Zeit

detail shot of my pinboard.
("Zeit" is "time").
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gates

there is this road, not far from here, framed by trees. now they all turned yellow. kind of like the natural autumn version of Christo's gates, i thought, while driving through them.
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Mel Bosworth Reads Things: Sliver

some seasons ago, i kept a dream diary for a while. some fragments of those dreams found ways into some stories. others, i almost completely forgot about. now i returned to them, inspired by an invite from Mel Bosworth to send a short text for his youtube project "Mel Bosworth Reads Things", which has the very concept the title suggests:

"And it's exactly that: me reading the work of other writers. No frills, no bells & whistles, just me, often sitting in my chair reading."

curious, i went to the youtube page. i watched Teresa Houle's "September Tragedy", then Cynthia Reeser's "The Unmooring". it probably was the nightish mood of the 2 clips that made me start to browse the dream diary. or maybe this dream just waited for its place since i noted it down.

now it is up. here is the link: Sliver.
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wednesday

(click to enlarge)

october fog, like a still life that keeps moving.
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Writer's Bloc, Foliate Oak, Literary Mama

the new issues of Writer's Bloc, Foliate Oak and Literary Mama are out - and all of them include pieces of contributors who are featured in the current issue of BluePrintReview. here the double links:

Peter Schwartz
Artificial Light - a Writer's Bloc poem
(BluePrintReview images: mute knows how / Zoo)

Carrie Crow
Web / Wires / Doors - 3 Foliate Oak images
(BluePrintReview image: Vietnam in View)

Eileen Donovan-Kranz
O Canada - a Literary Mama story
(BluePrintReview poem: Granite)

congratulations all around!.
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Infinite Jest in German

1517 pages. a block of a book. standing there, in the library, in the shelf with the new books. luck, i think. "looks like i am the first," i say to the woman at the library counter. she nods, then mixes up authors.

back home, i realize my own mistake: reading David Foster Wallace in German makes about as much sense as reading James Joyce in translation, especially for someone who can understand the original. Infinite Jest, it has a slightly different vibe than Unendlicher Spass.

so i browse the book at random. and find the line about the one who translated the work: it took him 6 years. must have been a strange time.
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sunflower circles

the sunflowers are cut since end of september - they aren't all gone, though. one sunflower had a huge top, and so i pinned that one to the garden shack. it turned into a hangout for birds, who pick one seed after another, in narrowing circles.

(here a "before"-version... details of the everyday.)
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Fictionaut: Three + The End of Février

about 2 weeks ago, via a facebook post, i came across Fictionaut. i think i visited the site in spring already, but got sidetracked. what immediately caught my interest this time was the subline: "Fictionaut - For adventurous readers and writers".

after browsing the page a bit, i looked for the register-button. turns out that the place so far is by invitation only. well, i thought, and sent a mail, asking for an invitation. which waited for me in my mailbox when i returned from Frankfurt.

i first thought i only register, and have a closer look around, but then remembered this story that i once wrote, and that now is leftover in "perfectland".. a magazine gone in haitus. so i posted it in Fictionaut, it's called "The End of Février".

the welcoming surprise arrived some hours later: feedback-mails, and messages like this one: "X. wrote on your Fictionaut Wall."

since i registered, i visited Fictionaut almost daily, to check out the latest "most recent stories" - some of them are new, some previously published (seems to be a theme of these days).

today, i put a second story up there, it's new, short, and a bit on the somber side, probably induced by the change of season towards colder and darker days: "Three".
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timeswitch

this morning: switch back to wintertime. half of the clocks adjusted automatically, the other half is still clinging to summer, providing a mix of time.

also: great skies.
the first picture, with Venus between dark clouds, is from 7.16 / 6.16
the second picture is taken an hour later, at 8.13 / 7.13
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indie lit scene gender imbalance?

via facebook, i came across an interesting post that reflects on the question to which degree the indie lit scene might be male-centric: "it does disturb me to realize that even among independent presses, literary publishing is assumed to be male-centric. There is obviously an implicit hostility to female writers."

the post is up here in Big Other:
"BlazeVox publishes ladies"

this is a topic i was pondering on last year, when BluePrintReview submissions moved from rather balanced to more male. i posted some lines in a comment, but thought i include them here, too, so that they pop up with the blueprintreview tag for magazine readers / contributors:

------------
comment #9

here’s a bit from my experience as editor of the literary online magazine BluePrintReview.

one of the concepts of BluePrintReview is to have an even balance of stories and poetry, and also an even balance of male and female contributors. both are sometimes a bit difficult to reach, with poetry submissions and submissions from male contributors usually outnumbering short stories and submissions from female contributors.

last year, i did some research on this theme, that’s how i came across this bit of statistic:

——————
“WomenTK (TK is journalism lingo for “to come”, i.e. “yet to be included”) has assembled stats on how many bylines we “ladies” get in the major U.S. general-interest magazines.

Current figures:

Ratio of male to female writers in national “general interest” magazines, compiled from September 2005 to September 2006: 3 : 1
Raw numbers: 1,446 : 447

“The numbers speak volumes, but they’re not the whole story. As a former editor at The New Yorker wrote me in an e-mail, ‘in addition to counting bylines, you should look at what women are allowed to write about. I’ve been struck by a pattern, at The Atlantic in particular, where women only seem to write about marriage, motherhood and nannies, obsessively so. If you count the number of women’s bylines there that weren’t about hearth and home, the number would approach zero.’

(this was online here: http://www.womentk.com/ – unfortunately, the statistic isn’t online any more, but it’s still up in a blog, here: in-search-of-generation-xx, with some additional quotes)
——————–

the thing that struck me back then was the ratio:
3 to 1 — which fitted with the submission ratio i received back then, too. right now, the submissions are rather even. my guess is that the issue styles / characterists / gender ratios themselves are influencing the submissions.

as to my own gender: female. (one funny thing is that some (male) contributors seem to assume that editors are surely male, too – every now and then i receive submissions that start with “Dear Sir”. the last time that happened, i couldn’t resist, and wrote back: “Dear Madam.”)
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Jürgen Neffe: Darwin

"New Horizons - During this time you should attempt to broaden your horizons - through study, new and unfamiliar experiences, travel or by meeting people from totally different backgrounds."

said my horoscope. turns out, the book i am currently reading perfectly fits into this scheme: a combined travelogue / biography, written by Jürgen Neffe, a science journalist who reflects on Darwin's work and his journey while following in during a 1-year-trip.

the splendid subtitle of the book: "Das Abenteuer des Lebens" - "The adventure that is life".
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...Is In The Details

freezingly beautiful. this image was partly inspired by the october light, and by photo friday's current miniature theme: "...Is In The Details".

some of my favourites from there: Neurons / 360° and Dragon Fly / iClix

(a larger version of the freezing beauties is up here: frosted lilac.)
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Dogzplot Magazine: The Alpha and Omega of Now

i'm still not sure where the idea to alpha/omega actually was coming from. the thing started with a 5-word mail from Jeff Crouch: "Hi dorothee-- Material for you."

the material were 8 images. most were multi-techno-color. one, (#03), was black and white. and induced this alpha-beta-gamma-string. once started, it was hard to stop. in 2 erratic leaps, the visual came together, the color set induced by the technocolor-images of the initial file. then we looked for a fitting place. and i remembered those lines:

DOGZPLOT is what the description says, erratic, so send us precise, playful, honest, original, disgraceful, hopelessly optimistic, dirty, beautiful, ugly, thoroughly proofread, over the top writing. So don't send us the good stuff. Send us something that will blow our fucking minds.

so we did. and it fitted. and is up on the cover page now: The Alpha and Omega and Now.

it's intriguing to see the visual there, in such good fictional company, and with the technocolors crossing into the magazine layout. there also is another of our collaborate visuals included in the Dogzplot issue: "Neurotically in Zero Land".

(thinking of it, maybe Jeff and i should return to that initial file, and start off with a colored image in the next step).
~

20/10/14/10

sometimes beauty pops up in unexpected places. like today, at 14.10, on the way to the recycling plant. took a turn, and there it was: a vast blue horizon.
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calls for submissions: Nano Magic in Process

here a quick list of upcoming deadlines / calls for submissions i recently came across:

Switchback -- Eleventh Issue: "Process vs. Product" -- deadline October 31
Nanoism - December Contest "five tweet serials" -- deadline October 31
Dogzplot - Winter 2010: "Magic" -- (deadline not stated)

and upcoming in November:
BluePrintReview - issue 23: "(dis)comfort zones" -- submit Nov 1-30
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summer's end.

it's official. after all the september sun, and the warm days, summer ended last week with a nosedive into frost and cold rain.

bye cosmeas, bye zinnias, bye sunflowers. hello cold season.

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Dogzplot Flash Fiction: Word Of The Year

the new issue of Dogzplot Flash Fiction is up. i learned about that in facebook, when i saw the cover image in a note: a visual i know well -it came together in collaboration with Jeff Crouch, in july. it's good to see it online now, fittingly framed in dogzplot dark.

"Word Of The Year" is based on 2 different versions of the "word of the year" list:
- the US words (via wiki): Word_of_the_year
- and combined with those, the German words: Wort des Jahres

this turned out rather interesting, to see the US / German differences and similarities in themes and in focus. the strongest similarity: 2001, with 9-11. and 2008, with the global financial crash.

altogether, it seems that the US terms in these years lean more towards technology, while the German terms tend to refer to the political changes: 1994, four years after the german reunion, a "Supervoteyear" - which didn't bring much change. 1997 is the year of "Reformstau" - "reform-jam" - which then lead to a change of government in 1998: after 16 years of chancellor Kohl / CDU, the tables turned, and the rot-grün ("red-green") opposition turned into government. and in 2005, Merkel became the first female chancellor: "Bundeskanzlerin". and of course, the Euro - the unified european currency. which pops up in 2002 als "Teuro" - a word combination of "Euro" and "teuer" (expensive).

my personal favourite is 2006: plutoed/Fanmeile ("fan mile" - referring to the world soccer cup live streamings in germany)

while at Dogzplot, also check out Mel Bosworth's "Best Purchases of the Year" - it somehow clicks with Word Of Year in one of those brilliant coincidental e-zine theme crossings.

and for some more Jeff Crouch & Dorothee Lang collab visuals, try:
- Confitures d'Oranges (Wheelhouse)
- under s core, real i ty, sed i ment (Compostxt)
- Train Ride Gulag + Strobe Lights (Otoliths)

(more to come :)

rhein river and mekong memories

2 more photos from the short trip:

from frankfurt, i went to visit relatives who live in the same region, close to river rhein. i typed their address into the car navi, and was almost there, when the navi directed me to a deserted parking lot at the rhein riverside.

"and now?" i wondered.

then i saw the ferry sign. and the ferry, which must have left a couple of minutes earlier. "this can't be," i thought, and drove on, to get to a bridge.

turns out, there is none. so i ended up taking a ferry after all, and felt like laos. ("...there is no bus because there is no road, see? there just is the river. that's why you take the boat. and don't miss it, there is only one a day.")

the second photo is taken the next morning, from the other side of the rhein.

~

the power of culture (frankfurt book fair)

cathedrals of glass for all those words written
7000 publishers meeting in one place
the number of their books: uncountable

police guards at the entry, checking bags -
- but who would bring a bomb to a book fair?
- well...

i dive into hall after hall, into lakes of words and sound
chinese poetry live, textcontext, forum book,
prix nobel 2009, du monde entier a-z

outside, a circusstyle reading tent, cup of coffee for 1.50,
live words for free: Anthony McCarten: Show of Hands,
Leon de Winter: Recht auf Rückkehr.

in between halls, gateways of thought, words on a poster:
Der Kultur der Macht / die Macht der Kultur entgegensetzen
Contradict the Culture of Power / With the Power of Culture.

i move on, into other worlds, into installations of ink on paper.
i try to trace the line between fiction and fact,
and reach the fine hall of art,

i gather conceptual, (un)monumental
keys to this world
in lines on paper

----

some links:
- frankfurt book fair photo gallery
- frankfurt book fair website
- leon de winter / Anthony_McCarten
- new art books
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frankfurt

off to a mixed short trip: a day at the Frankfurt Book Fair (which comes with China as focus theme this year) & then on to visiting relatives. plus: checking out the art museum of Bonn (former german capital), and meeting up with a friend who used to live not far from here.

will bring back notes + pictures.

~

nightfrost..

there's nightfrost coming.

time to get the glads and dahlias out of the earth, and put them into hibernating boxes. i hadn't known about this, learned it just some days ago. so this is the first time for me to hibernate flowers. will see if it works out.

(can i go into hibernation now, too?)

~

Brigitte Giraud: Die Liebe + Navid Kermani: Kurzmitteilung

the bright, clear colours were misleading - i thought both books were coming with a fancy mood. instead, they both were about endings - endings of love, endings of life. seems there is no real escape from the huge themes these days.

and another parallel: both authors have a multi-national background: Brigitte Giraud was born in Algier, and lives in France, she studied German and English. and Navid Kermani's family is from Iran, and then migrated to Germany. interesting sidenote: Navid Kermani was in the news this year after he first was nominated for a culture award, which then lead to a controversy and a withdrawing of the prize. (link FAZ german + link Islam Today (and what an interesting page, the world seen from another point of view).

lines to remember, from Brigitte Giraud:

"Hat das alles schon am ersten Tag begonnen? Hast du diese Geschichte selbst zerstört? Man sagt, das jedem Anfang schon das Ende innewohnt. Wer ist also schuld?"

"Has all this already begun at the first day? Have you destroyed this story yourself? The say that every beginning already includes the end. Who is to blame then?"

~

monday sky

some awesome clouds this morning. a larger shot is up here: seven twenty.

now it's back to rainy grey sky.
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re /print /flect /vel

the new issue of blueprintreview is now up since a couple of days. so good, to see it online finally. and so interesting, to receive feedback. there are some first mails, and also some first blog entries, with a wide spectrum of themes:

- interconnections / permutations of texts + images
- significance of work in changing times
- different shapes / layouts of texts

reading through those reflections, i felt: there should be a feeback zone in the issue. and then decided to add an extra page: "re: re/vel".

the page also gives an overview of the "extra pages" of the issue (like the page with further re/visited reads, and the list of lost+found magazines).

and there is more to come :)

~

weekend rain

on a more trivial note: it's the weekend.
and it's rain.

~

Müller / Obama

nobel prize week. coming with surprises this year.

yesterday, the prize for literature: Herta Müller.
who? - i first thought. and then did a google search. the first thing that came up was the quote of the committee, with he answer to my question:
"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
the second clue that came up is that Herta Müller is shortlisted for the german bookprize. that's why she was interviewed on tuesday, in a rather casual way - not knowing yet what was to come, in an interview titled: "Ich habe noch nie auf einen Preis gewartet" ("I have never waited for a prize)".

and today, the prize for peace: Barack Obama.
"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"
and an additional explanation, here, in the BBC article: "Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel Committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve."

not sure about the theory that the Committee awarded the prize to morally shift US politics towards peace in this conflicting times. but what do i know. and what a subversive idea - that the way to peace, after all, rather might be peace prizes than guns ;).

~

update, 10.10.
seems this prize stirs up quite a bit of emotions and reflections, on politics, peace, and the world in general. "which is a fitting thing," a german newspaper commented, "especially as the prize is funded by dynamite."
here an interesting blog link: "An Open Letter to Americans Who Are Annoyed at Obama's Nobel Prize." (check out comments, too).
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this day, then

just back from a walk through photo files. out came this time collage:
this day, 1 year back.
and 2 years back.
and 3 years back.
and 4 years back...

~

blueprintreview #22 is up!

the new issue of blueprintreview is online, it's the one that is consisting entirely of pre-published pieces. the official theme, derived from the pre-published approach: 're /visit /cycle /turn'.

memoirs, i expected. abroad and home reflections. stories of recycled goods.

the first submissions pointed at a slightly larger take, leading from "Antibodies" to "dying for answers" and to the quizzical question: "How to Describe Eternity." the following submissions, almost in answer, delivered an Insight, Fragments, and - The Birth of the Universe.

the reflections and abroad clues arrived, too, yet in a way i hadn't foreseen: a mail conversation about shut-down e-magazines induced a tour through internet archives, and brought lost magazines back to the web. and the longlist of marked submissions brought the idea to put a page with memorable further reads together, something that usually isn't possible.

another highlight of this issue: the artwork. some of the image titles almost form a poem -

Blue Radiant / Corridors
a new day / untitled
sequestered / rezonation
Dusk / A Wing We Saw

- and the images themselves are beyond words.

to sum it up: if this issue had a subtitle, it probably would be: "re/view re/joice re/collect."

here the direct link into the re/zone:
blueprintreview #22: re /visit /cycle /turn.

enjoy the retrospective ~
dorothee

PS: another novelty: there is an extra page with notes on the process, collected while working on the reprint issue: "Some Aspects of Reprints". like the whole issue, this page turned larger and more compex than expected first.

~

october

october, coming in shades of orange and red today.

..and with stories of photos that weren't easy right-in-front-of-your-doorstep takes: "My Toughest Shot" / Outside Online, via Rumpus.net Morning Coffee.

~

blueprintreview --> #22 --> #23

just 2-3 more days, then the "reprints" issue of blueprintreview will go live. it's the twenty-second issue of blueprintreview. and the following issue now took a first shape, too - since around issue 18, i always try to get the submission page for the following issue together, so that the theme and dates get spread with the going live.

the good thing was that i received 2 submissions for the reprints issue that both were great stories, but weren't really fitting into the issue, especially as they weren't previously published online / or at all. maybe... i thought. and had a second look, trying to find a theme that both would match. that's how the idea for issue 23 surfaced: "(dis)comfort zones". and so reassuring, to have the #23 file started already, instead of moving from going live to a blank page.

the submission page is already up here:
"Call for Submissions: BluePrintReview #23 - (dis)comfort zones"

~

struwwelpeter

simple pleasures: monday snail mail with fancy stamps - the yellow one brought back childhood memories of "Struwwelpeter" (messy-hair-peter), a classic german tale by Heinrich Hoffmann that comes with this verse:

"Sieh einmal da steht er,
pfui der Struwwelpeter"..

(here a bit more, including a translation: Struwwelpeter.)

~

overcast / space / stillness

october. and it still feels like late summer.

here, 3 sunday-terrace-reads of today:

- The Movement to Stillness, another reflection from Ajahn Sucitto, which made me want to keep that passage, to put it in my pocket for later: "Relationships are about being willing to relate; that’s all. They’re not about always living in agreement and never being separated. Bodies are for being embodied in, not for looking beautiful, being painless or staying young."

- Voyage Back into Space / Ethan Bernard, from the new eclectica issue, which comes with a fascinating extraterrestrial photo series: images of the Mars surface.

- Overcast / Aaron Burch, from Memorious. a winter story, which made me cherish the late-summer-sun double, together with the solitary sunday clouds: "I wished, when the clouds had still been around, I’d been able to grab one out of the sky, keep a little piece for myself. I did that sometimes, kept things, put them in my pocket for later."

~

blueprintreview cover #22

(click to enlarge)

the upcoming issue of blueprintreview is in the finalizing phase now. yesterday i worked on the cover, and following the issue theme "re /visit /cycle /turn", i returned to May '05 and revisited the very first issue of blueprintreview. going from there, i created a recycled version of this first cover by shifting the colours back to original, and then picking a detail cropping that comes out almost surrealistic.

above, the complete image as i downloaded it from the camera - the photo is from Mallorca island. the day i took it, i went to Palma - the main city at the southern coast - to visit the newly opened museum "Es Baluard", which is set in an old historic building.


(click to enlarge)

i went there by bus, and that's how the cover photo came into being: it's taken while waiting for the connecting bus, the angled city corner shot probably influenced by the museum visit. the photo i took before it also is a bus stand photo, from Palma itself, with the museum advertising right on the other street side.

(and see the poster? another re/: "retrospectiva". how fitting.)
~

blueprint moon

one of those beautiful coincidences:

i was working on the upcoming issue of blueprintreview, put a page into layout, checked the formatting, then tried the page in a browser. there, i read the starting line of the poem: "Just the moon.."

looks fine, i thought. and looked up.

and saw - the moon.

~

into the past IV: Whalelane & Blue Moon Review

just back from trailing the vast land of the wayback archives for the blueprintreview reprint issue.. this time i found:

- The Blue Moon Review, one of the oldest online zines (dating back to 1994)
looks like the archive is online, too, under 'back issues'

- Whalelane: writing, visuals, and hybrids. click the diagram fields to get to the archive.

- and i came across a beautiful fragment of the lost first issue of 'Suitcase Generation': "Why we travel" (from Adam Jeffries Schwartz)- which also fits with this archive work:

A long time ago,

you flung out parts of yourself to keep them safe.

---Now, ----you're collecting them.

~