Kundera’s Identity. I read this book before. If I am not mistaken, I read it in French. Now, it was in English. It is not as gripping as the other Kundera books but it is worth the ensuing meditation, nevertheless. And somehow it did not come alone. It’s a bit scary when I think of how often many things gravitate and converge at the same time. I finished the book while sipping a beer and watching the rain on the Donaukanal, in Urania: we went to the movies, yesterday. Kinomontag! We saw Alle Anderen, with Minichmayer. A good film. Both the book I just finished and the movie we saw were somehow dominated by the same theme – being someone else. But I’ll write more about this with another occasion. It’s one of the things I want to do from now on – take a bit of time and not just jot down whatever happens to cross my head but do a bit of analysis, elaborate a bit, bring up some new ideas, connect some old ones, make something new…
This week I got my first issue of The Economist. I cancelled the Time subscription (which I had for about 6 years now) and I started something new. And? How do I like it? Well, there is a lot to read. And it’s English English (which means a couple of more words/phrases to learn every now and then). But I miss the pictures, the wide-angles, the focus/blur play of the Time. Oh, well, I guess I see enough pictures every day at NY Times’ Lens blog and almost every week at Boston’s Big Picture. They should be enough, shouldn’t they? At first I thought I will not manage to read the whole thing in a week (and do the rest of my other reading chores as well) but I think it’s going to work out.
What else do I read, actually? Following a short BBC film on Desmond Morris, I started reading The Naked Ape. Yes, this is popular science and it was written in the 60’s and, yes, I knew most of the stuff already but I still find it interesting. Leafing through, at least, could be refreshing and, at times, does make me laugh (the guys has a sense of humor). I think this week I’ll be done with it and then, I’ll do some Paul Auster (The Brooklyn Follies). Hope to get some straight, good storytelling (what Auster always delivers) out of it…
And there is always reading from the blogs – quite a lot of it, actually. Every day a small trip around the world, reading stuff from people I do not know and learning from them, feeling with them, hoping with them. Whether they write about books, food in SE Asia, a funeral in Romania, philanthropy, bike rides on the country side, traveling, cell-phone photos of an empty bin bag as the only thing that moves in forgotten American cities, clever ‘events’ in Romania/Bucharest (sometimes I wish I were there), I do not let them go away unread. Sometimes more interesting than others, sometimes happy, sometimes sad… If nothing else, it’s a good exercise in building up characters. But there is plenty…
I wonder if any of them reads what I write. But it doesn’t really matter.
Paintings from the States. Yes, they are here! Unpacked them like a kid unpacks his toys. They seem alright (except perhaps one of them, which looks a bit too stiff – perhaps a fake; but first it needs a good clean-up). I hope they’ll sell well!
And cooking: aubergines in mustard sauce (Indian). The mustard seeds were rather old and they did not really taste that much but it was good, nevertheless. I still have yellow fingernails from turmeric (the curry mix I made from scratch, btw). Finished it up in the morning (yeah, I do this kind of things once in a while)!
