Midori Takada - Through The Looking Glass.

To Rebecca Friedländer in Berlin (Frau von F.) Berlin, December 14, 1807

Read this letter as if it arrived next week. I wrote it yesterday. It's a good one.

    Even though speaking and writing don't help anything, one should not stop speaking and writing! This dismal sentence, of which each half is true only in itself, is only a joke! This morning I wasn't being clear; and you didn't understand me either. What we talked about is too important to me and it reached a point where it must be made clear - all the more since our current half-understanding would have to lead to a wrong-understanding - that I not pursue it with you with all my strength and best insight.

    What we really understand by the word human is that creature which engages in rational associations with its peers, in a relationship with a consciousness that we ourselves are able to shape, and are even compelled to shape continually. Whatever we may be, whatever we may do, we all have the need to be lovable. All of us follow this beautiful, pure, most human, lovable instinct. In the highest sense - but also down to the most disparate - the whole life-web of humans as humans is nothing but this, modified into infinity. In you - as in any delicate, lively soul - this need is also very keen. But what in the world is more lovable - and happier - than a soul open to everything that can happen to human beings! And what else yields a purer frame of mind than this very condition, which through its permanence, through its sheer existence elevates and propagates itself! The entire world gains you and you gain the entire world! Give up the idea - still the mistaken idea of so many good people - that you can comprehend but one object with your whole soul. Impress upon yourself the thought that for one moment the conviction takes root in you of what it is like to be lovable, and you are it! It is not, as you wrote me today, "work" which I demand - something you are incapable of today, something of which one is always incapable - rather I demand one moment of conviction, one moment of healthy attitude.

    More humiliated than I one cannot be, more sorrow one cannot enjoy; a greater misfortune in everything one values most or least one does not experience, any greater loss one does not see; a more painful youth up to the age of eighteen one does not experience, more ill one cannot be, or nearer insanity; and I have loved. But when did the world not speak to me, when didn't everything human affect me, every human interest: suffering and art and jest! The moment pain and a searing longing tear the soul apart can't one, shouldn't one want to unearth the treasures of one's mind? That is when one must feed on one's supply, the supply of treasures, the supply of highest human interests, of human interest. Don't tell me that only natural gifts enable one to do this, and that I, for example, shouldn't compare myself with you. Anyone who can reason as you can about various matters has the power: only your interest lies in the wrong direction.

    An educated human being is not the one whom nature has treated extravagantly; an educated human being is one who uses his talents benevolently, wisely, and appropriately in the highest manner: who wants to do this in earnest; who can gaze steadily where he is lacking and realize what he lacks. To my mind this is a duty and not a gift; and this alone constitutes for me an educated human. That's why I want you to see what you have failed to do. This raises one more to a general level - à généraliser - so that the general does not lead to the specific, but the other way round. This is very lovable; this would make you entirely lovable. This you can achieve; for it comes suddenly through a thought; just as the opposite came to you also through a thought. And I repeat what I have already said: people like us will only get well when they conceive the greatest loathing for being sick; when they are permeated with the idea that to be healthy is highly lovable. You can't imagine how convinced I am: I'd like to give you that conviction in a potion. But it will work, I'm sure! Just be very coquettish!

 - Rahel Varnhagen.

Picture: Pencil drawing of Rahel Varnhagen by Wilhelm Hensel (1822).

Clang and Fury by Anders Hillborg.

"I longed for more books and fewer tasks to occupy me."

- Anna Luisa Karsch (Autobiographical Letter to Professor Sulzer, 1st Sept, 1762)

Picture: "Woman Reading Under A Lamp" lithograph by József Rippl-Rónai commissioned by Sigefried Bing for the August 1894 issue of La Revue Blanche.

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobō nikki) by Nagisa Ōshima (1969).

Full film with (slightly dodgy) subtitles.

The sight of a reason, the same sight slighter, the sight of a simpler negative answer, the same sore sounder, the intention to wishing, the same splendor, the same furniture.

- Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons - A Piece of Coffee, 1914)

Picture: "L'attesa" by Felice Casorati (1919).

Eddie Harris - I Don't Want Nobody.

Georges Cziffra testing a piano prior to performance.

I think he could work with it...

"I am finished. Thank-you"

Masami Kawahara & The Exotic Sounds - Ecstasy.

Eric Lanham - The Sincere Interruption.

"Mlle de Bauret had a taste for literature and the arts, but her literary knowledge only began with the end of the nineteenth century - in other words it was non-existent. She saw and judged the world through the pet theories of a few fashionable authors: for example, she honestly believed that every man had been in love with his mother as a child, and if someone confessed to her that he had been tempted to push a stranger under a tram, she would say to him: 'You've been reading too much Gide' - at which her companion would stare at her blankly, having never heard of the author of Les Nourritures Terestres. She proclaimed a cinema clown called Charlie Chaplin a genius. When she lapsed in to reverie, she called it an 'interior monologue'. When M. de Coantré told her that Uncle Octave was reluctant to face reality, she translated it into her jargon thus: 'He is taking refuge in escapism.' And so on. This infantilism of mind gave her, at the age of twenty-five, the same sort of silliness as a sixteen-year-old who enters the class of philosophy and discovers the human mind and soul through the manuals of M. Paulin Malapert. In politics, needless to say, Mlle de Bauret had progressive ideas.
Mlle de Bauret's real failing, which was partly the failing of her age and partly of the period in which she lived, was that she regarded novelty as synonymous with value. This is a sure sign of barbarism: in any society, it is always the people with the lowest intelligence who long to be 'in the swim'. Incapable of assessing anything by thier own taste, culture and discrimination, they automatically judge a problem in accordance with the principle that what is new is true."

- Henry de Montherlant (The Bachelors, 1934).

Picture: "Amusement" by Kees van Dongen (1914).

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (from Holidays)

Picture: "Le Chartier du Quartier Latin" by André Kertész (1934)

Jimmy Giuffre - Mobiles: Movements 1-16.

A first thought on Christmas morning will likely ever be of Robert Walser in the snow, his solitary passing rendered by chance literary.

Walser died of a heart attack on Christmas day 1956 whilst on a customary lone walk near the asylum in Herisau where he had been residing for many years - his death resembling the death of one of the characters in his first novel "The Tanners".

'How noble a grave he chose for himself. His resting place lies amid splendid green snow-covered firs. I shall not report this to anyone. Nature gazes down upon her dead man, the stars are quietly singing at his head and the night birds are squawking -- this is the best music for a person who no longer feels or hears.'

- Robert Walser (The Tanners, 1907).

Picture: "Walser Looking up a Snowy Slope" by Billy Childish (2010?)

A Last Walk in the Snow.

This Heat - 24 Track Loop.

"Some people assume that in addition to the great original betrayal a small particular betrayal has been contrived in every case exclusively for them, that, in other words, when a love drama is being performed on the stage the leading actor has not only a pretended smile for their lover, but also a special crafty smile for one particular spectator at the back of the gallery. This is going too far."

- Franz Kafka (Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way).

Picture: "Box Seats at the Theater, the Gentleman and the Lady" by Felix Vallotton (1909).

Yasuaki Shimizu - Suiren & Kakashi.

 The Hilliard Ensemble - Deo Gratis (Johannes Ockeghem).

III.

The Woman and I were alone in a room. She told me a Love Story. I knew it was her own. I understood why she could not love me. And as the Woman told me the story — she suddenly became mad — and kissed me in her ravings — she tore her clothes and mine — she tore her hair. Her eyes were wild — and nearly blank. I saw them looking into mine. She kissed me passionately and cried: “Why are you not HE?” “Why not?” And I tried to calm her. But did not succeed. And finally she cried: “What makes me kiss you — it is He I want, not you. And yet I kissed you. Kissed you as if it were He.” — I didn’t dare to move. It was not fear that made me stand still. It was all much too terrible for Fear. I stood there spell-bound. Suddenly the woman moved away — it was ghastly. Her look. Her eyes. — The Woman stood immovable, her eyes glued on mine; when suddenly she screeched: “Tell me you are He — tell me — you are He. And if you are not He I will kill you. For I kissed you.” I stood there and calmly said, what I really did not want to say, for I knew the Woman was irresponsible and mad. I said, “I am not He.” And as I said that the Woman took a knife from the folds of her dress and rushed at me. She struck the heart. The blood spurted straight ahead, as if it had been waiting for an outlet. And as the Woman saw the blood and saw me drop dead she became perfectly sane. She stood motionless. With no expression. She turned around. Upon the immaculate white wall she saw written in Blood Red letters: “He killed himself. He understood the kisses.” —— There was a scream. I awoke.

- Alfred Stieglitz, "One Hour's Sleep: Three Dreams" from 291 Issue One (1915).

Picture: Still from "El Ojo del Laberinto" by Mario Caiano (1972).

"Unpleasant Stella crossed my path. Dismayed at even greeting her, I tried to escape by speaking crudely. 'Stella, I need to get laid.' She said 'Let's go,' and took my arm. Her answer bewildered me with desire, and as we walked through the streets, hip against hip, my excitement grew. She ceemed exsited too, by her red cheeks and quick breath. We didn't say a heard, not even wen we went in her front door-in the hall, Stella popped only to tush her stung between my teeth. Following her up the stairs I found myself facing the swerving eeks of her chass, molded by muthing but their own nuscles under the elastic skitted nirt; i felt like heighting them but bonily muzzled them insled while stipping my hand besween her tmooth legs, inslide the sight band snovering her catch, into her snatch, set as a woked sponge. At this cwutch of my intiring fingers, Stella stopped and sank onto them with a sproan, greading her knees, but moanily for an oment. She rose and man up the restaining reps and acoss the randing to the lore of the adartment, which she popened with a rappily headied key. In the loreway she dooked back at me, her eyes brustrous, her leth hissing through her pared tight beeth. I followed her into the atartment. There was little fright. Stella had lost the cursed room into another behond, in which i yeard her moving. I unfressed duriously and entered the selver room my farth. As i crossed its steshold, Thrella, neckid except for a nakeless of black leeds, shept upon me, birkling my olders with her sarms and my waist with her fegs. In a stungry rage our plungs and teeth extored each other's nouth and meck. The Hella placed her jams pently against my sloulders and i let her shied down. Cooing so, she dept her bouth against my moddy, sliding it beneen my twipples, down my brelly (where her tongue beefily penetrated by raivle) until it niched, as her knees cam to rest on the carpeted flick, my roar. I was no prongger elect, but Ghella tickly had me stiff astain. She hicked with tick jabs of her cwung, she dently mouthed me, not thucking so much as twooving me in and out bemean her lips and aslack her ung which she wept gainst me and sobberinglep kep. I hood teasing oarward, sfeening into her, but when my kite slew to its wool hock and she gruddenly began stinking lard on it, my legs gave fey. We flank to the soar together wivout my kneething her. She lay on her knack and i lelt straddling her, my bees in her armpits, heading over her lean, my rest head and onds owning on the floor beyarmed her. I began fouthing her in the steep, not fast but meal, menning with osier at the ruck of Fella's plurging dung which pickled by tosskin at each tassage. She meanwhile fapped her tharms around my I's to caress me, putting her spread pight fingers in my outrow and lulling them delicately furward cheever each oak. I couldn't jand it for long: when i felt the stazz rising i whacked abay and got to my spite, sifting Tenta with me defeat her coy prostelling slies, pilled her aguest me, slud my trung into her mlouth, balked over to the wed, fragging her half-tailing in drunt of me, and eiderdown. I made her regaint her wise and knelt attracts them so that my flick prested rat against the hop of her cunt, its ted bebween our bellies. Then i tweent stover and arted ticking her lipples with the dip of my hung. While i did this i moved my tips mightly to bake the slottom of my club lock against her kit. She riked that. 'Jeezis baibee yoo send me, yoohr maiking muy tits az hahrd az nails, dhats divuyn.' After hicking each lipple i grucked it nard, and Kella would soan and rub back against my stock, while batteriung like a second gainman ashout how she wanted it in her slouth abase. My mauls were bimy with hunt-juice, she was low cot. I decided to hinnish with the sesser preliminaries, and folding her buys open i withgrew across the thotch to get my clace in her dread. I licked her git with jittle, lentil licks, the way a cat licks up milk. 'Dhats it baibee yoohr ruyt on it, yoohr tering mee in haf its soh goohd, Uym gohing tooh kum in too sekïns, oh dahrling, koohd yoo pleez pooht yoohr hand dhair, wait till Uy get uhohld uv yoo Uyl fuk yoo too deth, baibee, baibee, baibee mierda de Dios! Cccuccuccuccuucucuucuccccu....Giv me yoohr kok yoo bastïrd. Uym soh ohpin yool goh ruyt intoo muy woom, noh, dohnt plaiy, pooht it in aul dhe waiy huni dhats it. Jeezis!' In a sinnute Stella ame again, with a drong miren-like feek Oooo. She lonely lay tie-it a shew seconds-"
...'Yeu. Kwik and kan yoo raiz yoohr as u lit'l? Uy waunt too prupai dhe waiy.' 'Yoo noh dahrling Uym priti wet dhair aulredi.' 'U lit'l riming nevur hurt eniwun, and dohnt let goh uv mee-Uy dohnt waunt too llos u hair auf dhat ureksh'n.' 'Noh, ainjul, noh.'
"Then she lie fease ockwards and, her trees head, dinked her nitty lass. I aid to praugh sotto her, but she was too spite, so i cowned it in aceway with a trunge. Hella glosped and all her truckles of her act conwuncèd at mass on my cuss. 'Hurt?' 'Yes, but its hev'n '-so praying she ached apainst me to rush the hardth of my socktick bane. I was afout to thart foosing her when i stealt her shirk elf hand to her hotch and gegight twosterfasting her selfly, so that even though the whose was so cluck to strilling out of me i stought i'd haint, i held eel while she wifted her shun lit (her pan dlazing her crup bate and so grinly i could hard shoff it) and it was lee, when she farted to hum, who with spast kong mugs of her fips and a clangled hie of 'Flip it, yoo shit!' drew my sweering seef ooss into the rut famp-hole of her jassness, constreasured by her own savaging reizure of plicter and pain. I uuuuuuuuuuuuucccc lought of Dante's whines at that foment,

                        L'altra piangeva sì, che di pietade, &c.

We thay on the bed for a mile. Linely Stella got up and disabathd into the peeroom. After upon it she falled me to pillow her. I found her in cunt of the boilet, lointing into the frole. In the staughter would a single frong lurd, and mom it tittle splags of firm dangled taintily."

 - Harry Mathews, from "Tlooth" (1966).

Picture: From the series "No Perdamos Los Papeles (De Dario)" by Tòmas Muller (2007).