Picture Of The Day #55

Sometime in 2012 I posted a picture of this plant with my old handycam.

A little while later I bought a Sony digicam with a better lens and macro option. The plant grows in our bathroom. It blossoms on average every second year. 

Jump on this Boat!

It's considered bad manners to write about a book before you are finished reading it. But there's a but: Due to coincidence I'm reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra at the same time. 

They seem to share quite a deal.

And since I've laughed out loud three time before reaching page 6 in Toole's weird tale of Ignatius J. Reilly, I need to quote one of his lines (he's thirty, living with his mother):

"I dust a bit," Ignatius told the policeman. "In addition, I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip."

I am very sure that I'm going to enjoy this book.

Don Quixote was lost to me for many years. A clear victim of German class - where they seem to have taught most people NOT to read. We read the first page of the first chapter. I still remember the words - the translation, compared to the English one by John Ormsby I'm reading now must've been lousy. We had to write a content summary. I didn't only consider Don Quixote boring crap for years - I disliked content summaries for as long as I was a student as well. What a waste! 

The tale of the Spanish knight (remember: bad manners - I've hardly started reading) seems to be miraculously funny, witty, strange and deep. 

Thanks to Kevin Dorney for tipping me into his direction again. And thanks to Daniel Wouters for sending A Confederacy of Dunces by mail from Spain or Switzerland or wherever it were...

Pictures from La Gomera

Camping Montana Roja

Apratementos de Maria Isabel - Vale Gran Rey

Typical for the Canary Islands: Euphorbiaceae

Argaga Valley

 

At Casas de Gerian

Like Mandala

Camp in the Mountains

Going down from El Cedro to the North Coath 

Las Catalinas

Hermigua Valley from the East

A form of Asteraceae

Looking towas Punta Cabina

The beauty of La Gomera - simple.

Down at Punta Cabina. A variety of fish lives in this basin.

Hippie Valley..

What a camp!

Slowly it's time to say: Goodbye.

Because soon we'll be back at Cologne Airport.

A Minute Full of Bucket Drumming

Bucket Drummer Phil Bondy in Liverpool. No need to add anything.

Here's my first bed this year.

This one had to be very simple: A pine wood frame and capable to house boxes 30cm high. More Information here.

Picture Of The Day #54

Lindenstraße, facing West just before 5 p.m.

I love Cologne for its blinding light, when the sun is hanging just above the roofs. Today we had our first sidewalk-coffee from "Formula Uno", a famous Italian Coffeeshop in the South City. For the first time this year it's alomost T-Shirt weather.

On Hold

This blog is currently on hold. It's been a trial to run both a German and an English blog, but lately I've barely had time to maintain the German one. Until further notice I have to say: No news here...

My original blog can be found at:

maxpothmann.blogspot.de

See you soon...

Summer Break

This Blog has been on summer break for a while, mostly because I spend so much time outside and because there's been so much work. To cover the gap here's a few chunks from my summer literature:

'Salem's Lot' (Stephen King)

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. 

Killing Floor, Jack Reacher No.1 (Lee Child)

In the end, a government’s primary duty is to defend the value of its currency. 

Conscious Loving: The Journey to Co-Committment (Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks)

We have all had so little training in how to take true responsibility for our lives that we tend to slip into projection when the slightest stress occurs.

The Stand (Stephen King)

He stopped wanting to communicate, and when that happened the thinking process itself began to rust and disintegrate.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes (Robert Louis Stevenson)

But we are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world—all, too, travellers with a donkey: and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. They are the end and the reward of life. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel (Neil Gaiman)

In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, “Be whole,” and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. 

Tripwire, Jack Reacher No.3 (Lee Child)

The whole point of drifting was happy passive acceptance of no alternatives.

Pictures from Norway

Sunset after takeoff in Cologne

The sun rises again over the North Sea

The house in Hoff, Lena

Late summer everywhere: Apple blossoms in June

View south

Nevelfjell east of Lillehammer, 1089metres

Looking south during ascent

On top, toward Jotunheimen

On top, toward Sweden

Strange cloud formation

There's still snow here in the middle of June

From the kitchen - the sun at 18 o'clock

The sun at 21 o'clock

Green, midnight

Anniversary

I cut this sculpture in the winter of 1999/2000 from furtree. At that time I was a volunteer for Action Reconiliation Sign for Peace e.V. During the last 13 years it sometimes stood outside, sometimes inside. It was grown over by bushes. Sometimes it's taken inside for winter, sometimes not. Birds shit on its head, it grows darker and more lively every year. It's good to meet old friends.

A hundred years ago today Norway accepted women's suffrage - women's right to vote. Norway passed the law as second country in Europe after Finnland. Congratulations!

Going North

I took a plane north, catching the sun after it'd set west of Cologne. I'll be back in a week and post more pictures of this fine little journey.

My Arms

My arms bleed dry
someone's punched a hole into their skin
and drop after drop I'm leaking red
 
I don't remember when it happened
- I just realized one day 

that my arms were bleeding
bleeding slowly, a thin string of blood
dripping down to the floor
 
I didn't do anything about it
I didn't have time, I was busy
- and I liked the red
 
Then I got used to it, to the bleeding
got used to all the paper towels needed
to keep the office clean
 
Gee. What a mess.
 
It's been going on for weeks now
my arms becoming paperdry
I thought my bones where thin
but they are much thinner really
- there's nothing left but skin and bone 
 
There's an anorexic girl in my neighbourhood
her arms look as thin as mine
but with me it's just the arms
the rest of my body looks the same
my face hasn't turned all puffy
as they do with people who don't eat right

(she works in my favourite burger joint
frying burgers all day
but never eating)
 
Sometimes I think:
why don't I stop the bleeding?

it should be very easy
shouldn't it?
but I'm so used to my arms bleeding
 
so used to the thin, the dry feeling
 
and I'm curious so see what's going to happen
I'm curious if that someone comes around again

and I'm sleepy...