Writer´s block, midnight disease & my mother

I´ve been suffering from a life long writer´s block. As a schoolgirl, I wanted to become an author & write novels & short stories. Had the complete plots in my mind, but couldn´t write them down. A few weeks before my mother died from Hodgkin´s lymphoma at age 59, she told me she had second sight & second-guessed me a blooming future as a successful writer. But that never happened, because I do not write. My mother & I had been estranged for many years around the time of her death & that didn´t change at her deathbed. Maybe it was more a curse than a foretelling. When finally she died, as her only child I had to break up her household.Clearing up the attic, I found dozens of suitcases & boxes stuffed with letters & documents. I squatted down & started reading the whole night through, forgot about my then husband & my two children (4 & 12 years at the time). I almost drowned in a sea of sadness.

I found out that my mother had appointed a private eye to stalk me & later given money for stalking me to a neighbor of mine in the little town I had been living in with my family for ten years. Among these documents, I found postcards with erotic lover´s oaths from a Bremen-based theater makeup artist we had met while on holiday in Andalusia 20 years ago & a handwritten copy of a novella by the north Frisian poet & novelist Theodor Storm we both once had adored, Immensee. During that night I learned more about my mother than in the years I had lived with her. Theodor Storm was a lawyer & a judge & an author. My mother always wanted me to study law & improve my English & start writing a novel at the same time, I took German linguistics, literature & history instead. She wanted me to move to England for a while, I choose Aix-la-Chapelle. She didn´t like my last boyfriend at all, I stood by him & married him. Now I know that my mother was right in many respects. But at age 20 or 30 you do not want to know this, do you? What the hell did she see with her second sight? And - why did she let spies shadow me? Maybe it was because of her paranoia & mental instability.

This is the first time I can write about those things. Maybe I should ask Dr. Alice B. Flaherty for advice. Dr. Flaherty, who is a M.I.T. neuroscientist & has been suffering from bipolar disorder afer the loss of her twins, has written a book about midnight disease, the contrary of a writer´s block. I´m going to read her book.

Feeling like Gustave Flaubert in a marinade on my sofa, I´m waiting for the writer´s block´s ending. Guess it has all to to with my mother. Among the papers in my mom´s attic I found a copy of a psychiatric report that she had been suffering from a mild form of schizophrenia. She had always been an eccentric, but this knocked me down. And it lasted more than ten years, before I could write about it. Writing about personal things in German is almost impossible, so I do it in English. Just found: Lydie Salvayre, a French psychologist, and her book "Public Life"/La Vie Commune, inspired by her paranoid father. Lydie Salvayre in conversation with Yann Nicol for the Brooklyn Rail. Some short information about Gustave Flaubert. Feeling exited & confused, similar to the feelings I got before I gave birth to my children.

Welcome to OldBlueIris´ Blog

OldBlueIris has been on twitter for some time & now the time is ripe for a new blog. I´m living in the Western part of Germany in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area, but I´m on the move to Cologne. Though German, I feel more like a European with a strong bond to the Western parts of this continent & with an empathic view over the Atlantic & all around the globe.

Though born & raised as a Catholic, I´m not a pious person & call myself an agnostic with strong interest in why human beings are so much interested in religion though it doesn´t have brought mankind freedom & happiness so far. Prefer cinema to theater, internet reading to paper reading, but I love old books & the poets. The older I get the more I prefer writing to reading. Got my own thoughts. The internet is my Promised Land. Love silence, islands, red wine, cheese, bread and walking. Like to travel by train & love hiking. I´ve banned cut flowers from my home.

Blogging & writing is the only way to express myself, can´t help it. Hope to share my eclectic musings with you. I haven´t got the slightest idea where this journey will lead me. Feeling like a surveyor in my own terra incognita.

Blogroll & such stuff will come soon.