Sigmund Freud's couch

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We are the best experts on ourselves.

But a little outside input won’t hurt. [it would, though]

In a few days, I will be starting a person-centered counseling – zu deutsch: Gesprächstherapie, which is also the name I prefer because it makes it more about talking and less about counseling or psychoanalysing and whatnot. Definitely makes it sound less intimidating. And me less crazy.

It’s been a long time since I was last seeing someone, as in therapist. It’s been in fact so long that my last therapy sessions were still filed under “home visiting family therapy”. Naturally, I am a bit scared as to what to expect now. I suppose, it can only get better though, right? There’s just been too many things piling up, too much emotional baggage and garbage that I have vigorously ignored. However, in the end, there’s only so much running or bouldering or engaging in other time-body-and-mind-consuming tasks one can do to cope before one realizes more drastic measures are required. I’ve long since gotten to that point and left it far behind, and I’m honestly just glad the bestest roomie was not around when I hit my low-point because that’s something you don’t want anybody to witness. In order to get to grips with all this, I met up with my sister, who always has the answers to all questions I didn’t have the words for. She’s a superstar anyway. Not only did she casually rock her master in psychology, she is also currently enrolled in further training to specialize on above mentioned person-centered counseling. One requirement of her course is that everybody suggests someone in need of therapy who is willing to participate and then in return is willing to become a case study.

In other words, I’m a guinea pig.

Soon I was allocated to Claudia. Soon she contacted me and asked to postpone the beginning of our sessions till June. Which was sadly the opposite of soon and meant I had to wait two long, agonizing months during which merely the prospect of having decent counseling in the foreseeable future kept me going. Sooner became later et voilà, here we are, both ready to begin our journey together.

Gesprächstherapie. For those of you who are not sure what exactly that is and too lazy to look it up, let me explain in a nutshell: established in the 1940s by Carl Rogers, it focuses on the patient, on the patient’s experience and awareness, feelings and thoughts. It is based on empathy and seeks to facilitate the patient so that they might be able to help themselves and find answers, solutions, help within. It’s about knowing and accepting who you are and allowing yourself to be exactly that and thus make change possible in the first place. Six core conditions build the foundation of person-centered therapy: contact, client incongruence, genuineness or therapist congruence, therapist unconditional positive regard, therapist empathetic understanding, client perception. All those fancy words describe a very specific relation between therapist and patient defined by by the therapist’s explicitly and articulated desire and active attempt to relate to the patient and fully understand and acknowledge their perspective. As Carl Rogers describes it:

To be with another in this [empathic] way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another’s world without prejudice. In some sense it means that you lay aside your self; this can only be done by persons who are secure enough in themselves that they know they will not get lost in what may turn out to be the strange or bizarre world of the other, and that they can comfortably return to their own world when they wish. Perhaps this description makes clear that being empathic is a complex, demanding, and strong – yet subtle and gentle – way of being.

Carl Rogers, A Way of Being

In other words: it’s the therapeutic equivalent of Douglas Adams’ Point-of-View Gun, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Psychology, the intergalactic highway into my mind, the big friendly letters on the back reading DON’T PANIC. And yet, I do.

Person-centered therapy allows the patient to address topics and do most of the talking. Once you say out loud your thoughts, fears, feelings, put them into words, you automatically re-assess them. I have experienced this and I bet so have you. Gesprächstherapie sort of enhances that process and facilitates the patient to come up with possible solutions for themselves. Ideally, during this process, the therapist simply listens, without judging and without showing any signs of approval or disapproval. The patient should perceive this as truly being heard. This should (theoretically, haha) enable the patient to find the answer (the ones that aren’t 42) within oneself. It shifts the attention from outer circumstances to the inner self. It’s a guidance to love, embrace, and accept oneself. Super lame and soppy, I know, – insert pathetic inspirational quote. Oh, well, let’s actually insert a pathetic inspirational quote:

I’m not perfect… But I’m enough.

Carl Rogers

One of Rogers’ key slogans. To truly believe that and live by that principle is what person-centered counseling hopes to achieve. So fingers crossed. To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about this. I have high hopes, certainly. But then – and I know, that sounds weird for somebody who hardly ever shuts up – I’m very concerned about the talking itself. Will I be able to open up? To transform the mush in my mind into meaningful units? Will I be able to talk about whatever if I don’t even know what this whatever is and which part of whatever might be relevant to get to the previously mentioned self-insight? Also, I always considered myself being fairly self-assured. Of course, there are situations I feel insecure and of course I have inadequacies T H I S big which others might not even notice. And I’m not sure how all this soppy “love yourself”-mantra is supposed to help me with insomnia, anxiety attacks, or my psychosomatic pain. But I’m open-minded and willing to try and we shall find out this coming Friday. In a brand new episode of Julia flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Until then, we’ll remain curiouser and curiouser. And needless to say: We’re all mad here. Cheshire Cat over and out.

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“The hog-squeal of the universe”: Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle

Last semester at FernUni Hagen was all about Großstadtliteratur (urban literature? Metropolitan literature? Eh, books about big city life. You get it.) and provided me with a huge collection of extracts and excerpts from the finest authors from the turn of the 19th/20th century.

I’ve read some Rilke and some Raabe, the whole fivehundredsomething pages of Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, and travelled abroad to Joyce’s Dublin and dos Passos’ Manhattan. My journey began in 1482, Paris, with Victor Hugo and his Nôtre-Dame de Paris (1831). A true classic and yet: So. Overrated. Maybe it gets better once the prominent Quasimodo plot unfolds. But the first couple of pages are merely a tedious and very detailed description of the geometrical patterns, the metropolitan maze and the architectural composition of Paris. It’s not just a literary travel guide, it’s the narrated Paris of Google Maps through the centuries and in 3-D-Zoom-In. Veeeery long. Once you think you made it through, a new paragraph starts something like “knowing this has all been a lot of information let’s try and summarize it all again” and then the narrator blabbers on for another 4 pages repeating everything he just said!! So not too keen on that one. The excerpt stopped here, so I wanna emphasise that it might get better. However, you shouldn’t judge a book by his cover (yet I do) but I think it’s perfectly acceptable to judge it by its first ten pages so my verdict is: boooooring!

However, one book really stood out: Upton Sinclair and his 1906 novel The Jungle. There were only very few and very short excerpts but those very intriguing. So despite having already bought 5 post-exam-reward books, I decided I deserve the full story. And so I made opportunistic use of my American friends and now have my very own copy from a US secondhand bookstore and greedily devoured the whole thing within days.

Accurate depiction of me reading The Jungle

Sinclair’s The Jungle is a ruthless account of the appalling labour conditions in Chicago’s meat (packing) industry and circles around Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant, and his family, who were hoping for a better life and saw their American Dream shattered by corruption, greed and social brutality. It’s a pitiless urban jungle of injustice where the insignificant folks are doomed to become collateral damage of capitalism, a dystopian and sadly too real depiction of the exploitation of men and meat.

It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-making by machinery, pork-making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests – and so perfectly within their rights!

[Upton Sinclair: The Jungle]

It is a sight to behold when a work of fiction has such effect on reality, i.e. the political world. President Roosevelt was highly appalled by the lack of hygiene and health regulations within the food industry displayed in the novel. Subsequently, the Pure Food and Drug Act from 1906 was passed to improve hygiene standards in meat production. Unfortunately, no such act was passed to protect the workers’ lives. Sinclair’s criticism with the working conditions were me(a)t with scepticism and considered mostly fiction. Needless to say, our socialist author was not happy with the outcome of his novel: “I aimed at the public’s heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach”, he once famously proclaimed.

Nonetheless, it had great impact and it’s social effects should not be diminished. Nor should its literary value. Before you stop reading here and start reading there: Be warned. The Jungle is a very intense narration that doesn’t spare your feelings. It is brutally honest. It’s depressing to read and on occasion makes your stomach turn. You just wanna rebel against greedy bosses, cheating estate agents, against the whole financial, social and political system. A system in which a Lithuanian family has to sacrifice everything they have in order to survive and yet, [SPOILER ALERT] it’s all in vain. Like a Gerhard Hauptmann novel. Bad in the beginning, worse in the end. How they try to hold on to their believes, traditions and each other against all calamities is heartbreaking. And calamities is a quite euphemistic word for jail, rape, death, and the likes. How the Rudkuses still manage to savour rare moments of happiness, culture and family makes it even worse.

To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat – and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.

Upton Sinclair: The Jungle

Despite the family’s harsh fate, Sinclair ends his book on an uplifting note and offers a way out: socialism! Introduced to Jurgis (and us) towards the end of the book, it equips the working poor with a new hope, a vision, something they can hold on to and believe in. Socialism as the solution to capitalism is the clear message Sinclair wants us to tske from this book. In the 27 preceding chapters, he relentlessly and vividly depicts capitalism as the source of all evil. By narrating the sad and horrible fate of Jurgis and his family he easily plays our heart strings and sense of justice. You can’t but abhor a system that allows such tragedy to happen. In the end, The Jungle is superb socialist propaganda through the gut-wrenching tale of one immigration family. And a must read, political stance aside.

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My Body is a Cage

Fritz Zorn meets Arcade Fire meets The Intellectual Chaos.

I’ve scribbled and drawn this during a time I felt really bad. The Jüngling had just dumped me (via text message while he was on a faculty party less than 10min away from me), I was heartbroken, I ate nothing but dark chocolate (Schwarze Herrenschokolade) and drank red wine, cycled myself to exhaustion (>5 hours per day), cried myself to sleep every night, slept maybe 3-4 hours per night, listened to nothing but Mahler and Arcade Fire, and read nothing but destructive literature. Full-on Werther-style. Minus the suicide. So yeah, not the best of times. I tried to keep myself busy to stop my intestines from writhing and my heart from hurting. It was also the time I applied for a job at the theatre, so it wasn’t the worst of times, after all. Anyway, one of the ways to deal with how I felt and the fact I loathed to be me and that I tried to punish my body for what was going on in my heart was this drawing. It is a symbiosis of Arcade Fire’s My Body is a Cage from the Album Neon Bible (2007) – one of the best songs out there –

and the cover of Fritz Zorn’s Mars, a scandalous book with huge success in Germany during the late 70s and 80s; a ruthless account with the well-off bourgeois Swiss society on which he blames his lethal cancer. Fun stuff, yay! No, but seriously: that is one of the most intense things I’ve ever read. Every sentence is so strong, so violent, so powerful.

Whatever exists is inevitably flawed.

And so I channelled my black dog via two different media into a third one. It’s still up on my wall and reminds me whenever I struggle, that things can indeed get better even if it might not feel like they possibly can.

The bird symbol continued to play an important part in my life for various reasons, Fritz Zorn and his influence being just one of them. But that is a different story to tell. Until then, take care out there!

Yours The Intellectual Chaos.

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Genetics, Gender, and the Greeks. On Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex.

Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

Middlesex is Jeffrey Eugenide’s second novel. After the much promising The Virgin Suicides, it was not surprising that his 2002 novel of epic proportions would win the Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 2003. In 4 books, 28 chapters, and 529 pages, a monumental Bildungsroman tells the family saga of hermaphrodite Cal. It is a story about the American Dream, about love and obsession, rebirth and puberty, about migration and Greek/American culture. It explores questions of gender and cultural identity, incest (not the icky kind but the one you actually somewhat sympathize with) and other family secrets.

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.

With a vigorous opening line like this, Eugenides clearly does not beat around the bush. What follows this promising beginning is the story of Cal Stephanides, former known as Calliope, and how they became a ‘he’, how they discovered, and learnt to accept and adopt their hermaphroditic nature. Together with Cal, we’re (literary hehe) travelling back in time to explore their teenage years respectively but also the story of how Cal’s ancestors immigrated to the US and their struggle to assimilate to the American way while also obtaining their cultural inheritance.

The first chapter: Yia-Yia Desdemona swings her spoon to reveal Cal’s gender antenatal and fails at the first attempt. A strong symbolic scene of how the Greek inheritance and superstition cannot stand up against genetically caused inter-sexism. Tradition VS DNA. Halfway through the book, you are so captivated by the Stephanides’ family saga, you almost forget about the eponymous hermaphrodite from the opening. The tale of Lefty and Des, who flee their hometown in Greece to escape the war, are siblings madly in love with each other. In Detroit, USA, they start a new life as immigrants – and as a married couple. Their incest remains a secret for many many years, until Des eventually comes clean to her grandchild. To cut a long family tree short: Lefty and Des have a son, Milton. Milton marries Tessie. Milton and Tessie have two kids, Chapter Eleven (whose proper name is never revealed to the reader) and Calliope. The three-generation family lives in a house called Middlesex. “Did anybody ever live in a house as strange? As sci-fi? A house that was more like communism, better in theory than reality?”

From here, Cal sets our on their teenage adventures. It is not so much a tale of a hermaphrodite as more of a personal account of the genreal confusions and struggles that come with pubertyy. This makes Middlesex – beside other factors – so brilliant: Eugenides never pushes the subject of inter-sexuality and gender identity too hard, there’s no in your face. Instead, it is neatly woven into the saga, never omitted but always acknowledged while basically telling a coming-of-age story. Our internally focalized narrator Cal occasionally slips into ironic, sarcastic, sometimes even stern comments to remind us of their genetic predisposition. However, there’s never a moment where you feel lectured.

Jeffrey Eugenides is a literary genius. Period. How he describes emotions in such striking imagery yet at the same time remains so pure, prosaic and pragmatic in his style is pure genius. I orgasmed at this specific sentence:

When he spoke to himself, it was in complete paragraphs. If you listened closely, it was possible to hear the dashes and commas in his speech, even the colons and semicolons.

Cal, the omniscient overseer beyond time, mind and existence, who dares to comment on his own conception, is an excellent and very unusual choice for the narrative voice. Cal is an extremely audacious, wondrous, pointy and eloquent narrator, who never ceases to draw our attention and empathy, may it be towards themself or their ancestors.

Middlesex is a collection of individual and very personal stories, all quite touching, skilfully woven together under grander themes.

Eugenides has a somewhat weird take on sex scenes though. Not that there’s a lack of very explicit sexual episodes. However, they all are a bit off in the way they are told: one is incestuous, one uses the clarinet (of all instruments!!!!) as an erotic metaphor for hormonally motivated lust, one is experienced by Cal twice simultaneously – by herself, with Jerome “sliding and climbing on top of me like a crushing weight. So do boy and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.” (yeah, that sarcophargus reference makes sex totally appealing) and at the same time impersonating Rex Reese, who is ‘busy’ with Cal’s real love interest, the obscure object. Cal lives his feelings, sexual fulfilment and satisfaction empathetically through someone else.

The whole 529 pages are amazing from beginning to end. Most intriguing is probably The Obscure Object. I re-read the whole chapter twice. But then there are also so many neat one-liners, you kinda wanna quote them all.

Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913.

I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies.

“It’s like the paintings in the museum,” she said, “Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.”

What else is there to say? Much more. So much more. I warmly welcome you to read it and go into an in-depth analysis with me. It’s literary dimensions are of such significance, it should become a modern classics. Maybe already is. Furthermore, it matters. What a truly compelling, transatlantic and outstanding epos.

Go and read it. Please.

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Facing your fears: The Snail-Watcher

Confession: I suffer from slugophobia. Not sure that word exists (yet), but I use it anyway to describe my very unnatural abhorrence of those slimy little bastards. Shell or no shell, slug or snail – doesn’t matter. I see one, I freeze, I panic. Molluscophobia is the proper name for it. I was scared of them since I was a little kid. And I get mocked a lot: “But they are so slow!” Yes, they are, but they are also slimy, weird and just ew ew ew. I can’t even write about them without making a grimace of disgust. Ew.

One summer, I left my plants at my Mum’s place and she left them outside. When I came back from my holiday, I moved into a new apartment and one random evening decided to repot my plants. After two or three perfectly boring plants, the next one surprised me with a tiny little snail creeping (me) out, unwillingly, like a whining schoolboy with his satchel and shining morning face [yay, Shakespeare reference] approximately the size of a beer cap. Tiny. Any other person would have picked it up by its shell and gotten rid of it. Easy.

And what did I do?

I sat down on a chair on the other end of the room and looked at a pile of soil spread on the floor and stared at one this terrifying moving shell with mollusk under it. For about half an hour I just sat there and cried and couldn’t move. Then I texted DJ, who was luckily still in the theatre and I literally begged him to come by and help me out. He came, he laughed, he laughed some more, he basically never stopped laughing; yet I made him go through every single plant, pot and soil and check for further snails. “There aren’t any”, he said, clearly enjoying himself watching my torture and clearly annoyed about having to dig through pots of soil. Well, turned out he was wrong, CAUSE THERE WERE ANY because a couple of days later I found another one ON THE OUTSIDE OF MY BEDSIDE TABLE PLANT!!!! Ew. Massive Ew. And fuck you, DJ. That night, I changed the bedsheets and put all plants outside, despite the almost freezing temperatures. I was willing to kill off all my plants because there was a slight chance of snails living inside their pots.

If I go camping, I a) have to sleep in the middle. Imagine touching the walls of the tent where slugs crawl up on the outside! We’d basically have skin contact, only separated by a thin layer of nylon. I b) need someone to get out first thing in the morning and pluck all slugs from the tent and then c) check my shoes to make sure there’s no snail hiding somewhere. As a kid, there once was one in my welly and I freaked out. I’d also walk over meadows in a stork-like manner, carefully scanning the ground for a slug-free spot to put my foot down. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Another time, I thought I’m gonna try and defeat the enemy. I was at an annual wine festival in Baden and they served a very traditional local dish: “Schnecken im Weißbrot”, i.e. escargots in garlic bread. I thought: “Well, if I eat those, I sure show that little bastards who’s the boss now.” Long story short: it was the most expensive garlic bread I ever had, and I couldn’t bring myself to eat those weirdly looking things in the middle.

Also, you know that pasta type Conchiglie? I had and still have troubles eating it, once it’s *sluuuurp* sucked to the plate by the sauce like a suction cup – resembling a slug pressing itself firmly and slimily to the ground. Ew.

I am not sure why or when I developed my phobia. One incident in my early childhood, however, contributed very much to it. I must have been 6 or 7, when I read anything I could get my hands on (as if I ever stopped doing that, lol). Diogenes publishing company had these little pocket books, and since I was little and they were little, they looked so cute and compelling to be read. Note: just because a book is little, it is not necessarily aimed to the little ones. The short story that fell into my hands was by the mistress of psychological thrillers and self-declared snail-lover herself, Patricia Highsmith, and it was called “Der Schneckenforscher”, original title: “The Snail-Watcher”. It gave me the creeps. I had nightmares. And I still partly blame it for my overreaction to slugs and snails.

Since I’m all about adulting now, I bravely decided to face my fear. I googled it, I found it, and I read it (in English, this time). I actually read the story that traumatised me. Probably wouldn’t give me nightmares these days (I’ll let you know after tonight, haha) but it is still very disturbing. Like definitely very ew. You can easily find it online. I’m really insecure about all those copyright laws so I’m not gonna copy and paste the whole text, since I’m not sure it’s legal or not. But here or here, you can find it and [disclaimer coming up] I’m not responsible for the contents bla bla bla. Okay, click on either of these and read. And then come back.

It’s both horrifying and fascinating and disgusting (and yes, I’m aware that’s three adjectives I introduced with ‘both’, sue me). It’s so vivid, too. Patricia Highsmith has a talent of narrating in a way you picture it perfectly no matter how much you’re trying not to. Kopfkino, as we Germans say. And mine is in HD.

I mentioned earlier, Patricia Highsmith was obsessed with snails, even had some herself. Again, and I’m aware I repeat myself: Ew. There’s a rumour that she used to bring them along to dinner parties, hiding them under her boobs (super ew!) and even the possibility someone would do that is so cringeworthy, I am cringing right now and experience strong phantom sluggishness under my boobs. Ew.

What makes the story so repellent is with what intensity and almost erotic fascination the protagonist watches his snails mate and reproduce. I mean, the first mating scene is basically sexy snail porn but also really repugnant to the reader (me). Interspecies voyeurism par excellence.

So yeah, that’s that. Did rereading my childhood trauma tale help my slugophobia (#stillabetternamethanmolluscophobia)? Not really. But I dared to reread this traumatizing piece of art. It still sends shivers down my spine, and not the good ones, but I still went through with it. Despite feeling more and more uncomfortable with every line I went further down the snail shell.

To make a long story short: I (s)nailed it.

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Friday Night Thoughts

A Stream of Consciousness that had to get out.

Do you know the feeling when you’re lonely, when you’re desperatly longing for someone to text you, check up on you and ask you a simple “hey, what you up to?” (not the booty call kind of text). And if you do, do you furthermore also know how at the very same time that you so desperately crave company, you knew that whoever would actually ask you to hangout, you’d decline because you just can’t? So you find yourself in a constant struggle with yourself, being sad, disappointed and lonely and simultaneously dreading that someone might actually contact you. Well, that just sucks. And yet, it happens ever so often lately. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to fill the unexplicable void. I spent ages trying to decide what I wanna eat, what I wanna watch, what I wanna read, what I wanna do. And end up eating nothing (or later shuffling too much food in my mouth because I’m so fucking hungry), watching the same bland TV series, wasting my life away when there are so many miraculous things I could do instead. Why? I don’t know. I can’t explain, I can’t find a reason and I struggle to find the strength to keep going. Life offers me so many moments of love, metaphorical and literal rays of sunshine and the best friends I could wish for. So where does the pain, the void come from? I don’t know. But it won’t stop nudging me and taking my energy away and I just wanna sleep it off, run it off, but the sleep won’t come and if it does, it’s not the good one, and the running doesn’t really any more and I just wish I had all the answers and MAKE IT GO AWAY. But I can’t.

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Ian McEwan: Black Dogs

In 1946, a young couple sets off on their honeymoon. Fired by their ideals and passion for one another, they plan an idyllic holiday, only to encounter an experience of darkness so terrifiying, it alters their lives forever.

Quoth the blurb.

It’s my fourth Ian McEwan after Atonement, Solar and The Children Act. When I read Atonement, I wasn’t much into it and condemned it as kitsch (especially with the movie adaption in mind). Looking back, I was way too young to be ready for it and for McEwan’s overlaying topics and dense prose in general and therefore it’s overdue to be reread, now that I feel more mature as a reader, and do the novel justice. Solar, my second encounter with one of England’s leading novellists, came years later. I hated the protagonist. I loathed him. What a digusting, pig-like unsympathetic person, the kind you wish to spend as little time with as possible. And yet I wanted to continue reading even though it meant hanging out even more with despicable Michael Beard. That was the moment upon which I briefly stopped reading, looked up and nodded approvingly to acknowledg Ian McEwan’s talent before I continued with my literary frenemy. The Children Act, which I read on holiday just a couple of weeks ago, was a dense and tense novel I devoured within hours and I am very excited to see Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci in the 2017 film adaption because a) book and b) Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci! So much to my short literary journey so far with Ian. And now over to Black Dogs.

Black Dogs is one of McEwans earlier novels, first published in 1992. It is set in the aftermath of World War II and tells the story of June and Bernard. It’s presented as a mock memoir written and conducted by their son-in-law Jeremy. It is a story of two very different people in love but not able to overcome neither their differences nor their feelings for each other, which means they are doomed to be apart yet never be truly separated from each other. Or the other way round? I guess toxic is what we’d call it nowadays. It is also the story about one particular event that would change everything for them. “But the next day, and the day after, and on all the succeeding days, they never set foot in the metaphorical landscape of their future. The next day they turned back.”

On one side we have Bernard, a communist who’s firmly settled in the rational world and defending his political believes no matter what: “He’s got facts and figures, he’s always rushing off to give a speech, be on a panel or whatever. But he never reflects. He’s never known a single moment’s awe for the beauty of creation. He hates silence, so he knows nothing.” June, on the contrary, starts off as a communist, too, but is far more attached to the spiritual world, to ideas of karma and whatnot: “She’s got her own ideas and they’re strong and strange.” Pretty sure she’d believe in homeopathy.

With these two characters, the novel explores various topics of opposing nature: religion versus politics, spiritual versus rational believes, fantasy versus reality. It’s never about which of those supersedes the other or has more of a right to be. It’s about the fact that contraries exist, about the struggle to overcome them and the devastating realization that there’s no guarantee you can. Both June and Bernard fail at some point and yet both are too hung up on their side of the aisle that even their strong mutual affection can’t bridge that fundamental gap.

To lighten things up a little, Jeremy and Jenny (the narrator’s wife) seem to be the author’s assurance to the reader that even relations with such contradicting values from each party can work. They are a couple far from over-the-top romanticism and kitsch. On the contrary – their marriage is based on a very profound and solid trust in each other.

“We rolled into a sleepy embrace. Minor reunions like this are one of the more exquisite domestic pleasures. She felt both familiar and novel – how easily one gets used to sleeping alone. […] Her eyes were closed and she half-smiled as she fitted her cheek into the space below my collar bone that seemed to have formed itself over the years to her shape.” So sweet, so simple and so comforting.

The fake preface written by the first-person narrator to account for Jeremy’s motivation of writing his step-mum’s memoirs seems oddly out of place. Jeremy’s obsession with other people’s parents (resulting from losing his own parents back when he was a kid) gives somewhat a reason but I felt it was a bit over the top. The story of June and Bernard is enough, and I for my part didn’t need full accountability for why it was being told.

The first three quarters are basically a very long built-up to the scene we’ve been intrigued with since the title: the encounter with the black dogs.

The Black Dog, synonym of depression, coined by Winston Churchill and associated with all the side effects whilst suffering depression. Choosing that as an eponymic antagonist sets a very distinctive and dark tone. Selected scenes at historically relevant locations add to this atmosphere of the decay of human morality and doom. “What possible good could come of a Europe covered in this dust, these spores, when forgetting would be inhuman and dangerous, and remembering a constant torture?”

The novel is a commentary on different systems of believe, he captures the political moods that defined life in the decades after WW II and he throws in some major and minor wisdoms of humanity, love and life. It’s a recipe for a dense, absorbing and very vexing novel. It leaves so many things unsaid after it went long ways pretending to lead up to some revelation. That is frustrating, sometimes. But if you accept it for what it is, Black Dogs will give you a lot to take in and to think about.

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Funny, Clever, And Meaningful: Watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Ah, Netflix and me. What an intense relationship. Netflix, always checking up on me. “Are You Still Watching You?” when I binged the first season of You must have been the freakiest question I ever read on a screen and almost as meta as Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode. “Yes, Netflix, I do. I still watch out for myself, thank you very much.” Or rather, “I’m binging several seasons of one show in one night. Obviously, I am NOT alright. Thank you for asking, though.”

Anyway, if I started posting about ANY show I watch on Netflix, I wouldn’t have time to watch Netflix or do anything else. So TV shows will almost never come up here unless there’s something really interesting to say about them. Otherwise there might be quotes or little references or side note recommendations but an elaborated post like this one is a rare exception.

So, why Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a title that suggest a clichéd Hollywood Romcom with really cheap jokes?

Well, because it is a CW TV show that is surprisingly smart, witty, intelligent and clever, at the same time funny, daring, dark and bold and yet it manages to address social stigmata and taboos; a refreshing show that keeps you entertained, on edge and is one of the best things TV (i.e. online streaming devices) has to offer these days. Plus, there’s tons of songs.

But let’s start from the beginning. Rebecca Bunch, played by the amazing Rachel Bloom, is working hard at a New York job, making dough (the kind of dough that pays your rent) and is offered a promotion. Which makes her not happy, but sad. A margarine ad asks her “When was the last time you were truly happy?” and while that question is rummaging through her mind, she runs into Josh Chan. Perfect Josh, her teenage summer camp crush/love. And suddenly, everything becomes clear. Rebecca decides to start anew and move to West Covina – which happens to be where Josh is but that’s not why she’s here. Well, at least that’s what she tells herself and others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yjVUP_zryk

Rebecca meets new colleagues, some become her friends (despite her explicitly displayed reluctance), some become nuisances, some fall in both categories. She meets Josh and – oh no! – Josh’s perfect girlfriend. The goal is clear: get rid of the latter, get Josh and be happy.

I have an I.Q. of 164. On the entire S.A.T., I got two questions wrong and in subsequent years those questions were strickened for being misleading. But I know nothing about life! Yeah, no. Truly, nothing! Like, I make awful decisions! Like really, you know, really, really awful decisions. [Rebecca about herself, S01, E05]

And believe me, she really does. And hilarity ensues. To see how Rebecca lies to everyone around her, especially herself, and how her fake reality puts her in the most embarassing (Stichwort Fremdschämen, as the Germans say) and impossible situations is hilarious! And yet gives the audience the chance to reflect upon the strains of modern society, especially for those who don’t fit in 100%. Rebecca is straight-up adorable and you totally sympathise with her despite (or because of?) all her wrong-doing and self-delusioning. She’s quick-witted, overdramatic, strong but insecure and just so incredibly likeable. And so are the others. Once Rebecca has settled in (or rather, once we’ve settled in with our protagonist), every character gets their story arch and becomes more than just a plot device to tell Rebecca’s story.

The genre, I believe, is called Dramedy (although I totally dig Wikipedia’s classification as “Cringe Comedy”) mixed with musical elements, i.e. songs.

Speaking of songs: Each episode has two or three songs neatly woven into its storyline and they either present a specific topic or display some character’s feelings in a more accessible way. Taboos don’t exist: Ass waxing, period sex, you name it – it’s all covered. Outstanding in one of the first episodes is definitely “The Sexy Getting Ready Song“, to name but one example of brilliant song writing. They are not only outstanding by themselves, though, they also convey important messages, drive the plot, and a more than just a gimmick.

What I love about this show is that it’s not afraid to point out inconvenient, unmentionable or intimate truths that are usually omitted. It dares to make mental illness one of it’s main topics. Anxiety and depression, insecurity and inadequacy, to name but a few, are recurring motives for character motivation and – despite the show’s seemingly overall comedic tone – are treated with all due respect and earnestness. Feminism and a liberal sexuality and sexual orientation are just happening, with no need to punch it in our faces.

Creators Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna did a hell of a job. Even the worse episodes are still pretty good. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a show full of diversity in topics and people, a compassionate take on mental illness, balancing between brilliance and banter. Cynical, serious, satirical, affecting and very entertaining. And has the biggest pretzels we’ve ever seen.

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Gateau au Chocolat

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” 
[Charles M. Schulz]

A new, rich recipe with lots and lots of chocolate, chocolate sprinkles, cacao, Lindt Lindor chocolate, cream, coffee and rum.

DISCLAIMER> If you don’t wanna read the intro, you may scroll down to CHAPTER I

I was sitting in a Otorhinolaryngologist’s waiting room to finally do something about my nosebleeds. While I was sitting and waiting, I flipped through one of those women’s magazines and found a very rich and dense looking chocolate cream cake recipe, snatched a picture and decided to give it a try. One of my work colleagues is a big fan of anything that involves cake and chocolate and this seemed like made for him. Being a culinary half-blood prince, I of course did not stick to the recipe but made a few adjustments here and there and as usual ignored precise quantities. The numbers in my recipe down there are therefore in between the original recipe and rough estimations of how much I used.

In order to make this gluttony in cake reality, you need patience, time and follow the following steps:

CHAPTER I. The Cake Base.

Preheat the oven to 180°C ( ≈  356 Fahrenheit) on upper & lower heat. Whisk 3 eggyolks with 50g white sugar. Whisk 3 tbsp cocao powder and another 50g white sugar into it. In a separate bowl, beat 3 egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff. Carefully fold in the cocoa mixture. Blend 100g plain flour with 2 tsp baking powder and 2 tbsp instant coffee and slowly stir this, too, into the batter.

Take a baking tray, put some baking paper on it and spread the batter circularly so it covers at least the diameter of a cake ring (which we will be using later anyway, so just keep it nearby). Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes and let it rest. Once it’s cooled down, take aforementioned cake ring and cut out a perfectly round cake base. Leave the cake ring attached. Nibble on the leftovers cause that’s what baking is all about, anyway.

CHAPTER II. The Chocolate Mousse

Aka the best, richest and the most chocolaty step. Heat 250g dark bitter chocolate and 100g milk chocolate in a bain-marie – and OMG, what a noble expression, so French cuisine and nothing like the plain “water bath”. Clever people break the chocolate bar into pieces BEFORE opening the package. Now if you feel really fancy, chop up some Lindt Lindor dark bitter chocolate balls and add them to the melting pot.

While melting away, whisk 2 egg yolks, 2 eggs, 50g white sugar and 8 tbsp rum. Add the melted chocolate and 125g Quark (I think it’s curd cheese in English? I remember it was super difficult to get it in the UK. If all else fails, Greek yoghurt could work as a substitute but it’ll make it even denser and richer. You have been warned.). Add 4 tbsp instant coffee. Whisk 250g cream until whipped and add that, too. Pour the mixture over the cake base and let it rest at a cool place over night. I just left it outside on my balcony in deep winter and that worked perfectly.

CHAPTER III. Coating and Decoration

Fast forward to 4-24 hours later, ready for the final step. Again, heat up the water hot pot and set up le bain-marie to melt 150g dark bitter chocolate, 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp honey.

Whisk 125ml cream with some stabilizer and pour the ready-made chocolate fondue into it. Let it cool down a bit – it doesn’t have to be cold, lukewarm is fine – and smear it onto the cake and, the sides. Make it all smooth with a dough scraper. Unwrap Lindt Lindor dark bitter chocolate balls and cut them in halves. Set them on the outer ring of the cake, one half for each slice, and one in the middle. Sprinkle chocolate sprinkles or grated chocolate everywhere – I personally love the dark bitter sprinkles but that’s up to you.

And now take a pastry fork and go right into the soft creamy texture and indulge this sinful, rich dessert. And die from sugar shock now or diabetes later. Worth it, though.

“Boah, ist die aber fett!”
[G. K., who is not exactly eloquent but brutally honest. And to this day, it remains a mystery if he meant me or my cake.]