Tsunami:

A reminder that the world can change in an instant. Remembering the last week of December that Keith and I spent on Karon Beach in Phuket and on Koh Phi Phi, in places that no longer exist.

I had just finished writing a year-end essay, preoccupied with the US election and my own personal rage. Words, pain, even our lives seem very small in the shadow of disaster.

aftermath

"I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says, be serious, be passionate, wake up."--Susan Sontag

Okay, finally got my act together and wrote the whole thing. Boxing Day 2004 can be found on DailyKos.

Solstice

They are still moving, out there, forming signs in the sky, I am sure about that, even though I can’t see them. But I saw them this morning, when I went to the bakery: the little strings of smoke that were coming from the chimneys in small clouds.

It looked like the houses were breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Haze. Puff. Haze. Puff.



I could have stood there, on the street, watching them, yet the cold was creeping through my shoes already. So I walked back home, where I left the frost covered shoes at the door, and slipped into a second pair of woollen socks. Warm and cozy, just like the shawl I wrapped around my shoulders.

Then tea and toast, coffee and croissant. And the sun rising, just when I placed the tray on the bed. At 8.35. The latest sunrise of the year.

"Solstice," I whispered.

The beginning of winter. Yet, at the same time, the turning point of the skies, of the world. From days that grow darker to days that grow lighter.

“Solstice,” the sun answered, and moved across the horizon.

Phone Poem

If the phone rings in a dream, should I answer?
If I answer, who will hear me?
Can silence hear?
Do the dead make calls?
Is my father returning the call I made
so many hears ago in a dream?
Does the operator who told me
the line was broken now call with good news,
that dead silence was only sleeping,
that beyond all names and all numbers,
beyond all known paths, beyond the pause
between heartbveats, between breath stopped
and the gap of his going,
she has found him waiting for news
of weather in the world he loved,
of new children learning to walk,
on the sweet crust of the earth?
Will he hear my message?
If I hear silence,
Is the silence listening?

By Nancy Willard

a link to the world

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i just came across it. a link to the world. beheld in the blogger submenu at the bottom of the dashboard. one single word, written there. one single word, not telling about the enormity it leads to:

more...

and there it opens. the page that links to the world. the page that lists all those blogs that were updated in the last 10 minutes. their names alone forming a poem in time

The words we cannot say
hereweareagain
Accidentally in love

Across the Pond
Facades are Real
My World I Dream

Moments of Silence
A walk or Time
shining through

I want to tell you
hola
twalala
hello

antsy travel bug

This week I learned that the software project I'm working on is late and that they won't need my time until January 10. The bad news is I could have been out of the country by now and had time to go somewhere from my List. (Plus I won't get paid and it's not a great week to find clients, so I'm feeling a little insecure.)

On the positive side, I've been contemplating all kinds of last-minute trips--Hawaii, Mexico, the desert. Still, I'm hesitating. Two nights ago, I found an amazing deal to Cancun and kept refreshing the web page until 2 a.m., but just couldn't get myself to click and buy it. I have booked a short trip down the coast after Christmas with a girlfriend; a few blissful days of drinking wine and lounging around. Maybe we'll see whales or elephant seals.

The hesitation is not like me: usually I leap at the chance to get on a plane to the unknown. But so far I'm resisting. In part because it's been so sunny and clear here--flamingo pink sunsets. I walked along the bay today, saw an egret, played with a dog at the beach.

Will I know when it's right? or do I need someone to push me off the cliff and tell me to buy that ticket before another great fare expires?

It's as if there's someone I'm supposed to meet and I just haven't figured out where I need to be to do it...

hometown moment

today, my mum went with me to see the Christmas market in town, and to maybe buy some small gifts there. yet as always, the best moments were free of charge.

Bahnhofswächterhäuschen

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i just came across a great German word: Bahnhofswächterhäuschen.
the thing about German is, that you can combine words to specify their meaning. it works like this:

Train - Bahn
Yard - Hof
Train Station - Bahnhof
Guard - Wächter
Train Station Guard - Bahnhofswächter
House - Haus
Train Station Guard House - Bahnhofswächterhaus
Train Station Guard Little House - Bahnhofswächterhäuschen

smile. Häusschen – that is another twist. in German, you can turn things small by adding some variation of -chen. this way, you also get to throw in the äs, ös and üs:

cat - Katze. small cat - Kätzchen.
tree - Baum. small tree - Bäumchen.
river - Fluss. small river - Flüsschen.

and..
bye - Tschüß. small bye - Tschüßchen!

it's all about ourselves

Yesterday i went to a conference about psychoanalytical views on photography. One of the speakers brought this:


Camille Silvy
French, negative 1858, print 1860s

And said it represents peace.

Well, to me it doesn't. It's dark, the skies are threatning (and made of two negatives), people are looking at the photographer and not to what they are doing. It's just that...dark and mastered by human mind.

And basically, that is how the world goes, right? My peace won't be the peace of someone else and that's why so many breakdowns in feelings and words occur.

Lua

Oracle Night

Sunday late afternoon. The outside light fading while I read the last pages of Paul Auster's “Oracle Night” – wishing the novel wouldn’t end, wishing this story about writing stories would go on and on. But then, maybe it does.

"Thoughts are real", he said. "Words are real. Everything human is real, and sometimes we know things before they happen, even if we aren’t aware of it. We live in the present, but the future is inside us every moment. Maybe that’s what writing is all about. Not recording events from the past, but making things happen in the future.”

holiday lights

holiday lights ~ warm even though the light does not radiate directly from the sun. in the northern hemisphere, they brighten the darkest days of the year.

Circular movements

At dusk, on the way from place to place, circles of light.

Paths crossed

somewhere in this Europe.

I still compare the cold i feel here with the cold i felt while i was in Germany. All this to remind me that i don't like the cold but i can live with it and that i would be far happier in a sunny place. Kind of that life lesson of living your life with average because if it's ok, it's good and the better is just, well, for the best.

Ok, i guess i really miss the sun. That's all.

Lua

City Crossing

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Cars going. Cars coming. Cars whizzing through the night, in endless streams, forming a line of red leading inwards, a line of white leading outwards. On the side of a four lane road, a fairy tale house with three towers and seven roofs, full alit, shining like an ufo that fell from the sky. The door open. The view to the floor open from the street. No one there, in the floor, in the rooms behind the window. A life size still life.

In town, mazes of metal, of stone. Two yellow buses crossing on a bridge, in the very moment the traffic light underneath turns green. Three trees on the left side, remnants of the time before asphalt. Prisoners of the streets they are, there is no way out for them, not to the left, not to the right. So they stand. Reaching for the sky with their black arms.

At the train station, a sign saying Agra. As if it was close. As if it wasn't two continents away. Between a media maxistore and a company called clockhouse: a plastic half moon, dangling in the air, accompanied by fallen stars.

At a crossing, a woman in a long white coats. On the other side of the street, a guy in an orange jacket. Maybe their eyes will meet, somewhere, for a moment, while they cross to the other side. Maybe we all met, somewhere, in between streets.