Journal of a Solitude (reading challenge #10)

After leading to Asia and in Mexico, my global reading challenge now brought me to a place of solitude: the journal of poet May Sarton, written during her stay in a solitary house in the countryside of New Hamphire. The journal starts in September, and continues along one year to the following September.

It was the first paragraph, included in a review, that made me go and order the book:

"I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange—that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened... I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths, to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there."

it’s a passage that moved me when reading it, as i also feel like this. Sarton, there is so much i could quote. She also observes the sky and the garden, the change in seasons and moods, internal and external.

A central thought of Sarton's journal: that being in a difficult place is maybe part of being a poet or writer, or just anyone who is open to the world. And indeed, if you really start to let the world sink in, it’s beautiful, but there also so many things that are unsettling, painful, overwhelming.

The journal itself, i found it through an earlier book in this book journey: Sheila Nickerson quotes the first lines from Sarton in her Alaska journal, which i then quoted in my own blog note:

"Begin here. It is raining.." (more here)

Today I read the final pages, and it includes a line that connects to the circular pattern of life, and also to our place in time, with the future not necessarily in front of us, but maybe also behind:

"This is where poetry is so mysterious, the work more mature than the writer of it, always messenger of growth. So perhaps we write toward what we will become from where we are."

reading Sarton also made me think of Annie Dillard's journal, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", which i read last year. especially with the image of the lighthouse keeper:



And maybe that is what many writers are: lighouse keepers on rocky islands along the coast of our time.

So that was book 10 for me in the reading challenge. the next book, it is waiting already, inspired by the visit to the old places near here - a science-novel that leads back to neolithic times. Looking at the reading list, I just realized that this actually will be the first book from here, from Germany. 

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Global + European Reading Challenge
In the read this year, i am taking part in a global and in an european reading challenge. the idea: to read books from each continent of the world / several countries of europe. so far i've been to:
- book 9: Mexican Lives (America)
- detour: the world in 7 books
- book 8: Tagore (India/Asia)
- book 7: Zarzura (Egypt/Africa)
- book 6: Jericho (Israel/Middle East)
- book 5: Ledra Street (Cyprus/Europe)
- book 4: Disappearance. A Map (Alaska/America)
- book 3: Paris was Ours (France/Europe)
- book 2: Anar (Middle East)
- book 1: The Tigers's Wife (former Yugoslavia/Europe)
- more books: virtual bookshelf
- about: the Global Reading Challenge

this fleeting time (marches)

around this fleeting time of march
in 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008

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this is a photo time loop of the last years, with a focus on the photo friday theme "Fleeting"
there also is a time loop of february

the bluest pond and oldest Venus of Germany: Blaubeuren

today: a trip to the bluest pond of Germany. which is called, following the blue logic: "Blautopf" - "Bluepot". it's a place that doesn't like to be photographed. it's not a large lake, either. but a deep one, with legends attached to it. the lake, it has an open ground, with a spring at its bottom that leads into a cave system. that's why the water is so blue: "The water's blue color is the result of chemical properties of limestone densely distributed in the water."

there’s a walkway around it, and the light and blue shifts with the angle you look at it. it’s a small place of many views. if you walked around it in a medium pace, it might take you 5 minutes. but this place isn't made for medium. it invites to slow down, to sit on a bench, to watch the surface that looks so still, while all the time, water is pouring from it, and flowing into the stream called "Blau".



if you follow that stream, you are lead to a labyrinth of sub-streams that run past houses. there's a wooden bridge here, an old mill there - the oldest building of the town, and maybe the starting place of what later became this town. there are walkways, tiny bridges, doors that open to water. and there's the place where the streams come together again: a pair of swans nests there, in between all.



the pictures are missing something, of course: the sound of water, the flow of it. here's a water video:



The Neolithic Venus of Blaubeuren
all that is only half of the story - it was here, in this valley, that some tiny remains of another time were found: flutes, 2 lion men, and just recently: a venus figure. made of the ivory of mammoths. which gives an idea of how old those memories of a time gone are: about 35.000 to 40.000 years. i still have to wrap my head around this. just last week, i was in a place that reached back to Celtic times, and i felt: that was a long time to imagine already: 2200 years ago, near here.

and compared to that, the Venus is 20 times older. how to capture that? but so interesting, this reaching into the past. and it most probably was the very same water source that brought those very early settlements there. the same blue. only that back then, it was mammoths instead of swans (well.)

the discovery is a recent one, though: it was about 4 years ago that archeologists found the venus figurine the, the "Venus of Hohle Fels". the town is still reshaping its museum, here's a photo from the current exhbition, with a collection of other female figurines from long past:



At the exhibition, they also showcased some books that related to the theme, one is written by a historian and a literary professor, both from the university in Tübingen, it's titled: "Die Venus aus dem Eis - Wie vor 40.000 Jahren unsere Kultur entstand" - "The Venus from the Ice - How 40.000 year ago, our culture developed", which has the venus on its cover



The known and the unknown
The university takes care of the scientific studies that relate to the area of Blaubeuren, the original venus is in their labs. And it seems, the scientists there arrived at the same question: how to capture this time, and how to deal with the mix of facts and theories?

There are so many facts that were found and explored in the last years there, but also so much unknown about that time, they tried to make the knowledge accesible in a science-novel: based on what they know, but adding a narrative and also additional parts with scientific notes. I knew i just had to read the book. And it’s well written, and very interesting and illustrative, with the narrative and with additional chapters that include explanations, notes and diagrams, like this one that sums up the keys to life on earth in the last 250.000 years:



And there is an English wiki page of Venus figurines, and of the Venus of the Hohle Fels.

It seems like magic that those figurines survived through time. They feel like stories from the past, materialized in our modern world.

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and as all those home road trips start to connect more and more, here the links to the previous regional road trips:

celtic memorial site

• a-day road trip along Roman roads and home rivers
• into the past: a Celtic settlement from 2200 years ago
• our local ex-vulcano: Randecker Maar / Swabian Jura

myths, legends

I see the world in pictures
here's a story of images and no images: yesterday, the new Aoteaora blog carnival went live. the theme of it is: Past Myths, Present Legends.it turned into a rich carpet of tales, posts, reflections, and: images. the collage above is created from it, and reflects only 4 of more than 20 contributions.

the edition is guest edited by Rachel Fenton, whose introduction comes with 2 simple, complex lines that spoke to me. One is "I see the world in pictures". which also is true for me. there's a reason why the blog posts in this blog all come with an image. it's not really a conscious decision to blog like this. it's rather that i feel there's something missing when there is no image there.

but back to the edition: the thing is, in the last days before going live, the edition developed an on mythical character. some edits refused to show. some paragraphs appeared, then were gone again. we put it all up in a testblog, and in the end, all was ready and looked good. yet when the edition went live, the images were missing. to add to the mystery, that was invisible to us at first: while logged in, the images still showed. after some mails, things were solved and it finally was all online.

the episode brought a good reflections, though. here's a note from my mail to Rachel: "the interesting/surreal thing is that in your opening lines, you write about how you see the world in pictures – which i can very much relate to. and then this carnival went online without images. which made me then think, that the images make such a difference. and now the images are back."

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the past is in the future
the other complex and simple line of the introduction is: "the past is in the future." - the full explanation is included in the introduction, but basically, it's about viewpoints: from a Western Historical perspective the past is ‘behind’, while from a Maori perspective, it is ‘in front', while the future is behind - as it is something you cannot see. "To conceptualise this, you must reverse your notion of history.”

it's an idea i am still chewing on. but it's not that abstract: this weekend, when i drove to the Alb mountain plateau, and sat in a place for a while, i thought: this really is the past in front. in a mountain landscape, if you start to think in timelines, you start to see the landscape as a formation that formed in millions of years, like this maar in the blog post right below: home journeys to wider views

looking very forward to read through the myths and legends step by step.
the link again: Past Myths, Present Legends.

and here, the direct links to the collage images:
Escape Behaviours by Rachel Fenton
Once Upon at Time, an Empty Page (my own contribution)
The Long Way by Michelle Elvy
The Pa Boys Movie by Himiona Grace

home journeys to wider views (or: road, mountain, bird)

on Saturday, i went on a little road trip to the "Schwäbische Alb", to a place where remains of a Celtic settlement are still visible. just driving there was amazing. the "Schwäbische Alb" is a mountain plateau, it's not far from here: i can see its "skyline" or rather "mountain range line" in the distance from the window here. the drive there takes about half an hour. yesterday i went there again. and i guess, i will go there more often now. there's such a variety in views. so many little places with a history. and so many spots that invite to sit and enjoy it all: the landscapce, the trees, the views, and the song of the birds. click the video for a snapshot of being there (and turn up the volume to hear the birds):



being there, forgetting about time, about the news, i just walked and looked, and stopped every now and then to take an image. and now created a place for those larger images - i revived my "participation" blog, the one that is home to my river of stones from january, and to the 100days-of-summer moments.

i think, for a while i will return there with a daily photo. the first ones are up already:
participation

and here's a bit more about the "Schwäbische Alb" - the "Swabian Jura":

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The Swabian Jura (German: Schwäbische Alb) is a low mountain range in the South of Germany, extending 220 km (140 mi) from southwest to northeast and 40 to 70 km (25 to 43 mi) in width. The area's profile resembles a high plateau, which slowly falls away to the southeast, while the northwestern edge is a steep escarpment.
In a number of its caves, some of the oldest signs of human artifacts were found. Best known are:  the oldest representation of the human body, the Venus of Schelklingen. Other finds include a mammoth, a horse head, a water bird, two statues of a lion man, and the flutes made from the bones of swans and griffon vultures, some 30- 35,000 years old.  In some places, former volcanic activity has left traces, such as maars and hills. 
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i really like that little sign on the tree, the pointed arrow: a tiny sign in the huge landscape, a hint of a path to take. and what you see in the first image actually is such a volcanic "maar" as described in the wiki quote: a crater that opened near the edge. but it takes a map and a diagram, or best: an animated movie clip to really see the formation in the landscape – or rather: see the landscape as a geological formation, the slope as the remains of a crater whichs other side has been washed away by a stream.

Previous "Alb" trips
and here, the first post of what probably will turn into a series, and the wiki link:
- 2200 years ago, near here (the trip to the Celitc settlement)
- landscape (a view from the Alb plateau into the lower valley)
- the larger context: A sense of place in time
- and the wiki link: wikipedia/SwabianJura

after the rain

photo friday's new theme is "Rain". it brought be back to the sunday walk in February: it had rained for several days, then the sun came out.. i went for a walk along the Neckar river, which was streaming with all the rain water, and the puddles along the way reflected the sun and the trees, combining two the the themes that keep running through these months and through this blog: water, and: trees.

below, the reflections. and here, the photo friday link, which leads to a whole lot of photo rain

2200 years ago, near here

today: a drive into the past, to a place near here. about 2200 years ago, a Celtic tribe settled in an area of the Alb plateau. the area is sheltered by steep natural Karst-stone walls on two sides. the Celtic tribe picked up on the natural structure, and combined it with a protective barriere that formed a ring around their settlement. the remains of this ring are still there, and there's a walkway leading along it. to go full circle would take about 5-6 hours. "Oppidum" the structure was called by the Romans later: a city-like settlement. you get an idea of the size of it from the slopes on both side of the road. (and of course, i first drove past it, as i didn't know what i was actually supposed to look for, and as the road itself cuts through the ring.)

here's another photo, from the other end of the area:



the trees grow along the protective ring, and there is a path on the top. it felt special to walk there, and to imagine that people walked along the same path since hundreds and thousands of years ago.



there's not much left of the settlement itself, as the houses were made of wood. but just a mile further is a field of "Hügelgräber" - "mound graves":



again, if you don't know they are there, or if you are not sure where to look for, it's easy to miss them when driving by. actually, i think i drove past this place before once, without knowing anything about the history. the thing is, there is not one huge main "memorial site" of the Celtic time, but lots of smaller places where relicts or other marks have been found. in some places, there are small museums with permanent exhibitions, but you have to search for them. this year will be different, though: all Celts-related places in this region are joining in the "Keltenjahr" - "The Celtic Year", with a large exhibition in Stuttgart, the capital of the region.

i think i will "follow the trail" for a while and explore more or the smaller places in this region i am living in. it's a theme that also seems to unfold by itself this year in many layers - here's a reflection with notes about it: A sense of place in time.

PS:
there is a German wiki page about the settlement: wiki/Heidengraben. and of course, there is an extensive page about the Celts - "Kelten", they are called in German. here's the English page: more about the Celts.

one thing leading to another (or: domino day and a lighthouse)

today: a domino.
visiting a neolithic exhibition in February with a friend (this one) now sparked the idea to go and visit the place where the little neolithic Venus figure was found - it's only an hour from here. so that was the plan for today, only that due to life in all its unexpected twists, my friend had to postpone it. which made me look for an alternative place to drive to and visit, for the joy of it. more about that tomorrow (hopefully without twists) .. it's funny how when travelling in another country, it's the common thing to go and look for the highlights of the region. while when living in the region, it somehow takes an extra spark to do so.

the not-going today then brought some extra time, and as it was sunny, i read in May Sarton's "Journal of a Solitude". it's a book i came across when reading the Alaska journal of Sheila Nickerson, who quoted the first lines from Sarton, which i then quoted in my own blog note:

"Begin here. It is raining.." (more here)

Sarton's journal starts in autumn, and includes many notes on the place she lives in: the garden with its changes, the light, her writing, her life there, on her own in a house that stands there, alone, surrounded by green. and her work: the writing. here's a passage i read today:



next to the entry is the photo of the house in the evening, the windows alit.
reading Sarton also makes me think of Annie Dillard's journal, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", especially with the image of the lighthouse keeper:

"It is comforting to know there are lighthouse keepers on rocky islands along the coast."

the line, it also brought back the memory of the lighthouse in Lanzarote, or rather: the lighthouses. at the southern end of the island, there's a bay with an old lighthouse. and next to the old one, there's a new, much higher one, which probably is automatic.

and 3 related notes / links
"Rain": that's also the theme of photo friday, while there's a sunny weekend upcoming.

the source of the quote: GoogleBooks, "In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts", pageview p. 122

and another link that came up when looking for the quote:
Single-minded - The writer who chooses solitude finds purpose and inspiration in the absence of others

lila lunch break

just this.
this moment.
this color.
at this time of day.

2 book fairs, 2 keys to twitter, 21 senses, and the world

2 book fairs in 1
one of the main themes of the last days was the Leipzig book fair, which happened just now, at the verge of spring. i visited the fair last year, and followed it online this year. it's a festival of books and all the themes they encompass. so many links, photos, comments, reflections - based on them, i put 2 articles together. one is for the German comics page (one of my freelance projects), and the focus thus is on comics and the trends in the German book market (where comics & graphic novels are seen as "not really literature" by some, but alas, they find more and more readers, and are one of the continuing focus themes in Leipzig with an own hall).

later, i put together a blog note about Leipzig for the New Zealand blog – piecing it together brought back even more memories of my own visits to the fair. the New Zealand article is about the visiting authors – but then rolls in a wider direction, and includes the history of the fair in a nutshell – which is so deeply connected to Leipzig and to the German history. it’s online now here: Impressions from the Leipzig book fair
working on both was like moving through the same fair, but in different worlds, probably best illustrated by the tweets with the links:

New Zealand authors at the Leipzig Book Fair & a walk through Leipzig city: newzealandgermany2012.wordpress.com/category/feature #lbm12

Comics, Graphic Novels & Manga auf der Leipziger Buchmesse: Clips, Links + geteilte Meinungen: mycomicsde.blogspot.de/2012/03/comics #lbm12

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a key to twitter
the "#lbm12" you see at the end of each tweet is the tag for the Leipzig Book Fair: "Leipzig Buch Messe '12". it's just a little addition, but it's like a link (or rather: it is the link) that connects your tweet to a virtual web catalogue. twitter has the function to create a whole twitterstream for an event or a theme with a tag, when clicking on the tag, it lists all tweets that include the tag - and in contrast to facebook, it lists all, and not only the ones you are friends with already. here's an example, and below a screenshot: twitter-hashtag #lbm12



a note: for large events, the stream often gets so busy that twitter just lists the "Top Tweets", but offers the option to switch to "All" on top of the list, which then lists the most recent tweets. .

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new blog carnival: language/place: "Senses"

parallel to all the book fair blogging, the language/place carnival went online, just in time for spring. and again, twitter was one of the places that spread the message beyond mail, here's the message from issue-editor Stella Pierides, with lots of tags included to help to spread the news:
‏
Lang/Place #14 on The Senses in Language/Place is here!
http://stellapierides.com/blog/languageplace-14-locating-the-senses
#stories # #art #smallstone #greece #poem

the coincidence in time was especially beautiful as it actually was a visit to a book fair that brought the idea for the language/place carnival, which then later also sparked the New Zealand carnival. here's that story: When 2 Things Connect.

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a second key to twitter
you can also use twitter to search for a theme when the tweets don't include hashtags.
for example, if you go ahead and look for the "language/place" carnival on twitter, and enter the term in the seach field, this tweet-list pops up: twitter: "language/place":



so that's the second key to twitter: you don't need a hashtag to cross-connect, you can also just do a search by theme. but then, hashtags in tweets of course invite to click, while otherwise, it takes a copy-and-paste first. and if a lot of people use the same hashtag or the same terms in their tweets, a theme can go "trending" and will be listed in the sidebar next to the tweets (this happened with the book fair, both "Buchmesse" and "#lbm12" were listed as trending while the fair was on.)

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books, books & books
and finally, to round the book-blog-day up, i put a new book feature live in the blueprint book blog, which in time turned into a little book exhibition itself, with books that range from poetry to novel to non-fiction and art. here's the blog link: blueprint book + lit blog

and here's the note for the new book feature - the book? it's about walking into the world with an open mind and an open heart:

poetry meets philosophy:
Daniela Elza isn't afraid of the questions and answers
the weight of dew - Daniela Elza

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now, a new day. things to do, one of them: preparing the next pages of the blueprint issue. and some time off-line, with a book ... ("Journal of a Solitude" by Mary Sarton. talk about contrasts.)

spring moon senses

today: the start of spring.  spring, it is called "Frühling“ here in Germany: „Early-ling“, and arrived with a moon sliver at the horizon - and with new senses -

just time with the turning of seasons, the new language/place blog carnival went live:
Language/Place #14: Locating the Senses

happy spring!

Mexico in stories (reading challenge #9)

Machismo...
The book journey now brought me to Middle and South America. My first entry point was a small, but thick collection of short stories. Again it's a book that waits since a while to be read. Only that this one, it probably will leave my bookshelf unread: it includes stories from 20 authors, but there is no female author included. None. What's also missing is a bio part, or at least a short note about which country each author is belonging to. Weird. Who creates such collections?

Mexican Lives
Frustrated, I put the collection away. By chance, another Mexican book popped up some days later, through the reading list of a friend in Goodreads: "Mexican Lives". . it’s a collection of different life stories from different corners of Mexican society - the main part of it consists of 15 life reports of Mexican men and women, from worker to street merchant to farmer to factory owner. It also includes chapters on the historical background, the political system, and the agricultural and rural development in Mexico. Looking at the reading list, the book "Mexican Lives" is a bit like the "Paris Was Ours" book: every story adds to a larger, more complex picture. I just looked for a note on it, and arrived at a detailed review at Mexconnect: Mexican Lives by Judith Adler Hellman, here's the start:

"What a wonderful book this is for explaining some of the mysteries of Mexico. It’s not pretty stuff but one emerges with great admiration for the Mexican people and their ability to survive in a plainly rotten social and economic system. Ms. Hellman, who is a Professor of Political and Social Science at York University in Toronto, has done superb research. She writes here about fifteen Mexicans in all walks of life..."

Special Issue: The Mexican Drug War
When I had reached the last chapter of Mexican Lives last week, the new issue of Words Without Borders went live: "The Mexican Drug War". It features 11 pieces of fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction exploring the world of a modern-day Mexico held hostage by drug lords.

Guest edited by author Carmen Boullosa, the issue delves into the personal and the global repercussions of a conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people, it's online here: The Mexican Drug War. For most articles, there also is a Spanish version online. A good entry point is the article "A Report from Hell" by the editor Carmen Boullosa:

"I never dreamed that Mexico would be like this when I entered my sixties. My generation was raised on stories of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero War. Around dinner tables our grandparents—eyewitnesses—had talked of the cost of those eruptions, when the “bola”—the people—had risen and violence had spread like a raging sea. But we believed such violence was a thing of the past."

More of Mexico
And while putting this note together, and wondering where to head to next, I realized that I should add this note, as it belongs to the reading challenge, too: the friend in Goodreads - that actually is Rose Hunter, a poet living in Mexico. I read her collection "A Foal Poem" last year - an inner and outer journey through Mexico: starting in Puerto Vallarta, it moves to Acapulco and San Miguel de Allende, Sayulita, and back to Puerto Vallarta.

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Global + European Reading Challenge
this year, i am taking part in a global and in an european reading challenge. the idea: to read books from each continent of the world / several countries of europe. so far i've been to:
- detour: the world in 7 books
- book 8: Tagore (India/Asia)
- book 7: Zarzura (Egypt/Africa)
- book 6: Jericho (Israel/Middle East)
- book 5: Ledra Street (Cyprus/Europe)
- book 4: Disappearance. A Map (Alaska/America)
- book 3: Paris was Ours (France/Europe)
- book 2: Anar (Middle East)
- book 1: The Tigers's Wife (former Yugoslavia/Europe)
- more books: virtual bookshelf
- about: the Global Reading Challenge

140 places to unwind + a me/mory

the new theme of photo friday is Unwind.

140 unwinding moments are online already: Umbrellas from Mexico + Umbrellas from Florida, Dias from Lisbon, Morning Light from Saguaro National Park in Arizona, Après-Midi in Japan... seems photo friday is getting more and more international. so good.

for an unwinding scroll, here are all moments via the Unwinding Link Viewer - just click on any link on the left and the image appears directly on the right side.

my unwind is #141: a pair of photos from Lanzarote island. it's the same place, and it's actually just some metres between the 2 views. here's the second view, with a thought line from january:

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This time of now, of me/mory, of sketching
a rough plan/e and finding a feather in the s/ink

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and looking at the jetty now also takes me back to those other places from Lanzarote:
life as a journey that sometimes leads to Lanzarote

2 time/lines, 3 links + a string of thought on translating the world into words

2 time/lines
friday morning. an open sky with 2 lines. the sun rising at half past 6 in the morning now, and sets at half past 6 in the evening. so the mornings come with earlier light now, which will last another week - then the switch to summertime will move the sunrise back to later.

3 links

• i put some notes on the process of the new blueprintreview issue together: Diary of... notes
• photo friday's new challenge theme is online: Unwind
• words without borders has a compelling article on the Poet as Translator 

a string of thought on translating the world into words
on poems as way to exchange of gifts, of experience, all quotes are from the poet/translator article by Malena Morling (which includes so many good lines and quotes that i am tempted to quote it all).

"Perhaps it is possible that our minds move too directly to our writing and therefore we often miss our poem in its utmost compelling state."

 "A poem is a manifestation of an invisible poem that exists beyond the conventional languages." (Tomas Tranströmer)

"This possibility suggests a fundamental kind of exchange, an exchange of gifts so to speak, poems as gifts, the giving and receiving of the world of images, and things, that is, in some ways at the heart of translation."

Once upon a time, an empty page

This post belongs to the Aotearoa Affair blog carnival - a web initiative of Kiwi and German writers and artists. It's inspired by the theme "Past Myths, Present Legends", moves from present to past to the now, and includes one of the oldest German literary works: a (anti)heroe's tale.

June, 2009, Konstanz
Together with a friend I walk through Konstanz - a city located at the edge of Lake Constance, which itself is an edge: the southern border of Germany. Neither of us has been in this place before. We walk through the old streets of the city centre, and arrive at a house with a large mural, like a memory of the past. We try to decipher the scenes, and notice the word: "Salve".

Our guidebook doesn't tell the story of the mural, but it includes a timeline. Turns out,  the history of Konstanz reaches back to Roman times. Back then, around the year 300 a.C., the settlement was named Constantia. So that's what the words "Salve" relate to: the Roman greeting. Now, if only those old stones could talk and tell the tales of those times.

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January, 2012, Munich
In many places, the old stones were lost: demolished, to make space for new houses. Or simply: built upon. Sometimes they appear again. Like in this construction site in the centre of Munich. Underneath the planned new buildings: the old foundations of houses forgotten a long time ago. Who lived there? And which tales were told in those old rooms? Nothing remains but the silent stones. And sometimes, a piece of paper.

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Year 900, in an unknown place
After 30 years of war and forced exile, as a German legend has it, an old warrior returns home. At the border, a young soldier stops him, and asks who is. The father realizes that the young soldier is his son - but the son believes his father is dead. He calls for a fight, in the honour of his father.

The story, it's the "Hildebrandslied" - "Hildebrand's song" - an old legend that points at the reality of the region that started to turn into "Deutschland" in the 15th century. Before that, Germany was a patchwork of changing borders, and endless wars. It's maybe not coincidence that the warrior legend is one of the earliest literary works in German, written in Old German verse, and with it, is the only surviving example of what probably was an oral tradition of the Germanic tribes.

Here's the original start, in Old German - which no one would be able to understand now, except of a few experts of old languages. The lines, they are like language fossils. But their sound still carries the tale, beyond understanding:

Ik gihorta ðat seggen
ðat sih urhettun ænon muotin
Hiltibrant enti Haðubrant untar heriun tuem
sunufatarungo iro saro rihtun
garutun se iro guðhamun gurtun sih iro suert ana
helidos ubar hringa do sie to dero hiltiu ritun

here's the German version:
Ich hörte (glaubwürdig) berichten,
daß zwei Krieger, Hildebrand und Hadubrand, (allein)
zwischen ihren beiden Heeren, aufeinanderstießen.
Zwei Leute von gleichem Blut, Vater und Sohn, rückten da ihre Rüstung zurecht,
sie strafften ihre Panzerhemden und gürteten ihre
Schwerter über die Eisenringe, die Männer,
als sie zu diesem Kampf ritten.

and here's the English translation:
I heard tell
That warriors met in single combat
Hildebrand and Hadubrand between two armies
son and father prepared their armour
made ready their battle garments girded on their swords
the warriors, over their chain mail

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Two Pages
1100 years is the age of the pages that carry the Hildebrand-text. It was written down in a monastery, on the first and last page of an even older biblical manuscript. The text is not complete - as the space on the last page wasn't large enough for all verses. Still, it survived. Was stolen, brought to another continent, brought back. Its story, it now is a fable in itself.

*

2012, Überlingen
Tales told. Tales forgotten. Tales lingering.
And sometimes: tales turned into a fountain. Like here, in Überlingen - a place that also borders at Lake Constance. I walked around the fountain twice, but there's no plate, no hint at the tale itself. But it's there, wordless, rising.

*
1885, Regensburg
A recent article in the Guardian: For years, a historian travelled a the region of Germany called Oberpfalz, to collect the local fairy tales, like the Grimm Brothers. But while the Grimm fairy tales got popular, the collected tales of Oberpfalz didn't gain much attention. The volumes were filed in the city archive, and forgotten, for 150 years. The rest, again, is a tale itself: a cultural curator looked for regional stories in the archive, and re-discovered the books that alway had been waiting there, carrying 500 tales.

One of them is online now in English: The Turnip Princess

*

And to end these notes on tales with a beginning, here the starting words of fairy tales in German:
Es war einmal...
It was onetime...

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related links, myths, lines:

• myths + tales in this blog: life as a journey with some myths included
• the current issue of the Aotearoa Affair: Crossings
• the Hildebrand lines: wikipedia/Hildebrandslied

the world in 7 books (or: mapping our world by continents)

Here are some world numbers and thoughts, sparked by the global reading challenge I am joining for this year. The idea: to read books from each continent of the world.

Which lead to a short continental detour in January:

Detour: Continents
The whole thing made me look for a world map by continents. it's a topic many books were written about, and you could probably create an own reading challenge about it. here's a summary: wiki/Continent. below, an image with the various ways to distinguish continents. (and here the whole post)

7 books later and continents by population
Last week, I completed book 7 of the challenge. So far I have "visited" the continents: Europe, Asia, North America, Africa. what's missing yet is: South America, Australasia, and a "seventh continent" (either Antarctica or an own seventh setting, f.e. the sea.)

I already have the books for the next continents waiting in the bookshelf. But the whole theme now made me go and and look at a world statistic: world population by contienents.

This isn't news: the world population is now in the range of 7 billion persons. and the continent with the largest population is Asia. what i didn't fully realize, though, is the proportions of the population in relation to continents. if you put Asia in one hand, and all the other continents in the other hand, Asia still would be largest:

Here's the same statistic, only in a different type of chart: 

7 books
So looking at the world from this angle, if you want to read around the world in 7 books, you actually would have to go and look for 4 books from Asia and 1 book from Africa - and then for 2 anthologies that cover the rest of the world in their pages.

***

Update Summer 2012:  World Population, Books, and Worlds Apart

World Statistics: After arriving at this unexpected statistic, i explored this theme further in a second post, here: 1 million books published, 9 books read, and 25% non-readers: book figures from around the world

+ here's a bit more on world population, via wiki: world population

And if you are interested in world books: these are the world books i read so far: virtual world bookshelf

+ My own new book is a world book, too - written with a friend from Asia: Worl(d)s Apart: 2 friends, 2 journeys, 10 life lessons - a true story.

lake constance + (coin)cidences

from this sunday: walking along lake constance.

and a poem, from this time, last year:

(coin)cidences

are tossed tangents
of chance,
flocks of relativity
touching the ground
right in front of
your feet
in the shape
of an invisible coin
pick it up and
live, now

or leave it

while you halt + read
live, now
backwards

while the heads
turn to tails

in this velo(city)
called our
life

which is
Leben
in German
and, in any mirror, turns to
Nebel:

fog.

***

september flowers

the new photo friday theme is "Floral". when i searched for it in this blog, i arrived at this entry from last september, from the garden here, with the note: "the sunflowers cascade. and the red dalias form petals that are too large to hold in one hand. such floral thrive."

and looking at it today, i feel: such colors. right now, the sky is grey, and the garden is mostly coming in tones of brown, with some first new green starting to grow.

some more moments from the garden in different seasons:
life as a journey of growth (and withering)

Tagore + Think Like Chinese (reading challenge #8)

Tagore: Fruit Gathering
"One of India's most cherished renaissance figures, Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) put India on the literary map of the world when his Gitanjali was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Myriad-minded, he was a poet, short story writer, novelist, dramatist, essayist, painter and composer of songs..."

My book journey now continues from "Zarzura", the diary of the explorers of the Egyptian desert to "Fruit Gathering" - a collection of poems from Tagore, the first Nobel laueate from India. Fruit Gathering contains 86 poems, many of them are of spiritual temper.
Here's one i marked to return to, especially the first line:

21
I will meet one day the Life within me, the joy that hides in my life,
though the days perplex my path with their idle dust.
I have known it in glimpses, and its fitful breath has come upon me, making
my thoughts fragrant for a while.
I will meet one day the Joy without me that dwells behind the screen of
light--and will stand in the overflowing solitude where all things are seen as by their creator.

...and looking for it online, i came across this Google Books link that seems to includes not only the whole Fruit-Gathering, but also other works of Tagore, starting wtih Gitanjali: I will meet one day Life within me and here's the wiki page with Tagore's biography, which reads like a novel in itself: wiki/Tagore

*
Think Like Chinese
"Fruit Gathering" was given to me as a gift in India. underneath the ISBN-mark on the back, the price is listed in Rs: Indian Rupees. The ohter book, about China - that's a second hand book i picked out of sheer curiousity: how does it feel to "Think Like Chinese?"
the book is a business non-fiction book that explains Chinese thought and business culture from the Chinese perspective. it starts with a quick guide to Chinese history and philosophy, and includes a lot of short episodes that illustrate both specifics and larger contexts.. i don't think i will read it all, but it's a book that is fascinating, like a window to another world.

also, it belongs to the "Asia" region of the global reading challenge, and also includes a line that refers to the whole theme of geographical grouping and categorization. for the challenge by continents, obviously India and China belong to the same group, even though from culture and philosophy, they are very different - and as single country, both have more inhabitants than other continents as a whole (*i think)

but then, all is a question of perspective, as this line in chapter 3 of the China book reminded me. the chapter is titled: "Contemporary China" - and sums up the most important facts in the end, in three points to remember. this is the third:

3.
China is like Europe - understanding the common traits of Chinese thinking does not necessarily guarantee business success. One needs to pay great attention to regional detail without losing the "bird's eye" view.
(more here: "China is like Europe...)

*statistics
i probably will go on a little world number detour next, to look at world population from a continental point of view. the one number i already checked: Europe has a population of 738 millions. so i got this relation right: both India and China as single country have more citizens than all of Europe together.
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Global + European Reading Challenge
this year, i am taking part in a global and in an european reading challenge. the idea: to read books from each continent of the world / several countries of europe. so far i've been to:
- book 7: Zarzura (Egypt/Africa)
- book 6: Jericho (Israel/Middle East)
- book 5: Ledra Street (Cyprus/Europe)
- book 4: Disappearance. A Map (Alaska/America)
- book 3: Paris was Ours (Europe/France)
- book 2: Anar (Middle East)
- book 1: The Tigers's Wife (Europe/former Yugoslavia)
- more books: virtual bookshelf
- about: the Global Reading Challenge

sunrise & life

sunrise. always such a special, unique moment, even though it happens every day.

& a string of links, inspired by international women's day, but really life reflections on a larger scale:

more than 1 story:

International Women's Day 2012: A Film by RaRa from Scotland

On International Women's Day by Jean Morris

*

transformation:

You arrived at the fire: Dear Sugar Column #97
some necessary truths, said with love

full moon rain voices

today: full moon
today: rain
today: international women's day
today: piecing the blueprint newsletter together
today: thermal water waiting: "spa"
today: thursday

the photo above is from Munich, from a modern passage that connects some of the old city centre houses. for me, it’s like a reflection of real world and virtual world: the persons on the ground, the connecting net of lines and lights above, like a fourth dimension that opens connections between different, same grounds.

& a link, for international women's day:
reflections on fe/male voices

& a prayer from a woman, from the very first issue of blueprintreview

"I am grateful for what little wisdom I have,
For the ability to describe my world and share it and have it shared.
For everything that I have experienced
and everything that I have been spared."

here's the whole prayer, it is called: Today

new blueprintreview issue launching: "Diary of..."

the new “Diary of..” issue of blueprintreview is now starting to launch –like the previous issues, the content will go online in stages, so that the whole issue has time to unfold. the last days finally brought the time and space to get the issue ready to launch.

the first 3 pages are now online at: blueprintreview - Diary of

really excited how the issue turned out, and how the pieces connect across pages, and also with previous issues. make sure to visit the extra links in the footnote, they are forming an own web of cross-connections.

"Zarzura": a desert diary (reading challenge #7)

book journey continued: my reading challenge now lead me to Africa. in book #4 about Alaska, i followed the route of Arctic explorers who traced their way through ice deserts. this book leads into the counterpart region: into the Libyan desert. it's the journey diary of an expedition during the 1930s, lead by Almásy - the real "English Patient". here’s the wiki note on them:

“The western side of the Gilf Kebir was explored in 1932 by the Clayton-Almásy Expedition. The expedition explored the area by Gypsy moth plane, by car and on foot.”

the book i am reading, "Zarzura", was written by one of the expedition members, a German. the title is derived from the mythical oasis in the desert the explorers searched for. what they didn't know: the oasis existed. and the stoney region that surrounde it had caves, with paintings from ancient times. one of the caves later was named "Cave of Swimmers".

here’s a collage from the region, from google's image page with images from the regions, and of the cave paintings:



the cave paintings, they also are how the book connects to the Cave of Forgotten Dreams i blogged about in February. it actually was this blog entry that made a friend of mine browse her bookshelf for the Zarzura book.

reading through "Zarzura", i got all wrapped in this desert journey. such an adventurous expedition. and the journal, so well-written that it takes you there, into the sand dunes, into the wadis, and into this white square they were exploring – a blank spot on maps.

some additional links:
-a summary: History & Exploration of the Libyan Desert
-a page about Almasy with images and notes: László Almásy: the real 'English patient'
-the wiki page: Gilf Kebir

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Global + European Reading Challenge
this year, i am taking part in a global and in an european reading challenge. the idea: to read books from each continent of the world / several countries of europe. so far i've been to:
- book 6: Jericho (Israel/Middle East)
- book 5: Ledra Street (Cyprus/Europe)
- book 4: Disappearance. A Map (Alaska/America)
- book 3: Paris was Ours (Europe/France)
- book 2: Anar (Middle East)
- book 1: The Tigers's Wife (Europe/former Yugoslavia)
- more books: virtual bookshelf
- about: the Global Reading Challenge