Friday 27 April 2012

The Grey


"Once more into the fray
Into the last good fight I'll ever know
Live and die on this day
Live and die on this day."

Joe Carnahan, director/writer.


The lines appear in the movie "The Grey", which I highly recommend. Reminiscent of Shakespeare's Henry V ("Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; / Or close the wall up with our English dead." III, 1, 1-2) and of Tennyson's The Last Charge of the Light Brigade.

Interesting spin-off: Rudyard Kipling's much overlooked The Last of the Light Brigade (I'm root-quoting, dudes, so Kipling's poem has little to do with the subject I started with).

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Stones



A pebble the shore yielded, I put in my pocket.
A rock the mountain gave, I stored in my satchel.
A stone my hand let go, I picked up again.
When I bent down its weight was that of a mountain.

Some stones I discarded. Some I threw as far as I could.
Some I skimmed across the ponds and lakes
During my peregrinations.

Some pebbles I assembled in towers for the dead.

Some rocks I quarried with my bare hands.
Some I polished on my skin.

There are stones which need not be hewn to build a house –
They lie on the tussocky plains, waiting to be pieced together.

Gemstones indeed are uncovered. No stone is heavier than them.
None more coveted. None more trenchant.

There were stone beads arranged in a pendant
Which lasted millennia. Mine were attached to a weak string:
They fell back into a river.

There are rocks which we use as pedestals, stairs, gallows.
There are rocks which shimmer at night.
Others are darker, and cover us in cold slabs.
Each older than all our ages added up.

Meandering near the Mouth of the Cow
Or down Khutumsang's ravine,
I have carried two obsidian pebbles,
A chunk of flint and one of fool's gold.

Stones always bear marks of a kind.
Pebbles always wash up for a reason.
Rocks always shape a path.

Tuesday 24 April 2012

Go clubbing


"You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."


John Griffith "Jack" London, American writer, adventurer, sailor (1876-1916)

Monday 23 April 2012

I know that I know (next to) nothing


"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.""


H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Tuesday 17 April 2012

Inner spirit


"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit."


Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965) 

Friday 13 April 2012

Lost and found


Here's a haiku I found in one of my notepads. It is dated November 8th, 2011, morning, Orchha, India.


Warm feeling of homeliness
Far away from kin and fatherland
So much happens over tea


Twenty-four hours later, my life took an entirely different turn. So much happens over tea.

Thursday 12 April 2012

Monday 9 April 2012

Another quiet night in Tours


Terrains de sport de l'île Aucard 

 Quai Paul Bert

Vue de la bibliothèque municipale et du pont de fil, du pont Wilson 


Rue Briçonnet 

Jardin Saint-Pierre le Puellier 

Place Plumereau 

Rue Colbert 

Passage du Coeur Navré 



Cathédrale Saint-Gatien, vue de la place Grégoire de Tours 

Rue Manceau 

Angle des rues Racine et de la Bazoche

Sunday 8 April 2012

Thunder and love


"El amor y el rallo dejan la ropa intacta y el corazón en cenizas."


Spanish proverb, untraced origin.

Great expectations


“There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.” 
Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes.






“I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen 'King Lear,' never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person, the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We could prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.” 
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita.






"Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation."

Elbert Hubbard, writer (1859-1915)






"We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation."

Ivan Illich, sociologist (1926-2002)

Friday 6 April 2012

Bridging minds


"Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass."


Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)

Thursday 5 April 2012

La triste fin du grand séquoia du jardin botanique de Tours



Quelques années auparavant :



Forward!


"Walking is also an ambulation of mind."

Gretel Ehrlich, novelist, poet and essayist (born 1946)


"I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards."

Abraham Lincoln



"He who would travel happily must travel light."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars (1939)



"There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right."

Paul Theroux, novelist and travel writer, The Happy Isles of Oceania (1992)

Monday 2 April 2012

Starkbierfest 2012 Munich


As the name suggests, the following pictures were taken during the Strong Beer Festival held in Munich.

It was a lot of fun. Good beer, good cheer, good band, good dirndl (typical Bavarian dress which I like immensely for the, well, for the view of women's attributes it provides; the male equivalent is called the lederhosen, and I was told isn't practical "if you're in a hurry to piss", which I guess must be the case quite often considering the number of the pints a lambda Bavarian downs in one sitting.) Warmhearted thanks to my friend who brought me there!









And here's a whiff of the ambiance:


Sunday 1 April 2012

Trip to Landsberg


My friend Johanna brought me to her parents' house in the countryside, about half an hour's train from Munich. Fresh air, fresh food from the garden, lunch on the terrace, horses, trees all around, hills. Cloudless blue sky and sun. Old, lovely house. Paintings old and new on the walls and antiquities everywhere. I cannot thank my friend enough for this getaway trip. I was quite serene after that.

On the way to the railway station, Johanna's parents drove us to Landsberg am Lech, fine little town about 65 kilometres west from Munich. Best known perhaps for its prison where Adolf Hitler was incarcerated after his first putsch in 1924. There he dictated and wrote Mein Kampf, together with Rudolf Hess. Quite famous really.

But all things considered, I prefer Rococo.

Klosterkirche, ceiling. 




End of Klosterkirche

Rococo Rathaus 

 Clock tower




Four pictures above: Mariä Himmelfahrt 

View from the riverbank

Lichen

The blind woman next to me fidgeting in her seat visibly uneasy brushed my arm as if in need of help with her train ticket but she tricked ...