grand Admiral’s Cape. One can only speculate how it would feel to be raised to the task of monarch. She was so young when she became Queen, so beautiful and full of energy, seemingly without a doubt about her role, so aloof.

“When I was a little child, it always delighted me to look out of the window and see the people and the traffic going by”, said the Queen once - that was interpreted for the Annigoni portrait as: ‘The image suggests an individual gazing at the world from a position of isolation.’

The theme of the Monarch in an Admiral’s Cape is repeated through the decades: by Annigoni 1954, Cecil Beaton 1968, Annie Leibovitz 2009.

On the other hand (my favourite) we see the private person: the Queen under an umbrella, laughing into a rainy sky. 

The image changes gradually.

We see a portrait by Gerhard Richter, that shows a blurred portrait of a Queen, surrounded by a sort of haze.

Then we see the Queen in her family, no longer stiff portraits but ‘relaxed’ meetings.

What I admire: though giving in to more nearness to the public the Queen always keeps a sort of personal distance.

So the snapshot of the Queen looking at Castle Windsor after the fire seems almost indecent to me (as I always think of photographs of persons in grief, whichever rank in life they have – I wish they were protected to keep their dignity, not being exposed).

The peak of image change comes after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

What I admire: the Queen very seldom rejects the request for a portrait, and she doesn’t censore or comment on a portrait. No comments on Justin Mortimer’s or Lucien Freud’s portrait. I never forgot the cover of the Sex Pistols' single “God Save the Queen” by Jamie Reid – funny -, but after a short glance at  “Medusa” by John Locke I have forgotten that one in a minute.

Unsettling: the holograms. Especially the last one, where the Queen has closed her eyes. 

The official Jubilee-Portrait by the German Thomas Struth gives a successful synthesis of Art&Image: for first time you see the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, as Struth said, "both in their royal environment... and yet both in their own aura".
Though official, it is a (huge) photograph with a private touch, both sitting on a beautiful sofa (not a throne!) in Windsor Castle’s Green Drawing Room. The Queen is a bit nearer to the viewer, more light on her face and powder-blue dress, looking aloof but almost vulnerable to me. I pondered what made the tweak in that portrait, and I think it is the “Image” of Royalty in the baroque splendour versus her comfortable black shoes. Even a Queen is human and gets older. Someone wrote: “.. the Duke appears to fall back into shadow” – that I cannot confirm: the vivid presence of Prince Philip, a beautiful man, drew me back at least three times after having made my round.
Because this portrait shows – to me – not only the image, but it shows love and understanding between a couple. 

I feel it: He ist he love of her life.

PS: I found a beautiful little gem about Prince Philip in a German newspaper from 1950: “As any other proud father Prince Philip went himself to the registrar to let the birth of his son been registrated. He took the ration cards, which were allowed to every new born child, and bought himself the bottle of codliver-oil and the two bottles orange juice, that every new born was allocated out as extra ration."

"As my Whimsy takes me"

This will be a short post. Promised.
Cause I still to have unpack a few things, being back from a week in London.
And it is so hot, even now when the air stirs a bit and the sun is sinking. In a few minutes I will sit beside my sweet smelling roses on the balcony and drink a glass of fine chilly white wine. Ahh!
But I thought a lot not only in London of Lord Peter's motto: "As my Whimsy takes me", which I have adopted over a decade ago.
I have good travel guides - but I prefer to follow my whimsy. And not only on travels.
In London I met a dear exciting friend - and made new ones: Louise, whom I only knew via Facebook, came from Dover and we spent a lovely day in the V&A and Kensington Gardens.
And the author of the Leon-Cookbook, Henry Dimbleby, and his wonderful wife Mima invited me spontaneously to their home and cooked for me - such an amusing, witty and nourishing evening  that went by like a minute.
The whole week flew by in the blink of an eye (I will not get allegoric about that now, because then the post will become longer :-)
I'll raise my glass to you instead and greet you all:
"Cheers! Sláinte! Good to see/read you again!"

When nothing goes right/ turn left.

When nothing goes right / turn left. 
Yogi Berra

Sometimes I am in dire need of a quick laugh. This morning I skimmed aimlessly through my notebook - and found this quote of Lawrence Peter 'Yogi' Berra. Born 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri, he was a famous baseball player, nowadays mostly known for his sayings, which seem often a bit strange, but include more wisdom than one guess at the first glance.
In career guidance I especially love:
"If you come to a fork on a road, take it."
(No, I'm not mocking my clients - but sometime there must be an end of pondering and procrastinating, and one should act at last).
"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else", is another favourite of mine.
And we all know the deep wisdom of this one:
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
Sometimes I wish I had his nerves:
"I never blame myself when I am not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?" 
Well, I can.
And of course he is right with this corker:

"It ain't over till it's over."