There is no more to post here. Richard Gardner has gone on 20th Feb 2012. His husband, Detlef, thanks for 16 years of love and enlightenment. I hope there will always be enough people on this earth to enlighten those areas that are kept in darkness by fundamentalists, dictators and simply stupid beings.

Solidarity is Humanity!

It is indeed time for the USA to learn and practice compassion and thus and only thus attain true greatness.
President Obama is the greatest beacon of freedom and caring leadership in the world today! It is time to support him for the US and the world to accomplish what is so needed in this young century.

Worrying...

...fretting, almost obsessing, too closely monitoring myself is not going to make me forget that I am a SURVIVOR and will do everything to remain one.
Just saying.
Auch hier, wo Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch. Sorge ist auch Besorgen, mein Leben und unsere Liebe, meine Liebe und unser Leben werde ich ohne Ende besorgen. Und so kann ich erkennen, was IST, wenn ich sage und weiss, dass ich BIN.
Il fallait le dire. La vie n'EST que si nous chérissons la joie intense et tout simple d'être. Je ne suis pas sans soucis, mais je me soucie de ma vie et de mon amour.

Detlef's morning wish ...

This song is the one Detlef picked out for me this morning...
...and I have that lucky star, we both have it, will shine ever more brightly with our love.

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris: Love and Happiness (live)

And here, the lyrics:

Here's a wishing well
Here's a penny for
Any thought it is
That makes you smile
Every diamond dream
Everything that brings
Love and happiness
To your life

Here's a rabbit's foot
Take it when you go
So you'll always know
You're safe from harm
Wear your ruby shoes
When you're far away
So you'll always stay
Home in your heart

You will always have a lucky star
That shines because of what you are
Even in the deepest dark
Because your aim is true
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you

Here's a spinning wheel
Use it once you've learned
There's a way to turn
The straw to gold
Here's a rosary
Count on every bead
With a prayer to keep
The hope you hold

You will always have a lucky star
That shines because of what you are
Even in the deepest dark
Because your aim is true
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you
And if I could only have one wish
Darling, then it would be this
Love and happiness for you

In Memoriam

TJOM

23 July 1954 - 19 January 1985

In Memoriam

With you began the diary of a cure I have lived to fulfill.

Finally arriving ...

L'Éclaircie, by Philippe Sollers, is arriving, an arrival that corresponds with that of my own break in the clouds, a clearing for life and love and thought to open yet more. I greatly look forward to reading it.

Perhaps my life has been painted by Manet, Detlef and I at the picnic, why not? We need artists to show us the beauty of life and love which they see so we can see. Open our eyes, welcome Being and consider the clearing that we humans provide it.

YES, I can...

2012 is a gift I welcome and am grateful for. Yes, I can enoy another twelve months of life; yes, I am well and confident, ever better, ever stronger; yes, I will speak up for all those everywhere who also need a chance, need support, need protection, need encouragement.
There is no turning back, no relinquishing what has been achieved, no doubt, no despair.
There is only hope and thought and love and ongoing life.

And with that, we can ensure freedom and rights for all everywhere...
the right to think, speak, love, and to be cured of illness.

Another year !

May we all remember what a wonderful joyous privilege it is to begin another year, a new year, to go on with our lives, living with love, sharing that love, and smiling, yes, laughing, simply because we are there and aware and mindful of being there!

HAPPY NEW YEAR - FROHES NEUJAHR - BONNE NOUVELLE ANNÉE - BUON ANNO

FIVE MONTHS OLD

To celebrate reaching the ripe old age of FIVE MONTHS with my new (Terri's, thank you) stem cells with vigor and élan to become ever better, ever stronger, ever more, I am posting this festive piece by Mozart to match my mood and spread joy to whomever may happen to hear it. Joy and love is what we are all here for, and I know that is what I celebrate every single day of my new life.

- Thanks to Philippe Sollers for sharing this performance on his website; and don't forget that his new novel appears at the beginning of 2012.

Celebrate !

Merrry Christmas, everyone, and don't forget to celebrate your life and the life of all those dear to you. Rejoice in love and smile with that joy.
Let us ALL do what we can to ensure that all those in our world teetering on the edge of life are able to continue to live, let us help the sick and the needy, let us bring smiles where there are frowns, let us constantly think about how wonderful it is to be alive.
With that, Christmas and the New Year can be a gift for everyone.

So, giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, let's go ... life is a wonderland.

Václav Havel - IN MEMORIAM

With the greatest of respect for this most honorable defender of human rights, I am deeply grieved that VÁCLAV HAVEL has died today. His voice and thoughts will be sorely missed in our age of increasing human rights with simultaneous increase of threats to precisely those rights. Let us all be vigilant to carry on the cause of one of the authors of CHARTER 77.

Let us all remember this man with deepest admiration and in deepest humility!

FREEDOM FOR LIU XIAOBO !

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day.
In Berlin, Nobel Literature Prize laureate Herta Müller joined in a demonstration at the Chinese Embassy for human rights and especially to free the Chinese author and Nobel Peace Prize winner LIU XIAOBO.
Also yesterday, Nobel Prize laureates around the world called for the release of LIU XIAOBO from the prison in China in which he has been held since 2009 for an eleven-year sentence. This call was made on the eve of the presentation of this years Nobel Prizes in Oslo and Stockholm.

Do not forget

LIU XIAOBO !

Free

LIU XIAOBO !

Freedom of expression and opinion, free access to information, freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. LIU XIAOBO's "crime" in China was to demand nothing more than this in the Charta '08 for the respect of the rights "guaranteed" in the Chinese constitution.

LIU XIAOBO

must be set free.

Liu Xiaobo's poem from prison:

Your Lifelong Prisoner

To Xia

My dear,
I'll never give up the struggle for freedom from the oppressors'
jail, but I'll be your willing prisoner for life.

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
I want to live in your dark insides
surviving on the dregs in your blood

inspired by the flow of your estrogen

I hear your constant heartbeat
drop by drop, like melted snow from a mountain stream
if I were a stubborn, million-year rock
you'd bore right through me
drop by drop
day and night

Inside you
I grope in the dark
and use the wine you've drunk
to write poems looking for you
I plead like a deaf man begging for sound
Let the dance of love intoxicate your body

I always feel
your lungs rise and fall when you smoke
in an amazing rhythm
you exhale my toxins
I inhale fresh air to nourish my soul

I'm your lifelong prisoner, my love
like a baby loath to be born
clinging to your warm uterus
you provide all my oxygen
all my serenity

A baby prisoner
in the depths of your being
unafraid of alcohol and nicotine
the poisons of your loneliness
I need your poisons
need them too much

Maybe as your prisoner
I'll never see the light of day
but I believe
darkness is my destiny
inside you
all is well

The glitter of the outside world
scares me
exhausts me
I focus on
your darkness –
simple and impenetrable

-Harvard University Press from No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems by Xiaobo Liu. Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Art Provokes Thought

Yes, the play Golgota Picnic, now at the Théâtre du Rond-Point, production Centro Dramático Nacional Madrid, production déléguée Théâtre Garonne Toulouse, coproduction Festival d’Automne à Paris, and which has already been performed in Spain, Toulouse, Graz, and is coming to Hamburg in January, has been "greeted" everywhere by the protests of those so unfirm in their fundamentalist religious "beliefs" that they very christianly and catholically have NOT seen it and condemn all those who do to a hell of their own fantasies and demand its prohibition as "blasphemous" (hello Sharia!) and is confronted in Paris (City of Lights, former center of the Enlightenment) with violent actions to disrupt the performances, with pious ultra-rightists, royalists, and Pius Brothers at the fore and a dangerous coalition with populists neo-nazis and fascists.

Can art be so dangerous? Can a play in a theater cause so much havoc? Remember the idiotic protests against the film The Exorcist in fundamentalist Baptist strongholds in the States, but also in rabid Catholic neighborhoods in the Northeast? Blasphemy is in the eye of the beholder, and is NOT a legal term. Freedom of expression is NOT limited by the beliefs of others; quite the contrary, freedom to believe is no longer possible if all opinions cannot be expressed. There is also a freedom NOT to believe, by the way. Moreover, true belief could never be endangered by satire or diatribes against it.

In any case, it is time to support the performances of this play wherever they may be and to condemn vehemently those who would attempt to deprive you of your right to decide on your own whether to watch it or not.

Praise is due again to Charlie Hebdo for satirizing in its latest issue the fundamentalists at work in Paris; the "blasphemous" caricatures are a refreshing breath of fresh air!

And here, to shock, please, irritate, interest, or baffle you, a video trailer of Golgota Picnic:

Welcome to the Twenty-First Century !

I wish for more such fellow countrymen before the country of my birth sinks fully into the dark night of medieval ignorance and prejudice. Mr. Prayer-Perry should perhaps ask his god who gave him the right to demean and discriminate other fellow humans or to deny them the rights and privileges and duties he enjoys himself. He is not running a campaign for president, but a campaign for Ayatollah of America. Watch out, people, before they put you under a veil with stars and stripes and introduce a christaria reminiscent of the horrors one of the first great American authors, Nathaniel Hawthorne, described in The Scarlet Letter. I for one will always be in solidarity with all the Hester Prynnes everywhere!

Perry’s Anti-Gay Rights Focus Is Divisive Even to Staff

The New York Times, by RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., Published: December 8, 2011

OKATIE, S.C. — Gov. Rick Perry of Texas’ hard turn the past two days on gay issues, in which he has suggested that gay rights are inconsistent with both American and Christian values, has generated enormous criticism from lesbian and gay organizations and some religious groups, and has even helped split Mr. Perry’s top campaign aides over a new ad.

In that campaign ad, released on Wednesday, Mr. Perry says “you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday” to know it is wrong that gay men and lesbians openly serve in the military at a time when there is no organized prayer in public schools.       

Real Writers Do Not Really Die...

AFP: Christa Wolf im Alter von 82 Jahren verstorben

In memoriam for Christa Wolf, a brave voice of the GDR and of a united Germany afterwards, a warning voice, a lyrical voice, a thinking voice, a voice of literature.

Her words will continue to sound loudly from her texts, all of which deserve repeated reading.

Sad is that another has disappeared who dared to think in our all too thoughtless age.

Christa Wolf Dies at 82; Wrote of the Germanys

By DAVID BINDER and BRUCE WEBER, Published: December 1, 2011, The New York Times

Ms. Wolf, a leading writer from the former East Germany, explored the weight of history on ordinary people as well as her own struggles with Nazism and life in a Communist society.

Christa Wolf, écrivain de l'ex-RDA, laisse une œuvre marquée par le doute et l'espoir

LEMONDE.FR | 01.12.11 | 21h34 

Celebrating the New Normal

A New Friend, New Caring

Siang Be, a new friend from my last brief stay in Station 51 due to a fever episode, is just beginning his battle against mantle-cell lymphoma and will have as much support and encouragement along the way as Detlef and I can possibly muster for him.
His wife Steffi will enjoy that support, too, and we will share all that those who have been down such a road are unique in being able to give to others just entering such uncharted territory.
There is a special solidarity possible among "patients"; a nod, a smile, a little shake of the head is enough between us, because we know this "dark cloud" from the inside, know therefore HOW MUCH LIGHT there is inside that supposed darkness.
Siang will be beginning his chemo today, and I am simply calling upon everyone who read's this to think of him and his wife - they are two REAL people! - and wish them strength and healing. They needn't know you; you needn't know them: just send positive vibrations into room 13 of Station 51 of RVK so that he can achieve the cure I have achieved due to the successful beginning of my fight in precisely that same Station!
YOU CAN BEAT THIS, SIANG! HANG IN THERE, STEFFI! WE ARE THERE FOR BOTH OF YOU!

Hiddensee Beauty for New Stem Cells

Fog, sun, cool, great air, good feelings, simply wonderful!

Toot, Toot

Choo choo train, bouncy bus, puff puff boat ... and then tomorrow all the engine noises will stop and there will be the island
with only the sounds of horses and bicycles, waves and wind, rustling leaves and joyful birds, and even our own voices will become quieter.
To wake up, there is always the triple horn blast of the first ferry out, and at this time of the year, sunsets are early enough for us to see every one of them before dinner.
It's going to be great!

Charia Hebdo Mon Amour ...

Glad now to be a regular subscriber, the "front pages" of the first two issues I have received (starting by my special request with the controversial one from last week that led to the arson and destruction of Charlie's offices).

MERCI BIEN, CHARLIE !   Satire à plus forte raison !