Deep in the mountain wilderness Where nobody ever comes Only once in a great while Something like the sound of a far off voice, The low rays of the sun Slip through the dark forest, And gleam again on the shadowy moss. -Wang Wei (tr. Kenneth Rexroth)

"The number of lives that enter our own is incalculable." John Berger, Here Is Where We Meet, The Szum and the Ching

thinking flowing drifting in this cloud of snowy air

„Deine Gedanken sind wie Schneeflocken, du kannst sie fallen oder vorüberziehen lassen.“

"To edit your life is to save it, for fiction, for yourself. Being identified with your life as others see it may mean that you come eventually to see it that way, too. This can only be a hindrance to memory (and, presumably, to invention).”  Susan Sontag, from the essay Where The Stress Falls.

die Welt wirbelt, in mir nur Winter

The magic of nature holds hope for the New Year, best wishes to all! 🕊️ …

Wintersonne

die Stille nach dem Auslesen eines dicken Buchs

Your body is away from me but there is a window open from my heart to yours. From this window, like the moon I keep sending news secretly. ~Rumi

“Indeed nothing is more painful than this contrast between the mutability of people and the fixity of memory.” (Proust, Time Regained)

Sommerfarbenes.

If the silent train of 70ties Improv was riding through Studio Gibli’s enchanted landscapes youtube.com/watch?v=lP38...

Bereit für einen Neuanfang. 🌱 Ready for a new beginning. #eastcoastkin

People all over the world rave about German "Literaturhäuser"...but they are under threat these days. A petition here to keep the Leipzig one going... innn.it/zukunftliter...

Rolf Mellström (Swedish, 1896-1953), Hare in a winter landscape, 1919. Oil on canvas, 70 x 100 cm.

“That the past and the future may become contemporary within a being—this is the possibility that reading books offers.” — Pascal Quignard, Petits traités II

Akino Fuku, Red Clothes (1938)

“Ah, but we die to each other daily. What we know of other people Is only our memory of the moments During which we knew them. . . . . . . We must also remember That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” (T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party)

Happy December, Shipmates & Friends! Happy #MelvilleMonday ! 🐳

I’m happily gazing upon today’s pearlescent sea

wie schön dieses Leben doch ist.

Snow is covering us. Close your eyes and sleep. Close your eyes and dream. This is one story. There will be another. Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods

Stockdunkel auf der Wiese, hier sitz ich auf dem Vorsprung der Holzschlichte auf einer Tüte und hör den Bäumen zu, den Tropfen vom Tag, breiten sich um mich wie ein Musikzimmer, in dem man Musik macht und nichts anderes.

William H Gass on Rilke - never without a joke: „Orpheus sings, and a tall tree springs up in the ear. This pure wand of song creates a clearing into which charmed animals are drawn to listen to Orpheus, who could move the trees as well as the wind. We must forbid the image to remind us of Disney.“

“Poetry = practice of subtlety in a barbaric world. Whence the need to fight for poetry *today*: Poetry should be one of our ‘Human Rights’; it isn’t ‘decadent,’ it’s subversive: subversive and vital.” — Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel (tr. Kate Briggs)

“If absence does not allow itself to be reduced by the letter, this is so because it is the letter’s ether and respiration.” — Jaques Derrida, “Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book,” in WD

kann mir mein Patenkind nicht mehr leisten

Im Anschluss liest Jens Harzer aus Rilkes Roman ›Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge‹, es spricht Joy Williams (in engl. Sprache), DLA-Direktorin @sandrarichterdla.bsky.social diskutiert mit Uljana Wolf. Die Eröffnung ist ausgebucht, sie wird live gestreamt: www.youtube.com/live/zpwAsRl...

from an Inuit song originally translated into Danish by Knud Rasmussen — English version by Autumn Richardson, Heart of Winter (Xylem Books, 2018)

The border is a rusted hinge that does not bend. The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein. The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest. -Alberto Ríos from “The Border: A Double Sonnet” (2015) #everynightapoem

Today’s #BirdOfTheDay theme is #OnTheEdge of water This is some years old, from the German isle Amrum Sanderling

“Music is the mirror of what is lost.” — Pascal Quignard, Abysses (trans. Chris Turner)

Zutaten für die ersten Zimtsterne besorgen ⭐

durch saubere Fenster ins Grau schauen

The joy of listening to the Swiss teens in the car: "J'ai dead mon test de maths"; "Elle est en flirt avec ce mec"; "oh em jhay". (For my language loving heart, it's hilarious...trying to work out how 'dead' has made its way to French in this way)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) | La Blanchisseuse.