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De Nederlandse schrijfster en columniste Margaretha
Hendrika (Cri) Stellweg (alias Saartje
Burgerhart) werd geboren in Nijmegen op 23 maart 1922. Zie ook mijn
blog van 27 november 2006.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: Ontbijten in je eentje
Vanuit het bed en over het theekopje biedt
de kleerkast daar recht tegenover een breed overzicht aan beschikbaar textiel.
Kleurige stapeltjes truien, blouses, t-shirts, ze vouwt ze in drieën, alles
volgens hetzelfde principe, twee flanken over het middenveld, armen eroverheen,
vervolgens dubbelgevouwen. Daaronder hangen de rokken, de broeken, languit in
de ruststand, alleen de benen ontbreken nog. Ze geeft er meer aan uit dan
vroeger. Op de verpakking komt het nu meer aan dan ooit. Waarin zullen we
vandaag nu weer eens het versleten lichaam verbergen. Hoofd, steunend op een
arm, slokjes thee slurpend, stelt ze het omhulsel samen voor deze dag, de circa
29.460ste in dit leven dat ooit begon in wafelluiers, flanellen hemdjes,
omgezoomd met kruissteekjes van rood haakgaren en sajetten truitjes.
Vier hoofden bungelden van een balk op de zolder. Vier bolle krijtwitte
hoofden, elk aan z'n eigen spijker. Wanneer bij een straffe wind uit zee de
ramen van dakkapel en steekraam tegen elkaar openstonden deinden ze zacht in
een macaber witte-hoofdendansje. Ze was er niet bang voor, ook 's avonds niet
als de zolder enkel door een zwak peertje werd verlicht. Als angst al eens
dreigde, dan was ze die gauw de baas door met geweld van overtuiging te zeggen:
het zijn slopen! Gewoon kussenslopen, gevuld met houdbaar voedsel, witte bonen,
bruine bonen en twee met rijst. Op een dag had zij ze met houtskool gezichten
gegeven, ogen, neusgaten en een mond. Eén hoofd keek zuinig, met klein geknepen
mondje, de ander benauwd alsof er gedrukt moest worden op een grote scheet, en
de rijsthoofden lachten, hartelijk de een, schaterend met wijdopen mond met
zwarte tanden erin de ander.
Cri Stellweg (23 maart 1922 - 26 november 2006)
De Amerikaanse
dichter Gary Joseph
Whitehead werd geboren op
23 maart 1965 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Zie alle tags voor Gary Whitehead op dit blog.
A Used Book
When I open its pages my dog stirs
from his repose on the couch beside me
to sniff at the spine and trim. His gray ears
lift to listen, and I hear what he hears:
traffic horns, a teapot's whistle, the purrs
of the reader's cats on her old settee.
What was she doing reading such heady
stuff so early on a Saturdaysun
not yet risen, her lover still asleep?
The book, I guess, her company to keep,
and the cats, while the light kept its steady
course across her floor. Paris or London,
I imagine, though it was probably
San Francisco, a streetcar passing by
and fog rinsing the morning air. A gray
day then, much like any other. It may
be that she, too, drawn irresistibly
to its place on a shelf in a nearby
shop, blew the dust and bought it second-hand.
And perhaps her cats roused when she opened
its cover, catching the vague scent of dog,
and she got no further than the prologue
before she was off to some other land
where a man held a page against the wind.
Gary
Whitehead (Pawtucket, 23 maart 1965)
Pawtucket, Rhode Island
De Japanse
schrijfster Yōko Tawada werd geboren op 23 maart 1960 in Tokyo. Zie alle tags voor Yōko Tawada op dit blog.
Uit: The Naked Eye
(Vertaald door Susan Bernofsky)
A year had passed without my ever having
spent time alone with Jean. Perhaps Ai Van made a point of never leaving us
alone. I, too, avoided being alone with him whenever possible. When I was home,
Ai Van stayed home as well. When Ai Van left the house, I made sure I went out
as well, usually to the movies, since I didnt know where else to go. In the
movie theaters there were sometimes men who spoke to me. I would say a word
that didnt exist in any language and walk away. This one word was meant to
signify: I am unable to speak. It was a noun in the singular signifying
speechless subject; or else it was a verb that could be used only in the
first person singular and meant the opposite of to speak.
(
)
And so I could use
the passport of a Japanese woman that Heron would be glad to sell me to leave
France without a visa and travel to Thailand. There I could marry Tuong Linh
and return to France as his wife with my own passport. Tuong Linh was satisfied
with this plan. What does such a passport cost? I asked. Dont worry. Your
entire life depends on it, so how could it possibly be too expensive?
Yōko Tawada
(Tokyo, 23 maart 1960)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Mitch Cullin werd geboren
op 23 maart 1968 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Zie alle tags voor Mitch Cullin op dit blog.
Uit: A Slight Trick of the Mind
Of course, when stung by a bee on the
throat, he knew it was best to drink salt and water to prevent serious
consequences. Naturally, the stinger should be pulled from the skin beforehand,
preferably seconds after the poison's instantaneous release. In his forty-four
years of beekeeping on the southern slope of the Sussex Downsliving between
Seaford and Eastbourne, the closest village being the tiny Cuckmere Havenhe
had received exactly 7,816 stings from worker bees (almost always on the hands
or face, occasionally on the earlobes or the neck or the throat: the cause and
subsequent effects of every single prick dutifully contemplated, and later
recorded into one of the many notebook journals he kept in his attic study).
These mildly painful experiences, over time, had led him to a variety of
remedies, each depending on which parts of his body had been stung and the
ultimate depth to which the stinger had gone: salt with cold water, soft soap
mixed with salt, then half of a raw onion applied to the irritation; when in
extreme discomfort, wet mud or clay sometimes did the trick, as long as it was
reapplied hourly, until the swelling was no longer apparent; however, to cure
the smart, and also prevent inflammation, dampened tobacco rubbed immediately
into the skin seemed the most effective solution.
Mitch
Cullin (Santa Fe, 23 maart 1968)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Steven Saylor werd geboren op 23 maart 1956 in Port Lavaca Texas. Zie alle tags voor Steven Saylor op dit blog..
Uit: House
of the Vestals
"Eco," I said, "do you mean to
tell me that you have never seen a play?"
He looked up at me with his big brown eyes
and shook his head.
"Never laughed at the bumbling slaves
who have a falling- out? Never swooned to see the young heroine abducted by
pirates? Never thrilled at the discovery that our hero is the secret heir to a
vast fortune?"
Ecos eyes grew even larger, and he shook his
head more vigorously.
"Then there must be a remedy, this very
day!" I said.
It was the Ides of September, and a more
beautiful autumn day the gods had never fashioned. The sun shone warmly on the
narrow streets and gurgling fountains of Rome; a light breeze swept up from the
Tiber, cooling the seven hills; the sky above was a bowl of purest azure,
without a single cloud. It was the twelfth day of the sixteen days set aside
each year for the Roman Festival, the citys oldest public holiday. Perhaps
Jupiter himself had decreed that the weather should be so perfect; the holiday
was in his honor.
For Eco, the festival had been an endless
orgy of discoveries. He had seen his first chariot race in the Circus Maximus,
had watched wrestlers and boxers in the public squares, had eaten his first
calfs-brain-and-almond sausage from a street vendor. The race had thrilled him,
mostly because he thought the horses so beautiful; the pugilists had bored him,
since he had seen plenty of brawling in public before; the sausage had not
agreed with him (or perhaps his problem was the spiced green apples on which he
gorged himself afterward).
It was four months since I had rescued Eco in
an alley in the Subura, from a gang of boys pursuing him with sticks and cruel
jeers. I knew a little of his history, having met him briefly in my
investigations for Cicero that spring. Apparently his widowed mother had chosen
to abandon little Eco in her desperation, leaving him to fend for himself. What
else could I do but take him home with me?
Steven
Saylor (Port Lavaca, 23 maart 1956)
De Samische
dichter, schilder, musicus en fotograaf Nils-Aslak Valkeapääwerd geboren op 23 maart 1943 in Palonjoensuu
nabij Enontekiö. Zie alle tags voor Nils-Aslak Valkeapää op dit blog.
Uit: The Sun, my Father (Fragment)
as if
I myself
inscribe
but often
I fly to the other side
and no longer
know
life
turns
pushes
into action
as if I
myself
was doing it
and I draw
sometimes I believe
that this is me
these images
and
however I change
the images, images of me,
or I myself
so many shapes of me, aspects, I could have
been
so many, or almost anything
in another condition
I find
readiness in me
to do everything that people do, and even
more
simply wipe away a speck of dust, unfold an
open human, naked
and when I draw myself, I suppose I draw
others too
or is it just me, is it in me that people
reveal themselves, modesty
and greed
again I leave
fly away
to see
how I am
I feel fire
billowing
the mind's night
impure
the shame of deeds
Vertaald door Harald Gaski,
Lars Nordström en Ralph Salisbury
Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (23 maart 1943 26 november
2001)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 23e maart ook mijn vorige
blog van vandaag.
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