Just words: hope

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well. It is the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.
Václav Havel

When I grew up in East Germany, Václav Havel was known as – what they called at the time – a dissident and as a writer, whose books we were prevented from reading, whose theatre plays I never saw. During the Prague Spring and the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies, he provided an on-air narrative on the radio and was banned from all theatres after the supression of the Prague Spring in 1968. Later he was the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic.

I have nothing to add to his quote in the context of his story.

I heard this quote today in a lecture by Margaret Wheatley.

Vaclav Havel (from https://www.ndi.org/tribute-to-Vaclav-Havel)

I am reposting this (originally 2022-01-17) at a time when many of us need hope …

Just words: Powerless

Mos.ru, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There is a POW in power. There is less in power. It’s powerless.

I wish I could talk to this little guy in the Kremlin. And I don’t see why not. His German is quite good, I am told. Younger Vladimir learned it well in the KGB in East Germany. My Russian used to be good. I learned it at a university in Russia, when perestroyka and glasnost’ were frequent words. I should dig them out for this blog one day. I wish perestroyka would have been change. For the better. Glasnost’, it’s transparency, was only budding thirty-five years ago. You helped shatter it.

That’s what I would ask that guy whose face became a meme. A meme of fame with a little squared moustache most people in this beautiful world don’t just remember from Charlie Chaplin. I would ask the guy who shaves carefully daily: why? Is it really worth it? Sending men who are still blue-eyed children west – zapad with a Z – does it make you feel better? Less powerless? You are right, you are not your brother’s keeper. You never were. Then, why did you destroy his home? Did it make you feel safer in yours, next to the mausoleum? Why do you kill his family? Do your daughters hold you dearer for it? When you will have killed him, do you believe you will live longer? What will you do in your remaining days? You have felt paranoidly powerless, I know. Will that change in your remaining days? This is the only thing you have power over. May you find peace for your Russian soul. You have heard Tchaikovski’s Swan Lake the other day.

When talking about the ongoing war in Ukraine, I cannot really say that I am playing with words, as I normally do under Just words. This is serious. Weighing words. My thoughts and prayers are with the Ukrainian people.

The other day, I met a young Ukrainian family here in San Diego. They established a small charity some years ago. Now their sole purpose is to feed suffering people in Ukraine. They are looking for support. Their website is https://icareministrys.org/.

I wrote this about 3 years ago, when the war in Ukraine had just intensified, by Putin’s forces attempting to conquer Kiev. Reposting it now …

… wander off to left field

I am not good with these sports metaphors. And they get kicked back, bounced off, and swung around. Everywhere. Seven o’clock in the morning, I got hit by a writing prompt. Wander off to left field. I am not sure what sports this is. With a field. So I am wondering. I can never hear whether someone said wondering or wandering. He was wandering wondering. He was wandering down the mountain path, wondering why he went up in the first place. But fields and wandering … Mostly people talk about baseball, football, basketball. Does it have to have balls? In it. Which of these has a field? It has to have a field, so they can wander off. Let’s try this by elimination. Basketball doesn’t, there are no baskets on the field. Not anymore. Just tractors. And they don’t go left field. They go in circles. Corn circles. Now, that’s not the point. Must be one of the two others. Again. For one they use an egg, for the other they have bats. That I know. I just know it. I don’t understand it. With the bat, I have seen more people stand behind a door or go neighbor hunting, than I have seen them on a field. Maybe, they should be on the field more often, then less people get hurt. With the egg … I don’t know. So I won’t comment. They can kick or throw the egg during the short times when they are not on break, I think. I guess you can’t make these guys work any harder. Kick the egg once. Rest for 23 minutes. Oh, here is the egg in a position where you like it … The coach calls and does not even ask whether you are rested sufficiently after a mere 23 minutes! I don’t know. Does egg kicker go back on the field? Or do the batters thrush the ball across the field? Both or none? Any others? There is field hockey, but no-one ever talks about it. Maybe no metaphors in common parlance? I like winter sports. They have mountains. Up and down. Mostly down. Downhill. But no fields. And here they hardly show this on TV. Especially not in winter, I find. So, no fields. No TV. No metaphors. No nothing. No wandering off. Not in these sports. But I wandered off to left field.

This was some writing practice late last year. I had fun …