it started of with whiskey. quickly followed by belgian apple beer. ice coffee. mango lassie and tea.
impressive no, in less than 48h hours? the best today was the unexpected massage i received this morning. there was a bicycle competition going on here, and they had a team of massage therapists that would treat you for donations. more massage for the people. especially if they are over-worked dancers (smile). seriously, we need objective touch. that’s what i concluded this morning.
OhMyGod-it’s june, already (didn’t i just write something similar about may?)
OhMyGod-i work six days/week this whole month
OhMyGod-the world is still crazy
OhMyGod-i am having chocolate and whiskey for dinner (i allow myself since i don’t have a proper weekend)
this weekend, a woman taught me how to weave a basket. meditative activity. ♥DIY!
somehow these days i feel like on a hold. no playing with the camera. not much blogging or interneting in general. wondering where we will go from here. for sure, we keep going. one way or the other.
bumped into an old favorite today. oh,both the song and the clip feels like a polaroid picture.
fits me, being nostalgic and emotional as usual. goodnight. wish you all important dreams.
today, i don’t know what to write. this world is a crazy place. painful to see. over and over again. this is a speech that haruki murakami gave when he visited israel a while back to receive the jerusalem prize of literature. worth reading, for those who have the patience.
I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.
The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.
It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.
Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.
That is all I have to say to you.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
i keep sleeping in many different places. different cities, different beds, different people. my all time favorite though, is probably sleeping outdoors. what do we need after all? something to lay on, a blanket to cover ourselves with, and a mosquito net. this weekend i was camping out with a big bunch of people, next to this beautiful waterfall. these are a few of the temporary homes from the weekend.
tonight i dreamt that my camera fell into water and stopped working. what a nightmare. and now, struggling with the tax office and accountants. be brave!
a mountain of dishes in the kitchen. tons of dirty laundry in the sleeping room. a lost suitcase (again). a few white nights *that’s how they call it in hebrew, sleepless nights basically* behind me. mice running in the wall. a restriction from the tax office. general identity crisis and tomorrow i am waking up at 4.30. but hey, i am not complaining, i just roll my eyes and gag instead.
i found my usb cable. bliss. oh. bliss. also, i found a second hand underskirt in zagreb. not those synthetic sleazy ones, but one from good old cotton. with a little embroidery. perhaps it was made by some croatian grandmother? made me wonder how come i almost always sleep with a pajama? and realized that if, for what ever reason. you might need to escape quickly at night, you are already dressed. you won’t find yourself naked on the street. what a level of anticipation!
i am reading another book by murakami again, this man is a genius, i wish i could invite him for a cup of tea or a glass of whiskey…i have plenty of things to tell him!
now i need to inject some coffee/take a cold shower if i want to wake from this zombie state of mind. what are your plans for this weekend, folks?
ciao!
two years ago when i was in zagreb, i also enjoyed photographing windows. if i will close a deal on a second home, an apartment in the center for my working days, i have this fantasy of filling the windowsill with plants and flowers. those that can survive the cruel middle eastern sun. yesterday we had a very enjoyable performance here. communicative audience and lots of energy. today my body is sore, my muscles are stiff and my mind is blurry. nothing that a croatian beer can’t fix. i hope. have a good day.
these days i wonder what happens the moment before we die? and i wonder what happens after? i wonder where you are now, els, and what you would have told me about it, if you could? i wonder if i will be brave when i die? if i will dare to let go? these days, it seems terribly scary to me. i wonder if you were scared? these are a few of the many things i wonder. while walking the sunny streets of zagreb, in between rehearsals and croatian beer. i wonder. and my mind won’t stop wondering.
photo by c.v.rooijen
after forgetting the camera itself, the second worst is forgetting the cable to the camera. can’t seem to find it. oh, what a hard life…
this saturday morning i had these two very enthusiastic sisters ordering me to photograph them in their bikinis. later both of them changed into swimming suits since the bikini tops were too uncomfortable. i must say i never got the idea of bikini tops for little girls. i hardly understood the point of it all together, but i still wear one, once in a while. still, nothing like a nude dip, when the coast is clear of course… i am busy packing my bag for zagreb, while drinking coffee and writing letters. me♥weekends.
i almost never wear nail polish. but this week i did. just before i went to plant lettuce in the garden. and then i realized what a stunning color combination it made, the nail polish, the lettuce and the soil. you can call me disturbed if you want to. i am. anyhow, the contrast also suits me. instead of being careful not to destroy the freshly painted nails, i just shove them straight down in the earth.
now i am planning to eat a kilo of pasta and crash. have a great weekend.
the cup is usually half full and not half empty. and don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
bonfires and toasted marshmallows. that get stuck to your hair if you are unlucky. i avoid eating marshmallows, cause i don’t want to eat gelatin. but it looks pretty tasty. and unhealthy..mmmm
since my sleeping marathon in the beginning of this week due to my flu, i feel like i kicked off my sugar addiction a tiny bit. all of a sudden i am aware of how sweet sugar really is. it is enough to eat a very small amount, and it sort of explodes in my mouth. let’s see how long i can keep it up. the coffee habit is slowly creeping back however. from a conscious choice though.
tonight i dreamt of a house with pink walls, pink cupboards and many hidden doors and corridors. it was all very fairytale like, from this empty, pinkish room i found myself getting lost in new spaces, new worlds. i will need to do some interpretation on that one.
It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.
mr.bukowski
knäckebröd, tahini, date-honey and pickled cucumbers. i am not pregnant, even though people might think so.
