napping.

One of these days, I had a mid-afternoon nap. This is the dream that came to me.

I was explaining to my friend how I had three muses. They were called Beauty, with a capital B; Truth with a capital T; and Silliness, with a capital S. To me they were quite concrete beings.

An argument ensued about whether one could live with one’s muses. I was arguing, but of course, I do actually live with them. My friend asserted the contrary, and said this was impossible.

What do you think? Can one live with one’s muses? Is it something to aspire towards?

the shores of the Marmara Sea.

 

Die Zeit knows more about the incident of the handbrake and Orhan Pamuk.

Fernweh…

Photo © Alex Webb/Magnum/Agentur Focus aus »Istanbul. City of a hundred names«, Aperture 2007 (mit Essay von O. Pamuk)

moral action.

God may reduce you
on Judgment Day
to tears of shame,
reciting by heart
the poems you would
have written, had
your life been good.

from ‘Thanksgiving for a Habitat’ by W.H. Auden

FRICHE, subst. fém.

this is an argument for trans-lation as a process that does not create synonyms on equal footing, i.e. just-a-different-language-dude way.

i love this word. translated with the common dictionary you get ‘wildland’. may i suggest that that’s not it, at all (and leave you to wonder what poem that line is taken from…). 

FRICHE, subst. fém.

A.− AGRICULTURE.

1. Terre vierge ou (le plus souvent) laissée à l’abandon. Anton. défriche rem. s.v. défriché. Domaine vague que la culture dispute à la friche (Vidal de La Bl., Tabl. géogr. Fr., 1908, p. 118). Les trois hommes s’engagèrent dans la friche, levant haut les genoux parmi les touffes de bruyères, les ajoncs épineux (Genevoix, Raboliot, 1925, p. 249) :

Elle fuyait comme une bête (…), prenait des raccourcis dans les friches et les landes incultes. Elle ne sentait pas la morsure des ronces qui faisaient saigner sa chair et, quand elle mettait le pied au creux des sillons, elle trébuchait et chancelait, comme une personne ivre.
Moselly, Terres lorr., 1907, p. 269.

2. Loc. adv. ou adj. En friche. En état d’inculture. Tomber en friche. La terre et l’homme avaient été également saignés. La moitié des maisons étaient closes, la plupart des champs en friche, faute d’habitants et de bras (Pesquidoux, Livre raison, 1925, p. 105).

Rem. Plusieurs dict. attestent friche au masc., notamment comme synon. de chiendent (cf. Littré, Lar. 19^e-20^e).

B.− Au fig., notamment dans le domaine de l’intelligence

1. Domaine inexploré ou négligé. Chez lui, c’était le pressentiment du génie envoyé pour ouvrir une nouvelle route dans les friches de l’intelligence (Balzac, L. Lambert, 1832, p. 132).

2. Loc. adv. ou adj. En friche. À l’abandon, inemployé. Je n’aime pas plus qu’un autre à avoir de l’argent en friche (Sue, Atar Gull, 1831, p. 24). Quand la liberté reste en friche, c’est l’homme qui renonce à sa chance d’homme (Jankél., Je-ne-sais-quoi, 1957, p. 223). Cf. crime ex. 6.

− En partic. [À propos d'une pers. dont les facultés intellectuelles sont négligées] Anton. cultivé. Leur auteur avait l’esprit fin, cultivé à peu près sur certains points, en friche sur d’autres (Gobineau, Pléiades, 1874, p. 16). Elle avait des dons : on crut distingué de les laisser en friche; de l’éclat : on prit soin de le lui cacher (Sartre, Mots, 1964, p. 7).

Prononc. et Orth. : [fʀiʃ]. Ds Ac. 1694-1932. Étymol. et Hist. 1. 1251 (Cart. de Notre-Dame de la Roche ds R. Hist. litt. Fr. t. 12, p. 710); 2. 1269-78 an friche (J. de Meung, Rose, éd. F. Lecoy, 19544). On admet d’ordinaire (FEW t. 17, pp. 424-425 et Bl.-W.⁵) que le mot (et sa var. freche dep. 1287 ds Gdf. Compl.) vient du m. néerl. versch/virsch « frais, nouveau » (Verdam) qui, employé avec le mot lant « terre » désigne une terre qu’on a gagnée sur la mer en l’endiguant. Fréq. abs. littér. : 156.

in her shoes?

i changed my mind about aberdeen not being a violent place. i can be very naive at times, disconsidering plenty of evidence jumping at my face…

the scenes happening outside and imposing themselves on my own being of our flat last night were born of substance abuse and probably a lifetime of general suffering. the kind of destitution linked to this seems to lead people to act desperately, fiercely, screamingly. the teenage girl living on the floor above us (with her mother and her brother) got into a fight earlier in the evening, on the streets. a loudly wailing blob of fuckedup-pentup anger. she probably got hit/hit herself on her head, because she was bleeding later on. the police came and the ambulance and the mother, herself under the influence 90% of the time, said that the girl had been fine when she came in, and that she had thrown her out because she had proceeded to trash the flat. it appeared a clear distortion of what had happened. the girl did not come back during the night. i want to say, i hope she will be ok, but it seems a frail hope, and a naive one at that. her substance abuse and all that desperation in her person would seem to indicate that life does not have the same worth for her than it has for me, for instance. maybe never had. as someone once said, a lot of people have a lot of reasons to be very angry.

even if she is not as badly hurt as it sounded, what perspectives does she truly have?

what will happen to her? what has happened to her in the past?

how could i possibly relate to her? who, if anyone, would take on her case beyond the social worker record? and how would it actually work given the past and the current situation?

how is this kind of destitution spreading in other parts of europe?

it makes me think a lot about the ways in which people are separated from each other by unimaginable rifts. it also begs the question of the increase of this rift through neoliberal policies, and divide and conquer type mechanisms that do not aim at equalising/compensating for being, quite simply, inadequate subjects.

i need to write about economic violence.

i also found the following macro-view here. i had completely forgotten about this part of scotland while being away. it is pretty old data (ten years) but i have the feeling this might not have gotten any better since then. happy to be proven wrong, of course…

note that scotland has a population of around 5 million….

* One third of children in Scotland grow up in poverty.

* One third of pensioners live on the basic state pension of around $100 a week.

* 10 percent of workers take home less than 55 percent of Britain’s average wage, the highest number ever recorded. At this level of earnings, only childless couples and single adults are better off working than living on benefits.

* Less than half of local government housing tenants have jobs, compared to 70 percent when unemployment was previously at the present level.

* Over 50,000 Scots have been registered unemployed for over a year and 20,000 for more than three years.

* Some 564,000 households live on welfare payments.

* Scotland’s diet is among the worst in Europe. The report acknowledges that “food poverty is largely a reflection of the limited choice excluded families have over where they can shop, what they can pay and what is available…”

* The gap in life expectancy between the working class Drumchapel area of Glasgow and the neighbouring middle class neighbourhood of Bearsden is eight years.

* Children in Glasgow’s Easterhouse housing estate are five time more likely to die before their first birthday than the UK average.

* The closure of safe leisure facilities and parks means that children from the poorest areas are four times more likely to be killed in road accidents than their better-off counterparts.

calvin is the hero of the month.

nutshell’s a very un-abstract kind of being.

this is in relation to something long-missed aino said a while ago about my abstract thoughts taking over this blog and, my life, par extension.

i believe that almost all of my thinking is very pragmatic. in fact, all of my thoughts, though articulated in this distancing-cum-knitterausbuegelnden way that has become ‘habitus’ through long-and-bumpy practice [i.e. the academic genre], have their origin, momentum and vectorality in the very material world i so love/loathe. anthropological thought needs to be grounded so badly that you can taste the mud and hear the seagulls in the words. so please read this as an exhortation to ground for yourselves all you read on this blog, if i cannot do it properly.

for it is my conviction that humans are so thoroughly of this world that even metaphysics are so sehr menschlich it hurts, at times.

and also this methodology does not leave the whole meaning-making up to me, for it lies with you as well as with me and arises out of that particular relationship. so it will depend a lot on whether you know me or not. and it will carry (ferry, as bruno said what appears now a long time ago…) different kinds of things across. like people reading novels very differently and not taking away the same things, because of their own position, prior experience, levels of sleepiness, drug-induced states of consciousness [of course without the whole good-story bit... missing in this blog... but most good stories are not true - btw, would you like even more fiction?].

today is a day that cannot decide. brother has left, and the world keeps turning.

in gedanken, worten und werken. i need to work on my writing. i want to tell the stories that i feel.

today i wrote… and this will hopefully paint a little smirk on your pretty face… an abstract.  in fact, two… they’re awfully concrete things for concrete humans at concrete conferences in concrete places not waxing lyrical about ‘being’ but about ‘being-in-the-world’, about being indissolubly part of it [within the confines of life of course] and about caring for it too.

at least, that’s my hope as a very un-abstract kind of being. why does material girl sound in my head all of a sudden?

deprecating type humour? all mine, thank you very much.

ari hoenig magic.

this was definitely poetry by other means. allusive esprit ludique carrying across emotion kind of music also making people smile just by its lightheartedness. communion reached across tempos (tempi?), tonalities and original compositions.

the music is really connected, in his case, to his body, and it makes it very strange to watch. it seems like he is birthing this complicated stuff throughout, and that it is tensing him up. he has commented on this, and does not recommend his technique to anyone else.

Photo taken off here, where more information about the man-as-drummer is available. also, his own site, with interviews and things www.arihoenig.com. go and listen!

Noyé dans le coeur des fous.

C’est dans ton fleuve que je m’écoule

Quand tous les ponts d’or s’écroulent

C’est de ton air que je me saoule

Rien nous n’appartient

Les territoires inconnus je les

Parcours je les inclus

Mon pays mon sang mes rêves

Sont dans tes yeux je les ai vus

(noir désir) 

Combien de temps faut-il pour aimer quelqu’un?  

Le sommeil interrompu par un coeur nerveux–étincelant, je me réveille au chant des oiseaux qui accueillent le jour de l’autre côté de la lumière. Je travaille un peu mais dois constater que mes pensées s’envolent avec les cris des oiseaux pour te trouver au bout de la nuit. La natation synchronisée me hante. Mes rêves sont peuplés de fantômes. Ces objets de désir qui échappent ne restent qu’une ombre en forme de, une trace à la. Tu es à l’origine de ces tremblements. Je me retrouve réacteur, plutôt qu’acteur. Je te sens comme le vent du nord qui descend la moelle épinière et qui éclate même mes os les plus forts. J’ai peur d’avoir étalé mon être un peu trop peu à l’abri. La nuit perturbe le coeur diurne qui semblait si bien maîtriser son monde. Le monde est trop vieux, trop grand, trop silencieux. J’attends l’aube et la réapparition de ton visage impatiemment et avec l’enthousiasme qui accompagne un tabula quasi rasa figuré.

Je me souviens surtout d’Electre.

Gems.

 

[http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017.4/3250.19567]

For me, manuscripts are among the most beautiful cultural products of pre-modern times. The University of Pennsylvania Library has a lot of them online, within the context of JL Schoenberg who was a great collector. I have been known to stare at illuminated manuscripts in Echternach for hours and hours.