Break

I will take a break from this BLOG as I’ll move on to some other studies in the coming year. This present one was much fun for me, concerning myself with style, clothes, drink and other material and Dionysian addictions along with problems of intelligence, politics and sensibility. At times it was a 'close shave' that brought me not only to the edge of life and death but also to the border of sanity yet helped me to better define and circumscribe certain limits of the human form and experience, apart from bestowing me with such side-effects and accidental advantages as developing a high tolerance for alcohol, increasing my practical aesthetic skills and even heightening my physical fitness. I would like to thank everyone who read this space and those who I read for giving me insights and inspiration.

In the interim, I’m leaving this place in the custody of Apollo (see post below). My best wishes, Bromios.

Self-sufficient and free like the sun-

Like a thermonuclear power generator locked into an infinity-loop, as the modern poetical myth called science would express it: Today man strives for self-contained hyper-individualism. In his love for liberty he is mistaking and mingling old metaphysical concepts with his academic pseudo-religions, thrown back upon his feeble self by overly populated, chaotic social conglomerates.

The digital age was proclaimed and the Muses wept when script that is culture, was denounced as an unimportant atavism, a thing of the past while I as their lord and leader can only laugh at such fancies as we gods ride on solar winds and create poetry from galactic mists that we form into concrete and well-defined shapes (cause only form is beauty!), we create with and from nature itself! But can man do as we do- can he, envisioning opium-dreams of monadic nomadism realize and make actual this unbound freedom?

To me such endearing attempts are nothing new. Did the mortals not try to match even Me in contests of music and beauty? And the reason for my severity in the punishment of such hubris was not conditioned by cruelty but by my debt to artistic expression that prospers when its lines and the boundaries of the spheres are distinct and clearly defined and when no man impedes the splendour of the gods by trying to make himself Our equal.

So for man this freedom cannot be attained with him still remaining man in all his bestial and compassionate confines, with all his spiritual and imaginary limitations that constitute the foundations of his natural beauty; (but neither is he Satyr or demon, either).

...

In this day and age I am reminded of my own Titanic blood by some of man’s efforts wherefore I bade my sister to chastely sit beside me and judge and watch from this higher sphere the strive of those human forms: on most who rise up to us we may train our arrows but to a few I might reach out my hand in advice like I once did to the heroic son of Thebes who was Argos' Glory. But thus shall the prophecy be divined: a score will rise unaided and supplant Our Father like he and his brothers once had supplanted Their Titanic forbears.

...

Apollon.

Whisky-Studies:

Glasses
A few books
Deeper Mysteries

Hornblower and Sharpe's Regiment (and self-imposed idleness!)

Trying to avoid the general Christmas-craze, I holed myself up at home with a bottle of vodka, two cans of caviar and these two British history-dramas. I have only watched the first episodes of each [vide infra], but the stories seem to be set up quite well.

The Lost Tools of Learning:

http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html

Some interesting ideas there.

The 'medieval' Trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric), part of the Septem Artes, as seen in relation to child psychology and development with the phases of: wanting to know- criticizing- interconnecting. University graduates at the age of 19, starting to learn Latin at 6. Why not? It could be better than (it is) now!

Opinions

'Most people are nothing and count for nothing until they have clad themselves in general convictions and public opinions- in accordance with the tailor's philosophy: clothes make the man. In regard to exceptional men, however, the saying should read: only the wearer creates the costume; here opinions cease from being public and become something other than masks, finery and camouflage.' (Friedrich Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human [325].)

Seneca: On the Happy Life

"When we discuss the happy life, there is no reason for you to give me the well-known reply familiar from vote-counting [in the Senat]: "This side seems to be in the majority." For that is why it is the worse side.
Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favours the better things: evidence of the worst choice is the crowd." [De Vita Beata II,1]

Ikkyū Sōjun

‘Do not worry:
Wherever you are
You are always you.’

Ikkyū is accredited as one of the great influences on the Japanese tea ceremony, and renowned as one of medieval Japan's greatest calligraphers and sumi-e artists. Known to drink in excess he would often upset [his teachers] with his remarks and actions to guests.

He was among the few Zen priests who argued that his enlightenment was deepened by consorting with pavilion girls, and entered brothels wearing his black robes, since for him sexual intercourse was a religious rite. At the same time he warned Zen against its own bureaucratic politicizing. After training Ikkyū quickly left the temple and lived many years as a vagabond. He was not alone, however, as he had a regular circle of notable artists and poets from that era. Around this time, he also established a relationship with a blind singer Mori who became the love of his later life. (Cobbled together from here)

If, at the end of our journey,
There is no place to rest,
We need not worry about
Losing the way.

(Translations of poems by me.)

Cover your path
With fallen pine-needles
So no one will be able
To locate your
True dwelling place.

Thomas Mann über die künstlerisch-poetische Weltsicht (1938):

[…]...muß man nicht, ob man will oder nicht, in dem Phänomen eine Erscheinungsform des Künstlertums wieder erkennen? Es ist, auf eine gewisse beschämende Weise, alles da: die "Schwierigkeit", Faulheit und klägliche Undefinierbarkeit der Frühe, das Nichtunterzubringensein, das Was-willst-du-nun-eigentlich?, das halb blöde Hinvegetieren in tiefster sozialer und seelischer Bohème, das im Grunde hochmütige, im Grunde sich für zu gut haltende Abweisen jeder vernünftigen und ehrenwerten Tätigkeit – auf Grund wovon? Auf Grund einer dumpfen Ahnung, vorbehalten zu sein für etwas ganz Unbestimmbares, bei dessen Nennung, wenn es zu nennen wäre, die Menschen in Gelächter ausbrechen würden. Dazu das schlechte Gewissen, das Schuldgefühl, die Wut auf die Welt, der revolutionäre Instinkt, die unterbewußte Ansammlung explosiver Kompensationswünsche, das zäh arbeitende Bedürfnis, sich zu rechtfertigen, zu beweisen…[…] (Bruder Hitler)

http://www.cicero.de/97.php?ress_id=4&item=266&aktion=blaettern&teil_num=1&teil_gesamt=2

The most common trait of the petit bourgeois:

His need to be 'correct' and his insurmountable crave for praise of his opinions by the others.

A Season inHell

(Bag by Timberland- fake-distressed but recommended, they did a good job there;
Loafers by K&K Schuhmanufaktur Alt Wien.)

As you all know I am a well-integrated, conforming citizen but in the winterly months, especially during carnival-season, I sometimes tend towards the eccentric. Today, shortly before dusk, we arrived at some small, provincial airport on the Eastern outskirts of our former empire- the region where snowflakes dance and wolves howl just beyond the border of vision- when I spontaneously decided to buy this fine-looking bottle of vodka from an honourable fringe dweller of proto Indian descent. Good, inflammatory stories begin like that, those that I never will write since I am but a mere poseur of the arts; but- as I keep repeating: I am the poet of poets- I am the one who the poets read for inspiration! Aye, and now I’ll enter the gates of Ereshkigal with my heroic compatriots via a communal sample of that fine-looking beverage!

The Schoolsystem in this country:

Sucks. I was reading a history of the political development of Austria in the 20th century the other day that said that public education was (re)-introduced and made widely popular by the Socialist party in the 1920s. That was quite revelatory to me. ‘So that’s why I always hated it so much’, I thought, I could smell that inferior conformism, that sweaty labour-mentality intuitively even as a child- that system was not designed to educate but to infiltrate persons like me. So, consequently, I had refused to learn anything from it. All that I know today, I have taught myself.

Non so più cosa son cosa faccio...

Non so più cosa son cosa faccio...
Or di foco, ora sono di ghiaccio,
Ogni donna cangiar di colore,
Ogni donna mi fa palpitar.

Solo ai nomi d'amor, di diletto,
Mi si turba, mi s'altera il petto,
E a parlare mi sforza d'amore
Un desio ch'io non posso spiegar.

Parlo d'amore vegliando,
Parlo d'amor sognando,
All'acqua, all'ombra, ai monti,
Ai fiori, all'erbe, ai fonti,
All'eco, all'aria, ai venti,
Che il suon de'vani accenti
Portano via con se.
E se non ho chi m'oda,
Parlo d'amor con me!

[I don't know any more what I am,
what I'm doing,
Now I'm fire, now I'm ice,
Any woman makes me change color,
Any woman makes me quiver.
At just the names of love, of pleasure,
My breast is stirred up and changed,
And a desire I can't explain
Forces me to speak of love.
I speak of love while awake,
I speak of love while dreaming,
To the water, the shade, the hills,
The flowers, the grass, the fountains,
The echo, the air, and the winds
Which carry away with them
The sound of my vain words.
And if there's nobody to hear me,
I speak of love to myself!]

Gottfried Benn

One of the best modern German poets- apart from Eichendorff and Rilke- that I know of. He was the last one to be able to express genuine mythical, emotive 'pathos' in his work before the rather dark period of the last 50 years set in. Here are two of my favourite poems by Benn; to all who don't speak German I can only say: It is worth learning it in order to be able to read them.

Benn also said that, if one already concerns onself with something as futile and seemingly useless as poetry, one better should try to give ones very best.

Nur zwei Dinge

Durch so viel Form geschritten,
durch Ich und Wir und Du,
doch alles blieb erlitten
durch die ewige Frage: wozu?
Das ist eine Kinderfrage.
Dir wurde erst spät bewußt,
es gibt nur eines: ertrage
- ob Sinn, ob Sucht, ob Sage -
dein fernbestimmtes: Du mußt.
Ob Rosen, ob Schnee, ob Meere,
was alles erblühte, verblich,
es gibt nur zwei Dinge: die Leere
und das gezeichnete Ich.

Dennoch die Schwerter halten

Der soziologische Nenner,
der hinter Jahrtausenden schlief,
heißt: ein paar große Männer
und die litten tief.

Heißt: ein paar schweigende Stunden
in Sils-Maria-Wind,
Erfüllung ist schwer von Wunden,
wenn es Erfüllungen sind.

Heißt: ein paar sterbende Krieger
gequält und schattenblaß,
sie heute und morgen der Sieger -:
warum erschufst du das?

Heißt: Schlangen schlagen die Hauer
das Gift, den Biß, den Zahn,
die Ecce-homo-Schauer
dem Mann in Blut und Bahn -

heißt: so viel Trümmer winken:
die Rassen wollen Ruh,
lasse dich doch versinken
dem nie Endenden zu -

und heißt dann: schweigen und walten,
wissend, daß sie zerfällt,
dennoch die Schwerter halten
vor die Stunde der Welt.

Water

I love water, apart from wine it is the best 'invention' of God-; one could live exclusively on water and wine (and love, of course!).

Jade

In Asia it is said that jade will cool down a person with overly prominent emotions like myself. I have found this to be true: try to wear it around your neck on a pendant, I would suggest one in the shape of your (Chinese) astrological sign, mine for example is Tiger. If it is genuine jade, it will always feel cool against your skin even when you are in a hot, tropical climate!

(picture/screen from my private collection)

Hercules

Since I have discovered that drink and physical fitness needn’t be mutually exclusive, I have become a happier man; only mental fitness suffers from it but that is no problem to me since I was born with too much intelligence, anyway.

The Kraken Rum

I would like to taste this:

A Romantic Vision of Old Europe

Some people only learn to realize and appreciate the worth of their own culture by viewing it through the romantic, idealized vision of someone from outside of it. Miyazaki Hayao does a good job, there!

Musicals

I do not like post WWII musicals but I like some music-plays by Gilbert and Sullivan and Cole Porter:

Per esempio: HMS Pinafore, or:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrCn6G7cp5I

I asked a Chinese friend if she understood what the actress is singing there and she didn't have a clue; my guess is that it is Shanghainese (nearly not-understandable for other Chinese) pronounced in a completely faulty way...

There are actually quite a few songs in 'Anything Goes' that I like: You're the Top, I Get A Kick Out of You, It's De-lovely, et cetera...

A very old one:

The professor rapped on his desk and shouted,
"Gentlemen - order!"
The entire class yelled, "Beer"!

Playing Hooky or hookey or Hockey?

In my schooldays I was the most proficient in not attending class. Not wanting to boast but I think that I was the best in the whole city of Vienna, in this discipline, then! Instead I often went to some Kaffeehaus. The Hawelka as is depicted here (with the old owner, the old Hawelka) wasn't one of my major hang-outs then, but now and again I paid it a visit, too. Then, in the late 80s the ol guy still used to serve us personally in the morning with a nice warm coffee, a Melange, and Powidltatschgerl (some dough-bakery-intricacy fílled with plum 'marmalade', actually not marmalade but something else that would take me two pages to explain).. Anyway, old Mr. H. has bequeathed his café to his son and grand sons already but he still turns up now and then, I heard...

Nice video, slightly annoying singer (or not? have some love-hate relation to that....ahh, the perpetual agony of choice!):

Via: Les Nouveaux Dandys

Out of the past cometh this New thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYoJ4fhMlC0

Nice looking loafer

The tongue looks a bit prominent but if worn it ought to be cool and smug. I think that it was some ad in the latest Uomo Vogue fall/winter style-supplement, the only part of that otherwise boring mag. that I am usually giving a closer look.

Barbey d'Aurevilly

“Beloved of Fin-de-siècle decadents, Barbey d'Aurevilly remains an example of the extremes of late romanticism. Barbey d'Aurevilly held extreme Catholic opinions, yet wrote about risqué subjects, a contradiction apparently more disturbing to the English than to the French themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly was also known as a dandy artisan of his own persona, adopting an aristocratic style and hinting at a mysterious past, though his parentage was provincial bourgeois nobility […]”

For a compassionate and succinct characterization of Barbey d’Aurevilly I’d also recommend the obituary written by Paul Bourget in 1889.

Waterville Jackets

This exclusive North-Italian firm makes nice coats and jackets for late fall and winter. The aesthetic resembles somehow the Barbour-line but with a more elegant cut.

I’d also recommend them to my American (and British) friends both female and male if you can get them over there, or else: it’d be another good reason for visiting the continent.

They are good for storming into a liquor-store before the long weekend and telling the Central-Asian Turk-folk clerk who obstructs your passage and tells you to please take care, Sir that it is he who should take care of the customers. Disgusting if people have no manners, no culture cause then one has to recur to the international language of greed. God, I hate this modern economic primitivism! Anyway, Waterville jackets- buy them!

Paradise Lost!

What has become of the promise that mechanization and industrialization would reduce work and increase man’s leisure?

En Garde!

Beer-duell by Georg Mühlberg: to the left and the right side one can see the opponents (corporated students); the colleague in the middle functions as the judge.

"In der Regel trinken sich die beiden Kontrahenten zu, als Startsignal das Anstoßen oder das in der formellen Austragung das Kommando „Sauft's!!“ des Unparteiischen. Sieger ist, wer sein Gefäß als erster vollends austrinkt und senkrecht abgesetzt hat."
http://de.academic.ru/dic.nsf/dewiki/169856

50 cult-books

A fun article with sometimes intelligently and sometimes funnily written short-reviews of books most of which I knew and some of which I have read; a few I have even enjoyed:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3672915/50-best-cult-books.html

For example:

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974)
Burnt-out hippy takes son on bike trip. Remembers previous self: lecturer who had nervous breakdown contemplating Eastern and Western philosophy. Very bad course in Ordinary General Philosophy follows. If he’d done Greek at school and knew what "arête" meant, we could have been spared most of the 1970s. AMcK"

"The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
Deep in the South American jungle an intrepid explorer is about to stumble on a sequence of ancient prophecies that could change our way of living, even save the world. If only we didn’t have to buy the other novels in that the series to find out what they were! For a similar effect on the cheap, rent an Indiana-Jonesalike film – Tomb Raider, say – and ask a hippy to whisper nonsense in your ear while you're watching it. TM"

The Horseman of the Storm

Every child of the plain knew about the Rider. Some of us had seen Him in the month of august after the harvest when the land was an endless sea of golden stubbles. From time to time and quite sudden a storm would approach and I will never forget the stark contrast of blue sky and dark-grey clouds and the glorious rolling waves of the shorn, sun-coloured land beneath. It was then that some of us saw Him as a black silhouette on the horizon charging headlong towards the oncoming darkness. All kids knew of Him but only I had once seen him closer so to discern some of his features; he had seemed to halt and come toward me before he suddenly reined in his steed and again sped off into oblivion accompanied by the turba ferox of the Wild Hunt.

When we got older we of course found rational explanations for such childish fancies. There was a castle in the village that a Habsburg-emperor (the dynasty from ‘outside the land’, as it was still referred to in my family) had built for one of his maîtresses, and annexed to it was a modern horse-riding school, so that the Rider must have been one of its patrons. Yet I still never believed in such explanations, maybe because of my qualified encounter, maybe due to my otherness or due to the fact that one day he had sent me his envoy, a large black butterfly that only I had seemed to notice: it had flown straight at my face and then had miraculously vanished.

I had forgotten all about it until I was 17 years old and dying on a bathroom floor in Hong Kong, laying there poisoned by a girl for revenge of a murder that I had committed in innocence. There, He threatened to come through the wall, half-visibly looking down on my squirming form and that was when I saw Him even closer and I also saw his flesh-dripping horse. Maybe I made a promise there and maybe I did not care to remember it thereafter, anymore.

Tonight, I saw Him again for the first time in dream. I just woke up: 2:45 a.m., the room is very cold and the town unusually quiet.

The Laphroaig-time of the year!

It is quite healthy, I heard, to leave open the window even in the cooler months of the year to let in some fresh air. With the help of single malt whisky and good knitwear you will be able to achieve this objective, even when the temperature drops below 10°C. Thus you may harden your constitution for your next expedition to Central Asia and eventually- in combination with other longevity-exercises- prolong your life!

Some Knitwear for the cooler season:

From bottom to top by maker: Alan Paine, Loro Piana, Pringle, Knize, Peter Scott, A. Paine for Harrods, Boss Orange, Pringle, N.N. (cut out the label long ago), Barbour, Dalkeith, N.N., RL., most are Lambswool some cashmere...I also have or had a very heavy one from China that a friend from the province of Gansu once gave me but it is nearly unwearable in Europe; you could go outside wearing it when there are minus -10°C and wouldn't need a jacket..

Drinking Wine by Tao Yuanming

Tao Yuanming drinking in the shade of a willow-tree.

Drinking Wine
Tao Qian

I made my home amidst this human bustle,
Yet I hear no clamour from the carts and horses.
My friend, you ask me how this can be so?
A distant heart will tend towards like places.
From the eastern hedge, I pluck chrysanthemum flowers,
And idly look towards the southern hills.
The mountain air is beautiful day and night,
The birds fly back to roost with one another.
I know that this must have some deeper meaning,
I try to explain, but cannot find the words.

Poems Written While Drinking Wine (Chapter V)

In the introduction to his 'Poems Written While Drinking Wine', Tao Yuanming tells us: I am leading a simple and secluded life without many pleasures. Now, that the nights are growing longer, if I have some wine no evening passes without drinking. Alone, only with my shadow to keep me company, I empty a bottle and suddenly feel intoxicated. Thus inebriated, I scrawl some lines of poetry here and there for my amusements sake. Paper filled with verse already piles up high around me but there is no order in it so I asked a friend to copy some of it out […]

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Already as a child, Lampedusa had 'preferred the company of objects to that of human beings'. He spent his afternoons reading or writing in his library. Twice a month princess Alexandra, his wife, received friends of her husband, mostly intellectuals and a few aristocratic relatives.
Source

Following a book-recommendation from this BLOG, which is actually putting me in touch with my long-neglected conservative roots again- I got reminded that I also wanted to read the 'gattopardo' for some time. Judging from the reviews that I read, it could either be a bit boring and long-winded or written in a beautiful lyrical language that poetically dwells in the moment and melancholically laments the inevitable loss of the old world. Let's see...

Short internal note for a political campaign- that is how I want to see Mr. Kirschner presented!

Happy Meditrinalia, Everyone!

In Roman religion, Meditrinalia was an obscure festival celebrated on October 11 in honor of the new vintage, which was offered in libations to the gods for the first time each year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditrinalia

The fascinating world of Auberon Waugh

"The world of Auberon Waugh is a coterie of reactionary fogeys centred on the Spectator and the Telegraph who affect an imaginary style of 1930's gent - Evelyn was the icon. Battered brown trilby, chalk-stripes, sit-up-and-beg bike with a basket full of books from the London Library are the accoutrements. The mind-set is all Evelyn Waugh too - the smells and bells of aristocracy and old Catholicism (recusant priest-holers only - God forbid any happy clappy stuff). Effete, drunken, snobbish, sneering, racist and sexist, [...]"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/19/news.comment

Addendum: of course this article is overly polemic but not only is it -for this very reason- extremely fun to read the author also makes some good points about herself and people in general who are only able to think politically, and in no other way (mainly the off-spring of the Enlightenment). They cannot abide of ‘stupid things’ like aristocracy or religion, things that would help them to look at the world in love or not to take it overly serious or to simply enjoy life. They are modern so all they have is their ah-so-precious selves and anyone who has honestly and philosophically looked at oneself knows what a sad sight that can be- about as sad as some modern art…

Knowledge and Wisdom

To know much but to never think of it!

'For learning you gain daily; for the Way you lose daily.
Losing and losing, thus you reach noncontrivance; be uncontrived, and nothing is not done. Taking the world is always done by not making anything of it.
For when something is made of it, that is not enough to take the world.'
(Daodejing, Chapter 48 [transl. Cleary])

Autumnal Stroll: Zentralfriedhof- Central Cemetery Vienna.

'Opened in 1874, then still lying outside of Vienna's city borders, the cemetery spans 2.4 square kilometres with 3.3 million interred here. It is also second largest cemetery, after Hamburg's Ohlsdorf Cemetery (more than 4 km²), by area and largest by number of interred in Europe.'

Irish Tweed-

Magee of Donegal

Archaikon: Eine Neue Mythische Poetik (Exzerpt)

Audiatur et altera pars.

Tore auf! Und lasst prächtig aufmarschieren
Thelemische Magier, wirkende Hexen und Stregas
mit stolzen Stachelschweinen an Ihren Leinen
aus willenlosen Schopenhauerschen Komplexen;
Sowie Aufguss alter Mysterienschulen von falschen,
Verstandenen Weisen in langen, smaragdenen Roben,
Mit Lapislazuli gesäumte Garderoben
bewacht von jungen Geparden und Globen mit Flügeln
und hermetischen Anachoreten auf Säulen oben…

Als ich vor einigen Tagen hierher an die Südküste der Britischen Inseln kam um Spazieren zu gehen und zu schreiben, dachte ich, ich könnte Frieden finden- doch ich fand nur Langeweile und Horror- !
Es regnete schon seit zwei Wochen. Die Pubs waren mit stinkenden Fischern und dummen Urlaubern überfüllt, die Strandpromenaden waren nicht zu gebrauchen, da sie verschlammt und vermurt waren- Lös und Erde hatten sich mit dem schlickigen Sand vermischt und wurden vom stürmischen Meer weiter verschäumt und vergischtet.
Eines Nachmittages saß ich in der Schankstube über mein Pint gebeugt und dachte über Dämonenbeschwörung und ihre Sinnlosigkeit nach. Vor dem Fenster türmten sich als Kontrast realitätsnahe, dunkelbleifarbene Wolkengebilde während ich jahrhundertealte Kratzspuren auf der schwärzlichen Oberfläche des Holztisches studierte.
Baron Bollocks- ein unverbesserlicher Kretin, den ich zufällig kannte, kam vom Tresen zu mir herüber und erzählte mir in seinen englischen Offiziersoberlippenbart nuschelnd von banalen Jet-Set Abenteuern, die höchstens das Interesse von frustrierten Provinzbewohnern weckten. Er sagte, er habe in Rom mit einem deutschen Schauspieler und einer italienischen Gräfin die Nacht durchgemacht und sei dann gleich gestern am Morgen her geflogen, weil er so große Lust auf ein Ale gehabt hätte: Solche und noch schlimmere Perversionen tischte er mir auf, bis ich gar nicht mehr zuhörte.

Ich dachte an das Problem des Nicht-Seins und seine Beziehung zu pseudo-intellektuellen Möchtegernphilosophen, welche dasselbe in popularisierender Weise vermarkteten. Meine Hemmschwelle gegen die Begehrlichkeiten des Narrentums war aufs Äußerste herabgesetzt, und ich fing sofort zu klatschen und zu grölen an, als Bollocks am Tisch einen Hula-Hoop Tanz aufzuführen begann. Nach nur 5 Minuten wurden wir von den antimediterran eingestellten Einheimischen auf die Strasse gesetzt. Da standen wir nun im Sprühregen bis wir dann doch zu seinem alten, weißen, zweisitzigen, teuer gewesenen, verdreckten Alfa-Romeo Sportwagen rannten.
Drinnen- der Regen wusch gegen die Frontscheibe- drehten wir die roten, abgefuckten Ledersitze nach hinten und ich schnorrte mir eine von Bollocks dicken Zimtzigaretten.
„Hast Du eine Idee, wohin wir fahren könnten?“, fragte ich ihn.
„Natürlich“, sagte er und kurbelte sein Fenster ein wenig herunter um den Rauch in den Wind zu blasen, „wir fahren aufs Kap hinaus. Dort können wir das aufgepeitschte Meer beobachten wie es sich brutal gegen die hohen Klippen wirft und wenn einer von uns es möchte, sogar Selbstmord begehen.“
Ich war einverstanden.

Die schmale Strasse führte uns über einige Hügel jenseits der Stadt und danach landauswärts in Richtung der Halbinsel. Wir fuhren in einem Hohlweg zwischen den Wackersteinen und Zäunen und Büschen britannischer Provenienz dahin bis der nun einfallende Nebel so stark wurde, dass er uns die Sicht raubte. Die völlig verschmutzten Scheinwerfer des Autos taten das Übrige. Bollocks raste beinahe blind mit 80, 90 km/h durch die Landschaft. In einer Kurve verlor er die Kontrolle über das Fahrzeug, sodass wir gedreht wurden und anhalten mussten. Er und auch ich brauchten beide einen großen Schluck aus dem Flachmann mit dem Whiskey, den ich in der Frühe heimlich aus der Vorratskammer meiner Pension gestohlen hatte. Danach wollte auch ich einmal fahren. Natürlich war keiner von uns beiden gewillt auszusteigen- der Regen war noch zu stark, und weil mir Bollocks einfach nicht das Steuer überlassen wollte, setzte ich mich eben auf ihn drauf; er stöhnte gekünstelt wie eine Schwuchtel und startete den Motor. Freundlicherweise übernahm er für mich das Gas und ich konnte mich aufs Lenken konzentrieren.

Die Strasse war nur eineinhalbspurig und wir fuhren genau in ihrer Mitte, da dort ob ihrer gar so konvexen Form sich am wenigsten Regen und Nässe angesammelt hatte.
Einige Minuten später hörte es glücklicherweise auf, der dichte Nebel wurde von einer Windböe zur Seite gerissen und wir konnten ein Stück freien, blauen Himmels über uns erkennen; auf der rechten Seite tief unter uns befand sich der gewaltige, schäumende Ozean. Voll Enthusiasmus und Freude jubelten wir zum Himmelszelt aufblickend die Götter an; seit langen Äonen hatten wir keinen Sonnenstrahl mehr erblickt. Meines Kompagnons Übermut war derart groß, dass er mir sogleich die Whiskeybulle aus der Hand riss (ich hatte sie zwischen Lenkrad und eine neue Zigarette geklemmt gehalten). Gerade in diesem Augenblick fiel mein Blick vom Firmament wieder einmal auf die gar so mundane Strasse.

Dort hatte sich plötzlich eine Schafsherde mitsamt keats’schem Homo- Sapiens -Zubehör, vulgo Schäfer mit gewaltbereit wirkendem Hirtenstock, manifestiert. Stehen zu bleiben war bei unserer Geschwindigkeit keine Option, die der Anstand erlaubt hätte- doch Fortuna war uns gesonnen- linksseits der Strasse bog ein schmaler Kiesweg von ihr ab. Wenn ich es schaffte, mich dort hinein zu schleudern, würden wir und die Schafe überleben. Um den Schäfer, der irgendetwas wie „Ja nicht dorthinein! - Dort wohnen Satamagie-Torrtur-Ritualplasmialien Cthulhuidenfanatiker...“, brüllte, sorgten wir uns nicht weiter- sollte jener Tierquäler doch sehen, wo er blieb. Und was wollte er denn? Vielleicht, dass wir uns auf ihn ipsum oder gar die andere Seite hinunter in den Atlantis-Ozean stürzten? Ha, den Gefallen wollte ich ihm nicht tun, und auch der Baron brüllte hinter mir hervor: „Nein, den Gefallen tun wir Dir nicht, Du Bastard!“

Verdammt, hoffentlich hatte er nicht schon den ganzen Whiskey alleine ausgetrunken…
Doch nun hieß es schnell handeln! Die Schafe der Herde waren bereits nahe der rettenden Abzweigung, da bog ich mit aller Gewalt den Knüppel der Handbremse nach oben und schraubte das Lenkrad quer. Unser Wagen schrammte zur Seite, schleuderte auf der nassen Fahrbahn und drehte sich in den Seitenweg. Ein Schaf, ich werde es mir nicht verzeihen, erlitt eine Beinluxation wie mir schien, doch hatten wir es geschafft. […]

Austrian Polo

http://www.poloclub.at/

Nota bene!

"Ein pfiffiger, junger Mann, der sich im Leben eingerichtet hat, bietet einen der erbärmlichsten Anblicke, den man zu sehen bekommen kann." (Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Notas, p.306)

"Der Humanismus ist die Haltung des Betrachtenden und Genießenden, nicht des Schaffenden und noch weniger des Arbeitenden und Tätigen." (ibid., p.163)

"Der Techniker ist ein Landarbeiter, dessen Hacke eine Formel ist." (ibid., p.263)

Legends of the Fall

I once was together with a girl who was a pianist and she played those études by Chopin up and down for hours while I was idly lying on her bed drinking wine or looking past the window at the falling rain or the dancing leaves.

Lohengrin

I just listened to this right now; this version is partly incredibly fast! Very creative take by Furtwängler there.

Indian Drivers…

…at night; driving without their lights on,
Straight, filthy roads with holes and dead cows and men,
Coloured neon-gadgets on their windshields,
Driving with glazed eyes towards Nirvana.

Between the worlds

Ikebukuro: Chinese immigrants playing Mahjong in the next room- shouting. The walls made of thin wood with broad slits at the bottom and the top- the smoke drifting through. I was reading a pulp called: 'Tale of a Bounty Hunter'.In the morning it got crowded in the communal shower-room. I stayed there for two weeks.

The markings of a man

On a recent trip to Sicily I have noted some features on many of those tough, bucolic but honourable people that spoke of the hardships and experiences of their adventuresome lives. They were: tattoos, scars, missing limbs and physical deformities like bent noses or lop-sided mouths that gave their expressions more impact. To those I would add prominent beards that are not typical on that particular island but elsewhere they could also mark the man of experience hardened in various battles and struggles against the forces of nature.
Two of those I happen to have myself already, but the older one gets, the more likely one is to accumulate others in the course of ones journey.

'To Tassle!'

As I have said earlier in this spot, I had played with the thought of getting some tassle loafers, so the other day I bought these at a local young and upcoming shoemaker's shop- in order to 'try them out'. Sofar I quite like that design- very confident and self-assertive!

Tezuka Osamu: Adolf ni Tsugu

Der Klassiker

Teatro Grottesco

Old Raj and Gin in general

I am not a gin person, not at all but if it is of exceptional quality like Hendricks or Ol' Raj, I do enjoy it a lot, especially in the warmer, leisurely months of the year...

(edit)-

My favourite colours (to wear)…

Have always been earth-colours especially brown-tones on the one hand and blues with a focus on navy on the other.



There is a fun theory invented by some eccentric nobleman of my acqaintance that draws parallels between the prominent forces of the military (Army, Navy, Air Force) and the elements*, and clothes. According to him all those components ought to be combined in the right proportion in order to make one a dashingly well-dressed gentleman (or Ehrenmann or gentilhomme, depending on where you live).

Basically the theory says that the Army stands for the element of earth and all its colours. Its contribution to good clothes is structure and material (fabric, weave), its overall feel and comfort. Then, there is the Air Force: element 'air' of course; its characteristic is not colour-it uses them all- but rather the cut, the sharpness, the lines of the clothes. And finally we'd have the Navy: the element of water, that contributes elegance and roundness and binds all the other characteristics together…furthermore there was also fire which is supposed to be artillery but it would be a bit too much fuss to explain it thoroughly in this short space: it adds creative splashes of colour here and there (ties, socks, cufflinks, buttonholes, pocket squares [least of which I personally hardly use at all] ) and is also quite important to women (paradoxically – or rather: conclusively- so, for Freudians); anyway, it seemed to be a pretty crazy theory.

* confer the teachings of the philosopher Empedocles there who supposes 4 basic elements: earth, fire, water, air!

Those were some hot days-

But also very good ones to me; the universe is working my ways, correcting obstacles and teaching people certain meanings, although I know that this cannot last forever. I felt very relaxed and finally could do some concentrated private studies of a literary, artistic, metaphysical and philosophical kind. I also wore this unstructured coat, at times; it is simple and not perfect but I like it and its colour well enough. It reminded me of North African desert uniforms and quite appropriately so, fore these days we were blasted by hot winds from the Sahara.

Country (Book)

Also see here: 16house-BLOG

For a rainy spring: scarf from Drakes

We had a very rainy season and this light scarf, along with my beige Barbour jacket as well as my navy Burberry one belonged to my trusted allies on walks through town. Now, I heard that it will get sunnier and warmer and I probably only will use this overly-long drapery on cooler summer evenings when drinking some wine between vineyards overlooking the Vienna Woods or as a lasso for girls. Anyway, I wish you a nice weekend (should you 'celebrate' it).

A symphony of the elements-

Is what I experienced when I was strolling through town today (I like to walk around town on a Sunday because there are only a few people about): A strong, warm wind blew from the east carrying scents of the wide Pannonian grassland plain, bearing intimations of far-off Central Asian steppes. Although the sun was shinning piercingly, it was also raining in a light drizzle while I was treading the light-grey stone pavement of the boulevard. I was completely enveloped by that curious and fascinating interplay of the elements.
Strangely enough, the people I scarcely encountered along the way seemed to be quite oblivious to that grand concert of natural forces; in animalistic self-reflexivity they tended to their children, discussed plans of business or looked into shop-windows to decide what to buy or not to buy in the near future.
Seeing all this made me understand a bit more of the world…it was quite beautiful.

Helmut Berger

Interview m. H. Schmidt 1

Interview m. H. Schmidt 2

Nr. '3' :

Rufus Excalibur Ffolkes

From: North Sea Hijack (1979)

Charge!!

When the weather is fair, I..

...sometimes like to take my satchel, put on some soft shoes and go out into the woods and meadows for a day. This is especially enjoyable on weekdays when there is no one else about.

(With me I take some book of verse or myth [last time e.g. From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston], small-folded paper and pen, a Swiss knife and a storm-proof cigarette-lighter, and other small items that are too prosaic to mention. For drink in ones flask, I’d recommend on this occasion either an old cognac, or (my preference) a mellower single malt, maybe a Knockando with a warm nut-and-berry-bouquet, an elegant, smooth Glenrothes or an elusive Rosebank.)

A lovely girl

From: Hel-sinki

A Child of Nature

My mother told me that, when I was very little, she used to carry me in long walks through the forest, and that she did that nearly every day through all the seasons. It is almost as if something had entered me, then, a longing for solitude, for the woods and meadows, some thing that whispered to me: 'I am not of this world.'

As soon as I could walk, I would run through silvery, chest-high grass under an orange sun while she would paint watercolours sitting on the crest of a nearby hillock. I'd play hide and seek with gigantic dark brown menhirs or encounter strangely freezing currents of air around old, abandoned watermills.

And a few summers later, I'd already prance through the Alpine woodlands of Salzburg where relatives owned a small patch of forest. Inside of it, there was nothing to mark the borders of property, continuously it spread over mountainsides and narrow, shadowy valleys that had never been inhabited by man. Crouched down next to a small brook, I'd listen to the water trickle and gurgle endlessly by, and then on climbing tours and hiking trips I'd incessantly invent spontaneous nonsense-verses and drive my step-father mad, savouring the helplessness of that oxymoronic, because academic, philosopher in the face of words and expressions without meaning but with higher sense: a primal, deep-rooted sense in an utterance of nature itself whose voice I had become.

p.s. much later my good Zen teacher, when seeing some applicants and pulling some customary unlearn-what-you’ve-learned-jokes on most, upon seeing me just said: Ah! you know. He saw that I had once been taught by Mother Nature, already- and consequently treated me much harsher than the others [but that’s a different tale]...

Bow ties...?

Recently I'm honestly thinking about getting myself some bowties (well, for starters, I only had a monochromatic midnight blue one and a navy or light blue white-dotted one in mind). Bow ties are something of a rare phenomenon these days; they can be seen here and there in some fashion-shots but IRL, nada...I wonder how they'd fit me? Maybe not too bad cause in my wild, rambling days of (already) drunken and vigorous youth I sometimes used to wear a black one with cosi-detti smokings for evening wear and I thought that they did fit me quite well. Yet, to wear them in quotidian life, in broad daylight is another matter, maybe...?

Typhonian Tomes

I'm thinking of getting into Typhonian and qlippothic studies again, though I haven't decided yet.
Although those works are (quite illegally but ubiquitously) available on the net, I prefer the printed originals of Kenneth Grant's magico-poetical masterworks called the Typhonian Trilogies due to their hypersigilized, quasi fetish-like appeal. I'm still missing the authorized published versions of 'The Magical Revival' and 'Cults of the Shadow' from my collection, as can be seen in this old picture, infra.

A hangover in style:

(From Mr.Classic by J. Hackett)

Swiss Army Bicycle

With full gear (1947):

Lord Flashheart!

Trees!

Some cultural historian once wrote that trees have taught the Germanic peoples how to stand straight and march in line. While that may have been a bit polemically exaggerated, it certainly does have a point. I do think that even today people of Middle and Northern Europe –and their cultural descendants elsewhere- share certain cultural traits that could be recurred to some kind of forest lore. Trees have not only given us shelter, have kept us warm with their leaves and the fuel that their wood provided for our fires, but also have given us culture: letters (the German Buchstabe [literally: beech-stick] means letter) as well as writing, books, prophecy, myth and oracle-magic (a future); yet also dreaminess, wisdom and the famed idealism. Trees teach us how to face life standing up straight, how to have pride in ourselves, but they also reveal and sway and again conceal things beyond our reach: the skies and the sun and beyond those- the stars and the ocean of night, and they sing of them with the voices of leaves.

I seem to remember that one of my favourite authors, J.R.R Tolkien, was especially fond of trees, too. Maybe in an essay about his mythopoetical theories that was attached to the story called 'Leaf by Niggle', he wrote something to the effect of: 'small-minded, mediocre persons cannot stand large trees, they cannot live next to them, cannot tolerate anything greater near them- so they cut them down.' Sadly, when I look into certain suburbs and modern gardens and homes (and minds!), I have to agree with him.

Kinski as Dr. Zuckerbrot

(From 'Buddy, Buddy'.)