November 11, 2014

Suburb
c.1900
Édouard Vuillard
b. November 11, 1868

The sister-principle, he says. The suburban-principle.

Even if she lost her job, she knew she could find a new one. Even if she was passed over for promotion, she knew it was only a matter of time before she, too, was promoted. This world was hers.

To hear her talk about her work-world, the corporate world, was to know that he could not possibly succeed in that world. That he could in no way get on in her world. To listen to her hold forth on hirings and firings, of targets and headhunts, made it clear that, whatever else, he should follow a path entirely different from his sister. It was to accept that there was no place for him, or for people like him, in the suburbs. That he could not possibly thrive in the suburbs, as she could. That he could in no way advance into the suburbs, as she could. That he was set up for failure – for complete and utter failure – in the suburbs.

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Crepuscule d'Hiver
Gustave Marissiaux
1908

The dead speak kindly
Tua Forsström
Translated by David McDuff
books from Finland

(....)

The thing with sorrow is that one thought there
was a fire but it is starting to rain. The brushwood smokes
listlessly for a while, it is far too sparse or dense
and on the field remains a dark installation sprawling
to the sky. The smoke from the clear evenings in April has
stuck in the jacket in the hall. Far from the city’s lights
So many years have passed, but flakes detach at the slightest breath
and blow out across the lake and up toward the house where I lived
with my parents and my brother, in our family.

(....)

The next chapter is called: before we forget
The next chapter is called: the darkness
the rain the kindness
It is already October and blowing hard
I must drive firewood home
I must turn the key in the lock
And then I hear again that voice,
mysterious and clear
You are old now little child
don’t be afraid little hare

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For it is not we who know, but rather a certain state of mind in us that knows.
Kleist -- On the Gradual Formulation of Thoughts while Speaking
excerpted at flowerville

Language is as such no shackle, no brake-shoe, as it were, on the wheel of the intellect, but rather a second, parallel wheel whirling on the same axle. It is something else altogether when the intellect is done thinking through a thought before bursting into speech. For then it is obliged to dwell on the mere expression of that thought, and far from stimulating the intellect, this has no other effect than to let the steam out of excitement. Therefore, if an idea is expressed in a muddled manner it does not at all necessarily follow that the thinking that engendered it was muddled; but it could rather well be that those ideas expressed in the most twisted fashion were thought through most clearly. ...(more)

Cold Mountains and Withered Trees
1938
Kagaku Murakami
d. November 11, 1939

The History of Men
Jack Gilbert
1925 - 2012

It thrashes in the oaks and soughs in the elms.
Catches on innocence and soon dismantles that.
Sends children bewildered into life. Childhood
ends and is not buried. The young men ride out
and fall off, the horses wandering away. They get
on boats, are carried downstream, discover maidens.
They marry them without meaning to, meaning no harm,
the language beyond them. So everything ends.
Divorce gets them nowhere. They drift away from
the ruined women without noticing. See birds
high up and follow."Out of earshot," they think,
puzzled by earshot. History driving them forward,
making a noise like the wind in maples, of women
in their dresses. It stings their hearts finally.
It wakes them up, baffled in the middle of their lives
on a small bare island, the sea blue and empty,
the days stretching all the way to the horizon.

The Florist
Édouard Vuillard

(....)

Farocki’s oeuvre bespeaks a consistent interest in forms of migration. He parsed the official depiction of migration in his video In-Formation—which he called “a silent movie”—and found myths of cultural difference, sedimented in language regimentation and pictograms. He himself was a passionate Berliner, always attached to his respective neighborhoods, but also a frequent and distant traveler, a “rocketeer,” as he liked to say. His interest in migration was related to a foible for the rootless—as described by philosopher Vilém Flusser, with whom he was in dialogue. No surprise then that the only actor Farocki ever dedicated an entire film to, was Peter Lorre, the lost one (Der Verlorene), whose “double face” he read as a palimpsest of transatlantic movements. Perhaps it was this interest in migration (also in the sense of translation) that inspired him—like Pasolini—to study gestures, one of his central projects.

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