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Aller Anfang ist schwer. In meinem Kulturkreis ist der Anfang schlechthin der erste Januar. Warum eigentlich? Dann ist hier Winter. Es wäre doch so viel leichter, im Sommer anzufangen. Mit was oder wem auch immer. Ich beschloss, meine Freunde zum ersten Januar diesen Jahres einzuladen. Warum ist da eigentlich so ein verflixter Genitiv? Wie soll ich das nun wieder meinen Schülern erklären? Das macht es noch schwerer. Anfangen im Genitiv… Und dann wollte ich etwas zaubern. Es sollte aromatisierend-verführerisch sein. Glücklicherweise wurde es ein voller Erfolg. Gegrillte Ameisen mit Nudeln. Buchstabennudeln. Meine Freunde beäugten neugierig die von mir vorbereiteten Teller. Das ist ein attributivisch verwendetes Partizip. Ein Partizip II, wenn das überhaupt jemanden interessiert. Mich interessiert es. Irgendwie. Aber mich interessieren mehr die Fetische meiner Freunde, die diese zu unserem Beisammensein mitgeschleppt hatten. Eine Freundin kam mit ihrer gesamten Froschsammlung, die im Anschluss in der Mülltonne landete. Gierig aßen meine Freunde und ihre Fetische – Frösche, Fische und Tische (Tische???) – das von mir zubereitete Gericht. Und das ohne schlechtes Gewissen. Wegen der Proteine. Frivol verschlangen sie alles und schafften es, sich nicht zu bekleckern. Und dann fing es eigentlich erst an, denn ich hatte natürlich gut gewürzt. Mit Zimt. Aphrodisierend-verführerisch. Das Ende ist also der Anfang…

Ich empfehle zum neuen Jahr die im Insel-Verlag erschienene Lektüre Ein neuer Anfang. Schöne Impulse zum neuen Jahr… Ernstes und Heiteres. Poesie und Prosa. In diesem Sinne wünsche ich ein glückliches neues Jahr! Happy New Year! Feliz año! Bon any! Bonne année!

First of all, I would like to wish you all the best for Christmas! Merry Christmas, Frohe Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad, Bon Nadal and Joyeux Noël! To those of you who celebrate Christmas have nice little gatherings together. To those of you who do not celebrate it and who might read this article I wish a few days of rest and serenity among family & friends. I think about those who cannot celebrate it and I dearly hope there will be a better time ahead of them.

I sometimes reread books from the past, not very often though. Yesterday I browsed through a book called Wege zur Ruhe. The English title is Instant Calm. The author, Paul Wilson, has collected many pieces of advice for us to unwind and gives loads of pratical exercises, both from oriental and occidental cultures. I think it is a valuable book for almost everyone these days. Calmness and silence are from the same semantic field but different though.

One chapter of the book is about the inner attitude. The first exercise he suggests in this chapter is the “Space Perspective” (pp. 130-131). It takes one minute and is for people who worry a lot and therefore cannot calm down. Close your eyes and visualize the room where you are in. Consider how you have put your furniture. Then go above the house in your mind. You see the house and its immediate environment. Gardens, parks, people walking up and down the streets, shops, traffic lights, … You rise a bit higher as if you were in a balloon. You see the whole city, suburbs, neighbouring towns and villages… Your city is no more than a sparkling sea of lights. You rise a bit higher and the colours of your continent blur. Welcome in Space! Now, the earth is no more than a beautiful ball floating through space. A little light. A piece of dust in our galaxy. From here, some of our problems seem to be insignificant. Some of them. If you repeat the exercise, you can go directly into space. Of course, this is only one little exercise among several but I think it is quite original. In the end, everybody has to find out what suits him best. In most cases it is a mixture of different exercises for inside and outside.

One emblem of calmness is Buddha and I would like to translate a little story for you. It is taken from a book I found by chance in a little library in Girona (Gerona): Cuentos de Amor y Amistad. The story is called “Talante de Ecuanimidad. The title is a bit difficult to translate maybe. I would translate it as “The Way to Equanimity”[1], which is close to serenity. In German we have the nice word Gelassenheit. When you are gelassen, you are calm, composed.  Here is my little translation.

“The Way to Equanimity”

A man who disagreed with Buddha’s lessons met him one day and spat into his face. Then, they both followed their way. Some days afterwards they met again. Buddha looked calmly into his eyes and smiled benevolently. The other man was very much surprised and said:

“But how is it possible that you are so serene and that you also smile at me in a friendly way after what happened a few days ago?”

“Very easy, my friend, said Buddha without moving. “Neither you are the person who spat at me any more nor I am the one who received the spit. Go in peace.“ (p.90)

I would like to finish with a quote from a little booklet, one of these beautiful little books I cherish:

“Wer lächelt, statt zu toben, ist immer der Stärkere.” (Aus Japan)

“Those who smile instead of shouting are the stronger ones.” (From Japan)

Serenity. Equanimity. A long way or a short journey?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Maybe talante can also be translated with temper: “Calm Temper”. It reminds me of the word talent. I don’t know if there is a linguistic connection. But “The Talent to Remain Calm” would make sense as well.

About ten years ago I lived on the Canadian West Coast together with a lovely family and quite a few foreign students from Bresil, France and Japan. I wonder what has become out of the little boy. I also wonder what has become out of my French Au pair children. I wish the best for all of them. But I want to talk about a trip to California I did with a friend of mine. We went to San Francisco by Greyhound Bus. Long distances but it was fun. I did not have flowers in my hair but on my mind because I had always wished to go to San Fran. I did some typical touristy things of course but what impressed me most were the Sequoia trees near the city… The city is pretty, too, though. I like original means of transport like the cable cars but most of the time I walk when I am on holiday. I let myself to be carried along… Most of the time. But I went to City Lights Bookstore on purpose. I’ve always loved bookstores and libraries. A bookstore is like an oasis in a bustling city. You can retreat and submerge in an ocean of literature, or just one poem…

I got the collection of poems ‚A Coney Island of the Mind‘. Ferlinghetti considers his poems to be „a kind of circus of the soul“ (p.8). That is a great description of poetry. Some poems express a feeling of great joy, joy doing somersaults… But there is also the feeling of sadness and melancolia omnipresent in poetry and in circusses. I once stayed with an English lady from Middlesbrough when I did an internship in the North of England. We had tea and she gave me a poetry book. Second-hand. I found it great because there were commentaries from other people, which allow you a glance into their thoughts. I will look at the book again for sure…

The poem I would like to present here is called „Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass“. I think everybody must have experienced something similar as Johnny Nolan, whoever that is. I leave it uncommented:

„Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass“

Kids chase him

thru screendoor summers

Thru the back streets

of all my memories

Somewhere a man laments

upon a violin

A doorstep baby cries

and cries again

like

a

ball

bounced

down steps

Which helps the afternoon arise again

to a moment of remembered hysteria

Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass

Kids chase him

 

Pobrecito.

 

 

Good morning! My name is Doris Anne and I would like to welcome you to my literary blog “Paraules i pensamientos”. I want to write in English to use it as a lingua franca to reach, first of all, as many of my friends as possible and of course, secondly, other people from different backgrounds interested in literature . Of course, this makes things a little bit more complicated for me but it’s also a challenge to find the right words in a language that is not my mother tongue. I’ll briefly explain why I have chosen the title of this blog, “Paraules i pensamientos”, i.e. “Words & Thoughts”. I would like to use this blog to present works of literature: poetry, short stories, drama and novels. Little by little… Just a few ideas for each work of art. A few thoughts for many words if we deal with a novel for example. Or a few thoughts for a few words when it comes to poetry with its sometimes incredibly dense and complex language. I would love to get some sort of feedback (and/or corrections). You can use the contact formular to get back to me if you want to.

The first book I would like to deal with is called “Une rose seule” by Muriel Barbery. I’ve found it by chance. Maybe it was not accidentally: The book has a beautiful cover. You see a woman’s face, or let’s say half of it. The woman’s mouth is painted in bright red and on the right part of her face, the one we can see, there is a tree with its branches reaching to the sky, the clouds, that is her hair. I think it’s a beautiful picture and it made me probably buy the book and read the story of Rose, a young woman, who goes to Kyoto in Japan to follow in the tracks of her dead father, thereby learning a lot about the Japanese way of thinking. The story is interrupted by little chapters with beautiful anecdotes from Japanese history and mythology. I marked quite a few sentences. These sentences are like little treasures for me. Maybe I’ll write them on cards and but them into a little box. So let me tell you the little anecdote: There are thousands of prune trees in the courtyard of a temple in Kyoto but Issa, a marvelous poet, only walks around before the blossoming of the trees. When the first blossom appears, he leaves the courtyard to come back the following winter. When people, worried about his taste, talk to him he just laughs and says: “J’ai attendu longtemps dans le dénuement, à présent la fleur est en moi.” (“I’ve lived in misery for a long time. At present, the blossom is within me.”) One sentence. Beautiful language. Beautiful thoughts. Beautiful.