This was painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Can you find the people playing Eisstockschissen?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
16th century "Where's Waldo?"
This was painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger sometime in the late 1500s or early 1600s. Can you find the people playing Eisstockschissen?
the words
German has a word for to forget. So I don't know why this happens, perhaps it's colloquial, or has to do with usage rather than literal meaning. But it's happened to me several times where I'm talking with someone and they can't think how to say what they want to say, and they pause, and then tell me, "I miss the words."
I want to say, I miss them too! Repugnant, chartreuse, cataclysmic, trickling, dross, unwieldy, dregs, disconsolate, ampersand, elusive, prognosticate, hyperbole, circumscribed, pastoral, antediluvian, prelapsarian, heteronormative, concupiscent, seredipitous. I'm off on one iceberg, they're off on another, and we are both slowly melting.
I miss the words.
I want to say, I miss them too! Repugnant, chartreuse, cataclysmic, trickling, dross, unwieldy, dregs, disconsolate, ampersand, elusive, prognosticate, hyperbole, circumscribed, pastoral, antediluvian, prelapsarian, heteronormative, concupiscent, seredipitous. I'm off on one iceberg, they're off on another, and we are both slowly melting.
I miss the words.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Schnee
Something I never understood or suspected, never having sat and watched the snow fall, was how graceful it can be, how balletic. How slow, feathery. Pillows in a gentle explosion from an unknown height.
If I didn't need to go to work, I'd watch it for hours.
If I didn't need to go to work, I'd watch it for hours.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Eisstockschiessen!
Did I mention that I learned how to play this odd and fascinating Bavarian winter sport? It's some kind of cross between bacce ball and bowling. On ice. And the pieces you use look like giant Sorry! pieces. More importantly, old Bavarian men still wear those hats on a regular basis, to the bakery, to the post office, to buy the paper.
It was surprisingly fun. I want to go again! Who's with me?!
It was surprisingly fun. I want to go again! Who's with me?!
Monday, January 26, 2009
nie prawda
At first glance, it looks like a vodka ad. Sure. But look again. It's clearly a subliminal message for Callan English!text: (top) Why is this top model giving her friend Pravda Vodka?
(bottom) The top model is giving Pravda Vodka because she is knowledgeable...
(especially) for Jamie
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Janus and my habiliments
I remember reading years ago (but where?) that often when relationships don't work out, those involved cite as the cause the very qualities that drew them to their partner in the first place. Thus, he's so organized becomes he's rigid and can't be spontaneous; she's in touch with her inner child turns into she's immature. I think there's something of this love/hate duality with travel to and life in a foreign country as well. Many of the things which are exciting - a new language! foreign customs! a different style of daily life! - have as their other half something daunting, confusing, or frustrating - I don't speak the language! I don't know the customs! all the &^*$ing stores are closed on Sundays! The sizes of things change: pants, shoes, bras. There are tetrapaks everywhere. Muffins are available but tasteless. Sourdough is gone. Cheddar is rare.
Not to mention the question of where to buy things. For a USAmerican, this is pretty much always a problem. In the States, you can buy almost anything you need almost anywhere you go. The question is not where must I go to buy vitamins, duck tape, tomatoes, hand lotion, blank CDs, or underwear, but to which of the many, many stores, all nearby, which probably carry all of the aforementioned items and more would I like to go? For although I have never purchased underwear at say, Safeway, I would be enormously surprised if it couldn't be found there. The difficult things, however, are not the day-to-day necessities (toilet paper, stamps, carrots, socks), which can be found using pretty much the same logic you would use in the U.S.: toilet paper = drug store, stamps = post office, carrots = grocery store, socks = clothing store (and in Germany, also at the drug store! There's a more than slight U.S. influence here). What is a challenge are the various and sundries, the things you might need to buy only once or twice, but which you really do need. One more or less eternal difficulty:
Clothes hangers.
When I lived in Florence, my bedroom had a closet. It contained about five hangers. No problem, I thought, I'll just go buy some more. Yet after days of searching, they were not to be found in a drug store (which they don't really have in the U.S. sense in Florence anyway, they only have pharmacies), a grocery store (of course not! you can't eat them!), or any of the other odds-and-endsy type stores I investigated. In the end, in despair, I entered a small electrical shop. Just off the main square, it sold fancy designer lamps and lighting fixtures. I asked them if they knew where I could buy clothes hangers. They did not. But then man asked me to wait a moment. He climbed a ladder up to the attic of the store, and brought down some wire hangers, which he sold to me for a reasonable price. In my nine months in Florence, this was the only time I encountered hangers for sale.
In Krakow, I'm not sure if I ever succeeded in locating them (a special note to Kasia: I'm sure they are available in a perfectly logical place; however, herein lies the core of my problem: it seems to me that logic is not always cross-cultural, and that these things do not always translate across borders. Logic seems to be local, it seems to have a language. I often fail to speak or understand it). Luckily it didn't matter, because my boss at work was kind enough to give me some.
Here in Munich I encountered them accidentally. I was at a used furniture store, which perhaps would be better described as the used furniture store, and saw a box of used hangers for sale. At the time, I didn't have a closet. Now that I have succeeded in purchasing a lovely, wonderfully cheap and blissfully lightweight (my apartment is on the third floor, no elevator) clothes rack, I think I will go get some.
I have no intention of arguing that the U.S. style of one-stop-shopping to which I am accustomed is superior, or even preferable, to the multi-stop many-shop structure more common elsewhere. I don't necessarily think that this is at all the case. If anything, perhaps it has weakened our social survival skills, and limited our ability to reason by extension. In the urban jungles of Europe, we United Statesians are not the tigers. In our confusion and genial awkwardness, we may well be capybaras.
Not to mention the question of where to buy things. For a USAmerican, this is pretty much always a problem. In the States, you can buy almost anything you need almost anywhere you go. The question is not where must I go to buy vitamins, duck tape, tomatoes, hand lotion, blank CDs, or underwear, but to which of the many, many stores, all nearby, which probably carry all of the aforementioned items and more would I like to go? For although I have never purchased underwear at say, Safeway, I would be enormously surprised if it couldn't be found there. The difficult things, however, are not the day-to-day necessities (toilet paper, stamps, carrots, socks), which can be found using pretty much the same logic you would use in the U.S.: toilet paper = drug store, stamps = post office, carrots = grocery store, socks = clothing store (and in Germany, also at the drug store! There's a more than slight U.S. influence here). What is a challenge are the various and sundries, the things you might need to buy only once or twice, but which you really do need. One more or less eternal difficulty:
Clothes hangers.
When I lived in Florence, my bedroom had a closet. It contained about five hangers. No problem, I thought, I'll just go buy some more. Yet after days of searching, they were not to be found in a drug store (which they don't really have in the U.S. sense in Florence anyway, they only have pharmacies), a grocery store (of course not! you can't eat them!), or any of the other odds-and-endsy type stores I investigated. In the end, in despair, I entered a small electrical shop. Just off the main square, it sold fancy designer lamps and lighting fixtures. I asked them if they knew where I could buy clothes hangers. They did not. But then man asked me to wait a moment. He climbed a ladder up to the attic of the store, and brought down some wire hangers, which he sold to me for a reasonable price. In my nine months in Florence, this was the only time I encountered hangers for sale.
In Krakow, I'm not sure if I ever succeeded in locating them (a special note to Kasia: I'm sure they are available in a perfectly logical place; however, herein lies the core of my problem: it seems to me that logic is not always cross-cultural, and that these things do not always translate across borders. Logic seems to be local, it seems to have a language. I often fail to speak or understand it). Luckily it didn't matter, because my boss at work was kind enough to give me some.
Here in Munich I encountered them accidentally. I was at a used furniture store, which perhaps would be better described as the used furniture store, and saw a box of used hangers for sale. At the time, I didn't have a closet. Now that I have succeeded in purchasing a lovely, wonderfully cheap and blissfully lightweight (my apartment is on the third floor, no elevator) clothes rack, I think I will go get some.
I have no intention of arguing that the U.S. style of one-stop-shopping to which I am accustomed is superior, or even preferable, to the multi-stop many-shop structure more common elsewhere. I don't necessarily think that this is at all the case. If anything, perhaps it has weakened our social survival skills, and limited our ability to reason by extension. In the urban jungles of Europe, we United Statesians are not the tigers. In our confusion and genial awkwardness, we may well be capybaras.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Borges beat me to it
"...It was time [abu-al Hasan] argued, that the old metaphors be renewed; back when Zuhayr compared fate to a blind camel, he said, the figure was arresting - but five hundred years of admiration had worn it very thin. To that verdict, which they had all heard many times before, from many mouths, they all likewise gave their nod. Averoës, however, kept silent. At last he spoke, not so much to the others as to himself.
'Less eloquently,' he said, 'and yet with similar arguments, I myself have sometimes defended the proposition argued now by abu-al-Hasan. In Alexandria there is a saying that only the man who has already committed a crime and repented of it is incapable of that crime; to be free of erroneous opinion, I myself might add, one must at some time have professed it. In his mu'allaqa, Zuhayr says that in the course of his eighty years of pain and glory many is the time he has seen destiny trample men, like an old blind camel; abu-al-Hasan says that that figure no longer makes us marvel. One might reply to that objection in many ways. First, that if the purpose of the poem were to astound, its life would be measured not in centuries but in days, or hours, or perhaps even minutes. Second, that a famous poet is less an inventor than a discoverer. In praise of ibn-Sharaf of Berkha, it has many times been said that only he was capable of imaginging that the stars of the morning sky fall gently, like leaves falling from the trees; if that were true, it wold prove only that the image is trivial. The image that only a single man can shape is an image that interests no man. There are infinite things upon the earth; any one of them can be compared to any other. Comparing stars to leaves is no less arbitrary than comparing them to fish, or birds. On the other hand, every man has surely felt at some moment in his life that destiny is powerful yet clumsy, innocent yet inhuman. It was in order to record that feeling, which may be fleeting or constant but which no man may escape experiencing, that Zuhayr's line was written. No one will ever say better what Zuhayr said there.' "
- Jorge Luis Borges, "Averoës' Search," Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Huxley
'Less eloquently,' he said, 'and yet with similar arguments, I myself have sometimes defended the proposition argued now by abu-al-Hasan. In Alexandria there is a saying that only the man who has already committed a crime and repented of it is incapable of that crime; to be free of erroneous opinion, I myself might add, one must at some time have professed it. In his mu'allaqa, Zuhayr says that in the course of his eighty years of pain and glory many is the time he has seen destiny trample men, like an old blind camel; abu-al-Hasan says that that figure no longer makes us marvel. One might reply to that objection in many ways. First, that if the purpose of the poem were to astound, its life would be measured not in centuries but in days, or hours, or perhaps even minutes. Second, that a famous poet is less an inventor than a discoverer. In praise of ibn-Sharaf of Berkha, it has many times been said that only he was capable of imaginging that the stars of the morning sky fall gently, like leaves falling from the trees; if that were true, it wold prove only that the image is trivial. The image that only a single man can shape is an image that interests no man. There are infinite things upon the earth; any one of them can be compared to any other. Comparing stars to leaves is no less arbitrary than comparing them to fish, or birds. On the other hand, every man has surely felt at some moment in his life that destiny is powerful yet clumsy, innocent yet inhuman. It was in order to record that feeling, which may be fleeting or constant but which no man may escape experiencing, that Zuhayr's line was written. No one will ever say better what Zuhayr said there.' "
- Jorge Luis Borges, "Averoës' Search," Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Huxley
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