Summer Holiday...

St. Tropez, St. Raphael (France/2005), London (UK/2005), The Hague and the Kinderdijk (Netherlands/2004)...memories :)

Amok...

A student has threatened to run *amok* at our school.
A handwritten message was found on a desk by which a student declared that he/she/they would run amok today - police was called, students were sent home, we the teachers are clueless. We have to take this seriously - this might be a very sick joke or dead serious...you simply can't tell. I tend to believe that it was a joke...a very sick joke...but we've been asking ourselves today how we would deal with such a situation should it really occur. What are you supposed to do under such circumstances...there is nothing written about *amok* in the teacher's manual. It's just scary and fucking frustrating...Do I really want to do this job? What's the fucking matter with our youth...even if this was meant to be a joke, what does it say about the state our teens are in...
I'm speechless, clueless...
How would you behave? What would you do? Would you lock yourself and your class up in your classroom? I seriously don't know...we are all clueless...
Any suggestions??

Messages from the 'Other World'...

My computer mouse took its first unmanned flight today...the subsequent touch down was rather rough and I'll have to buy a new one now :)
That leads me to the question...do things have a soul? Is the computer mouse sad now that she's broken?
While I was sitting behind my computer screen tonight, I heard a funny sound in my kitchen...like breaking glass...when I had a look, everything was in its place...nothing was moved or broken. This reminds me of a story that my grand-mother told me once (my grand-uncle confirmed the story later)...After the death of my great-grand-mother, my grand-mother - who was twelve at the time - and her older brother, my grand-uncle, went to see their mother as she was lying in state in the living room. My grand-uncle said a little prayer and quietly asked their mother to give them a sign...he had just ended his prayer when the glasses and the china in the cupboard made a terrible noise, as if they were breaking into pieces. My grand-mother and my grand-uncle, both terrified, charged out if the living room. When they went back later to see if anything was broken, everything was in its place, fully intact...
I made a couple of similar experiences after my grand-mother's death...lights that acted funny, noises, curtains that moved without even the slightest breeze...
I have spoken with a lot of people who have made similar experiences. Without being completely un-scientific, one cannot simply dismiss these stories...there is more to our existence than the material world - epecially if you have a look at quantum physics. Within the workings of the micro cosmos our material world is just an illusion...

Across the Universe...

I'm going through a relatively difficult time at the moment.
I have a Master's degree in linguistics and although I have been teaching for the last decade or so (adult/further education and university) I don't have a genuine teacher's degree - a degree that is mandatory if you want to work at a German highschool. Thus, I am doing a 2-year teacher training on top of my classes in order to get said degree...What is so stressful at the moment isn't so much the incredible work load (and it's loads of work - I can tell you), but rather the power games of the instructors...they're right and you're wrong - always - as simple as that. And as I am hopeless as an actress, the look on my face alone gives my disenchantment away... I'm a really bad liar...
That's why I so can't push myself to play their game, to apply methods that I don't believe in, to become someone that I'm not...a carbon copy of them. For me, this training is slowly turning into a nightmare, as it seems to me that I only have the choice between self-denial and failure...
In times like these, it is so easy to lose track of what matters in life...so I'll take a minute and write it down...

I made an experience a couple of years ago...
I was present the day my grand-mother passed away and to say that this day changed my life doesn't even begin to describe the impact that this event had on me. Not only did I realize to the fullest that this life is NOTHING BUT A MIRACLE, but this experience endowed me with a "knowledge" that I cannot quite put into words...I caught a glimpse of the eternal it seems - of something beyond the realm of our every-day perception. I cannot describe what it was, let alone explain it...but, for a brief moment, I grasped the full picture - from outside - 'outside the universe' if you will, and in this picture everything made sense...it made me realize that we're not lost...and there was something 'out there'...something that felt like the very essence of love.
I don't know what it was and to this day I have NO explanation for any of this - suffice it to say that I was agnostic prior to this event...to this day I don't know what to make of it and perhaps I never will, but this experience gave me hope and faith in this life, in this universe.
And it made me understand what life is all about...it's all about love.
Forget money, forget your brilliant career...as cheesy as this sounds, what it really boils down to at the end of the day, at the end of the road, is love. You will be remembered for the love that you have given and the love that you were given.
Love truly is eternal if you look at it...and love defies all laws of nature, as it is the only thing in this universe that is truly abundant, truly eternal...your loved ones may no longer be with you, but their love still lingers on, their love still feeds you...and will continue to feed you.

The photo above shows the vault of Canterbury Cathedral/UK.

War of words...

Ha, I can post again...without having to sign up - it's a sign...well, maybe not :)

The one thing that I was recently reminded of is that negativity only begets negativity. It is incredibly tempting to hit back, to set the record straight, to give people a taste of their own medicine and before you know it, you're lost in a war of words.
Someone said that words are nothing...I couldn't disagree more...words are EVERYTHING. Wars have been faught because of words...words have brought people up against each other, words have pushed people to cut each other's throats - the Holocaust wouldn't have happened without words, the war in Iraq wouldn't have happened without words.
Some people are vicious by nature, but the majority of people just 'shuffle along'...they go about their daily business, they go to work, bring their kids to school, eat, drink, go out once in a while, sleep.
You need powerful words if you want the common man to go and kill someone, hate someone; nobody wants war, but if you sell it well enough, you can make people believe in anything - that a peaceful and safe environment can only be achieved by bombing entire countries back to the Stone Ages - that followers of a certain religious cult are Untermenschen - that people with a darker complexion are less intelligent than people with a fair skin...
Sounds crazy, but that's what many people believed for a LONG time...still believe sometimes.
'The word is more powerful than the sword' - words have built up dictatorships and they have made them crumble. Words are meaningful, words are powerful and words can be incredibly hurtful - as they cannot simply be erased from your memory.
Regarding negativity and violence...sometimes it's best to just walk away.

Colour...

After my rather dark blog below, I thought something slightly
more colourful might be in order...

Untitled...

Ok ok, this is the 2nd time today that I could enter my blog without *signing in* - strange - but maybe it's the blog telling me that I should write something...LOL. I don't really feel inspired today; yet, at the same time I have the feeling that something is 'boiling in my guts'...something that wants to get out. Do you also know this feeling...you don't know what it is before you begin to write it down and sometimes, in the course of writing, the words that leave your fingertips take a certain shape and when you're done you realize *why* you had to write it...
The last time this happened to me was when I wrote something about my father who died of ALS (Motor Neuron Disease/Lou Gherig's Disease) a couple of years ago. When I started writing my blog entry, I didn't know that the blog would be about him...I was listening to Madeleine Peyroux who was singing Dance Me to the End of Love as the words suddenly started to pour out of my fingertips...and without thinking about grammar, content or style, I just let them float...it started with 'love' and it ended with 'loss'...

Maybe that's what is travailing me at the moment - the thoughts, the worries, the grief that you keep tucked inside - within neatly confined and well hidden places that you don't visit throughout the day - while you're busy at work, or while you're being successfully sedated by your tv set. Grief is a tough labour...it completely devours you, it submerges you...it almost feels like drowning sometimes...your head underneath the waterline...while you're desperate for air...you keep struggling for a while...until it feels easier to let go...to let yourself drown...I've tried to 'function' over the last couple of years...being "the good girl", the reasonable adult - graduating, taking up a teaching job in France, taking up a teaching job at a highschool only recently. At the same time, I've been fighting in these waters for too long...fighting the grief inside...holding back an ocean of tears...carrying the Mount Everest of sadness on my shoulders. It's not that I haven't cried - I guess I have cried a million tears - but perhaps I still haven't cried enough for him...for myself.
Yes, for myself too...seeing somebody you love suffer is unbearable and your glaring helplessness stares back at you whenever you look into the mirror. You feel so pathetic in this part that confines you to being the witness...incapable of being genuinely helpful...I always had the feeling that my best or my all wasn't enough - worst of all - that it was zillions of lightyears away from being enough...I tried to give my all, but my all it seemed pathetically little...I tried my best to "act naturally" around him...and like some really bad over-actor, I smiled too often and sometimes I would laugh hysterically in order to give him the feeling that his disease wasn't a fucking desaster - a desaster I so couldn't deal with. I don't know how believable my act was, but in hindsight, my act was laughably "transparent"...as my despair kept shining through - out-doing my wooden laughter time and again. Sometimes when you smile, you're in fact screaming inside...that's what I was doing for two and a half years...I was screaming my lungs out...inside, behind my wooden smile...

Throughout the course of his disease, I felt like being cast in a tragically absurd movie, the script written in stone - you had no choice but to play your part. The way it was going to end was clear from the onset...there was no way out, no way around it. We knew right from the start what an ordeal it would be, but still, we were nonetheless unprepared for what lay ahead of us...
We all duly played our parts - my father as the terminally ill father, my brother and myself as the helpless and over-burdened 'loved ones'...we played our pathetic little roles until the bitter end, until the grand finale, the dénouement of this sad tragedy of Greek proportions.

As I'm writing this I realize that I'm still mad and furious...how do you get over stuff like this? I think you never really do...but hopefully, you can learn to cope with it...time is a factor (not necessarily a healer)...I know I should simply dive into this ocean...I'm taking small steps though...one at a time...for now, the water reaches up to my ankles...the dark waters I'm facing still don't look very inviting to me...it's dark and it's cold out there and I'm scared...I'll walk a bit further though...maybe once I've waded deep enough into these waters, I'll have the courage to let go, to dive into this ocean without being devoured by it.