Roll with the punches

'Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect, it means you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.' - Unknown

Now I know why all the trees change in the fall

The last blog I wrote was about people who realised that, during WW1, the Germans and the Brits weren't that different after all. They were destined to be enemies, but, as implied in Thomas Hardy's 'The Man He Killed', perhaps in other circumstances they would be close friends. Coincidentally I read a passage earlier (The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite) that expressed these thoughts perfectly;

"He could hear their whispers and the click of their guns. He could smell their fear, their sweat, even the oil they used on their rifles. He picked one, a small man with a strange loping shuffle, and set him in his sights. And then he saw that the soldier's uniform was faintly steaming. He happened to glance down and realized that his own uniform was doing the same. The sun was drying out the rain, the mud, the recent past; they were the same, weren't they?" - The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite, Beatrice Colin

the song is what I was listening to when I read it.

Indifferent

My book, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite, has reached a part where she is living very rough in 1916 Berlin and has been deserted by a close friend. It made me think about the war, and how the attitudes in this book of the Germans are no more hostile and hatred than the British attitudes were during the war. It reminded me of Thomas Hardy's poem 'The Man He Killed.' He writes about two characters who were enemies by law but in reality not so different. He says that in other circumstances, they probably would have been friends;


Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
He thought he'd 'list perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work –
had sold his traps –
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown. - Thomas Hardy, The Man Who He Killed









Some lyrics, by A Fine Frenzy, I felt were also quite relevant;

Help me out said the minnow to the trout
I was lost and found myself swimming in your mouth
Help me chief
I've got plans for you and me
I swear upon this riverbed
I'll help you feel young again

Not your every day circumstance
The hummingbird taking coffee with the ants

Please, I know that we're different
We were one cell in the sea in the beginning
And what we're made of was all the same once
We're not that different after all. - The Minnow and the Trout, A Fine Frenzy

"Es ist nichts."

I gave up reading Kristallnacht when I felt that most of the interesting accounts had been described in the first few chapters, hence why I have started reading the very highly recommended 'The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite'. I'm really into it and find it wonderful how the author, Beatrice Colin, manages to describe everything so delicately accurate that you can put yourself in the shoes of the character and imagine what they are hearing, feeling and even smelling.

There are lots of interesting quotes that I could pick out, but I have just read a passage that I found was very cleverly put together. The book is about decadent, tantalizing Berlin in a Germany torn apart by war at the turn of the 20th Century. War hadn't actually broke out at the time that this chapter was set, but it adapts in the key cause of WW1, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand;


"My tea was a little cold this morning," he would say. "Could you make sure the water has actually boiled next time?" And she would nod, because her voice would only betray her. When he was gone, her tears would roll into the sponge mixture and it would spoil. 'Es ist nichts,' she would tell herself. It is nothing.
'It is nothing,' Archduke Franz Ferdinand repeated as he lay bleeding to death beside his pregnant wife on the floor of his carriage in the middle of Sarajevo in June. But of course, on both counts, it was not nothing." - The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite, Beatrice Colin

Hey there little sexy pig you mated with a man, and now you've got a little kid with hooves instead of hands.

Your life is defined by its opportunities... even the ones you miss. - Benjamin Button

Please, I know that we're different, we were one cell in the sea in the beginning, and what we're made of was all the same once, we're not that different after all. - A Fine Frenzy

Ink was spilled, manuscripts rendered illegible, and white dresses were ruined. And so in homage to all the creativity that had been wasted, and faced with a spoiled set of clothes, she decided to dye the lot and dress her baby in black. "I'm sorry," people would mutter as they passed her in the street, thinking the infant the victim of some awful tragedy or other. "Me too," replied the mother through the twisted corner of her crimson painted mouth. - The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite

It is not our abilities that show what we truly are. It is our choices. - Professor Albus Dumbledore

Kristallnacht; Prelude to destruction

This is the book that I started reading today after finishing The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles. I'm already really into it, as history is a secret passion of mine :S.
I already had a brief understanding of what Kristallnacht was; I knew that it was referred to as 'the night of broken glass' because it was when Hitler went around and demolished Jewish shops and synagogues etc and stripped Jews of their qualifications and.. dignity. I knew that Hitler commenced this act upon hearing news that the German Ernst vom Rath had been shot by a Jew at the German Embassy in Paris too. However, I did not know the full story behind the shooting of vom Rath. The book explained;

'On 18th October 1938, on Hitler's orders, more than 12,000 Jews were expelled from Germany... 4,000 were accepted by Poland. But 8,000, denied entry into Poland, were forced to stay at the border... There, in harsh conditions, they waited for the Polish government to agree to take them in... One expelled couple, who had been living in Hanover for more than 27 years, had a 17 year old son, Herschel Grynszpan, living in Paris. From the border his sister Berta sent him a postcard describing their expulsion: "No one told us what was up, but we realised this was going to be the end." Her final appeal: "We haven't a penny. Could you send us something...?"... Herschel recieved his sister's short but anguished message on November 3. On the following day he read a graphic account of the deportations in a Paris Yiddish newspaper, which reported a number of instances of insanity and suicide among the expellees. Grynszpan was outraged. On the morning of Sunday, November 6 he bought a pistol, loaded it with 5 bullets, and on the following day went by Metro to the German Embassy. His plan was to kill the Ambassador. After telling the doorman that he had "an important document" to deliver, he was sent to the room of the Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath. "Did you have an important document to give me?" vom Rath asked. Drawing his pistol, Grynszpan called out: "You are a filthy Boche and here, in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, is your document." Grynszpan fired 5 shots.' - Kristallnacht; Prelude to destruction, Martin Gilbert

But I am not afraid

Thick as thieves the last of leaves

In the winter sun

Holding fast this freezing branch

Is home to us

Step, step right over the line

And onto borrowed time

When it's life, not waiting to die

Waiting to divide to divide

Counting stars and passing cars

On the interstate

The end is near I feel it dear,

But I am not afraid.. - Borrowed Time, A Fine Frenzy

Today I finished reading my book whilst listening to A Fine Frenzy's album 'One Cell in the Sea'. Above is the track and some lyrics from it that I found very appropriate to the story.

I felt they were relevant because the tale is one about a logger from Finland and how he survives during the war in 1939. Conditions are harsh and as he is taken prisoner by the Russians he finds himself in the company of a few other Russian prisoners of war and a Finnish speaking Red, Antonov, who helps him commute with the others. Although they are supposed enemies, they all form a bond with one another and realise that they are all that they have left in the world. They make an attempt to escape the clutch of the heartless and bitter Russians and flee to a boathouse. However they realise that they are running out of food and have to make an important decision between staying and dying of hunger, or attempting to go their seperate ways and possibly dying in the cold.

'The snag with your question, angel, is you don't know if we'll be shot when we get home, nor whether we'll be allowed to live in Sweden. You said so yourself, we don't know anything, and the man who knows nothing goes home.' - Antonov, The Burnt-Out Town Of Miracles (Roy Jacobsen)

They all decide to set off on their own individual missions and wish eachother good luck for the future. I wont tell you how it ends in case you're planning on reading it, but I will say that I was quite disappointed with the ending.