a collage of my voyage to Turkey, have finally made a web album. check, check, check off of my to-do list. a few other places up next... in the meantime, here's the slideshow-- still working on labels & the map, but the basic pics, below. I visited, in this order: Antalya, Olympia, Cappadoccia, Istanbul, Troy (with a view of Lesbos further down the coast), Selcuk, Pergamum and the Aescleipon, Ephesus, and the beach and treehouses southwest of Antalya.
Aha, have done some research and found a source on the previous post:
" Thomas Hardy said the movement of the Earth's shadow over the Moon had an "imperturbable serenity". The refracted light is red. If it were possible to look back at the Earth during a lunar eclipse then the rim of the Earth would appear a glowing red. This colour effect is the stuff of myth and legend. An account in 331 BC said: "...all her light was sullied and suffused with the hue of blood." Some ancients called it "the time of the blood of the Great Mother's wisdom", linking the Moon's colour with menstruation. This was a natural thing to do given the link between the length of the month and human fertility. In 1503, Christopher Columbus, stranded in the Caribbean, used a lunar eclipse he knew would take place to impress the natives and secure respect and fear, as well as a regular supply of food." from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3020737.stm
Here's a video of this morning's event filmed from LA to music:
Here's one where it really turns red, also to music:
Well, I pretty much slept through it, but supposedly it was spectacular, with the moon turning blood-red early this morning. Now I have the next one in my schedule book. It had to do with Stifter, but I'm saving expounding on that for the next Mondfinsternis. The idea of climbing out and up to see it reminds me of the Calvino story in Cosmicomics where the surface of the moon is gathered and harvested. I think a Mondfinsternis celebration is a good occasion for reading moon-related material like Faust and poems and more by candlelight with some wine.
I have noticed something perhaps noteworthy, minorly personal. Before, I've always lived with or had women all around me, and found that often we were all menstrual at the same time & the currents of our bodies somehow synched into one another after a few months. This wasn't really coinciding with anything else.
This year has been my first experience ever living with a guy who is not related to me, and having my office be otherwise all male, and not so many women around. And have found that my cycle has become much more regular, and also, always coincides with the full moon. Nature is interesting indeed, and the moon-- Semele in myth-- probably turns blood red during an eclipse for a good reason, but I have to admit that I find it unsettling that this is something I have no control over.
Perhaps there is comfort, however, in feeling supervised by something bigger than oneself.
So I titled this blog "Denksteine" anticipating that it would eventually be like some sort of Arlington for all of my residual literary thoughts which needed a decent burial. Also in reference to the Bunte Steine, of course. And referencing things one thinks about from day to day. I don't think I like that title much anymore, so need to change it. The first idea is too depressing, the second may be too obscure, and the last a bit heavy and unpolished. It also sounds a bit passive- aggressive in terms of just thowing my thoughts out there like I'm throwing rocks at something. I haven't decided what to do about it instead, yet. And besides that, have had a hankering for British literature these days, which does not seem to fit with the concept here. Maybe I will call it "Ohne Umschlag." We will see.... but I need to get on with my post if I want to go out tonight.
I've decided to be a bit more religious about keeping track of people, and my current project is people in Germany. An aunt here in the states sent me family tree software so I can chart everything out, another little project I want to do before anyone else dies, here or there. I have to write about them a little bit because I miss them and my pals there these days. Once again, not much to do with Stifter. My dad's gone on another bike trip to France with his current girlfriend. He has no interest in meeting his relations in Germany. He did the same thing when I was living there, without even bothering to come see me. He's still stuck in some of the "shame of being in any way Kraut" from his impressionable years during the 60's and so on. He can't handle the guilt, I think, along with whatever guilt I might try to "assign" (in his words) him for the divorce. His sister felt the guilt of being "distantly Kraut" so strongly, that she converted to Judaism. None of my family in the states speak German with the exception of my grandad. And they all think I'm SUCH a dork. Sometimes, though, I think I like my German family more than I like my biofamily in the U.S. Naja.
Recent post-- indeed, a real letter when everything else is per email-- from relatives in Hamburg; I don't know what to call these people and "daughter of my grandfather's cousin and her husband" is a bit long, they're more like close aunts and uncles now. So Onkel Reinhard is still in chemo for his Krebs, but it looks like it's going well, Tante Helga also doing well and sent me a Marienkafer she'd gebastelt in honor of her sister, who passed away last year. Their son Jan, who's about the same age as I am, finished his degree and got a job in Bremen, back to where Tante Helga comes from, and is commuting and then will move there.
The offspring of all of my distant relatives over there are all around my same age within a year or two, and that's been really cool. One's an actress in Berlin, one teaches German and English in a highschool near Bonn and just got married AND had a baby, Jan's in business, and another one just opened his engineering firm near Konstanz. My parents' generation there is about where my parents' generation is here now. My great-gradfather was really the only one who left southern Germany, all of the other family members there stayed put, for a number of generations, and don't look like they're going anywhere soon. How's that for stability. I think about moving there sometimes, but I don't think it's a good place for me to try to get a date.
The last post I got from southern Germany contained a description of the coming of spring there, in terms of the mountainsides becoming green and the wine vines growing and Lake Konstanz and the flowers and so on. At the time, was also reading Stifter concurrently and I could not help thinking of one when thinking of the other, and vice versa. Such wealth of Natur. Also, a postcard of the Stoffelberg, which happens to look like a pair of breasts from far away and up close. I guess that fits with Stifter, too.
My next project is to read another Stifter story and make a some literary doodles about it.
I was happy to see that one's in fact in the Belvedere; before learning this, I had felt bad that he is not so recognized for his paintings, though the Bergkristall was in fact in part inspired by someone else's painting. I've found his stories to be very visual and easy to imagine, that's perhaps part of the thrill. The first picture reminds me of Boehlingen & Singen in Germany, where the buildings which are 200 years old are still standing:
Wiener Vorstaedthaeuser. Gemaelde, 1939. (Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Wien)
The second looks like it could be anywhere; I like the distribution of light and shadow and the folding at the back. I have also been experimenting with putting my hand over different parts of it; if one covers the right-hand portion, the left cliff looks like a dog or a bear, with its paws falling over the waterfall. If one covers the shadow part of this on the left, it looks as though the part with light is a face, perhaps of a young boy with dirty blonde hair. It also looks as though the part in the shadow on the right contains a masculine profile which is looking toward the cliff in the light. Turned upside-down, it looks as though there is a baby being born or wrapped up in something and hanging upside-down in the right-hand part which is in shadow, or as though there is another face on top of it, perhaps a mother holding a kid, or just two people sleeping upside-down in the rock face. I would have to see the real thing to check this out for sure, I think.
Felspartie. Ölgemälde von Adalbert Stifter On the left is the dark part, upside-down.
A fairly recent time I was compelled to blush and giggle when reading a picture upside-down was while visiting a cafe in Munich after a falling-out and before going to see a play, while on vacation. I was sitting there and Carla handed me her business card. She told me to look at it upside-down, put the top kunckle of my righthand index finger on the c, in "carla" and extend my finger over the "carla" down to the lefthand corner. This took awhile in German, but it worked. I have found the business online and turned that image upside-down, too, though I don't think one can see it so well here:
Perhaps later will add ones by Stifter of the soft moon "eating up" the sun.
Nothing whatsoever to do with Stifter this time. Except for maybe the Schubert in the first film mentioned below, as he was a contemporary of Stifter's, but I don't know if Stifter really even liked him.
Just getting out some ideas, like one needs to shake water out of one's ears when emerging from a swimming pool... or ocean... or, well, a little goldfish bowl as one packs up one's little plastic castle, or from some sort of academic cage-dancing. It's actually sort of like the sensation one has when one has climbed up a tree or a big rock and is not quite sure how to get down again without breaking something... one could always take to the treetops, as in the Calvino story. My present approach is to clip a few ideas up on some sort of clothesline; it seems to be the best answer right now. Meine Waesche. ------------------------------------------------------ One theme I always wanted to do for a film series but didn't have the chance to do was a series called "Gefaengnis/Gefangen/Gefaengene." I also think it would be good to do concurrently with the "crime scenes" course. Perhaps inspired by the cages hanging off the Dom in Muenster, where the heretics or others like unsuspecting grad students can get put away for awhile.
In this series, which features some classic "girls of the slammer," (all the best women seem to end up in jail at some point, whether innocent or guilty-- (update on 8/23: I don't read the news enough, I see, and today learned about the slammer for Hilton, Lohan, and some other girl. I was not thinking of them when I wrote the above) I would include:
--4 Minutes, the "hammer" German film which just played as part of the SIFF : here's a clip-- (there's also this wonderful scene I couldn't find a clip of, where the prisoner is forced to eat a letter she wrote, which the piano teacher didn't like):
and another:
--Esmas Geheimnis-- Barbara Albert, I think. --von Trotta: Rosa Luxembourg or Schwestern/Balance des Gluecks or Fangschuss --Das Experiment --Bandits --Funny Games --Berlin is in Germany --Der Untergang --Jakob der Luegener --more about the DDR, maybe Shaut auf dieser Stadt or Stille nach dem Schuss --Fassbinder: Effi Briest or Voss or Petra van Kant --Szabo: Oberst Redl, or Mephisto --Deutschland, bleiche Mutter, for the Bluebeard story part --Schloendorff: Blechtrommel, Toerless, or Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum --Die Leben der anderen --Novembermond --Herzog's Strosek, Kaspar Haeuser, or Rescue Dawn (English)
maybe: --Maria Stuart (English) --Madame X --Gegen die Wand --M: eine Stadt sucht.... --addiction films: Bildnis einer Trinkerin, Journey to Kafiristan, Veronika Voss --Maedchen in Uniform (German)/Loving Annabelle (English) --Caged (English) --Bound (English) --Klavierspielerin --Das Schreckliche Maedchen --Der neunte Tag (Schloendorff, I think) Hope I didn't forget anything.
I don't think I would want to show this series, because it seems like it could be upsetting, or I was at least sufficiently upset by Der Untergang so as not to really want to see it again, so I would have someone else do it, or most of it.
There. That's that. Wieder frei. Jetzt steig ich auf.
Which leads me into the library as I trip over some discursive fabric (Hoppla!), or, perhaps, demonstrate some stockholm syndrome. There are also books to go along with this, like:
--Something about the Russian queens and princesses imprisoned in Novodevichy Cloisters in Moscow. --Ang San Suu Kyi, the female president imprisoned in Myanmar --Cankar's "The Ward of our lady of Mercy" --Courasche --Jungfrau von Orleans --Maria Stuart (Schiller & Jelinek) --Sarah Waters-- Selena's Geister, don't know the English title. --Kafka's Hungerkunstler --Vaclav Havel's prison book --Che Guevara maybe more later.
I will end on a note of going onto other battles now, because Xena is always seeming to escape some sort of prison. Does it match my life? I don't know. I'm not planning to go "home," and I don't like the idea of running around killing people, but it I would enjoy flipping around in the air like that. Emotionally exhausted, I can relate to, but that fades. Here's the clip:
