Agape

Hin-gabe

devotion

dedication

more passive than passive - Levinas

to abandon oneself

to become a gift





It's quite interesting that we can only actually see ourselves as a reflection in the mirror or in the other, that is before the advent of photography culminating in the selfie.

Father Damien or Damiaan 

Hold On II

Trust and Faith

Hold On I

Inevitably There - Necessarily Valued

...

You neighbor of the Danube!

You working-man of the Rhine, the Elbe, or the
Weser! you working-woman too!

You Sardinian! you Bavarian! you Swabian! Saxon!
Wallachian! Bulgarian!

You citizen of Prague! you Roman! Neapolitan!
Greek!

You lithe matador in the arena at Seville!

...

Each of us inevitable,

Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her
right upon the earth,

Each of us allowed the eternal purport of the earth,

Each of us here as divinely as any is here...

 

Salut au Monde! - Walt Whitman

 

There's a Limit

As Rembrandt has to learn in a heart-rending way in Nightwatching. All his art cannot resurrect Saskia.

Was soll man sich ins Grab mitnehmen?

What should one take into the grave?

"Du schweigst, sagte er (Václav Talich) zu Křížek. Du weißt doch am besten, daß der Mensch sich nur das ins Grab mitnimmt, was er im Leben verschenkt hat./ You are silent, he (Václav Talich) said to Křížek. You know best that the only things a human being can take into his grave are those things he has given away." - Jaroslav Seifert

Utéct - Escape

Both are being aware of the fact that he will get killed during the battle the next day, as she tells him to run, he being the radical knows that all will be lost if he does.

The Matador*

* 




At about 47:00 minutes: "Give us a taste of your rare affection!"

Eyes Not Even Blinking

When did I disappear?!

Customs - The Matador



Actually it's about the actor, who gives it all he got (which is a fucking lot). And that's something I cherish since I'm tired of all those cultivators of their own image nowadays. I know it's demanding but just to please me...

Confession

If somebody asks me about my profession - which spitefully happened a lot recently - I would rather draw something across my head. Sometimes I resort to simply telling them that I've studied art, which is something that can not be argued. Harder yet, when one has to fill in some blank...The next time I'll write self-employed.

For Heaven's Sake

get out and get to know people. It's becoming clearer ever so more that only knowledge of human nature can save us from bot and social media imposed lies.

And then find the courage to speak up against those very lies.

The Sweetest Thing

is a companion.

Which makes me wonder for how much longer "sweet" will keep its positive connotation nowadays?!

Who's Jealous of Who?!

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all:
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call -
All mine was thine before you hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest
By willful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

Sonnet 40

My thoughts about this Sonnet

Shakespeare is talking to a jealous lover, who demands all his love for him- or herself. But, says Shakespeare, even if I loved somebody else, this will not diminish my love for you at all. Actually you demand the very thing of me that you are not willing to give me, which is your unconditional love. You are even using my love for you against me. You want to possess all of me - he obviously still loves the addressee, since he calls him/her "gentle thief" -. Your jealous love is even worse than what an enemy could do to me (for I love you). Yet I love you still, even your nasty traits, but the ultimate danger of your attitude is that we might end up as enemies.

So in the end jealousy is probably not even a feature of love.

Noble Confrontation

Communion in contact

We cannot be without it

Gentle Confrontation

Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all:
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call -
All mine was thine before you hadst this more.
Then if for my love thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed if thou this self deceivest
By willful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty;
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spites, yet we must not be foes.

Shakespeare, Sonnet 40

Be sure all love is but one

Random Acts of Kindness

"Und ich erschrak in diesem Augenblick bei dem Gedanken, ich könnte sterben und all das Unglaubliche, das Wirklichkeit geworden war, alles könne dahingehen...
Und mich überkam der Wunsch, alles aufzuschreiben, so wie es gewesen war, damit die anderen Menschen es lesen konnten, doch auf eine Weise, die ich "das Malen aller dieser Bilder" nenne..."

"And I was alarmed at this moment by the thought, I could die and all the impossible, that had become reality, everything would be gone...
And I was overcome by the wish to write down everything like it had been for the other people to read, but in a way that I term "the painting of all these pictures"..."

Bohumil Hrabal, Ich habe dem englischen König gedient/ I served the King of England

The Dynamics of What is Actually Happening

Though the gesture might be simple, yet depicting it might be a challenge.

Just like the complex motion when Hans returns to Krista after he had been pleading for his life and she had let him go. There he stands ready to take on the guilt and ready to take her revenge and by letting her hit him he becomes what he proclaims in the end - innocent.

And many happy returns of this day ringing out to Czechia...

Intimate Confrontation

until I finally get it, nice try though

The Intimate Confrontation

Never forget: We're in this together

Out of Your Bounteousness

overflow

Jest

and you will still be floating wild and easy, free and wonderful, while others are already withering.

And then there was poor Pavel, whose Eastern European kind of humour was taken too seriously. Stupid enraged parents wanted to have him expelled, because he wanted his guitar students to pay him ( a small amount of) money if they  played  the note too long or too short. Poor Pavel, one may joke about many things, but not money. My daughter was told to bribe him with sweets when she had not practice at home. I always thought it was a joke, but she insisted and so I bought him sweets, which pretty soon had him railing that he was getting fat.

Spread

Tranquility

Something they fear the most that you look around and find that your actual needs are but few.

Be tranquil and don't let yourself be lulled by their hustle.

Sneaking

Looking at people who look at people looking at the very thing that they the first ones have created and seing the smile on their faces.

This can oviously tell a lot about the creative person and be sure that I always adore this attitude for it reveals a bounteous soul.


twinkle-toed

All My Defences

are futile against such wonder.

Oh Belgium, how could I ever resist a country in which natural nobility is so rich, in which there is a Baron Ensor

and Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans genreally known as Toots Thielemans.

Inbetween

So art could be a catalyst and maybe within the blank spaces the author leaves for the recipient to fill, in order to make this person experience something that is only possible here.

Communion

Brothers Gonna Work it Out

or the week of brotherliness at the  Frari in Venice or how we dabbled in King Lear, but almost turned it into a tragicomedy

So I had enough of the vanities and the power games going on in the class during our trip to Venice in 1997, and since we were staying in a student hotel near the Frari, which translates into "brothers" indicating the Franscicans, who run this place, I quit and went into the church. All the while - and I'm not making this up - an electric storm was coming down outside, while I was happy to find out that there actually was a service going on at the church. I sat down in front of Titian's Assumption and listened to intercessions put forward by the participants reflecting brotherliness among people, for as I learned they were celebrating the week of brotherliness. At some point even I was invited to come forward, but because I do not actually speak Italian I gestured and declined their kind offer. Anyway I was very relieved afterwards and the air was very clear after the storm.

So I went back to our place we were staying, where in the meantime my professor had been left alone by the others. Like King Lear he had to find out the hard way that he was powerless. His vanity had him consider a little scheme where he would choose those students who would have the honour of accompanying him to have a meal at a restaurant. Yet apparently nobody wanted to play along. Thus I said I would join him and we had a wonderful little dinner, I still remember that I had some great porcini polenta. The rest of the week was very calm and we had some fun, e.g. finding out about the traghetto, but then I had to leave a little bit earlier because I felt the great urge to attend a symposium in Düsseldorf. So tragedy struck again. For my professor was suffering from the early stages of Parkinson's disease and he couldn't very well carry heavy objects, but he would have loved to take a copy of a catalogue of the Vienna Group, which was lying for anybody to take away for free at the Austrian pavillon, back home. Especially because he knew some of the artists personally, but nobody would help him.

Skating

So Noble Prize winning poet Jaroslav Seifert considers the coincidence that he might have been skating together with Lenin as a kid in Prague  because Lenin was allegedly frequenting the same haunts as he did. And then ten plus years from there he used to meet with his friends in front of a bust of Lenin.

And all the while a second image comes to my mind, which is Gene Wilder as rabbi rather skating with the kids in Poland than studying. Therefore when the Jews in San Franscico ask for a rabbi, he is sent to them. I guess because he is considered to be expendable ;)!

Kompromiss Kompromittieren

Why would Cyrano fight the compromise, when usually it's not bad to come to terms with one another, it's even more the epitome of the art of politics?



Know the shame of it, compromise is bad, when it exposes, and worst if it exposes somebody else.

Learn How To Handle This

Two thoughts for today

The impossible is to fully realize that every human being is a singular person, a whole complex of categories, but never just this.

Also today my grandparents' garden came to my mind. Whenever did I last climb the huge cherry tree and gorged myself with the first cherries of the year?! It must have been before I grew allergic to them.

The Good Life

What do you need your luxury to compensate for

"There can be no right life in the wrong one." - Theodor W. Adorno

or

"Great lords have their pleasures, but the people have fun." - Montesquieu

Let's Talk About Beauty

It's a misconception to think that beauty lies mainly in the regularity of a person's features or just on the surface.








So somebody once called me beautiful to my face. In hindsight I'm sure that it was due to my radiation - btw somebody once called me radiant -, for at the time I was feeling pretty marvellous. It transpired.

Du hääss mech aajekieke

Enchanté! The look of covetousness or maybe love...

Remembering the look that Richard Harris gave the young and pretty woman, who was asking him for an autograph at the stage door after a performance of Pirandello's Henry IV in London in September 1990.

Trust

Why would I retort, "I am the walrus" if somebody asks me about an egg man?!
Am I the walrus?!
At least sometimes I'm doing quite weird things like watching movies in a language I do not actually speak, without subtitles, and still it's marvellous to see how much one understands if the actors are really good.
I just want to sit and listen, please tell me for I am a curious person...



O, learn to read what silent love has writ!
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. - Sonnet 23, William Shakespeare

The Rest is Silence

...but only at the very end.

There are too many voices I loved, that have fallen silent in the past years. Due to resignation because they being mostly the voices of reason have been shouted down by hate and egomaniacal ignorance. I especially miss my friend Thomas, with whom I had so wonderful discussions that another friend called us poets - though I'm certainly not ;) - even though he is from Kenia and doesn't understand a single word of German.
There is at least one more important lesson to be learned from Jaromír Hanzlík's Cyrano: Never give up, even if the world's ignorance hits you, even if other people gather the fruits of your achievement. Life is indeed only worth living if you go for it.

Genuinely Heartfelt

Pavel and me shaking hands, while he remembered his wife giving birth to their daughter and I remembered giving birth to my first daughter.

Dirt

I love those dirty hands,
those hands that create,
those hands that care,
those hands that won't let you down,
those hands that are there...



On the other hand I do remember my daughter telling me about her teacher, who wouldn't plant his vegetables in  "Dreck" (dirt or soil) like the local dialogue suggest, but rather in "Erde" (soil). The local farmer certainly would smile at this because just like the English translation suggests "Dreck" and "Erde" are sometimes soil and just don't ask what it is made of...