renovatio06's blog

Since I had to prepare a few selections of images for potential clients, I decided to upload them to my own web share for the time being.

There is a number of pictures at these locations:

www.copyblock.de/tours_texasreise
www.copyblock.de/tours_texasreise/horseback_terlingua
www.copyblock.de/tours_texasreise/cibolo_creek_ranch
www.copyblock.de/jimbo
www.copyblock.de/apple_tx_story

Hope, you'll enjoy them.

Over the last two years, I have repeatedly come across a roadblock in my personal development. In brief words and in sparing you the details, the roadblock was about not knowing how to cope with some events in my early past. It seems, from whichever angle I looked upon those events, they'd leave me bitter, scarred, unable to embrace life and keep me from fully becoming the person I think I am at the core of my being.

Then a friend sent me on a press trip to Texas - which turned into a transforming experience. I find this quote by George Moore, an English philosopher, to be particularly well suited:

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.”

And now, being home and in beginning to digest and process the plethora of encounters, sights, sounds, experiences which were condensed into a tight schedule of a mere 10 days of travel, I think I'm beginning to find, what it takes to move the roadblock out of the way: Acceptance of my fate, ultimately maybe forgiveness, coming from a place of GIVING the exact thing I think I'm missing. I repeatedly referred to this as the "Baron Munchhausen"-maneouver, which is a metaphor of a physically impossible act, where Munchhausen boasts having saved himself from drowing in a swamp by pulling himself out by the ponytail on his wig. Moving that roadblock - or going around it - often appeared to be that exact - near impossible - act to me. And indeed: All I can do to liberate myself from past agony is to find the strength of pulling myself out. It may be a trivial thing to find, and it's an insight certainly coming pretty late in my life. But it is beginning to take crystal-clear shape and form.

On a different note: I find travelling a very inspiring experience and I went crazy with the camera, shooting 3,052 images in those 10 days (yes, that's an average quota of 300 a day, which I'd transfer onto the laptop every night). I am now working hard on selling this trip in as many ways as possible: I have a writing assignment with a German travel magazine, and I'm working on selling some of the pictures I took. I would love to make this into a career switcher and keep on writing and photographing for travel and lifestyle magazines. At the same time, my musical acquisition endeavours seem to yield results and I am booked in two different places, on a regular basis in one of them and on a semi-regular basis in the other. I am hoping for this to gain some momentum, predominantly in the material connotation. But the most important thing is: I seem to get my life back!

Saved a Life!

I happened to be around and have my camera with me when this happened on the lake today: A mother had her six months baby and a two-and-a-half-year old with her, all three of them being on skates. When she approached a spot of thin ice, bystanders shouted warnings her way, but it was too late: She broke through the surface, which was a mere half inch thick. As she fell in the water, she lost grip of the stroller with the baby that she had been pushing in front of her. The stroller rolled on and came to a halt, while the woman sank. Bystanders were able to alarm rescue forces and pull the women out. However - noone was able to reach the stroller to pull it back in. As rescue forces arrived, the stroller had already broken through the surface, but was stabilized long enough for rescue to arrive and reach for the baby - at the very last minute, before the stroller sank!

Accident site

Luckily, both the mother as well as the baby are in good condition. Noone could have know that there are patches of thin ice, as we have been having freezing temperatures near 5F for over a week and the ice is as thick as 3-4 inches in all other places. Guess, we were all lucky today.

P.S.: Story runs in the weekend edition of the local newspaper. I provided a few photos as well as the story behind the story, which I came to know only later.

Playing Friday Night's Blues i…

Please find my complete post here.

... to all my American friends and contacts! Enjoy the bird-slicing! ;-)

I know, this may read crazy: I just came across this station on the web, who play nothing but the sounds and songs of different birds! It's winter here and I'm missing summer terribly, so this radio stream creates a summer atmosphere right in my living room - crazy, but nice (and nobody gets hurt, either ;-))

P.S.: The link may not work in your browser - the station is actually listed on iTunes under "radio" and "Ambient".

At least I got it completed for now: I managed to add a melody and solo track to one of my tunes. Please visit me on my iLike-site, where I plan on adding material I perform live as well as one or the other original tune I intend to come up with. I will also add vocals in the process - for now, it's basically instrumental stuff first.

It's a free download - you can listen to it on the web or download it locally. Feel free to do so and let me know, what you think.

My Trucks ;-)

Just found this ;-) I spotted those trucks all across Canada and the USA, when I travelled there last time.

Tonight was a special night: It's been just a few weeks, since I first spotted him on YouTube:

Andy McKee, delivering a killer arrangement and performance of Toto's 80ies hit "Africa" with nothing else but six strings and ten fingers - I was blown away! Later that week, I barged into the little acoustic guitar and repairs shop just up the street from where I live to share my find with the owner. He just silently looks at me, ushers me towards his "marketing" desk and fishes for a sheet of paper, announcing a concert with that very guy along with his teacher and mentor Don Ross! Now - the timing (coincidence?) gave me the goose-flesh! But tonight, when listening to 2+ hours of pure genius and virtuosity, I couldn't help, but be at awe over those two music masters! Plus, Don Ross sang a song that almost had me in tears: Any Color But Blue - a haiku of art and sensitivity in a human being, the nearest thing to experiencing God while in the flesh! Allow yourself being inspired, elevated and uplifted by checking out those guys' art and clips on YouTube! What an evening! I've never seen or listened to anything like this!

I swear, I haven't laughed this hard in quite some time: I rented a movie today, which - going by the title - sounded like just another romantic comedy. But... it's written, directed and produced by Julie Delpy, a French atrice, who currently lives in Los Angeles. So.. it's loaded with funny twists of the different mentalities in the States and France.

Check out the trailer - it gets so gross at times, you can't help but laugh (well, at least I think so ;-)):

Found this on YouTube the other day - hilarious! The words read:

- cow

- jackass

- witch

- dork

- whore

- quiet!

Unfortunately, the joke works better in German, as the last two words are made of the same characters, just different sequence. But I still find the idea funny enough, how they form words with those characters made from pasta ;-)

Enjoy:

Tried a new variation today. Ingredients:

- Salmon, about 7 ounces (200 grams)

- Thai Rice Noodles

- Handcut Fries from Spring Potatoes

- Yellow Squash

- Optional: Yellow Bell Pepper

- Ground Black Pepper

- Ground Sea Salt

- Thai Curry Relish

- Virgine Olive Oil

- Virgine Coconut Juice (13.5 ounces, 400 ml or more)

Spread the olive oil on a coated pan and put it on high temperature. Meanwhile, cut the potatoes in halves (longitudinally), cut again sideways, after that slice them thinly. Disperse spices (black pepper, sea salt) over them. In the meantime, have a bowl of water boil. Put the potatoes in the frying pan, put Thai Noodles in the boiling pot for no more than three minutes. Continue with slicing the yellow squash thinly. Spread black pepper and some salt (not too much of each) over it. When the fries are of a bronze color, add squash. Chill the noodles and put the cap on top of it, so they won't cool too fast. Roast the squash for a little while and in the meantime, slice salmon in stripes, about half an inch each (1 cm). Slide sideways once. Add to the frying pan. Fry all that at high temperature for no longer than a minute. Open a can of virgine coconut juice and add. Add about one or two teaspoons of Thai Curry and stir well with the rest.

At your preference, grind a little bit more of black pepper and sea salt (careful though! The salmon is pretty salty, Thai Curry is spicy, too - we don't want it to be too salty). Have it all simmer for another minute or two at medium temperature. Add some of the rice noodles and simmer another minute at most.

Cut the heat, open a bottle of dry white wine, get set, put a movie on and - enjoy! :-P

I need to talk about stalking today. wikipedia says this about stalking:

"Stalking is the obsessive following, observing, or contacting of another person, or the obsessive attempt to engage in any of these activities. This includes following the person to certain places, to see where they live or what the person does on a daily basis, it also includes seeking and obtaining the person's personal information in order to contact him or her; e.g. looking for his or her details on computers, electoral rolls, personal files and other material containing the person's private information without his or her consent."

They continue to say this: "Stalking exists in many forms. [...]. Stalkers may even have a sincere but misguided belief that their victims love them, or have a desire to help the victims. Stalking consists of a series of actions which in themselves can be legal, such as calling on the phone, sending gifts, or sending emails.

Stalkers will often denigrate and objectify their victims. This can help stalkers to abuse their victims without experiencing empathy, and may reflect or fuel a belief that they are entitled to behave as they please toward the victims. Viewing victims as "lesser," "weak" or otherwise seriously flawed can support delusions that the victims need to be rescued, or punished, by the stalkers. Stalkers may slander or defame the character of their victims which may isolate the victims and give the stalkers more control or a feeling of power.

Stalkers may use manipulative behavior such as bringing legal action against their victims. They may also attempt to diagnose victims with false mental illnesses. Stalkers may even threaten to commit suicide in order to coerce victims to intervene - all methods of forcing victims to have contact with the stalkers."

Further down, wikipedia leaves no doubt as to the effects of such restraining behaviour on the victims of stalking. I can't even chuckle at that exhaustive list any more, as I have been suffering from ALL of these effects - for most of my life to this very day.

Since I have isolated the most likely source of my being stalked as my own family, I am now implementing a list of actions, hoping to reduce the degree of outcomes of this abusive behaviour. However, it is almost impossible to escape that, as I still have a phone, address, e-mail etc.

One of those measures will have to be to refrain from posting any more publicly visible entries here. I made the mistake of posting last night's entry as public, and retribution in form of an unsolicited phone call with suppressed caller ID follows in its footsteps. For those of you, who'd like to be able to read this blog in the future, I suggest you send me ipermail requesting to be promoted from contacts to something above that. I will have to see, whether that works better. If not, I might have to stop posting entirely.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but the situation is really as serious as it sounds.

update: There is a small possibility, I'm wrong THIS time about it - but it has happened before, so I don't feel all too remorseful.

Awwwww... how I love those mild summer nights! I am so grateful for the place I live in! On nights like this, where we still had 68F/20 Celsius at midnight, I like to step out on the terrace, prefererrably just wearing underwear, sometimes my bathrobe, and look into the nightsky with its gazillions of bright stars, sometimes complemented by the moon. Tonight is such a night: It's incredibly warm, I just returned from the open-air cinema, where I met a friend and we watched No country for old men together. I stand there, it's all quiet, there is a soft summer breeze, there is just the faintest hush of the highway in the distance, other than that it's perfectly quiet. I rest, I breathe, slowly, consciously and marvel at the shere immensity of the universe above and around me. Could it only stay summer year round - I'd have nothing to ever complain about...

But then, there are still those other moments, when I feel unworthy, small, intimidated, insignificant. And there's rage, incredible amounts of rage, rage that scares the shit out of myself. If the proverbial fairy offered me a wish, I'd know it right away: Peace, nothing but peace... give me that, and I'll be fine. Alas - with a little more luck, I might even find that. It's all about the homecoming, and I am sensing it to be close - in one or the other way.

I've been flattering myself into thinking, I was quick to grasp things. I now have to admit to myself (and all of you reading) that I'm not - I'm naive... still. Hard to believe, but unfortunately, it seems to be a fact. In the current case, we're talking about business expressions. For all of you, who aren't exposed to business speak, here's a little vocabulary help. Let me give you five introductory examples - (a) will be the expression used, b) what's actually meant by it:

1 a. "Can I call you back?"

1 b. "Get lost, will ya? And don't come bothering me again - ever!"

2 a. "What can I do for you?"

2 b. "You're already getting on my nerves - you think, I'm much inclined to hear you asking a favor of me?"

3 a. "This will take no more than a minute."

3 b. "Unless they don't invent everlasting youth and eternal life in the body, don't bother waiting on this to happen."

4 a. "It's my pleasure!"

4 b. "I'd like to feed your guts to my overweighed cat and throw the vomit she'll produce into the fish tank."

5 a. "Will you be here another minute?"

5 b. "You don't get, when you're no longer welcome, don't you? Just fuck of, o.k.?"

I was used to similar expressions in the music scene, and they go something like this:

1 a. "Hey, can I call you?"

1 b. "I'll never bother to keep your phone number, let alone give you a call."

2 a. "Can we do something together?"

2 b. "I'd rather build me a spaceship and fly to the moon than sit in together with you."

3 a. "Ey man - great solo!"

3 b. "My grandmother - God have mercy on her poor soul - just turned in her grave hearing the sad crap you're playing on your instrument - don't you have a heart for people?"

This just to get you started. I'm sure, you're smarter than me - you'll figure out the rest. Happy translating!

P.S.: From now on... anyone who treats me like I was stupid and didn't know above... boy, you wish you'd be stucked in a pile of shit face first instead, when I'm done with you...

I'm hoping, it will fall shut completely and stay closed for good. The good news: Other doors have opened instead. I'm hoping for those to open as widely as a horseback riding ranche's gate.

Just how could this guy escape me?

routeledge cover

So, it's a deal now: The publishing company, who contacted me, have licensed my image for an upcoming title of their list of books. We'll be signing an agreement and the deal will be formalized that way. I feel like I should celebrate this a little - oh, well... maybe having my third tequila-flavoured beer tonight may count as a little celebration? ;-)