Jan 25, 2023The Art Of Flight
By Sergio PitolPart autobiography, part literary criticism. I was a bit skeptical at first, and maybe to a certain extent throughout the entirety - while most of it is beautifully wrought, there is a tendency for Pitol just to simply start listing off names and places and books and works of art. Worse than that, they are lists of names of which I recognized only a small amount, and read even less! So basically both pretentious and an insult to my intelligent wordliness. (Reading the translator's note at the back, I discovered that the description of a man he saw in a bar in Barcelona as "the little black princess of the heaths" was in fact a reference to the nineteenth century novel Das Haideprinzeßchen? Which has a German wikipedia page, but no English one.) Unlike, say, Terry Pratchett, this is not an easy read.
Feb 24, 2017Beware of a fast-flowing mountain stream !!!Chiang Mai lies in the north of Thailand, a small university town founded in the late 13th century as the capital of the kingdom of Lan Na, staying that way for a few hundred years. But I don't know much about that, as my knowledge (as unfortunately usual, I reluctantly admit) comes mostly from a cursory glance at the wikipedia page. Normally, my research is a bit more in depth, but these days as my travel is coming to a close I've gotten a bit lazy. And, hey: maybe the lack of context is helpful. For shouldn't the beauty of an art work come completely from the conversation its existence has with the viewer? And what greater art work isthere than an entire city and hundreds of years of history and culture? is the only lame excuse I can come up with. And there are so many more engaging things to read and do than just getting a basic grasp of your surroundings.
Feb 20, 2017Do Not Step Into the Lotus Lily GardenMy timelines are getting a little bit fudged. It is so infrequent, these days, that I actually sit down and write, that I am never able to finish an entire post in a single sitting. Of course, by the time I return to finish it, I have enough material for another post. But! I am on a 10 hour bus ride now, so hopefully I'll have the patience, the time, and the battery life to play catch up.