Great German Words

Managed to fast all day yesterday, that's a 38 hour fast, all total, and am deliberating whether to continue to lunch or have breakfast - but who am I kidding, breakfast is waiting in the kitchen and it's spectacular, it's carbs all the way, and even though I feel good about not binging the day before yesterday, before going into my fast, I feel like this fasting thing, reducing my total meals to 8 meals a week, means I am losing out on a lot of good food and drink out there I will never be able to experience before I die.  From Christmas on – actually from Thanksgiving on – I have been eating like there's no tomorrow. So I started fasting again and will fast (intermittently) until I get my weight back down below 75 kilos then to 72, which I have been aiming for for years now. My main problem is not the fasting itself – the is. For some reason, easy – but the binging afterwards, both with food and drink (alcohol). So this is my attempt to solve the binge problem – after every fast period I will reflect and monitor myself and try to find out why I can't stop binging and how to stop.  These are mini-episodes – maybe 10 minutes each, through the month of January. 

MY BINGE DIARY Part 1 From Christmas on – actually from Thanksgiving on – I hav ew been eating like there's no tomorrow. Yesterday I started fasting again and will fast (intermittently) until I get my weight back down below 75 kilos then to 72, which I habe aiming for for years now. My main problem is not the fasting itself – the is. For some reason, easy – but the binging afterwards, both with food and drink (alcohol). So this is my attempt to solve the binge problem – after every fast period I will reflect and monitor myself and try to find out why I can't stop binging and how to stop.  These are mini-episodes – maybe 10 minutes each, through the month of January. 

Been thinking about what makes a man a man and came to the conclusion that it's all about the hat. It was.a little late when I recorded this and I had been drinking the kind of whisky that makes me sentimental, which is every kind … perhaps it is unwise to publish this… but only the very wise know that they are not really wise. My Very Last Life Chapter 43.

I've been telling myself for some weeks now that I don't have that much to be thankful for on Thanksgiving … so I sat down and wrote a list of things I was not thankful for … then I took another good look at myself and saw the other side.

Reading Iliad, I had to think about heroes and heroic moral values … then Kyle Rittenhouse happened.  My Very Last Life Chapter 41.

Look at the vastness of space – look at the empty space inside our molecules – what are the chances that you tried out to be a thing and not part of the Great Empty?

I have begun five inner journeys in my life – and hope I will conclude at least one or two of them before I die.  Also, the Dad question. 

One meaningful relationship – it seems to me that no man should die without one – but I don't know how to do it, or with whom.   

Funny how certain thoughts, loves, jokes, anecdotes, comments come to define certain sections of your life – I find myself increasingly bored with and rejecting the stuff that has defined me for so long.     My Very Last Life Chapter 37

  I worked as a journalist all my life and learning how to write to include what is important taught me also to notice when the important things re being left out –   My Very Last Life Chapter 36    

I actually wanted to talk about how walking regularly in the open air has made me much happier and less depressed, even surprisingly so, but then I lost focus and went off on a wild rant about death. My Very Last Life Chapter 35

Sometimes I turn around and see my cat watching me … and I wonder: How long has she been doing that? And why? And what does she know that I don't?   My Very Last Life Chapter 34   Check out the video on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/594216545   #WritingCommunity​​​ #writer​​​ #writerslife​​​ #writercommunity​​​​​ #book​​​ #readingcommunity​​​ #books​​​ #life #60 #meaning #purpose #philosophy #personal #introspection

I've begun writing them down …      

Lanikai – the title of my autobiographical crime story … it's about my life, but but I don't know what it's about.   

My 61st birthday – one year into my Very last Life and as per schedule I decide what I am going to do with the last 20 years (now 19) of my life ... the entire plan, the boozey party by myself on the bridge overlooking the highway at 5:45 in the morning, my list of Great Books, my prayer.   

One year down and 19 to go – next week I turn 61. So of course I sat down in the display furniture in the dark parking lot of Möbel Höffner and talked about it to myself. I was not alone. The first year of my Very Last Life has been lived and the goal I set for myself was to know within this year exactly what I was going to do with it.  Do I know? do I not? I sat in the dark empty nighted parking lot of Möbel Höffner and thought about it and spoke this podcast …  Epilogue!  … and on my way home I made two of the strangest, happiest encounters I've ever made in Berlin – so I added on an epilogue.  One of those encounters was a young man named Guri, an Indian Sikh – as far as I can tell – who is pursuing a rapping career. He was the other guy in the parking lot!  He was a nice guy and I highly recommend you support him - young men and women of ambition need our support – so watch, like and subscribe to his channel on YouTube: https://youtu.be/udMXWXhbqvw #WritingCommunity​​​ #writer​​​ #writerslife​​​ #writercommunity​​​ #writing​​​ #bookclub​​​ #book​​​ #readingcommunity​​​ #books​​​ #life #60 #verylastlife #meaning #purpose #philosophy #personal #introspection  

He is dead – the man me and Ralf have tried to make a video about for more than a year now is dead – Ziona his name, polygamy was his game and he played the game well. I doff my hat to the passing of a man who did what a man wanted to do. My Very last Life Chapter 29. 

Playing the brilliant game "The Last of Us II," I realized that modern feminism is really about women taking on the same masculine values that pretend to despise. Is the woman of the future a man with a vagina?   

There was the Greatest Generation, then the Hippie Generation, then me. 

A Hawaiian Highway at night, Bonnie Tyler singing Vampire Rock Opera, there is a time in everyone's life when they hold all of life in their hands like a basketball.    My Very last Life Chapter 26. 

It’s Mother’s Day and I have to say the truth about my mother – she was a woman who did her fucking best and are you doing your fucking best?  My Very last Life Chapter 25.  

The only refuge from depression and whiney self-pity is purpose – but there are two kinds of purpose - big metaphysical and small amygdala versions.

When I think of heaven, or even just of the bar I want to spend time in, the bar of eternity, I think of the stable where five or six medieval writers sat around getting drunk. That's where I want to go. 

Okay so I got vaccinated and for me the crisis is over - but it doesn't feel like it's over. It doesn't even feel like it ever can be over. 

You start out a little worm without scales, claws or teeth; then as soon as you are aware of yourself you start making plans for who you want to be; then in the middle you realize you failed and are not what you want to be at all; then in the end you realize you really did become more or less what that 15-year-old panned to become, and you think: Why is this kid dictating to me who to be? 

There’s this definition of insanity: You keep repeating the same action in the hopes of getting a different result.  I’ve known this saying forever, but only recently realized I was doing it. So I drew up a list. 

I have lived more life in the dark realm of dream and imagination and myth than in the real world.    

Retirement offers an opportunity – to find meaning, purpose, to find fulfillment ... 

Is all Life Really Sacred?  Does a bug have the same rights as a proud early flying high? Is the life of Hitler as valuable as that of Jesus. I had to hink about this recently.  

By "Cynicism" I mean Truth," and by "Sincerity" I mean "Truth." Two different things. #WritingCommunity #writer #writerslife #writercommunity #writing #bookclub #book #readingcommunity #books #seniorcitizens #60 

You look for substance in life and what do you get? Style. Trendiness. A poor substitute, a Kaugummi popcorn milkshake mascara pink crappy substitute for something real.   On Substance and Style (Actually Trendiness) – My Very Last Life #15   

A confused mess of cats and metaphors This started out as „My Journey from Cynicism to Sincerity“ but then I got tangled up in cat metaphors and never got out – now I don’t know what it was really all about – listen at your own risk. #WritingCommunity #writer #writerslife #writercommunity #writing #bookclub #book #readingcommunity #books #seniorcitizens #60 

A writer must see the world and reduce it to a parable. Then he must find a way to write about the parable. Lucifer and free will, the Germans and the vote to abolish democracy, lot of incoherent ramblings on a Sunday evening after a good steak and fries and with a glass of whiskey at the ready.  #WritingCommunity #Writer #Writing #Life #Aging #Mormons #Germans #Democracy 

Remember that time in church on a hot Sunday in Kailua, Hawaii, and you scribbled in your journal or on a notepad or in the margins of a paperback that the emotions you are feeling now - teenage emotions - are the only real thing you will ever feel? Stay true to that boy you were. 

Am I the only one who thinks of Dickens and Marx as hero/anti-hero, two sides of the same coin? It seems natural to me - they were both of the same time, but such different cloth. Dickens seems so humane, Marx seems so … German …   My rant on Dickens vs. Marx.  When I turned 60 I resolved to live my last good 20 years as if they were the first twenty, but knowing more than I did then. This is my journal of that journey. #WritingCommunity #selfimprovement #selfhelp #readingcommunity #books #philosophy #inspiration #book #Marx #Dickens #ChristmasCarol #Communism #Capitalism #startover #seniorcitizens #seniorliving

Here I sit on a Sunday evening, I made myself a steak and fries, I fed the cats, I have a whiskey with lots of ice and water and I'm thinking about what it means that Trump was sitting there waiting to see what would happen as a couple of hundred idiots stormed the capitol. Similar things happened here in Germany and it wasn't that long ago and they too got nowhere near a successful coup. It was just stupidity. But – without wanting to, Trump gave me something I am, grateful for. I always wanted to see the future and now, thanks to him, I do.  When I turned 60 I resolved to live my last good 20 years as if they were the first twenty, but knowing more than I did then. This is my journal of that journey. #newyear2021 #writingcommunity #selfimprovement #entrepreneur #motivation #selfhelp #readingcommunity #books #philosophy #success #goals #attitude #inspiration #WritingCommunity #writer #writing #book #Trump

On New Years Eve, not long before midnight, Astrid said to me the most beautiful thing I think I ever heard. And: New Year's Resolutions, but not really resolutions, more like work-arounds. When I turned 60 I resolved to live my last good 20 years as if they were the first twenty, but knowing more than I did then. This is my journal of that journey. #newyear2021 #writingcommunity #selfimprovement #entrepreneur #motivation #selfhelp #readingcommunity #books #philosophy #success #goals #attitude #inspiration #WritingCommunity #writer #writing #book

Just Drunk Eric rambing on about the end of the year ... Trading in the horrible year 2020 for just about anything, really anything better in 2021 … and yet, I refuse to let 2020 go without wringing something good out if it. So here's me trying to go that. *this was recorded a few days ago - I held it up for New Year's.) But to get the New Years part, you have to go through another bout of winging and whining about my dead friend.  Wishing all of you all the best in the New Year - good luck and Guten Rutsch! #newyear2021 #writingcommunity #selfimprovement #entrepreneur #motivation #selfhelp #readingcommunity #books #philosophy #success #goals #attitude #inspiration #WritingCommunity #writer #writing #book 

Still thinking of Claus, dead a week now - warm-hearted but arrogant and selfish, funny and honest but ... well arrogant. But there is a thing I want to learn from him, carry around inside me in his absence. My Very Last Life - my unedited thoughts about my life at and after 60 and making something out of it I could never have done earlier.

Claus died – one of my best friends, a writer, we went drinking nearly every Saturday and bullshitted about life ... he took with him a thing I had that I can never replace ... a part of myself that was real, perhaps the realest part of myself. 

I've been struggling all year to get an online project off the ground and not even my friends thought there was money to be made in it. This week, I wrote my first invoice.   

If I had to name some of the things that really had meaning in my life it would be love, family and friends, God or some kind of search for meaning, my cats, American and German and then on that same level, great books. Not all books, just the great ones - they stand out like giants, they have followed me like true friends, and I want to live and die among them – more, I want to be - or write - one of them.    

If you've gotten this far, you have the distance to look back on the decisions you made in life and ask yourself: What was I thinking?  I came to Germany, I stayed here. Whart was I thinking.  Maybe it was my way of trying to erase myself. But now it's different: I no longer want to be erased.  My Very Last Life - my unedited thoughts about my life at and after 60 and making something out of it I could never have done earlier. 

You want to know what I'm thankful for on Thansgiving? I'll tell you what I'm thankful for – I'm thankful for one goddamned minute of peace and quiet without something going wrong or the wife needing help or food smoking and setting off the fire alarm or the doorbell ringing or some deadline coming up quick and passing without being fulfilled or the cat meowing incessently for attention, that's what I'm thankful for. And for this goddamned peant butter cocktail. I'm actually very thankful for the goddamned peanut butter cocktail.  

How I came to seek a "last life," a final self-invention, upon turning 60, what I hope to accomplish in my next and last 20 years of life, and how. Wish me luck! 

Late night rant after it became clear that Biden had won the election – I thought I was going to be more mjoyful than I was, and there are reasons why ... maionly because the central problem of the last four years has not vanished, naemly, us. But still – it's good to say goodbye to Trump and thank him for his service and wish Biden luck and success for the next four years - and the same to us. 

Last Episode of Great German Words – Over 2019, I discussed 52 Great Germans Words, sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, all of them words I love. It was a pleasure and an honor to be able to speak about nothing so complicated and controversial as simple words, and in that time I realized how much of the world and life is buried deep within those simple collections of letters and sounds. For all of those who listened, thanks – I appreciated and enjoyed it. Here's wishing you all the best for 2020 and for all the rest of it too! Guten Rutsch! 

To Christmas, the verb

Eskimos have 50 words for snow ... why do we only have one word for love?    

Can paper be happy? Sad? In Love? Frustrated? Impatient? In Germany it is geduldig.    

Every culture has sacred words that reverberate in the soul more than normal words. The Germans have free beer.