My Toe is Broken

I take off my left shoe
or is it the right one?

I always mix that up
pu taht xim syawla I

my big left toe is bent
way to the inside

how did that happen?
I must've stumbled

over a rock
in a dream

Leo Tolystoy - Anna Karenina

 

Leo Tolystoy (1828-1910) published Anna Karenina in serial newspaper installments from 1873-77. Which is why some people call it a soap opera. There may be parallels, but this book is much, much larger.

Famous writers like Dostoevsky, Nabokov and Faulkner called it "flawless" and "the best ever written". It's certainly worth reading. Here's a bunch of quotations in chronological order. You can get this translation for free at www.gutenberg.org.

* * *

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Stepan Arkadyevitch liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain.

Having got rid of the staff captain's widow, Stepan Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget—his wife.

Spring is the time of plans and projects. 

She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be.

And Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of philosophical history where Konstantin Levin could not follow him, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.  

"To sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to work too." 

"But [...] in getting to know thoroughly one's wife, if one loves her, as someone has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them."

"You despise public official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim—and that's not how it is"

"But how do schools help matters?" - "They give the peasant fresh wants."

Levin had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts [...] the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. 

He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires.

He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.

Altogether their honeymoon—that is to say, the month after their wedding—from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves. It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly. 

But it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction. 

He was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her. 

"Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be." 

"If goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect. "

Picture Of The Day #50

Spring is coming.

(Spring means Feather)

Picture Of The Day #49

Coffeecup, taking a moment

Couldn't he? - Picture Of The Day #47 reloaded

I'm a huge fan of Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes. And specially of Calvin's craftmanship regarding snowmen. Here's great collection of wintery strips...

All day today snow fell in Cologne. I crossed the city by bike - I like riding across parks in the snow and I was thinking how as a child I always wished it to snow, so we could ride a sled or ... build a snowman. But it hardly ever snowed in my childhood - and if, it melted right away, which is why I'm probably among the top 100 world's lousiest snowman builders. Nothing like Calvin...

Picture Of The Day #48

So blue the was the sky last week...

Picture Of The Day #47

Calvin couldn't have done it better.

Street Music in Oslo

The Karl Johans Street in Oslo runs in a straigt line from Central Station to the Royal Castle, passing the Norwegian parliament Stortinget. It's one of the busiest shopping streets in town: Famous brands sharing space with crappy souvenir shops and shady pubs. In winter the sidewalks are heated to melt snow and ice.

Somewhat halfway to the castle is the hightest point, forming a small, nameless square. All year long you can meet great street artists there: it's probably one of the most lucrative spots in Europe. During high season in summer they get exactly one hour each to present their shows.

I've seen young elflike women singing there in December nights, playing with icecold fingers and blowing everybodys minds and hearts away with their voices.

Strangely enough I could find only one video on youtube. But what!? We all get a chance to listen to this great Hang-player Daniel Waples! Follow this minute into a footenotefull of great street music...

te quiero

This wallpainting crossed my tracks when I tried to avoid the last of this season's carnival parades. On Tuesday, on the sixth day of the annual Cologne mayhem, most neighbourhoods stage their own, small Carnival processions.
Completely forgetting about this I went out for a walk and aimed right for the middle of it. But I found this painting in a small alley, and its longing expression very much reminded me...

... that once someone wrote these two words on a piece of paper and taped them to a yellow door. I passed through that door each day, dressed, undressed, took showers and joked with the other guys. I remember the green rubber floor and the smell of training clothes old, forgotten and dusty.

That was nine years ago. I didn't understand the meaning of those words. I was too dumb too hard too blind and too unwise to get them. Seeing them painted on that wall on Tuesday I was reminded of what felt like a whale mistake.

The person who wrote those two words now lives on the other side of the planet. I can't just call and ask if we could have a cup of coffee together and talk about the paper, the door, the smell and everything connected to them. We are seperated by an ocean, by 7.000 miles, by nine years and meanwhile even by languages. But still. If she would see me, I would go. I would cross the ocean for a cup of coffee and two spoons full of talk.

Clean Windows

Times when you feel worn out
come again and again
- every couple of months
every couple of years
the well runs dry for a while

you feel like an old leather cloth
that's been used too many times
to clean windows
and when you're picked up once more
to clean yet another one
you plainly refuse

refuse and crawl away into a dark
preferably warm corner
and you stop moving
until the worn-out feeling has left your body
your heart your soul your spirit
your cells your breath your mind
your voice your ear your eye
your luck your courage your sixth sense
and your seventh

and maybe while you lie there
huddled into your corner comfortably
and undisturbed - you might even
find the nourishment
that feeds you
find cuddling, find talking, find company

to come out again
to clean windows

mighty soon

Examples of Cool #2

I wrote the last "Examples of Cool" almost two years ago. That's not because I haven't been thinking about more posts or even forgot them, but because really cool people (or things that people do) are rare by definition. 

Before I pin down more examples of cool, let's take a closer look at what "cool" might actually mean: In the beautifully written book "Birth of the Cool" American poet-writer Lewis MacAdams traces the word back to its African origins and follows it all through Jazz, the Beat Generation and the wild 60's right into what's become "popular culuture" in the past three decades, when "Cool" sort of washed-out bit by bit. 

The origins of "Cool" root in music, in drumming: Keeping one's cool means to keep the rhythm, not to let oneself get carried away (by ego) but to think of the music and only the music. Later "Cool" becomes opposed by "Heat". Heat means disorder, chaos, legal problems, drug problems - not being in charge, not being in control. A cool person is reliable and keeps control even if things start falling apart. 

And yet another meaning is added: Cool needs faith. A person without a certain faith cannot be cool. One has to believe in oneself, in fate or in God (or all three of them) to be cool. In the end, cool is always related to action, like Marcel Duchamp cutting off a footlong piece of canvas of the painting "Stampede" by Jackson Pollock - just because it's too large for the wall in Peggy Guggenheims apartment - or like Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady who traveled across the United States several times with no money at all and drank every image, every experience, every conversation they could get hold on. 

Simply to look cool hasn't got much to do with it: Even Snoopy knows that. Right now I have at least two examples of cool in store. To be continued.. 

Picture Of The Day #46

Mosaic at Bürgerzentrum Ehrenfeld