Health & Spiritual Fitness – Page 2

Posted on August 3, 2014November 5, 2014 by Frau Kolb

Born from The Womb Room and Ready to Go!

Drained from racing to the top of a collective dream, we retreated into the refuge offered by the elegantly understated, Hotel Pullman. Our room is done in inoffensive shades of plumy gray. A wide desk, a leather lounge chair, and a generous floor lamp allow for serious securing of ideas and floating impressions, gathered all around The Eiffel Tower, and retrieved from memories of last night’s adventures. Our room is a perfect haven for two tired tourists to recover, before transforming themselves into rare, industrial strength, Urban Butterflies.

Ever competent, Hartmuth, is on his lap-top searching for “The Perfect Restaurant.” Reading reviews in FRENCH, with no difficulty, my husband never ceases to impress me. (He found this, La Fourchette, a website, much like the trusty Opentable.com, website in the United States, where he made our reservation for the evening.)

We coin our affection for the gray on gray, plum room, our temporary HOME by giving it a fitting nickname. “The Womb Room,” embraces us. Soon, we will be born from it, and ready to go out and enjoy what Paris has to offer. At the moment we are content to each melt into our very own perfectly comfortable twin bed, separated by a trim twilight gray on dusty plum nightstand, stacked with Guidebooks and anthologies of short stories set in the contemporary French Capital, which I happily hauled across the Atlantic, in my indestructible, stand out peace-sign print, carry-on bag.

I doze with “First French Reader; a Beginner’s Dual-Language Book,” open on my belly, while my husband continues his intensive on-line hunt for “The Perfect Paris Restaurant.”

WE are hosting The Muse for dinner out tonight! She’d offered to come to our area, in the 7th arrondissement. The Muse! Coming to see us! Hurray! What excitement! Anticipation!

I can not tell you how much fun we had the night before. I really can’t. I won’t. I refuse to reveal just how splendid it was. (I’m hoarding the story, savoring the lingering taste of the mind boggling pleasure of roaming deep into Paris, into the sweet Summer Night, in the quiet and refined company of pure Beauty and Handsome Strength.) In the same league of excellence as my husband, Ms. Crane is an amazing human. She positively thrills me with her keen intelligence and juicy observation skills, an avid people-watcher Ms. Crane makes KILLER cracks about The Audience.

The Audience? Yes, “All the world is a stage,” after all… wherever we go, Ms. Crane and I experience… a surge in public attention, a blanket of external focus, which wraps around us, creating an interesting bulge. Lumpy is the attention hurled at us, everywhere. We only catch that which is useful, wholesome, deftly allowing all the rest to fly past us. Undeniably, The Muse is so beautiful people crave to facilitate, to pave the way around her, and I benefit for this power she wields, without seeming to notice. Yet, from experience I know that THE MUSE notices everything. She is sharp, keen, calm, and alert.

Our friendship sprang from a mutual connection. Yet the force with which it grew, took us all by surprise, like the famous beanstalk, which Jack accidentally planted, our friendship immediately lifted us UP and apart from others. We found in each other a source of the most precious fuel. An immediate rush of mutual support and genuine understanding, which yields a bounty of frame shaking laughter, and truckloads of unmitigated earth moving, JOY! Few times in life have I felt such a strong bond for another.

It happens to be that the first time I met Ms. Crane I was in the company of my very best friend. Having flown in from Manhattan, she is a secretive Muse, a blue-eyed lady ninja, who has always had my back. She approved of Ms. Crane, immediately promoting her to “Someone Special,” status. This New York Muse, being an apt judge of character, is always watching out to ensure that I’m aware, paying attention to who plants roots in the garden of my heart, she acts like a beneficent pesticide, killing weeds that seek to spring up and take over the ordered peace I cultivate.

Many are startled or envious of The Muse’s intense physical beauty. The first response is understandable, the second unforgivable. The Muse has green eyes to make emeralds jealous. She is a tiny mountain of dangerous Alpine Curves. What breasts! What body of knowledge! The grooves in her brain must be very symmetrical, electric. Her hair smells of apricot blossoms in ripe summer meadows. She is a living ideal of human perfection, in Frau Kolb’s humble estimation. The desire to climb to new heights in her arms must be universal!

I experience unparalleled pleasure each time she hugs me. Her hugs scoop me up and carry me away from all mundane, ugly, and sinister nonsense which threatens to invade the pristine landscape of my picturesque imagination. That Frau Kolb would gladly travel to the end of the cosmos, to have lunch with The Muse is no question. (The timing of my first trip to Paris is but a token of my commitment.) No friendship can compete with The One that gives you reason to forget all the HORROR and arrive at the simple hilarity of reality. Together, Ms. Crane and Frau Kolb laugh and laugh at all the minor league and rather pathetic, mean people, the two-faced hordes of Los Angeles Liars, the lame Game Players, Aspiring Professional Actors, and cheapskate Name Droppers. We laugh at the pretentious “Grand Dames,” and the cheesy, “The Mean Girls.” In short, we laugh at all those that try and fail to harm us, to damage our enduring sense that living is a worthwhile choice.

We laugh. Laughter heals. Over lunch, or our soon to be dinner, we invite the world to laugh with us and thereby heal itself, because we can not help but roll with mirth when we contemplate our good fortune in having found each other.

This feeling of LOVE is one I know intimately. Yet it is not ROMANTIC in the way that I am thinking of now… I will never forget our first date, he made me laugh right away. His humor cutting through my New Yorker attitude and introducing me to a new vulnerability I hadn’t been able to afford before his muscle and brains came into my life. Thereby, my WHITE KNIGHT books the room for love and laughter, healing, and feeling good. He secures the possibility of my joy. He protects me and provides for me, the way that I always dreamed ONE would. He performs this service and many others promised and did not deliver, without prompting. He is dynamic, active in his LOVE. Because, LOVE is NOT A THEORY! Love is laughter, support, understanding, and flowing fuel into the tank of one’s soul. Love is reciprocal, life sustaining, and energizing on the cellular level. It makes the world spin

NOW, my German Genius has found, “The Perfect Restaurant.” We are dressed. I’ve changed into a long sleeved silk blouse with a coral collar, thick black tuxedo slacks, with a traditional side seam, and I’ve carefully stuffed my swollen foot into platform Prada heals. I’ve applied a dash of make-up and we are ready to GLOW!

Thus, we set off to Je thé… me where we met and established the greatest admiration and affection for the most charming restauranteur and entertainer: Jacky Larsonneur He treated us like old friends on our first visit. We arrived early and stayed well beyond closing, indulging in fabulous French wines and the after glow of a perfect traditional yet innovative dinner to exceed our expectations and etched permanent smiles on our newly adopted French faces.

Posted on July 24, 2014August 17, 2014 by Frau Kolb

ASML Executive, Thunderstruck by Malaysian Plane Tragedy

On a flight out of San Diego, I spoke to Claus, first, I’m sure. I don’t know what precisely about him said to me that it was OK for me to break the ice with a little conversation. He had a friendly air, even though he appeared engaged with work on board the cross-country flight to Newark, New Jersey, where I would was to connect to my flight to long awaited, romanticized, and idealized PARIS. He was busy being productive, clicking screens, texting with the air of business drive. We were seated in the business section, after all. So I felt compelled to write about my departure and surroundings, noting every fluctuation in group mood and seat mate’s work flow. Charts and graphs, very important looking, lit up his lap-top screen. I watched him work with growing fascination. Taking a few notes about, “productivity,” and “dynamic people,” inspired by watching Claus blaze from file to file, taking in what looked like highly complex information, at a super quick rate. I’m always curious about fellow travelers. Yet, I don’t always engage others in conversation. This was special.

He was wearing the black sports uniform of an affluent man. He looked ready for a run in any of San Diego’s frightfully exclusive neighborhoods. I felt an instant kinship with this man. He being a “Road Warrior,” as I am well acquainted with his ilk of being constantly going, moving, creating, leading, and facing the ups and downs that life hurls at us all. My husband is such a man and this man’s energy was much like that of my beloved Dr. Hartmuth C. Kolb.

In our initial banter, Claus made the following comment: “The stock market is where the world decides what is important.” He was referring to his company’s performance as a world leader in high-tech semi-conductor business (forgive me if I failed to understand Claus’s business exactly, I’m sure that there will be corrections made to this initial draft, thank you for understanding). His savvy comment really got my full attention. I enjoy (for conversations sake) a good, solid blanket statement! I thought to myself, “What an interesting person! I’d like to know more about him,” Thus began an unofficial, off-the-record interview with this tall, fit, senior executive at ASML.

I asked:

“How old were you when you built your first computer?”

In a blink and with a boyish smile, “Eight!” He answered and then his grin broadened and he said, “but it did not work!” with a laugh, he continued… “I just loved building things, taking things apart.” We both laughed appreciating the beautify of assembling and disassembling, creating and erasing.

Then I asked Claus,

“So how old were you when you built your first working computer?”

“Over 18, in college, it was an assignment or something… but that was easy, by then I really had a sense for how these machines worked.” Listening to him a felt a familiar rush of admiration, because I have nothing but affection and respect for intelligent people, the ones that invest their youth in learning, becoming social leaders and thereby providing jobs, products, and services to the world.

So, feeling this way, I asked him, “What three acts define you?”

Easily he answered, “One is building machines, the second is exercise/sports/fitness, the third is fuzzy… but clearly, his relationship to wife and child… filled the plane with warmth for his work, recreation, and family. I felt myself to be in the company of a man much like my adorable husband. Therefore, I mentioned to Claus, that he reminded me of my Dreamboat. They have much in common since my husband built his first working computer at age 18, while in the army, inside his private locker, for relaxation. Ha!

Then I asked him, on a lark, “IF you were to get a tattoo what would it be?”

“I’d want a crude dagger henna tattoo, noting permanent!” We both laughed again at his quick reply.

Then he gave me a HOT San Diego Tip: Go to Whole Foods in Del Mar at 1pm on Saturday, during the Del Mar racing season, which is now, and prepared to be amazed by all the BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!

Being that I love looking, I made a note of that and everything else Claus said. He was funny, entertaining and then he went on, “These are not first wives…” Hah! “This are the second and third wives, the Mistresses, they are AMAZING!” I thought, “WOW! I really have to make a point of seeing this spectacle of fine females on parade while organic grocery shopping in one of Souther California’s most desirable locations.

“You know how you can tell that they are second and third wives, not the first time around?” He asked me. I answered, “Because they are way too beautiful to be affordable by young men, these are the trophy wives of the triumphant males.” He seemed even more amused that I was not under any illusions about the facts of youthful beauty and its exulted status among those that can command dreams and shape the world to fit their fancies. We laughed a little more, savoring the fact of knowing a thing or two about life and yet not feeling cynical about our own lives, observing the patterns of others. Then he went on, “They say that the first wife is for love, the second for hope over experience, the third is a choice between rental and retail.” Again we chuckled, because we have in common knowing these facts to be true for many, yet not having fallen for the social traps, since we are both happily married to our one-and-only first spouses with whom we have our respective children, a source of pride and outstanding joy.

Thus, he told me of his son’s computer building antics and the boy’s delight at bossing father, Claus, around.

I enjoyed every second of our jovial conversation. Yet, just as we were parting, having turned on our phones to communicate with the world, Claus’s entire demeanor changed. The Malaysia Airlines flight had some of his companies’ employees on it. Claus was immediately crushed by the news. I was there to witness his sudden encounter with life’s bitter, cruel, edge… taking notes and talking come naturally to me. This person’s pain hurts me, too, and brings home the fact that we are all connected, involved, and politically intertwined ONE people of the world, wherever our location our lives are intertwined with those of others, around the world, through commerce and culture.

I send condolences to the Dutch people (I have family in Amsterdam). I send condolences to all those affected by this senseless tragedy.

Posted on July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 by Frau Kolb

“Who’s NEXT?” A Barber Shop with Class in La Jolla, California.

You can judge the quality of a community by its Barber Shop(s). Take for example, actor Seymour Cassel’s, memorable rendition of the ideal Barber/Father to the young genius, Max Fisher, astutely played by Jason Schwartzman, in Wes Anderson’s brilliant film, Rushmore. In the film, Rushmore the Barbershop is portrayed as what is should always be, a place of comfort and paradoxically of stark revelation, transformation. It is where the beloved actor, Bill Murray, playing a whiskey drinking, divorce-bound Sad Dad, is transformed, redeemed, rescued by the honest embrace of a thickly padded Barber’s Chair, a pile steaming hot towels, and the razor’s ready edge.

In fact and fiction, good traditional Barber’s Shops are a refuge for men. Seeking this ideal experience we have, at times spent BIG MONEY. For example, there was a periods of years during, which we paid for Honey to have his haircut at The Shave in Beverly Hills. After a while, we stopped it because we realised we were being fleeced. A haircut for a half-bald Honey should not cost $$$$! No way! Yesterday, at “Who’s Next?” which is a welcoming little nest for shaggy fellas, we confirmed our experience. Hartmuth got a quick haircut. By a beyond efficient, masterful Barber. Haircuts with clippers, buzz cuts with stubbly edges, all the fuzzy feelings of joy that do with good grooming! We can all agree: men LOOK so Good, after a fresh haircut!

Have you ever had the pleasure of hanging out in a classic Barbershop?

Have you ever met a refined, sensitive, highly educated Barber? Well, meet Mr. D. He is the most friendly, competent, immediate confidant, trustworthy man with a sharp tools, I’ve ever met!

An excellent Barber listens, laughs, and, he treats each guest with the respect he clearly has for himself, if a perfectly groomed Barber is to be taken as proof of good training and self mastery. His easy, earnest conversation is a soothing example of how humans are supposed to connect and confide, confer and create bonds which sustain others and the self. After visiting, “Who’s Next?” one is left with a sense of excellence. In meeting a man that clearly values his connections to family and friends, his fiancé, his son who also clips the hair of men of others, part-time, as he prepares for college. In this way, father passes on to son, an honest trade which is always and forever in demand, thereby reveals the core of masculine strength, nobility, passed from one generation to the next, which inspires. Ah!

Return to the comfort of “Who’s Next?,” a quality barbershop in San Diego’s upscale paradise, La Jolla. It is a real place.

Small. Cosy. Friendly. Prompt. Service! I love good service.

Former Navy Man,* Florida native, happy San Diego transplant success, Mr. . runs a tight ship. The shop is immaculate. Two giant scissors decorate the wall, evoking crossed swords in a symbol of chivalry. In an informal interview Mr. D revealed that “Who’s Next?” is a family business. He inherited the skills and the passion for creating a quiet, manly retreat, from his uncle. He says, “My Uncle always knew that I would continue working with hair, that I liked it.”

Mr. D’s smile, speaks volumes about his standards of conduct. The great haircut my husband received proves that Mr. D. is a no-nonsense small business owner, the kind of man whose conduct and true character shine brighter than the best and most sparkly, stiff, pomade.

*(Correction: in an earlier published draft I wrote that Mr. D was a Marine, not the case, I made that up. Sorry.)

Ah! To be transported to the living age-of-chivalry, yesterday in a cute little barbershop, via good-old-fashioned slow and thoughtful conversation we arrived at that place outside time, where everything slows down, allowing for a few ernest moments of sparkling laughter. Served fresh, humour is the best medicine and laughter is the most potent health tonic.

Take time, My Friends, to connect, to arrive at the small pleasures. So… I advise you go get a haircut. Go to a neighbourhood spot, where you are recognised and treated like a close and cherished friend upon arrival. If you happen to be in San Diego, I highly recommend that you visit Mr. D. at “Who’s Next?”

Big hug,

Frau Kolb

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Frau Kolb

ON Time and OUT of Bed! Getting a Day off to a Good Start

How do you slice up your day? What do you put first? What do you do when you first get up? How does your day unfold from there? Does it vary from day to day, or are you a machine of routine, a mountain of repeating rituals?

Time, I am aware of as a flexible construct. To me, TIME is a foreign concept. It is an Swiss idea, made law by Northern Europeans desperate for a means of controlling the harsh realities of their ancestral weather and the need to parse out moments into useful chucks for agriculture. Farming, planting, and harvesting within the narrow band of spring, summer, and WOOPS you better get moving, because it is HARVEST time, autumn or fall arrives with merciless winds on its tail.

Time is a sand dial in the face of absurdity, a trickling remnant of the industrial revolution. Time is a horn, telling you what to do. Time is the LUNCH bell. Time is all those intrusive little blings and noises our “Smart Phones,” make. Reminding us that we must GO! GO! GO! Time is the slave master and his or her whip. We must run, before traffic, before the tourists arrive in swarms.

Despite our rushing, due to the fact that reality happens on its own schedule, TIME remains pretty flexible.

It stops. Time just stops, runs real slow, sometimes… when you are waiting for a boring lecture to finish, for example. Then it speeds up when you spend time with a best friend and LOOK you are gotta go. Time OVER. Done. How did that happen?

I sometimes get lost in projects. Time flies out the window, when I’m really writing, reading, painting, and/or complaining about not getting to do what I must. Interviewing, hiring, and firing eats up moments that might be spent, elsewhere. Yet, Chronos doesn’t control me because… I often ignore the old child-eating monster. I live by my own internal clock, thank goodness. I get up way early, because that works for me. I write best before distractions take over the day. I write best when the silence of the purple pre-dawn etches its name on my windowsill.

Then there is breakfast. I LOVE making breakfast for my family. I do. I’m big on it being the most important meal. Thus, I start with tea. I like mine milky, with stars in it, like a photograph by Ed Valfre, it goes down smooth. I make a big pot and pour some for my family. The sizzle of the skillet wakes me up further and tofu sausages are not out of the question. It varies, what we eat, but I always turn on the stove.

This week we had:

Sushi Rice Pudding with Coconut

Rollmops with Eggs and Salmon Caviar, the day before.

Organic almond milk, papaya, kale, goji-berry, raw cacao, and vanilla vegan Smoothy

Schwartzbrot mit Nutella and heaping cups of jersey cow yogurt and blueberries.

I cook, which takes time, but is so much better than exposing myself to the horrors of FAST FOOD, which is not so fast… if you consider how much it slows you down when you are fifty pounds overweight. (I’m sorry, but, I’ve not arrived at the point when ordering a seat belt extension is OK. Come on, people… stop it with the brand name garbage food! Invest time in eating foods that are minimally processed and LOOK for the organics, demand them for your family) If you are determined you can and will find a way to increase your intake of health food.

Eating enough organic kale, a box of it is less expensive than what ever budget meal you fork over a fortune for. Seven dollars, or less will buy you, rice, kale, and tofu for a homemade lunch *add a little garlic and salt, olive oil and KABOOM you are eating like a healthy California surfer DUDE!

Party ON!

An investment of time, which will pay in dividends and appreciation, is looking for organic food to eat with your family.

The day proceeds from there and it marches on in style when you have started it right. Meditation in the morning. Prayer. Sending love to the sick people. Making sure you get out of bed slowly or quickly enough to launch a lovely day is an art form. Guten morgen, Baby! Rise and get out there with a willingness to make today a worthwhile addition to a string of good days.

It really makes a difference, what you do in the morning. It sets the tone for the rest of the day.

So, make time for breakfast, pretty please!

Even when the clock which ticks to is own beat is out of sync with all other clocks it still operates as a drum would in battle. It keeps movement flowing at a rhythm in step with fate. Ah, Fortuna! You! There is a slim chance that you encounter life as a series of staccato beats, reasons to run from one job to the next gig, a life sprinkled with inhales and the end made elegant by a deep exhale into the mud.

IF so… keep to it, fighter. Yet, you are not to be picked for the Frau Kolb & The Talkinggrid, winning team, while snoring on the battlefield of an eternal rush-hour.

Posted on July 16, 2014July 16, 2014 by Frau Kolb

SEVEN DAZE A WEEK

FONDLING FRIDAY: 25 APRIL 2014

Oh Friday!

You, Friday, Famous in Faux Fur!

Fifteen minutes is not enough for you.

Fourteen Centuries will the curtain call, endure.

Chiseled in Forever this Friday, will last.

Come lay here under the shadow of this

Red blanket with me… see… you feel…

SONNTAG /SUNDAY

¡Santa, es la cuidad que celebra el Domingo!

Sunday smooth knit lace of Chai Tea and gently folded

Passion flowers blooming in the pages of the novels

Competing for eye, clicks, with scented history books

filled with saintly images and narratives of knights

Men ready to kill the… villagers… near the church…

the chicken, organic, rolled in a quail’s egg and herbs

From Frau Kolb’s private poolside garden.

SAMSTAG: 26 APRIL 2014

Sacred Saturday (¡Sabado Sagrado!)

Behold: the little pancake of silence

Cut from a loaf of the roasted, twisted

Brains; bent under the wait of… WALT DISNEY!

Work loaded; Seventh Day weakness.

A “Winner,” losing sleep.

Baked in reek of shattered dreams and broken

Recovery in a lingering cup… Shabat morgen

We walk, after the sun rises:

Kona Kaffee… Schwarzt mit Zuckenberg, Bitte.

IT IS THURSDAY

I am constantly surprised by how quickly the days… evaporate and time leaves behind coffee rings and bagel bulges… on some bottoms… others: not so much. Hah! Thursday: you are a day everybody welcomes. You are beloved.

Recycled WEDNESDAY

You are standing. You are soaked in blue WISDOM!

This Wednesday is a flowering, towering, dazzling

Reality: you hear the birds, see the butter flying, and

SING along with the i-tunes streaming elevator jazz.

YOU throw back a couple leggy numbers in the

steaming spring rain passed lightly over wise men

Wearing candelabras in their wasted coats. WOW!

I’ve arrived at a destination I dreamed of. I am home. Finally…

I roamed. I went everywhere. I came here before and found it alien.

Now I hang my hat by the door and I adore that we have finally …

Arrived at this simple now that I wish everyone would find

the fine and simple armpit smell they LOVE and TRUST.

I met my match. He’s handsome! He is taller than me.

I feel very much a “she,” next to him; which helps me feel safe. Yes, he’s my muscle.

He’s the brains of this operation. I’m just show and fireworks. AWE.

He delivers. I’m just his top distraction and consul. I am the gate keeper.

I pour the wine my X sent us to celebrate my 41st. Thank goodness.

WHO’S TUESDAY

This Tuesday belongs to the Muses; an amusing bunch.

They lunch, yet prefer brunch because Champagne

And Muses go together into the Grove; a Mall at the edge of Vine

And Passion: the Muses dance together, barefoot, fingers and toes…

Entangled sister Muses; Molly wrote new code for the web that

Stretches into a pinprick sized rod to aid in dividing time

and saving ours: to be wasted, elsewhere, in a flurry of action!

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Frau Kolb

Painting as Release and Memorial: Creative Healing Strategies for Wayward Artsy Types

Below is the finished watercolor painting, I started a few days ago in Marsberg, Germany and finished here in Playa del Rey, California.

Photo of “Bloomen für Unsere Mutter,” © Frau Kolb, 2013, Watercolor on paper 7.9″x7.9″

Walking OFF Emotional Pain, On Losing OUR Dear Mother, Christine M. Esch Kolb, in Marsberg, Germany

Los Angeles California,

Playa del Rey.

6th August 2013

(8:57 am)

Today, I am back in Los Angeles after an emotionally intense trip to Germany. We buried our mother. We are torn inside and feel like crying buckets of tears just to prove that our pain is BIG, BAD, WORSE than any other…

Yesterday, was my first real day in Germany. Of course, I’ve visited my husband’s homeland many times before. At least ten times…. I think. But never have I had a day to myself here, since family obligations, and domestic duties, a myriad of un-worded demands commanded my every moment spent in this richly attractive and powerful, relatively small, nation.

I had a healing, IF, pensive hike. After an intense week of social formality, all conducted 100% in German, defined by deep, potentially life altering, conversations with closest family and cherished older-generation, family friends, including the family’s 88 year old brilliant Protestant pastor, a married man who spent part of his youth preaching for the German speaking community in Manhattan, my beloved hometown, New York.

It was TIME for ACTION, movement, exercise… at least. It was urgent to get inside myself, hear my own voice, and YES, remember how I’d arrived at this crucial junction in my personal history. Every step was toward understanding, meditation. Every moment was draped in the dappled sunlight of heavenly grace, which is a flawless summer day in a place with harsh winters. Yes.

After the death and burial of our beautiful mother, the beloved, Frau Christine Kolb, I had a lot to think about. What is LIFE for? Why are we here? Where are we going? What do we really want? What is worth fighting, or better yet… what is worth surrendering for?

These and many other questions burst forth in noisy mind chatter. On the onset of my walk, I was feeling a flood of emotions. I reflected gently on some intense talks I’d had with my family members, ancient and dazzling family friends, my dashing husband and his two tall intense brothers… Can you imagine… The boys, now men, adored their MOTHER! The pain radiating, at times, was thick ass rotten cheese. I had to find my silence, my stillness, my joy in a hike toward my silent center.

After about an hour invested in silence, together, at Mommy’s, Grave with my, very European, tall and slim brother and sister-in-law, they left and I took another chunk of time and used it to really LOOK at, listen to the buzz of bees fluttering around, and thereby draw the once triumphant, now fading flower arrangement, that marked the, waiting to settle, burial mound. Then I walked, down the hill and into the small town, where my sweet and loving husband grew up.

Marsberg is a place ripe with natural beauty. Traditionally, this fruitful, furtile, land is what we think of when reflecting on representations of rural Germany: hills, farms, and triumphant summer green define the place. The people of the town vary from the sophisticated, highly educated town’s people to recent immigrants without the advantages of German education, destitute depressed burn-outs addicted to social services, prostitutes and their clients, and every other kind of person a little city, including, Germany might breed. There is also a population of drooling/stumbling yet NOT drunken but “geistes Krank und körper behinderte leute,” being that Marsberg is home to at least three mental institutions. Walking in the town past all these and other types of people I felt a curious solidarity with the folk around me. It was an intense, full of feeling.

Before the visited the grave, we had hiked a steep and winding path, up to the tower of Marsberg, which over looks the city, the walk is punctuated by scenes from the fourteen scenes, known as the Passion of Christ.

It hurt when Hans told me of his pain. I felt every word like a lance, piercing my milk chocolate heart. Empathy is not recommended as a sport or hobby, IF you don’t want Swiss cheese to be made of your main organ, its four thumping arteries torn asunder, a series of holes where wholesome obliviousness once lingered. I could taste the grief, the hard baked solid HATE which years of battle, war, envy, rivalry, and LOVE have transformed into a multi-layer CAKE of bitter-hard sufferings molded into a sculptural mass of fetid misunderstandings and continuous strife which is a slice of life, he’s cut for himself.

Thank you, god or goodness that despite our issues personal issues we managed to bury our mother with the appropriate dignity, well deserved, honest earned, deep LOVE and undying admiration, our the gifts we lay before Christine’s Grave. Yet, we can not allow grief over DEATH, which is essential to LIFE, to derail us. We must stay focused on living progress. Life continues.

Today, for example, despite the cloud of grief, which threatened to break into torrents of negativity, there was a happy mood just outside, our potentially gloomy home. A wedding took place the day before and the voices of a cheerful circle tempered our ability to wallow in a tepid pool of predictable and necessary grief; the clensing routine, post-sorrow.

A guitar melody tickled my ears as I made my way up the small hill to our family driveway. The light-hearted sound of backyard jazz, in rural Germany, no less, as I arrived HOME, from my glorious—thoughtful—revitalizing walk, through town, and up the hill where houses curl around in an affluent maze of residential structures, welcomed me. Tired, sweaty, I felt as though I’d taken an meander through time and space, from place to place I had ambled, from the graveyard, where we visited Mother’s freshly flower bedecked “final resting place,” to a re-invigorating stop for Mother’s favorite ice-cream treat: a “Spagetti Eis,” at one of the only two places open Sunday on the town’s short center street.

Ah! I felt privileged to have let into me, via the music and ice-cream, the drawing and the walking, the blessed beauty of a Sunday in a (traditionally) Christian nation. Just as I’m sure it is a pleasure to enjoy a Sabbath in a Jewish state… I find it marvelous and truly helpful to be in a place where the weekly calendar includes time for stepping outside of routine and thinking about the steps taken and the future course of one’s tracks.

Ass you may know, shops are mostly closed on Sunday in Germany and I had to go to a Tankhalterstella to buy wine. I bought a bottle of tröcken oder “dry,” “Reisling undeine flasche Rot wien, bitte,” from a blond girl with the name, “Johanna,” tattooed on her inner arm in Gothic Script.

(I wonder who Johanna is. Is she living? Is she dead? Is she a girlfriend, a forbidden love? I know that some people get tattoos to commemorate the dead. I learned that recently, at Sprouts, a grocery store near my home in Southern California, from a young man, with luminous eyes, that works there. He explained to me, that he had tattoos because his best friend of childhood committed suicide via heroine overdose. The young man’s eyes were so shiny, brimming with life and intelligence. His arms were covered in tattoos which, tightly packed, intricate stories of his life, his values, which he’d decided to have woven in ink into the fabric of his young beautiful skin.)

So…Today, I invite you to create your own Sabbath or holy Sunday, take healing time OUT for yourself and go out for a thoughtful walk. Make a drawing, perhaps… so that you really LOOK and see the buzz and squirm which is real life, miracle, all around you, let yourself feel, allow yourself to think. Allow yourself to take a further step outside yourself, walk away from who you think you are, step by step finding what is ancient and pure, LOVE within which like a well can quench every thirst, love for our brothers, sisters, (and NUT JOB Jehovah Witness mother(s), too,) walk away with yourself to the true Center, that which does not change, of who you really are besides the YOU you have invented, and cultivated, sharpened, and honed you of professional life and public interactions. Step away from who you were told you had to be and come into the place of knowing that YOU have arrived, at your real you, right now. FRONT and CENTER! Peace.

Sincerely Yours,

Frau Kolb

Posted on July 15, 2014November 7, 2014 by Frau Kolb

Chameleons STEP Aside

Los Angeles, California

3 October 2013

IF you are the kind of person that changes COMPLETELY fades into the background and becomes part of whatever scenery you encounter, leaving your personality at the door, individuality at the coat check and BLENDS into whatever/whoever is around them in the BLINK of an eye, without feeling the lose of self as a deadly HORROR please pass me by. I am not interested in communing with the soulless.

Furthermore, experience has revealed to me time and time again that I work best with people of integrity. People that stand for something and don’t change with the wind or the latest whim of contemporary fashion. I am a straight forward woman. When people SMILE real big and play NICE NICE, I often fall for their surface changing trickery. Based on being burned, a number of times by apparently interested, invested, and caring companions and co-workers, I’ve learned to avoid picking as work /play mates people I can not acurately read. IF you are the type that BLENDS well into your environment and becomes just LIKE every friend, employer, lover, acquaintance, dance-partner, or clever/dominant friend circle you ever had, well pardonne moi s’il vous plaît, but we are not destined for closeness. Intimacy being a treasure, to me, reserved for those that can handle my precious and tender soul with care.

I LIKE transparent people. This doesn’t mean YOU are required to tell me what you eat for lunch each day. (Goodness forbid, in fact.) Yet, “Full disclosure,” of pertinent facts is a MUST for establishing a sticky bond in my book. No mystery for me (unless, of course, it is a Judge Dee book). I do NOT mean that I expect or prefer people to be boring or predictable. NO! I’m talking integral and REAL. YOU tell me your truth. I tell you mine. I appreciate that we are different people. YOU are YOU and I am ME, (Frau Kolb, the woman that snatched birth name away from the public eye in order to protect it from butchering by Americans and Anglo-Saxons and Others that can not roll their “Rs,” or delight in silent last letters and, instead, goes by the word for Mrs. in German because that is what people call her when she is in Germany, the nation she LOVES and where her one and only husband, a person so distinct, unique, and patently integral was born and raised by his equally forth right and authentic parents.) Anyway, this doesn’t mean that we don’t all change a little as time goes by or when we should behave in the same way when we are at a funeral AND on the dance floor of a thumping disco.

capicé

Perhaps, it takes a lot of… I don’t know… mojo to stay true to one’s calling and steer clear of the well worn path of hypocrisy which is so alluring with its benefits of promised respectability and social acceptance. In my tattered and well worn book of life rules, I believe nothing would compensate me IF I hadn’t listened to my inner voice when it told me I must become a mother first and that everything else was less important TO ME.

I’ve never, I guess, “had to,” sacrifice myself on the altar of convenience. I never had to become what others wanted me to be. I am what I am: a gracious and vivacious HAM, a slightly twisted BRAIN, a woman that can aim at her goals and achieve them. I’ve always been me: buzzing along, smelling the roses, into sweetness, and occasionally planting my stinger in the enemy’s bum.

The bottom line is: BEE yourself. Buzz around obstacles to the true YOU. You are beautiful. You won’t find real pleasure in LIFE until you stop being a carbon copy of your wife when the two of you are at church and she prays publicly LIKE her life depends on it and you kneel down right beside her and pretend that you aren’t really into hot hairy sweaty men, ass you are. The fact is that with self acceptance comes freedom, JOY, happiness and the ability to stop judging, harassing, hurting, and bothering others that have made the leap and become who they really are.

BASTA!

Yours truly,

Frau K.

Posted on July 15, 2014July 15, 2014 by Frau Kolb

Finding your Niche

“Little Critter,” part of “Australian Animal,” series by Frau Kolb

September 26, 2013

Los Angeles, California

Who the F. are YOU?

Tell me? I’m curious. I’m always poking around looking for new friends, new foes, new shoes, and more ways to have FUN.

Tell me? What is your story? Do you make it up ass you go along? Or… do you calculate your moves, planning your way to paradise, aiming and pulling in the WHALE of your dreams?

Me? I’m a combination of instinct and spontaneous mapping. I chart, by the stars, not celebrities but the blinking gas giants that shine far and guide the ships of “ancient mariners,” long gone. In other words, I’m intuitive. Spontaneous. ALIVE!

YES! I LOVE living! Living is my favorite sport. Just doing it THRILLS me. I have zero understanding for all those people who allow their lives to slip by in a stupor of boredom and empty ambitions. Life is such a gift, such splendor, I can’t imagine not LIVING IT UP!

Now, I thank you for reading and IF you don’t know what the F. I’m going on about I welcome you to AVOID this blog because, the celebrating of NOW is only getting started here and IF you want to be down, depressed, jaded, and scared this is NOT the place for you because come hell or high-water I’m going to be grateful, proud, bubbly, and bright. This is simply how I roll.

You gotta figure out how YOU are going to spin your story and don’t waste ONE second of any day lamenting mistakes when you were learning how to fly, float, or otherwise go with the flow.

Bravo!

Warm regards,

Frau K

Posted on July 15, 2014November 9, 2014 by Frau Kolb — 4 Comments

NOW, Pull Yourself Together

Part of “Australian Animals,” series by Frau Kolb, Acrylic on various (3×5″) panels,

Los Angeles, California September 2013

You are living, reading. You clicked your way to this page, where you often visit, to see what Frau Kolb is up to. What is she UP to now? I understand your curiousity. I am curious, too.

I write. You read. You probably write, too. Do I read your blog? Or is your blog only in your head? Is it something you THINK about doing, writing and don’t do?

Well… writing is a practice. You get better at it the more you do it. And… well, I’m glad I can type FAST. If I had to struggle with the mechanics of sentence structure and just getting the words down was a challenge this blog wouldn’t be slowly but surely gaining momentum.

I’ve had some set-backs, for a moment I was visualizing this more as a on-line zine, with guest writers, featured and focused on, and I was planning my role to be more a behind-the-scenes, an administrative one. I thought I’d pay to have a jazzy platform built and… and… But… it turns out that IF I’m not careful this page will end up being like everything else on-line soul-less and commercial… that first vision did not work out. So…. here I am typing and sharing with you samples of what flows from my head to hands.

Recently, I’ve been working on this series of paintings, “Australian Animals.” Above is one example and if you are interested you can look under “Zoom in with Frau Kolb,” for more examples of my recent figurative painting(s), a series I am making with my daughter in mind. I’m painting so that she will have an encyclopedic reference on what kinds of strokes, modes, methods I have mastered. I used to be an abstract painter and I learned a lot about patterns and creating visual harmonies in that capacity. Yet, for me there was something pattently false about painting in Clement Greenberg mode.

I’m glad that these attractive, unassuming, “Australian Animal,” puzzle pieces exist. I plan on making at least eight hundred of them. This is to be a full body of work. I’ve heard from a few people that they want to BUY these. I am not opposed to selling them, after they are all done, complete, and shown in a respectable gallery. So… If you feel you MUST OWN well I might, maybe, well… whoever the dealer I allow to represent this work… WE SHALL SEE. In the meantime, I welcome your compliments, donations (Champagne fund), and invitations to fascinating events. I’m honored that you make time to read this simple blog and that you appreciate that words pile up hot one on top the other until a world of knowing is born.

Best regards,

Frau K.

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Frau Kolb

Koala Wanna Cling to Facebook Friends?

“Koala,” seven assorted sizes, acrylic panels on canvas, August 2013 by Frau Kolb

Saturday, 28 September 2013

Los Angeles, California

Do you get attached to people, places, things? Do you try to hold on and hoard for the “uncertain,” future? Well… I do, too. An artist, for better or worse, a performer, an entertainer, a talker, writer, painter, creative party-animal, and sometimes insecure nerd. I have an issue with wanting to amass more and more followers, following, flowering towering, the youngest and only child of an extended family, getting attention being a factor… dominating my consciousness… It isn’t easy to let GO.

Take family, for instance…. do you LOVE the family you stem from, beyond all measure, and even if they don’t care for YOU? Are they really your people or do you simply cling to them for lack of other obvious options, in the name of duty and status quo? It is very tempting to paint yourself into a corner and feel YOU MUST maintain your relationship with people that don’t necessarily LIKE you. Have you ever considered that your family members might not choose YOU? That YOU are the unwelcome guest in the family bosom? The BLACK SHEEP? The ONE they don’t want, the one they loath, the one with the darker skin or the ugly mole? ARE YOU A PARIAH?

Tell me. I wanna know.

Why? Because, I’m curious… LIKE, a little animal… crawling, poking, pushing… investigating… sometimes where I am NOT wanted or welcome. Yet, I continue.

How about your “so called,” friends? Do they LOVE or LIKE or merely tolerate YOU? Who are you to them? Are you little Ms. Moneybags that appears at just the right moment to pick up the check and the residual laughter over jokes you did not devour? Are you the person they turn to when they “need,” someone in a pink rubber ALL-EAR suit to listen to their boyfriend drama or other mindless BS?

Tell me. I crave the comfort of knowing you better. I crave the fact of companionship, comradery of LOVE.

I have a handful of very close deep friendships. Connections that blossomed spontaneously and have endured for decades, sometimes despite my many short comings and sometimes precisely because of who I AM. Friendships with very intelligent—gifted actually—humans, seem to suit me best, people that read deeply and fluently, between the lines, and in some cases between the sheets… Hah! Brilliant humans with hearts made of pure solid precious metal guarded by barbed wire and the automatic weaponry of hyper intelligence. Hah! I’m lucky they LOVE me. And… How do I know they LOVE me?

Because LOVE is NOT a theory. Love is not a casual, occasional convenience, it is not the thing of FACEBOOK LIKES. Fakebook plays an important role in my LIFE, I’ve met brilliant and inspiring artists, art dealers, the occasional popular art critic, and other wayward art minds which have enriched my somewhat isolated and patently sheltered existence. I HAVE! I also unfriended 90% of my sprawling friend-list starting about a year ago. The reason I had to raise the hatchet and hack my way to the tiny number, less than a regiment, of Facebook contacts is that I had allowed the toxic hordes of uncaring gawkers to come in unsupervised and run amok among the golden treasure of my true feelings. OUCH!

Love is a verb, manifested in action, caring, proximity, and passion. Love is the daily contact, the all-night vigils, the primate-grooming, the little gifts, the big bail-outs. Love is powerful, fulfilling, and reliable. I have experienced true HONEST and tangible LOVE. It has healed me, saved my life, motivated me, made me laugh, and given me reason to stand up for myself and refuse to be discounted, dismissed, and/or disrespected.

Now, I miss a few of the cut-out FACEBOOK contacts. The witty ones, that write well…and post tantalizing images of ART I dig. Artists, mostly, that make work not only in images but in on-point observation, and clipped tight repartee, which is very much a part of the city I stem from, which was my real mother, Manhattan, NEW YORK. Not EVERYONE. After my “Great FACEBOOK Purge,” of 2012, few of the Facebook flock don’t want ME back, butt at-the-end-of-the-day, I am happy because I know that the handful of real friends, old pals and perhaps one or two new ones that love me, do so with real intensity, real acceptance, devotion, and knowledge of who I am over the long haul, after the cows and koalas come home.

Wishes of Maximum Well-Being for YOU and everyone who CARES about YOU,

Frau K