The Light at the End of the World

     

 Near the end of 2018 I lost a good friend- a pen pal and e-mail correspondent- who had lived out her life in Nuremberg, Germany while I (for a large part of my life) have been nearly halfway across the world here in Denver, Colorado. It would probably seem to the world that the two of us had little in common on the surface, but in fact, we did in so many ways! We began our mail correspondence after we were introduced by an international pen pal organization, when we were teenagers. I was sixteen and she was seventeen when we began writing in the first half of 1975- her name was Eva Beran. (In German, both the names Eva and Evelyn are Hebraischer names which means that both are Jewish in origin and have similar meanings.)

      As we wrote to each other through the years even though I had language classes at school she taught me modern German and I learned many words I would’ve never known had it not been for her occasional lessons in her letter along with her news. She received technical school training years before me in secretarial work. I went to Beauty College after graduating from High School for manicuring training at the beginning of 1977. By April I had my diploma and license and was working already, to her amazement. Later, I noticed that she sent letters by typing them at work!

     We had so many common interests. We both were intrigued by and loved animals. I remember receiving a sticker from Germany in one letter which was emblazoned with Ein Herz fuer die Tiere and I knew that she noticed my interest. I collected everything and still do. We exchanged post-cards, stamps, photographs, photos of fashion and fashion models. Magazines were our mode of teaching each other our native tongue. She sent me paperback novels in German which were incredibly helpful for modern usage of German. This was after I told her about my love of writing short stories.

      March 25, 1977 marked a rite of passage for Eva that I was never to approach myself, however. Perhaps I felt a little left behind because she had gotten married and had never mentioned dating. We seemed to share on so many other levels that I accepted it as a matter of course and became pleasantly surprised that she had married at the age of nineteen to Hans-Jurgen. She sent a photograph of them with both sets of parents standing behind them on the church steps.

     When I moved out to California three and half years later, I found that writing to pen-pals had become almost a sideline to my new life of autonomy. However, we did write but she was amazed that I had left home and started a new life for myself in California. My letters, which were sent clear up to the time of my going back home to Denver, were filled with wonder about all my possibilities. As for herself, she worked for a bookshop chain at that time and I think she thoroughly enjoyed it. She also wanted to know all about my life in California. 

     After 1999 our communication switched over to e-mails and we stayed connected our new way quite frequently. I started to research castles on the internet by then so my interest in them increased and we started sending photos electronically, back and forth. Some of them were castles she had never seen because they were in Austria. From her I learned about the Romantic Road in Germany which stretches for many miles and is filled with lots of castles- the kind of which people think are a fantasy but are completely authentic!

     When I went on my grand tour of European castles at the very end of August in summer of 2001 I made plans to meet up with her and Hans-Jurgen in Rothenburg and I looked as forward to that meeting as I did in seeing the castles. This wasn’t my first meeting with a pen-pal in Europe but this was definitely profound because by that time I knew that Eva was struggling with a condition which was congenital. In Germany it is referred to medically as CVID and is an autoimmune blood disorder- a gamma globulin deficiency. Even though it can be genetically passed down it is very rare and can show up at any time, internally. I remember at one point the doctors wanted to remove her spleen.

     When we met on Sunday morning (September 9^th, 2001) in the town hall square of Rothenburg, I actually met her husband and new puppy, Sina, first and then Eva. We walked and talked as we strolled through the amazing medieval streets of Rothenburg. This is a walled town of Germany which was preserved and never allowed to be modernized so when you walk through its streets it is literally like stepping back into history. We stopped to eat in a restaurant and talked some more about my tour. Hans Jurgen took a photo of us together. It was almost surreal and I sensed that even Eva and Hans-Jurgen felt that this was a rare moment in our lives. It was only two days later, when I and my tour group arrived in Salzburg, Austria in the early evening. We all turned on our T.V.s before we met at dinner in our hotel and saw the Twin Towers of New York obliterated in smoke and ash. We were all confused about what we’d seen and it was all we talked about at dinner. Our tour guide found a newspaper with a huge photo of the Twin Towers half down and another with Bin Laden’s face on the front page.

     

Eva and Hans-Jurgen reached out the next day by e-mail and later they also drove to Munich to my hotel to see me. My mother actually called them to find out if I was alright and they talked to her at length, I believe. My entire tour group were supposed to fly out, originally, from Munich on Sept 14^th but all our flights were bumped and my flight out wasn’t until a week later when everybody had left by then. Because I was alone, Eva and Hans-Jurgen immediately offered for me to come to be with them in Nuremberg. I was excited at the prospect of getting to see the castle there which is the largest castle citadel in Germany so I, of course, accepted and did make a day trip to be with them there. We sat down to snacks in their home and I was able to sit and talk about 9/11 with them and learned more than I did with my tour group. The German papers were filled with information.

    

We toured the castle grounds high above the city, Albrecht Durer’s house and the Octoberfest was already underway in the center of the city and in front of the Cathedral. In this same plaza they have the longest running Christkindlesmarkt every year and it is the most world famous one of its kind. All of this definitely made up for missing Hohensalzburg Castle back on Wednesday the 12th but I had fun hanging around Mozart’s Geburtshaus that day while whistling his greatest hits. The Salzburgeans were quite amused.

     While I was alone in Munich I took a day trip out by light rail to Nymphenburg Palace on my own and had a blast spending the entire day exploring the vastness of this veritable palace and the Versailles-like grounds on my own. I discovered a building there which was made to look like a crumbling medieval church (Magdaleninklause) and it looked so authentic it fooled me until I looked it up on the internet. Munich’s subway is fantastic- it’s clean and really fast, not too expensive and easy to navigate. I never had to look at a map although they were everywhere. I had all the photos from my trip processed there and had an album full by the time I got home. My time in Munich and with my friends in Nuremberg is among my fondest travel memories.

     When I received the e-mail from Hans Jurgen about Eva’s passing on the 28^th of October last year- the same day that an American tourist from Louisiana stopped a thief trying to steal the Magna Carta at Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire, England- I was devastated. To me her life was a testament to God’s good will toward all of us. She had passed only two days before that day on the 26^th which was a little over a month past her birthday. I thought of the birthday card I had sent her by regular mail and realized that it was possible that she never saw it.

    

Eva's gravesite

I’ve realized so many things since her passing. One is that we never know when or if we will see the people we care about ever again when we say bye. We really don’t know how long we have in this world. A second realization is that we need for people to know how we feel about them. Closure is not closing the door- it is appreciation for a person or persons being their genuine selves and loving, respecting and accepting it. A third realization is that no matter how long a time we think we have for all the aspects of our life it probably won’t be sufficient. That old saying, “Life is short,” is truer than we think or believe. There really isn’t enough time for everything so you’re going to have to prioritize and make sure that what you’re doing is what you want to do with your time. What are the things about life that are most important to you? What should you let go?

     If you ask yourself these things each day you’ll eventually see your answers start to change. Our mortal lives are finite but eternity will go on. There is really a light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel is our life and our friends and family who go before us are at the end of it- just waiting for us to arrive. They pray for us everyday and make petitions to God on our behalf because they invested themselves in us when they walked this world. These people are a part of the light at the end of the world. I am the light of the world…John 8:12

God save us all !

The Castle Lady

The Writing Life

    

Not many people understand what the life of a writer entails. When we are earnestly in pursuit of our profession we spend more hours on our work and/or craft (and more diligently) than most people do at any other job you can name. I’ve lost count of the times people have asked me in person or over the phone, “What are you doing? Where have you been?” Average work days for most people are eight hours a day but for the past 17 years it has not been unusual for me to work at writing for more than 12 hours in a day and no less than 8. Ah! Those were the days! I can tell you that we are not only dedicated, in most instances, but if we could work longer days- if it was physically possible, most of us probably would and certainly not complain about it. Mainly, I am speaking for myself in this case but I’m sure that my fellow bombastic-but-ardent scribes most likely do the same or more. Some of us sleep.

     Once writing becomes a serious part of your life- for whatever reason you

are writing- words take on an importance in the way a surgeon’s tools become integral to his skill as a physician and healer. We scour dictionaries, pore over thesauruses and read obscure sources for the best word in order to give our ideas and theories impetus. We are not just pouring out words, we also devour them like hundreds of pieces of rice and corn at a meal. We must feed on words in order to create them. Our behavior is not unusual given our profession. Our words and ideas must have meat with fat on them! New words flash like neon signs in our minds for hours if they are powerful enough and our ideas are formed by how we feel about certain words. We are full of word prejudice; Arbiters of words, you could say.

     Writers are accused of being daydreamers in early childhood and even into adulthood. Having never experienced this type of criticism from anyone, I have come to understand that it’s quite common. The sentences we write take about 50 to 100 times more forethought per sentence. (You can give and take those numbers and still basically be right about the math. It’s an individual thing for each person.) We certainly come across to people as very quiet so we stare much more than we talk and you can be sure we’ve observed everything in our path, the room, the concert hall or the shopping mall. Observations come with the territory and believe it or not, it’s exhausting. Sometimes it can be tiresome to pay that much attention to certain mundane aspects of life. There are a percentage of us who believe that is what our job actually is- observation and then to paper. Journalists at heart- believe it!

   

  Personally, I was a poet first before I ever wrote anything else. My first book of poetry, Seasons of the Heart, is primarily a collection of my first poems up to the brink of adulthood- before I moved out and away from my parent’s house. Poets are very special writers and any writer will agree with me on that premise. They may expound much further than I because I am a poet and a writer. There are two workers inside of me needing to take that precious time. My poet is hungry these days and needs more sleep and sitting quietly observing everything. But the poet has learned how to swoop down like a heron on a surfacing fish in the water. When those poems come, everything stops and the poet writes and soars through those castles in the air. Castles? I’ll throw one in if I must but for now… 

   

    

The best gift a writer can be given is extra time. Mundane life activities such as housework, cooking meals, general self-care, driving anywhere, shopping and exercise take away time from what we’d rather be doing. We might be the worst workaholics in the world but I once read a quote from a famous feminist writer to this effect: “Writing is the one thing that, when I’m doing it, I don’t feel like I need to be doing something else.” That sentence sums up why we do it. Compulsion comes into play here but with the effect of positivism that other compulsions don’t normally convey. When we go for a walk it’s usually to clear our minds for another eight hours of solitary confinement with a P.C., typewriter or perhaps a notebook if we are having a restless day. 

 

     When you see a writer friend absorbed in internet research, a nose stuck in a book, pounding away on a keyboard or hiding in a corner with a pad and pen, don’t shake your head and stomp your feet. We’re being who we are. Yes, we really love you but we must write. Take us to lunch once in a while and don’t pay any attention when our eyes glaze over. We’re saner than you realize and we just need a little space for that idea fermenting in the brain. 

     In conclusion, here’s a piece of advice to all those who are sadly watching the writer quietly go about his/her work. If you buy them anything, as a gift perhaps, buy them some extra time. “How does someone buy time?” you ask. Of course, you can’t literally buy time but there are many things you can do for them which frees up said time. Be sensitive to what is unnecessarily taking up their precious hours to the point of distraction and there’s the answer. For me, personally, if I could afford a cook and maid I’d hire them now. I like having a decent-looking yard but wish I could just stay at my computer rather than mow or rake the lawn or any of the other numerous outside tasks which seem to be endless. If I had a handyman to fix the 100,000 things that need doing- bliss!

Enough said !

The Castle Lady

Risk is Good

Many a man is praised for his reserve and so-called shyness when he is simply too proud to risk making a fool of himself.

-J.B. Priestly

     My grandmother used to say, "A faint heart never won a fair lady," and I can't claim that I always understood this saying but after watching The Bachelor tonight on T.V. I think I now understand better than I ever thought I would. I just got through reading an article in Psychology Today about a certain trait in men that helps them make their decision about who they are likely to pick and why women are more likely to choose them because of this certain trait. In Theresa DiDonato's article A Mind for Love she asks the reader when they are interacting with someone of the opposite sex if they are completely focused on what the other is saying and if they are listening deeply and without judgment. Apparently, if your mind drifts to mundane things or pressures you are experiencing or even if the distraction is the physical desirability itself it means that you are not being mindful.

     She explains that mindfulness refers to one's nonjudgmental awareness and full engagement in the present moment and it's been shown to correspond to myriad advantages in individual well-being. People who are mindful are more at ease, not prone to depression and are not impulsive. They can seem to have higher self-esteem, be especially positive in their outlook and are vital and happy.

     That being said, the article outlines that women are attracted to men most who have this mindfulness trait but for men it's not reciprocal. Apparently men are simply attracted to the woman that is most attractive to them. The article uses evolutionary reasons for the phenomenon in both men and women but I have a feeling that there is more to it than accepted scientific reasons. Let's face it, we all know women are more intuitive so I'm not surprised that they would choose the most mindful man they can find to tie the knot with. It would be just the reassurance they need that they are loved back. Men take rejection better than women do normally and so it just makes sense that this is true.

     Tonight, our Bachelor Ben had to choose between two women who he claimed right up to the moment of proposing to love both of them. He didn't say the love was equal but who's quibbling? I watched this article I just read being played out before my eyes with all three individuals struggling with this phenomenon. It must have been heart-wrenching to the woman who had to walk away, who had mentally prepared herself for a proposal and was instead put in a car and removed from his presence. Even if it was difficult for him to decide, he was the only one who could make that decision. It isn't fair but that's the way it is- right or wrong.

     The only leveler is that men who aren't very mindful will have a difficult time engaging any woman in a relationship. There's a lesson in this, though. According to the article mindfulness is not in your DNA. It can be developed and acquired like a skill. I think this would be a better world if men would work on this because it can only improve them as a person and they may just find and land the woman who really is the most attractive to him. No more settling- for anybody !

Risking it all on love,

The Castle Lady