Litigium

Early in the Jewish Passover Seder, the leader reverently holds up a piece of matzos with the words: “Lo! This is the bread of affliction!” and that’s the last time anyone mentions that particular elephant in the room. The mark of a Jewish hostess is to make matzo meal into light, fluffy ‘kneidlach’ without any rising agent. When successful, served in chicken soup (a tribal panacea guaranteed to cure all ills including the coronavirus), it makes matzos vaguely palatable, however when unsuccessful, the result is a bit like a depth charge. I just wonder whether our forebears knew that their hastily baked unleavened loaves for their fraught exodus from Egypt were condemning their descendants to an annual week of constipation for the next few millennia? But have you ever heard a Jewish person say: ‘I don’t like matzos?’ Humans are funny that way. It’s by no means unique to the Jewish tradition to ritually eat certain unpalatable foods out of reverence and homage to an hist...

There was once a peaceful little village nestled on the coast at the base of a hill. The village had beautiful westward views over the sea and the mud flats, and everyone loved living there. All except one old man who refused to live in the village. He built his cottage set apart on the windy slopes of the hill. H e wasn’t from the village but came there after the war. Walked with a limp. Always wore a naval cap. Nobody knew much about him, but letters were addressed to him as ‘Capt.’ So everyone called him 'the Captain'. His cottage was full of books and old maps. You could often see the light shining deep into the night as he read them, plotted, and made notes. The villagers didn’t really like him. They would mutter that he thought himself too high and mighty to live among them. One day, as he was collecting more maps from the village post office, he was overheard warning the grocer that the village could be washed away by the sea. “It’s happened before and it will ...

Alone I am not afraid to be alone From my first hours on earth, I was set aside to be alone. Since then, I’ve done and experienced all manner of things alone. So if you want to walk with me, walk with me. If you want to think with me, think with me. If you want to argue, dispute, and mentally wrestle with me, I am here. But never forget that to be alone and lonely are not the same thing, And I’m neither afraid of, nor unaccustomed to being alone. AMB - 2019

These past 18 years as an expat have been an incredibly interesting journey. As a sociologist, I’ve found the process and pitfalls of fitting-in as a ‘foreigner’ fascinating for all its fits and starts. The adage ‘it’s not  what  you know but  who  you know’ holds true everywhere in the world, however in (post) colonial societies/cultures like South Africa (Australia, NZ, and even Canada and the USA), ‘stewardship’ (Pete sent me/recommended you) is even more prevalent. So you obviously leave a lot more than just your family support network behind. As a newcomer, you also need to find an 'in' to a world where interpersonal (business) relationships have been built-up over generations and centuries. The days when you'll be granted credit, credibility, or deference based on your father's reputation are over. Local village One of the most fundamental differences is that if you move from anywhere in South Africa to Western Europe, you are invariably moving from a relat...

It's all about a faulty light: One comes up behind you, or you stop behind one at a traffic light. He's unaware, or doesn't care his light is faulty. What's the condition of the rest of his car? How are his brakes? Is it safe to drive behind/in front of him? Get away, get away... Hazard up ahead... DARE (Define Assess Respond Evaluate)... move on, but can we? They call us 'judgemental' but are we? Aren't we just being realistic in a world that seems half asleep? Is it just me? Clearly not. PTSD   Hypervigilance :

Sunsets can be spectacular – I’ve photographed many – reminding me of the transience of life. It is as the Sun dips toward the horizon that we can most clearly watch the seconds pass. But for all their display of colours, they seldom touch my soul as deeply as the majesty and mystery of dawn. Let there be Light!  - AMB Dawn over the Zaan  18 March 2016 Westzaan © Andrew Bergman 2016 all rights reserved Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, all text and photographic material used in posts to this blog are the property of the Author, used at his sole discretion, and while they may be freely shared online in their entirety via Facebook, Twitter etc. may not be published elsewhere without express permission. The Author takes no responsibility for the nature and content of the adverts placed on the page (in exchange for free blog space) by the blog host.

I entered this world in defiance. My mother refused to abort me, in defiance. In childhood, I refused prejudice fed me, in defiance. At school, I insisted on questioning, in defiance. In battle, I denied my enemy victory, in defiance. And one day, hopefully, I will leave this world In defiance!

It is my wish that one day, when I die, I be buried at sea (after any viable/useful spare parts have been removed and passed-on to suitable recipients). Should sea burial not be financially/legally feasible, it is my wish that, using whatever technology available at the time, whatever nutrients my body may represent should be returned, as efficiently as possible, to the earth - preferably to nurture a tree. Sitting at the base of a Nevers oak that will one day yield casks for Cognac is by far enough immortality for me… - AMB

As the New Year approaches… If you think ‘it will be better’ in the New Year, you’re wrong. There’s absolutely no rational reason to expect the pace or pattern of cosmic change to alter simply because it’s subsequent to a man-made Gregorian moment that does not mark any particular interstellar event; is remarkable only in its insignificance, and fleetingness in the greater macrogalactic scheme of things. It’s not going to take a New Year to stop smoking; it’ll take tough self-discipline. It’s not going to take a New Year to get a better job; it’ll take guts and persistence. It’s not going to take a New Year to heal the world. Shit is gonna happen the way shit has always happened: In a high-density extrusion steam! As humankind celebrates, they gather in groups, and become silly. And many then consume alcohol (etc.) and become even more silly. Then, when they realise ‘everybody is doing it’, they become Übersilly. But as the day dawns on the first day of the n...

What I write is but an echo of what I have heard; What I write is but a reflection of what I have seen; What I write is but an inkling of what I have felt felt; What I write is but a suggestion of where I have been; What I write is but a dream of where I wish to go; What I write is but an anthology of what I have read; When I can bring echo, reflection, inkling, suggestion, dream and anthology together, Then I will not have written in vain. Until then, I write. AMB

Now who gets this lucky TWICE in one day? Watching a group of para-gliders prepare to launch from near the summit of Papaner Rothorn (2,899m) in Lenzerheide, Graubünden, Switzerland... As the first guy took off, he was looking good until a cross-wind turned him around and slammed him unceremoniously into the mountainside, twice! You'll see how he narrowly missed rocky outcrops and landed, both times, in relatively soft snow. After a thorough check-over by his buddies, he could walk away. Fair to assume he'll be feeling a little 'blue' for a few days... (Video best viewed in 1080p HD).

Though in the heat of battle, my foe was as determined and duty bound to kill me as I was to kill him, I will be magnanimous in my victory, for that is what I went into battle for. So as my vanquished ‘enemy’ and I share a cigarette, a rat pack or creased and faded pictures of our sweethearts, it’s really just two soldiers talking in a copse within a wood, a bend in a trench, or a tent in the desert, their uniforms caked with the same mud and dust, their wounds oozing the same blood, their brows stained with the same sweat, their cheeks streaked with the same tears. The measure of honour is not in our victory: It is in how we treat the defeated. A remnant of Der Atlantikwall , a seaward-facing command bunker in the dunes at IJmuiden, the Netherlands. Inspired by the sentiments of Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, defender of Moscow (1941), reliever of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) (1944), liberator of Berlin (1945) etc. - AMB * Latin: All ...

  For the last few months (at least), the ‘rest of the world’ has been subjected, ad bloody nauseam, to both US and local press coverage of the elephant and donkey circus the USA calls an ‘election’.   It has all the makings of a soap opera. Apart from a short intermezzo provided by Mother Nature (who doesn’t give a New York Subway rat’s arse who wins) in the form of Hurricane Sandy – which temporarily called Obama away from campaigning to do the job he’s paid an obscene amount to do as President – it’s been non-stop. No-doubt the Greens among us will chalk-up a victory as there is no conceivable way the aftermath of Sandy cannot impact heavily on the outcome of this ‘election’. But is it really an ‘election’ at all?   So what if it’s happening to/in the country that (if the scientists are to be believed), via pollution and overconsumption, contributes the lion’s share to global warming and climate change? It’s undeniably ironic but while it’s all well an...

Over the last few days, a drama has unfolded in the UK and European media surrounding a 15-year-old schoolgirl who eloped to France with her 30-year-old lover, who was also her maths tutor. Probably to counterbalance the “official” Facebook page that inevitably sprang-up for the occasion, someone started a page entitled Megan Stammers & Jeremy Forrest - Good Luck To You Both . An interesting, stimulating and sometimes heated debate ensued about the rights, wrongs, ups and downs of the case. From the cacophony that erupted emerged a (very eloquent) word of moderation. After some persuasion, the modest wordsmith allowed me to reproduce it here, unedited and its original form, on condition of anonymity. – AMB By courtesy of an anonymous author: My heart truly goes out to ALL those involved, both families, friends, the school, its students, meg and jeremy. There are only two people who know the truth and the facts, everyone else can only speculate. I deliberately avoided pos...

My uncle lived to 96 – almost. His body just shut-down but right until the end, his mind was crystal clear and razor sharp. In the last decade of his life, he’d often say (of people not older than 75) “take these senile old folks away! I want to talk to young people.” And young people always came away from such a chat with something they could keep. But he was an exception that proves the rule. The slowing-down of the brain (in the absence of an actual degenerative disease) after you’re 40 is not a disorder: it’s physiological. Considering you will have learned about 75 percent of everything you will ever learn by the time you are eight, after 30-odd years of making neurological connections, if you have the odd “senior moment” at 45, you needn’t panic and suspect early onset Alzheimer’s. Accepted opinion today is that your brain will have been “slowing down” since your 30s but experience might have compensated for it until now.    Nieuwjaarsduik, Wijk-aan-Zee, 01 Jan 201...

יזכור This blog post has been on my desktop for eight months. The pictures are now several years old (2008). I need to share them. I've been at a bit of a loss as to how. Uncharacteristically (for those who know me), without words (apart from the occasional caption) is the only way I can think of. Because I have none other than those that these pictures scream. - AMB (Click on thumbnails to view full-size image) Main gate, Auschwitz I  Execution yard Crematorium Gallows built after the liberation to hang the camp commandant Entrance to Auschwitz II "Birkenau" One of the scenes of just some of the crimes Symbolic headstones