30.8.08

Samstags-Lob (6)


"Middle age is when you´re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the phone rings and you hope it isn´t for you."
(Ogden Nash)

29.8.08

Shopping for Images









Last night in a supermarket: greenish light on the fruit, glacial draught from the yoghurt/dead chickens-department, whole families greedily indulging in a free read at the magazine rack... Made me want to read this great poem again:

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! - and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brillant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detectives.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we´ll both be lonely.
Will we stride dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat dissapear on the black waters of Lethe?

(Alan Ginsburg, 1955)

28.8.08

The autumn leaves of red and gold...





Slighty obsessed with leaves. So, why not. There will not be many left of them soon...




"Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower."
(Albert Camus)

27.8.08

Verteilerkasten-Optimismus









Ob´s hilft?

"Personally, I´ve never been stupid enough to be an optimist.
I know things are going to turn out shitty, but I´ve got my mind set to enjoy it."
(Kinky Friedman)

On a distribution box, in Berlin: joy without end, happiness without shadow, love without limitations ...

24.8.08

Handgemacht - black & white garden scene (2)




With this I lament the fact that I don´t have a garden, I guess ..

22.8.08

Samstags-Lob (5)


"I once saw a bloke try to kill himself. I´ll never forget the day because I was sitting in the house one Saturday afternoon, feeling black and fed-up because everybody in the family had gone to the pictures, except me who´d for some reason been left out of it. ´Course, I didn´t know then that I would see something you can never see in the same way on the pictures, a real bloke stringing himself up. I was only a kid at the time, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed it.
I´ve never known a familiy to look as black as our family when they´re fed-up. I´ve seen the old man with his face so dark and full of murder because he ain´t got no fags or was having to use saccarine to sweeten his tea, or even for nothing at all, that I´ve backed out of the house in case he got up from his fireside chair and came for me. He just sits, almost on top of the fire, his oil-stained Sunday-joint maulers opened out in front of him and facing inwards to each other, his thick shoulders scrunched forward, and his dark brown eyes staring into the fire. Now and again he´d say a dirty word, for no reason at all, the worst word you can think of, and when he starts saying this you know it´s time to clear out. If mam`s in it gets worse than ever, because she says sharp to him: "What are yo´looking so bleddy black for?" as if it might be because of something she´s done, and before you know what´s happening he´s tipped up a tableful of pots and mam´s gone out of the house crying. Dad hunches back over the fire an goes on swearing. All because of a packet of fags.
I once saw him broodier than I´d ever seen him, so that I thought he´d gone crackers in a quiet sort of way - until a fly flew to within a yard of him. Then his hand shot out, got it, slung it crippled into the roaring fire. After that he cheered up a bit and mashed some tea."

(Alan Sillitoe: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1959)

21.8.08

Handgemacht - some more bags






This seems to develop into a passion - might as well one day sell them ...

20.8.08

Trödellektüre - Wie der Taucher auf dem Meeresgrund


Ernst Jünger: Afrikanische Spiele, 1936

"Daß am Nachmittag ein feiner, staubartiger Regen zu fallen begonnen hatte, war mir nicht unangenehm, denn es erhöhte die Einsamkeit. Überhaupt gehört es zu meinen Neigungen, bei dichtem Regen spazierenzugehen. Ich besitze dafür noch heute eine Vorliebe als für eine der wenigen Gelegenheiten, bei denen man in unseren Breiten im Freien ungestört seinen Gedanken nachhängen kann. Wenn man, in einen undurchlässigen Mantel gehüllt, im Unwetter die großen Wälder durchstreift, dann ist man selbst in der Nähe der Großstädte so unbehelligt wie der Taucher auf dem Meeresgrund."

19.8.08

Handgemacht - black & white garden scene (1)



"If everything isn´t black and white, I say: Why the hell not?"
(John Wayne)

18.8.08

Sammelsurium - hotch-potch

Erstaunlich, wie leicht Bloggen zur (beinahe) täglichen Gewohnheit wird. Bereicherung oder Belastung? Eine Gewohnheit, heißt es, ist eine Lösung, die zum Problem geworden ist. Nein. Wohl eher: eine Gewohnheit, die zur Lösung eines täglichen Problems namens Alltag beiträgt, indem sie ihm ein durchaus belebendes Sammelsurium an Flüchtigem, Verstreutem, Nutzlosem beigesellt...

Amazing, how easily Blogging becomes a (almost) daily habit. Blessing or burden? A habit, they say, is a solution that has become a problem. No. More like: a habit that works towards the solution for a problem called everyday life by adding to it a quite refreshing hotch-potch of the volatile, the scattered, and the useless...

17.8.08

Handgemacht - (pre)autumn leaves (2)



Using for the leafrips a strong brown cotton thread which must be at least 50 years old - like to think of it as a power-of-resistance-booster - and certainly not "made in China", for a change ...

"...The day becomes more solemn and serene/ When noon is past - there is a harmony/ In autumn, and a lustre in the sky/ Which through the summer is not heard or seen/ As if it could not be/ As if it had not been!"
(P.B. Shelley: Hymn To Intellectual Beauty)

16.8.08

Samstags-Lob (4)









Went to see a movie show
Found myself an empty row
Thought the show was just alright
Same old Saturday night

Then I made the usual stop
Coffee at the coffee shop
Friendly face nowhere in sight
Same old Saturday night ...

(Frank Sinatra)

14.8.08

Das Nadelkissen zum Gedicht - poetic pincushion









Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very qietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall be moving
Inherit the earth.
Our foots`s in the door.

(Sylvia Plath)

12.8.08

Muster-Lob - patterns and progress


"In the dream I´m alone. But I´m not just alone: I am the only one alive in the world at this time. I am making a row of rocks in the middle of a dirt road. I am doing this to mark the way for someone who will come later. I have to make sure that the rocks are close enough together to indicate a trail so that those who come later will be able to follow my progress and find me.
Carefully I place the rocks equal distances apart so that the trail will be easy to follow. Then it occurs to me that this regularity is monotonous. I decide to make an irregular pattern that will be interesting for those who will find it. I begin to place the rocks unequal distances apart, choosing each distance at random, without conscious repetition.
As I work I become excited. The pattern is complicated, now quickening its rhythm, now stretching out in long, sweeping, repeating intervals. Those who follow me will quicken their pace, eagerly, appreciating the subtle nuances of my design.
I continue, knowing instinctively just what to do, certain that the pattern is beautiful and that it accurately portrays my own progress. I am completely happy. Before this I have not been happy, but now I know what happiness is."

(Marilyn Krysl: We Are Ready, 1988 - for more from and about M.K., see linklist Literarisches)

11.8.08

Handgemacht - (pre)autumn leaves (1)







Made a sketch of 3 chestnut leaves, moth damaged and prematurely withered, which the wind blew on my doorstep. Thought I´d try and tranform it into textile, add some power of resistance ...

10.8.08

I have eaten the plums ...









This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(William Carlos Williams, 1962)

9.8.08

Samstags-Lob (3)



"Den Nachmittag des folgenden Tages verbrachte ich in meinem Sessel am Fenster, ein aufgeschlagenes Buch auf den Knien. Ich sah hinaus, ohne wirklich etwas zu sehen. Es war recht angenehm.
"Meine liebste Unterhaltung an Samstagabenden", soll Bob Hope gesagt haben, "ist es, im Sessel zu sitzen und darauf zu warten, welches Bein zuerst einschläft." Mir geht es genauso. Bedauerlicherweise ist es nicht ganz ungefährlich, dieser Neigung freien Lauf zu lassen.
Was als harmloses Vergnügen beginnt, wächst sich im Verlauf des Abends nur allzu leicht zu einem unbekömmlichen Zustand verbissenen Gegen-den-Strom-Sitzens aus. Zu sehr kollidiert, zumindest an einem Ort wie Berlin, der mühelos durch Hauswände und geschlossene Fenster sich mitteilende unbedingte Amüsierwille der Außenwelt mit dem stillen Verweigern desselben durch den Sitzenden. Kurz: Man fühlt sich nach einer Weile nicht mehr wohl. Trotz mischt sich unter das Behagen, Starre bemächtigt sich der entspannten Glieder, Melancholie verdüstert den Geist ..."

(H. Gerbig: Berliner Teufelskreis)

7.8.08

Handgemacht - a "summer quilt" in the making (2)


... and a pillow, too -


- they´re beginning to look quite inviting (to me), but there´s still a lot of stitching to be done ...

5.8.08

Steinzeit - a rose is ...


"When I said./ A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose./ And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I carressed completely carressed and addressed a noun."
(Getrude Stein, Lectures in America)

Kaufte ein Bund Astern. Die vietnamesische Blumenfrau legte eine Rose dazu: Hier, nimm mal mit!

4.8.08

Trödellektüre - (Not so very) long ago ...


Sven Hedin: Wildes heiliges Tibet, 1942

"Im Herzen Asiens ragen die schneegekrönten Gipfel des höchsten Berglandes der Erde bis weit in den Himmel. Tibet oder Schneeland ist sein Name. Sein südlicher Grenzwall ist der Himalaja, "die Wohnung des Winters", der gleichzeitig im Norden den ewigen Sommer Indiens begrenzt. Von dem Teile Zentralasiens, in dem sich die stickigen Sandwüsten Turkestans befinden, wird Tibet durch das gigantische Bergsystem des Ku´n-lun getrennt. Auch das Innere des Landes besteht aus mächtigen Gebirgsketten, die sich fast alle weit nach Westen und Osten erstrecken.
Die Völker Tibets brauchten nicht dem Beispiel der chinesischen Kaiser zu folgen, welche die große Mauer zum Schutz gegen die Barbaren der Steppe bauten. Die mächtigen Gebirgssysteme haben Vorsorge getroffen für eine feste Verteidigung des Landes. Deshalb ist Tibet bis heute eine der unzugänglichsten und unbekanntesten Gegenden der Erde geblieben.
Friedliche Eindringlinge aus dem Westen konnten jedoch von der spärlichen Bevölkerung nicht vollkommen ausgeschlossen werden. Es sind erst 270 Jahre vergangen, seitdem die ersten Europäer in das Schneeland eindrangen, zu einer Zeit, in der Europa von ihm nichts anderes wußte, als was der unsterbliche Marco Polo vom Hörensagen zu berichten hatte ..."

2.8.08

Samstags-Lob (2)


"Samstag nachmittags ging ich mit meiner Mutter spazieren. Man trat aus dem Dämmer des Flures plötzlich in das Sonnenbad des Tages. Die in Gold watenden Passanten hatten die Augen in der Glut zusammengekniffen, wie mit Honig verklebt, so daß die hochgezogenen Oberlippen Zähne und Zahnfleisch entblößten.
Und alle trugen sie beim Waten im goldenen Tag die Hitzegrimasse, als hätte die Sonne all ihren Anbetern ein und dieselbe Maske aufgesetzt - die goldene Maske der Sonnenbruderschaft; und alle, die heute durch die Straßen spazierten, einander begegneten, aneinander vorbeigingen, Alte und Junge, Kinder und Frauen, grüßten sich im Vorübergehen mit der dick aufgetragenen, goldfarbenen Maske im Gesicht und schnitten einander diese bacchantische Grimasse - die barbarische Maske eines heidnischen Kults..)"

(Bruno Schulz: Die Zimtläden/August, 1933)

"On Saturday afternoons I used to got for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passers-by, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey. Upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore the grimace of heat, as if the sun had forced his worshippers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, greeted each other with these masks, painted on their faces with thick gold paint; they smiled at each other´s pagan faces..."