Im Streit um die Nachkriegsvertreibung der Sudetendeutschen hat die Tschechei jede Forderung nach Aufhebung der Benes-Dekrete zurückgewiesen. Die Verordnungen seien «unantastbar», und jeder Versuch ihrer Streichung käme einer «Umschreibung der Geschichte» gleich, sagte Präsident Vaclav Klaus in Prag.
Sentinel
A lot of people find it hard to realize that a computer has no conscience. It doesn't know right or wrong, good or evil. You program it to give you the best way to screw up the world, and it'll chug along for a few seconds and tell you; it doesn't care. You're with me so far? Okay. What I'm trying to say, it's not easy to write something constructive and interesting into a personal page. In case you expect to see travel or baby pictures, photos of family pets like the favorite canary, or, perhaps, dumb animations, forget this web site! The internet is full of utterly boring home pages, and nobody really gives a damn whether you're poor, fat and ugly. Or, whether your dog just had a new litter of cute puppies.I'd much rather report about real life, the activity in the big city with all its hassle, beauty and uglyness. Perhaps a story about everyday life in the streets by day and especially night with pimps, prosties the pushers and hooked, the drunks and loonies, the streets thronged with the noisy brawling of real people... But then again, I could write absolutely nothing unless you want to read an interesting story about my beer can collection
In my sixty-some years I had lived through dire warnings of nuclear catastrophe, global warming, ozone depletion, universal extinction via cholesterol, and the invasion of killer bees. After a while my juices stopped their panicky surge and I realized I was bored with all these screeched predictions of Armageddon due next Wednesday. It hadn't happened yet, had it? The old world tottered along, and I was content to totter along with it, and I see no need to concern myself with disasters that may never happen. The world is filled with kvetchers, and I have no desire to join the club.
Which brings me to the start of my next story...AGINGFirst of all, let me assure you that some of us who are fated to grow old remain forever young in mind and soul. That is, we have the same dreams and hopes and loves we had at a boy of eighteen. The brain remains young and steaming, but something dreadful happens to the thing in which the wild spirit is sealed.
Suddenly, warmth and dryness become important. You wear coats and scarves. Blankets multiply. Hot water bottles and heating pads are no longer a joke. That is, physical comfort begins to assume a more important, an overwhelmingly important, part of your life. Strolling without umbrella in the rain is out. But, mind you, while all this is happening, almost unbeknownst to you, the essential spirit remains young. That is, you still have sexual fantasies, you still react to young beauty, you still hope, and you still dream.
Yes, it is true you have corns and calluses. You are the victim of quite unexplainable aches and pains. You wake one morning and the knee hurts like hell. No reason for it. And it passes. - But your entire body is prey to these inexplicable and frightening agues. By this time, of course, you probably have glasses and dentures, perhaps a hearing aid and a cane. Your eyes begin to leak, and strange things appear on you - all kinds of things: bumps and knobs, growths, like lichen and moss on an old oak.
Certainly, everything in your physical rhythm has slowed... But the spirit! Still young. Still dreamy and hopeful. And with these physical changes comes a strange and sad vulgarity. You belch, cough, sneeze, hiccup and fart. And if it offends others, you couldn't care less.
But enough of what happens to your body and what happens to your memory. What is important, as you grow old, is that the spirit still flames and flares, the dreams remain
The Expulsion
Wehe den Besiegten!
Lili Marlene
