1. Before, After, Alone by Emma Newman (Planetfall #4.5) by Emma Newman, 161p: This is a short stories collection from the Planetfall series. The stories dive a bit deeper into some characters, giving us some snippets of what they've been up to after events in the books, or within the book’s timeline. But the story that stayed with me the most was “Albert and the Kraken” which doesn't have any of the book’s characters in it.

2. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, 259p: I enjoyed the found family dynamic in this one and the updated fairy tale vibes. There were some interesting bits, like the scene with the Toothdancer and also Agnes, the fairy Godmother, was great. The challenges in the story were not that hard, and that made the plot very predictable. But overall, it was a fun read, it feels like a cozy spooky read.

3. Scandalous Desires (Maiden Lane #3) by Elizabeth Hoyt, 393p: I did not like this book. The whole plot with the orphan baby and Silence being caught in this forced proximity situation with the pirate hero Mickey O'Connor did not work for me at all. I guess I didn't expect it to have so many sad backstories, from both Mickey and Silence. There is murder and drama and a bit of mystery. I kept reading because I wanted to know who was the Ghost of St Giles, which is revealed at the end. Not sure I will continue the series.

4. Red Team Blues (The Martin Hench Novels #1) by Cory Doctorow, 216p: This was my first fiction book from Cory Doctorow, and I enjoyed it! I struggled a bit with the whole cryptocurrency techno jargon, but I think I got the overall concept. I liked the older main character, Martin Hench, who is a forensic accountant with expertise in money laundering and he knows all the Silicon Valley dirty secrets. I think it was a great techno-thriller that got me out of my comfort zone. I was not ready for a gruesome murder scene in the story, but that did not scared me away. I want to read to the next in the series.

5. How to Focus (Mindfulness Essentials) by Thích Nhất Hạnh, 130p: This book works best with previous knowledge about Buddhism mindfulness. It has super short chapters presenting concepts of meditation and concentration, but it does not take too much time explaining these concepts. There are nice nuggets of wisdom that made me smile. It was nice as a refresher of mindfulness and concentration techniques, but it might be hard to follow without previous knowledge.

#readinglist #books #reading

Titel: Veel te moe

Ik ben veel te moe om nog te schrijven. En nog tevreden moe ook, vandaag. Een zalige zonzusdag gehad. De vriend van mijn lieftallige zus had me via mijn zus een prachtige cd cadeau gedaan met pianomuziek van Valentin Barray. K heb hem een kaartje geschreven ter bedanking. Mijn zus en ik lachten ons net nog een deuk. Het was een heel gezellige namiddag. Mijn verslaving en drang tot nog een pil zijn verdwenen als sneeuw voor de zon. Nu begint de vermoeidheid er door te komen na een nacht zonder slaap.

Je passe la grande majorité de mon temps à travailler. Je ne suis plus sur les réseaux, je ne regarde plus les nouvelles. Je suis, en quelque sorte, hors du monde.

Je ne me compare qu’à moi-même. Je ne vois le monde qu’à travers le prisme que je construis. Je suis en dehors de la horde et même si à première vue cela peut sembler effrayant, cela a ses bienfaits.

À quel moment la solitude devient-elle une souffrance ? La limite n’est pas très claire pour moi.

Lorsque notre vie est en accord avec nos valeurs ? Quand nous arrivons à voir le ciel plutôt que la fange ? Quand notre pourquoi dépasse notre personne ?

J’ai l’opportunité d’avoir un impact sur 24 enfants. Tous les ans. C’est une responsabilité et un honneur incroyable quand on prend un peu de recul.

C’est peut-être ça : vivre en accord avec son moi profond.

Je n’y suis pas encore. Mais j’y travaille.

The sound of healing_

The sun was already high when I crested that last ridge, my Groundcover boots scuffed with dust, lungs drinking the thin, rare air of the Highveld. I had come up here to outwalk something I could not name, tightness in the chest, noise in the head, the low hum of a life that had begun to feel borrowed. Then I heard it: water rushing over rocks.

Not the polite murmur of a garden fountain, but real water, quick, bright, alive, roaring its way down a narrow gully in the hillside. I followed the sound like a child seeking treasure and found the stream: no wider than a jeep track, yet fierce with purpose, sliding over granite boulders that had been polished over aeons of water wear, flashing sparks of silver where the light struck.

I knelt. The moment the water touched my ears everything else stopped.

The sound folded time the way wind folds grass. Suddenly I was young again, barefoot on Oakvilla farm in the Natal midlands, following the little streams that spilled off the Inyosi River after rain. Those streams were my secret kingdoms. I knew every pool where the Platanna frogs floated. I knew the places where Leonorus grew thick along the banks, with its orange claws of flower, and how, if you brushed past, the sunbirds would explode out of them in a whirr of emerald and crimson, dancing drunk on nectar.

I would lie on my stomach for hours, chin on my folded arms, watching tadpoles flick like black commas through the transparent water. The stream never hurried, yet it never waited. It simply carried everything downstream: sticks, leaves, worries, time.

Now, decades later, the same music played in a different key. I eased myself down onto a flat rock still warm from the morning sun and let the water have me. Each note of it rinsed something loose, deadlines, arguments, the dull ache of roads not taken—and sent it spinning away over the rocks and stones. The tightness in my chest loosened its fingers one by one. My shoulder pains dissipated. My breath slowed until it matched the rhythm of the stream: in, over, out, gone.

A kingfisher, beautiful, but there it was, flitted across the water, a streak of impossible colour, and for one heartbeat the years collapsed entirely. I was both the boy and the man, both the child lying spellbound on a Midland farm and the tired adult sitting on a rock in distant hills, and neither of us had anywhere else to be.

The water kept talking, soft and relentless, washing the dust from my soul the way it washed silt from the hill. When I finally stood, the light had shifted and the shadows were longer, but I carried no weight at all. Only the bright, running sound of the stream inside me, carrying me forward the way it always had, light, clean, and free.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Religious Apartheid | Separation & segmentation

In the valleys of Kranskop, where the mist clings to the hills like unspoken regrets, my family’s story with kwaSizabantu, or KSB, as it’s known, unfolds like a wound that never quite heals. It began not with the mission’s polished facade of revival and redemption, but with the brutal blade of shunning, a practice so ingrained in KSB’s doctrine that it severs bloodlines as easily as one might clip a withered branch. Shunning isn’t mere disapproval; it’s excommunication from the soul, a deliberate isolation enforced under the banner of purity and obedience to God. It a religious Apartheid, a disgraceful and unholy separation. To leave, to question, to simply choose a different path is to invite the silence of the forsaken. And in our family, it struck first at the heart of my father, Mastelek mkulu.

The ripples of Bible House, a fervent evangelical group led by the charismatic Anton Engelbrecht, reached and touched our home. My father’s siblings, drawn by promises of spiritual fire and communal living, threw their lot in with the movement, which would later morph into the sprawling KwaSizabantu Mission under the iron guidance of Erlo Stegen. Bible House preached instant obedience, confession of sins in excruciating detail, and a hierarchy where leaders spoke as the voice of the divine. But for those who resisted, like my father, the cost was exile. Overnight, he became a ghost in his own bloodline. Phone calls went unanswered; visits were met with locked doors and averted eyes. “It’s for your soul” they said. “You’re choosing the world over Jesus.” He didn’t join, not out of rebellion, but because his faith was quieter, less armored in absolutes. My mom and him raised us with something sorely lacking at KSB, integrity and true strength in faith. Faith was never blind obedience.

A decade passed before reconciliation came, bittersweet and incomplete. Bible House dissolved into KSB, as Erlo Stegen consolidated power on a 140-hectare farmstead bought for the cause using ill gotten gains. My father was extended an olive branch as his family reconciled, leaving Bible House but not joining KSB. He was the prodigal. But you see, he had been right all along. By then, KSB had grown into a self-sustaining empire: schools, farms, even a bottled water brand called aQuellé, drawn from the mission’s own springs and marketed as “purity in every drop.” It had ballooned into a network of control, where obedience wasn’t optional, it was the air you breathed.

The shunning didn’t fade with time; it calcified. I saw it devour my cousin Karen, a girl I’d known growing up. Married to Albu van Eerden, both deep in KSB’s fold, she turned inward to embrace the devil by shunning her own children. Tabitha, her daughter, bright, questioning Tabitha, who dared to seek a life beyond the mission’s walls, was cut off without ceremony. No birthday calls, no hospital visits during illness, just the void. Karen’s other children fared no better; one by one, they were deemed worldly, their imagined sins confessed by their mother publicly before the congregation. And then the wall went up. What drives a mother to this? To stare into the eyes of her flesh and blood and see only a threat to her salvation? It’s not a love of Jesus, its the twisted teachings of KSB, a love that demands you “die to self,” even if it means burying the living. Witnesses before South Africa’s Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL) have described it as systemic: families torn asunder, weddings boycotted, children orphaned by decree. One ex-member recalled parents refusing to attend their child’s marriage because it defied the mission’s courtship bans, no dating, no autonomy, just arranged unions blessed by the elders. In KSB, love is conditional, doled out like rations in a siege.

At the helm of this machine stood the Stegen brothers: Erlo, the founder, a missionary whose fake Zulu revival birthed the mission, and Friedl, his quieter but no less commanding sibling, who preached “instant obedience” from pulpits echoing with the ghosts of German pietism. Their rule was absolute, laced with secrecy that one critic, their own brother Manfred, likened to “Nazi-style” control, decisions shrouded, dissent crushed. Manfred, once a pillar, grew disillusioned, peeling back the layers of abuse: forced confessions that veered into voyeurism, underpaid labor on mission farms, and a doctrine that policed thoughts as fiercely as actions. For his candor, he was shunned, barred from the community he helped build, his warnings dismissed as betrayal. Even Friedl, in his nineties and confined to a wheelchair, wasn’t spared the blade. Accused of straying from the “Way,” he was isolated by the very obedience he once demanded, wheeled away from fellowship like yesterday’s sermon. The irony was poetic, almost karmic.

Karma, in our family’s telling, runs deeper still. Friedl’s wealth, stemmed from a betrayal that scarred another lineage: the Witthofs, a vulnerable German family whose patriarch’s will he assisted in executing. The widow, grieving and isolated, trusted him implicitly. But Friedl, with executor powers unchecked, transferred their fertile farms into his own name, a brazen heist that funneled resources into his own and Erlo’s growing empire. It echoed an earlier theft: Bible House’s coffers, siphoned by Hogart Joosten in the movement’s chaotic infancy, providing the seed money for KSB’s expansion. These weren’t footnotes in revival history; they were the foundation stones, built on wool pulled over grieving eyes. Friedl’s late-life shunning? To us, it was the universe’s quiet accounting, a reminder that no throne of piety stands forever.

Today, as scandals swirl, allegations of sexual assault, child labour, and cultic control probed by commissions and ignored by corrupt police, KSB soldiers on, its aQuellé bottles gleaming on shelves despite attempts at boycotts. The mission’s defenders cling to a narrative of salvation, but I see the cost: fractured families, silenced voices, a society where “helping people” means breaking them first. To those who still quench their thirst with aQuellé, who tithe to this golden calf, take a hard look. Is this the obedience Jesus craved, or the cage we build when faith turns feral? My father’s reconciliation with his family taught me grace is possible, but only if we see the shadows. Shunning isn’t divine; it’s the cult’s cruelest chain. And in breaking it, we reclaim not just our families, but our souls and humanity.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Tailgating

Growing up in a family with ties to the cult of kwaSizabantu (KSB), I found myself dragged into some truly peculiar social obligations. My cousins on my dad Mastelek’s side were die-hard devotees of KSB—where “Reverend” Erlo Stegen reigned supreme as the spiritual patriarch. He wasn’t just a preaching bible puncher; he was the architect of lives, dictating everything from daily routines to eternal destinies. And when it came to matrimony, Erlo’s word was law. These weren’t your typical love stories blooming from stolen glances or whirlwind romances. No, sir—these unions were meticulously arranged under his watchful eye, with a strict code that forbade any premarital “shenanigans,” as my dad would euphemistically put it. Courtship was a controlled affair: supervised interactions, no physical contact beyond a chaste handshake, and certainly no funny business that might sully the purity of the occasion. It was all about divine alignment, or so they claimed.

My parents, bless their skeptical souls, weren’t exactly enthusiastic participants in this fervor. They accepted the wedding invitations more out of morbid curiosity than genuine familial duty—a chance to peek behind the curtain of this ultra-strict world without committing to its doctrines. “Need to see what they are up to,” my dad would quip under his breath. And when these events coincided with my holidays, I’d inevitably tag along, wondering what fresh oddity awaited.

I remember one wedding in particular, when I was already knee-deep in my university days at Maties, feeling worlds away from the rigid piety on display. The ceremony was held at Claridges, that elegant old Bible House venue where these austere KSB affairs occurred. We sat through the vows, a sea of somber faces nodding in approval as the couple pledged their lives under Erlo’s orchestrated blessing. No frills, no flair—just scripture, hymns, and a palpable sense of enforced holiness.

After the “I dos,” the congregation filed into the adjoining hall for the reception. That’s when my dad, ever the opportunist, leaned over and muttered, “Come on, son, help me check the tires on the car.” I shot him a puzzled look—our tires were fine—but I followed anyway, leaving Mom to scout out our table for the impending meal. Now, these KSB weddings were bone-dry affairs; alcohol was taboo, a sinful indulgence that had no place amid the godly gathering. Lemonade, tea and maybe some grape juice were the strongest libations on offer.

We slipped out to the parking lot, and Dad popped the boot of our car. He peeled back the mat covering the spare wheel, revealing his hidden stash: a bottle of fine Scotch whisky and a couple of tumblers tucked away like contraband. “Just a quick toast to survival,” he winked, pouring us each a generous tot. There we stood, tailgating in the shadow of the venue, sipping the amber liquid and chuckling about the irony of it all—the puritans inside preaching temperance while we savored our secret rebellion.

Refreshed and a tad warmer, we rejoined the festivities for the main course. Mom eyed us suspiciously, her knowing glance saying she’d pieced it together without a word. The meal dragged on with speeches extolling Erlo’s wisdom and the couple’s virtuous path. But after the plates were cleared, Dad nudged me again: “Think we should double-check those tires, just to be sure.” I nodded, playing along, but then Mom piped up, “I’m coming with you this time.” I was gobsmacked—Mom, the picture of propriety, joining our covert operation?

Back at the car, the plot thickened. Dad hadn’t just planned for us; he’d smuggled a bottle of sweet Hanepoot wine especially for her. We poured another round—Scotch for us, wine for Mom—and there we were, the three of us, laughing quietly in the boot’s glow, toasting to our little family insurgency. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy amid the starchiness. We returned just in time for dessert, our spirits lifted far beyond what any sermon could achieve.

Looking back, we were undoubtedly the happiest attendees at those weddings. While the KSB faithful celebrated their arranged bliss with hymns and handshakes, our family found our own brand of merriment in those parking lot interludes. Erlo Stegen is turning in his grave.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Today's Game of Choice.

Unless I'm called away, I intend to follow the (5-2) Cleveland Browns vs the (5-2) Pittsburgh Steelers NFL game, with its scheduled start time of Noon Central Time. Go Steelers!

And the adventure continues.

My Life as Julius Caesar

It’s strange how some affinities feel less like admiration and more like recognition. Julius Caesar has lived inside me since I was a boy in that old and dusty Oakville farmhouse, long before I had words for past lives or soul memory. I must have been seven or eight when I first saw him, not in a history book, but as a flickering image projected on the bare dining-room wall. An old reel-to-reel projector had been rigged up, and there he was: Caesar, played by Rex Harrison, commanding the screen while the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, gazed at him with a fire that burned straight through the grainy film and into my chest.

In that moment I didn’t think, “What a great leader.” I thought, “That’s me.” Not in some infantile way. It was deeper, spiritual. I knew the weight of the laurel wreath before I knew what laurel even was. I felt the Nile breeze on my face though I had never left Natal.

And to this day I still have dreams about this.

I am always in a red tunic, the dye still bright, the gold-threaded hem brushing against bronze. The segmented Roman armour, lorica segmentata, fits as though it was forged for my body yesterday. In one hand a gladius, perfectly balanced, almost weightless until it meets resistance, then suddenly alive, singing. The battles change: sometimes the forests of Gaul, mist curling between the oaks; sometimes the dust and blood of Pharsalus; once, memorably, the deck of a trireme off Actium, though history says I wasn’t there. Doesn’t matter. I’m there now.

I fight with a clarity I have never known while awake. Every parry is instinctive, every thrust economical and final. There is no fear, only purpose. Men fall, but I do not gloat; I simply move to the next threat, the next moment that must be shaped. Often I wake shouting in Latin, my voice hoarse, heart racing, sheets twisted. Yet the feeling is never distress. It is triumph, clean and ancient. I reach for my phone to check the time and its always the eleventh hour, and I smile in the dark. The sword skills I wield in dreams still seem to protect me in waking life. Debts get paid. Doors open. Enemies, seen and unseen, keep their distance.

Now, older, I understand there is richer meaning beneath the spectacle.

To dream repeatedly of being a great conqueror, especially one who was both adored & assassinated, is rarely about simple ego. The psyche chooses its symbols with precision. Caesar represents the part of the soul that refuses to accept imposed limits, the part that says, “If the world will not bend, I will cross the Rubicon and make it bend.” The red tunic is Mars, the god of war but also raw life-force. The sword is discrimination, the ability to cut through illusion, to separate what serves from what destroys. To dream of wielding it masterfully, without hesitation or wound, is the unconscious announcing: You have the power to shape your fate. You have done it before. You are doing it now.

And Cleopatra, ah, she is there too, sometimes watching from a marble balcony, sometimes fighting beside me with a dagger. She is the other half of the archetype: the feminine wisdom that knows power is not only force alone, but seduction, strategy, the long game. When Caesar & Cleopatra appear together in the soul’s theatre, they are saying: Integrate. Marry the general and the queen within you. Rule with both the sword and the serpent.

These dreams are not escapism. They are remembrance. They are confirmation that the same fire that burned in a Roman on the Ides of March still burns in this man in a quiet Douglasdale suburb, tempered now by time but no less fierce. Every time I wake with the taste of iron in my mouth and the echo of battle in my ears, I am reminded: I came back to finish what was started. The conquest is no longer of provinces, but of fear, of mediocrity, of every small voice that says stay small.

I was Julius Caesar once.

I crossed the river.

I still am.

Ronald Bartels | LinkedIn | Instagram

Titel: Jammer.

Jammer dat ik al een heel stuk geschreven had en nu pas een account heb dus nu niet weet waar mijn stuk is. Ach ja, anoniem gepubliceerd en ik heb de link nog ook 😊. Fijn. Zalig zo anoniem bloggen... Dus...toch niet jammer, maar een stakend kortetermijngeheugen na nacht geen slaap.

Prayerfully reading the Mass Propers for today, 11/01/2026, All Saints Day.

And the adventure continues.

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

• ☆ Godzilla Minus Zero
• The Last Temptation of Becky
• Ramayana: Rise of a Legend
• Wild Horse Nine
• Nightborn
• The Cat in the Hat
• I Play Rocky
• Club Kid

Anticipated Shows

• Bass X Machina
• ☆ The Remarried Empress
• The Greatest
• Campus Drivers

Returing Favorites

• The Gilded Age — Season 4
• St. Denis Medical — Season 3
• QI — Season 24
• Stick — Season 2
• All's Fair — Season 2
• ☆ Black Doves — Season 2
• Sweetpea — Season 2
• The Assassin — Season 2
• The Institute — Season 2

Trending Shows Status Changes

• Dead-End Job — Returning Series → Ended
• Bleach — Returning Series → Ended
• The One About Matthew Perry — Returning Series → Ended
• You Maniac — Returning Series → Ended

Most Watched Movies this Week

• new The Dog Stars
• -1 Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• new Verity
• new Ali G: Who Iz I?
• -2 Buddy
• new The Cycle
• -5 Tenzing
• new Clayface
• -5 Hope
• -5 Practical Magic 2

Most Watched Shows this Week

• = VisionQuest
• = MobLand
• +3 Tulsa King
• new South Park
• +2 Dark Matter
• -3 Slow Horses
• new The Terminal List
• new Lupin
• -1 Marshals
• -6 Crystal Lake

Popular Trailers

• history is about to begin. — The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
• Tricks and treats that can’t be beat. — The Cat in the Hat
• Anything for her. — Clayface
• Season 7 Episode 2 Teaser — Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir
• Star-studded. Crafted to perfection. — Wicker
• Wicked Fun — Hexed
• Dark Magic Awaits This Halloween. — Wildwood
• Devil on His Shoulder — VisionQuest
• In Cinemas Now — The Social Reckoning
• The worst cellmate ever has arrived. — Ghost in the Cell

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Hi, I’m Kevin 👋. Product Manager at Trakt and creator of Rippple. If you’d like to support what I'm building, you can download Rippple for Trakt, explore the open source project, or go Trakt VIP.

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He he he he he he he he he —– cough, cough

On the twelfth day of Krismoss

my true love sent to me:

Twelve Shebeens a Drinking

Eleven Prosecutors Pimping

Ten State owned companies a captured

Nine Best friends daughters

Eight Jets a landing

Seven hundred and eighty three fraud charges

Six Firepools a bubbling

Five Security Chickens

Four Cattle Kraals

Three Gupta Brothers

Two Presidential Terms

and a MaNtuli in a Poison Tree

Mensjes op leeftijd Wachten stipt tot negen uur Gratis met de trein.

Friends and strangers!

Through November I am hosting the RPG Blog Carnival, and I would like to invite you to contribute!

The theme is Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, and your contributions can be anything related to it, from your procedures and practices for creating and running them to random tables for generating and populating them to actual adventuring sites.

In OD&D Gary and Dave describe underworld and wilderness as places of adventure, peril, and treasure:

... the referee must draw out a minimum of half a dozen maps of the levels of his “underworld,” people them with monsters of various horrid aspect, distribute treasures accordingly, and note the location of the latter two on keys, each corresponding to the appropriate level. ... When this task is completed the participants can then be allowed to make their first descent into the dungeons beneath the “huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses.” ...

Before it is possible to conduct a campaign of adventures in the mazey dungeons, it is necessary for the referee to sit down with pencil in hand and draw these labyrinths on graph paper. ... In laying out your dungeons keep in mind that downward (and upward) mobility is desirable, for players will not find a game enjoyable which confines them too much. On the other hand unusual areas and rich treasures should be relatively difficult to locate, and access must be limited. The layout of a level will affect the route most often followed by players. Observation of the most frequently used passages and explored rooms will guide the referee in preparation of successive levels, which, of course, should be progressively more dangerous and difficult.

The so-called Wilderness really consists of unexplored land, cities and castles, not to mention the area immediately surrounding the castle (ruined or otherwise) which housed the dungeons. The referee must do several things in order to conduct wilderness adventure games. First, he must have a ground level map of his dungeons, a map of the terrain immediately surrounding this, and finally a map of the town or village closest to the dungeons (where adventurers will be most likely to base themselves).

The theme is quite broad, and I encourage you to focus on gameable contributions—ideally something from or for your table that others could benefit from as well.

Simply share the link to your contribution (e.g. a blog post) in the comments below, and I will include it in the summary post at the end of the month.

I plan to write about how I roll up small random sites for sandbox play, from the resources I use to how I shape the site to how I then document and use it.

Fight on!

P.S. If you don't have a blog, but would still like to participate then you can either send me your contribution via email or comment below.

#RPGBlogCarnival #OSR #Resource

⚓️ Novemberinsel 

Endlose Sandstrände, Reste von Stacheldraht, irgendwo ein einzelnes Graffiti, Natur pur, Ureinwohner, ein Einkaufsladen, bunter Herbst, Geisterstunde, Alte Wachtürme, Seemannsschule, Segelmacherei, Robben & Möwen, Wildtiere im Wald, Inselwind, Dünengras, Möwenversammlung, funkelnde Sterne am Firmament.

🐚 Strandgut

Im Herbst sieht der selbe Weg anders aus als im Frühjahr oder im Sommer. Ein vertrauter, oft begangener Pfad erscheint wie neu. Immer wieder. Mit jedem Wechsel der Jahreszeit. Aus der vertrauten Ansicht wird eine neue. Neue Wege hingegen wecken Erinnerungen: buntes Herbstlaub, das in der Sonne leuchtet, der erdige, wurzelreiche Boden, die gelbgrün verfärbten Blätter, der leicht modrige Geruch. Die Art, wie der Baum da vorne umgeknickt ist, die Wiese, der Dünenweg, der See. Und doch weiß ich nicht, was kommt. Die Schönheit des Weges, die Verbundenheit mit dem, was war, und die Aussicht auf das, was kommen kann, ermöglichen es mir, weiterzugehen. Der neue Weg verbindet Vergangenheit und Zukunft. 

📖 Gelesen – gesehen – gehört

Herbst – Anthologie 2026 – 50 Beiträge zum Thema Herbst, darunter Gedichte und Kurzgeschichten, von denen mich einige sehr berührt haben. Einen Beitrag habe ich geschrieben.

Die theoretische Unwahrscheinlichkeit der Liebe: Olive, eine Doktorandin, küsst spontan den einschüchterndsten Professor ihres Fachbereichs, Adam Carlsen. Ihr gemeinsames Bedürfnis nach einer Scheinbeziehung wird zum chemischen Experiment, das womöglich die Formel für die Liebe liefert. Eine Verfilmung nach dem Roman von Ali Hazelwood: The Love Hypothesis 

Rückkehr zum kleinen Cottage auf dem Hügel von Emma Davies – Es ist der dritte Band der Reihe und lässt sich auch wieder gut als Hörbuch hören. Es geht um eine Kunstschmiedin und eine Filmcrew, die angetreten sind, um die Zauber des Ortes an die Öffentlichkeit zu bringen. Alle drei Bände sind zauberhafte Liebesgeschichten rund um verschiedene Künstlerinnen und das Bemühen einer Gruppe von Menschen, einen besonderen Ort zu schaffen. 

☕️ Ein letztes Wort

Alle diese Dinge sind ein Neubeginn. Aber kein Ende. Das Zuvor kann in ihnen weiterleben.

Kyra Groh

How the fuck does she know? actually, let me explain. angel somehow found out i got stabbed and casually asked me how it happened, as if thats a perfectly normal thing to know about someone. but seriously, how the fuck did she even find out? that’s what i’ve been confused about. i dont remember telling her, and im not sure who else wouldve told her. i must’ve missed the meeting where everyone was briefed on my business. but you know what? she still doesnt know how it happened. or where, for that matter. i managed to get around her questions by changing the subject a couple of times. problem solved. well, maybe. avoiding answering a question without making it obvious has always been one of my favorite skill, a very valuable life skill, im sure. not one they’ll teach you anywhere. Oh, and before you get too comfortable, no. im not telling you either. i know how this works. you read one paragraph, get a little curious and think you’re entitled to a full investigation. whats next? an interview? a little documentary? get a detective involved while we’re at it. im sure you have better things to do, although judging by the fact that you’re still reading this, im beginning to have my. doubts. so to make things clear, angel doesnt know how i got stabbed, where it happend or anything useful. you dont know either. and thats probably how things are going to stay. i would apologize but you’re getting too much in my business. About yesterday and me regretting a matter, i dont regret it anymore. maybe i will later on who knows. im not going to complain about that yet. i dont know how things are going to go from here. i really dont. im not going to pretend i have everything figured out because i dont. but i hope whatever happens next is better. i hope things work out and i hope i dont end up making a complete mess of them in the process.

Anyway, thats all for today, i dont really know what else to say. theres a lot in my head, im getting tired listening to my own thoughts. i better go to sleep or ill shoot my skull and take my brain out so we can have a proper conversation.

Sincerely, Boo boo, no story for you to investigate.