Happy Thanksgiving from Vienna!
Instead of turkey and punkin pie, I'm drinking cheapo German beer and enjoying free internet access at the Vienna airport, where I'll be until our flight for Doha leaves 5 hours from now. Vienna is a gloomy place, from what I can tell from the train and shuttle bus window. Full of fog and crows and grubby children playing soccer. I can see how this could be the birthplace of psychoanalysis. Vienna is actually spelled Wien in German so if your last name is Wiener (like Dawn), your forebearers probably hailed from Vienna. Wiener Schnitzel is a Vienna sausage, etc.
I had a fun 'aha!' moment lying in bed last night trying to fall asleep. I realized that when I land in Hanoi, I will have made one complete circle around the earth! Check that one off the 'things to do before i die' list!
Lastly, I've just finished reading a book by an American poet/essayist who taught at the Prague study abroad program the summer I was there. He traveled through the Balkans during the Third Balkan War, struggling to help his Serb, Croat, Muslim, Slovenian and Macedonian collegues preserve their literary heritage in the face of the senselessness of that war. They didn't really succeed, of course. Many of the libraries and archives in each of the places he visited were completely destroyed (much of them containing irreplaceable and ancient Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox and Catholic illuminated texts). Anyways, I'd just like to share a quote from that book. It's lenghty but here goes:
Aharon Appelfeld speaking of the Holocaust
"When people challenge me and ask what is the place of art in that sphere of death and horror, I reply: Who can redeem the fears, the pains, the tortures, and the hidden beliefs from the darkness? What will bring them out of obscurity and give them a little warmth and respect, if not art? Who will take that great mass which everyone simply call 'the dreadful horror' and break it up into those tiny, precious particles? Art cannot replace faith. Art lacks the power for that task, nor does it pretend to possess such power. Nonetheless, art constantly challenges the process by which the individual person is reduced to anonymity."
I like that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Much love all around!
I had a fun 'aha!' moment lying in bed last night trying to fall asleep. I realized that when I land in Hanoi, I will have made one complete circle around the earth! Check that one off the 'things to do before i die' list!
Lastly, I've just finished reading a book by an American poet/essayist who taught at the Prague study abroad program the summer I was there. He traveled through the Balkans during the Third Balkan War, struggling to help his Serb, Croat, Muslim, Slovenian and Macedonian collegues preserve their literary heritage in the face of the senselessness of that war. They didn't really succeed, of course. Many of the libraries and archives in each of the places he visited were completely destroyed (much of them containing irreplaceable and ancient Muslim, Jewish, Orthodox and Catholic illuminated texts). Anyways, I'd just like to share a quote from that book. It's lenghty but here goes:
Aharon Appelfeld speaking of the Holocaust
"When people challenge me and ask what is the place of art in that sphere of death and horror, I reply: Who can redeem the fears, the pains, the tortures, and the hidden beliefs from the darkness? What will bring them out of obscurity and give them a little warmth and respect, if not art? Who will take that great mass which everyone simply call 'the dreadful horror' and break it up into those tiny, precious particles? Art cannot replace faith. Art lacks the power for that task, nor does it pretend to possess such power. Nonetheless, art constantly challenges the process by which the individual person is reduced to anonymity."
I like that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Much love all around!