oophelia

[oophelia]

So be the post-modern german interpretation of the black cat at père lachaise. tomb stone and garden deco. Work of "art," duplicates in the age of modern reproduction. I had a walk along Lake Constance, pondering on life and philosophy. Pondering on Baudelaire, and then Benjamin. Pondering on the Erlösung, as the mundanity has been so deafening and I'm not sure if I've missed the calling. Where shall the flaneuse be looking for the aura? If we are indeed endowed with the little messianic power, where should we be turning our heads to?

[oophelia]

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends... #portraitofalady #tseliot #poetry #modernism #modernist #berlin #neukölln #kiezpoesie #flaneury #flaneuse #hauptstadtpoesie (at Hasenheide)

[oophelia]

I think i too have known autumn too long #eecummings #poetry #autumn #berlin #neukölln #hasenheide #flaneury #flaneuse #strolling #kiezpoesie (at Volkspark Hasenheide)

[oophelia]

God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust? #sylviaplath #corridors #staircase #flaneuse #flaneurie #berlin #kiezpoesie #tresspassing #architecturephotography (at Berlin, Germany)

[oophelia]

1 ook- pigeons fly inand whee(:are,SpRiN,k,LiNg an in-stant with sunLight then)!- #eecummings #poetry #pigeon #iwillbe #berlin #neukölln #kiez #kiezpoesie #cummings #poem (at Berlin Neukoelln)

[oophelia]

aura within the ruin #ruin #ruinology #aura #walterbenjamin #stroll #albayzin #granada #travelgram #travelphotography #spain #wall (hier: Albayzín)

[oophelia]

In pursuit of the aura of a tinted childhood: abandoned Taolin railway

[oophelia]

Encapsulated time.

[oophelia]

Benjaminian moment of phantasmagoria

[oophelia]

In a world of chance, is there a better and a worse? We yield to stranger’s embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and then we are awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. What are these blinks of an eyelid, against which the only defense is an eternal and inhuman wakefulness? – Foe, J. M. Coetzee

When taken out of the post-colonial context, Susan Barton’s observation is oddly applicable to the modern metropolis life.

[oophelia]

In a murderous time The heart breaks and breaks And lives by breaking

[oophelia]

O Rose thou art sick The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. -- William Blake

[oophelia]

I am not good at keeping loving letters but I stumbled upon this while going through my grad school notes. People come and go, saying goodbye albeit it's dying a little. And yet, we'll always have Paris.

[oophelia]

"She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever." --Alice Munro 

Das unumgängliche-- that cannot be tackled. Not by talking about it, not by writing about it in a foreign language, albeit the emotion might be somehow mitigated during mediation. 

On the 20th of May, my mother had been officially discharged from the role of a daughter. We had a lengthy conversation, though 80 percent of which were mere repetition and paraphrasing. 

 "She had reached her time. It was just a natural process. It was a good death."

 "Do not dwell too much upon this. Cry if you want to. Write about it if it helps."

I still cannot write about this. Caught up by job interviews a continent away, I could not even have left a rose for her--and I have left roses for people I was way less connected to. 

I still refer to her in present tense when I talk about her in front of people. 

Amsterdam is only 22 hours ahead and packing could be a fitting metaphor for exhumation. And thus I thought about closure. I thought about death. I thought about how saying goodbye is dying a little. I've exhumed the memory that could not be tackled. And then I thought, it's about time for the feeble attempt. 

She was a remarkable woman who had given up her chance of being happy for her family. She was Japanese, and then Taiwanese, but never Chinese-- she did not speak a word of Mandarin. And thus on the day of her cremation I stood by the window and bade goodbye to her in Taiwanese. My waning first language, and I was surprised that I was still able to say what I meant to say. 

I wish I had conveyed.

280615, Berlin

[oophelia]

here is the deepest secret nobody knows 

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows 

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

[oophelia]

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

[oophelia]

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:Σιβυλλα τι θελεις; respondebat illa:αποθανειν θελω.

I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”