A Summer Smile Comes Not Without a Rock
The first azure skies come with a rolling thunder to Berlin. At first, the spotted patterns of the heaven seem harmless, and a deep purple blue colored cloud blows over without a single drop, making room again for the vacant airs of summer. But within minutes new waves of foaming waters above, now accompanied by the fresh smell of moist winds, and sharp, shiny silver stabs of lightning, cut across the rooftop horizon of the city, fast and dangerous but on the slow beat of crawling thunder.

As the heaven closes like a grand stage behind a blackened curtain, the rolls of cleaving light repeats itself faster and faster, like a tiring day forgetting to keep pace, but still more filled with expectation than fulfillment. A summer smile comes not without a rock. The light now breaks through the window’s glass, penetrates the inner sanctuary, and light burst back out, answering the call of lone television sets, of gruesomeness and splendour of a flattened, hollow world. (more…)

“De dood is een feest, omdat wij alleen maar aan het leven kunnen denken.”

The large world of superseding emotions demands from us to formally abide to social expectations of behaviour, to stop thinking and sympathize, even if the principle of superseding emotions is to be rejected and the souvereignty of the self to be accepted as the dominating principle of western culture and of individuation itself. This inconsistency is upheld with a blunt socially repressive strictness.

The average person can only create a restricted line of dependencies. This is because it is closely related to the phenomenon of psychological fixations, which exclude one or the other of two choices. These exclusive fixations though need to be resolved, in order to discover the true and disinterested aesthetics of the world. However, most people function in a constant web of social dependencies, which emotionally settle in an unmanoeuvrable solidity of formal behaviour. The ratio, in general, is but a weak blow to such concrete structures of the mind. Especially, in small social groups and communities like a rural village or a virtual parallel to it, a weblog community, this small size expresses itself literally, and could fairly be labelled as small-minded. (more…)

Today, for the first time this year was a beautiful summer day, to enjoy the heat of the sun beating down.

Started reading: Jacob Burckhardt, Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (1860)

The train station of Gdansk lies somewhat at the border of the old city center, the main town. In front of the station lies the main traffic-artery, where ten year old busses and the local trams stop. The main town seems fenced off for visitors by the concrete road and iron tracks. In order to cross to the other side, one has to walk through the pedestrian tunnel underneath the road, since a green barred fence runs along the tramtrack for a few hundred meters in front of us. The pedestrians tunnel houses numerous kiosks selling everything from sexy lingery, cell phones to the latest news. Each store enprisons a salesassistant within a glass cell of one meter depth and three meters wide, stuffed with goods to sell. Resurfacing from these consumerdepths of Polish kiosks, one stands at the foot of a western-style mall, next to the Rossmann drugstore chain that can be found in Poland since the last few years. (more…)

Das Leben ist Verlassenheit, das nur die Liebe trösten kann. Aber der Trost bringt Mittelmäßigkeit, die den geistlichen Mensch traurig stimmt. Also, das ist mit dem Leben eben so, dass es nicht erfüllt werden kann. Mann muss das Leiden nun erträgen, so wie mann auch das Gluck nicht bestimmen kann. So trage ich körperlich die Sehnsucht der Schönheit mit, weil ich geistlich leide an Sie, und so liebe ich mit meinem Kopf die Gegenwart meines Geistes, die doch nie ständig mir gehört.
Ich schlage meinen Arm un Sie herum, damit vertreibe ich dann für eine kleine Weile die Langeweile die mir herum schwebt.

On the other end
Across the street, she could see her neighbour, who diligantly seem to either read, work on his notebook at his desk or put out and take in the laundry, depending on the weather changes. The apartment on the other side lay also on the 4th floor and she could look into what appeared to be his living room.

As every morning around 10 or 11 she would wake up and switch on the television to MTV. She loved waking up to the rhythm of the latest hitmusic and watch the glamour of the stars falling into their large room, in which she had made her bed but which also served as their living room during the day.

Started reading: Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930-1952)

With new devotion I engage myself to the arts. Inspired by the newly found introvercy and descriptions of goodness, the pure selfishness liberated from ambiguous ties to others, that consititutes beauty, and the energetic ambition of a man like Karl Ude. Only through such pure selfishness can we establish goodness without interest, or as Hegel defines estheticism: pleasure without interest.

The Weather Pendulum
I hear the gentle rolling of cartires, carrying a 1000 kilos of metal and synthetics over the cobbles in the street, mixed in with the soft throbbing of its engine, a lost sound of a faraway object hitting the ground. I react immediately to see if it is raining again. Die Stütze, one of the Berliner streetjournals, writes: all of Berlin is waiting for the summer, me too. So far, it has been quite a challenge to dry one’s clothes. Most of the mornings are beautiful until 9 or 10 o’clock, when a first quick shower hits the window panes. After 10 minutes the sun again is shining. This pattern continues throughout the day, heavy clouds, dark and ominous, passing over, driven by the wind, which drops the temperature immediately from a pleasant 20 degrees to under 16. Que sera, sera. In Amsterdam I trusted that the weather would more or less be close to that of the day before, in New England I had grown accustomed to listening to the weather forecasts again to prevent catching a cold every week, in Berlin I have given up both. (more…)

In the evening, we went to watch the Ceska – Hellas game in a local Kneipe. The bar, a darts bar, of which there are plenty in Berlin, is located just down Boddinstrasse. There is always a mixed response to walking into a local Kneipe in Berlin. Although Germans are very open and welcome to strangers, there is always the reluctant acceptance of intruding their space noticable as well. The guests struggle with the dislike for a second, but quickly overcome their hesitation. It won’t take long before someone starts talking to you here. After a few minutes, an older woman, sitting in front of me on a bar stool and watching the game on the screen in the back of the bar, turns around naturely, and expresses her dissatisfaction about the game of the Czechs so far. I go back and forth with her for a minute or two. Then we abruptly without explanation or announciation interrupt our brief conversation again. Such abrupt endings are accepted with the greatest evidence and stand not in the way of as evident of a continuation of one’s conversation. It characterizes the ease by which Germans interact with other people, stranger, acquintance or friend. (more…)