Henning Mankell

hen I finished reading The trouble Man, I was so so upset...All the bad moments I lived with my hubby's death came back to my mind...
And going back to the book I was so much in love with Kurt Wallander...
Strange how a character sometimes takes such a place in your life..I just not couldn't forgive Mankell for making him disappear that way, that was too much...
Then my son came back from England with "the man from Bejing"...a terribly complicated story, but the stories we love, fascinating...horrible murders ( how can we bear reading such things !!! I do wonder !!!!), the snow, the cold, the past the present....
and a quite nice woman, around my age: Birgitta Rosslin...She is a judge and she investigates about the famous murders...Some said she was a depressive woman...I don't agree, she's asking herself questions about the past, May 68, women's lib, politics, China...as most of us do...I mean women around 60...
She's great ! I do hope we'll meet her again in another book.

Haïku

I love haïkus, love putting pictures on them, would love writing some...

Mary Oliver

Starlings in Winter by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly
they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
..................................................
when you feel sad and tired, poetry is always here to comfort you...
during the last two years books saved me...

Siberian women

Sibérie, un voyage au pays des femmes Chroniques
by Anne Brunswic

In the winter of 2004 and the spring of 2005, Anne Brunswic traveled twice to Siberia, crisscrossing this region/ continent extensively, a region whose history has primarily been a tragic one, marked by political upheaval and severe economic depression. From the White Sea to the Pacific Ocean, from Yakutia to Birobidjan, from the mines of Kolema to the port of Vladivostok, she wandered through this wide, sometimes deserted countryside, magnificent, stark, meeting the few native Siberians and European immigrants still surviving in the extreme climatic conditions. This is also where Orthodox Christians, animists, the descendants of the butchers of the gulags and the families of their victims have ended up, scratching out a bare living.Anne Brunswic decided to seek out the women of Siberia, be they poets, singers, journalists, cooks, professors or museum curators. Natalya, Tamara, Ludmila, Irina ... they share with her their professional and personal stories, their political and religious beliefs, the tragedies which have touched their families, their bereavement, how they manage in their day-to-day lives, speaking quietly about the dreams they had when they were young. We follow the author, a keen observer of daily life, on her voyage, learning with her how these Russians living at the end of the world – make sense of their brutal historical experiences, about the hopes they still have for the future. She becomes a messenger, a voice reaching out to these women separated by thousands of kilometers. In spite of the difficulty and the uncertainty of their lives, most of the women speak of their attachment to Siberia, to the land, to its standards of brotherhood and adventure. Each of them is convinced that their bruised and broken country will someday move forward into a new day.