40th entry to the Colonel`s Scrapbook
Birthdates which occurred on August 17:
Birthdates which occurred on August 17:
1786 Davy Crockett US, frontiersman/adventurer/politician ,the Alamo wil always be his historical tomb
1892 Mae West Brooklyn, actress (Go up & see her sometime)one of the sexiest ladies I have ever seen
Deaths which occurred on August 17:
1850 Jose Francisco de San Martin South American revolutionary hero, dies, another Latin America who should have realized how useless it is to chase freedom for so long
1786 dies Frederick II of Prussia, one of the most perfect men of history,my Fritzlr
and in events we have that
1896 Gold is discovered on Klondike River and everyone goes beserk
FRITZ
“Excellent et pas mèchant” was the description given ny my father about King Frederick II of Prussia, known as the Great. By age 4 I knew he existed. He possessed that devotion to excellence we need so much in my country- The colonel admires him,worships him
And the writer of fiction wrote him Fritz when she was still getting out of her wheelchair. When you were in Germany,dearest of all my readers and for whom on repeated occcasions I will mention as having the paternity of this scrapbook, you were aware how loved he still is by his people. I, without even knowing how to speak German, tip my hat to this almost perfect of all men. The reason why I have always had a crush on this majesty lies not only in his obvious great physical and intellectual attributes, but his will to overcome even the most bloody events of his life and continue on.
While being in a wheelchair in 2003, Fritz,as he was called by those who loved him, was always there by my side. When I got called by the fat slob of a ministress of social insecurity of Nicaragua “a heap of beautiful meat and broken bones made useless” and my spouse fled the house on two Saturdays for the whole day to avoid seeing the kind of worn dishtowel I had become, the gentle phantom of Fritz would stand by me. Remember I survived the loss of Hans, he would whisper into my ear with a sardonic smile of conspiration. Up and around my officer. I will never desert you,not the kind of man who wood run into the woods.
Today when we were talking ,I told you that the idea of all round excellence was taken by me from Fritz. He had everything against him:a homosexual in times when gays were discriminated against, a mom who was terrified of her husband, and his father was the worst king of punishment nature could have inflicted on this man. A brash overfed perfectionist, Frederick William I goes down in history as the soldier king who may have harboresd some homosexual tendencies which came out when he collected gigantic Teutonic soldiers for the first professional army Prusia was to have, of course under his rule. His favourite pastime was hitting Fritz,who preferred to speak French(of course, you can`t deny that the chap had good taste) and write poems instead of drilling continuously.
Fritz was his punching bag. No wonder the kid hated him. Very close to his also gifted sister Wilhelmina, Fritz grew up with music lessons and he adored his teacher Joachim Quantz. A gifted flute player, Fritz would compose 100 sonatas for this instrument.
In his teenage years he was to find the man who would be the love of his life, the officer Hans Hermann von Katte, of aristocratic origin. They were destined to fall wildly in love and to be discovered by Frederick`s bullying father when they were going to escape together to Great Britain. Katte lost his head in the whole affair,and I mean literally. Fritz`s fatso father demanded to court martial the guy and as an end result, the officer was beheaded in front of Fritz in the Kustrin fortress.After his death Fritz would never mention him in public, but he never loved anybody else with the same intensity.
I took this episode of the king`s life and converted it into a short story which I obviously called Fritz. I was still in the process of trying to stand up and walk out of the wheelchair. I felt more or less like Fritz must have felt after losing Katte. I knew I was a terrible burden to my family, including Grozny,the gentle mongrel dog who would help me get in and ut of the shower. I held onto the example of excellence given by Fritz as a raft to get me out of a shark-.infested sea. The day I sat to write Fritz something hinged into functioning in my bloated mind. Fighting the painful neuropathies that my diabetes gave me, I decided I was not going to lose this battle. Wobbling on shaky legs, I would somehow get myself into a cab and go for the daily torture sessions with my doctor,who so far was the only person alive who believed I would walk again. My physiatrist believed in hard work, just like Frederick. If it brought pain, great.No pain no gain. Pain, my dear, is always underestimated. With labor pains at least you have an immediate result:the beautiful baby.
Once she is out of your belly,all pains leave. There is no anesthetic as pride in what you gave birth to. But the pains of rehabilitation know no bounds, and your results are seen slowly. I think, no I feel, I believe one muscle twitched.No, it was my imagination. Cats have lion imaginations,so I who cannot walk dream of being Abebe Bikila running the marathon barefoot on a balmy Roman night towards victory. If that doesn`t sound like a wet dream you tell me what that is.
But one night, I finished eatingmy supper and glared at the saucer next to my glass of water. Tramadol, for the pain.Laxifen to relax my muscles. And the expensive Neurontin, to recoat with myelin the frayed lining of my neurons,which was why I had neuropathies.
So expensive.No wonder my family saw me as a coin machine in Las vegas,just swallowing up money. NO. So help me Fritz but I refuse.I have the right to say no. I evoked the sad life of a distant relative who fafter being shot in Olama y Mollejones by the guerrilla in the fifties, had to depend on morphine for the rest of his life. NO. I left the pills on the saucer to the amazement of husband and daughter. NO,I refuse. They would call the doctor. Oh big deal,Boo. The little sheep Nancy again saying in her stupid girlie voice,”WOLF”. I refused to take the pills.
Somehow I wobbled into my bed and Joseph, mu husband`s kitten,followed me into the bed and nestled onto the hollow of my neck, that particularly warm hollow between neck and clavicles we have. He approved and was ready to soothe me. I didn’t sleep to be truthful.Pretended only,so my husband would stop nagging. I had shooting pains in the pelvis and legs.But I didn`t give in. I wasn`t going to end up hooked on painkillers. I was also tired of getting reminded that all the money disappeared down my gullet. It was a question of having my ego survive somehow and still in one piece
On the 10th night sleep came naturally and the pain diminished. That is when Frederick came in my dream. He looked at the droll Pikachu pillow I had under my buttocks and asked me to listen to him. He threatened to stick his hand into my spine again as he did when trying to get my attention. He poured out his heart over the Katte episode. I was able to understand him. As soon as I woke up I had to find a computer so I could write what he had told me and convert it into a short story.
From the moment the tale was written, it has been like a lighting rod for good luck.It was published shortly afterwards. By now it has been translated into German, English, French and Arabic. It seems to have feet of its own. Who would have told the same somnambulist who once walked into the kitchen in Potsdam while profoundly asleep, almost tipped a huge cauldron of soup and went back to bed without realizing what he had done that he had tiptoed into my mind, stirred up the angry lion of my inspiration, and forced me to fall in love again with my own integrity? How would I know that he would be my guardian angel dressed in his Prussian blue uniform of soldier king, wearing that selfsame colour he invented for his troops? He drilled me into walking again, along with my doctor who was the only person alive who was sure I would defy all diagnoses and get back on my flat feet again. He was the same who said don’t be suspicious of happiness, but of those who deny it to you. Wasn`t he right,after all? After my full recovery life has dealt me other blows that hurt more than a simple diabetic neuropathy or a fracture. But I have also become like a soldier-king, like the enlightened Frederick that took things in stride until finally death was too jealous of his power and took him with her on a day like today.
When I visited his burial site in Potsdam, being a young exchange student, I knew I had a lot to learn from him. I was far away from the woes that would make my 40s such a conflictive time of my life. I had no inkling that all those binges at Fauchon and bad eating habits would land me into the warm and sweet lap of diabetes. It`s funny that the selfsame disease that renders your bloodstream so sweet can embitter your life so drastically if you don`t overcome the naked temptation of self pity. But as DGH Lawrence once said,”You can see a bird freeze in the middle of a blizzard until he drops dead but he will never have felt a moment of self-compassion.”
Fritz would have loudly cheered for Lawrence having said that. That would have made two of us.
Deaths which occurred on August 17:
1850 Jose Francisco de San Martin South American revolutionary hero, dies, another Latin America who should have realized how useless it is to chase freedom for so long
1786 dies Frederick II of Prussia, one of the most perfect men of history,my Fritzlr
and in events we have that
1896 Gold is discovered on Klondike River and everyone goes beserk
FRITZ
“Excellent et pas mèchant” was the description given ny my father about King Frederick II of Prussia, known as the Great. By age 4 I knew he existed. He possessed that devotion to excellence we need so much in my country- The colonel admires him,worships him
And the writer of fiction wrote him Fritz when she was still getting out of her wheelchair. When you were in Germany,dearest of all my readers and for whom on repeated occcasions I will mention as having the paternity of this scrapbook, you were aware how loved he still is by his people. I, without even knowing how to speak German, tip my hat to this almost perfect of all men. The reason why I have always had a crush on this majesty lies not only in his obvious great physical and intellectual attributes, but his will to overcome even the most bloody events of his life and continue on.
While being in a wheelchair in 2003, Fritz,as he was called by those who loved him, was always there by my side. When I got called by the fat slob of a ministress of social insecurity of Nicaragua “a heap of beautiful meat and broken bones made useless” and my spouse fled the house on two Saturdays for the whole day to avoid seeing the kind of worn dishtowel I had become, the gentle phantom of Fritz would stand by me. Remember I survived the loss of Hans, he would whisper into my ear with a sardonic smile of conspiration. Up and around my officer. I will never desert you,not the kind of man who wood run into the woods.
Today when we were talking ,I told you that the idea of all round excellence was taken by me from Fritz. He had everything against him:a homosexual in times when gays were discriminated against, a mom who was terrified of her husband, and his father was the worst king of punishment nature could have inflicted on this man. A brash overfed perfectionist, Frederick William I goes down in history as the soldier king who may have harboresd some homosexual tendencies which came out when he collected gigantic Teutonic soldiers for the first professional army Prusia was to have, of course under his rule. His favourite pastime was hitting Fritz,who preferred to speak French(of course, you can`t deny that the chap had good taste) and write poems instead of drilling continuously.
Fritz was his punching bag. No wonder the kid hated him. Very close to his also gifted sister Wilhelmina, Fritz grew up with music lessons and he adored his teacher Joachim Quantz. A gifted flute player, Fritz would compose 100 sonatas for this instrument.
In his teenage years he was to find the man who would be the love of his life, the officer Hans Hermann von Katte, of aristocratic origin. They were destined to fall wildly in love and to be discovered by Frederick`s bullying father when they were going to escape together to Great Britain. Katte lost his head in the whole affair,and I mean literally. Fritz`s fatso father demanded to court martial the guy and as an end result, the officer was beheaded in front of Fritz in the Kustrin fortress.After his death Fritz would never mention him in public, but he never loved anybody else with the same intensity.
I took this episode of the king`s life and converted it into a short story which I obviously called Fritz. I was still in the process of trying to stand up and walk out of the wheelchair. I felt more or less like Fritz must have felt after losing Katte. I knew I was a terrible burden to my family, including Grozny,the gentle mongrel dog who would help me get in and ut of the shower. I held onto the example of excellence given by Fritz as a raft to get me out of a shark-.infested sea. The day I sat to write Fritz something hinged into functioning in my bloated mind. Fighting the painful neuropathies that my diabetes gave me, I decided I was not going to lose this battle. Wobbling on shaky legs, I would somehow get myself into a cab and go for the daily torture sessions with my doctor,who so far was the only person alive who believed I would walk again. My physiatrist believed in hard work, just like Frederick. If it brought pain, great.No pain no gain. Pain, my dear, is always underestimated. With labor pains at least you have an immediate result:the beautiful baby.
Once she is out of your belly,all pains leave. There is no anesthetic as pride in what you gave birth to. But the pains of rehabilitation know no bounds, and your results are seen slowly. I think, no I feel, I believe one muscle twitched.No, it was my imagination. Cats have lion imaginations,so I who cannot walk dream of being Abebe Bikila running the marathon barefoot on a balmy Roman night towards victory. If that doesn`t sound like a wet dream you tell me what that is.
But one night, I finished eatingmy supper and glared at the saucer next to my glass of water. Tramadol, for the pain.Laxifen to relax my muscles. And the expensive Neurontin, to recoat with myelin the frayed lining of my neurons,which was why I had neuropathies.
So expensive.No wonder my family saw me as a coin machine in Las vegas,just swallowing up money. NO. So help me Fritz but I refuse.I have the right to say no. I evoked the sad life of a distant relative who fafter being shot in Olama y Mollejones by the guerrilla in the fifties, had to depend on morphine for the rest of his life. NO. I left the pills on the saucer to the amazement of husband and daughter. NO,I refuse. They would call the doctor. Oh big deal,Boo. The little sheep Nancy again saying in her stupid girlie voice,”WOLF”. I refused to take the pills.
Somehow I wobbled into my bed and Joseph, mu husband`s kitten,followed me into the bed and nestled onto the hollow of my neck, that particularly warm hollow between neck and clavicles we have. He approved and was ready to soothe me. I didn’t sleep to be truthful.Pretended only,so my husband would stop nagging. I had shooting pains in the pelvis and legs.But I didn`t give in. I wasn`t going to end up hooked on painkillers. I was also tired of getting reminded that all the money disappeared down my gullet. It was a question of having my ego survive somehow and still in one piece
On the 10th night sleep came naturally and the pain diminished. That is when Frederick came in my dream. He looked at the droll Pikachu pillow I had under my buttocks and asked me to listen to him. He threatened to stick his hand into my spine again as he did when trying to get my attention. He poured out his heart over the Katte episode. I was able to understand him. As soon as I woke up I had to find a computer so I could write what he had told me and convert it into a short story.
From the moment the tale was written, it has been like a lighting rod for good luck.It was published shortly afterwards. By now it has been translated into German, English, French and Arabic. It seems to have feet of its own. Who would have told the same somnambulist who once walked into the kitchen in Potsdam while profoundly asleep, almost tipped a huge cauldron of soup and went back to bed without realizing what he had done that he had tiptoed into my mind, stirred up the angry lion of my inspiration, and forced me to fall in love again with my own integrity? How would I know that he would be my guardian angel dressed in his Prussian blue uniform of soldier king, wearing that selfsame colour he invented for his troops? He drilled me into walking again, along with my doctor who was the only person alive who was sure I would defy all diagnoses and get back on my flat feet again. He was the same who said don’t be suspicious of happiness, but of those who deny it to you. Wasn`t he right,after all? After my full recovery life has dealt me other blows that hurt more than a simple diabetic neuropathy or a fracture. But I have also become like a soldier-king, like the enlightened Frederick that took things in stride until finally death was too jealous of his power and took him with her on a day like today.
When I visited his burial site in Potsdam, being a young exchange student, I knew I had a lot to learn from him. I was far away from the woes that would make my 40s such a conflictive time of my life. I had no inkling that all those binges at Fauchon and bad eating habits would land me into the warm and sweet lap of diabetes. It`s funny that the selfsame disease that renders your bloodstream so sweet can embitter your life so drastically if you don`t overcome the naked temptation of self pity. But as DGH Lawrence once said,”You can see a bird freeze in the middle of a blizzard until he drops dead but he will never have felt a moment of self-compassion.”
Fritz would have loudly cheered for Lawrence having said that. That would have made two of us.
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