Bonfire!

I love fire. In a safe-distance-away, controlled-setting kind of way, of course. I love the way it looks and moves, all those flickering colors and fleeting shapes. I love it's warmth and coziness and maybe even the whisper of danger. Huddling around a fire feels primordial and right.

Karl and I were down south last week on a skiing getaway weekend, right on the border between Austria and Germany in tiny little village in the mountains. There we stumbled on a local celebration (outside, of course, in below freezing temperatures, because the people that live there year-round must be utterly resistant to cold) and man, what a bonfire! It was huge, the size of a small house, and magnificent. People stood around and drank beer while the flames licked high into the night sky and sent sparks and smoke flying across the snow. The whole scene was like Robert Frost's poem, Fire and Ice, come to life. There were kids playing everywhere (because this is Europe, after all, and safety is more an every man for himself, common sense kind of endeavor) and people laughing and talking but all I could do was stare into that inferno.

Then I noticed clusters of people huddled around some sort of "warmers". I had to take a closer look. From what I could make out, they were hollowed-out tree trunks with smoldering ashes inside that emit heat as a kind of makeshift mini-fire. I was fascinated. What keeps the whole long from burning? How does it self-contain? I have no idea, but I huddled up to one too as the night got colder and I must say; I'm a fan!

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna

Five Things No One Knows About Me

Wall Art at Cinema Paris in Berlin

I was inspired to write this post by Rita of the Hey Rita blog. I'm new to this blogging thing and while I love the journal-y aspect of it and the connections with strangers that reinforce my faith in our common humanity, I am also skeptical of the sterile, self-centered, present-my-perfect-little-life part of blogging. Don't worry, in this facet I'm more critical of myself than of anyone else, and I love scrolling through the beautiful pictures of other peoples adventures, cities, and yummy food. It's my own theoretical insincerity I despise. And that is why I was touched by this post: an effort to circumvent the comfort zone. 

So here goes. Five things no one knows about me:

1. I'm sarcastic, and yes, often in the mean way. I hate to admit it, but it's true.  The master of the snarky comment and the not-so-gentle-jive, I strive for a friendlier and more forgiving dialogue and yet I negate my own aspirations of positivity daily. I think part of it just comes from the pervasive irony our family employs, the currency of humor that I grew up with. In our clan, nothing and no-one is safe from humorous harm, no topic too taboo and no psyche too vulnerable. Somehow, the laugh always justifies the joke, no matter how underhanded or unnecessary. Its not a character quality I like, and I'm working on it, but there you have it.

A Quiet Evening: Me reading, Papa napping, Oma with her paper

2. I'm an loner and a bookworm trapped in an extroverts body. I find myself being the life of a party I didn't want to go to in the first place, but got dragged to by Karl or another friend with the admonishment that six hours of a Saturday spent in bed with chocolate and a book is enough. I often tire of social interactions, but find myself extending the conversation out of politeness. I ask all sorts of questions about salmon culture and macrobiotics and investment banking in order to engage my conversation partner and show interest in their field while yearning for a solitary soak in the bath. It's not that I'm not interested in what they have to say, I just love love love being alone sometimes. 

3. I go through a whole bar of dark chocolate at day. The big bars.

4. I am always homesick for a different homeland. This is part of being a mixed culture kid. The other language, the other world, far-away tastes and scents and sounds are as much home as all you have right here and now. Missing a home is like missing a loved one; a constant ache where an essential part of you should be. You forget, in the shower and on the bus and in line at the grocery store, that the hole is always there. Then you hear a song about Berlin or see the New York skyline in a deodorant ad across the street and remember, like a punch in the gut, the piece of you that's an ocean away.

5. I am regularly overwhelmed (literally stop-in-your-tracks overwhelmed) with gratitude at the immensity of undeserved blessings I have been given in this life. The opportunities and adventures and pure-dang-good-fortune with with I have been endowed boggle my mind. Sometimes, on a quiet weekend, I'll take a walk in the woods around the corner and whisper to myself like a witchy old crone: "thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you."

Look up at the Sky!

--Zanna

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...

Our Family Reunion in Sicily--Staring meditatively at the ocean and the sky

Welcome to my new years resolution, begun prematurely and with the very best of intentions. I want to be a journal-er more than a blogger, to be honest, but year after year and in many attempts I have failed miserably at this task. I used to write a diary when I was a teenager, and continue to get my act together and document trips (2014: Skiing in the Alps, Paris, Prague, Rotterdam, Sicily, South Africa and Edinburgh! More on those adventures later...) but the act of putting pen to paper to capture every day life somehow eludes me. And frustrates me. Immensely. I love looking back, paging through old journals from a time I still consistently wrote in them. A different and yet deeply familiar voice sings back, of fights with parents and little sister, childhood dramas and adolescent dreams, what we had for dinner and where we went sledding, shopping, gallery-hopping on any particular day. I want my old self to look back on this youth, these precious student-y, med-school-cramming days and to know which tests I hated, which recipes I loved. Can't rely on this dusty camera in my head!

So, this is my attempt to be accountable. You are my workout buddy and my AA sponsor. I will be true, will write to you, when I'm bouncy, when I'm blue. No, no more Dr. Seuss rhymes.  Promise.

Apart from my last ditch effort to keep some words nailed down from windy time, I'm also just plain curious about blogging. Whats up with blogs, anyway? Are they just the narcissistic monuments of the selfie generation? Do we need the positive reinforcement that we're living life correctly? Or is there something really to it? Before starting this, my first blog, I looked around the blogosphere (word usuage?) and everyone who shared a  "why i blog" post seems totally enraptured by both the experience itself and the sense of community provided by this new literary art form. I was particularly intrigued--and pushed over the edge, thus my early start-- by this little list I stumbled across. Number 3 and number 12, here I come!

 So, again: I'm curious. Lets see...