Dolce far niente
The Raft door Daniel-Bennett Schwartz 1998
Lazy Summer Day
Lazy summer days Hard labour has gone No serving, no stress Just rest! A chance to dance A chance to sing With everything you've got A chance to laugh 'til you're sore With those who are close Stroll down the silvery ground Sparkling in the sun Away to join the bustle Of the busy city life Await the smiles And happy faces The fun's about to begin Alas the end of wait is near So long stuck in that place Locked with the false rays shining down Behind the wall of coldness Now out in the real Soak it up Soak everything in Breakthrough the cloak Open your heart To that which is good Let it all in Don't give up No-one else has Look at them All laughs All smiles All jokes and japes And you All alone Join in Feel good… Feel good…… Why won't it work? Where's the sunshine gone? Why is it so dark? It's so quiet Am I even alive? Do you see me? Yes you do Like many times before Watch me walk Into the deathly cold Shuddering winds Howling screams Darkness Take me once again Cast my awful shadow Blacken my soul Work it in Straight in my heart Twist it Push it in more Make me want to die Then leave me cold on the floor Now do you see me? Do you see behind the mask? Do you see the pain? Do you see the tears inside me? Do you see me?
Kat Clifford (Derby, 1989) St Mary's Church, Derby, de geboorteplaats van Kat Clifford
De Australische schrijver John Birmingham werd geboren op 7 augustus 1964 in Liverpool, Engeland. Zie ook alle tags voor John Birmingham op dit blog.
Uit: On Father
“When a parent dies, for those left behind it can feel as though half of the sky has fallen. My father was the sheltering sky, and beneath his mild firmament no storm ever raged, no hard rain fell. His nature was as gentle as the fallen world is brutish. All of our lives, he was both a bastion against the trespasses of ill fate and the predations of the inimical. Shortly after three o'clock on Monday morning, June 19 2017, my father drew in his last breath and let go of his hold on the world. He lay abed in the palliative care ward of a hospital overlooking the western reaches of the Brisbane River. My brother Andrew was with him, holding his hand. Our mother, his forever love, was there, too. I was laid out on a couch in a tearoom, harboured somewhere in the grey lands between exhausted sleep and the edge of wakefulness. It was a liminal place, somewhere to wait and hide from consciousness. I had turned Andrew out of the tearoom an hour earlier, after many hours of our final vigil at my father's bed. He had been a long time dying. A cancer diagnosis more than five years ago; small skirmishes and border wars with lesser cancers in the years since. He'd fought the good fight, but in the end he succumbed to his nemesis, an aggressive, relentless angiosarcoma. The cancer did not care that he was a good man, the best I've ever known. It did not care that he was loving and loved. It just took him, and with him went everything he ever was. Everything he had done and seen and known. The notes he had plucked from a guitar as a younger man; silenced. The memory of running across a soccer pitch in a suburban club game, chasing a ball, while his children shouted from the sidelines; lost. Seven decades of memory and being in the world; vanished altogether like a dream. "He's gone," my brother said. He gently pushed open the door of the hospital tearoom, which was set aside each night for the family members of patients in the palliative care ward. A wedge of harsh white light from the fluorescents in the hall outside spilled through and my brother said quietly, "John, he's gone." For a weird, contrary moment, it felt as though the foolish and precipitate act of opening that door had killed my father, as though we would still have him with us if only I'd been allowed to wait and hide in there forever. But I suppose they'd have wanted the tearoom back eventually. Andrew and I returned to Dad's room, ghosting past other rooms where other sons and daughters, or brothers and sisters, or wives or husbands or friends, or perhaps a solitary nurse, completed the final days or hours of their own muted and impassive death watch. It was striking, in a way, that quietude. All around us, human lives guttered out like candles burned down to the very nub, often ending in horrific pain, and some in terror of the great darkness about to envelop them. But all was hushed and measured. Nobody raged against the dying of the light. Mum was holding Dad's hand as we returned. She would hold on to him for a little while yet, talking to him, talking to herself.”
John Birmingham (Liverpool, 7 augustus 1964) Cover
De Nederlandse dichter en prozaïst Cees Buddingh’ werd op 7 augustus 1918 geboren in Dordrecht. Zie ook alle tags voor Cees Budding’ op dit blog.
Die eerste nacht
Die eerste nacht, dat we door Londen reden! 't Bestond dus echt! Oxford Street, Regent's Street, Marble Arch, Bayswater Road, Kensington Gardens: 't leek allemaal één lang vertrouwd gebied. En toch ook zo onwezenlijk, alsof elk moment de wekker ratelend af kon lopen, en alles: huizen, mensen, lichtjes, pubs, zich in een Dordtse ochtend op zou lossen. Hier had ik dertig jaar lang van gedroomd. Hier had in gedachten al honderdduizenden voetstappen liggen. En nu was ik er. De taxi zwenkte Gloucester Road op: hier zat ik Kees Buddingh', zesenveertig jaar, die morgen wakker zou worden op Devonshire Terrace.
Tal
Ik moest denken aan het antwoord dat Tal eens gaf toen men hem vroeg of hij wel eens wat anders deed dan schaken 'Ja'. 'Wat dan?' - ‘Denken aan schaken.’ Die bezetenheid heb ik nooit kunnen opbrengen, zelfs niet voor de poëzie.
Zeer vrij naar het Chinees
de zon komt op. de zon gaat onder. langzaam telt de boer zijn kloten.
Cees Buddingh’ (7 augustus 1918 – 24 november 1985) Hier in 1942 in sanatorium Zonnegloren in Soest
De Nederlandse dichteres Diana Ozon (pseudoniem van Diana Groenveld) werd geboren in Amsterdam op 7 augustus 1959. Zie ook alle tags voor Diana Ozon op dit blog.
De vreemde geur van halletjes
De geur bij mensen thuis die aan vroeger herinnert Geurige halletjes Die geur herken ik altijd weer Die hangt in hun jas, in alles En allen hebben die mensen het een of ander voorwerp dat daar al eeuwen hangt Een barometer Een souvenir uit Nederlands-Indië Een hoedenstand of kapstok tafeltje om tas en handschoenen op te leggen Paraplubak flesje, flessenrek, de mat hondenriem, kinderlaarsjes noem maar op Van alles wat het bekijken waard is 'Mevrouw hebt u dit of dat voor de zus of zo?' 'Ik zal even wat halen wacht jij maar in mijn halletje' En dan ruik ik het Ik hoor de hond achter de glazen tochtdeur blaffen ben bang dat hij de deur open krijgt door het glas springt en mij bijt omdat ik in hun halletje sta Ze vertrouwen me toch mooi die mensen Ik kan 'm net zo goed met een jas van de kapstok smeren De galerij over spurten en in zweet naar de uitgang zoeken Ordinair gegil galmt van de gevels Die mensen, termieten in hun ingestorte betonhopen ik ontvlucht ze als een kleine miereneter die fooitjes slurpt en het geordend leven der slaapkolonie in opperste opschuddding achterlaat
Diana Ozon (Amsterdam, 7 augustus 1959)
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 7e augustus ook mijn blog van 7 augustus 2017 en ook mijn blog van 7 augustus 2011 deel 1 en ook deel 2.
07-08-2019 om 13:46
geschreven door Romenu
Tags:Dolce far niente, Kat Clifford, John Birmingham, Cees Buddingh’,, Diana Ozon, Romenu
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