De Nederlandse schrijver Herman Franke werd geboren op 13 oktober 1948 in Groningen. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Herman Franke op dit blog.

Uit: Wolfstonen

“Hij betwijfelde of die oude huizen het zouden pikken. Anders dan de overbuurvrouw geloofde hij wel in bezielde materie en hij dacht aan een harem vol oude wijven met verdorde schaamlippen waar een jong, stralend meisje werd binnengebracht; haar billen glommen als goud, op haar borsten schitterden zilverkleurige sieraden, tussen haar benen gloorde een vochtige hemel en haar liefdeszuchten klonken als engelengezang. De oude vrouwen maakten krabbend, schoppend en bijtend een wrak van haar. Maar zo fantasierijk en poëtisch waren de anderen niet. Zij herinnerden zich het gat dat tientallen jaren lang in de huizenrij gegaapt had en de vlakte met puinresten en uitbundig opschietend onkruid maar al te goed. Het gat werd rechts en links begrensd door de bontgekleurde tussenmuren van de belendende percelen, die buitenmuren waren geworden op de dag van de sloop. Je kon nog zien waar de vloeren en trappen hadden gezeten. De witte uitsparing in een geel geschilderde kamerwand verried waar een rechthoekige kast had gestaan. Je zag de betegelde wanden van doucheruimtes. This wall is now available in paperback, was er met een spuitbus op de rechtermuur geschreven, die opbolde en gestut werd door boomstammen. Er liepen altijd katten op het door een gazen hekwerk afgezette terrein, dat in feite de enige groenvoorziening in de wijk was maar als zodanig werd de plek niet gewaardeerd. Integendeel, het gat was iedereen een doorn in het oog. Er werd huisvuil en andere rotzooi gedumpt dat ging rotten en stinken en ongedierte aantrok. Ouders verboden hun kinderen het terrein te betreden maar via kleine openingen in het hek kropen zij stiekem toch naar binnen. Kort daarna kregen ze last van huiduitslag en misselijkheid. Er zouden giftige planten groeien. Er zou illegaal gif zijn gestort. Er zou ontucht bedreven worden door homo’s en kinderlokkers.”

Herman Franke (13 oktober 1946 – 14 augustus 2010)

De Jamaicaanse schrijver Colin Channer werd geboren op 13 oktober 1963 in Kingston. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Colin Channer op dit blog.

Uit: Satisfy My Soul

„I’m a playwright and director whose grandfather moved to Harlem from West Africa in the twenties. Chadwick is fifty. I am thirty-eight. Chadwick is married. I will never be. He is a Republican. I like to call myself a negro. He is bald. My locks are wrapped around my head to form a turban.
His freckled cheeks are settling into jowls. His nose is sharp and owlish. He does not have an upper lip. His forehead lasts forever.
“I think I’d have a rack of lamb,” he answers. “And it is always hard for me to sleep without my wife. My favorite book has always been Heart of Darkness. Conrad is amazing. You should read him. I would dine with Rudy Kipling. As a boy in Oklahoma I felt connected to his stories . . . all the Indians. I know that our natives aren’t the same as Kipling’s Hindus, but I could still relate. As far as music is concerned I think I’d listen to Aretha Franklin. And you—you asked the question. What would you do?”
I glance at the producer, a desert-colored woman with a se- cret trail of bites along her neck and stomach. Her name is Amaranta.
Smiling as she looks away, she scoops her copper hair into a ponytail. When she looks again I recognize the contour of her body in her nose. Like her back, it arches inward on a bony spine then flares into a bulb of spongy flesh.
The diamonds on her wedding ring are glinting. Her cheeks are hard and chiseled like the stones. But as a woman she is soft. Her skin. Her voice. Her touch.
Last night, as she read to me in bed, I told her that her skin reminded me of sand. She drew her nipple on my chest and said I was her Tuareg . . . the way I wrap my dreadlocks like a turban, the oily blackness of my skin, the height of what she calls my Libyan nose. She held me by my cheekbones when she kissed me. She christened them my little horns.”

Colin Channer (Kingston, 13 oktober 1963)

De Albanese dichter Migjeni (eigen. Millosh Gjergj Nikolla) werd geboren op 13 oktober 1911 in Shkodra. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Migjeni op dit blog.

Autumn on parade

Autumn in nature and autumn in our faces.
The sultry breeze enfeebles, the glowering sun
Oppresses the ailing spirit in our breasts,
Shrivels the life trembling among the twigs of a poplar.

The yellow colours twirl in the final dance,
(A frantic desire of leaves dying one by one).
Our joys, passions, our ultimate desires
Fall and are trampled in the autumn mud.

An oak tree, reflected in the tears of heaven,
Tosses and bleeds in gigantic passion.
"To live! I want to live!" - it fights for breath,
Piercing the storm with cries of grief.

The horizon, drowned in fog, joins in
The lamentation. In prayer dejected fruit trees
Fold imploring branches - but in vain, they know.
Tomorrow they will die... Is there nowhere hope?

The eye is saddened. Saddened, too, the heart
At the hour of death, when silent fall the veins
And from the grave to the highest heavens soar
Despairing cries of long-unheeded pain.

Autumn in nature and autumn in our faces.
Moan, desires, offspring of poverty,
Groan in lamentation, bewail the corpses,
That adorn this autumn among the withered branches.

Vertaald door Robert Elsie

Migjeni (13 oktober 1911 – 26 augustus 1938)

Postzegel ter gelegenheid van zijn 100^e geboortedag

De Amerikaanse dichter en schrijver Arna Wendell Bontemps werd geboren op 13 oktober 1902 in Alexandria in Louisiana. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Arna Wendell Bontemps op dit blog.

Length of Moon

Then the golden hour
Will tick its last
And the flame will go down in the flower.
A briefer length of moon
Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.
Then we may think of this, yet
There will be something forgotten
And something we should forget.
It will be like all things we know: .
A stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.
It will be quiet then and we may stay Long at the picket gate
But there will be less to say.

Arna Wendell Bontemps (13 oktober 1902 – 4 juni 1973)

De Amerikaanse schrijver Conrad Richter werd geboren op 13 oktober 1890 in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Conrad Richter op dit blog.

Uit: Smoke on the Prairie

„Her hands kept eternally busy. She washed and ironed, heating the heavy smoothing iron by setting it upright on the hearth before the coals. She sat daily over winter socks for Pleas and the baby, one foot moving the cradle as she knitted. Morning or afternoon she let the sheep from the high corral and followed on foot over the range, resting with her baby on the grass in cedar shade.
Pleas had set up a hopper for the oak ash. In the big copper kettle brought from Arkansas she boiled wood ashes. When the lye dissolved the end of a feather, she added accumulated greases and tallow and boiled a small batch of soap, cut the cooling mixture into yellow-gray bars and piled them on the mantel to dry. She soaked a flint-dry deerskin in strong suds of lye soap, water, and a spoonful of lard; scraped off the hair with an old corn knife; let it remain by the warm hearth all night; wrung, pulled, and stretched it next day until perfectly dry, when it becomes soft and pliable as cloth and waited only her shears and thread for gloves or clothes.

(…)

They rode slowly on, while the luminous purple began to appear like violet mist on the hills. It spread to the plains, bathing them in color. The home ranch in the wide mouth of Monica Canyon ahead became an island of buildings, corrals, and windmill swimming in a bright velvet sea. The color seemed to float in the air about them. They breathed it, road through it.”

Conrad Richter (13 oktober 1890 – 30 oktober 1968)

Als cowboy, rond 1940 

De Britse romanschrijfster en gewezen politica Edwina Currie werd geboren in Liverpool op 13 oktober 1946. Zie ook alle tags voor Edwina Currie op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 13 oktober 2010.

Uit: Diaries

“Les Tuileries [Edwina’s house in France], Friday, January 6, 1995, 6pm

Every time I come here, I wonder why on earth I bothered to buy such an outlandish property so far away. But this is a place for reflection and healing — and without it, I’d be some kind of nutcase.

Here, I did all my weeping over John Major, and what hurt the most — not being invited to join his government at the first opportunity.

I think a lot about keeping age at bay. I wish I could stop nibbling and generally overeating: although I’m fit, ten-and-a-half stone means a thick waist and a big bum.

Tower House [Edwina’s house in  her South Derbyshire constituency], Friday, February 24, 8pm

When [my husband] Ray’s around, all I get is a grunt. And yet . . . I know as I pack those boxes to move out to my new flat [in Clapham, South London], I’ll be very tearful.“

Edwina Currie (Liverpool, 13 oktober 1946)