Tag: Andreas Neumeister

James Alan McPherson, Hans Arp, Andreas Neumeister, Anna Bosboom – Toussaint, Frans Eemil Sillanpää

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Alan McPherson werd geboren op 16 september 1943 in Savannah, Georgia. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor James Alan McPherson op dit blog.

Uit:A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile

“I recall that in 1960, for example, something called the National Defense Student Loan Program went into effect, and I found out that by my agreeing to repay a loan plus some little interest, the federal government would back my enrollment in a small Negro college in Georgia. When I was a freshman at that college, disagreement over a seniority clause between the Hotel & Restaurant Employes and Bartenders Union and the Great Northern Railway Co., in St. Paul, Minn., caused management to begin recruiting temporary summer help. Before I was 19 I was encouraged to move from a segregated Negro college in the South and through that very beautiful part of the country that lies between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. That year — 1962 — the World’s Fair was in Seattle, and it was a magnificently diverse panorama for a young man to see. Almost every nation on earth was represented in some way, and at the center of the fair was the Space Needle. The theme of the United States exhibit, as I recall, was drawn from Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”: “Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways.”
When I returned to the South, in the midst of all the civil rights activity, I saw a poster advertising a creativewriting contest sponsored by Reader’s Digest and the United Negro College Fund. The first story I wrote was lost; but the second, written in 1965, was awarded first prize by Edward Weeks and his staff at The Atlantic Monthly. That same year I was offered the opportunity to enter Harvard Law School. During my second year at law school, a third-year man named Dave Marston (who was in a contest with Attorney General Griffin Bell [last] year) offered me, through a very conservative white fellow student from Texas, the opportunity to take over his old job as a janitor in one of the apartment buildings in Cambridge. There I had the solitude, and the encouragement, to begin writing seriously. Offering my services in that building was probably the best contract I ever made.
I HAVE NOT recalled all the above to sing my own praises or to evoke the black American version of the Horatio Alger myth. I have recited these facts as a way of indicating the haphazard nature of events during that 10-year period. I am the product of a contractual process. To put it simply, the 1960s were a crazy time. Opportunities seemed to materialize out of thin air; and if you were lucky, if you were in the right place at the right time, certain contractual benefits just naturally accrued. You were assured of a certain status; you could become a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, an accountant, an engineer. Achieving these things was easy, if you applied yourself.”

 

 
James Alan McPherson (Savannah, 16 september 1943)

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Justin Haythe, Andreas Neumeister, Anna Bosboom – Toussaint, Frans Eemil Sillanpää

De Amerikaanse schrijver Justin Haythe werd geboren op 16 september 1973 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2010.

 

Uit: The Honeymoon

„After lunch we waited at the table for him to finish packing. We could hear him banging closets and drawers until he reappeared wearing a hat. We followed him into the hallway and waited for the elevator. He stood amongst his luggage; my mother and I amongst ours. ‘Be careful of the Arab children in the park,’ he told me. He turned to Maureen. ‘Petits voleurs,’ he explained. She smiled although she did not understand. She would look it up as soon as he had gone. He picked up his cases and stepped into the elevator. She blew him a kiss. ‘Bon voyage!’ she called.

When he was gone, the reflection of Maureen and me looked back from the mirrored elevator doors. I wore a white canvas hat and a pair of favourite copper corduroys. Maureen had yet to remove her pink silk jacket.

‘Don’t listen to him,’ she said. ‘He’s trying to impress you.

Only men need to impress children. You don’t need to be any more careful with one person than another.’

She began her inspection of the apartment the way she entered a gallery: as if she had money to spend. She passed from room to room with increasing excitement. When she found one more impressive than another, she called out for me to come and have a look. There was a pink study with a fireplace and a pair of French doors looking out onto the street; a small toilet off the hallway containing a gold-painted sink; and the kitchen with three Thai-wicker umbrellas bound to form a single lampshade. She could not stand still and almost as soon as I entered a room, she left it. She was like a child receiving a gift long obsessed over – slightly panicked by a world in which dreams are realized.

Marcel had inherited his money. The apartment was large for a bachelor living alone, with both a guest room and maid’s quarters. It was substantially larger than our place in New York, and had a view of the park across the street and, in the evenings, of the patches of setting sun reflected from the windows onto the tops of the trees. Marcel directed documentary films, usually about the Amazon. Several years later, Maureen took me to see one when it was playing in New York.“

 


Justin Haythe (Londen, 16 september 1973)

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Breyten Breytenbach, James Alan McPherson Michael Nava, Hans Arp, Andreas Neumeister, Anna Bosboom – Toussaint, Justin Haythe, Frans Eemil Sillanpää

De Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijver en dichter Breyten Breytenbach werd geboren op 16 september 1936 in Bonnievale. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2006 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

Uit: Intimate Stranger

“Poetry is the breath of awareness

However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves in the dense forest of Eternity.” This was written by the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, the man said softly as he stroked the silver fur of the animal crouched in his arms. The animal pricked up its ears, then strained to look back at the dark copse of trees where shadows moved as if alive. As if alive and waiting to move out into the open.

Listen, this process called poetry is an exercise in imagining memory, and then having that memory snare and cherish imagination. Yet, every poem is and will be a capsule of territory in the perpetual present tense, a vessel taking on the ever-changing colors of the sea.

Poetry is the breath of awareness and the breathing thereof. I even mean this literally, for underlying the flow and the fall of verses are ‘natural units’ of consciousness sculpted by rhythm, by recall, by movement reaching for the edges of meaning and of darkness. One could illustrate by averring that the poem is a membrane, rippling, thrumming; reminding us that we are breathing organisms continually translating the space around us, continually translating ourselves into spaces of the known and thus drawing circumferences around locations of the unknown. From this one could extrapolate that the practice and process of remembering /evoking /awakening events and our selves lead quite naturally to questioning the polarities of other and I, to writing (and un-writing) the self, and toward rewriting the world. The boat changes the water.

Poetry is also the wind of time and thus the movement and singing of being. An old poet friend of mine – now coming to the end of his life and cold to dying, the earth lurching under his unsteady tread as he hides his eyes behind tinted glasses to soften the glaring (maybe the gloating) look of Dog Death sniffing closer – told me the other day that whatever memory and understanding he has of himself, of the route and the roads traveled, of seas navigated, of big H history, he knows through the resonance of a clutch of poems.”

breytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach (Bonnievale, 16 september 1936)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Alan McPherson werd geboren op 16 september 1943 in Savannah, Georgia. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

Uit: A Loaf of Bread

“It was one of those obscene situations, pedestrian to most people, but invested with meaning for a few poor folk whose lives are usually spent outside the imaginations of their fellow citizens. A grocer named Harold Green was caught red-handed selling to one group of people the very same goods he sold at lower prices at similar outlets in better neighborhoods. He had been doing this for many years, and at first he could not understand the outrage heaped upon him. He acted only from habit, he insisted, and had nothing personal against the people whom he served. They were his neighbors. Many of them he had carried on the cuff during hard times. Yet, through some mysterious access to a television station, the poor folk were now empowered to make grand denunciations of the grocer. Green’s children now saw their father’s business being picketed on the Monday evening news.

No one could question the fact that the grocer had been overcharging the people. On the news even the reporter grimaced distastefully while reading the statistics. His expression said, “It is my job to report the news, but sometimes even I must disassociate myself from it to protect my honor.” This, at least, was the impression the grocer’s children seemed to bring away from the television. Their father’s name had not been mentioned, but there was a close-up of his store with angry black people, and a few outraged whites, marching in groups of three in front of it. There was also a close-up of his name. After seeing this, they were in no mood to watch cartoons. At the dinner table, disturbed by his children’s silence, Harold Green felt compelled to say, “I am not a dishonest man.” Then he felt ashamed. The children, a boy and his older sister, immediately left the table, leaving Green alone with his wife. “Ruth, I am not dishonest,” he repeated to her.

Ruth Green did not say anything. She knew, and her husband did not, that the outraged people had also picketed the school attended by their children. They had threatened to return each day until Green lowered his prices. When they called her at home to report this, she had promised she would talk with him. Since she could not tell him this, she waited for an opening. She looked at her husband across the table.”

mcpherson

James Alan McPherson (Savannah, 16 september 1943)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Michael Nava werd geboren op 16 september 1954 in Stockton, Calefornië. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

Uit: How Town

“The road to my sister’s house snaked through the hills above Oakland, revealing at each curve a brief view of the bay in the glitter of the summer morning. Along the road, houses stood on small woodsy lots. The houses were rather woodsy themselves, of the post and beam school, more like natural outcroppings than structures. Wild roses dimpled the hillsides, small, blowsy flowers stirring faintly in the trail wind of my car. Otherwise, there was no movement. The sky was cloudless, the weather calm and the road ahead of me clear.

Earlier, coming off the Bay bridge I’d taken a wrong turn and found myself in a neighborhood of small pastel houses. Grafitti-gashed walls and a preternatural calm marked it as gang turf. The papers had been full of gang killings that month. When I drove past, a child walking by herself flinched, ready to take cover. None of that was visible from these heights.

This was like living in a garden, I thought, and other associations came to mind: Eden, paradise, a line from “Sunday Morning” that I murmured aloud: “Is there no change in paradise?” I couldn’t remember the rest. Elena would know. And she would appreciate the irony. She and I had grown up in a neighborhood called Paradise Slough in a town called Los Robles about an hour’s drive from here.

There had been little about our childhood that could be described as paradisiacal. Our alcoholic father was either brutal or sullenly withdrawn. Our mother retaliated with religious fanaticism. As she knelt before plaster images of saints, in the flicker of votive candles, her furious mutter was more like invective than prayer. Their manias kept my parents quite busy, and Elena and I were more or less left to raise ourselves.”

nava

Michael Nava (Stockton, 16 september 1954)

 

De Frans-Zwitserse kunstenaar, dichter en schrijver Hans (Jean) Arp werd geboren op 16 september 1886 in Straatsburg. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2006. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

kaspar ist tot

weh unser guter kaspar ist tot
wer trägt nun die brennende fahne im wolkenzopf verborgen täglich zum schwarzen schnippchen schlagen
wer dreht nun die kaffeemühle im urfass
wer lockt nun das idyllische reh aus der versteinerten tüte
wer verwirrt nun auf dem meere die schiffe mit der anrede parapluie und die winde mit dem zuruf bienenvater ozonspindel euer hochwohlgeboren
weh weh weh unser guter kaspar ist tot. heiliger bimbam kaspar ist tot.
die heufische klappern herzzerreissend vor leid in den glockenscheunen wenn man seinen vornamen ausspricht. darum seufze ich weiter seinen familiennamen kaspar kaspar kaspar.
warum hast du uns verlassen. in welche gestalt ist nun deine schöne grosse seele gewandert. bis du ein stern geworden oder eine kette aus wasser an einem heissen wirbelwind oder ein euter aus schwarzem licht oder ein durchsichtiger ziegel an der stöhnenden trommel des felsigen wesens.
jetzt vertrocknen unsere scheitel und sohlen und die feen liegen halbverkohlt auf dem scheiterhaufen.
jetzt donnert hinter der sonne die schwarze kegelbahn und keiner zieht mehr die kompasse und die räder der schiebkarren auf.
wer isst nun mit der phosphoreszierenden ratte am einsamen barfüssigen tisch.
wer verjagt nun den sirokkoko teufel wenn er die pferde verführen will.
wer erklärt uns die monogramme in den sternen
seine büste wird die kamine aller wahrhaft edlen menschen zieren doch das ist kein trost und schnupftabak für einen totenkopf.

arp

Hans Arp (16 september 1886 – 7 juni 1966)

 

De Duitse schrijver Andreas Neumeister werd geboren op 16 september 1959 in Starnberg. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

Uit: Könnte Köln sein

„Wenn alle Wege nach Rom führen, dann müssten erst recht auch sämtliche Autobahnen nach Rom führen.

Immerhin zwei der fünf vom am nördlichen Fuß der Alpen gelegenen Basislager in fünf Windrichtungen strebenden Autobahnen führen letztendlich über Brenner und Alpen auf direktem Weg nach Rom Von verschiedenen Moränenhügeln aus den Bau der Garmischer Autobahn mitverfolgt. Bei Exkursionen zu Baustellen immer gerne mit dabei. Operation am offenen Herzen einer bewegten Landschaft. Baustelle mit Alpenblick: Immerhin ist Vater Ingenieur beim Bau der Autobahnbrücke über Loisach und Loisach-Moos gewesen.

Immerhin ist die Ohlstätter Brücke Vaters Lieblingsbaustelle gewesen. (Spannbeton – es kommt darauf an, was man daraus macht.) Karin-Stoiber-Tunnel bei Farchant. Einschlägige Bauten, Olympiade 1936. Garmisch bleibt rechts liegen. Garmisch kann uns gestohlen bleiben. Mittenwald wird aufgeständert umgangen. Kasernen im Heimatschutzstil, Jäger, Gebirgsjäger alles aus der Guten Alten Zeit Großkampfstätten des Wintersports: a.) Garmisch b.) Innsbruck. Die Isar als Wildbach verschwindet unter einer Brücke nach rechts. Seefeld schon auf der Höhe vom Brenner. Der Zirlerberg führt hinunter in den Abgrund.

Vom Seefelder Sattel hinunter nach Innsbruck am Inn. Energieverschwendung. Eine Stadt, die ich als Kind gerne verfluchte. Das Goldene Dachl. Städte in tief eingeschnittenen Tälern gehören verboten. Zum Wohl und Schutz ihrer Bewohner. Die Stadt, ein Flughafen zwischen Inntalautobahn und Brennerautobahnzubringer gequetscht. Die neue Hungerburgbahn: irakische Architektin!“

neimeister

Andreas Neumeister (Starnberg, 16 september 1959)

 

De Nederlandse schrijfster Anna Bosboom – Toussaint werd geboren op 16 september 1912 te Alkmaar. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2006. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2009.

Uit: De Alkmaarsche wees

“Met eene gewaarwording van vroolijke voldoening, doch door weemoed getemperd, zet ik dien titel boven hetgeen ik ga nederschrijven. Voldoening, omdat ik spreken mag van dien eerbiedwaardigen karaktertrek onzer vaderen: zorge en liefde voor het verlatene; trouwe en teêrheid voor het weeskind. Weemoed, omdat de instelling, die ook in onze stad van dien karaktertrek getuigde in mijn tijd heeft opgehouden te bestaan, voor onze Protestantsche weezen; omdat ik niet zonder een blik van benijding en van bewondering, die ik gaarne wil uitspreken, mijne Katholieke stadgenooten uit eigen fondsen en ten koste van welke offers dan ook, zich dat voorrecht zie verzekeren, waarop het menschelijk hart en het vaderlandsch gevoel grooteren prijs hadden behooren te stellen dan zij getoond hebben te doen, die zulke offers te groot hebben geacht. Hunne redenen te wegen of te doorgronden is noodeloos en hier niet oorbaar; maar de klachte, die mij op ’t harte lag, moest ik lucht geven: Geen Gereformeerd weeshuis meer in dàt Alkmaar, dat zich toch niet de mindere toont, als er beroep wordt gedaan op hare goeddadigheid, en dat eene der bloeiendste wordt geacht onder de zeven Westfriesche steden! Dat was het reeds in 1611, als men Schagen en anderen gelooven mag, en …. wat voor ons zijne belangrijkheid heeft, toen bestond er een weeshuis.

Het was Zondag: er is iets eigenaardig aandoenlijks in, op zulken heiligen dag des Heeren, de weezen te zien opgaan naar het huis van Hem, die het gezegd heeft, dat Hij hun Vader wil zijn; er is iets liefelijks in hen te zien komen en gaan in lange statige rij, allen ordelijk en stemmig voortgaande, twee

aan twee, de kleinsten vooruit, soms nog wel aan de hand geleid, de grooteren volgende, de plaatsvervangende vader en moeder met de leermeesteressen den trein sluitende: het geeft u zoo goed een denkbeeld van de stilheid, de aandacht en orde, die de vrome godsdienstige zin met zich brengt.”

bosboom

Anna Bosboom – Toussaint (16 september 1812 – 13 april 1886)
Borstbeeld in Alkmaar

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Justin Haythe werd geboren op 16 september 1973 in Londen. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008.

Uit: The Honeymoon

 „She had met Marcel somewhere else, in another European city I was too young to remember. That’s what he told me when we met. We stood in the front hallway of his apartment and shook hands. ‘We’ve met before,’ he said. ‘You were small.’ He kissed Maureen on both cheeks and then held her by the shoulders. He said, ‘Look at you.’ She stepped back out of his grasp so that we could look at her. ‘You have a beautiful mother,’ he told me.

This was June of 1980. I was eleven years old and he was leaving for the summer. I have often wondered if he and my mother were sleeping together. He was twenty years older than she was, heavy-set, with a thick moustache. On the train into Paris, Maureen had assured me that Marcel was, in some ways, a great man. But I cannot help remembering his hands on her body, on her clothes where he could feel what she wore underneath.

He showed us to our rooms. He put Maureen in the large bedroom where he slept, where the bed was still unmade, and showed me into the guest room that had once belonged to his daughter, Claudia. There was a single bed, a hand-painted child’s desk and dark carpet. He showed Maureen the priceless artefacts on the shelves that could not be replaced if broken and the wine in the cupboard that had survived both wars and was too precious to be drunk.

Maureen and I sat opposite Marcel at lunch. He gripped the bottle of white wine by the neck, and plunged it back into the ice bucket when the glasses were full. Without turning his head, he gestured out towards the street behind him and said the best shopping in Paris was just a few streets away.

‘I have no interest in shopping,’ she told him. ‘And besides, I can’t afford it, as you well know.’ He laughed as if she had said exactly what he had expected her to say.“

 haythe

 Justin Haythe (Londen, 16 september 1973)

 

De Finse schrijver en Nobelprijswinnaar Frans Eemil Sillanpää werd geboren in Hämeenkyrö op 16 september 1888. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2006.

Uit: People in the Summer Night (Vertaald door Alan Blair)

“There is almost no summer night in the north; only a lingering evening, darkening slightly as it lingers, but even this darkening has its ineffable clarity. It is the approaching presentiment of the summer morning. When the music of late evening has sunk to a violet, dusky pianissimo, so delicate that it lenghtens into a brief rest, then the first violin awakens with a soft, high cadence in which the cello soon joins, and this inwardly perceived tone picture is supported outwardly by a thousand-tongued accompaniment twittering from a myriad of branches and from the heights of the air. It is already morning, yet a moment ago it was still evening.”

Sillanpää

Frans Eemil Sillanpää (16 september 1888 – 3 juni 1964)

 

Breyten Breytenbach, Alfred Schaffer, Michael Nava, Andreas Neumeister, James Alan McPherson, Frans Kusters

De Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijver en dichter Breyten Breytenbach werd geboren op 16 september 1936 in Bonnievale. Zie ook mijn blog van 16 september 2006 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2007 en ook mijn blog van 16 september 2008.

Report

I saw couples kissing in doorways

turning around with open mouths I walked

across bridges and heard people cough below

I saw grayheads riding in taxis

look through rain-thick windows at buildings

no longer there. snow in winter

and grapes in the summer but I

don’t remember much about it

 

I saw the midnight sun

and birds of all sizes and fish

in the water and the southern cross above a peak

and cats wearing boots and drunken women

and bare trees with blossoms.

snow in the winter

and grapes in summer but

I don’t remember much about it

 

I too heard roosters crow

and the call of trains and voices

in my bed and gods on the roof and I saw

dragons in zoos and the beards

of friends and smelled the sun.

snow in winter and grapes in summer

but I don’t remember much about it

death sets in at the feet

 

One should simply doze off

yet they say for 48 hours consciousness will

still beat at the steamed-up windows of the skull

      like a fish in a basket

      or an astronaut in his spacetub beyond control

      or a Jew under a pyramid of Jews

      or a nigger(lover) in a cell

with a prickling of pins that begins in the soles.

 

Could it be thus?

The giddiness as the floor tilts

and a membrane of water draws over trees

and a zealous hand embraces the throat more tightly?

And what a farce, this fumbling for pictures.

 

Last week’s chrysanthemums are already rotten

on their stems, the green veins perished rubber tubes,

they who were yakking parrots

are now drooping withered wings.

 

Yesterday’s white carnations stink like slumped old women.

Yesterday’s red roses have a deeper bloom

as smothered fists.

 

People usually die flat on their backs,

feet coldly erect as petrified rabbits

or blossoms on a branch,

with a prickling of pins that begins in the soles.

 

My feet are recalcitrant: I must cajole them,

swaddled in rags, because I’m not yet done,

must still learn how to die,

I must still decide how to make up my mind.

 

For now I gaze through a mirror into a riddle,

but tomorrow it will be from face to face.

 

 

BreytenBreytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach (Bonnievale, 16 september 1936)

 

 

 

De Nederlandse dichter Alfred Schaffer werd geboren in Leidschendam op 16 september 1973. Hij is de zoon van een Arubaanse moeder en een Nederlandse vader. Schaffer debuteerde in 2000 met de dichtbundel Zijn opkomst in de voorstad. In 2004 verscheen zijn vierde dichtbundel. Hij werkte regelmatig samen met de Zuid-Afrikaanse schrijfster Antjie Krog en was na zijn promotie als Fellow aan de Universiteit van Kaapstad verbonden. Schaffer, zoon van een Limburgse vader en Arubaanse moeder, woonde vanaf 1996 een tijd in in Zuid Afrika. Zijn boeken verschijnen bij de Bezige Bij, waar hij als werkzaam is als redacteur. Schaffer is tevens redacteur van het tijdschrift Bunker Hill.

 

Slotzinnen genoeg zou je zeggen

 

Nu wordt het ingewikkeld, struikel niet over de rommel. ‘Kijk eens,
ook hier hebben mensen gewoond.’ Een dagreis van vandaag blijft alles
bij het oude: de penetrante lucht van enkelvoud, het straatleven o zo
geloofwaardig, de natuurramp die aan alle twijfel een einde zal maken.

Met de schrik vrij heet dat dan, eind goed al goed, de uitgestrektheid
is het ritselen dat ons omgeeft. Dat wordt flink dringen geblazen.
‘Jij hier?’ ‘Jij hier?’ Resteert de vraag wie van ons beginnen mag, hand
op het hart. Groot verdriet. Wie weet wat we straks zullen zeggen.

Weer dwalen we af, het is net echt. Je moest er nodig eens tussenuit,
je ziet de laatste tijd de gekste dingen – je zou bijvoorbeeld kunnen liften,
zet je schrap. Lekker weg in eigen land. Wacht, ik loop even met je mee,
ik moet toch die kant uit. Er zit een vlekje op je bloes. Nee, iets hoger.

 

 

Schaffer

Alfred Schaffer (Leidschendam, 16 september 1973)

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver Michael Nava werd geboren op 16 september 1954 in Stockton, Calefornië, en groeide op in Sacramento. In 1981 voltooide hij zijn studie rechten aan de Stanford universiteit, waar hij een jaar eerder zijn partner Bill Weinberger had leren kennen. Zij runden samen een advocatenpraktijk, eerst in Palo Alto, vanaf 1984 in Los Angeles. In 1986 verscheen de eerste roman The little death. Na zeven delen was de romancyclus over de homosexuele advocaat Henry Rios in 2001 afgesloten. Nava praktizeert sinds 1995 in San Francisco en is ook actief in de homobeweging.

 

Uit: Rag And Bone

 

I wasn’t usually so dyspeptic this early in the day, but I had the world’s worst heartburn, undoubtedly the result of a breakfast that had consisted of four cups of coffee, a bagel that was half-burned and half-frozen-I really needed a new toaster-and a handful of vitamins. The bitter aftertaste of the pills lingered at the back of my throat. Also, now that I noticed it, my right arm was throbbing. Great. When I was a teenager, I’d suffered through growing pains; at forty-nine, I was suffering through growing-old pains.

The young deputy A.G. beside me pored over his notes and muttered to himself, as if he were about to argue before the United States Supreme Court rather than a three-judge panel-two white-haired white men, one graying black lady-of the intermediate state appellate court. His knee knocked nervously against mine and I glanced at him. He was a handsome boy with that luminous skin of the young, as if a lantern were burning just beneath the flesh.

“‘Scuse me,” he murmured without looking up.

“Your first appearance?” I asked.

Now he looked. His eyes were like cornflowers. “Is it that obvious?”

“Don’t be too anxious,” I said. “They’ve already written the opinion in your case.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I said. “Oral argument’s mostly for show. It’s hardly worth bothering to show up.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m a criminal defense lawyer,” I said. “Tilting at windmills is my specialty.”

He smiled civilly, then returned to his notes.

“We will hear People versus Guerra,” the presiding justice said.

I pulled myself out of the chair and made my way to counsel table. The young A.G. beside me also stood up.

“You’re Mr. Rios?” he said as we headed to counsel table.

“None other,” I replied.

He held open the gate that separated the gallery from the well of the court where counsel tables were located, and said, “Great brief. I had to pull an all-nighter to finish my reply.”

I remembered his brief had had the whiff of midnight oil. “Thanks. You did a good job, too.”

I set my file on my side of the table and was gripped by a wave of nausea so intense I was sure I was going to vomit, but the moment passed.

“Counsel?”

I looked up at the presiding justice, Dahlgren, who was not much older than me and quite possibly a year or two younger.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

“Your appearance, please.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I grunted. “Henry Rios for defendant and appellant Anthony Guerra.”

“Mr. Rios,” the lady judge, Justice Harkness, spoke. “Are you all right? You went white as a ghost a second ago.”

“Heartburn, Justice Harkness. I’ll be fine with a little water.” I poured a glass from the carafe on the table. My hand was shaking.

 

nava

Michael Nava (Stockton, 16 september 1954)

 

 

De Duitse schrijver Andreas Neumeister werd geboren op 16 september 1959 in Starnberg. Hij studeerde na het gymnasium ethnologie in München. Neumaster staat in de traditie van de popliteratuur. Ook rap poetry wordt in zijn collage-achtige teksten verwerkt. In zijn werk „Könnte Köln sein“ onderzoekt hij de samenhang tussen architectuur, politiek en geschiedenis. In 1993 ontving Neumeister de Förderpreis zum Alfred-Döblin-Preis en in 1996 de Bayerische Förderpreis für Literatur.

 

Uit: Könnte Köln sein

“Aus dem Wasser ans Land gekrochen. Auf dem Umweg über das Reptil zum aufrechten Gang gefunden. Im Schutz von Bäumen übernachtet. Wo es Höhlen gab, in den Schutz von Höhlen gekrochen. In den tiefsten Höhlen überwintert. Horden gebildet. Immer wieder die Kontinente gewechselt. Auf dem Umweg über Landbrücken und Pässe weites Neuland besiedelt. Vom Urknall über den Urschrei zur Urhütte gefunden. Das Feld vor der Hütte als Anlass genommen, sesshaft zu werden. Gesellschaftsvertrag. Dörfer gebaut. Fehden gefochten, Schanzen gebaut. Kriege geführt. Grenzen gezogen, Mauern errichtet. Neue Säue durch neue Dörfer getrieben. Gräben gegraben, Mauern geschliffen. Entdeckungen gemacht und Hürden übersprungen. Dabei immer wieder in den Regen geraten. Auf dem Umweg über die Geschichte immer wieder in die Geschichtslosigkeit zurückgefallen. Auf dem Umweg über Abgründe immer wieder festen Boden unter die Füße bekommen. Städte gegründet und Handel getrieben. Immer größere Ansiedlungen geplant. Staaten gegründet. Kriege geführt. Meere überwunden und aus fernen Kontinenten unerhörte Schätze mitgebracht. Sklaven verschifft und weiterverkauft. Städte befestigt und Burgen geschleift.

Neue Waffen erfunden und Kirchen geweiht. Schulen errichtet, Kasernen gebaut. Niederlagen beweint. Siege gefeiert. Immer wieder aufgerappelt und von Neuem gestrauchelt. Gold eingeschmolzen und Münzen geprägt. Dächer geflickt und Paläste angezündet. Vom Land in

die Städte geflüchtet. Fabriken hochgezogen, Produkte verkauft. Eisenbahnlinien in die Landschaft getrieben und um neue Bahnhöfe neue Siedlungen erichtet. Baumschulen gegründet, Hecken gepflanzt

 wo waren wir stehengeblieben?

Brieftauben, schreibt der weltkundige Wissenschaftsteil heute, nutzen gerne das Straßennetz zur Orientierung. Offensichtlich folgen die Tiere lieber Autobahnen oder Schienen, als sich nach ihrem angeborenen Orientierungssinn zu richten – selbst wenn es für sie einen Umweg bedeutet.”

neumeister

Andreas Neumeister (Starnberg, 16 september 1959)
Foto: Franz-Xaver Fuchs

 

 

De Amerikaanse schrijver James Alan McPherson werd geboren op 16 september 1943 in Savannah, Georgia. In 1978 won hij de Pulitzer Prize voor fictie voor zijn bundel korte verhalen Elbow Room. Zijn werk is gepubliceerd in 27 kranten en tijdschriften, in zeven bloemlezingen van short stories. McPherson studeerde aan de Morgan State University, Morris Brown College, Harvard Law School, de University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, en aan Yale Law School. Hij doceerde Engels aan de University of California, Santa Cruz, Harvard, en gaf lezingen in Japan.

 

Uit: Hue and Cry. Stories

 

“Thomas Brown stopped going to church at twelve after one Sunday morning when he had been caught playing behind the minister’s pulpit by several deacons who had come up into the room early to count the money they had collected from the other children in the Sunday school downstairs. Thomas had seen them putting some of the change in their pockets and they had seen him trying to hide behind the big worn brown pulpit with the several black Bibles and the pitcher of ice water and the glass used by the minister in the more passionate parts of his sermons. It was a Southern Baptist Church.

“Come on down off of that, little Brother Brown,” one of the fat, black-suited deacons had told him. “We see you tryin’ to hide. Ain’t no use tryin’ to hide in God’s House.”

Thomas had stood up and looked at them; all three of them, big-bellied, severe and religiously righteous. “I wasn’t tryin’ to hide,” he said in a low voice.

“Then what was you doin’ behind Reverend Stone’s pulpit?”

“I was praying,” Thomas had said coolly.

After that he did not like to go to church. Still, his mother would make him go every Sunday morning; and since he was only thirteen and very obedient, he could find no excuse not to leave the house. But after leaving with his brother Edward, he would not go all the way to church again. He would make Edward, who was a year younger, leave him at a certain corner a few blocks away from the church where Saturday-night drunks were sleeping or waiting in miseryfor the bars to open on Monday morning. His own father had been that way and Thomas knew that the waiting was very hard.
He felt good toward the men, being almost one of them, and liked to listen to them curse and threaten each other lazily in the hot Georgia sun. He liked to look into their faces and wonder what was in their minds that made them not care about anything except the bars opening on Monday morning. He liked to try to distinguish the different shades of black in their hands and arms and faces. And he liked the smell of them. But most of all he liked it when they talked to him and gave him an excuse for not walking down the street two blocks to the Baptist Church.”

 

McPherson

James Alan McPherson (Savannah,16 september 1943)

 

De Nederlandse schrijver Frans Kusters werd geboren in Nijmegen op 16 september 1949. Hij studeerde rechten aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Na zijn studie werd hij daar parttime wetenschappelijk medewerker. In 1973 schreef hij acht korte verhalen, die werden gebundeld in de Gelderse Literaire Reeks. Hij won hiermee de Reina Prinsen Geerligsprijs. De verhalenbundel is daarna uitgebreid en onder de titel De reis naar Brabant, en andere verhalen bij De Bezige Bij uitgegeven. In 1977 was hij mede-initiator van het Literair Café Nijmegen in O’42. Daarnaast richtte hij rond deze tijd het literaire tijdschrift De Schans op, samen met Thomas Verbogt, Nop Maas en Anton Fasel. In 2001 publiceert hij zijn eerste roman, Na het wonder.

Uit: Na het wonder

 

‘En waar ze net nog aan het klaverjassen waren, zijn ze nu ineens aan het bamzaaien, zo lijkt het wel. Maar dan zijn ook de luciferhoutjes van het ene moment op het andere verdwenen en toch bamzaaien zij steeds fanatieker verder. Raadsels. Dilemma’s. Onzekerheden. Waar Theo is, zijn er, kortom, altijd raadsels, dilemma’s en dubbele bodems. Maar het zijn wel de raadsels, de dilemma’s en de dubbele bodems waar het in de hedendaagse kunst om gaat. Uitzoomen, even opnieuw inzoomen, dan bevriezen en aftitelen.’

 

Kusters

Frans Kusters (Nijmegen, 16 september 1949)

 

Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 16e september ook mijn vorige blog van vandaag.