Joy / Die Freuden

If someone asked, What’s your favourite word in English, my answer would probably be dragonfly. It is one of those words that stuck to my mind when I first heard it. I wasn’t quite sure how to imagine this hybrid of dragon and fly fluttering around me, instead of the elegant and fairy-like being that I’d known until then as “Libelle”. But the more I thought about the word dragonfly, the more it made sense. Dragonflies have a long and thin body, which reminded me of the 11th-century Lindwurm, a dragon without wings and a serpentine body. So these magical insects do transmit, for me at least, dragon-like strength and at the same time have the agility of a fly. The agility thanks to their fabulous wings. Dragonflies can move the two pairs of wings independently of each other which allows them to hover just like a helicopter does, and to fly forward and backwards and straight up and down. Furthermore, they can travel up to 40 miles per hour. In many countries dragonflies symbolise change, strength, adaptability, walking towards the light, metamorphosis and transformation, all of which can be intentions and skills that can ultimately lead to living our life to our full potential without regrets.

I came across Die Freuden (Joy) a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) in which he describes the speaker’s delight when s/he spots a dragonfly.

Joy

A Dragon-Fly with beauteous wing
Is hov’ring o’er a silv’ry spring;
I watch its motions with delight,
Now dark its colours seem, now bright;
Chameleon-like appear, now blue,
Now red, and now of greenish hue.
Would it would come still nearer me,
That I its tints might better see

It hovers, flutters, resting ne’er!
But hush! it settles on the mead.
I have it safe now, I declare!
And when its form I closely view,
’Tis of a sad and dingy blue
Such, Joy-Dissector, is thy case indeed.

Die Freuden

Es flattert um die Quelle
Die wechselnde Libelle,
Mich freut sie lange schon;
Bald dunkel und bald helle,
Wie der Chamäleon,
Bald rot, bald blau,
Bald blau, bald grün;
O dass ich in der Nähe
Doch ihre Farben sähe!

Sie schwirrt und schwebet, rastet nie!
Doch still, sie setzt sich an die Weiden.
Da hab ich sie! Da hab ich sie!
Und nun betracht ich sie genau,
Und seh ein traurig dunkles Blau –
So geht es dir, Zergliedrer deiner Freuden!

(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, deutscher Dichter)

Tierra de Campos – Land of Fields / Land der Felder

In my previous post I mentioned that the fields have turned beautifully yellow and golden and the harvest has already started. The golden fields remind me to the fields by Van Gogh. So I decided to write another poem, Tierra de Campos – Land of Fields. Hope you like it 🙂

The poem is my own. I wrote it in English first and then translated it into German.

Tierra de Campos – Land of Fields 

You comment on the slow serenity of Van Gogh’s fields
I on the blue horizon and fast moving clouds 
The afternoon sun tans our skin 
How quickly it has turned the grains golden 

Together we listen to the silence of the land and skies to 
the distant roar of a tractor and dogs barking 
We walk up some soft slopes to church chimes (a neighbouring village)
closer and closer towards stillness

I lift my nose
You ask,                 
Can you smell it?  Life sprouts here
the whole year

Tierra de Campos – Land der Felder

Du kommentierst die langsame Stille von Van Goghs Feldern
Ich den blauen Horizont und die schnell ziehenden Wolken 
Die Nachmittagssonne bräunt unsere Haut 
Wie schnell sie die Körner vergoldet hat 

Gemeinsam lauschen wir der Stille des offenen Himmels  
zum fernen Brummen eines Traktors und Hundegebell
Wir gehen einen sanften Hang hinauf zum Klockengeläute (ein Nachbardorf)
               immer näher an die Stille heran

Ich heb’ meine Nase
Du fragst, 
Kannst du’s riechen?  Das Leben sprießt hier 
                                                                                   das ganze Jahr lang

Poppies / Mohnblumen

At the end of April the first poppies were sporadically scattered on the strips of land you find at the side of the roads and along informal farm tracks. Yes, and I couldn’t stop taking photos of the little red blobs of colour. My companion told me “You’ll see, in mid-May, there’ll be a sea of poppies,” and like a child waiting for her birthday, I was waiting for the sea of poppies. And the poppies didn’t disappoint. From the second week in May, an explosion of colour changed the countryside. It was a feast for the eyes. Whether you travelled from village to village or walked in solitude on country lanes, you were surrounded by the scarlet red wildflowers. Driving around Tierra de Campos (Land of Fields) I found entire fields covered in red, which looked amazing. But not everyone loves their sight. A farmer told me that he considered poppies as a weed because they take precious water and nutrients away from the crops. But since it had rained a lot, and the wheat and barley that is being cultivated here amongst alfalfa and vezas (vezas are an animal feed, they look like tiny lentils) had already strong stems and healthy grains, I thought the crops surely wouldn’t mind sharing the soil with the cheerful poppies.

As I write this much has changed. The wheat and barley fields have now turned into a yellowish-brown, farmers are getting ready for the yearly harvest and the poppies are already withering. A couple of weeks ago sunflower seeds were sown on the pieces of land that lay until then bare, and I think probably around July thousands of little suns will be raising their yellow heads across Tierra de Campos.

I usually write my poems in English, but Mohnblumen came to me in German first.

Poppies 

In the middle of a cornfield
and down the country lanes
grows a mass of poppies
one wouldn’t dare to count

Three weeks ago I think it was
when I walked there all alone
alongside a great sea of fields
of different shades of green    

Instead of little petals 
I admired then   
some splendid cloud formations
in Castile’s open skies

But rain and lots of sunshine
gave courage to the poppies 
which gently sway now in the breeze 
and glow so happily   

The poppies in their lightness 
they laugh quite cheerfully
they are so tender and such fun
look how they decorate the fields 

Oh dear, oh dear, sounds suddenly 
a farmer’s loud lament
he cries Although I’d sprayed my fields 
I couldn’t stop the weeds 

And quietly I give my thanks
to the poppies’ tireless strength
And in the night I wish to dream 
of a sea of petals which bring much joy to me 

Mohnblumen

Inmitten eines Kornfeldes
und auf den Feldwegen entlang
da wächst ein scharlachroter Mohn
in Mengen die man nicht zählen kann

Drei Wochen könnt’n’s g’wesen sein 
als noch allein ich ging
nebenher den großen Ackermeer’n
so grün und farbtupferleer  

Anstatt der Blütenblätter 
bewunderte ich damals sehr 
die prächtige Wolkenbildung 
am Kastiliens weitem Himmel

Doch Regen und viel Sonnenschein
ermutigten den Mohn 
der sanft sich jetzt im Winde wiegt 
und leuchtet farbenfroh  

Der Mohn in seiner Leichtigkeit 
der lacht mich ganz frech an
er ist so froh und wirklich zart
wie er’s Kornfeld nun verziert 

Doch plötzlich klingts Oje Oje
ganz laut ein Bauers Jammern  
Er sagt er hätt’s besprüht sein Land 
doch konnt’s vorm Unkraut nicht bewahrn 

Und im Stillen sprech ich meinen Dank
zum Mohn und seiner erstaunlichen Kraft
und wünsch mir Träume in der Nacht
von Meeren aus roten Blüten die mir viel Freude bringen

First Love / Erste Liebe

One poem I particularly enjoyed writing, was First Love / Erste Liebe. First Love is an erasure poem. I had never heard of erasure poems until one Saturday morning, when a participant of the monthly poetry reading meet-up I attended at that time, read a wonderful poem. Afterwards, we discussed her poem, and she revealed that it was the result of the erasure poem technique, that is a technique where an existing text is used to create a new text. I found that fascinating. Was that allowed? Is that cheating? Well, I was still very new to poetry and had an insatiable appetite for discovering how other people wrote poems and which form they chose and why they’d chosen that particular form and so on. So when I got home that evening, I decided to have a go at writing an erasure poem. I didn’t think too much about which existing text to use. I had just read Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf a couple of days earlier and it was this text I used to create my first (and up till now only) erasure poem. I just skimmed through the text and highlighted words I liked which I then put in form adding just a couple of words to make it flow better. Only after I’d finished writing it and having read it a couple of times I thought, Wow, this makes perfect sense. I’d just created a poem about First Love with the help of Virginia Woolf.

Photo taken during a Graffiti tour near Brick Lane (Nov 2018)

“Hope” is the thing with feathers / “Hoffnung” ist das Federding

Another poem in English and German.

I love birds. Small ones like hummingbirds and finches, swifts and robins and bigger ones, too, like owls and herons or falcons and storks. And I love birdsong. I find forest birdsong, for example, very calming and comforting. 
I remember, that after wakening in the mornings as a child I listened to the birds in our garden before getting up, and often I wondered what they were chatting about so eagerly and noisily. We had lots of shrubs and trees in our garden, and next to our house were many more trees, so the air was always rich with chirps and tweets.
It was sometime after I’d moved to London when I thought, There’s something missing here, but I didn’t quite know what it was I missed. And then one day, I think it was the first time I stayed at a holiday cottage in the Peak District, it clicked, and I realised it was the chirping of the birds I’d been missing all this time when waking in the mornings.

Birds are the only animals with feathers and as a little child, I loved looking at their plumage close up which I could during the winter months because my grandmother scattered seeds on the windowsill twice a day. Together we would wait for the birds to come to pick the seeds. We never had to wait long. And my grandmother pointed out each by their names. So it was like, this grey one is a sparrow, this one with the yellow chest a tit, the one with the red chest is a robin, the one with dots a thrush, the black one that has an orange beak is a blackbird, and so on.  
Last year, during lockdown I heard and saw many more birds. I could even hear them in the mornings when wakening.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson is calming and uplifting especially now that we are still living in uncertain times with our freedoms ruled by restrictions and regulations, and there are terrible wars. At such times hope becomes even more important, and perhaps, the next time you see or hear a bird you remember “Hope”.

The painting above is the result of experimenting with soft oil pastels

“Hope” is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me

“Hoffnung” ist das Federding

“Hoffnung” ist das Federding  
das in der Seele sitzt 
und Lieder ohne Worte singt
und immerfort sie gibt

Am süß’ten ist’s im Sturm zu hören
und weh muss tun der Wind 
der’s Vögelchen beschämen kann
das so viel Wärme bringt

Ich hab’s im kält’sten Land gehört
und auf dem weit’sten Meer
doch nie, auch wenn in größter Not
bat es ein Krümelchen von mir

RIB Ride / Festrumpfschlauchboot-Fahrt

For a long time I wanted to record some of my poems in English and German. And now, finally, I’ve done it. I decided to start with RIB Ride. RIB stands for rigid inflatable boat. Those are lightweight and high-performance boats that can reach high speeds and are therefore often used as life or dive boats but also for sightseeing.
I think it must have been five or six years ago when I and my partner booked a RIB ride along the Thames, which was a real fun experience. And then when we stayed in Seahouses in Northumberland, we booked a trip to Holy Island. The instructions each time were the same, Never let go of the handrail if you don’t want to end up inside the water!
The experience in the open sea was totally different. You could feel and breathe the power of the sea and all of a sudden my day to day worries felt so insignificant compared to the size of the sea.
At one point, on our way back, the wind picked up and the waves rose quite a bit which gave the sensation that the boat jumped from wave to wave. And we laughed, everyone inside the boat laughed all the way back to the harbour. You could almost say the boat was shaking with laughter. Afterwards, I felt so light and happy, and this profound feeling of happiness returns every time I think of sitting inside this RIB on the open sea.

About RIB Ride: I started writing this poem in June 2018 as part of Sestina Insanity Studio, a poetry workshop run by the Poetry School. I have returned to it time again, but now I think it works…well, it works for me. I hope you like it too.

Below are both versions. Try to read along in German with me 🙂

RIB Ride

boat’s speed surges 

fingers grip the grab rail tighter   heads 

pull back   for a second I don’t see

instead  I yell   Almighty Sea

hitting hard  from wave to wave    a surge

of adrenaline fills our heads

a 360° turn of the boat makes them spin    we head

towards Holy Island    icy sea

spray sharp like needles    pricks our skin   waves are surging

black clouds surge to the sky before they disappear into the sea   my head at last cleansed

Festrumpfschlauchboot-Fahrt

die Geschwindigkeit des Bootes steigt

Finger halten die Haltegriffe fester   Köpfe

werden nach hinten gerissen   für eine Sekunde seh’ ich nichts

stattdessen schrei’ ich   Allmächtiges Meer

Wir schlagen hart Welle auf Welle    eine Woge

von Adrenalin füllt unsere Köpfe 

nach einer 360°-Drehung des Bootes dreht sich alles darin

Wir steuern Richtung Holy Island           kaltes 

Sprühwasser scharf wie Nadeln   sticht unsere Haut     Wellen steigen an 

schwarze Wolken steigen in den Himmel   bevor sie im Meer verschwinden      mein Kopf endlich klar

Rainbow Boy

Rainbow Boy by Chris Shea

Week 9 of lockdown is moving into week 10 tomorrow. This week was tough.

In a way, I was lucky that realisation of our new reality didn’t creep in until a few weeks ago. So I’m almost two months behind. And the reason for that is, I was busy experimenting with different online platforms (i.e. Zoom, Skype, Google Hangout which is now Google Meet, Google Classroom and Edmodo, …) and with exchanging information with fellow tutors, and thinking up new activities to keep learners, especially those in larger group settings, motivated and engaged during our weekly 90-minutes training session.
Now that all is working more or less smoothly (I mean, realistically, there’ll probably always be some sort of technical hiccup to deal with, even if only occasionally), I’m in the process of getting used to what my new routine will be.
My new routine, until, I believe the autumn. And I have to admit, I like it. Even though I need people, real people around me, rather than just faces on screens, because I enjoy feeling people’s energy, the energy of students, of family, friends and places.
Yet, I do enjoy the silence, the peace and quiet that arrived with lockdown. No more long commutes on busy trains and sitting in noisy coffee house chains. And I hope, I really hope in the end everything is going to be alright 🙂

That’s enough about me. Now let me tell you about “Rainbow Boy.

I spotted the beautiful image sometime in April, on a fence not far from where I live, on one of my daily one-allowed-exercise-per-day walk. From one evening to the next, Rainbow Boy had appeared, just like that. I was incredibly excited. I remember my face lighting up and my heart started racing the way it hadn’t for some time. I kept saying, Oh my god, this is a Banksy! A Banksy! We have a Banksy in Beckenham!  Since then I’ve spotted three more Rainbow Boys on my walks around the neighbourhood and realised that it couldn’t have been a Banksy.

When I got home I googled Rainbow Boy and discovered it to be the work of Croydon artist Chris Shea. Chris said, “During these unprecedented times I’m aiming to lift peoples spirits with my artwork. My work is my passion and a lot of my inspiration comes from watching my son grow, taking those moments and turning them into art that everyone can relate to. The rainbow boy that I am painting on garages, houses and buildings stemmed from a photograph of my son watering our plants in the garden. I then saw the local children painting rainbows to thank the NHS for all their hard work. This gave me a feeling that there is hope in youth and it should be watered like a plant.”

I then remembered the poem by Derek Mahon, “Everything is Going to be All Right”, and thought it a perfect match for Rainbow Boy.

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Cormorants at Farne Island

The Puffins had left Farne Islands for the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean the week before we arrived at Seahouses. It was late July. That didn’t stop us, though, to visit Staple Island. The boat trip alone around the outer islands was worth it (!) and in the end, we did see some Puffins, and there were lots and lots of Cormorants and other beautiful seabirds. Seeing Cormorants for the first time in a natural setting, watching them spread their wings to dry, was one of many things I’ll never forget about this wonderful trip. 

The shots below were taken whilst waiting for our boa at Staple Island after we about an hour’s exploration time. This small flock of Cormorants got on with their everyday life, completely ignoring their snap-happy onlookers.

oh, some loose feathers…

…that feels better…

 

A puffin :-), so glad we spotted one as most had left only days before our visit

Copyright (c) 2017 Gerda Brenner
All rights reserved

Closeness

Patiently and loyal they wait

when one falls behind         or

steps out of line

This was taken at St. James Park. Those three lovely creatures  entertained me and other visitors of the park. They’d been standing like statues for ages, until the one on the left, decided to move up a bit. Reunited, they were once again ready to continue their walk.

Copyright (c) 2017 Gerda Brenner
All rights reserved

Bearded Woman

We were lucky to find the central courtyard of Pilates House empty for the first few minutes after we had arrived at the magnificent residence of the Dukes of Medinaceli. Click-click. The sound of the double shot of my camera, which is usually drowned by the noises of busy city dwellings, echoed through in the quiet winter’s air.

We’d arrived early that morning to pay our entrance fee, which included an audio guide and a guided tour of the upper floor. The last time we were in Seville this 16th-century Mudéjar style gem was closed because…

…Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are here! They’re filming an action movie, we were told just after ordering, Dos cañas, media ración de croquetas de salmorejo y media ración de albondigas de choco, at a nearby bar. This spontaneous (the closure turned out to be a perfect excuse to stop for a small glass of beer and some tapas) but nonetheless vital break allowed us to ponder where to head next. And then the all too familiar tourist-native exchange followed as soon as one of the two cheerful Sevillanos behind the bar picked up on my non-native Spanish accent:

¿De dónde eres?

De Austria, pero vivo en Londres.

Ah, Austria  ¿Es la primera vez en España?

No, pero aquí, en Sevilla, sí, es mi primera vez.

I’d learned, that sometimes, for the sake of conversation flow, it’s best to stick to the polite ‘conversation script’. So, I left out my usual enthusiastic talk about Madrid and the small villages and towns of Castilla y León, and continued with my part:   

Me encanta Sevilla. Siempre fue un sueño para mí ver los naranjos.
(That is very true, and besides, I love Seville orange marmalade thinly spread on my breakfast toast, and the next time I return, it’ll have to be in March because I want to see the trees in bloom and take in their subtle fragrance.)

Tienes que venir durante la Semana Santa. 

Sí sí sí. Hay  que venir, sí sí sííí…, I nodded as the image of me bumping into Cameron Diaz in the narrow streets of Seville crept into my mind and …

Anyway. Back to January 2017 and Pilates House. We had about one hour to wander around the house to absorb the wonderful architecture of the central courtyard, its adjoining rooms and two gardens, a fusion of Italian Renaissance and Mudéjar-Gothic styles, before our guided tour started on the upper floor.

For twenty-five-or-so minutes, I listened diligently to the man and woman trapped inside the audio-guide, picking up interesting information on the way, such as why the palace became to be known as ‘Pilates House’. Then I decided to visit one of the gardens. It was then when patient partner called me inside a small room next to the Praetor’s Study. The room was furnished with a desk, a couple of chairs and on the wall behind the desk and …there she was, La Mujer Barbuda by Jusepe de Ribera, 1631.

Oh, what a portrait! I rushed towards it to have a closer look and read (yes, my audio-guide concentration span had already been exhausted) the plaque below it. Fascinating, I thought after I finished reading the story oft the painting and its protagonist.
The painting is beautifully executed. Magdalena Ventura’s femininity is highlighted by a large breast (it’s positioned quite central on her chest) and by her breastfeeding an infant. Her thickly grown beard is the one prominent feature of her masculinity. Apparently, Magdalena started to grow a beard at the age of thirty-seven after having given birth to three sons.
Some might find the portrait disturbing. But I liked it a lot, and was surprised that other visitors, who’d slowly started to arrive, entered the room without looking at the painting.
An interesting article, La Mujer Barbuda by Ribera, 1631: a gender bender, by W. Michael G. Tunbridge, can be found here

For me, Pilates House is all about fusion, that of Christian and Islamic workmanship. Thus, I thought it was the perfect place to have stumbled upon Ribera’s portrait of Magdalena Ventura whose body is a meeting point of both fe/male.