which i read right after i watched this with the beautiful kaka goal. i am, predictably enough now, beginning to believe in signs and portents and whatnots. in a nice way, may i add.
feeling a little manically pleased.

and incidentally, s and i read the hornby only a few days back. what a wonderful read.

today is documentedly the anniversary of his death, but arguably also the anniversary of his birth.

i have no qualms at all saying that i am grateful for him.

like a says, it doesn't really matter that we here don't really understand our german. we want to listen to celan, anyway.
and felstiner, i think, is good indeed to celan.

Nandigram urbs parva aut pagus in regione Medinipur est. Administrator primus Bengalensis volebat in Nandigram multas officinas facere. Deinde populus qui in Nandigram vitam in pace vivebant, timuerunt. Illi agros ipsos perdere timuerunt. Agricolae, enim, obtestabantur et contra dicebant. Per tres menses acerbitas inter ordinem potestatis et agricolas maxima fuit. Heri quum custodes armati ordinis potestatis Bengalensis in Nandigram intrare volebant, agricolae agros et domos ipsos ex aggressoribus cum vitis servare suis tentabant. Sed, isti custodes sclopeta parabant et multos agricolas necaverunt. Non solum viri, sed etiam pueri parvi et mulieres periebant. Isti custodes corpora in flumine mittebant.

Nos omnes, non solum cives urbis Kolkatae, sed etiam nationis Indiae, istud scelus damnamus. Volumus fortiter pacem in Nandigram reditum.

et

'Of course, you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.'

[C]onfess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write...

- why is it unlikely that julius caesar said 'veni, vidi, vici'?
- because he always spoke in the third person.

a, of course.

one and another of good things rather well done. the man was here, and he certainly likes what he has done. and what he is continuing to do.

improvisation
by the barenboim.

albeit this is from a while back, there is the business still of digging a well with a needle.

rubbing my hands in ill-concealed delight. only one of the reasons.

a and m were talking about a story by margo lanagan. very tender, very frightening. m forwarded the link.

and here, in fact.

after night.

arcche is the greek for beginning, foundation, and power.

archaeology.
hierarchy.
anarchy.

rickshaw
Originally uploaded by olidhar.

walkabout at last, and followed by a night of four.

agamben (a rough idea here and here) came yesterday. the kingdom and the glory.

quite apart from all things else, i cannot stop wondering about many years of work, study and scholarship. to be able to make accessible things -- whatever the discipline or area might be -- spanning 2000 and more years.
life is here and now and of this world.
and it must be a wonderful way to spend one's life.

a gave me shipton.
on the 1933 everest expedition:

'The next day Wyn Harris, Birnie and Boustead started up with ten porters, intending to reach 25,500 feet to choose a site for Camp V. But they were forced to retreat from 24,500 owing to the wind. Actually there waws some difference of opinion about the wisdom of this decision, and a hot-tempered argument raged most of the succeeding night, by the end of which the subject under debate had become rather confused. Nerves were already frayed, and we were all liable to lose our temoers at the slightest provocation, and to take our silly grievances sorely to heart. This seems to be a common manifestation of the effects of life at high altitudes. In our case it was undoubtedly aggravated by the rough handling we had received from the weather, and by having been forced to spend so much of our time during the past month cooped up in a tent with too little to do and too much to anticipate. Being unable to speak above a whisper, I found it difficult to quarrel successfully with anyone, and it would have been too exhausting to attempt to pull my companion's beard. Had I been psycho-analysed at the time, I would no doubt have been found to be suffering from some fierce repressions.'

Eric Shipton, Upon that Mountain (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1943)

greenblatt came today. shakespeare and the ethics of authority.

i find it entirely believable that given lear, shakespeare sort of DIDN'T know where to go in the end. thence the strange and strangely powerful consolation and exhortation that we speak what we feel, not what we ought to say...
as a says, comfort greater than truth.
the play IS astoundingly full of comfortings and very quiet murmurs of kindness. all prevailingly ineffective in causing greater change etc. so that the need for kindness is recurring and constant and growing. gentleness so quiet and so emphatic that one does not know where to look. art cold?

messner is a fair explosive.
i wish the whole was here, though. but the gallery has some photos i had never seen before.

"people say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading"

melvyn bragg and guests on borges.

das kunstwerk im zeitalter seiner technischen reproduzierbarkeit. is when i wish i was able to follow a little of the language. here courtesy of harry zohn and other philanthropes, of course.

all this benjamining came up with the business of photography. the small history, and so on.

i cannot have any contention with kracauer when he tells of the sign of the fear of death (more accessibly, here, perhaps). i fully admit it. what i wonder, then, is whether it is possible to look through the lens and actually love, or bless, or give deep, deep benediction. and thus to click. and thus to preserve. whether it is possible to tell through the lens of love. to tell of great longing and of desperate prayers and of such blessings as can only be given with the full fatal knowledge of the tremendous contingency of the moment.

but i probably have no business asking such a question. i have seen it to be possible, i think.