The Heart of a Broken Story

And in the Third Avenue bus early one morning, Horgenschlag stood over Shirley Lester, and was a dead duck. All because Shirley's mouth was open in a peculiar way. Shirley was reading a cosmetic advertisement in the wall panel of the bus; and when Shirley read, Shirley relaxed slightly at the jaw. And in that short moment while Shirley's mouth was open, lips were parted, Shirley was probably the most fatal one in all Manhattan. Horgenschlag saw in her a positive cure-all for a gigantic monster of loneliness which had been stalking around his heart since he had come to New York. Oh, the agony of it! The agony of standing over Shirley Lester and not being able to bend down and kiss Shirley's parted lips. The inexpressible agony of it!




J. D. Salinger
The Heart of a Broken Story
Esquire XVI, September 1941, Page 32, 131-133

Ich bin enttaeuscht:

Ich bin enttaeuscht:

Nach dem Diebstahl der Tor-Inschrift "Arbeit macht frei" des frueheren NS-Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz hat die polnische Justiz Haftbefehle gegen zwei Maenner in Schweden erlassen. Es soll sich um einen schwedischen Neonazi und einen Migranten aus Ex-Jugoslawien handeln.

Und ich haette darauf gewettet, dass ein paar von Westerwelles BWLern den Schriftzug fuer die Stirnwand des naechsten FDP-Parteitags hatten requirieren und gegen ein neues Schild ueberm Tor von Auschwitz tauschen wollen: "Leistung muss sich wieder lohnen."




Aus Konkret 2/2010, Gremlizas Express

the right mixture

not quite fallen into oblivion

some

"Some people," Edna said, "wanna be alone."





J. D. Salinger
The Young Folks
Story XVI, March-April 1940, pages 26-36

The Prom

For..

For the dubious satisfaction of calling anything in this beautiful, maddening world an unassailable, respectable fact, we are quite firmly obliged, like good-humored prisoners, to fall back on the flimsy information offered in excellent faith by our eyes, hands, ears, and simple, heartrending brains. Do you call that a superb criterion? I do not! It is very touching, without a shadow of a doubt, but it is far, far from superb. It is utter, blind reliance on heartrending, personal agencies.








J.D. Salinger, Hapworth 16, 1924

"Morfin"

'Morfin' - Emmy Hennings

Wir warten auf ein letztes Abenteuer
Was kümmert uns der Sonnenschein?
Hochaufgetürmte Tage stürzen ein
Unruhige Nächte - Gebet im Fegefeuer.

Wir lesen auch nicht mehr die Tagespost
Nur manchmal lächeln wir still in die Kissen,
Weil wir alles wissen, und gerissen
Fliegen wir hin und her im Fieberfrost.

Mögen Menschen eilen und streben
Heut fällt der Regen noch trüber
Wir treiben haltlos durchs Leben
Und schlafen, verwirrt, hinüber

c.m.

We had our season

We had our season. That is what I tell myself. We had our season, and it ended.









John Banville, Athena

..I came across..

I came across a list of phobias arranged into various classifications. I found myself delighted by genuphobia ( the fear of knees), pogonophobia ( the fear of beards ), and keraunothnetophobia ( the ninenteen-letter word used to identify those who fear the fall of man-made satellites ). Reading over the lists, I found myself trying to imagine the support groups for those struggling to overcome fears of rust or teeth, heredity or string. There would be definitely daytime meetings for the achluophobics ( who fear nightfall), and evening get-togethers for the daylightfearing phengophobics. Those who fear crowds would have to meet one-on-one, and those who fear psychiatry would be forced to find comfort in untrained friends and family members.

The long list of situational phobias includes the fears of being bound, beaten, locked into an enclosed area, and smeared with human waste. Their inclusion mystifies me, as it suggests that these fears might be considered in any way unreasonable. I asked myself, Who wants to be handcuffed and covered in human feces? And then, without even opening my address book, I thought of three people right off the bat. This frightened me, but apparently it´s my own private phobia. I found no listing for those who fear they know too many masochists. Neither did I find an entry for those who fear the terrible truth that their self-worth is based entirely on the completion of a daily crossword puzzle. Because I can´t seem to find it anywhere, I´m guaranteed that such a word actually exists. It will undoubtedly pop up in some future puzzle, the clue being "You, honestly."

Taken out of 21 Down, Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris

...when..

When Gretchen´s talent was recognized by teachers, both my parents stepped forward to claim responsibility. As a child my mother had shown a tendency for drawing and mud sculpture and could still amuse us with her speedy re-creations of a popular cartoon woodpecker. Proving his to be a latent gift, my father bought himself a box of acrylic paints and set up his easel in front of the basement TV, turning out exact copies of Renoir cafes and Spanish monks brooding beneath their hooded robes. He painted New York streetscapes and stagecoaches riding into fiery sunsets - and then, once he´d filled the basement walls with his efforts, he stopped painting as mysteriously as he´d begun. It seemed to me that if my father could be an artist, anyone could. Snatching up his palette and brushes, I reteated to my bedroom, where, at the age of fourteen, I began my long and disgraceful blue period.



Me Talk Pretty One Day, Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist, by David Sedaris

sans soleil

He liked those moments of fragility, suspended in time.
Those memories whose only function it been to leave behind memories.
He wrote: "I´ve been around the world several times and now only banalities interest me."

laura veirs

laura veirs, new album july flame

'Why do I go?' Zooey said, without looking around. 'I go mostly because I`m tired as hell of getting up furious in the morning and going to bed furious at night. I go because I sit in judgement on every poor, ulcerous bastard I know. Which in itself doesn´t bother me too much. At least I judge straight from the colon when I judge, and I know that I´ll pay like hell for any judgement I mete out, sooner or later, one way or another. That doesn´t bother me so much.






J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

and the worst part is

It´s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so-I don´t know- not wrong, or even mean, or stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and- sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you´re conforming just as much as everybody else,
only in a different way.





J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

(Saigyo says,

' What it is I know not/But with the gratitude/My tears fall.')




Jerome D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction