Did you know that South Korea's national anthem was originally set to the tune of the Scottish folk song, Auld Lang Syne, after Scottish missionaries brought the song into the country and made it respectable? Of course, you did!
(The composer Ahn Eak-tai wrote new, far more boring, music for the anthem in 1935 after hearing the Scottish original and, presumably, realising it was a song for drinking rather than praising nationhood.)
I love my kimchi but my Korean is pretty lousy, so I stick to the German version which I sang with the Boy Scouts when I was still in Germany and knee-high to a grasshopper, and long before I had heard of Robert Burns.
Nehmt Abschied, Brüder, ungewiß
ist alle Wiederkehr,
die Zukunft liegt in Finsternis
und macht das Herz uns schwer.
Refrain:
Der Himmel wölbt sich übers Land,
Ade, auf Wiedersehn!
Wir ruhen all in Gottes Hand,
Lebt wohl auf Wiedersehn.
Die Sonne sinkt, es steigt die Nacht,
vergangen ist der Tag.
Die Welt schläft ein, und leis erwacht
der Nachtigallen Schlag.
So ist in jedem Anbeginn
das Ende nicht mehr weit.
Wir kommen her und gehen hin
und mit uns geht die Zeit.
Nehmt Abschied, Brüder, schließt den Kreis,
das Leben ist ein Spiel.
nur wer es recht zu leben weiß,
gelangt ans große Ziel.
There seem to be two lyrics, one which reads, "das Leben ist kein Spiel", and the more optimistic version which removes the pessimistic 'k'.
I've always sung "das Leben ist ein Spiel" (life is a game), and I'm still singing it, so let's be thankful and raise our glasses for auld lang syne!
All of us at Riverbend wish all of you a Happy New Year!
the same rainbow lorikeets and king parrots on the verandah, the same possum and her joey in the possum penthouse, the same ducks and the white heron by and the turtles in the pond, the same pelicans in the lagoon, the same George the Goanna, the same water dragons in the shed, the same echidna at the bottom of the property, the same mice in the attic and, of course, the same Padma and yours truly who had wished you a merry Christmas only a week ago because nothing ever changes at Riverbend which is beautiful one day and perfect the next!
She was the one who waited patiently for you to come around, to finally give yourself to her completely and realize that she's the one for you. She was the one who supported you in
everything you did and you just took her for granted. Now you've lost her and you regret not being able to tell her how much you cared for her and how much you loved her. Now it's
too late for could haves, would haves and should haves.
You probably thought that she would never even think about leaving you because you knew she loved you with her whole heart. You probably thought that she will stick by your side
and that you still had time to have some more fun. She may be patient, but she's not a fool, she wasn't going to wait for you forever. She's proud and strong and she knows that
she's worth much more than you gave her credit for. She mustered the strength and walked away, even though she loved you truly. She just couldn't take your lies and excuses anymore and
she couldn't wait for you any longer.
She was naïve enough to think that you will change over time, that you will realize she's the best thing that has happened to you. She gave you all the chances she could but you
just took her for granted. All she did is believe in you and your love, and all you did is fail her trust each and every time. Time and time again she forgave your misgivings and
she hoped that there will be no next time. She hoped that this will be the last time you've caused her pain and that you'll finally give her the respect that she deserves. But
time and time again she was wrong. That day never came and she just couldn't wait for it any longer.
She walked away and never looked back and there's just nothing you can do to change it. She will no longer tolerate your egoistic nature, your insecurities and your foolishness.
She will no longer sacrifice herself for someone who doesn't appreciate her, for someone who doesn't know how to express his love, for someone who hasn't matured yet. She will no
longer accept your lies and deceptions because she knows that she can have something much better. She knows that she deserves something much better, something that you will never
be able to give to her.
She may be hurting, she may be in pain, but once the crying is over, she will pick herself up, dust herself off and carry on with her life. She will wipe away her tears and promise
herself that she will never cry for you again. She will never let anyone else treat her badly again.
Now she starts to live again. Now she starts to love herself again, to reinvent herself and to rediscover her passions. She is finally free of your negativity, of your toxicity
and she can live life to the fullest again. She can enjoy the little things, she can be happy and she can search for her soulmate. One day she will find the person who will light
up her eyes and fall madly in love. She will love again and she will be loved the way she deserves.
You'll regret losing this beautiful, amazing woman who was ready to give herself to you completely. You'll regret losing this one-of-a-kind woman who was ready to be your partner and
to spend her life with you. She was going to give it all to you, but you just didn't know how to cherish her.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.
--Constantine P. Cavafy
I've read these consoling words many times, finding curious ambiguities in them ...
Für drei Monate schickt das ZDF zwei deutsche Familien ans andere Ende der Welt. Der Zielort: ein fernes kleines Eiland im Pazifik - bewohnt von einer Hand voll Einheimischen. Die Inseln der Südsse - traumhafte Orte, die Sehnsüchte wecken nach weißen Stränden, azurblauem Meer und einer Hängematte zwischen Palmen. Mythos Südsee - oder nur ein Klischee? Von 400 Bewerbern für das Südsee-Abenteuer wählte das ZDF zwei Familien aus. Sie haben in der Erlebnisdokumentation "Traumfischer" die Chance, das Leben auf einer Südsee-Insel kennen zu lernen. Anfang August 2004 begannen die Dreharbeiten. Schon in der ersten Woche mussten die Familien erkennen: Das Leben in der Südsee ist nicht nur Sonnenschein.
Die ZDF Serie ’Traumfischer’ braut zur Zeit im Südsee-Staat Tonga einen Balsam zur Heilung der im deutschen Alltag erlittenen Seelenwunden. Der Mix aus Sonne, Meer und Palmen, wird mit freundlichen, offenen Menschen garniert und entspricht dem Südseetraum schlechthin.
Bougainville, Rousseau und Goethe hätten sicherlich ihre Freude an dieser Idee vom Paradies auf Erden in der Südsee.
Romantisch verklärter Naturalismus ist in Europa seit dem 18ten Jahrhundert ein beliebtes Thema und je komplexer die Zwänge unserer ’westlichen’ Gesellschaft werden, umso mehr scheint auch die Sehnsucht nach einem natürlicheren Leben zu wachsen.
Dem trägt das ZDF demnächst mit der auf Tonga gedrehten Serie Traumfischer Rechnung.
Wer sich nun auf die Spuren der Traumfischer begeben will, dem werden zwei verschiedene Südseen angeboten: Das kommerzialisierte, optisch unserem Ideal von der Südsee sehr nahen, Südseeparadies à la Bora Bora - oder die Realität eines verschlafenen, traditionellen Inselstaates, wie im Königreich Tonga.
Wer nach Tonga kommt und Bora Bora-Südsee erwartet, wird eventuell enttäuscht sein. Wer nach Bora Bora fährt und Südseekultur sucht, wird wohl ebenfalls enttäuscht werden ...
Seit 1994 lebe ich in Tonga.
Sechs Jahre davon auf einer unbewohnten Insel in der Ha’apai Gruppe, ca. 50Km vom nächsten Geschäft. ’Die letzte Ecke’, so zu sagen. Hier ist die Erde noch eine Scheibe und Captain Bligh erst gerade am Horizont verschwunden.
Für mich ist ’Südsee’, neben Sonne und Meer, vor allem die einfache Lebensweise der Menschen auf den abgelegenen Inseln.
Die insulanische Gelassenheit und stoische Akzeptanz des Lebens sind für mich das eigentliche Südseerlebnis – auch wenn ich, wie fast alle ’Palangis’, diese Lebensweise nicht adoptieren könnte.
Wer nach Tonga kommt und den einfachen Fischer im Einbaum sucht, der nicht vom Hotel bezahlt wird, kann hier Belohnung finden. Natürlich nicht dort wo die Flugzeuge landen, sondern zum Beispiel dort, wo auch das ZDF ihre Traumfischer Serie dreht, in Ha’apai.
Die meisten Reisenden bewegen sich nur selten abseits der Touristenpfade, sprich: Unterkunft, Geschäft, Cafe, Kneipe, Steckdose. Der Fischer im Einbaum kommt dort selten vorbei. Wer sich nicht von der Vertrautheit des Guesthouses, Hotels oder Cafes lösen kann, wird daher leider auch an der Südsee vorbeifahren.
Wichtig ist, dass sich jeder bewußt ist, was er hier erwartet oder sucht.
Wer lediglich Sonne, Meer und Cocktails sucht, wird in einem Resort gut bedient. Wer aber die Südsee aus Gaughins Bildern sucht, der fährt besser auf eine der kleineren Inseln – wenigstens für einen Tag."
So schrieb Joe Altenhein, ein Deutscher der in 1994 eine neue Zukunft in der Südsee gesucht hatte aber in 2002 schon wieder in Deutschland war.
Und er war nicht einer der vielen "Aussteiger" die sebst in ihrem eigenen Land auf Grund ihrer Nutzlosigkeit schon "Aussteiger" waren. Die Südsee-Inseln sind voll von ihnen. Nein, Joe Altenhein brachte Geld und Ideen mit und baute sich ein kleines Inselparadies auf seiner Trauminsel Telekivava'u - aber dennoch war er sechs (?) Jahre später wieder zuhause - siehe hier.
Ich hörte von den "Traumfischern" als ich in 2006 durchs Königreich Tonga reiste von einem Österreicher der dort schon seit Jahren ganz "einheimisch" lebt - siehe hier. Ich traf auch die deutsche Frau Juliana die damals in der kleinen Hauptstadt Nuku'alofa ein Restaurant betrieb (inzwischen abgebrannt - siehe hier) und engagiert war um für die Fernsehleute zu kochen. Also ganz so "einheimisch" ging es bei den "Traumfischern" nicht denn sie waren immer von den sehr deutsch-lebenden Fernsehleuten umgeben obwohl sie später mehrere abenteuerliche Berichte für die deutschen Zeitungen schrieben - siehe hier.
Wo bist Du jetzt, Joe? Ich würde gerne wieder einmal von Dir hören! Falls Du dies zufällig liest, schreibe mir bitte an riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com.
There is supposed to be something significant about us reaching the end of a year – that point in time where we come to an ending and then re-start, where January 1 marks the beginning of a new journey that will take us all the way through to the end of December again.
If you are going to try to improve in the next year or you do have some regrets about the previous year, don’t just hope that this will happen. That’s not how it works. As Seneca wrote to a friend who’d asked for advice, you need to pick a person or a model to hold yourself against.
"Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight."
I've been lucky to have had such a friend as a role model for almost thirty years. He has been dead now for almost as long as we had been friends but he's still my role model as well as having become my memento mori.
We didn't see Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, and Cupid, but Donner and Blitzen did their names proud because we had heaps of thunder and lightning and torrential rain all through the long Christmas weekend.
The other reindeers must've been laughing at us as we binge-watched the first, then the second, the third, and finally the sixth and seventh season of "Columbo". What saved us from turning into complete couch potatoes was that we didn't have the fourth and fifth season. Maybe next year!
I still remember Lieutenant Columbo's trademark outfit of a rumpled raincoat over a suit-and-tie and his characteristic squint (caused by a glass eye in the right socket) from my second stint at Barton House in 1969.
Those were the days of watching what was then still black-and-white television in the boarding-house's TV Lounge. I treasured them because there had been no television in South-West Africa where I had just come from, and there was going to be no television where I was heading: first New Guinea, then Burma, Thursday Island, the Solomons, and Samoa.
Those television-"deprived" years turned me into a bookworm instead of a TV addict - well, until this "Columbo"-an Christmas! And, stealing from Columbo's famous phrase together with his characteristic hand gesture, "just one more thing ...": I'm glad I spent all those years without TV!
The first 11 minutes of the film, showing people gathered around an old-fashioned Feuerzangenbowle. Heinz Rühmann enters after a few minutes.Inspired by his own school days and his son’s pranks at school in Düsseldorf, in his first novel Spoerl tells the story of a famous playwright named Johannes (Hans) Pfeiffer going undercover as a pupil at a small town Gymnasium (secondary school) after sitting around a bowl of fire-tongs punch with friends and hearing them tell him that he missed out on the best part of growing up by being privately tutored at home. Intrigued by the idea, Pfeiffer cuts his hair and shaves off his mustache to assume the identity of a high school student at an all-boys school in the sleepy town of Babenberg. The novel is set during the later years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) in Germany, and takes its title from the opening fire-tongs punch chapter.
Things get complicated when Pfeiffer’s girlfriend Marion learns of his stunt and travels from Berlin to Babenberg in an effort to persuade him to give up his crazy masquerade. Hans by chance meets the lovely young daughter of the school’s headmaster. And the story continues from there, with classic school prank scenes and more.
Besides being a popular hot beverage that warms your body and soul in the chill of winter, Feuerzangenbowle, also known as Krambambuli, is featured at German Christmas markets, and has a long Germanic university student tradition that dates back to the 18th century. This hot winter drink has served as the inspiration for songs, literary works, several films, and even a musical.
Feuerzangenbowle (FOY-er-tsangen-BOH-luh) is a famous German drink that few non-German-speakers have ever heard of. Fire-tongs punch is a seasonal, hard-to-pronounce alcoholic hot beverage, but it’s based on a much better known winter drink called Glühwein (hot mulled wine).
"Krambambuli" or "Der Krambambulist" is a German student song that sings the praises of the eponymous Krambambuli beverage. The version you can listen to here was composed by Christoph Friedrich Wedekind in 1745.
The German author Heinrich Spoerl (1887-1955) published the novel entitled "Die Feuerzangenbowle: Eine Lausbüberei in der Kleinstadt in 1933". The novel was popular and ultimately led to three movies (1934, 1944, 1970), the most famous of which was released in 1944 during the final days of a war the Nazis were on their way to losing. Read the book online at www.archive.org (if you can read German; if not, why not?)
This most famous version was produced by the Ufa Studios (Terra Film division) in Potsdam-Babelsberg near Berlin. Filming began in March 1943, and was extended to take longer than normal by shooting and reshooting scenes to perfection in an attempt to save the younger actors from being drafted into the war. Filming ended in June 1943. By the time the film was released in 1944, the German Wehrmacht had suffered massive casualties and some of the actors had been killed in battle despite these efforts.
In the opening credits, just before the now famous opening Feuerzangenbowle scene, a slightly adapted quotation from the book is displayed: "Dieser Film ist ein Loblied auf die Schule, aber es ist möglich, daß die Schule es nicht merkt." ("This film is in praise of schools, but it is possible that schools may not recognise it as such.")
The film’s setting is a somewhat nebulous "olden days" (early 1900s), evident in the old-fashioned school uniforms and caps that had already disappeared by the time the movie was in production. The clothing and styles in general also evoke an earlier time period. In part this was to avoid comparisons to the Nazi era and any potential political/cultural problems.
Today the 1944 film enjoys cult status in Germany. Since the 1980s, the film has inspired party-like screenings in university auditoriums and open-air cinemas around Christmas and New Year's Eve. For example, the audience will ring alarm clocks whenever an alarm clock rings in the movie and use flashlights to mimic certain scenes. At various times in the past, more than 10,000 students have participated in the Feuerzangenbowle film tradition at the university in Göttingen.
Before I sit down and enjoy a mug or two of Feuerzangenbowle, I should mention that this movie is of special significance to me because Heinz Rühmann was my Patenonkel (godfather) in Stendal in September 1945. It was the aftermath of the war but we were still relatively well-off 'landed gentry' in what would soon after become Soviet-occupied East Germany, and Heinz Rühmann and his wife Hertha Feiler and some of his fellow-actors lived with us in Stendal for a while.
Years later we all ended up as refugees in West Germany where Heinz Rühmann became rich and famous again while we remained poor.
I heard this story from Auggie Wren. Since Auggie doesn't come off too well in it, at least not as well as he'd like to, he's asked me not to use his real name. Other than that, the whole business about the lost wallet and the blind woman and the Christmas dinner is just as he told it to me.
Auggie and I have known each other for close to eleven years now. He works behind the counter of a cigar store on Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, and since it's the only store that carries the little Dutch cigars I like to smoke, I go in there fairly often. For a long time, I didn't give much thought to Auggie Wren. He was the strange little man who wore a hooded blue sweatshirt and sold me cigars and magazines, the impish, wisecracking character who always had something funny to say about the weather, the Mets or the politicians in Washington, and that was the extent of it.
But then one day several years ago he happened to be looking through a magazine in the store, and he stumbled across a review of one of my books. He knew it was me because a photograph accompanied the review, and after that things changed between us. I was no longer just another customer to Auggie, I had become a distinguished person. Most people couldn't care less about books and writers, but it turned out that Auggie considered himself an artist. Now that he had cracked the secret of who I was, he embraced me as an ally, a confidant, a brother-in-arms. To tell the truth, I found it rather embarrassing. Then, almost inevitably, a moment came when he asked if I would be willing to look at his photographs. Given his enthusiasm and goodwill, there didn't seem any way I could turn him down.
God knows what I was expecting. At the very least, it wasn't what Auggie showed me the next day. In a small, windowless room at the back of the store, he opened a cardboard box and pulled out twelve identical photo albums. This was his life's work, he said, and it didn't take him more than five minutes a day to do it. Every morning for the past twelve years, he had stood on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street at precisely seven o'clock and had taken a single color photograph of precisely the same view. The project now ran to more than four thousand photographs. Each album represented a different year, and all the pictures were laid out in sequence, from January 1 to December 31, with the dates carefully recorded under each one.
As I flipped through the albums and began to study Auggie's work, I didn't know what to think. My first impression was that it was the oddest, most bewildering thing I had ever seen. All the pictures were the same. The whole project was a numbing onslaught of repetition, the same street and the same buildings over and over again, an unrelenting delirium of redundant images. I couldn't think of anything to say to Auggie, so I continued turning pages, nodding my head in feigned appreciation. Auggie himself seemed unperturbed, watching me with a broad smile on his face, but after he'd seen that I'd been at it for several minutes, he suddenly interrupted and said, "You're going too fast. You'll never get it if you don't slow down."
He was right, of course. If you don't take the time to look, you'll never manage to see anything. I picked up another album and forced myself to go more deliberately. I paid closer attention to the details, took note of the shifts in weather, watched for the changing angles of light as the seasons advanced. Eventually I was able to detect subtle differences in the traffic flow, to anticipate the rhythm of the different days (the commotion of workday mornings, the relative stillness of weekends, the contrast between Saturdays and Sundays). And then, little by little, I began to recognize the faces of the people in the background, the passers-by on their way to work, the same people in the same spot every morning, living an instant of their lives in the field of Auggie's camera.
Once I got to know them, I began to study their postures, the way they carried themselves from one morning to the next, trying to discover their moods from these surface indications, as if I could imagine stories for them, as if I could penetrate the invisible dramas locked inside their bodies. I picked up another album. I was no longer bored, no longer puzzled as I had been at first. Auggie was photographing time, I realized, both natural time and human time, and he was doing it by planting himself in one tiny corner of the world and willing it to be his own, by standing guard in the space he had chosen for himself. As he watched me pore over his work, Auggie continued to smile with pleasure. Then, almost as if he'd been reading my thoughts, he began to recite a line from Shakespeare.
"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," he muttered under his breath, "time creeps on its petty pace." I understood then that he knew exactly what he was doing.
That was more than two thousand pictures ago. Since that day, Auggie and I have discussed his work many times, but it was only last week that I learned how he acquired his camera and started taking pictures in the first place. That was the subject of the story he told me, and I'm still struggling to make sense of it.
Earlier that same week, a man from the New York Times called me and asked if I would be willing to write a short story that would appear in the paper on Christmas morning. My first impulse was to say no, but the man was very charming and persistent, and by the end of the conversation I told him I would give it a try. The moment I hung up the phone, however, I fell into a deep panic. What did I know about Christmas? I asked myself. What did I know about writing short stories on commission?
I spent the next several days in despair, warring with the ghosts of Dickens, O.Henry, and other masters of the Yuletide spirit. The very phrase "Christmas story" had unpleasant associations for me, evoking dreadful outpourings of hypocritical mush and treacle. Even at their best, Christmas stories were no more than wish-fulfillment dreams, fairy tales for adults, and I'd be damned if I'd ever allowed myself to write something like that. And yet, how could anyone propose to write an unsentimental Christmas story? It was a contradiction in terms, an impossibility, an out-and-out conundrum. One might just as well imagine a racehorse without legs, or a sparrow without wings.
I got nowhere. On Thursday I went out for a long walk, hoping the air would clear my head. Just past noon, I stopped in at the cigar store to replenish my supply, and there was Auggie, standing behind the counter as always. He asked me how I was. Without really meaning to, I found myself unburdening my troubles to him. "A Christmas story?" he said after I had finished. "Is that all? If you buy me lunch, my friend, I'll tell you the best Christmas story you ever heard. And I guarantee that every word of it is true."
We walked down the block to Jack's, a cramped and boisterous delicatessen with good pastrami sandwiches and photographs of old Dodgers teams hanging on the walls. We found a table in the back, ordered our food, and then Auggie launched into his story.
"It was the summer of seventy-two," he said. "A kid came in one morning and started stealing things from the store. He must have been about nineteen or twenty, and I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic shoplifter in my life. He's standing by the rack of paperbacks along the far wall and stuffing books into the pockets of his raincoat. It was crowded around the counter just then, so I didn't see him at first. But once I noticed what he was up to, I started to shout. He took off like a jackrabbit, and by the time I managed to get out from behind the counter, he was already tearing down Atlantic Avenue. I chased after him for about half a block, and then I gave up. He'd dropped something along the way, and since I didn't feel like running any more, I bent down to see what it was.
"It turned out to be his wallet. There wasn't any money inside, but his driver's license was there along with three or four snapshots. I suppose I could have called the cops and had him arrested. I had his name and address from the license, but I felt kind of sorry for him. He was just a measly little punk, and once I looked at those pictures in his wallet, I couldn't bring myself to feel very angry at him. Robert Goodwin. That was his name. In one of the pictures, I remember, he was standing with his arm around his mother or grandmother. In another one he was sitting there at age nine or ten dressed in a baseball uniform with a big smile on his face. I just didn't have the heart. He was probably on dope now, I figured. A poor kid from Brooklyn without much going for him, and who cared about a couple of trashy paperbacks anyway?
"So I held on to the wallet. Every once in a while I'd get a little urge to send it back to him, but I kept delaying and never did anything about it. Then Christmas rolls around and I'm stuck with nothing to do. The boss usually invites me over to his house to spend the day, but that year he and his family were down in Florida visiting relatives. So I'm sitting in my apartment that morning feeling a little sorry for myself, and then I see Robert Goodwin's wallet lying on a shelf in the kitchen. I figure what the hell, why not do something nice for once, and I put on my coat and go out to return the wallet in person.
"The address was over in Boerum Hill, somewhere in the projects. It was freezing out that day, and I remember getting lost a few times trying to find the right building. Everything looks the same in that place, and you keep going over the same ground thinking you're somewhere else. Anyway, I finally get to the apartment I'm looking for and ring the bell. Nothing happens. I assume no one's there, but I try again just to make sure. I wait a little longer, and just when I'm about to give up, I hear someone shuffling to the door. An old woman's voice asks who's there, and I say I'm looking for Robert Goodwin. 'Is that you, Robert?' the old woman says, and then she undoes about fifteen locks and opens the door.
"She has to be at least eighty, maybe ninety years old, and the first thing I notice about her is that she's blind. 'I knew you'd come, Robert,' she says. 'I knew you wouldn't forget your Granny Ethel on Christmas.' And then she opens her arms as if she's about to hug me.
"I didn't have much time to think, you understand. I had to say something real fast, and before I knew what was happening, I could hear the words coming out of my mouth. 'That's right, Granny Ethel,' I said. 'I came back to see you on Christmas.' Don't ask me why I did it. I don't have any idea. Maybe I didn't want to disappoint her or something, g, I don't know. It just came out that way, and then this old woman was suddenly hugging me there in front of the door, and I was hugging her back.
"I didn't exactly say I was her grandson. Not in so many words, at least, but that was the implication. I wasn't trying to trick her, though. It was like a game we'd both decided to play - without having to discuss the rules. I mean, that woman knew I wasn't her grandson Robert. She was old and dotty, but she wasn't so far gone that she couldn't tell the difference between a stranger and her own flesh and blood. But it made her happy to pretend, and since I had nothing better to do anyway, I was happy to go along with her.
"So we went into the apartment and spent the day together. The place was a real dump, I might add, but what can you expect from a blind woman who does her own housekeeping? Every time she asked me a question about how I was, I would lie to her. I told her I found a good job working in a cigar store, I told her I was about to get married, I told her a hundred pretty stories, and she made like she believed every one of them. 'That's fine, Robert,' she would say, nodding her head and smiling. 'I always knew things would work out for you.'
"After a while, I started getting pretty hungry. There didn't seem to be much food in the house, so I went out to a store in the neighborhood and brought back a mess of stuff. A precooked chicken, vegetable soup, a bucket of potato salad, a chocolate cake, all kinds of things. Ethel had a couple of bottles of wine stashed in her bedroom, and so between us we managed to put together a fairly decent Christmas dinner. We both got a little tipsy from the wine, I remember, and after the meal was over we went out to sit in the living room, where the chairs were more comfortable. I had to take a pee, so I excused myself and went to the bathroom down the hall. That's where things took yet another turn. It was ditsy enough doing my little jig as Ethel's grandson, but what I did next was positively crazy, and I've never forgiven myself for it.
"I go into the bathroom, and stacked up against the wall next to the shower, I see a pile of six or seven cameras. Brand-new thirty-five-millimeter cameras, still in their boxes, top-quality merchandise. I figure this is the work of the real Robert, a storage place for one of his recent hauls. I've never taken a picture in my life, and I've certainly never stolen anything, but the moment I see those cameras sitting in the bathroom, I decide I want one of them for myself. Just like that. And without even stopping to think about it, I tuck one of those boxes under my arm and go back to the living room.
"I couldn't have been gone for more than three minutes, but in that time Granny Ethel had fallen asleep in her chair. Too much Chianti, I suppose. I went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and she slept through the whole racket, snoring like a baby. There didn't seem any point in disturbing her, so I decided to leave. I couldn't even write a note to say goodbye, seeing that she was blind and all, so I just left. I put her grandson's wallet on the table, picked up the camera again, and walked out of the apartment. And that's the end of the story."
"Did you ever go back to see her?" I asked.
"Once," he said. "About three or four months later. I felt so bad about stealing the camera, I hadn't even used it yet. I finally made up my mind to return it, but Ethel wasn't there any more. I don't know what happened to her, but someone else had moved into the apartment, and he couldn't tell me where she was."
"She probably died."
"Yeah, probably."
"Which means that she spent her last Christmas with you."
"I guess so. I never thought of it that way."
"It was a good deed, Auggie. It was a nice thing you did for her."
"I lied to her, and then I stole from her. I don't see how you can call that a good deed."
"You made her happy. And the camera was stolen anyway. It's not as if the person you took it from really owned it."
"Anything for art, eh, Paul?"
"I wouldn't say that. But at least you put the camera to good use."
"And now you've got your Christmas story, don't you?"
"Yes," I said. "I suppose I do."
I paused for a moment, studying Auggie as a wicked grin spread across his face. I couldn't be sure, but the look in his eyes at that moment was so mysterious, so fraught with the glow of some inner delight, that it suddenly occurred to me that he had made the whole thing up. I was about to ask him if he'd been putting me on, but then I realized he'd never tell. I had been tricked into believing him, and that was the only thing that mattered. As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true.
"You're an ace, Auggie," I said. "Thanks for being so helpful."
"Any time," he answered, still looking at me with that maniacal light in his eyes. "After all, if you can't share your secrets with your friends, what kind of a friend are you?"
"I guess I owe you one."
"No you don't. Just put it down the way I told it to you, and you don't owe me a thing."
"Except the lunch."
"That's right. Except the lunch."
I returned Auggie's smile with a smile of my own, and then I called out to the waiter and asked for the check.
The short story has no Santa Claus, no Christmas tree, and no brightly wrapped packages. And yet there's plenty of giving. Merry Christmas!
All of us at Riverbend wish all of you a merry Christmas!
Yours without wax, *)
the rainbow lorikeets and king parrots on the verandah, the possum and her joey in the possum penthouse, the many ducks and the white heron by and the turtles in the pond, the many pelicans in the lagoon, George the Goanna, the many water dragons in the shed, the echidna at the bottom of the property, the mice in the attic and, of course, Padma and yours truly
*) To the few of you who are not Latin scholars, please let me explain: each time you end a letter with "Yours sincerely", you're acknowledging an ancient form of quality control. Roman sculptors often concealed cracks in apparently flawless marble statues with melted beeewax. When the wax dried and crumbled, the angry purchaser sought compensation. Reputable sculptors guaranteed their work as sine sera, which means without wax. Hence "Yours sincerely". But, of course, you already knew that.
(Volker, vous allez voir Santa demain? Dis bonjour de ma part.)
Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright, /
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child! /
Holy Infant, so tender and mild, /
Sleep in heavenly peace! /
Sleep in heavenly peace!
As I limber up for my annual rendition of "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", it may be a good time to retell the story of this popular Christmas carol.
In 1818, a roving band of actors was performing in towns throughout the Austrian Alps. On December 23 they arrived at Oberndorf, a village near Salzburg where they were to re-enact the story of Christ's birth in the small Church of St. Nicholas. Unfortunately, the St. Nicholas' church organ wasn't working and would not be repaired before Christmas.
Because the church organ was out of commission, the actors presented their Christmas drama in a private home. That Christmas presentation of the events in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke put assistant pastor Josef Mohr in a meditative mood. Instead of walking straight to his house that night, Mohr took a longer way home. The longer path took him up over a hill overlooking the village.
From that hilltop, Mohr looked down on the peaceful snow-covered village. Revelling in the majestic silence of the wintry night, Mohr gazed down at the glowing Christmas-card-like scene. His thoughts about the Christmas play he had just seen made him remember a poem he had written a couple of years before. That poem was about the night when angels announced the birth of the long-awaited Messiah to shepherds on a hillside.
Mohr decided those words might make a good carol for his congregation the following evening at their Christmas eve service. The one problem was that he didn't have any music to which that poem could be sung. So, the next day Mohr went to see the church organist, Franz Xaver Gruber. Gruber only had a few hours to come up with a melody which could be sung with a guitar. However, by that evening, Gruber had managed to compose a musical setting for the poem. It no longer mattered to Mohr and Gruber that their church organ was inoperable. They now had a Christmas carol that could be sung without that organ.
On Christmas Eve, the little Oberndorf congregation heard Gruber and Mohr sing their new composition to the accompaniment of Gruber's guitar. Weeks later, well-known organ builder Karl Mauracher arrived in Oberndorf to fix the organ in St. Nicholas church. When Mauracher finished, he stepped back to let Gruber test the instrument. When Gruber sat down, his fingers began playing the simple melody he had written for Mohr's Christmas poem. Deeply impressed, Mauracher took copies of the music and words of "Silent Night" back to his own Alpine village, Kapfing. There, two well-known families of singers — the Rainers and the Strassers — heard it. Captivated by "Silent Night," both groups put the new song into their Christmas season repertoire.
The Strasser sisters spread the carol across northern Europe. In 1834, they performed "Silent Night" for King Frederick William IV of Prussia, and he then ordered his cathedral choir to sing it every Christmas eve.
In 1914 it even introduced a rare moment of sanity into an insane war. Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas) is a 2005 French film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers.
In 1863, nearly fifty years after being first sung in German, "Silent Night" was translated into English. Today "Silent Night" is sung in more than 300 different languages around the world - including Humming if you don't know the words. Here it is in Indonesian:
Malam kudus sunyi senyap
BintangMu gemerlap
Juru s'lamat manusia
telah datang kedunia
Kristus anak Daud
Kristus anak Daud
Malam kudus sunyi senyap
Tuhanku penebus
telah datang
kedunia
bawa keselamatan kekal
puji Haleluya
pujilah Haleluya
Malam kudus sunyi senyap
kabar baik menggegap
bala sorga menyanyikannya
Kau gembala yang menyaksikannya
lahir Raja Shalom
lahir Raja Shalom
Iin the islands, by some unspoken agreement, we never talked about Christmases or birthdays. As my best friend Noel once confided, "Talking about them makes them more real", and so we never celebrated them either. It was our way of coping with loneliness and being far away from home. Not so in this story by Louis Becke, "A Christmas Eve in the Far South Seas":
"Donald MacBride and myself were the only Britishers living on one of the North Pacific Island lagoons when Christmas of 1880 drew near, and we determined to celebrate in a manner that would fill our German and American trading rivals throughout the group with envy. MacBride was a bony, red-headed Scotchman, with a large heart and a small, jealous, half-caste wife. The latter acquisition ruled him with a rod of iron, much to his financial and moral benefit, but nevertheless agreed with me that we - Donald, she and myself - ought to show the Americans and the 'Dutchmen' how an English Christmas should be celebrated. But as Sera was a half-caste native of the Pelews, and had never been to a civilised country, she also concurred with me that Donald and myself should run the show, which, although I was not a married man, was to take place in my house on account of the greater space available. Donald, she said, wanted to have a 'hakkise'; so we bought a nanny-goat from Ludwig Wolfen, the German trader at Molok, and one evening - the 23rd of December - I helped Sera to drive and drag the unsuspecting creature home to her husband's place to the slaughter. (I may as well say at once that MacBride's nanny-goat haggis was a hideous failure, and my boat's crew, to whom it was handed over, with many strong expressions about MacBride's beastly provincial taste, said that it smelt good, like shark's liver, but was not at all so juicy.) Continue reading here ...
Louis Becke ends his story thus, "... we raised our glasses and drank to the memory of those who had gone before". I shall do likewise, raising my glass of Pino More to dear and absent friends who, however briefly and whether still alive or not, shared those lazy island days with me: [in no particular order] Noel Butler, Des Hudson, Roy Goldsworthy, Peter Logan, Graham Ward, Ian Paterson, Frank Joslin, Chris Jeffries, Dave Richardson, Hubert Hofer, Brian Herde, Neil "Jacko" Jackson, Bob Green, "Bulldog" Malcolm Baker, Urs Christen, Merv Nightingale, Ian Paterson, Colin Cowell, Werner Seifert, Volker Leidner, Urs Christen, Bill Brown, Brian Darcey ... and the list goes on
We've made it home safely, so it's safe to wish us all a Merry Christmas!
Testing the springs in the worn-out old armchairs at the Treehouse Cafe
We must've walked past The Treehouse Cafe Ulladulla a hundred times. On our last drive through Ulladulla we actually walked inside - and we are so pleased we did!
It was like something out of the Mad Hatter's Party with all the furnishings, decorations, even the crockery and cutlery, straight out of the nearest op-shop. The chairs were comfortable and deep, mainly because the springs were so worn out, the cutlery holder a left-over from last night's dinner, and the table number as vinyl as the table cloth.
While others may have spent half a million dollars for a Coffee Club franchise and another hundred thousand for an all-chrome-and-glass fit-out which takes them years to recover, the Treehouse Cafe has created a unique ambience for less than the first day's takings.
If you want to study a good business model, come to the Treehouse Cafe in Ulladulla!
Yours truly somewhere in the wilds of the Sepik District
Before the mice start chewing on them, I thought it best to scan some of these old black-and-white photos and put them up on the net. They date back to Christmas 1975 when I visited my best mate Noel Butler in Wewak.
I had just come back from Burma after having - very unwisely - resigned from what was the perfect job, and was spending Christmas 1975 with Noel before jetting off to my next assignment in Tehran in Iran.
Noel had been one of the Territorians I met aboard the Greek ship PATRIS at the end of 1967. Our love of chess made Noel and me shipboard mates and we spent many hours hunched over the chessboard as the ship ploughed its way towards Europe. And as we played game after game, I learnt about the Territory and listened to stories of some the Territory's 'old-timers', and my mind was made up that one day I too would go to the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea - click here.
Outside the post office, about to cable my ETA to my new employers in Iran
Noel Butler at his saksak house just outside Wewak
Noel (left) and yours truly
Noel and yours truly somewhere on a hill overlooking Wewak
Noel's old ute with yours truly in the back somewhere outside Wewak.
'Yours truly' on the left, and the Austrian on the right, in 2006
Take one part of sun-soaked, palm-lined beach, add a hammock stretched between two palm trees, a dash of ice-cold beer, and a pinch of gentle tradewinds, and finish with a twist of tropical sunset. It's easy to lose track of time in the land where time begins. Welcome to the South Sea Island Paradise of Ha'apai in the tiny Kingdom of Tonga!
There are so many romantic beaches to wander at sunrise and sunset, or in fact, all day long! You can explore on foot or mountain-bike too - just bring along a change of clothes, beach towel, and snorkel and mask. As you stay in a traditional fale on a deserted beach or uninhabited island, you may think for a moment you have died and gone to heaven. But this paradise is real. And you can live this dream lifestyle for a fraction of what it costs to live anywhere else.
Which is what a man from Austria (not Australia but Austria, that little country in Central Europe where they speak German with a funny accent) had done in 1995 at the ripe old age of 39, following a workplace accident in Vienna which gave him a small pension to live on.
By the time I met him in Pangai on the island of Lifuka in 2006, he had already fully succumbed to the siren song of these remote and soporific islands which is that on this small and human-sized stage your life counts for more and even your smallest accomplishments will be remembered.
His one accomplishment since coming to Tonga had been to marry a local girl and sire two kids. By the time we met they had already separated again but he was still paying for her and the two kids which made his small pension even smaller. Suddenly, paradise seemed more like paradise lost!
He didn't seem to be ever struck by homesickness. And why would he want to leave? He subscribes to Louis Becke's sentiments - of whom he knows nothing - who once wrote about life in the South Seas, "Return? not they! Why should they go back? Here they had all things which are wont to satisfy man here below. A paradise of Eden-like beauty, amid which they wandered day by day all unheeding of the morrow. Why - why, indeed, should they leave the land of magical delights for the cold climate and still more glacial moral atmosphere of their native land, miscalled home?"
We kept up a correspondence over many years, sporadic at best because of the unreliable mail service in Tonga, but in recent years heard nothing from him. He'd be 67 years old now which, given the restricted diet and even worse health service, would make him an old man in the islands.
We had talked about this back in 2006, and he seemed to accept the fact that if he ever grew old or sick, he would be far away from any help. He seemed to accept his eventual fate with the stoicism of a man still in the prime of his life, but I wonder if he was still as accepting of his fate now.
As Somerset Maugham wrote in his story "The Lotus Eater" about a certain Thomas Wilson who had moved to the island of Capri with an annuity that would last him for twenty-five years: "Most people, the vast majority in fact, lead the lives that circumstances have thrust upon them, and though some repine, looking upon themselves as round pegs in square holes, and think that if things had been different they might have made a much better showing, the greater part accept their lot, if not with serenity, at all events with resignation. They are like train-cars travelling forever on the selfsame rails. They go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, inevitably, till they can go no longer and then are sold as scrap-iron. It is not often that you find a man who has boldly taken the course of his life into his own hands. When you do, it is worth while having a good look at him."
In the story, Wilson is asked, "Have you never regretted?", to which he replies, "Never. I've had my money's worth already. And I've got ten years more. Don't you think after twenty-five years of perfect happiness one ought to be satisfied to call it a day?" In short, when the money had run out he was going to commit suicide. As the author observed, "Wilson's plan was all right. There was only one flaw in it and this, I suppose, he could not have foreseen. It had never occurred to him that after twenty-five years of complete happiness, in this quiet backwater, with nothing in the world to disturb his serenity, his character would gradually lose its strength. The will needs obstacles in order to exercise its power; when it is never thwarted, when no effort is needed to achieve one's desires, because one has placed one's desires only in the things that can be obtained by stretching out one's hand, the will grows impotent. If you walk on a level all the time the muscles you need to climb a mountain will atrophy. These observations are trite, but there they are. When Wilson's annuity expired he had no longer the resolution to make the end which was the price he had agreed to pay for that long period of happy tranquility. I do not think, as far as I could gather, both from what my friend told me and afterwards from others, that he wanted courage. It was just that he couldn't make up his mind. He put it off from day to day."
I lost contact with the Austrian a long time ago and don't know if he's still living his lotus-eating existence, but I do know what happened to Wilson.
Both ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Bah! Humbug’ are known to people who have never read Dickens’ book, or even seen one of the countless film, TV, and theatre adaptations. But what is "A Christmas Carol" really about, and is there more to this tale of charity and goodwill than meets the eye? It might be worth briefly summarising the plot of the novella.
The novella is divided into five chapters or ‘staves’. In the first stave, the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge rejects his nephew Fred’s invitation to dine with him and his family for Christmas. He reluctantly allows his clerk, Bob Cratchit, to have Christmas Day off work. On Christmas night, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley.
Marley, bound in chains, warns Scrooge that a similar fate awaits him when he dies unless he mends his ways; he also tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits.
The second, third, and fourth staves of "A Christmas Carol" are devoted to each of the three spirits of Christmas. First, the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge and reminds him of his lonely childhood at boarding school, and the kindness shown to the young Scrooge by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig (whom we see at a Christmas ball).
Scrooge is also shown a vision recalling his relationship with Belle, a young woman who broke off their engagement because of the young Scrooge’s love of money. The Ghost of Christmas Past then shows Scrooge that Belle subsequently married another man and raised a family with him.
The third stave details the visit from the second spirit: the Ghost of Christmas Present. This spirit shows Scrooge his nephew Fred’s Christmas party as well as Christmas Day at the Cratchits. Bob Cratchit’s youngest son, Tiny Tim, is severely ill, and the Ghost tells Scrooge that the boy will die if things don’t change. He then shows Scrooge two poor, starving children, named Ignorance and Want.
The fourth stave features the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who shows Scrooge his own funeral taking place in the future. It is sparsely attended by a few of Scrooge’s fellow businessmen only. The only two people who express any emotion over Scrooge’s passing are a young couple who owed him money, and who are happy that he’s dead.
Scrooge is then shown a very different scene: Bob Cratchit and his family mourning Tiny Tim’s death. Scrooge is shown his own neglected gravestone, and vows to mend his ways.
The fifth and final stave sees Scrooge waking on Christmas morning a changed man. He sends Bob Cratchit a large turkey for Christmas dinner, and goes to his nephew’s house that afternoon to spend Christmas with Fred’s family. The next day he gives Bob Cratchit a pay rise, and generally treats everyone with kindness and generosity.
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" has attained the force of a modern myth, an archetypal tale about the value of helping those in need, in the name of Christian charity and general human altruism.
Perhaps you want to read the story again here, right down to the end where ... it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"
In Camp 6 at Loloho on the Bougainville Copper Project left-to-right: Neil "Jacko" Jackson, yours truly, Bob Green
We didn't use the word 'Christmas' then. Christmas came with too much emotional baggage. It reminded us of families and homes which we were far away from or didn't even have.
Of course, I'm talking of those many years - decades, in fact - spent in boarding houses, construction camps, hotels, and company housing. Come Christmastime, those who had families and homes had gone; those who didn't hadn't.
There was Barton House in Canberra, usually throbbing with life from its 300-odd - and some very odd - inmates, which turned into a morgue by Christmastime. The dining room was roped off except for one table next to the kitchen. That table was large enough for those left behind.
It's hard not to be reminded of something when you're surrounded by half a dozen gloomy faces. So for my last Christmas in Canberra in 1969, just before I flew to my next job in New Guinea, I hitched and hiked to Angle Crossing where I spent a solitary weekend writing letters which is the only device that combines solitude with good company.
Canberra's then Youth Hostel at Angle Crossing, over the hill from the Murrumbidgee River
Years later, and just one day before Christmas, I booked myself into hospital on Bougainville Island with acute appendicitis . "You'd better get on the next plane out and into a hospital at home", the doctor told me. He was already deep into his medicinal alcohol and had trouble remembering which side my appendix was on. "This is my home", I said. He made one long incision just to make sure he wouldn't miss it.
What I had missed was that my best friend Noel Butler was coming over from Wewak to spend - ahem! - Christmas with me. He must have got there while I was still under the anaesthetic, because there he was standing at the foot of my bed. He'd gone to my donga and waited and finally asked the hous boi where I was. "Masta bagarap long haus sik".
Yours truly and Noel hunched over a chess board in New Guinea
We tried again the following year by which time I had moved to Lae on the north coast of the New Guinea mainland. By the time Christmas and Noel had come, there was just enough time left for a drink at the club and a game of chess before I flew out to my next job in Burma.
And so it went on, year after year, either coming or going or laid up with something, deftly avoiding Christmas. It's not so easy anymore!
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen[AT]mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
In der Zwischenzeit, falls Du mein Blog in der englischen Sprache lesen willst, besuche mich At Home at Riverbend.
