Today, it is one year that Kawtang died. I miss him. It is true that time lessens the pain, but if I think of him I feel sudden surge of sadness. He was a wonderful person, wonderful friend who left behind in all who knew him a memory of the sunshine and happiness he brought in their life.

He was a very witty person... How can I explain that what I miss most is him shouting in the swimming pool, "This man, he pissed...!"

Mais seul, en sa chambrette, le soir, parmi ces riens familiers qui l’entouraient, auxquels il rattachait des souvenirs naïfs et précieux, la terreur du collège le reprenait, et il eût voulu qu’elle n’arrivât jamais, cette heure brutale où il lui faudrait dire adieu à tout cela qui était partie intégrante de lui-même, moitié de sa chair, moitié de son âme. Ce qui lui faisait mal, plus encore que ces douloureuses alternatives, c’était de penser.

(Translation below)

These two books were my first brush with literature when I was a boy. My mother read them onto Dictaphone records which I then would listen. Later, I read the two volumes myself. I loved the story so much, I tried to learn Mongolian...

Grosser-Tiger und Kompassberg was my first novel. The wonderful descriptions and the steady progress of the plot have been the unconscious model for my own novels. The reader should forget that he/she is reading, just dream the story like a movie...

Today is my younger son's 33rd birthday. How quickly kids become adults and (we) adults become old men and women!

you're part of me,
a part of me.
i'm part of you,
a part of you.
you're part of me,
a part of me.
i'm part of you,
a part of you.

God bless him!

Yesterday, I wrote (on tumblr) how much I like my new Kindle Keyboard 3G + Wi-F. I really like it. The free classics in English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish are like a huge (70 years old) library in my bedroom.

But today...

Tarde de mais...

Quando chegaste enfim, para te ver
Abriu-se a noite em mágico luar;
E para o som de teus passos conhecer
Pôs-se o silêncio, em volta, a escutar...

Chegaste, enfim! Milagre de endoidar!
Viu-se nessa hora o que não pode ser:
Em plena noite, a noite iluminar
E as pedras do caminho florescer!

THE VOID CAPTAIN'S TALE

by Norman Spinrad

Fur mi Kameraden de todas partes
No mondo nostro,
No spirito uno,
J'essaie esto Traum futuro
In an anglish sprach
De nuestro Lingo.

blackcat verfasste eine Rezension zu Putla - Junge ohne Lachen (Schwule Kurzgeschichten).

Sehr erschütternd 14. März 2012

Ich habe mir das Buch heruntergeladen, da mich die Kurzbeschreibung sehr interessiert hat. Es ist traurig und sehr aufwühlend wenn man daran denkt dass diese Geschichte in der Wirklichkeit ständig passiert und es eigentlich niemanden interessiert. Es ist unverständlich dass sich niemand aus der Politik um solche Sachen kümmert und jeder wegschaut. Ich könnte aus der Haut fahren und habe wirklich mitgeweint und war am Boden zerstört beim lesen. Autoren die sich solcher Geschichten annehmen bewundere ich sehr für ihren Mut da es nicht Alltagskost ist und sich nicht so gut verkauft.

Catalog of the exhibition Berns Weg in die Moderne in the Historisches Museum Bern.

ter fögi ische souhung

Literary Success...

There are writers like Paulo Coelho, - for me one of the worst writers ever, but of course, how could anybody be the worst writer ever, there is no limit to how bad writers and even more texts can be, - who are totally successful, and then there are writers like Felipe Alfau whom almost nobody knows.

"Grospapi, schau, ich habe aufgeräumt!" (Grandfather, look! I cleaned up the room...)

You could call it an installation...

C’est ainsi que bâille d’avance d’ennui un lettré à qui on parle d’un nouveau « beau livre », parce qu’il imagine une sorte de composé de tous les beaux livres qu’il a lus, tandis qu’un beau livre est particulier, imprévisible, et n’est pas fait de la somme de tous les chefs-d’œuvre précédents mais de quelque chose que s’être parfaitement assimilé cette somme ne suffit nullement à faire trouver, car c’est justement en dehors d’elle. Dès qu’il a eu connaissance de cette nouvelle œuvre, le lettré, tout à l’heure blasé, se sent de l’intérêt pour la réalité qu’elle dépeint.

I have been thinking (as a writer) for a long time about crime. For gangsters legality is like the catholic church for atheists. It doesn't concern them. An atheist doesn't break a law if he uses a condom, masturbates or has sex with the same sex, because the laws of the catholic church are for him laws of a parallel universe. Gangsters within organized crime have their own crude laws, while the laws of the government are as irrelevant for them as FIFA football rules to a golf player.

Anne Blocher "Malika"

Anne Blocher was the daughter of a Mr. Blocher said to be once a superintendent of police in Calcutta. She adopted the poetical appellation of Malika. She is reputed to be a great beauty and well versed in Indian music. She was an adept in playing the Indian Sitar. She was probably born in England but she spent her life in India.

I like Rubén Jiménez, his songs, his face, his sofa and the racing bike poster above his head! What a joy it is to find a new artist, who knows to create beauty with just his voice and a guitar.

Te echo tanto de menos

Gacela del amor imprevisto

Nadie comprendía el perfume
de la oscura magnolia de tu vientre.
Nadie sabía que martirizabas
un colibrí de amor entre los dientes.

Mil caballitos persas se dormían
en la plaza con luna de tu frente,
mientras que yo enlazaba cuatro noches
tu cintura, enemiga de la nieve.

Elsa Morante thought she was not like this. She must have thought this was a cunning act, "Elsa la cattiva", but maybe she only thought that she was the elegant, sophisticated wife of Alberto Moravia, while in her innermost reality, she was that lost she-cat woman who could write like almost nobody else but knew happiness only in writing not in life.

Einführungskurs der Neuenburger Versicherung November/Dezember 1957 in Neuenburg

Töng
Breitenmoser Gmür Kühni Frischkopf Ziltener Arnold
Metzler Glauser Kurz Frank Brosi

Only now, when I am getting old, do I understand that my father too, was "I" for himself. How strange and unhappy that we only understand other people when we ourselves have gone through it all and are about to die.

Un perro ha muerto

Mi perro ha muerto.
Lo enterré en el jardín
junto a una vieja máquina oxidada.

Allí, no más abajo,
ni más arriba,
se juntará conmigo alguna vez.

Ahora él ya se fue con su pelaje,
su mala educación, su nariz fría.

2. Juni 18...

"Nei, so öppis ist me...
sofort antworteten zwei andere Herren... eus...
Folgendes: "Mer händ e Wett gmacht, wer von eus dreie am sch...
uf und uf d'Losig: "Marsch!" ist dä Abstieg losgange. Z'erst hät...
Gnäggli geseht das, chunt schint's Angst über, purzlet über es Felsebä...
Da hätt Alles nüt meh gnützt und mich häts dunne no e paar mal ü...

"Grad eso isch es mer au gange!" seufzte Herr Gnäggli, ...
"Da nimmt's ein no Wunder", sagte jetzt ein hülfebereiter, ...

1896 Marcel Proust published Les plaisirs et les jours. Three years before he had traveled with his school mate Louis de Lasalle to St Moritz. The toi in this text is most probably Marcel Proust's lover Reynaldo Hahn.

Maybe this is how Marcel Proust would have written if he would have lived in a more gay-friendly epoch, is it another justification to

gayify

"In Search of Time Lost"?

Quod fuimus, estis; quod sumus, vos eritis (What Marcel Proust, Louis de Lasalle and Reynaldo Hahn were [alive], we are; what they are [dead], we will be).

Présence réelle

Nous nous sommes aimés dans un village perdu d'Engadine au nom deux fois doux : le rêve des sonorités allemandes s'y mourait dans la volupté des syllabes italiennes. À l'entour, trois lacs d'un vert inconnu baignaient des forêts de sapins. Des glaciers et des pics fermaient l'horizon. Le soir, la diversité des plans multipliait la douceur des éclairages. Oublierons-nous jamais les promenades au bord du lac de Sils-Maria, quand l'après-midi finissait, à six heures ? Les mélèzes d'une si noire sérénité quand ils avoisinent la neige éblouissante tendaient vers l'eau bleu pâle, presque mauve, leurs branches d'un vert suave et brillant. Un soir l'heure nous fut particulièrement propice ; en quelques instants, le soleil baissant, fit passer l'eau par toutes les nuances et notre âme par toutes les voluptés, Tout à coup nous rimes un mouvement, nous venions de voir un petit papillon rose, puis deux, puis cinq, quitter les fleurs de notre rive et voltiger au-dessus du lac. Bientôt ils semblaient une impalpable poussière de rose emportée, puis ils abordaient aux fleurs de l'autre rive, revenaient et doucement recommençaient l'aventureuse traversée, s'arrêtant parfois comme tentés au-dessus de ce lac précieusement nuancé alors comme une grande fleur qui se fane. C'en était trop et nos yeux s'emplissaient de larmes.

Today, Roman Peng found a piece of old newspaper from 2nd June, 1894, in the attic of our (office) building which was built in that year.

At that time too, people where living and thought that their time was the present - their present - as we believe our present time to be real for us...

Proust was alive [see separate post] and in love in 1894 and Cavafy too...

Days of 1896

He became completely degraded. His erotic tendency,
condemned and strictly forbidden
(but innate for all that), was the cause of it:
society was totally prudish.

Aπό την Φαντασίαν έως εις το Xαρτί. Eίναι δύσκολον πέρασμα, είναι επικίνδυνος θάλασσα. H απόστασις φαίνεται μικρά κατά πρώτην όψιν, και εν τοσούτω πόσον μακρόν ταξίδι είναι, και πόσον επιζήμιον ενίοτε δια τα πλοία τα οποία το επιχειρούν.

Set controls to outer space now
Flying higher than ever before
Rangers (in Space!)

Go, Power Rangers!
Go, Power Rangers!
Go, Power Rangers!
Go, go, go, fly
Go, Power Rangers!
Go, Power Rangers!
Go, Power Rangers, go....in Space!

Today, my grandson cried for hours, bitterly, tears flowing, because I didn't allow him to play computer games on his laptop all day. I worried what the neighbors will be thinking - unspeakable cruelties going on in our apartment. It took him several hours to get back to normal. Then we played Uno. I lost, of course. We went out, he on his cycle, I with Samurai, and he closed his computer after one more hour of playing games. I am always amazed at both, how deeply he gets upset and how long, and how after extreme drama, he recovers so quickly.

Today, the postman brought a box with advance copies of "Aruns Geschichte", the German translation of "Ocean of Love". It is my first real (i.e. printed) publication after a long time. Printed books seem so old-fashioned now that literature has gone Kindle. Traditional paper, glue and cardboard publishing also means that the book has been edited for the better and the worse which feels strange in a world where texts go straight from the writer's laptop to the Internet.

We dreamed of great works of art
But finally great love
Is all we created

Why did nobody tell me I looked so smart?

I liked the title of Bleach and after looking at it again and again on amazon, I could not resist to order it. What a disappointment! I'm used to read mangas, and don't expect every manga I order to be a stroke of genius. But Bleach... it was stupid, boring, absurd, irrelevant... and not funny at all:

This must have been around 1953-1954