WINSEN (BY CHANCE)
I have nothing to report. I am in Germany but I spent almost my whole day in my apartment in Wildblume except for two ten minute walks to Elke and Heinrich’s house for lunch and dinner. I’ll include a few panoramas taken on my walks.
After dinner last night we three old people played Skipbo until almost 11. I won, but since it is a game of luck, that is hardly an achievement. But it did occur to me afterward that even when I know it was a game of luck and depended entirely on what cards I was dealt that the game was still great fun both because of our comments to each other when we blocked each other from playing down our pile and because of the suspense of what cards I might draw.
It occurred to me that life is like that, maybe for all of us. A great deal of what happens to us as we make our passage through life including our gender, our inherited characteristics, which country we are born in and which social class, the random events that happen each day is simply by chance. It it is we are on a giant pinball machine bouncing around. All of the major events of my life were by chance including meeting Kathe and becoming attached to Winsen and of marrying into a German heritage. I am here in Wildblume by chance even though it was my decision to come as it was my decision to play certain Skipbo cards. And yet I look forward with suspense to each day to see what cards I will be dealt. Today I am going to attend, maybe, if allowed, a fluting circle of old ladies followed by an organ concert in Wietze. Otherwise I am going to sit here and wonder what it all means, trying to discern meaning in this chance card game of random events playing out within the much larger random events of the slow chance mutations of the evolution of the universe including the chance evolutionary process here on earth.
And just as I enjoy Skipbo, knowing it is all chance, I’ll enjoy today and tomorrow aware that I am having the time of my life and happy, by chance, to still be here.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 