Frothy Folly-Fallen Harpy

Shakespearean insults you gotta love them. It's the poor joy of verbal expression. One day when somebody was swearing and my oldest daughter was still very small, I remarked to her that this swear word was rather dull and we set on inventing new ones. We spent a wonderful hour doing this. Here is the Shakespearean Insult Kit:

Two of my favourites: fawning flap-mouthed flax-wench, vain hell-hated maggot-pie

You Take What Is Yours And I Take Mine

To please a friend I gave Peter Sloterdijk's speech on Stress and Freedom a try though I knew from the outset that Sloterdijk as always would piss me off because I always get the feeling that he is a mere apologist of the status quo.

At about the same time Arvo Pärt entered my life. Since the thing about Sloterdijk's text that turned me off the most was his concept of freedom I told my friend that my idea of freedom was rather expressed or better encompassed by Arvo Pärt's Magnificat and that it was a kind of freedom that Sloterdijk would never grasp.



Later I realised that this friend of mine was arranging a salon in Berlin with Sloterdijk as a guest, he even invited me, but Berlin is further away than Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam or London ;).

 "The remuneration of the just is included in the effort itself, her/his remuneration can be found in the participation in the divine order, a remuneration of virtue by virtue itself, and, vice versa, to work because of a calling, to work like an artist." - Emmanuel Levinas, Judaism and Revolution

Takes One To Know One

There are a lot of instances where one recognises oneself in other people. It's also hilarious - or rather not - that other people who do not share the same trait misinterpret what they are witnessing. For example for a shy person it's therefore gratifying to meet somebody who instantly on meeting one for the first time perceives this shyness and poses a wonderful and positive paraphrase for what this is, as happened to my daughter. Then learning in the same instance that the person who said this knows because he is, too. In fact before I only had experienced people referring to it as something utterly negative like when I was still a small child and my parents wanted me to talk to somebody I did not know ending with the remark: "You aren't shy, are you?!"

Nothing

"...You'd have asked a manufacturer about the conditions of his factory; but nobody seems to consider the conditions under which poetry is manufactured. It's done by doing nothing." - Father Brown in The Mirror of the Magistrate by Chesterton



On a different note, there is no depiction of Father Brown whether on film or in TV that even comes close to the books. Most of them seem to settle for the quirky outward appearance of Father Brown but seem to miss that if anything he is a sort of profiler, though not exactly for he admits that he solves the crimes by committing them himself. The other topos that he is constantly in trouble with his superiors is also something that can not be found in the books, instead he states once that solving crimes or rather sins was suggested as a clerical or spiritual exersise to him.

Inbrunst - Full of Inner Fire

This is a wonderful exercise to get your spirit flying. Just sing along with the Eh Eh Eh Oh Oh Oh Ah Ah Ah Eh Eh Eh.

Home Sweet Home

Just a few kilometres down the river Rur or Roer in Dutch (different spelling the same pronunciation), the Dutch village of St Odilienberg, a view so beautiful that everytime we pass it I have to watch it realising that the beauty is so unreal, almost otherworldly

.

Paradox

I've never heard anything coming even close to it, yet Mr Pond seems to know:

"He knew enough about men to know that a man must have a friend, if possible a female friend, to talk to till all is blue."

And yet shortly before Mr Pond had declared in some length that women are notoriously bad listeners, meaning from a speech they will extract what they want to hear and forget about the rest. The one quality this friend to whom one talks to till all is blue should possess is being a good listener though - and especially in Captain Gahagan's case.

G K Chesterton 'The Paradoxes of Mr Pond' - 'The Crime of Captain Gahagan' - which turns out to be a pretty romantic one by the way.