June 23^rd.

After days of rain finally sun. I am sitting near my sacred Linden tree, enjoying the sunset that I was wishing to see since the last days.

My mouth is filled with cherries. Here on the hill somebody had planted cherry fruit trees and now they are public. There are still apple, walnut, pear trees on the countryside near the cities that are public. A dream for me, the gleaner and harvester. These cherry trees let folks gather like on this evening with bags and baskets. We talk about cherries. The trees are so full that they bow to the ground. I got my paradise today again….

 

 

 

 

 

June 21^st

Summer solstice in Bamberg

At about as little as 12 degree Celsius, packed in all the shawls and sweaters I possess, I sit under my sacred linden tree in Bamberg. A rainy day and quite anti-climactic to the images of summer solstice. Nevertheless, the tree is blossoming in all its pride and hundreds of bees humming a song of linden blossom honey. I was curious if I might find some groups lightening a summer solstice fire, but maybe I am too early. In the Christian communities, the fires are lit at Saint John and that is on June 24^th.

I have the tree, the bench and the hill for myself and am sheltered from the rain!

 

This week end marks the turn in my sabbatical. Besides a guest lecture at the Bethlehem University, I have traveled mainly on a vacation schedule. I have enjoyed places and times with people that were on my bucket list and visited my beloved countries. I have given myself a real break of a hard working routine and filled my soul, mind and body with rich experiences, practiced to slow down and let be, be grounded and encounter the landscapes and the people with an open heart. Not that I succeeded in that all the time. I have stumbled over my impatience and ego. I am still a beginner in listening to myself and others. But I am on the way towards a life style that will enable my future professional practice. And it is time to start thinking about that now.

The next weeks I will be in Germany with my family and/or my godchild. I will start working on the advertisement for my Feldenkrais practice in College Park.

I was pretty good keeping my plan to study an hour a day wherever I was.

I had the joy to work with Fatima several times with the Feldenkrais work and we even filmed some bones for life processes. I already heard her family in Amman is doing them. For my dear Feldenkrais and Bones for Life colleagues: It is pure pleasure to practice a method with a person who still knows how to carry things on her head and what it means to be efficient in skeletal support for daily activities. There is also a lot of listening and translation involved. A great adventure.

I also had the pleasure to give a Feldenkrais lesson to my Turkish German friend in Oren. And we both have the dream to have a Feldenkrais workshop with lots of walking, swimming and as usual being on the floor in her newly renovated enclosed roof garden of her guesthouse (excellent food included).

Want to join? Let me know, we can organize it!

 

 

June 15^th

Breakfast on the foot of the Herodian/ West Bank with my friends from Alexandria/USA and my Bedouin best friend

I am deeply moved. Here we are sitting together with the treasures of Fatima’s hands: wood oven baked bread made out of wheat from her garden that got milled in the next town and formed to a dough the night before. Sheep yoghurt, butter and cheese. Fakous, a hybrid of cucumbers and squash. Tea with mint or sage according to the taste buds of the tea drinker. But most of all: we are here together. The three chat about children and grandchildren, a topic I listen and can’t much contribute. I am enjoying the scene. I do have a dream: when I win the lottery (I do play every month in a save and play option of my German bank), I will spend parts of the money to bring people together to visit and inspire each other. In German we call centers for that “Begegnungszentren”, in English that would be centers for inter-cultural encounters. Center or not, this is happening in front of my eyes. Human encounters, interest and curiosity in each other, friendship growing deeper. The three had met when Fatima had come for a visit 2 years ago. We spent a weekend together at their house near the beach in Delaware and Fatima invited them back to her home. But that is a long way from Alexandria to the desert at the Herodion. Now we are here. Her grandchildren are hanging around, curious as well, watching. A few hours later the youngest is nestled in my friend’s lab. We don’t take photos from that time, just enjoy each other.
Later in the evening, we have a festive dinner on the roof. A taste for you below!

The world would be in so much better shape and a better place if human encounters would be the highest priority in a countries budget plan!

 

Friday June 12^th

Tuscany again for one day. We spent the last day on our Umbria trip in Montepulciano and Pienza. After 16 years I am back in the Tuscany that was my dream to live. I had spent months in the area of Grossetto. I am very touched. Still here: the soft hills, the cypress trees on the side of the roads, vineyards and green meadows, golden grain fields. The towns on the top of the hills, a church tower sticking out. Yes, most Italians are still catholic but also here enriches ethnic diversity the lives. Women with head covers are visible and people of color. How smooth is it to live here as a stranger? I don’t know.

The prizes!!! Since the Euro started, the prizes are crazy, I heard and I choke in the shops when I read prize tags. How do Italians survive with such prizes?

I am relieved that some of the familiar culture is still alive. The shops are closed between 1 and 4.30pm for siesta. The bars are open from early in the morning for anybody who wants to stand and have café or cappucchino. I had one as early as 6 am for Euro 1.20.

I drink the coffee and the landscape, take it all in were the memories of tastes and smells live…

 

June 11^th

Every day we visit an Umbrian highlight: Perugia, the university city and origin of the chocolate baccetti (kisses), Assisi where the Francis of Assisi lived as a poor outlaw and later honored as a saint. Orvieto with its giant dome and famous wine, Gubbio, another medieval town. One more picturesque than the other. All of them very catholic.

Visiting these places for a week with a Christian White German group is more a challenge than I had thought. It is the monoculture in the group and the assumption of being Christian/catholic, heterosexual and German. I indeed did grow up like that but my reality today is different. I am totally invisible. I did ask both tour guides about the history of Jews in the places but the answer was there were none. Of course on my own internet researches in the evenings I found the stories of invitation and expulsion throughout the middle ages. The moneylenders are mentioned. So it was clear others must have been here as well.

More known are the communities in the Tuscany but also there our Tuscanian travel guide had nothing to say.

Our days go like this: we visit churches, then town piazzi (places), we learn about the neighborhoods, the history and architecture of these towns, many of them former Etruscan settlements. We admire the narrow street, the arches and stones. Then we have an hour free. My uncle, his girlfriend and I look for a café and enjoy a cappuccino and watching people (if we have not lost each other in the meantime between looking for bathrooms and buying souvenirs). I so much admire him and his ability to simply enjoy and let others have a good time, too. He grew up poor and with little family support and is such a model of sharing and be in the moment.

In our group is a man who clearly has communication disorders in the autistic spectrum. Her found his way to our dinner table and joined our party of three. Many in the group ignore him and others make jokes. I do mention to others that I find him the bravest in the group too dare to go on such a trip. It is very nice not to have to please people anymore. My first fruit of being 50. Life will be interesting and for sure more fun.

 

 

 

 

 

June 9^th

Bon giorno Italia! I am so grateful for the invitation of my uncle Josef. We arrived in our hotel Paradiso in Passignano sul Trasimeno, Umbria. This town is pretty much half way between Florence and Rome. The hotel was built in an old olive and cypress grove. They obviously conserved many of the trees and it is beautiful. It is also only 15 walking minutes from the Lago Trasimeno and we take an evening stroll to the lake. Here Hannibal defeated the Romans and chased many of them in to the lake. But that is many moons ago. This evening, the sun is glistening on the water and a swan takes her youngsters out for an evening hour as well.

 

 

 

 

 

June 5 2015

 

This is the date. I am 50. I thought it will be just a number, after such an exciting year of 49. Opening my Feldenkrais practice, getting the official adjunct teaching position with pay at Howard University, then fighting for a solution to stay employed in my rehabilitation position on a part time basis as a neurological occupational therapist but did not succeed and finally left with the option to substitute for a few hours as a contractor.

But it is what it is: 50 is a mighty number. The final gate to the other side. Which lies covered and may be around the corner or far away. But it is in my face. Reflections are in-evitable. The timing of my sabbatical could not be better.

The meaning of sabbatical is to take a rest, refresh and make place for the next to come.

Wikipedia has a definition for it: In recent times, "sabbatical" has come to mean any extended absence in the career of an individual in order to achieve something. In the modern sense, one takes sabbatical typically to fulfill some goal, e.g., writing a book or travelling extensively for research.

I am both far away from having a book written or a research in the classical sense. But I took myself out of my routine to unlearn patterns that have shown to be unproductive and unhealthy for myself and the work. And I already had plenty of opportunity to study these patterns, coming up unwanted but so well learned that it will for sure take more than three months to replace them with something more useful.

Urgency. Impatience. Fear of loss. Eating too much and being stuffed instead of nourished afterwards. Hurrying. Feeling so small that I have to put my ego as a shield in front of me instead of trusting flow. Becoming rigid, uptight and nasty when pushed too far beyond my comfort level. Not being clear in my plans and wishes and then blaming others that they don’t do it right for me… What a research list!

 But I am also experiencing so very wonderful things in these weeks and months of preparation: I can move slowly more easily. See people and things on the side. Less is more. It is in the end the quality that counts not the quantity. If I like to get up early in the morning and take myself for a walk, I do it and breathe in the beauty of creation. Forgiveness. Loving kindness. It does not all has to be according to my will, but in the essential things I stand like a rock. Essence. Focus. Clear in mind and heart. Being tolerant and forgiving to myself when I get sidetracked but bringing myself back. Being in true contact, connecting with the humankind and all the other beings. Learning to feel joy, expressing it and daring to share it. Might be one of the biggest. And trusting the flow, the process. Stay a true learner, curious and humble the same time.

Well, I would be curious what you over 50 have to comment or add to this list!

I for my case truly lucked out on this birthday: my mother baked a great cake that we ate after a nature hike, my sister watched the sunset with me, other family and friends called and send cards and mails, Barbara texted she thinks of me. I got treated to a full moon walk at the Elbe, a pre birthday brunch in a rose garden, a tete-a tete with my sacred tree playing chrotta, just for the two of us and all the spirits of beloved ones who I felt being so close and smiling at me.  

And now I am packing for a week in Italy with my uncle who invited me , and this followed by 5 more days in the Middle East. Stay tuned…

 

 

 

 

 

June 2^nd

Back from a weekend with my siblings and their children at a farm with lots of other children and animals and the soft landscape of middle Germany. This was our first sibling weekend and I hope we can continue this tradition.

Now I am on another favorite place in my life doing a favorite activity: I am kayaking on a little stream with my godchild Noah in the Northern German lake area. The weather is cooold and we I am glad I packed sweaters and jackets, but we are having a really good time.

On the stream we discover dozens of duck and geese babies. We stop to watch them and Noah collects some left over feathers on a meadow.

What a pleasure to have children in my life and to be a godmother!

That is a great entrance to my upcoming 50 birthday in 3 days!

 

 

 

 

May 24^th.

Landed in Germany. Again an easy flight and a gentle landing. Nuernberg: a cool, cloudy afternoon. We leave the plane, and with it the last piece of the Mediterranean world behind us. The houses feel so square in Germany and the street do look clean. Well, I am in a small town of 20.000 mostly middle inhabitants, no ugly high risers with sad little dirt playgrounds. Even our tallest high riser of 8 floors has a green area and playgrounds.

Herzogenaurach, the city of Puma and Adidas. 20 minutes by car to the University City of Erlangen or Nuernberg. A thriving place to be.

An interesting history though: once the seat of Earls (Herzog) at the little river of the Aurach, then a trading place for fabrics, later for shoes. Expanded after World War II with the migrations from Silesia and areas that Germany had to give back to Poland. Until today, the city has been absorbing refugees. In my childhood we had projects to meet people from Romania and Poland, who left the then communist regimes there as persons of German heritage. They came to our Puma and Adidas and Schaeffler town and here they were the folks from East Europe. I do recall collecting clothes for them and doing interviews and visits with them. Today the refugees come from Somalia and Syria. They stay in a school and then in private apartments. Herzogenaurach is proud to support the refuges with volunteers. The town is also proud of its partnerships with Kaya/Burkina Faso, where very lively cultural exchanges are organized and even a school in Kaya was built as a summer project by a team of students from Kaya and Herzogenaurach. My brother and sister were there and family contact remain to the present day. In my youth this was not so easy.

My parents and we three children came here in 1974. They have stayed since. Slowly, we became the strangers that integrated. My parents have many contacts and a few friends. I grew up here in my high school time in a town that did not have a cinema yet and the bus to the next town took an hour. There was no bus connection after 9pm. So I was very active here. I left when I was 18. Today I do walk through the streets and look at the folks that are my age and think I should know them. But I don’t. I enjoy strolling through the beautiful nature with a school friend and with a former teacher – age difference shrink with years. My parents have a garden full of flowers. I am here to spend time with my parents who struggle with health and depression. I cannot change anything but hopefully add some benign moments into the struggle to keep the head above water…

 

 

May 22nd, back in  Jerusalem - Al Kuds

 

The holy city of the Jews, Christians and Moslems and capital of Israelis and Palestinians. A loaded place. Israel is a tiny country where Jews were fighting to have a non-visa restricted home land for Jews with the experience of persecution, desperate attempts to get into safe countries that restricted the access with quotas and inaccessible visa restrictions and then the Holocaust. It sits every Israeli in the neck. Alone the thought Israel could be in danger provides nightmares and acts in the day time that are not always rational. It is painful to watch the current political developments, but isn’t it painful to watch what is going on in many other countries as well? Growing up as a gentile German in postwar Germany, I am especially sensitive to Anti-Semitism and easy one way solutions. Life is usually more complicated.  

This does not justify injustice. In Israel are a wide variety of social justice, civil and human rights and peace organizations. On my way to Bethlehem I meet the women of Machsom Watch (see below), an organization that would be interesting to learn from when we talk about the selective checks and violence against black US citizens.

Apropos Racism: this topic is on the surface also in Israel. While Baltimore rioted, the Ethiopians in Israel stood up for a big demonstration. It was not the first time to voice the racism this group of Israelis are facing with force to change names, inequality for jobs and education and daily discrimination, but this time is was big.


I came back for the Shavuot weekend. First I went for a dip in the Dead Sea, a meditation in the desert, a breakfast in the old city and a visit with some former neighbors. On Saturday, Kol Haneshama had prepared a night of study and action on racism. It included a lecture on identity, followed by an excellent playback theatre: Brave participants of the study night told events of their lives, where they either were acting racist/being bystanders or also being attacked. The group played the situation and offered a variety of solutions. It was very powerful. Then a question and answer section where Shlomit, an activist in the Ethiopian community reminded us all that it was the Israeli forces that brought the Ethiopian community into the country. You can find the reports on you tube if you are interested (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdf7OI7ywEY)

I have great respect for people who speak up in a way that fosters justice and life together in a society and the leil tikkun in Jerusalem did nourish my thirst.

The night and my Jerusalem visit ended for me listening to a beautiful chant of the Megilat Ruth and the sunrise over the promenade and after all these words I treat you to some pictures …

 

 

MachsomWatch is a volunteer organization of Israeli women who are peace activists from all sectors of society. We oppose the Israeli occupation in the area known as the West Bank, we oppose the appropriation of Palestinian land and the denial of Palestinian human rights.  We support the right of Palestinians to move freely in their land and oppose the checkpoints which severely restrict Palestinian daily life.

Since 2001 we have been observing and reporting on the Occupation.  On a daily basis we monitor the West Bank checkpoints, the separation fences, the agricultural gates, the military courts and Palestinian villages.  We document what we see and what is reported to us by local Palestinians.

Through our observations, reports, films, photographs and tours we aim to influence public opinion in Israel and throughout the world by recording and authenticating the impossible conditions faced by the Palestinians under Israeli occupation; conditions which also corrode the fabric of Israeli society and the values of democracy. We attempt to ease the frustrations and hardships of Palestinians by offering assistance wherever we can.

- See more at: http://www.machsomwatch.org/en/about-us

 

Another interesting link:

http://www.nif.org/our-issues/civil-and-human-rights

 

 

May 18^th

Oren – a little town at the Aegaen sea, near the old town of Milas. The Greek name of Oren is Keramos and that means broken pottery. We are in ancient land and the same time a place where the people are used to tourists = we are moving around freely. Oren is the home of my German Turkish friend Niluefer who built her dream, a guesthouse a few years ago. She has built this place with her own ideas, her own workers and much of it with her own hands.

For me, Oren is a love song to the lovely smell of pine trees in the noon sun, the bird chants in the morning, the oleander, the golden broom, hollyhocks, orange, lemon and olive trees, roses and jasmin, still Amaryllis besides daisies and then the desert cactus that decided to bloom in the last night before we left again. My first swim in the sea this year and an ongoing bath of my eyes in colors. Fatima and I are going shopping on the markets and stroll around the ancient ruins in the fields of Oren. I am happy to see Niluefer again but also sad to see that the price-dumping practice in the tourist industry and of course the altogether economic down has given my friend hard times. She is a not only the owner of a little paradise, she is also a talented cook. Highly to recommend if you are looking for an individualized quiet vacation in a cultural meaningful area.  Here it is:

www. Kaplumbaga-hotel.com