Ingela Bohm's Blog, page 7

Bread is life

First, a note: I feel guilty for posting anything remotely normal. It’s too early, it’s too meaningless. I should be living in a cave for a year to honour the dead.

On the other hand, I feel more obligated to LIVE than I have in a long time. Like I’ve been reminded how precious this world is, and what’s the point of being left behind if you don’t make the most of it?

So tonight I did something I haven’t done for twenty years: I baked.

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Hubby had cooked vegetables in chicken stock for dinner, and I used the left over broth for my bread. Managing my resources in a way that connects me to the rest of human history.

It’s a funny thing about autumn – I get this primeval urge to gather, to put away, to stock up on things. Normally I just go for ready-made preserves, but tonight it felt right to do something with my hands.

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Bread. The symbol for life.

In the days after news of a death, it’s impossible not to feel like you’re making a statement.

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Agent down

When I got the news, it was like a sliced fingertip. First there was nothing, no sensation at all. Then that hot, tingly feeling that’s the harbinger of pain – the deep breath before you realize you’ve cut yourself, deep. And then… pain and blood, hitting with full force.

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We used to call you “our man in Berlin”. I don’t think you ever knew that. In hindsight, it’s almost too apt. You were undercover, off somewhere doing the impossible, and we watched from afar. Your absence was literal, but also figurative. You had your own Scorpio world, populated by phantoms and screams. We never really knew you. Maybe no one did.

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Our few moments of real connection – Nick Drake, Recoil, And One, always there was a soundtrack to these moments – were unexpected bursts of sun in a gloomy cloudscape where our efforts at communication were, in your own words, exercises in estrangement.

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And yet, even though we never really connected, it feels like a part of me is gone. How’s that for banal? But you once said it’s the banal stuff that counts, so I’m allowing myself a piece of clichéd emotion in your honour.

At one time, I even wanted to be you. I wanted that darkness, that mystery to be mine. Wanted my ordinariness to be excised. I was attracted, like you’re attracted to a sheer cliff. Like you toy with the idea of stepping into that nothingness beyond.

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But your cliff was something else entirely. It was real in a way mine never was, and now you’ve taken that step. This new absence of yours is total, concrete, unquestionable. And I want to tell you. I want to call you and say, “You’ll never believe what happened – you died!” We’d laugh about it – about the obviousness, the improbableness of it all. About how I wrote it in a song fifteen years ago. About ravens and Poe and fate.

But I can’t tell you, and so it’s like you’ll never know. That you’re not here. We’re all here, everyone who knew you, and you’re not-here. As if you’ve taken the concept of leaving a party early to go home and listen to Kindertotenlieder to a whole new level.

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And that’s how I choose to see it. That you left. That death took you with your consent. That you completed your mission and dropped your gun in the Havel.

 

As for us, we no longer have a man in Berlin.

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Sowing the seeds

I wanted to be sure that the clear-cut is full of rosebay willowherb next year, so I decided to help Mother Nature along…

Cabin Friday

 

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The world is golden.

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Everything is ripening.

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Even the reeds by the creek are yellowing.

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Good morning!

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Post picture pool

A quick post-movie game in the cinema before uh… well, a bit of Game (of Thrones) in the TV sofa upstairs.

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The High Priestess

You can rationalize all you want – there are other ways of knowing the world. Seated at the edge of a misty pool, the High Priestess gazes into the bottomless depths of the soul. She is the physical manifestation of intuition, but she’s not a person. She’s a force within you, the part that knows without knowing and answers without speaking.

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But she doesn’t work for nothing. She craves solitude and silence to gauge the minute ripples of the subconscious. Away from the bustle of the world, she operates in mystery and stillness. You cannot hurry her along, you cannot sway her with desperate demands. She moves at her own pace, and wields her power by patience. Answers will come, but not when you want them or in the form you expect. To reach this particular kind of wisdom, waiting and listening is the only course of action.

Take a deep breath. You’re about to be submerged.

Creatures big and small

Tiny beaked things.

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Firs towering over all.

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Proud fireweed echoing the soaring treetops.

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The delicate morning air

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Prey

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We saw this bird from the car – it might be an osprey, we’re not sure. It had caught a fish and was circling over us with the poor creature in its claws.[image error]

Anyone know what it could be?

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