On the road

Misty morning.

Using the wind

Ideal day for drying laundry

 

 

 

here and ...

there.

Up the wind! ;-)

Friday is Skyday

Cloudy it was.

Her Voice His Eyes

On the other side I had seen a little girl,
her right hand holding a man's left,
leading him towards the night,
her voice being his eyes.
The sun is red, she said, and soon
she will dive into the glistening sea.

Having eyes only for the man at her side

she had not taken notice of me,

and still I felt like an intruder.

Suddenly I sensed myself walking away,

and only the sun could see

my eyes burning with sorrow and joy.

Could you see through walls,
there's a girl holding a man's hand
her voice being his eyes.
© 2009 Sean Jeating

Beers & Book (428) – Italian narrators

Italian storytellers, 13th til 18th century

Relats conjunts: Treason

«Ballarina amb ram de flors»
*
Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers
«Star of the Ballet»
(Edgar Germain Hilaire Degas – 1878)
*
Relats conjunts

 

 [To continue "TRAïCiÓ "/Treason, the story of Paula]

Still breathless after enjoying the standing ovation, Núria is greeted behind the curtain by her favourite colleague with two glasses of champagne. But she does not take the glass offered by Helena.
‘Give me your glass,’ she demands.
‘How suspicious you are,’ Helena smilingly pouts, but takes back the rejected glass, hands Núria hers, takes the one Núria rejected and drinks it in one gulp.
‘Forgive me! How stupid of me to mistrust you.’ Núria laughs, drinks her glass in one gulp... stares at Helena with wide eyes ... the bouquet gliding from her hand ... and collapses ... dead ... 

Friday is Skyday

Mostly a cloudy week it was, filling the rain barrels.

Laughing Lhursday*

The loveliest of all daughters and booksellers allowed me
 to 'make' a Laughing Lhursday of her mishap.

As title, she suggested two and a half weeks ago:
Tanzen ist doch schädlich. / Dancing is harmful after all.

Now, while sitting in Hogwarts
with her torn ligament, 
the cook's name is Sean,
for a couple of weeks
carrying pots and pans across the road
for four hungry mouths.

* [For first time visitors]: 
Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that 
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

Beers & Books (427) – Spanish narrators

Spanish storytellers, 14th til 20th century.

Beers & Books (426) – Catalan narrators

Catalan storytellers
*
Recently purchased second-hand: 19 stories by 
Jacint Verdaguer, Carles Bosch de la Trinxeria, Narcís Oller,
Joaquim Ruyra, Victor Català, Ernesto Martínez Ferrando,
Miquel Llor,  Lorenç Villalonga, Mercè Rodoreda, Pere Calders,
Salvador Espriu (2), Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Manuel de Pedrolo,
Jordi Sarsanedas (2), Joaquim Carbó, Terenci Moix, Josep Albanell.

Tomato puree & Puré de tomàquet

Tomato puree
112th birthday of Jesse Owens
&
Puré de tomàquet
un dia després
de la Diada Nacional
de Catalunya, 2025

Friday is Skyday

17:10

19:29

Balcony views with red moon

Whilst this afternoon sitting with Antonio Molina Muñoz, 
I enjoyed this view.

Five and a half hours later
I took a shot of today's lunar eclipse...

Thirty-one minutes later, Ms Luna
had reappeared from the Earth's shadow.

Balcony view

This afternoon, whilst sitting with Mercé Rodoreda
and a cup of coffee on the balcony,
when looking up, once again I felt privileged.

Friday is Skyday

Southwest, 15:49

West, 15:49

East, 18:44

Laughing Lhursday*

Quètxup d'espécies
un dia després
del 276è aniversar
de Goethe.
*
Spiced ketchup
one day after
the 276th anniversary
of Goethe.

* [For first time visitors]: 
Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that 
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

On the road

10:43

20:29

Beers & Books (425) – Victor Català: Solitud

I consider myself lucky.
Victor Català's ‘Solitud’, published in German in 2007, 
has ‘found its way’ into my library –
antiquarian, at a good price and remarkably well preserved. 
What a book!!

Victor Català (11 September 1869 – 27 January 1966)

August ending

Great effort, even greater delight for the palate ...

Friday is Skyday

Foraging ...

Summer stories by Carme: Cave paintings at El Cogul

I look at what I have drawn. I like it. 
One day people will say: contemporary painting.
But much rather would I paint eight or ten billion of us,
along with flying lightning bolts
that bring death to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands; possibly all of us.
Plus famines, rapes, misery and violence.

And there are many other things I would like to draw – 
as a warning to those who will live after me.
But how do you paint stupidity, envy, greed and similar abstract concepts?
Ah, my contemporaries wouldn't understand it anyway.
And so I prefer to indulge in the joys of love... 
well aware that it will end badly if we continue to reproduce so unrestrained.

Beers & Books (424) – Mercè Rodoreda

Aloma (1938), La Placa del Diamant (1962), La meva Cristina i altres contes (1967)
Mirall trencat (1974), Jardí vora el mar (1967), Quanta, quanta, guerra (1980)

 

Mercè Rodoreda (10 October 1908 – 13 April 1983)

Beers & Books (423) – Mercè Rodoreda: Short stories

La meva Cristina i altres contes
*
My Christina & Other Stories 

 

Mercè Rodoreda (10 October 1908 – 13 April 1983)

Laughing Lhursday*

Fortune favours fools,
or as a German saying goes,
"Die dümmsten Bauern
ernten die größten Kartoffeln."
/
"The dumbest farmers
harvest the biggest potatoes".

Once again I feel relieved. 

* [For first time visitors]: Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

 

One stem, four colours

...

Coffee time with Pavlova & Mr B

Pawlowa
or how to smuggle a donkey halfway around the world
*
Certainly neither the original title (‘The White Umbrella’)
nor the writer (Brian Sewell) would have piqued my interest.
Being sometimes a donkey myself, though,
I could not resist the German title. ;-)
For an enjoyable read ...

Mr B, a fifty-year-old Briton, is travelling with a television crew in Peshawar, Pakistan, to make a film about the country's history. When he sees a heavily laden donkey foal covered in wounds by the side of the road during a car journey, he decides not to take the flight back to London scheduled for the following day. Instead, he wants to walk to London with the young donkey mare, whom he names after the Russian ballet dancer Pavlova because of her long legs. With only the bare essentials, including a white umbrella from the London umbrella shop James Smith & Sons, the two set off.
Translated from the German Wikipedia entry.

He says it for me

Escric per viure.
O bé al revés, tal volta:
visc per escriure. 

 Miquel Martí i Pol

I write for living.
Or vice versa, this time:
I live for writing. 

Friday is Skyday

Tonight, 30 or 40 swallows were hunting for their dinner.
But no matter how hard I tried,
I could never get more than four in one photo.

They are so incredibly fast.

 

Laughing Lhursday*

Living room idyll
designed by granddaughter

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

 

Pretty cool it was

Eilean Donan Castle ...
around half past four in the morning,
when the pub had closed its doors.
*
Memories of morning freshness 
on a very hot day 27 years later. ;-)

The scum of America

"Listen," I say. "Isn't that great? The future ex-president of the United States is ordering National Guard units to Washington because he wants to 'take back his beautiful capital city'."  
No reaction.
"He wants to reduce the allegedly enormous crime rate and drive all the homeless people out of his city."
For a while, it seemed as if Tetrapilotamos, who is currently very busy proofreading his 1,669-page masterpiece ‘Pre-Assyrian Philately in a Nutshell,’ wasn't listening to me at all.
But then I hear him mutter: "Fact is, the illiteracy rate in Washington, D.C. is higher than in Cuba. Same goes for the crime rate.
The real scum of America these days is to be found in the White House, though, ... to tell the truth.”

Thistle feast

Most two-legged neighbours don't like thistles in their gardens, unaware that they are in the minority ...

... as the buzzing and humming inhabitants of Seanhenge prove.

They love thistles, especially these globe thistles (Echinops).

Coffee time with Lluís Llach

Les dones de la Principal
*
[There does obviously exist no English version]

Lluís Llach *7 May 1948

Seanhenge these days

 

Just a glimpse.

Balcony djungle.

Apples and prune plums.

Prune plums.

Apples.

Plums
[as an aside: super delicious]

Many people would not be able to imagine
what grows in and beneath this apparent chaos.

Potatoes, for example.