East and west

Two sunsets one sunrise...

Life & Times of Michael K

Life & Times of Michael K by JM Coetzee is all about the voyage, the road, the process, never about the result. The quest is more important than the finding. And finally it is all about the stories…The point if view of the teller is the story is first the all knowing author and then the care taker of Michael K. trying to know his stories, treeing to save him and in the process being a changed human being. The book ’The Life & Times of Michael K.’ is a fundamental anti-war book. The other protagonists are Time the flow of it and Freedom. A must read.

Quotes:

* Now surely I have come as far as a man can come; surely no one will be mad enough to cross these plains, climb those mountains search these rocks to find me; surely now that in all the world only I know where I am, I can think of myself as lost. p66

* But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over he face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids.

* He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around quietly minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand.

* At last he spoke: I am not in the war.

The Last Post in Doel

Doel is a small village in the harbor of Antwerp that has to be flattened so that some of the 100 largest Maersk ships can dock here. How many towns have to disappear for these ships? How many people's lives are uprooted and in turmoil. The same happened in Ruigoord, near Amsterdam. At least the town is still standing and it has been turned into an art enclave, where artists work, people visit but where it is forbidden to live. The Ruigoorders have opened an embassy in Doel as a token of support. As far as I am concerned lets close the nuclear plant in Doel and let the people live in Doel. The last post at the last action.

Summerstorm

I have learned and felt today that hailstones on your head hurt. Raindrops on your nose however are gentle greetings from a faraway brook where poets are born... or so it seems after the ice.

Jazz Middelheim II

Saturday night was great. Chet Mood with Philip Catherine. Nice sweet atmosphere on a languid summer's night. And then came Toots Tielemans with his Dutch Trio. Toots is a Jazz aficionado since 70 years. He and his harmonica and the three great musicians on the base, the drums and the piano giving joy and beauty. The gentle working together, the amicable atmosphere was just contagious. T.T. played several songs for his wife, it was mothers day after all, and as an encore he gave us a heartbreaking rendering of 'Ne me quite pas'... I chocked up, tears streaming... The lyrics by Jacques Brel floated into my head through this exquisite painful piece: I'll be the shadow of your dog, I'll bring a drop of rain from a country where it doesn't rain.... Fragile breaking sound and feeling. Melancholy and Romance on a summer's night in the park in Antwerp.

Jazz Middelheim

With a friend from work I go to concerts. We both have a longing for live music. So Jazz Middelheim it was yesterday and will be next Sunday. The Flat Earth Society was wonderful: melodious, innovative, funky, a big band with space for all personalities. Feel good music with oodles of quality and good unconventional music. Then as the apotheosis of the evening was to come Zorn, Lauri Anderson and her husband Lou Reed. They had performed this work once for a benefit in The Stones in New York. It was difficult. If it had been a cd I would have switched it off. Zorn was aggressive and arrogant overplayed the other two. Or so it seemed to me. In the few 'quieter moments' there were brief glimpses of possible beauty and understanding. Of the people who stayed one quarter really got it and were applauding enthusiastically. I need a teacher for the post experimental free music post avant garde sound of uncoordinated self-expression ...

Memories

This shop, the church, the general layout of the village, the ground plan of the cemetery and the local inflection and pronunciation of German is about all that is left in the material world of my mother's youth. Of course the new village will never replace the memories of a happy childhood during years of holidays spend here. That place will magically always exist, maybe just as a myth. So I felt lost and forlorn. The ravages of WW II are still visible, legible in these German towns. Their hearts have been ripped out by allied bombs and the cheap modernity that came instead is sad testimony to it all. In most cities it was a chance lost, in Duisburg the fountains and the water in the city and the walk made it all alright. Just as did a meeting with a poet and a pick nick in the park. Thus new memories are made.