Have you ever seen horses vomit in front of pharmacies? No?  Precisely.  Horses are physically incapable of vomiting, and if they were, the chance of several horses vomiting together in front of not just one but several pharmacies, is quite remote.   This elegant German saying thus refers to the unlikeliness of something happening.  As in a conversation I might have had last year:
“Do you think you’ll ever move back to Germany?”
“Sure, when horses vomit in front of pharmacies.” 
Well, I did move back, and so far I’ve been able to jump the hurdles of this new obstacle course with relative ease.  Yet when I walk to work in the pre-dawn hours, I like to imagine the ubiquitous puddles of vomit are of equine rather than human origin.  It means I live in a country of infinite possibilities.     

Over the years I’ve dined alone from time to time, at restaurants with beautiful views, or quaint interiors, or interesting menus. No matter what age I was at the time, I rarely got the chance to enjoy my meal without feeling that my sole presence as a woman dining alone was a disturbance.   In a Greek restaurant in Chicago, the waiter asked me three times if I wasn’t expecting someone else before finally bringing me a menu, and then served me with a kind of quiet fury.  In a fish restaurant in Tofino, Canada, on a short break from teaching, I asked for a table by the window. I was shown a table in a dark corner, where all I could do was admire the wood paneling.  I sat down obediently and stared at the white tablecloth. I was early.  The place was empty.  They didn't take reservations.  Strangely, what I felt was shame. 
 
A few months ago, I found myself in beautiful Rennes, Brittany.  I had just returned to Europe after thirty years of living in the States, and I was looking for the right place to have my first meal out.  I had bought a French diary, still wrapped in cellophane, and a brand-new French pen, and wanted to enjoy a glass of French wine together with a delicious French meal. I found a little bistro that seemed to promise all that.  Two men, tall, lean, fashionably unshaven, stood smoking on the steps.  “Ah bah oui,” they were serving dinner.  Was I expecting someone else? Non? I was shown a table right behind the open door, squeezed into a corner so tight I had to keep my elbows close in order not to hit wall or glass.  I asked for another table.  The place was empty, after all.  I was early.  “Non,” all reserved.  Not even a “désolé.”  Service was perfunctory, the bread dry, the wine they recommended, terrible. I ordered fish.  The waiters stood at the bar, looking in my direction, sneering.  Did they know they were crushing my French dream?  I used the breadknife to slash open the cellophane wrapping of my diary.  They snickered more loudly.  I screwed the cap off my new pen.  I looked at them, leaning against the bar, looking back at me.  I glanced up at the board listing the specials of the evening and wrote the name of the dish I had ordered.  I looked at the wine list next to the specials and wrote down the name of the terrible wine.  I swirled my glass, took another sip, closed my eyes for a moment before writing something in my diary that had nothing do with wine.  I noticed they weren’t sneering any more.  I took out my phone and snapped a few pictures of the menu, of the place, of my food, writing in between snapshot and snapshot. They looked worried. One came over and asked me if I had enjoyed my food.  The other recommended a different, much better wine. I got fresh bread.  They had become the polite French waiters I had pictured.  When I left, the place was still almost empty.   The pen felt warm in my hand. 

According to the German Bread Institute, there are 3,200 kinds of bread in this country.  One important reason for this extraordinary diversity is political: the fragmentation of what today is Germany into as many as 340 different states, city-states and duchies for a period lasting from the end of the 13th century through most of the 19th century.  Bread varied, and still does, from one town to the next, its distinct textures, flavors and shapes rooted in local traditions.   

In Northern European fairytales, bread is meant to be shared.  The miserly woman who withholds bread from her poor hungry sister to her horror sees blood gush from the fresh loaf she cuts for supper (“God’s Food,” collected by the Brothers Grimm).  A selfish girl who steps onto the loaf of bread she is meant to deliver to her old mother because she wants to keep her shoes clean, is swallowed up by the bog and sinks down all the way into the terrifying realm of the Marsh-Wife, the Elf-King’s sister (“The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf “, by Hans Christian Andersen).   I was therefore delighted to find the Lithuanian folktale of the little wheat roll that runs away from its human and animal pursuers only to be waylaid by the fox.  The fox bites it in half, eats the soft crumb and then … Well, see, it’s hard for me to tell you the rest of the story.  To hold a fresh loaf of bread in my hands, whispering with oven heat, seems to me an act of worship that transcends time and place and culture, no matter how many kinds of bread there are.  

​Late on the evening of August 8th I was walking home through the quiet leafy streets of my neighborhood, my thoughts with my sister, walking away from me toward her place on the other side of the busy street that divides our neighborhood into her Nord and my Mitte.  One of us often accompanies the other all the way to her door only to then retrace our steps together to enjoy each other’s company for a little while longer.  This time we had said good-bye on the steps of our favorite neighborhood hang-out, and I was trying to dispel superstitious dread--her walk was longer than mine--when I came across what I can best describe as a pop-up sidewalk garden: buckets filled with flowers, bright spots of color visible even in the darkness.  There was a wooden stand with postcards.  I took one and stepped out of the shadow of the Linden tree to read about the sisters who had once lived in the house whose lovely façade I had often admired.  On August 8th, 1938, they took their own lives after turning their apartment into a sea of flowers, “ein Blumenmeer.” They were Jewish.
Among Grimms’ fairytales there are plenty of stories about sister rivalry, about the good sister and the hateful one. There is only one that I remember where sisters step into adulthood as friends rather than foes.  It’s called Snow-White and Rose-Red, “Schneeweisschen und Rosenrot.”  

Some days are filled with pigeons, smashed beer bottles, and the smoke of  fires of all kinds.  You want to make it just a little better and take a bite out of a juicy piece of plum tart.  Unbeknownst to you, a yellow jacket has already staked out its claim.  On days like that you long for that pub where everybody knows your name, where everyone has a yellow jacket story to share.  Yet all you get is the Big Bad Wolf Café.   

There's a pub in my neighborhood called "The Big Bad Wolf", one of many reminders that I live in the country of the Brothers Grimm.  Both, in fact, lived in Göttingen, in the Kingdom of Hannover, until they ran afoul of the king, who in 1837 dissolved the Parliament and demanded an oath of allegiance of the university professors.  Seven refused to sign, among them the two brothers.   Jakob, head librarian and professor of German Studies, was deported, and his brother Wilhelm soon followed him to Kassel, at that time capital of Hesse-Kassel.  Today, as I worked on the image below, I happened to listen to the TED Radio Hour on NPR.  The topic was "Stepping outside one's comfort zone."  Maybe both the wolf and the child are doing just that, though the child, not having been bitten before, is more trusting than the older, warier wolf.  Who, after all, isn't bad.  He's just a wolf.  And so there's hope this story will have a happy ending.

I've moved, again, and have taken all my wolves with me.  Since they are here to stay, I picked the biggest one to watch over me and my daily work, and so far this has been working out quite well.  She reminds me of the fairytale forest at Shinglemill Creek on Vashon Island, the foggy winter nights in Northern Brittany, and the deep dark woods we all must traverse from time to time.  
You'll find news here of what's happening in my studio, and sometimes of what's going on outside, in this very strange land of my birth.
My recent moves together with a need for thriftiness have made me turn to cardboard and found materials.  Most of my recent paintings are on heavy-duty cardboard, like my wolf and many of the pieces featured on my Art page.   Two weeks ago I found a stack of old cardboard button boxes in front of a sewing shop ... 
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