Month: juni 2018
The be-who-thy-be new age bullshit
I watched a well-intended speech today for fifteen year old level A students. The gist was that life happens according to your own internal clock, not according to the timetable imposed on us by society. It's okay not to be married at 30 or graduating after 25 or getting your first job at 27. Did ...
Reading: The Hug by Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn (1929-2004) was an English poet. I've read another verse (tamer and hawk) by his hand before. Today I read a simple poem that says something I find lovely. The Hug It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined Half of the night with our old friend Who'd showed us in the end To a ...
Wildpoepen
In Zuid-Korea is net als overal op het noordelijk halfrond de lente uitgebroken. Een paar dagen geleden ging ik met mijn dochter van vijf naar het park. Ik speelde een deuntje op mijn viool en zij danste. We deden een wals, iets mozartachtigs, afgewisseld met ruige, onzuivere klezmer. Zie dit eenvoudige gegeven: park, dochter, muziek, ...
Conversation and Correspondence
It has been said - I heard the physicist Freeman Dyson relating it - that the human urge to converse is akin to the termite's instinct to build castles. Perhaps the truth of this becomes most clear in the edge case of the hermit who converses or corresponds with an imaginary interlocutor. Henry David Thoreau ...
on this day
meet me
mean me
mood me magic
make me surface
mask me free
mark me present
on this day
Artwork by Ian Bourgeot
Reading: Death of a friend by Rob van Moppes
Rob van Moppes (b. 1948) is a Dutch writer. I am his friend on social media and discovered this tender song-like poem today, so I decided to include it in my series. Death of a friend We met only two years before. Eyes sparkled when she spoke. We talked about the masks we wore, Considered ...
Reading: Gacela of the Dark Death by Lorca
Lorca (1898-1936) was one of the greatest Spanish poets of the twentieth century. I have read another of his poems here before. Today I read some morbid text I stumbled upon on the Internet. This is a 1973 translation by Robert Bly: Gacela of the Dark Death I want to sleep the sleep of the apples, ...