Karinaland River

  The words LIVES STOLEN – STOLEN LIVES best describe the memorial mural’s content.    For months now I have wanted to tie the theme of  wrongful convictions  into the mural. A huge number of innocent people are sitting in prison in America, a high percentage of them African American. Year after year, in every state, many lawyers are working to free them, trying to win exonerations for them, sometimes succeeding to get compensations for the freed innocent persons. Last fall a flurry of those cases happened to be in the news again, and I started to research, getting drawn into those excruciating stories of injustice, blatant racism, and presumption of guilt. I have been feeling this is part of what the mural is addressing and questioning. But how to make the visual connection on the garage doors, and find the right balance?   It took me a long time.   Draft on paper for the middle part of panel     I immersed myself in stories  from the...

  Today July 24 celebrating my Father’s Birthday   Papa would be turning 97        Mama writes: “This year 1985 your Papa turned 60 years old,    Dream and Time, he looks good, right?”     My two siblings, Matthias and Dinah, and I had the immense luck of having a very resourceful, inventive, and unconventional father. The perfect partner to my unique mother. He was a beloved problem solver at his job, later on a revered boss. A very gentle man, beautiful and naturally open, charming. After Papa retired at 65, he took to making ceramics. Earlier he had built a bigger ceramic oven for my mother. Now both of them did ceramics. He had two more years before his death from lymph cancer. In those years he created among other things, square dinner plates in several sizes and square cups. All with that light blue glaze that I cherish. His curiosity and creativity, were active till his last day...   I celebrate his spirit, drink from the cup...

  Jutta in 1959   In this photo my mother is 31 years old. I was six then…   As a child, I am convinced that my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world.    Looking back, I was right. We were an outsider family of very little means in the fifties and sixties. And in very homogenous West German postwar society we stuck out on all accounts. But what a beautiful mama I had – I felt pride. We did not have money or things, but we had poetry, music and art in our home. Everything was handmade, clothes, furniture, lamps, toys, gifts. So different than anywhere else. Mama was the craftswoman and artist, Papa the engineer and builder. We lived in a different world. Till the very end Mama was highly original, unique, full of creative projects and ideas. She lives on in the many things her hands made, and touched…. She lives on in me…  as my ancestor. I bow to her in great gratitude and admiration.  Her birthday is today July 21  – and I am celebratin...

  Flying Again   Here is a story about decay, repair, and renewal. And waiting… After 11 years of Karinaland swing, the rope was chewed on by squirrels at the very top of the loop. My tree people told me as they were climbing, taking out dead wood in the summer of 2021. They were concerned for my safety. I felt quite bereft, and was very tempted to still swing myself; just no more visitors should be allowed. Then though I remembered how much I cherish my well-functioning agile body at age 68, and that I need it for work and income. Finding the rope turned out to be difficult and pricy, plus the expenses of installing. I just did not have the money. For a year my Karinaland swing was out of order – painful for me to not swing in our pandemic times.   Nicky in beautiful yellow, resting at our lunch table     Luckily, I was patient for a whole year. Six weeks ago, following a faint inkling, Nicky and I found in the garage, in a big box not opened for 30 years, seve...

30 years ago     July 12, 1992, champagne in the patio   30 years ago. Our backyard wedding with only a judge and two witnesses, under the live oaks.       I like the strange double exposure in the above still – hard to even spot, visible on the lower left, the extra phantom glass floating… can you see it? I look at this photo from the past which seems now so long ago, and I wonder, really…?    Life lived is very embedded in my body, and I remember sitting on Bob’s lap, feeling his arm, our happiness, being in love. It all seems like a dream, another life, and so far away now that Bob has become my ancestor.      I am  never  going to get married, I had pronounced all my life. And when I announced the news to friends in my then theater world, they would laugh at my joke, disbelieving. But life was one huge ongoing adventure – still is – and I learned that  never  is not how things evolve. I was 38 years old ...

  Still Flying In 2010, I ask my tree pruner to install a single rope swing in the oaks. We use heavy manila rope and he makes a seat from a wooden piece with bark still on it. I step up on the 4 feet high terrace wall, and then let go… here I am swinging again, out into the trees, over the bay, into the sunset… In the mornings, at all time of day, it clears my mind, makes me free...    flying in 2014    As a child I seek out the “good” swings in the neighborhood, especially those that are not much frequented by kids and their parents. I prefer to be myself, swinging as high as possible, hitting the upper guard, and then I jump off and fly to the ground. Later, for a couple years, a big professional metal set with 6 boat-shaped swings is installed  each August  not far from where we live. Two of those “boats” allow for swinging 360 degrees if you are strong enough to get high and make it over the top, the “still point.” Only younger adults attempt it, ...

  Who is flying through the air here? Where? (Photo by Alan Finneran,  SOON 3,  Poison Hotel, 1988)   This old photo flew to me, bringing memories, and starting a few stories about swinging and flying....  For answers read: https://karinalandriver.blogspot.com/2022/07/still-flying-in-2010-i-ask-my-tree.html https://karinalandriver.blogspot.com/2022/07/flying-again-here-is-photo-story-of.html

Let’s call Light Pink the color of today – or  rosa , as we say in German.     The color  rosa  is delicate, delightful, refreshing. In the morning, some of my poppies will surprise me in a  rosa  dress among their mostly red companions. How exquisite. Involuntarily I break into a smile, cannot contain myself: “Look, how beautiful you are!” Each blossom receives a greeting and blesses me in return.   At this point, almost all of my colorful blooming friends in the upper garden are done with displaying their wonders. The gopher has been feasting on them, and the searing sun has become brutal. I only water around the house now, and even there frugally, as we are still in a drought of historical proportions. On last week’s super-hot June 21, patches of ivy were left with their leaves burnt brown. Here at Karinaland temperatures soared to 102 Fahrenheit in the shade.   Just few sweet peas left… a certain melancholy overtakes me.