Lemmings

Two crows
chasing each other
at three o'clock

Far out in the carpet sky
- piled on top of the roofy landscape
an endless repetition of greys

I listen to the silence of traffic
of computer ventilation
and of my own sneezy breath

The seconds've formed a queue
on my right shoulder
like lemmings they jump down

one after one

***

Happy Birthday Leo!

Jump On This Boat!

It's considered bad manners to write about a book before you are finished reading it. But there's a but: Due to coincidence I'm reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra at the same time. 

They seem to share quite a deal.

And since I've laughed out loud three time before reaching page 6 in Toole's weird tale of Ignatius J. Reilly, I need to quote one of his lines (he's thirty, living with his mother):

"I dust a bit," Ignatius told the policeman. "In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

I am very sure that I'm going to enjoy this book.

Don Quixote was lost to me for many years. A clear victim of German class - where they seem to have taught most people NOT to read. We read the first page of the first chapter. I still remember the words - the translation, compared to the English one by John Ormsby I'm reading now must've been lousy. We had to write a content summary. I didn't only consider Don Quixote boring crap for years - I disliked content summaries for as long as I was a student as well. What a waste! 

The tale of the Spanish knight (remember: bad manners - I've hardly started reading) seems to be miraculously funny, witty, strange and deep. 

Thanks to Kevin Dorney for tipping me into his direction again. And thanks to Daniel Wouters for sending A Confederacy of Dunces by mail from Spain or Switzerland or wherever it were...

Pillow Over Me Head

I've put a pillow over me head
feels better that way  -
it protects me
from too much noise
and it sort of slows down time

Does time run or walk?

I nick the corner of the pillow
when people look at me
their eyes telling me that I look stupid
but I'd rather keep it on my head
and pay that price

I don't know if time runs or walks
it probably can do both - like people
and sometimes I think it's gaining speed
(that's an old one, of course..)

---

My pillow and me
we went to the supermarket
a couple of days ago

I bought nuts and yoghurt
and went to the counter
where an old lady looked at me
 - she found my pillow perfectly normal
in its fluffy whiteness
and I thanked her for letting me go first
(she was reading the headlines)

I think she could've been Margaret Thatcher
or a sister of Roger Ebert
and I think she wanted a pillow too

All those people dying:
another reason
to keep mine 

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.