Sitting on the Fenster

The Bavarian window-box is a fine institution. Flowers gush from it, fecund and exuberant. In our hightly ordered culture, this amounts to gay abandon.
Like most altbau buildings, ours has window-boxes. Our landlord, Roman, maintained them in the traditional style. As spring approached, Master Right negotiated to take them over, since he loves gardening.
Master Right, as you recall, is Japanese. He takes a slightly different view of gay abandon.
The Japanese drone on, in haiku after haiku, about how much they love nature. This is bullshit. They like the idea of nature, but when confronted with it, find the whole thing too reckless, unpredictable and icky. I mean, have you seen what they do to trees?
So, our flower-boxes now look like this.
I ran into Roman the other day. "Did your...um, friend make the flowers", he asked?
"If you mean my husband, yes, he did."
"You can tell. It's not very Bavarian." Roman paused for a moment, searching for the right word. "It's ikebana."   http://deutschlanduberelvis.com/blog/japan/