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This text has been published on Valley Haggards Life in 10 minutes , but I wanted to also publish it on my own blog, so here it is again. I feel like I can not shower enough to get rid of this negative stuff, clinging to my skin, inside and out. Something seems to be lost. There is, for a year now, a dirt creeping up, an emotional dirt, which so far I only knew from history books or stories about far away places. I knew, they existed, but somehow I was naive, I never thought, they would come so close to me during my lifetime, that they would directly enter my heart, my soul, my entire being on a level, that forces me, to confront this shit every day, every minute. It started with the so-called „refugee-crisis“, which actually were syrian people, bombed by their own government and russians, attacked by the IS, trying to somehow make it to a safe place, which they only could on illegal routes, because nobody really wanted to take them in. Not so many, at least. So, all those bo...

Today was a good day. I awoke at about 6 a.m. to a blue sky. The air was cold, but also mild. August feels like october, but thats okay. I was very happy to be alive, until I remembered, that I was supposed to fly to New Mexico in exactly 7 days. Not good! I was afraid to go to New Mexico. I stayed in bed another hour and the fear was like a storm in my body. Also in my brain. So many thoughts about accidents, misfortunes, bears, the darkness, the loneliness, losing my mind actually. This has been so every morning for the past 2 or 3 weeks. I am nervous to go. I am afraid of all the things, which could happen, to me, but more so to Lilly. Am I endangering my little daughter by bringing her to New Mexico? Mainly, I am afraid to leave my comfort zone. So I hear my dead mother’s voice very much alive in my head: „You are crazy! Are you crazy? What do you want in New Mexico? Do you want to be killed by terrorists? What will you do, if a bear attacks you? Are you crazy to leave y...

Today I read on the internet somewhere, that the world does not turn just because I turn it. I had to laugh hard, „hard“ as in: what do you mean, it does not turn, if I do not turn it? You got to be kidding! I am one of those people who for years and years thought, everything was happening because of me, nothing would happen without me pushing it. One night, twelve years ago, I collapsed in our apartment due to a tubal pregnancy. My body just broke down, I was shaking, could not control any part of it and felt strangely removed from what had been one of my defining features until up to this moment. I was freezing and when I wasn’t trying to control, I was certain to be dying, I just knew, this was the end, and funny thing was: after a first wave of panic receded, it did not frighten me at all. I found, I was ready to let go…until the guys with the ambulance arrived and showed, that they were just that: guys with a driver’s licence for an ambulance. They could not do anything ...

...came from my former therapist, Frau Hering. She was an old woman, when I came to meet her. I think, she was about 77 or so years old, a kind of a sage. I found her through friends, shortly after I had arrived in Berlin in 1995, to live here for a year (this year is still not over btw!!)  I was 31 years old or so and she was my first ever therapist. After moving to Berlin I decided, that it was about time to work out some difficulties and shine some clearing light into some corners of my past and my present, and while we were at it, maybe even of the future. I went to see her once a week. Every session cost about 100 Deutschmarks, which was A LOT OF MONEY for me back than. But somehow I never asked her for a refund or to pay next time. I always managed to get that money together, which seems, looking back, like a freaking miracle.  She had a small apartment in Waidmannslust, a northern part of Berlin, to which I took the S-Bahn. I lived in Schöneberg, later in Neukölln, s...

"Wherever we go, there seems to be only one business at hand - that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us." Annie Dillard in "Teaching a Stone to Talk" There was a timed writing exercise a few weeks ago: Count your blessings. At first it seemed easy enough, since life was good.  O.k., I thought, give me a second and  I just might do that. But then, I couldn't do it and the more, I thought about why, I understood: before I count those blessings (plenty plenty) I feel, I have to do justice to pain, a feeling I never acknowledged properly. My childhood hurt, and I didn't admit it. Which has led to an entire life, that hurts at times, when it should'nt, even with all those blessings. So I guess, I have to write about the pain a little bit. I grew up in a very small german city, it was almost a village. We lived in one big house, eleven people, all family. My aunt and uncle, their three ...

I always liked the sound of the word providence. If I had to choose a favourite word, it might very well be it, providence. I also love its meaning. Today there was a thread on my facebook-timeline. I posted "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." J.W. Goethe A friend in a comment continued : „Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man or woman could have dreamed would come his or her way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Begin it now." I answered: „I wonder: when providence doesn’t move, ...

..but you can not write an entire book about your irritation. You’d probably be depressed after 10 pages into it (which I am) I have been irritated ever since I started the book and yet, never could let go. I threw away pages and pages and pages, again and again and again, but I still have the idea and about 500 pages of material. Growing. The first idea I had was: I want to write a book about women. Good. No, rather not good. It irritated me how many women my age or even 10 years younger were stuck in unhappy situations. So I knew, this novel might become sort of a feminist book. I was irritated right away, and embarrassed, just thinking about the reactions to it by, say: men. I would lose friends I'd never had, that one was for sure. By the way: its Gloria Steinems 81 st birthday today! Most women (maybe even all women) I knew had children and were in relationships and they did approximately 85% of the housework (rather more), on top of that fulfilling the perfect...

Sometimes, I wake up and immediately start to write in my disco notebook. It is silver and it glitters so much, it could blind you actually. I got it from my friend Greta Brinkman, a bass goddess and one of my oldest friends. We have been roommates too. She is cool. Which you can tell, since she knows to give me disco notebooks! Sometimes, right after waking up, sipping my coffee, I find my thoughts so deep and profound and interesting, that I feel the total urge to share them here with you all. Maybe I should not do that, but I can not restrain myself. So, take this, people and have a great day! What I notice, when I am still The cat purring beside me. He sounds like a tractor or a car engine. Content. I hear a little sound in my ears, a quiet sound. I call it stillness. Its where I dive into, whenever I sit on my zafu, or wherever I happen to remember, that this little sound is my home, is really everything I need. When I am still, which I hardly ever am, which I try to ...

"The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstrream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless." from: Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek When I was riding my car the other day to pick up my daughter from school, I listened to a broadcast on my car radio about so called diary slams. People read from their old diaries to an audience. And they usually pick up the hilarious stuff like " I really want to move to England to live with Take That. I know they would understand me much better than my parents do". Listening to this stuff made me laugh so hard, I almost drove straight into the traffic coming the opposite direction. It wasn't long until that evening, and  I was going through my own old diaries, 154 of them, and sure enough I found great stuff too. After all, I had been in love with Leslie McKeown from the Bay City Rollers and I had also been in love with approximately 25 different boys until I t...

love is a place and through this place of love move (with brightened peace) all places   e.e. cummings love is a place I have not found yet I moved around for 18065 days did I ever look for it? when I wanted to be loved I thought I loved another truly – but what I saw was always me, longing for innocence, what I saw was this question, deeply connected: is it important is it possible to be loved by others for who you are? I could have asked: is it possible to love another for who he is? it is important instead I tried to find me and was not very good at it I wanted to be alone, to open the door – visit me not because love is a place © Susanne Becker

"The list is the origin of culture" was once said or written by Umberto Ecco. So I don't feel quite as bad anymore when I think that I actually started my blog because I saw it as a perfect way to publish lists, fling them into the universe for everybody to know what I like (kids, especially the two girls I share my life with, my garden, the humming of bees in the meadow, cherries, The United States of America, Richmond/Virginia, sushi, journals, books, swimming, lakes, the ocean, movies) or things I don't like (stress, pain, people who want to convince me to do things I already know I don't like, toothache, reading glasses, fanatics, television, coca cola, fascists). Lists of favourite movies, favourite books, favourite places, favourite music.....I can post them and enjoy that so many people like to check them out. I feel I inspire others like they inspire me when I read their lists. I do not just love to write down lists, I am also excited to read those of oth...

This morning, while reading my daily quote from Barbara Abercrombies  A Year of writing dangerously  I read there about the necessity for solitude in order to remain sane and keep writing. Without solitude, no art. Without solitude, no sanity. I couldn't agree more. Its a sometimes painful truth for me in this busy life we all have to lead that it can be so very diffucult to find enough solitude for my sanity. Among others she mentioned Naomi Shihab Nyes poem  The Art of Disappearing  as a written testimony dealing with how to have these times of solitude often "against" the demands of others, and ones life in general. I really liked this poem. It expressed a lot of what I was thinking, what I was longing for, what I was trying to express myself during the past maybe fifteen years, could be even more. The Art of Disappearing. I want to learn it. I want to be able to just disappear in the middle of everything. When everybody in my office is dealing with bureaucrati...