aberdeen at night.
single piece of advice: learn to spell ‘fuel’ before starting the revolution. thanks ever so much.
this informative piece of graffiti got ripped off a few nights later from this supermarket advertisement panel.
taking care of thoughts.
last night our conversation turned on mind.
is it possible to keep taking care of our thoughts so they do not sediment into hardness with the consequence of stopping evolving and growing?
the other question concerned how we can stop living for other people’s approval, and how to keep apart their desires from our own, and what desires we choose to discard?
chasing cars in our heads it seems a lot of the time. that song woke me up this morning, along with cat being quite vocal and the rain outside having stopped and having left the place feeling very new. ended up in the blue lamp last night with cuban folk music with a scottish accent. aaaaah…
why is it that aberdeen has no places that serve tea and coffee after 8? i need to move.
under the rubric of ‘changing self to better’ my GP tells me it is time to act. alright then. i needed a push.
[image rippled from the web: paul klee, red balloon]
hope sandoval aka mazzy star.
kategorie entdeckungen im alltag. she is beautiful and so is her song. i can’t believe i didn’t have a tag for ‘music’ until now. shows the biased, unrepresentative nature of this blog.
grunge and pointless nostalgia.
i dug out a whole lot of tapes (yes, audio cassettes) one of these days and went on a trip to teenagerhood. i still love some of the stuff i recorded back then, and it worried me just a little bit. i rediscovered:
weezer’s blue album that i heard for the first time in 1994 on a bus in berlin (i had infiltrated a friend’s class’s school trip and did some pretty stupid things on that occasion). they are just great. btw i had no idea what ’stoned’ meant back then and probably understood only a fragment of the lyrics (actually that also has not changed radically…)
Choo-choo train left right on time.
A ticket costs only your mind.
The driver said, “Hey, man, we go all the way.”
Of course we were willing to pay. (my name is jonas)
soul asylum who have this really cool song called string of pearls i had completely forgotten about (it is not on youtube and i don’t have it digitally…). it was an early source for my (still ongoing) fascination for form and content of song/text being connected.
RATM forever!!!!! (sorry for the relapse into exuberant-naive youth…). i danced to this song in 1995.
also the Batman Forever soundtrack rocked. bigtime. I am the Passenger… I ride and I ride…
further to this, Fanta 4 Pop-pop-populaer… the list goes on.
i talked to nomad about the possibilities of youth, and the way in which, for postgrads, these remain open for longer, it seems. keeping us in limbo by delaying but also not narrowing perspectives on life’s potential paths just yet. i can feel the need to make decisions in this regard coming my way at the speed of light. the light vector [physically not very probable] has just reached our universe. i am stalking the light, in one way, but only because i know i cannot escape it.
i need to change my music that accompanies my writing. my life is not stuck at all, even though the last week has felt a bit like it. i need to remember what i am made of.
the way we feel about distance also relates to the way in which we touch the present. i want to retain my youthful exuberance, at least half-buried under shreds of some of the more uncomfortable fingers of the past. i do not seek full-fledged, lasting (possibly complacent) contentment, but baseline happiness and constancy that keeps my demons at bay.
last night i lost my faith in this city for a second. i am leaving, but it will take a while for the departure to materialise.
yours with all my heart and wishful thinking from alba.
thursday is for celebrating jl borges.
Instantes (by jl borges – sometimes attributed to virginia stair).
Si pudiera vivir nuevamente mi vida.
En la próxima trataría de cometer más errores.
No intentaría ser tan perfecto, me relajaría más.
Sería más tonto de lo que he sido, de hecho
tomaría muy pocas cosas con seriedad.
Sería menos higiénico.
Correría más riesgos, haría más viajes, contemplaría
más atardeceres, subiría más montañas, nadaría más ríos.
Iría a más lugares adonde nunca he ido, comería
más helados y menos habas, tendría más problemas
reales y menos imaginarios.
Yo fui una de esas personas que vivió sensata y prolíficamente
cada minuto de su vida; claro que tuve momentos de alegría.
Pero si pudiera volver atrás trataría de tener
solamente buenos momentos.
Por si no lo saben, de eso está hecha la vida, sólo de momentos;
no te pierdas el ahora.
Yo era uno de esos que nunca iban a ninguna parte sin termómetro,
una bolsa de agua caliente, un paraguas y un paracaídas;
Si pudiera volver a vivir, viajaría más liviano.
Si pudiera volver a vivir comenzaría a andar descalzo a principios
de la primavera y seguiría así hasta concluir el otoño.
Daría más vueltas en calesita, contemplaría más amaneceres
y jugaría con más niños, si tuviera otra vez la vida por delante.
Pero ya tengo 85 años y sé que me estoy muriendo.
If I could live again my life,
In the next – I’ll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won’t try to be so perfect,
I’ll be more relaxed,
I’ll be more full – than I am now,
In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,
I’ll be less hygenic,
I’ll take more risks,
I’ll take more trips,
I’ll watch more sunsets,
I’ll climb more mountains,
I’ll swim more rivers,
I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,
I’ll eat more ice creams and less (lime) beans,
I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary
ones,
I was one of those people who live
prudent and prolific lives -
each minute of his life,
Offcourse that I had moments of joy – but,
if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,
If you don’t know – thats what life is made of,
Don’t lose the now!
I was one of those who never goes anywhere
without a thermometer,
without a hot-water bottle,
and without an umberella and without a parachute,
If I could live again – I will travel light,
If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feet
at the beginning of spring till
the end of autumn,
I’ll ride more carts,
I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,
If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,
- and I know that I am dying …
want an awesome story told?
i know, i hardly get away with using american adjectives, but hey!
the garden of forking paths – by JL Borges…
hypertext version here.
and this stuff is directly quoted in the paper i am writing at the moment, not that you get to thinking i would be procrastinating. i couldn’t even spell that word if i tried.
bees…
are, for example, very communicative creatures. The dance choreography they perform in the hive provides precise information as to where food sourcs can be found. The intricacy and complexity of the communication system… demonstrates a truly amzing capacity for bees to encode and communicate information in an abstract, symbolic way that would put to shame many a communications of GIS specialist let alone any architect (Von Frisch, 1965, took 40 years to map the dances). The code to the dance patterns was broken, almost by accident, by a mathematician who happened to be the daughter of a bee researcher. She recognised the patterns when projecting the properties of a six-dimensional flag manifold – a rare and obscure kind of mathematics – onto a two-dimensional space (Frank 1997). The entire repertory of bee dances with all of its innumerable parts and variations falls within a mathematical schema unknown to any architect. The only other known physical process to which such a mathematics applies concerns the quarks of quantum theory. This raises the speculative possibility that ‘the bees are somehow sensitive to what’s going on in the quantum world of quarks, that quantum mechanics is as important to their perception of the world as sight, sound and smell’.
[David Harvey 2000 Spaces of Hope, p. 201]
This is by far the most impressive thing I have read this week [well, considering it is Tuesday, and all...]. The following conclusions could be drawn, among others, of course:
1. superiority of humans my a***; 2. note that this woman Frank spent a lifetime deciphering the bees’ movements – that is dedication… chapeau! 3. the limits of my perception are the limits of my world; 4. what does that make of the question – what knowledge is appropriate for what analysis; 5. how to go from the idea to the realisation, from the potential to the actual, from the hope to the fulfillment without pain, without mild delusion, without growth and moments of weakness that jeopardise all…
work ain’t all in life, that much is sure, but somehow it manages to be at the centre of the themes covered in my thesis, along with (haalt iech fest…) temporality, possibility, closure, regulation, food, and placing.
menschlich, ach so menschlich. an ode to human fallibility and limits. or rather: a toast, for it is late!
what do blue flowers do to you?
i mean, what random associations do you make with blue flowers?
i’m reading ernst bloch’s Principle of Hope, so german romanticism was bound to come up at some point… 
suddenly i remember all kinds of poems we had to ruminate upon at school. ambivalent memory.
[photo rippled from wikipedia, free usage, photographer: Mariam Severin]
le temps de vivre (par boris vian).
Il a dévalé la colline
Ses pieds faisaient rouler des pierres
Là-haut entre les quatre murs
La sirène chantait sans joieIl respirait l’odeur des arbres
Avec son corps comme une forge
La lumière l’accompagnait
Et lui faisait danser son ombre
il m’est revenu à l’esprit soudain. la vie est toute légère aujourd’hui, tels les papillons qui volent sur mes murs ensemble avec les tortues.
le vent souffle à peine dans mon coeur et tu me rends forte.
je vous encourage à passer le dimanche en compagnie musicale du maestro vian. ici, ou ici par exemple.
