Winter Doldrums

ON MONDAY it was my sister's birthday.

In the morning a university class was — if I recall correctly — cancelled due to the professor being sick. Altogether four of my professors have been out sick since the semester started in mid-October. I've been finding (like a child who, after eating ice cream for a week, finds out to its dismay that eating broccoli for a week would have counterintuitively left it feeling happier and more like playing outside) that the missed classes and online classes are actually not that good for my morale. A brisk bicycle ride to campus wakes up the brain, meeting up with my mother over a hot chocolate at the cafeteria lends a bit of comfort and brightness to the day, looking at bulletin boards for event posters and job advertisements is surprisingly stimulating, and I enjoy the sense of fulfilled virtue in having shown up for the requisite 1 hour 30 minutes and then being able to put a lesson behind me. Whereas doing homework for 1 hour 30 minutes at home instead — with recollections of undone housework, business and personal correspondence, job-searching, and literary and news projects swimming in my head like a vast soup — is not very relaxing.

The other problem lately is that the stove pipe in the corner room started glowing red from stove socket to wall socket one day last week. We'd thought that we followed all the proper procedures, especially aeration, to prevent a build-up of creosote. Nor have we used exorbitant quantities of coal. So it's a mystery why the pipe overheated. Long story short, we haven't been able to use that stove, unfortunate as temperatures have dipped below 0°C. An expert will only come by to look at it on December 8th.

This Incident has left my mother's room unheated, indirectly also mine. 'Indirectly,' because given what happened in the corner room, I feel paranoid about using my own room's stove, since no stove expert has taken a look at it in years. My room has been so chilly that I've been pulling a hoodie over my head and huddling in a sleeping bag during the daytime, and sleeping fully clothed under the sleeping bag at night. Besides I wake up at night worrying that the coal stove in the room next to mine has gone out. Then there are cold spots and draughts, despite my clothing and two layers of blankets.

So I feel badly rested when I wake up in the mornings, and not very energetic about studying or about errands or about any challenges whatsoever. When I was younger I just toughed the weather out. But now that I know that cold temperatures raise blood pressure (I've even stopped measuring my blood pressure regularly because it's so chilly when I take off my sweatshirt to fit the cuff around my arm) and I am having trouble sleeping, it no longer feels like a larky adventure.

That said, my mother has been staunch about the whole situation. She uses the heated office room to work and read in during the daytime. And wearing woolly socks is surprisingly helpful.

Today I finally made up my mind to use the electric heater in my room more often — despite the environmental and financial disadvantages.

At any rate, Ge. and I put things in order for T.'s birthday. Then, in the evening, our Uncle Pu joined us for snacks and conversation in the room next to mine.

ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON I had an online class. The professor was recovering from the cold that had led him to cancel last week's class: he was visibly ill and audibly hoarse. (He was dosing himself with cough-candies, and politely requested for us to talk so he wouldn't have to. The other professor-recommended remedy for losing one's voice I've come across is to sip Coca Cola; I suppose honey with ginger is the other option.) Fortunately, the class pitched in, and we had a fairly lively conversation about literary tracts on the role of women from 15th and 16th century Spain.

I felt lucky for being able to keep up with the discussion, since I'd read only 5 pages out of 50 in the scholarly book chapter he had assigned to us as the central text. (But to be fair, I'd also read the poem by St. Teresa of Avila, alongside the first chapters of Moses — assigned because the oppression of women was often predicated on the story of Adam and Eve.) When I mentioned the anomaly of Queen Elizabeth I as a woman in power during roughly the time we were discussing, like Isabella of Spain, the professor seemed to light up; I guess he'd once studied that period of English literature. Anyway, the role of Spanish women was grim; the ideal was for us to speak as seldom as possible, and to be kept at home by means of domestic violence if we were married so that we couldn't 'flirt' by looking at other men. Fray Martín Alonso de Cordoba, who was writing advice for Queen Isabella, was more diplomatic and perhaps progressive than the other tract-writers. Perhaps one might say, a nice Machiavelli. But I wasn't able to figure out if he was hoping to become one of her chief advisors. In other words, I suspected that even if he didn't fudge his ideas to ingratiate himself with the Queen, the power he wanted her to take might have been intended to promote his own ends.

It does feel a little strange that theology is popping up in my university classes, since I usually lead a pretty secular life despite my private convictions, and writing about Sunday church services already makes me a little uncomfortable...

THEN, ON WEDNESDAY, I slept badly and not well enough. I had the instinctual feeling in the morning that I should have stayed at home instead of going to university, but tried to make the best of things. My bicycle's steering has felt wobbly lately, and from experience I know it's not the bicycle but my own physical stability that causes the wobble. So I took the U-Bahn.

At the end of the class, I went up to the professor to apologize for not handing in the written assignments lately. (I've seen too late when the assignments are meant to be submitted online; and this week I was convinced I needed to submit something Wednesday when it was actually Tuesday. etc.) I felt non compos mentis as I was talking to the professor, probably used horrible grammar, and awkwardly used the Italian word finito when I couldn't think of a Spanish phrase. At any rate, the professor assured me that if I had too many other things to do, it was OK if I couldn't hand in the texts. But I had the impression that he was more peeved at my making excuses (in bad Spanish) than at my not handing in the assignments. Admittedly the situation is maybe more disadvantageous for me than for him, because I'll need to write an in-person essay exam in two weeks, and it's best if I iron out my errors with practice texts now. Lastly, I felt guilty: I'm not sure if I do have too many other things to do....

At least the afternoon class was an improvement. I had done 1.5 of 2 readings, and that was already enough to impress the instructor even though I was candid about the missing 0.5. We talked about Crimean Tatars and the Soviet Greek alphabet that was developed to try to put the local Greek (Romaic?) dialect into writing, as well as an author who pioneered Tatar literature. Then we briefly mentioned Vera Ingber's story "Maya" and Alexander Kuprin's tale of (early 20th century?) fishermen near Balaklava: "The Laestrygonians."

THURSDAY started on a better note. The morning class took place, and I had diligently prepared all the Greek grammar exercises that were assigned to us. We also discussed newspaper headlines, and I took the Council of Nicaea as a topic because it absolutely fascinates me that we still care about something that happened well over 1,000 years ago. Of course it's also relevant in that it's the new Pope's first journey abroad, amongst other things important because of the diplomatic implications of his visit to Turkey.

FINALLY, ON FRIDAY I cycled to university for my archaeology class. Unfortunately, I was 45 minutes late because I was waiting for the coal stoves to start up properly and there was nobody else in the apartment to take care of it. We talked about stratigraphy and 'stratigraphic units,' and how to survey archaeological excavations, using examples from Middle Eastern archaeology.

After class I went grocery-shopping: presents for Ge.'s birthday, and fruit and vegetables grown on the farm at the university campus. Then it was off to the zero-waste shop for more groceries. And then I joined the online class about Greek history from the 18th century to the present. We were waiting for the third student to join the video call, so I asked the professor about a book chapter I'd begun to read from the extended reading list. He seemed blissful that we were doing extended reading, and in general was in a good mood this week. He also enjoyed the questions we asked, and went off on an interesting tangent at the end of class about the Ottoman politics at play between the Sultan in Constantinople and Pasha Mehmet Ali in Egypt after the Battle of Navarino.

In the evening, I began looking for books from Italy in our shelves, for my personal reading project, and ended up reading Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons in Physics from cover to cover. Next: Elena Ferrante's My Beautiful Friend.

TODAY I was idling in the apartment in the hoodie I'd slept in, wondering when I'd gather the energy to go grocery shopping, when the doorbell rang. The brothers were playing music, so I went to answer, and found that instead of a parcel delivery, it was an uncle and an aunt! They are visiting Berlin, and we'd been disappointed that tomorrow we have a commitment that won't allow us time to meet up with them. So I was delighted they were there. We had chocolate-covered gingerbread and tea in the office room, beside the coal stove, and talked happily. Afterward (inspired by a discussion about how to cook beets) I made a pot of borsht for dinner. And hopefully I was not too unkempt and fusty-smelling...

Despite the visit, I feel like I want to slip right into the Christmas holidays to rest, read, and recharge my figurative batteries. Also: I'm waiting to hear back about a mini-job I applied for: selling decorations at a Christmas market. But I only got a missed call from an unknown number, which didn't match the number on the job posting. When I called back it turned out that it was likely a spam call (Berlin area code, redirected to a different number with an Austrian area code when I called back). It would also be the lowest-paid job, in terms of hourly wage, that I've possibly ever had.

An Autumn Leaf-Poem

This verse surfaced in my email archives, which I've been sorting and thinning out. Apparently I wrote it when I was 19 years old. Since it's reasonably seasonal, I've tidied it up a bit and will post it...

***

Subtle changes: newly cold
mornings, and shining sun
warmly calling forth the red
and yellow of the trees

Stir of wind, a whirl of leaves;
drifts of sweetly smelling
orange and brown and fading green;

squirrels bending over treasures
of walnuts, buried in the soil:
wetted, it still retains a
morning coolness and the dew.

Drying moss in concrete's cracks:
there grainy soil is dark with rain.
The blurred mud shadow of a leaf
trodden in the driveway.

— Nothing new, since through the ages
foliage has come and gone,
winds of desolation swept
through avenues that are made green
with towering maples and with oaks

— but something that still tells me of
great change and tides of fate and time,
better seasons, bitter years
yet life that thrives in spite of all.

A Kind-of-Naughty Tuesday

Life has gotten better since my last blog post, thanks to a programmed day of indolence: on Tuesday I skipped a morning class, didn't do my university homework, went to Dussmann with a friend and then read a romance novel in French translation for the rest of the day.

My indolence didn't avenge itself too badly on Wednesday: the professor cancelled the afternoon class due to her indisposition, for example, so I ended up being able to do one of the two readings (a short story, "Maya," by the Soviet author Vera Ingber) at leisure. And I feel fresher, and have happily shed the feeling of being stuck on a treadmill.

At Dussmann we ate cake, drank something hot (fresh mint tea for me), and talked, in the basement café. Afterward we roamed around the Christmassy displays on the ground level and first floor, including the English Bookshop section. I bought a book to give as a Christmas present — and a package of plum, passionfruit and pomelo-flavored mochi sweets, imported from Taiwan, to share with my family at home. I was tempted to skim through the first chapters of a few English-language books, since I've been thinking of casting a vote in the best-of-2025 book competition on Goodreads. But this would have forced my friend to wait. Besides I'm already listening to an audiobook recording of one of the contending books, Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai, online.

It was not too crowded in the bookshop when we arrived at 3 p.m. But by the time we left more than two hours later, it was busier. Winter has begun to displace autumn, so daytime temperatures have often been below 5°C in the past few days, and shops feel more like refuges from the elements than like mere capitalist repositories. On Monday I cycled to university gingerly, as I didn't trust the glossy pavement; that said, except at bridges it seemed like there was no black ice, and the main perils seemed to be the smooth or rotting leaves on the asphalt and — as usual — the antics of all of us who were sharing the roads.

The Perils of Being a Social Butterfly, and a Sunday Church Service

I've woken up the past week dreading the day ahead every morning. My schedule has been uncomfortably full, I haven't felt able to sleep in without worrying about preparing things and arriving on time at social or other appointments, I've been having headaches, and a backlog of homework is accumulating. On the positive side, however, I've been able to see more friends and family!

On Friday, the dentist discovered yet another cavity, this time in a wisdom tooth. Immediately after the appointment I cycled to university. There, I realized that my class was cancelled. After cycling back home, I found that I couldn't eat anything since my anesthetic hadn't worn off yet, so went into an online class on an empty stomach. Then I ate, had a second online class, and then had an hour or two to spend before a dinner engagement. In that time, or after the dinner (I've forgotten which) I found out that I should have submitted a homework assignment online earlier in the day, although I'd been convinced it was due Monday. The no eating had been a little awkward, as I'd had very little to eat in the morning: I arrived a minute late at the dentist's and would have been later had I not limited my breakfast to 1 apple and 1 Pfeffernuss.

Fortunately the dinner engagement was relaxing and nice — a meal with extended family at a nearby Swabian restaurant. I ate fried dumplings on a salad and drank a pale beer. Meanwhile, the others had sausage and kale, Spaetzle with herbs or cheese or mushrooms, large mixed salads with sheep's cheese, or a Flammekueche (like a pizza). For dessert, they had half a portion each of Kaiserschmarren.

This morning I cycled through the faint fog and went bouldering with my siblings again, since my aunt has very kindly given me three weekends' entry to the gym. My arms (now unused to climbing) were not in trimmest fighting shape, so I wasn't very convinced of my ability to keep holding the grips properly. I reached the top of one of the climbing courses, and made tentative tries of other easy ones. But it was nice to be able to go again, either way, and to watch my siblings' acrobatics.

BEFORE THAT, I'd adhered to my new tradition of listening to a weekly church service on the radio. The local RBB broadcaster records Protestant and Catholic services alternately, from different houses of worship in the city and in Brandenburg; this time it was a Catholic church in Berlin. Normally I like the music (when it's good), the readings from the Bible, and the sermon; but this time the latter two left me quite perturbed. On the bright side, this meant that I stopped listening to the service after the sermon, and was able to go bouldering half an hour earlier than anticipated.

Last week, the Protestant church had what I remember as quite charming Bible readings, for example about every person having their own fig tree and quietly turning swords into ploughshares. This week, we were treated to Malachi. (I'm quoting the King James version, but of course the Catholic church uses a different translation.)

1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

The Bible isn't the most comfortable book to read anyway, so it's not surprising if it has quotations that I don't like. I was rather hopeful that, although the first reading might seem like a stinker, the next reading and the sermon would turn things around... Not so much.

The second reading came one of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians:

Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you: [...] this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.

To me, that sounds like a standard Scrooge comment on the virtue of workhouses for poor people. I was curious to hear how the priest would explain this passage in his sermon. Instead his sermon went off on a tangent, and didn't apologize for the Bible passage in any way.

At least it was ironically funny to hear the congregation recite 'thank you for your joyful message' whenever these dire readings were concluded.

Early Christmas Season Shopping and Descartes

It's been a quiet Saturday. Fortunately, after abundant sleep and adding meat back into the week's diet, I'm feeling a lot steadier again, and yesterday I'd cycled to and from university without incident.

After our usual Saturday breakfast of croissants and baguette from the French shop, I began boiling pear quince from the local allotment gardens for quince-and-almond confectionery. Then I went to the grocery store. In the 1900 recipe book I am reading, the menu for dinner on November 8 is

Cod Cutlets.               Stuffed Mushrooms.
Boiled Rabbits.          Apple Tart.
Onion Sauce.             Devonshire Cream.
Fried Potatoes.

But for practicality's and the environment's sake, I whittled down the menu to roast rabbit with celery root, carrot, leek and parsley in my mind, served with boiled potatoes, fried mushrooms and bacon. I entirely forgot about the apple pie while shopping. Fortunately, we still have the ingredients.

As most shops are closed Sundays, the organic grocery chain store was relatively crowded. I bought apples, milk, bacon, and Christmas delicacies. There was no rabbit at hand, so I picked up a leg of duck instead. There was a long line-up at a single cash register. The school-age cashier handled the stream of customers serenely. The customers were also remarkably patient. Fortunately, from the grocery store's point of view, during our meditative sojourn alongside the shop's shelves, a few of us thought of other things we wanted to buy. For example, staring at Christmas paper serviettes and gift sets, candles, cosmetics, and yoga trousers, I noticed incense cones (these cones have felt rare and hard to find these past few years, and sticks aren't the same) and greedily added them to my basket.

The Christmas delicacies being sold were marzipan potatoes, chocolate-covered gingerbread with cherry filling, St. Nicholas figurines in chocolate and foil, glazed stars with candied lemon peel, Spekulatius, Dominosteine, pepper nuts (Pfeffernüsse) plain or drizzled with chocolate, Nuremberg gingerbread on wafers... Not to mention Advent calendars with different flavours of tea. But I only got two types of specialties, since I am tired of the plastic packaging that comes with store-bought Christmas baking, and sometimes the cookies are dried out and not as pleasant to eat.

On Friday my application for a mini-job on Saturday, moving boxes up to a third-floor apartment,was (somewhat to my relief) declined. So I had no other commitments.

Therefore I've been reading The History of Western Philosophy as background for the Molière-and-Moratín essay that I want to write for university. I don't think it would count as an academic source, but surely I can quote a passage or two to improve the literary value of the essay. Bertrand Russell is describing the beginnings of 17th-century scientific development, summarizing also the work of Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes. Now I've reached the mini-biography of René Descartes.

Likely I read this with Papa already, as this stove passage felt familiar:

It was in Bavaria, during the winter in 1619-20, that he had the experience he describes in the Discours de la Méthode. The weather being cold, he got into a stove in the morning, and stayed there all day editing; by his won account, his philosophy was half finished when he came out, but this need not be accepted too literally.

It reminded me of Otfried Preußler's children's book Die Abenteuer des starken Wanja:

Dieser zweite [Backofen], er füllte die ganze hintere Ecke des Raumes aus [...] außen sauber mit Lehm verstrichen und weiß getüncht. Geheizt wurde er vom Flur her, und das in den Wintermonaten Tag und Nacht. Es pflegte daher auf dem Backofen in der Wohnstube sommers kühl zu sein; und im Winter, wenn draußen der Frost klirrte und die Wölfe ums Dorf heulten, war es dort oben behaglich warm.

A Leaf of a Student's Diary

A few years ago, I read Eva Curie's biography of Marie Curie. When it came to the part where Marie Curie was so preoccupied with science that she didn't nourish herself properly and contracted terrible anaemia, I started practically shouting at her in my mind, Just eat a steak, please!! As the irony of fate has it, I suspect that I've slipped back into anaemia myself through a similar neglect of basic nutritional sense: the past two days have been a bit dizzy and tingly and brain-foggy, to the point that this morning it felt harebrained to go out instead of declaring a sick day.

This morning at 8:50 a.m.ish I arrived rather late for an online Greek class, in which we are reading fiction about the 19th-century master diplomat Ioannis Kapodistrias.

Then it was time to get ready for a Spanish class, in which we were overviewing Gender Studies theory with a heavy emphasis on Judith Butler, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Lacan. Cycling through an autumn tapestry of leaves, sunshine and bright blue skies and all, was rather nice except for my aforementioned anaemia symptoms, so that I pedaled slowly and concentrated on taking no risks.

Then I repeated the journey 40 minutes later, having left class early. Fortunately I arrived on time for a dentist's appointment back near my home. Funnily enough, I ended up waiting quite a while in the waiting room after all, and reading my uncle M.'s gift of a book about Captain James Cook to entertain myself. The appointment wound up soon enough, with the unwelcome news that I have a fresh cavity. (It will be seen to next week. In the meantime, I have regretfully turned my back on the remnants of Halloween candy in our household — except for a piece of chocolate.)

After that, I met up with my aunt. We went to a restaurant where we ate hummus, tzatziki, lavash bread, and a roasted dish of eggplant, zucchini, tomato, and carrot with rice, respectively. We chatted over the food, and sipped coffee and tea.

In my ideal world, I'd be about to eat a nice warming bowl of something sweet (yet dentally safe) while resting my slippers upon a footstool and watching the next episodes of The Wartime Kitchen and Garden on YouTube, then going to sleep. (Having finished the historical/experimental archaeology series Tales From the Green Valley yesterday.) Unfortunately there is homework to do.

On Thursday I sent off an essay about the preterito perfecto compuesto in post-Columbian Iberian Spanish. Finishing it was exhausting, also for my mother and two youngest brothers, who obligingly sat down with printed-out copies and corrected the flow and the German grammar. Now I'm working on my Molière-and-Moratín essay, also left over as an undone task from the summer semester.