i started today by not really feeling very well about all in my life, really all. i made a list of people that i feel have rejected me in some way, i looked at that list and realized that the one not figuring in the list is one who gives more thought to my existence than i care for. i certainly have rejected him. then i went down the drama queen path... this did not work, that is not working, this is no good, then one article i submitted got rejected. for an attention whore, it was devastating. feeling like a total blighted failure has its therapeutic value somehow.
early in the morning i got a call to inform me about the procedure for lending a helping hand to my neighbors who have been victims of the floods in the matte. the matte neighborhood, just a few meters from this place looks like a muddy ghost town now that the waters have receded, but the clean up work ahead is not to be underestimated, and it has just began. before i walked the few steps towards the catastrophe area, i gave an old friend in germany a call.
this old friend of mine in heidelberg, germany is a photographer, the father of two wonderful boys, and the kind of guy with whom i can and will talk about anything. i call him when i think that there is a major existential disaster in life, but not only. today was the second time that i felt my call was one of those existential ones, and that i would be asking him what i am doing on this earth, and that he would have the answer. last time i gave him such a call i was in portugal, and i was at the end of my own wits, i just did not know which way to turn, and i needed to be able to talk to somebody whom i trusted and could listen to. that was about ten years ago. statistically speaking one could say that my existential anxiety calls to heidelberg happen every ten years. so far so good.
i get on the phone and call heidelberg before breaking out to go give a hand down in the matte. his wife answers, we say hello, and he is on the phone before i have a chance of asking how she is doing. so, i ask him how she is doing, and i was not quite ready for the answer. the minute that i heard what they were dealing with, then i got pulled into reality, another's reality, cancer. for the past five years they have been battling cancer, i knew this, but we had not spoken with each other for a few months. much can happen in a couple of months when it comes to cancer, and hers has reappeared, new metastasis, and she needs to have surgery within the next week. rude as it was, it brought me down to earth and kicked the drama queen into hyper-space.
when i got down to the matte, sobriety had kicked in. i slipped into some blue worker overall clothes, grabbed a pair of gloves, and went to help out some neighbors in clearing their cellars. the house that i got dispatched to had its cellar full with water up to the ceiling. it took some restrain to develop compassion with one woman who was bitching about her daughter's past school work relics being totally destroyed. here i am volunteering my time to help out, and this woman ranting about all the crap that she now has to throw away somehow seemed displaced, so i reminded her that she was alive and all her family and for that fact all in that neighborhood had survived the catastrophe without injury or loss of life. she came to her senses, and stopped trying to salvage soggy old paper and got expedient with the clearing of her cellar.
i was dispatched to go help her neighbor, but at that point, i got busy and made myself useful. the house was without power, parts of the cellar are still flooded, the underground garages too, and trash bins were nowhere to be seen. all of a sudden having a mobile phone in one's pocket is indeed a useful thing, trash bins needed to organized, so i got busy calling the city. then i helped this man clear out his cellar, and then it was my turn to really feel sorry for all the good bottles of wine and spirits that he had stashed away in his cellar and that were now, in all likelihood tainted with flood water. between the insurance claim inspectors, the residents and office employees cleaning and clearing out their cellars and what had once been their offices, the civil protection officers, the police and the volunteers, the place was actually a lively place, and the devastation is hard to grasp. this is switzerland, and if there is one thing about the swiss, that is that they have insurance for everything and anything. so although the loss is real, it is all material loss, and just about anybody had the proper insurance.
still what gets me is that this has happened a few steps away from my front door, and it is really difficult to grasp. the berne matte neighborhood feels like a muddy ghost town in the evening hours. at a distance, it all looks fine, then you look close, then you start to realize that there is a whole lot of work to be done before the place is habitable again. some older building' statics may have been weakened to the point that the houses are inhabitable, within the next few days the engineer corps will be doing their work, and as the buildings are declared safe, then the people can start to clean up and return. the building where i was today is a relatively new and modern concrete construction, it is also the one that was most exposed to the river's torrential waters. i get the buzz on the hurricane katrina hitting by new orleans, and it is difficult to relate. over one thousand of my neighbors get affected by a natural catastrophe, and it seems like nothing happened while some news reports make headlines with swiss capital submerged.
the day was not over yet, not yet. after a good dose of reality, there comes another one. the mobile rings, and i miss the call. i get a message that i have 3 missed calls. then the fixed line rings in the office, it is my faithful friend calling from milano, italy the one who worries about me. again, what is this thing that gets into my head and makes me think that people are rejecting me?
nothing is new. i am the same old arrogant bitch as ever, and sometimes i make myself useful.
Technorati Tags: 2005, bern, berne, clean-up, katrina, matte, natural disaster, news, preception, swissbloggers, switzerland
