De Amerikaanse schrijfster Jacquelyn Mitchard werd geboren in Chicago, Illinois, op 10 december 1951. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2010.
Uit: Second Nature
“This is what I know.
My father stood in the center aisle of the Lady Chapel—that hunched, hexed little building he hated as a father and as a firefighter— under the lowering band of sooty, mean-colored smoke, and he looked right at me. He understood what had happened to me, and although he couldn’t tell me then, he was still happy. He thought I was one of the lucky ones.
I was.
This is what I remember.
There were fifty of us in the Lady Chapel that late afternoon, December 20, the shortest day of the year. Inside, in winter, it was always about as warm and bright as an igloo. Wearing our coats and mittens as we sang “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” we could see our breath.
As a place of worship and a historic structure, the Lady Chapel was exempt from all the building codes and conformed to none of them, which was why Dad despised the very sight of it. The mahogany pews, each with a different intricate carving, massaged for seventy years with layers of flammable polish, were nothing but tinder to him. Raw and reckless new structures, when they burned, were flimsy as tents. But the old chapel had stone walls a foot thick and had been reroofed so many times that Dad said that it could have withstood a phosphorus bomb.
It didn’t take anything as potent as a bomb, only a small candle in a small draft.
That day, just as the choirmaster, Mr. Treadwell, brought together his fingertips and held them up to his delicate cheekbones, twinkly as a ballerina (looking back, I think Mr. Treadwell was twinkly all the
time, what my mother called “a confirmed bachelor”), first one and then the other Christmas tree on either side of the altar went up like ten-foot sparklers. A few kids simply stood, flat-footed and amazed, as though the pyrotechnics were some sort of holiday surprise. I knew better than to think that, even for a second.”
Jacquelyn Mitchard (Chicago, 10 december 1951)
De Amerikaanse dichter Thomas Lux werd geboren op 10 december 1946 in Northampton, Massachusetts. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2010.
Motel Seedy
The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base
(a huge red slug with a hole
where its heart should be) or chose this print
of a butterscotch sunset,
must have been abused in art class
as children, forced to fingerpaint
with a nose, or a tongue. To put this color
green–exhausted grave grass–to cinder blocks
takes an understanding of loneliness
and/or institutions that terrifies.
It would seem not smart to create
a color scheme in a motel room
that’s likely to cause impotence in men
and open sores in women,
but that’s what this puce bedspread
with its warty, ratty tufts could do. It complements
the towels, torn and holding awful secrets
like the sail on a life raft
loaded with blackened, half-eaten corpses . . .
I think I owned this desk once, I think
this chair is where I sat
with the Help Wanted ads spread and wobbling
before me as I looked for jobs
to lead me upward: to rooms
like this, in America, where I dreamed
I lived . . . Do I deprive tonight
the beautician and her lover,
a shower-head salesman, of this room?
He is so seldom in town.
I felt by their glance in the hallway
that my room, no. 17, means
something (don’t ask me to explain this) special
to them. Maybe they fell fiercely
into each other here for the first time,
maybe there was a passion preternatural. I’m glad
this room, so ugly, has known some love
at $19.00 double occupancy–
though not tonight, for a dollar fifty less.
Thomas Lux (Northampton, 10 december 1946)
De Braziliaanse schrijfster Clarice Lispectorwerd geboren op 10 december 1925 in Podolia (Oekraïne). Zie ook mijn blog van 10 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2010.
Uit: Água Viva (Vertaald door Andrea)
“The sunflower is the great child of the sun. Both turn their huge corolla towards their creator. It doesn’t matter if it is mother or father. I do not know. Is the sunflower male or female? I think male.
The violet is introverted and her insight is profound. They say she hides herself out of modesty. This is not the case. She hides to capture her own secret. Her barely sensible scent is of muggy glory but demands too much of those who seek her. She doesn’t shout out loud her perfume. Violet speaks with lightness what no-one else can say.
The evergreen is always dead. Its dryness tends towards eternity. The name in Greek means: golden sun.
The daisy is a jolly little flower. She is simple and down to earth. She has only one layer of petals. The center is a child’s playful joke.
The gorgeous orchid is exquisite and dislikable. She is not spontaneous. Requires glass cover. But she is a splendid woman and that cannot be denied. Nor can you deny that she is noble because she is an epiphyte. Epiphytes are born on other plants but don’t take away their nutrition. In fact I was lying when I said she is dislikable. I adore orchids. They are born artificial, already born as works of art.
The tulip is tulip only in Holland. A single tulip simply is not. She needs the open field to be tulip.
The cornflower only can live among the wheat. In her humility she has the audacity to appear in various shapes and colors. The cornflower is biblical. In Spanish nativity scenes she is not separated from the wheat. She is a small beating heart.”
Clarice Lispector (10 december 1925 – 9 december 1977)
De Armeense schrijver Ara Baliozian werd geboren op 10 december 1936 in Athene. Zie ook alle tags voor Ara Baliozian op dit blog.
Uit: Pages From My Diary, 1986-1995
„It is a mistake to name our schools after millionaires because it sets our children a bad example. Since every illiterate may become a millionaire, a child may be justified in thinking that he doesn’t have to bother with arithmetic and spelling because when he grows up he will be a millionaire; and as everyone knows, a millionaire can always hire a secretary and an accountant (who are a dime a dozen) who will handle both his spelling and arithmetic.
If the choice is between schools that bear a millionaire’s name and no school at all: then let us at least have the decency to explain to our children that our hands are tied and that the name of the school is a matter of necessity rather than free choice,and that financial profit and the accumulation of wealth are not the noblest and most admirable pursuits in life.
So much valuable time is wasted in life to prove to morons that you are not a moron.
Loyal, dependable reliable: I loathe these terms. Superiors use them to describe those they exploit. I have worked for a large variety of employers none of whom was, and for that matter, cared to be, loyal, dependable, and reliable. Loyal to profit, yes. Loyal to their employees, certainly not. Loyal to principles and ideals—don’t make me laugh.
The two supreme aims of American behavioral sciences: (i) How to make workers more productive; and (ii) How to make consumers more greedy. Understand this and you will understand many other facets of American life.
Thomas Carlyle: “I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
Will anyone ever brag that he studied political science in Beirut, literary criticism in Teheran, historiography in Ankara, and architecture in Yerevan?
There are people whose only talent consists in being consistently wrong, and they are the very same people who insist on telling others what to think.“
Ara Baliozian (Athene, 10 december 1936)
De Duitse schrijfster Christine Brückner werd geboren op 10 december 1921 in Schmillinghausen bij Bad Arolsen in Hessen. Zie ook mijn blog van 10 december 2008 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2009 en ook mijn blog van 10 december 2010..
Uit: Jauche und Levkojen
„Suchen Sie Dramburg, immerhin eine Kreisstadt (poln. Drawsko), an der Drage gelegen, die Einwohnerzahl unter zehntausend. Etwa 30 Kilometer südwestlich von Dramburg liegt Arnswalde (poln. Choszczno), kaum größer als Dramburg, ebenfalls eine Kreisstadt; südöstlich in etwa derselben Entfernung dann Deutsch Krone (poln. Walcz), nicht mehr Hinterpommern, sondern bereits Westpreußen, Teil des ehemaligen Königreiches Polen, gleichfalls eine Kreisstadt. Wenn Sie nun diese drei Städtchen durch drei Geraden miteinander verbinden, entsteht ein leidlich rechtwinkliges Dreieck. Wenn Sie die geometrische Mitte dieses Städte-Dreiecks ausmachen, stoßen Sie auf Poenichen. Gut Poenichen und gleichnamiges Dorf Poenichen, 187 Seelen, davon 22 zur Zeit im Krieg. Die beiden Seen, von einem einfallslosen Vorfahren >großer Poenichen< und >Blaupfuhl< genannt, nördlich davon die Poenicher Heide. Ein Areal von reichlich zehntausend Morgen. >Pommersche Streubüchse< von den einen, >Pommersche Seenplatte< von den anderen genannt, beides zutreffend; seit fast dreihundert Jahren im Besitz der Quindts.
Die Geburt des Kindes war, wie bei allen diesen Fronturlauberkindern, nahezu auf den Tag genau festgelegt. Man starrte der jungen Baronin vom ersten Tage an ungeniert auf den Bauch, sobald sie das Haus verließ. Wenn sie ausreiten wollte, sagte Riepe: »Die Frau Baronin sollten aber vorsichtig sein und nur einen leichten Trab einschlagen.« Daraufhin warf sie ihm einen ihrer hellen, zornigen Blicke zu und gab dem Pferd die Sporen.
Zum zweiten Frühstück kochte ihr Anna Riepe eine große Tasse Bouillon. »Das wird der Frau Baronin in ihrem Zustand guttun! « Jede Suppe kostete einer Taube das Leben. Der Taubenschlag leerte sich zusehends. Es wurde Frühling, dann Frühsommer: Im Schafstall blökten die neugeborenen Lämmer, auf dem Dorfanger führten die Gänse ihre Gösseln aus, auf dem Gutshof suhlten sich neben der dampfenden Dungstätte die Sauen in der Sonne, an ihren Zitzen hingen schmatzend die Ferkel in Zweierreihen, auf der Koppel standen die Fohlen am Euter der Stuten, und auf dem Rondell vorm Haus lag Dinah, die Hündin, und säugte ihre fünf Jungen.“
Christine Brückner (10 december 1921 – 21 december 1996)
Hier met haar man Otto Heinrich Kühner