Titel & Post von Verwandten

So I titled this blog "Denksteine" anticipating that it would eventually be like some sort of Arlington for all of my residual literary thoughts which needed a decent burial. Also in reference to the Bunte Steine, of course. And referencing things one thinks about from day to day. I don't think I like that title much anymore, so need to change it. The first idea is too depressing, the second may be too obscure, and the last a bit heavy and unpolished. It also sounds a bit passive- aggressive in terms of just thowing my thoughts out there like I'm throwing rocks at something. I haven't decided what to do about it instead, yet. And besides that, have had a hankering for British literature these days, which does not seem to fit with the concept here. Maybe I will call it "Ohne Umschlag." We will see.... but I need to get on with my post if I want to go out tonight.

I've decided to be a bit more religious about keeping track of people, and my current project is people in Germany. An aunt here in the states sent me family tree software so I can chart everything out, another little project I want to do before anyone else dies, here or there. I have to write about them a little bit because I miss them and my pals there these days. Once again, not much to do with Stifter. My dad's gone on another bike trip to France with his current girlfriend. He has no interest in meeting his relations in Germany. He did the same thing when I was living there, without even bothering to come see me. He's still stuck in some of the "shame of being in any way Kraut" from his impressionable years during the 60's and so on. He can't handle the guilt, I think, along with whatever guilt I might try to "assign" (in his words) him for the divorce. His sister felt the guilt of being "distantly Kraut" so strongly, that she converted to Judaism. None of my family in the states speak German with the exception of my grandad. And they all think I'm SUCH a dork. Sometimes, though, I think I like my German family more than I like my biofamily in the U.S. Naja.

Recent post-- indeed, a real letter when everything else is per email-- from relatives in Hamburg; I don't know what to call these people and "daughter of my grandfather's cousin and her husband" is a bit long, they're more like close aunts and uncles now. So Onkel Reinhard is still in chemo for his Krebs, but it looks like it's going well, Tante Helga also doing well and sent me a Marienkafer she'd gebastelt in honor of her sister, who passed away last year. Their son Jan, who's about the same age as I am, finished his degree and got a job in Bremen, back to where Tante Helga comes from, and is commuting and then will move there.

The offspring of all of my distant relatives over there are all around my same age within a year or two, and that's been really cool. One's an actress in Berlin, one teaches German and English in a highschool near Bonn and just got married AND had a baby, Jan's in business, and another one just opened his engineering firm near Konstanz. My parents' generation there is about where my parents' generation is here now. My great-gradfather was really the only one who left southern Germany, all of the other family members there stayed put, for a number of generations, and don't look like they're going anywhere soon. How's that for stability. I think about moving there sometimes, but I don't think it's a good place for me to try to get a date.

The last post I got from southern Germany contained a description of the coming of spring there, in terms of the mountainsides becoming green and the wine vines growing and Lake Konstanz and the flowers and so on. At the time, was also reading Stifter concurrently and I could not help thinking of one when thinking of the other, and vice versa. Such wealth of Natur. Also, a postcard of the Stoffelberg, which happens to look like a pair of breasts from far away and up close. I guess that fits with Stifter, too.

My next project is to read another Stifter story and make a some literary doodles about it.