Mary Fleming

Laws of Nature

Friday, 30 November It's a law of nature: if you are down, someone else around you will be up. As readers of my last blog [https://mf.ghost.io/whispers-of-mortality/] will know, it has not been a great last six weeks for me. For Tasha, on the other

Whispers of Mortality

Friday, 9 November I am returning from an unexpected sabbatical. It started with nine days in Berlin’s Charité hospital. Oddly the notification came at another branch of the Charité complex, the heart hospital pictured above. Two days earlier David had been diagnosed with an atrial flutter, where the heart

Sharing Not Caring

Friday, 5 October Paris is under siege. It often is in September-October. The traffic is terrible. Disgruntled workers, back from a month’s holiday, start striking and demonstrating and generally adding to the chaos. This year, however, though there have been a few rather perfunctory manifestations, the siege is of

Symbiosis

Friday, 21 September Writers block is bad news for a writer but a much more critical condition is affecting me at the moment: brain block. I have been suffering from it since July. The 9th of July, to be precise, when we returned from Berlin to find a very unfinished

Summing Up Summer

Friday, 7 September Every year in the middle of August a miracle occurs in Paris. And I’m not referring to the Virgin Mary’s trip to heaven on the 15th. I am talking about a supernatural phenomenon which occurs during that entire week: les Parisiens smile at one another

What Is Good

Friday, 13 July We have once again crossed the Rhine. It does not get any easier with practice, even on a Sunday. Half of Europe was on the road with us in cars or caravans packed to bursting for the holiday ahead. Road works slowed traffic to a trickle everywhere

Skewers Unite

Friday, 29 June As the US prepares to celebrate 242 years of Independence, some citizens may be buying their charcoal with a certain feeling of superiority or at least a belief in their singularity. Barbecuing, says a Time magazine article [http://time.com/3957444/barbecue/], “is about as red, white

Georgia Unbound

On a clear day you can see forever, or from Tbilisi to Mount Kazbeg anyway Friday, 15 June According to Greek myth, Prometheus was the saviour of mankind and the wisest being in the universe. Some stories have it that he created man from clay but one thing is certain:

The Tasha Project

hard to resist Friday, 1 June Today I would l like to proffer a small piece of advice: if you are thinking of adopting a dog from a shelter because it will be a good deal, financial or otherwise, think again. I’ve written a lot about the ‘otherwise’ since

Build Up

Crow, sofa and Elsa's ear Friday, 18 May For the last three years I have rounded the corner with trepidation, expecting the worst. But it's been okay. Until last week. Our little Kiez of Berlin, Alt-Treptow, is bordered on two sides by water, the Spree River

Bottled Berlin

Friday, 4 May When I wrote about shopping in Berlin two weeks ago, how could I have neglected to mention the most German part of my routine? Every few weeks—and really I wish it were more often—I make a trip to the Trinkhalle, a place solely devoted to

Real at the Real

Friday, 20 April Even with only two of us in the house, I seem to spend a lot of time shopping, especially when we’ve just changed cities, as we recently have, and the cupboards are bare. It’s a very different experience on the two sides of the Rhine.

Versatility

Friday, 6 April I just took the above photo from my work chair in Berlin. A similar display stares at me in Paris. Lately, as I look at the pictures, I've been pondering how bringing up children compares to training a dog. On one level the goal is

Profound France

Togetherness Friday, 9 March I like to think of myself as a curious person. Someone who goes out of her way to understand people and places. It’s one reason I was lured abroad in the first place; it's what makes our half-move to Berlin compelling and the

The Princess and the Pellet

Friday, 23 February In Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Princess and Pea, the prince searches high and low for a princess to marry. No one he meets is quite right. One rainy day a bedraggled young woman claiming to be a princess arrives at the castle. The

Forgetful Snow

Friday, 9 February Paris is an old city that has suffered many a blow. For at least the last 10,000 years humans have resided on the banks of the Seine. In around 250 BC the Celtic Parisii tribe developed the first real settlement on the Ile-de-la Cité. Over the

History Repeats Itself

rice paddy, Sri Lanka Friday, 26 January The last 18 months have been a whirlwind of travel, at least by my standards. Besides six trips to the US around my mother’s final illness and death, there’s been Rwanda, Iran, Sicily. And last week we returned from the trip

Clutter and Dust

Friday, 22 December Maybe I was resistant to renovating our Paris apartment [https://mf.ghost.io/changing-perspectives/] for a reason. Last Sunday we survived another punishing 11-hour drive from Berlin and arrived to an apartment covered in plastic. The whole centre had been gutted and was stacked up in the

In the Shadow of Tomorrow

Friday, 8 December The vice of winter is tightening. In Berlin today the sun will come up at 8.04 and will go down at 15.52. Twilight will begin about 14.30, if the sun is shining. If not it will be hard to ascertain whether or not the

Giving Thanks

Friday, 24 November Yesterday was Thanksgiving in the US but it felt very far away here in Berlin. Beyond the fact it was a normal work day, David is in London and I ate my Thanksgiving dinner of leftover Georgian food alone at the kitchen counter. A good part of

This Good Old World

Friday, 10 November People often ask me why I like living in Europe. Usually my answer is a rambling, vague discourse that ends with an I-just-do shrug. But not anymore. Now I can sum it up in one word: Sicily. We have recently returned from eight days there. Barely long

Changing Perspectives

Onion dome of the new Russian Orthodox Church, seen from the quayside Friday, 13 October Because the world is uncertain enough as is, I generally dislike change. The routine of my days is a comfort: up early for some work before a dog walk along the same rutted road, then

Exponential Living

Starting small: Georgina, William, Christopher at Victoria's wedding to Antony, 1996 Friday, 29 September “Once you start with the international thing,” my friend Victoria W said, “it’s exponential.” She meant that I, an American who has spent much of her life in Paris and was first married

Processing

My father and William, 1998 New Marlborough Cemetery Friday, 1st September 'The unconscious is where most of the work of the mind gets done; it's the repository of automatic skills, the source of intuition and dreams, and an engine of information processing. Fleeting perceptions may register in

Life Goes On

Freiberg, Saxony Friday, 18 August As the paucity of recent postings indicates, I have not been a bundle of creative energy these last months. The sense of numbed detachment and lack of focus I felt after my mother died [https://mf.ghost.io/in-memoriam/] early June have not much subsided.