James Joyce - Walking into Eternity

It's been said he would have written like Flann O'Brien had he not been crackbrained; and who am I to disagree.
On the other side, what James Augustine Aloysius Joyce put on paper is not the worst one could find in the realm of letters, would you agree?
And: It's Jim's 127th birthday today.

So, what about a(n informative and entertaining) 'walk into eternity' and - who knows? - on the very tower in Sandycove we might get served some pints of plain so that we can raise our glasses on Mr. Joyce and his protagonists.


Part one



Part two





For those who did not have the pleasure yet, and those who couldn't get enough of it - voilà:

Pitch'n'Putt with Joyce'n'Beckett:

Molly Bloom's Soliloquy


Enjoy(ce)! :)

The most beautiful word ...

En güzel deniz:
henüz gidilmemiş olanıdır.
En güzel çocuk:
henüz büyümedi.
En güzel günlerimiz:
henüz yaşamadıklarımız.
Ve sana söylemek istediğim en güzel söz:
henüz söylemiş olduğum sözdür ...
Nâzim Hikmet, 24 Eylül 1945.


The most beautiful sea:
the one not been sailed yet.
The most beautiful child:
the one not grown up yet.
The most beautiful days of ours:
those we did not live yet.
And the most beautiful word I want to tell:
the word I did not tell you yet.
September 24th, 1945


Das schönste Meer:
das noch nicht befahrene.
Das schönste Kind:
das noch nicht herangewachsene.
Unsere schönsten Tage:
jene, die wir noch nicht erlebten.
Und das schönste Wort, das ich dir sagen möchte:
jenes, das ich dir noch nicht gesagt habe.

:)

Inanılmaz! Nâzım Hikmet is a Turk

Considered a traitor in life and denationalised, his poems which got translated into more than 50 languages forbidden for decades, only about 46 years after he died (June 3rd, 1963), from January 6th, 2009 on Nâzım Hikmet is allowed to call himself a Turkish citizen, again.

If Mr. Hikmet ("I love my Country") has already applied for a passport has not yet been disclosed.

Anyway, here's an excerpt from the oratory Fazil Say composed and dedicated to the poet who'd not mind to be called a traitor if ...

Dafydd ap Gwilym XV

A lock has been put on the door of the house, I am sick with loving you: hear me! Let me come and see you for God's generous sake and for your own. You are the girl I have celebrated in song (why should the song end in madness?) I swear by the Blessed Virgin who punishes me for it.

With my cold clumsy fingers I broke the latch while giving our signal of three clicks, then quickly the door was locked. Do you hear me now? The lock sounded loud as a bell to me out here. Morfudd, my chaste jewel, you are the nurse of all the deceit in the Principality. I make my bed against your wall, and call and pray to you my dear: have pity on my sleep lessness, the night is dark and I have been deceived. My feet know only weariness, alas! for the wretched weather that falls from the sky tonight. Torrents stream from the roof like eager weapons on my flesh, yet the rain is not harsher than my wound nor the snow under which I stand. I have been shut out and the snow lies on me like a cold yoke of tallow: I shiver under your eaves and the gray snow falls on me.

So I stand shivering, no greater punishment could be inflicted on a dead skin than the care which racks me: the Man who made me could not use me worse. In Carnarvon my prison was not worse than this road: there I would not be out all night, nor would I groan because of you, nor suffer the nightly ache of loving you. Nor would I now be out in rain and snow except for you. In my distress I would even forgive the whole world for your sake.

Here am I then enduring the cold, and you with all your grace and charity are in the house: my soul is with you there, my ghost is here outside. I doubt if I can suffer here much longer and remain alive my dear. By day I cannot meet you, at night my madness brings me here to the tryst which you yourself made with me. I am here now, and where are you?

Mozart's homage to Erdoğan

As an homage to Taqiyya .... err ... Tayyip Erdoğan, the greatest hero Turkey would ever get, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ("I write as a sow pisses") about 226 years ago composed the Turkish March.

Voilà, Omnium proudly presents a jazzy version with the fantastic Fazil Say.

Lord of the Flies

Coincidence? One would find impertinent idiots [in the classic sense, mind you] not only in Germany, but everywhere else, f.e. in England.

Beginning with the Netherlands, though.

You might have heard of that peroxide blonde gentleman who, as my friend Tetrapilotomos recently murmured, is looking like a sunlamp-tanned songster-queen and would obviously do all to attract attention and endear himself to certain folks of another wilde faculty.
Thus he let produce a lousy little film called 'Fitna', and called it a 'documentation'.

Now would some folks not like this lousy film (no matter if they've been wasting their precious time with watching it, or not); moreover, it became a political issue, and unlike the cleric cretin who recently talked as if he was an admirer of the 'great scientist' Fred Leuchter who once stated he had gone to Ausschwitz to prove the holocaust but after about 40 years just could not find any gas and 'Eureka! no gas, no holocaust'. (Mr. Leuchter, by the way, enjoyed close business connection with several US-states who use lethal injection machine designed by him. Official sides prefered to deny this, but Tetrapilotomos still has an interesting video in his cupboard, and would certainly be delighted to jog the memory of anybody who kindly asked. You could, of course, also just have a look at the small medal on the machine whilst you are executing the next death penalty. It reads: Fred Leuchter, Boston, Massachusetts), and still earned a 'welcome back within the pales of the Catholic Church', (which is why the Central Council of the Jews in Germany ... guess! ... right: ... publicly announced they will not speak with the Pope for a while) our blonde philanthropistic would-be saviour of the western word earned severe critics. Political correct politicians behaved as if they were disgusted, and as valiant defenders of democracy and free speech demanded to censor the lousy film.

End of the beforegoing.

Now, while the plebs, i.e. the ordinary stupid voting-cattle (German: Stimmvieh) ought not to be allowed to decide themselves to watch this lousy film or not, those who consider themselves a bit more equal than others, 'of course' are not only allowed to watch the lousy film, it's even their duty, one should think, hm?

I mean, unlike those privileged people who'd not need to watch a lousy film or a mediocre book, 'spontaneously' and with burning enthusiasm to support the flags-producing industry, politicians should at least watch respectively read it.
After all, they might come to the wise conclusion that censoring a lousy film or a mediocre book does not solve any problem.

And herewith we jump across the Channel, reach London and enter the House of Lords.

Now don't you need to know each Lord and Baroness, but you should know Lord Ahmed. So let me introduce His Extraordinary Magnificence to those amongst you who up til now had the great pleasure to never ever come across his name.

With thanks to 'His Grace'
where I pinched this pic.

For the beginning it's enough that you know the Lord loves to send text messages while driving.

Alright? Fine then. Here we go:

Lord Ahmed, the Muslim Peer, has admitted dangerous driving after sending text messages while driving on a motorway just before a crash in which a father-of-two died. Full article here.

Well, and what would do who wantonly negligent killed another person?
He'd at least feel miserable and hide himself in a mouse-hole, if only he could, you say?

Right.

And what did 'our good Lord' do, when a lordly collegue invited the producer of said lousy film in order to together with him and her esteemed colleagues watch and afterwards discuss it?

According to what I learned at Cranmer's, the Lord by grace of a certain Tony Blair reportedly 'threatened to mobilise 10,000 Muslims to prevent Mr Wilders [that's the blondie that let produce said lousy film; sj] from entering the house and threatened to take the colleague who was organising the event to court'.

And what did the honourable Lordships do?

Giving Mr Ahmed a democracy-lesson, you guess?

Nah! Showing him the white feather.

And the Lord announced via BBC, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Times etc ... err ... via Associated Press of Pakistan "a victory for the Muslim community".

And here the words almost fail me.
Imagine, next time the Lord of the Flies cometh and demands: 'Eat shit, Mylords! 100 trillion flies can't err.'

Apropos 'Lord of the (F)lies': Is it possible that Lord Ahmed on this very day sent one text message to Fethullah Gülen and four to the most intellectual mastermind's - Ha ha ha ha ... - intelligently designed mouthpieces?

Oops. Never ever heard such names in Merry Old England?
Now, that's surprising, hm?

Perhaps, after having read this and followed the links some English(wo)man feels fancy of investigating a bit on Lord Ahmed's connection with this self-styled elite and their common purpose?

Well, good luck, enjoy and let me know the results of your research.

* Title of a book written by William Golding. What did you think? :)

Jedem das Seine or: A bloody conflict

On the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp today,

Germany has remembered the victims of National Socialism with a variety of events. But the country's Jewish leaders chose to skip the main government ceremony on Tuesday in protest for what they say is lack of respect.
Full article here.
And here another one on Spiegel online.

As one grand dame of the German Social Democracy who for decades was involved with the Gesellschaft für christlich-jüdische Zusammenarbeit / Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation once stated: "As long as - even when there is an obvious reason - a German must not call a Jew idiot, and vice versa, as long there do not exist normal relations between Germans and Jews."
Well, and that's why I wouldn't call said ladies and gentlemen what they are.

However, noone - I repeat: noone - and if she or he happened to worship the head of a dead sardine - will ever tell me what I am allowed to express in my or any other language. Not even an idiot.

Perhaps I should not have written 'noone will ever, 'cause one should not underestimate the mighty mightiness of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

Tiny example:

German Coffee roaster Tchibo and oil company Esso have abandoned a nationwide advertising campaign for coffee following criticism from the Jewish community that it had been using a slogan similar* to a phrase used by the Nazis.
Full article here.
* emphazise mine

Oh dear! After Auschwitz there can't be any language / poetry etc. etc., hm?

Ah, I wonder why none of the absolute altruistic and uncorrupt ladies and gentlemen sewed George Tabori, who postulated "There are taboos that need to be destroyed" and thus in a way was the obstetrician to a serious reflection of the holocaust and other atrocities 'made in Germany', and of whom none of his plays impressed me more than this 'joke' (German: Witz):

"Wie lautet der kürzeste deutsche Witz? - Auschwitz."
"What's the shortest German Witz? - Auschwitz."

As said: Jedem das Seine. To each his own. Or, as Cato the Elder reportedly put it: Suum cuique.

Having written this, I do feel much better now.:)

Thus, with thanks to Bock and Jams, here two postings that moved me deeply:

Auschwitz,

Forgiving Mengele

Please read it!

The peace of the night!

I feel I shall have a lovely dream: Some members of the Central Council of Jews in Germany wake up and henceforth speak a very rare Hindu-dialect.

Dafydd ap Gwilym VIII

Unhappy the man who is in love except in the summer, fruitless his prayers and great his desires. After the one night I had with the girl, all that is left me of that love-affair is my recollection of it, and the winter, I swear, is angry, black and bare after Christmas: and the snow, sure sign of the cold, and the frost and numerous icicles.

Coming drunk from the tavern, disgruntled and in a wretched humour, I went to look for her, terrified lest I find her making love to some other handsome man. Through the wood in the valley I went, feeling no love at all, till I arrived at the stone wall inside which the beauty lives.

There was a dismal sound of dripping from the eaves like an overflowing cheesepot; but when I arrived there I felt a kind of relief because of the danger close at band beyond the wall. Thick under the edge of the cold roof were the frosty icicles, freezing cold, and cleverly the drops contrived to fall into my mouth as I stood at the mercy of the frost and the whistling rime of the ice. The frost bit me like a rake, and the cold went through me like the tender teeth of a harrow. As I stood in the porch the drops fell angrily on me from Jealousy's fine candles of ice, like freezing tears, and the snow drove every recollection out of me but that of black frost.


While my head endured the pangs of the drips from these cold spindles and the dismal sounds, I knocked on the window with my band, hearing within the sounds of those in their first sleep, the man louder than the woman. Suspicious he nudged the pretty creature with his cold elbow, easily persuaded that someone was looking diligently for his money. Then the withered oaf rose out of his bed like a draught of foul air, enraged and terrified and calling "Villain" after me. And this was a dangerous journey for me, for he set a scoundrelly pack on me consisting of the whole town; and he, promising a candle to Mary at every sight of my footprints, bellowed after me with a hundred voices, "After him there! he's barefoot!"

So I fled with painful haste along the black back of the frost, till I came to the pleasant birch-wood which used to hide me in summer, thinking it to be, as I remembered it, a house of leaves under a fine roof, where the birds loved me and I saw the girl in May. But this was no trysting-place now, but a place of grief, even in the grove of the wood. No sign of love nor anything else did I see, nor any person nor any leaf, for the barren winter had winnowed the green warp of the leaves to the ground. And so I am begging May for a thaw before I freeze to death: I am a man imprisoned in winter; good luck to the summer and may it not be long coming!

Murderous

Today 200 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was born.

A short story he wrote: The Murders of Rue Morgue.

Two novels he did not write:

The murder in Istiklal Caddesi

Today two years ago, Hrant Dink was murdered.
The mills of justice are still grinding. Or not.

The murder in 8 Lesnaya Ulitsa

104 days before Hrant Dink got murdered,
on October 7th, 2006 Vladimir Putin celebrated his birthday,
and perhaps some gentlemen intended to surprise (?)
their beloved President with a very very special present,
Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated.

Well, and I'd not be surprised when in 365 days the 'patriotic gentleman' who today killed Staneslav Markelov and Anastasiya Baburova , will also be not behind bars.

Thinking of Hope man and Peace man

Life must go on in Sderot and Gaza.

The name of a blog.

A blog of two friends.

The latest post dates from last Sunday.

Since I am longing for the next.

Thinking of Hope man and Peace man.

The peace of the night.


Update:
Good morning.
Hope fulfilled: This morning Peace man posted.



Other sites I found / find interesting reading these weeks:

Gaza Today

Lisa Goldman

Arab Writers Group

Snail's Dream

Had I followed my intention you would now read a short story, afterwards watch a short film and then ...

Anticipating the then :) I decided to not manipulate your thoughts and feelings with my writing, but leave you alone with the film.

Voilà.

Turkey on tenterhooks

'Normally' I do set links - yes, yes, it's time to overcome my lazyness and perhaps even for a revival of my 'Wordy Wednesdays :) - however this synopsis of what keeps great parts of the Turkish society on tenterhooks is so excellent that I asked Erkan - after the private, here the official congratulation, Dr. Saka :) - for his permission to pinch it.At the bottom you'll find - in chronological order - several links to the best source one can find when being interested (not only!!) in what's going on in Turkey.
End of the eulogy. :) Judge yourself.

Forensic officers search for weapons in a wooded area in central Ankara January 9, 2009. More than 40 people, including three retired generals, nine military officers, a state prosecutor and a former chairman of the higher education board, were detained for their suspected links to a right-wing group. The military, which has unseated four governments in the past 50 years and views itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secular order, denies any link to the group, known as Ergenekon. REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY)

Here are some ideas Erkan briefly notes
about the Ergenekon case:

1. I am personally not upset that coup plotters and their sympathizers are at least 'harassed' during the never ending Ergenekon case. All arrested, detained, investigated personalities are part of dark relations in Turkey's recent past. One is happy to see that there is a sort of "divine justice" in life.

2. I am suprised that the Case continues even after the end of closure case against AKP. There is a widespread belief that there is an understanding between the military bureaucracy and government now. PM Erdoğan's pro-State statements and cadre changes in AKP leadership seemed to be evidence for this belief. The case seemed to have lost AKP's political support.

3. Ergenekon is a very broad, powerful and well-supported network. Its illegality is reversed or justified by a particular civil mode of political culture. There are many civilians who support coups in order to protect the regime. This is still a strong pattern of political thinking in Turkey. One should not forget that in 1960 an elected PM was hanged! In order to protect Kemalism, many civilians would not mind a military coup and even execution of government members. In such a political climate, Ergenekon gang members could easily operate, settle and be protected. Many gang members become inseperable from the rest of smypathisers.

4. Turkish legal system is conservative, backward and has loopholes. In such a political and legal context, it is very hard for prosecutors to operate against Ergenekon. No need to say, system is totally politicized.

5. In order to operate, political and communal support is needed. I do not mind that prosecutors have some "backing".

6. In order to operate, there might be some violations of "procedures", that are constantly highlighted by secularist circles. "procedures" that are never settled, that are constantly manipulated. Same procedures that were not criticised when PM Erdoğan was imprisoned before, when Beşir Atalay, current minister of interior affairs, was thrown out of his university years ago, when pro-Islamic columnists were detained in the same like some columnists are now detained....

7. Despite my support in general, I have to admit that the Case process sometimes becomes too problematic to support. the Indictment itself is an interesting text but messy, long and evidentially weak.

8. I feel better with the latest wave of arrests after which hidden weaponry is found. Technical analysis finally secured the fact that some newly found grenades are now part of a group of grenades that were found initially in Ümraniye, İstanbul that started the whole process.

9. I understand that some of the arrests are just meant to harass pro-coup personalities who does not have any organic membership with the gang. But evidential connections have to be secured. Only after hard evidence, this very difficult process of Ergenekon case can continue and maintain public support.

10. But how can there be more evidence? That's a hard task. Turkish intelligence seems to be divided. Only some can provide direct help. Army intelligence act mostly after the fact. Evidences can easily be hidden or destroyed under the cloud of sympathy in several levels of bureaucracy. Police forces can be helpful but according to media reports, which are themselves quite suspicious, evidence is not collected properly (such as data found in computers are not registered according to proper procedures) and despite good intentions, evidence is corrupted most of the time.

11. In case of lack of hard evidence, evidentiality of the case becomes inevitably political. If there was a strong mainstream media support, instantiation of strong evidentiality could be more easily achieved. This also lacks.

12. If political support is secured limitedly through some negotiations, then there will only be some victims, and Ergenekon case will be closed without much sensation at a particular moment.

13. If political support is secured strongly, then there will be sensational conclusions. If AKP secures another big victory in March elections, this might lead to a strong political support for the case.

14. If Ergenekon gang members decided to retire after the AKP rule, their old misdeeds would be forgotten and they would live happily after. But their belief that they own the State led them to this particular predicament...

15. This is a good lesson for some: if you politicise the law, this is what you will get. This is in turn a lesson for those who rule now: If you maintain this level of politicization, you might again become the victim of the process. Justice is needed for all, although revenge tastes good for the moment...

On the same topic:

Here come the pain - Ergenekon gang receives a serious blow in the 10th wave of arrests

'Turkish judges' - so anxious ...

Why does military intelligence fail to see what the police can see?

Did the last Ergenekon operation just save us from a military coup?

Think about it

Think about it, man is the enemy of man
and he meditates on his own annihilation.
Think about it always, think about it now
as you look at the overcast sky
this moment in April,
as you believe you hear growth like a gentle rustling,
the girls are cutting thistels
under the lark’s song,
think about it at this very moment:

as you sample wine in the cellars of Randersacken,
or squeeze oranges in the gardens of Alicante,
as you fall asleep in the Hotel Mirarmar near the beach of Taorina,
or light a candle on All Soul’s Day in the churchyard at Feuchtwangen,
as you haul the nets, if you’re a fisherman, over the Dogger Bank,
or in Detroit remove a screw from a conveyer belt,
as you set out plants in the rice fields of Setzuan,
or ride a mule across the Andes—
think about it!

Think about it when a hand strokes you tenderly,
think about it when your wife hugs you,
think about it when your children laugh at your side.

Think about it, after the great destructions
everyone will try to prove their innocence.
Think about it:
Korea and Bikini aren’t on any map,
they are in your heart.
Think about it, you are responsible for every atrocity
committed far away from you—

Günther Eich

with thanks to Jim Doss (translator) and Loch Raven Review.