Happy Birthday to a "Titan"

Gustav Mahler

¡Que Viva España!

As I wrote here and there: If the German team plays as fine a football as against England and Argentina, they will have a chance.
I would not mind, though, if the Spanish team won; as long as they play fair and are better.

Well, and tonight the Spanish team was better!

What fascinated me: Seldom I saw such important a match with almost no fouls.

Thus, here we go:

 

Die Gedanken sind frei

Die Gedanken sind frei

Die Gedanken sind frei,
Wer kann sie erraten;
Sie fliehen vorbei
Wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen,
Kein Jäger erschießen;
Es bleibet dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

Ich denk was ich will,
Und was mich beglücket,
Doch alles in der Still,
Und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren
Kann niemand verwehren,
Es bleibet dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

Und sperrt man mich ein
Im finsteren Kerker,
Das alles sind rein
Vergebliche Werke;
Denn meine Gedanken
Zerreissen die Schranken
Und Mauern entzwei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

Drum will ich auf immer
Den Sorgen entsagen
Und will mich auf nimmer
Mit Drillen mehr plagen.
Man kann ja im Herzen
Stets lachen und scherzen
Und denken dabei:
Die Gedanken sind frei.

The thoughts are free!

The thoughts are free!
Who can guess them?
They fly along like nightly shadows
No man can know them
No hunter can shoot them
It remains as it is:
The thoughts are free! 

I think about what I want 
and what makes me happy
But everything in the still,
and as it's appropriate.
My wish and desire
Nobody can refuse,
It stays this way:
The thoughts are free!

And if they lock me
In a dark dungeon
All these are simply
(most) futile works
Cause my thoughts
do tear apart
The bars and walls:
Thoughts are free!

That's why I shall forever
renounce all worries
And shall never tease myself
with drilling anymore
Because one can in one's heart
always keep laughing and joking
While thinking: The thoughts are free.

Don't cry for me, Argentina ...

La mort des loups

Obviously

Ní fuláir deachmhadh na sláinte dhíol.

One must health pay its tithes.

Full age attained

Yesterday, around midnight I suddenly thought of that my father who - exactly four months after my mother - died 21 years ago, and I now have attained full age: he as a dead, I as an orphan.

'Oh, how disrespectful!'

Sure?

Anyway, the corners of our mouths enjoyed a jocund expedition to the ear-lobes.

Just a thought

Knowledge is not an abstract homogeneous good, of which there cannot be enough. Beyond the last flutter of actual or possible significance, pedantry begins.
Jacques Barzun

Encore

[Mr. O'Donnell's wish was my command]

Mediterranean Sundance

Just too hot

This morning: bright sunshine, blue sky, no wind, at 9 o'clock already 26°C; watering the flowers on the graveyard.

A voice behind me:

- Good morning, Mr. J.

- Ah, good morning, Mrs. D.  The dear dead are thirsty these days, aren't they?

- Indeed, it's awful hot.

- Well, up here it's certainly a bit warmer than down there. Want to move six feet under? I did not ask.

- A bit warmer? Hot it is! Awful hot. I am sweltering. [laughing]

- Oh well. Take it easy. It's summer. In six months you'll complain about how cold it is, and the oil-price, I did not say. 

- I have nothing against summer. But that's just too much.

- 26°C? Too much? 

- The heat came too fast. And the day has just begun. Don't you feel it?

 ...

 I felt ... indeed ... reminded of different kinds of heat:

In case you wish to dive a bit deeper into Harun Farocki's work, here's for a beginning.

Oh, and to the lady's question I (smilingly) replied: Yes, I do. What about just enjoying life?

And her answer: Soon I will. We'll spend our holiday in Tunesia.  

Tiny a tribute

Thus José Saramago began his Nobel lecture*:

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife. My mother's parents lived on this scarcity, on the small breeding of pigs that after weaning were sold to the neighbours in our village of Azinhaga in the province of Ribatejo. Their names were Jerónimo Meirinho and Josefa Caixinha and they were both illiterate. In winter when the cold of the night grew to the point of freezing the water in the pots inside the house, they went to the sty and fetched the weaklings among the piglets, taking them to their bed. Under the coarse blankets, the warmth from the humans saved the little animals from freezing and rescued them from certain death. Although the two were kindly people, it was not a compassionate soul that prompted them to act in that way: what concerned them, without sentimentalism or rhetoric, was to protect their daily bread, as is natural for people who, to maintain their life, have not learnt to think more than is needful. 

And these were his last words:

I conclude. The voice that read these pages wished to be the echo of the conjoined voices of my characters. I don't have, as it were, more voice than the voices they had. Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all. 

Well, I do have nothing to forgive.
José Saramago's voice to me was and is not all - and sometimes his style would cause me a frown - but his Seeing of the Blindness in the Cave we call progressing civilisation means much for me.
So much, indeed, that in the cathedral of this agnostic's heart there's been lit a candle of thankfulness.

And yes! Amongst the wisest (wo)men I ever knew in my (so far not) whole life were quite a few who could hardly read or write.
 

* The complete English translation is to be found here.

Postscriptum:
Anticipating some non-permanent readers' thoughts and answering them:

Ah, a communist. - Nah.
Ah, an atheist. - Nah. Although, I do like Buñuel's aphorism: I am atheist, thanks to god.

Ah, ... - Nah!  Why not come back and try harder?

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th of June*
The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Bertold Brecht

* choose any date and location you wish