Two incidents of yesterday,

 I think, make me get up at 4:30 in the morning, walk  the little balcony of my downtown flat where yesterday I telephoned with a company producing photovoltaic systems for the roof, googling the people I tried to reach, doing the mail necessary to get an offer for calculating , lots of not my money but nonethelesss caring for our ecological situation, taking the stairs instead of the elevator for the hope to someday not even needing these pills prescribed because of my stroke two years ago and the broken leg some 10 months ago and somehow finding out that life will end some day, me not being fully prepared.  Church has offered rituals for this feeling, no its yet too early fo the oil.

The one incident of yesterday was the letter with a black edge indicating someone has died: it turned out to be the mother of a close friend in Stuttgart. I telephoned with my youngest son, whether he would come with me to the funeral and he bluntly said No, which irritated me because he used to have a close relation to this woman, kind of kin from early childhood, but he now studying in Berlin having made plans for the day of the funeral already. I talked with Maria to find out what will be done from our side – she has met the mother of our friend three weeks ago  for the last time- I formulated my feeling towards our son in a different way, I told her that I feel his decision is perfectly o.k. with me, since life is not about mourning but about joy. This led to some words about our present situation where I left Frönsberg, living downtown alone in a practical flat, having reduced contacts to the absolute minimum, going to doctors and therapists nearby, reading, writing, going to Party meetings, preparing the new situation of not any longer having to go to work. But this is another story.

The second incident of yesterday was that I made my weekly walk to the shop with a small cart I can handle for not having to carry all the things I have to buy- water is quite heavy.

Then I decided to walk by the bookshop and have a look for a possible birthday present for the daughter of my –o damn English: lady friend does not sound correctly she is much more important for me, I love her dearly but we found out that we cannot live together so close as we wanted, that’s why we live nearby- ; I found a birthday present and another book I did not look for: Lettre á D. Histoire d’un amour by André Gorz.

I read it yesterday and this brought up so much from my own life that I decided this morning at 4:30 to sit and write it down.

I still smoke- on the balcony at least. The town wakes up, I can see the many houses from my third floor flat, lights come from bathrooms and then from cars, hills herded with homes, small cars of the different companies for nursing elderly people passing by and the first pedestrians crossing the street corner I can watch when the car of my friend with her dogs leaves or comes back- the feeling that I see this many times- a time span of only seconds, less than a minute, makes me think of an inbuilt contact mechanism of awareness.

I met André Gorz 1974 in Cuernavaca at Ivan Illichs place – being mentioned in his Histoire d’un amour as a group of some 20 people. Yes, but how could he know how important this had been for my life too? I come to think again that “by chance” is strictly a mathematical concept not suitable for everyday life. 1974 also was the year  when I almost every week met our friend whose mother just died. I got to know her in 1970 when we worked for the same company in Tübingen, the institute for distance education. These years until 1975 had been the most important ones, late 68ies.

Morning has broken, as in a lense the hills with the woods come out clearly, rain has stopped and a clean, structured sky promises a fine day.

There are so many stories still to be told. I will now go to the bathroom and start this day. Later I shall go on writing in German, I only wanted to ease the understanding for some of my friends.