Ja! De Tijd heerst; hij heeft zijn brute dictatuur hervat. En hij drijft mij voort, alsof ik een rund ben, met zijn dubbele prikstok.
– ‘Vort dan! ezel! Zweet dan, slaaf! Leef dan, verdoemde!’

Baudelaire

(vertaald door Hafid Bouazza in : Hafid Bouazza en Marlene Dumas, Parijse walging, uitgeverij Querido.)

everyone is a stranger, but with some strangers you become intimate for a time, and during that time you are able to convince yourself that you know them.

you are always wrong.

the most intimate stranger is yourself, your own body, your own mind. you may be able to convince yourself that you know yourself.

you are always wrong about that too.

Overcome with grief when Eurydice is killed, Orpheus ventures to the land of the dead to try and bring her back to life.

After charming Charon the ferryman and the dog Cerberus, guardians of the River Styx, with his music, his grief so moves the king of the underworld, Hades, that he allows Eurydice to go back with him to the world of life and light, on one condition : upon leaving the land of death, neither of them are to look back.

As they climb out of the abyss towards the opening into the land of the living, Orpheus, seeing the Sun again, turns back to share his joy with Eurydice and she is gone.

mr.death — one of the hand puppets made by paul klee for his son, felix, between 1916 and 1925.

what can you say about australian politics? well, not much because there’s not much to it — and as the old anarchist slogan goes, no matter who you vote for a politician will always get in — but the fact that one of the most complete idiots and utter bastards of recent times (at least since his predecessor) was finally replaced as prime minister of australia by one whose musical favourites include the pixies, the pogues and p.j.harvey, is worthy of note.

Yesterday cycled all the way to the Library to borrow a book which the Catalogue said was on the shelf. Was in a bad mood already but it got worse when the book was not in fact on the shelf. Library assistant unhelpful. Couldn’t find the book in the Catalogue. Realised it was because she didn’t know how to spell W-I-T-T-G-E-N-S-T-E-I-N. Wrote it on a piece of paper. Suggested that the Library changes the status of books in the Catalogue which are not currently on loan to ‘not currently on loan’ rather than ‘on the shelf’. Seemed to neither welcome nor appreciate my idea. Library assistant expressed the view that the very presence of the book in the Library Catalogue was an Error. How could such an Error occur? A malevolent daemon cataloguer decided to put a book in the Catalogue that the Library doesn’t have? Hate this Library and the people that work there. Nostalgic for all the wonderful Libraries I have used and the helpful people that worked there. I still remember them. Sydney College of the Arts Library, Newcastle University Library, Wagga Wagga, Sydney City Library (when it was in the old derelict Queen Vic building), Melbourne, CSU, Utrecht library (when it was in the old V+D building on the Stadhuisbrug). I miss you.

the drift

one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there…

– guy debord