De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op  21 september 1934 te Montréal.

 

Waiting for Marianne

 

I have lost a telephone

with your smell in it

 

I am living beside the radio

all the stations at once

but I pick out a Polish lullaby

I pick it out of the static

it fades I wait I keep the beat

it comes back almost asleep

 

Did you take the telephone

knowing I’d sniff it immoderately

maybe heat up the plastic

to get all the crumbs of your breath

 

and if you won’t come back

how will you phone to say

you won’t come back

so that I could at least argue.

 

 

Poem

 

I heard of a man

who says words so beautifully

that if he only speaks their name

women give themselves to him.

 

If I am dumb beside your body

while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips.

it is because I hear a
man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.

 

 

 

The Pro

 

from the Nashville Notebooks of 1969:

 

I leave my silence to a co-operative of poets
who have already bruised their mouths against it.

 

I leave my homesick charm to the scavengers of
spare change who work the old artistic corners.

 

I leave the shadow of my manly groin to those who
write for pay.

 

I leave to several jealous men a second-rate legend
of my life.

 

To those few high school girls
who preferred my work to Dylan’s

 

I leave my stone ear
and my disposable Franciscan ambitions.

 

 

Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)

 

De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent.

 

Uit: The Time Machine

 

“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch — into futurity.

“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then, though I was still travelling with prodigious velocity, the blinking succession of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set. It simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal drag was done.“

 

H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)

 

De Duitse dichter Johann Peter Eckermann werd geboren op 21 september 1792 in Winsen (Luhe). Hij was bovenal de medewerker en vriend van Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

 

 

Höchste Süße

 

Hochgepriesen ist des Honigs Süße,

Köstlich labt der vollen Kirsche Saft;

Traubenkühlung, wenn ich dich genieße,

Füllt sich Geist und Herz mit neuer Kraft.

Wer von Lebensängsten will gesunden,

Spüle sie hinweg mit kühlem Wein!

Bessre Labe will noch erst erfunden,

Süßere noch erst ersonnen sein.

 

Aber süßre Labe wird erfunden,

Als dir Honig, Kirsch’ und Traube nennt,

Wenn die Vielgeliebte du umwunden

Und ihr holder Mund an deinem brennt.

O des überseligen Genusses,

Der sich da von Seel’ in Seele gießt!

O du Wundersüß des ersten Kusses,

Wenn der Liebe heil’ger Bund sich schließt!

 

 

Getadelte Poeten

 

Gras, am Wege getreten,

Wird sich gleich wieder richten.

Getadelte Poeten –

Sie werden immer dichten.

 

Johann Peter Eckermann (21 september 1792 – 3 december 1854)

 

Zie voor bovenstaande drie schrijvers ook mijn blog van 21 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

 

Uit: Cell

 

„The event that came to be known as The Pulse began at 3:03 p.m., eastern standard time, on the afternoon of October 1. The term was a misnomer, of course, but within ten hours of the event, most of the scientists capable of pointing this out were either dead or insane. The name hardly mattered, in any case. What mattered was the effect.

At three o’clock on that day, a young man of no particular importance to history came walking — almost bouncing — east along Boylston Street in Boston. His name was Clayton Riddell. There was an expression of undoubted contentment on his face to go along with the spring in his step. From his left hand there swung the handles of an artist’s portfolio, the kind that closes and latches to make a traveling case. Twined around the fingers of his right hand was the drawstring of a brown plastic shopping bag with the words small treasures printed on it for anyone who cared to read them.

Inside the bag, swinging back and forth, was a small round object. A present, you might have guessed, and you would have been right. You might further have guessed that this Clayton Riddell was a young man seeking to commemorate some small (or perhaps even not so small) victory with a small treasure, and you would have been right again. The item inside the bag was a rather expensive glass paperweight with a gray haze of dandelion fluff caught in its center. He had bought it on his walk back from the Copley Square Hotel to the much humbler Atlantic Avenue Inn where he was staying, frightened by the ninety-dollar pricetag on the paperweight’s base, somehow even more frightened by the realization that he could now afford such a thing.

Handing his credit card over to the clerk had taken almost physical courage. He doubted if he could have done it if the paperweight had been for himself; he would have muttered something about having changed his mind and scuttled out of the shop. But it was for Sharon. Sharon liked such things, and she still liked him — I’m pulling for you, baby, she’d said the day before he left for Boston. Considering the s— they’d put each other through over the last year, that had touched him. Now he wanted to touch her, if that was still possible. The paperweight was a small thing (a small treasure), but he was sure she’d love that delicate gray haze deep down in the middle of the glass, like a pocket fog“.

 

Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)

 

De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2008.

 

Uit: Un roman français

 

“Je ne me souviens pas de mon enfance. Quand je le dis, personne ne me croit. Tout le monde se souvient de son passé; à quoi bon vivre si la vie est oubliée? En moi rien ne reste de moi-même; de zéro à quinze ans je suis face à un trou noir (au sens astrophysique: «Objet massif dont le champ gravitationnel est si intense qu’il empêche toute forme de matière ou de rayonnement de s’en échapper»). Longtemps j’ai cru que j’étais normal, que les autres étaient frappés de la même amnésie. Mais si je leur demandais: «Tu te souviens de ton enfance?», ils me racontaient quantité d’histoires. J’ai honte que ma biographie soit imprimée à l’encre sympathique. Pourquoi mon enfance n’est-elle pas indélébile? Je me sens exclu du monde, car le monde a une archéologie et moi pas. J’ai effacé mes traces comme un criminel en cavale. Quand j’évoque cette infirmité, mes parents lèvent les yeux au ciel, ma famille proteste, mes amis d’enfance se vexent, d’anciennes fiancées sont tentées de produire des documents photographiques.

Je ne mens pas par omission: je fouille dans ma vie comme dans une malle vide, sans y rien trouver; je suis désert. Parfois j’entends murmurer dans mon dos: «Celui-là, je n’arrive pas à le cerner.» J’acquiesce. Comment voulezvous situer quelqu’un qui ignore d’où il vient? Comme dit Gide dans Les Faux-Monnayeurs, je suis «bâti sur pilotis: ni fondation, ni soussol». La terre se dérobe sous mes pieds, je lévite sur coussin d’air, je suis une bouteille qui flotte sur la mer, un mobile de Calder. Pour plaire, j’ai renoncé à avoir une colonne vertébrale, j’ai voulu me fondre dans le décor tel Zelig, l’homme-caméléon. Oublier sa personnalité, perdre la mémoire pour être aimé: devenir, pour séduire, celui que les autres choisissent. Ce désordre de la personnalité, en langage psychiatrique, est nommé «déficit de conscience centrée».

 

Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)

 

 

De Vlaamse dichter Xavier Roelens werd op 21 september 1976 in Rekkem (Menen). Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2009.

 

 

een autochtone trein naar A

de ogen van een andere man zijn bijna dicht
er zit een weerlicht op zijn wenkbrauw
en rookt een zelfgedraaide sigaret.
een andere man scheurt bladen uit de bijbel, leest
een kopie van een kopie met een eenbenige bril
zijn hoofd is bijna kaal hij kijkt geen moment
naar medemensen.
een andere man roept minuten af.

een andere vrouw is de andere vrouw
en is voor haar de kous af.
een andere man schijt en plast
is daartussen één geworden.

 

Xavier Roelens (Rekkem, 21 september 1976)

De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zij schreef talrijke boeken, waarvan het bekendste Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is, dat in 1991 verfilmd werd met o.a. Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates en Mary-Louise Parker.Als actrice trad zij op in enkele films en spelshows.

 

Uit: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

 

Cafe Opens

 

The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since. Idgie says that for people who know her not to worry about getting poisoned, she is not cooking. All the cooking is being done by two colored women, Sipsey and Onzell, and the barbecue is being cooked by Big George, who is Onzell’s husband.

If there is anybody that has not been there yet, Idgie says that the breakfast hours are from 5:30-7:30, and you can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee for 25 [cts.].

For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings; or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink and dessert–for 35 [cts.].

She said the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.

And pie for dessert.

My other half, Wilbur, and I ate there the other night, and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at home again. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true. I spend all my time cooking for the big lug, and still can’t keep him filled up.

By the way, Idgie says that one of her hens laid an egg with a ten-dollar bill in it.

… Dot Weems …

 

Fannie Flag (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)