In verband met een korte vakantie van Romenu zijn de postings even wat minder uitvoerig.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

De Amerikaanse schrijver Robert Ludlum werd geboren in New York op 25 mei 1927. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

Uit: The Paris Option

“The first warm winds of spring gusted along Paris's narrow back streets and broad boulevards, calling winter-weary residents out into the night. They thronged the sidewalks, strolling, linking arms, filling the chairs around outdoor cafe tables, everywhere smiling and chatting. Even the tourists stopped complaining-this was the enchanting Paris promised in their travel guides.

Occupied with their glasses of vin ordinaire under the stars, the spring celebrators on the bustling rue de Vaugirard did not notice the large black Renault van with darkened windows that left the busy street for the boulevard Pasteur. The van circled around the block, down the rue du Dr Roux, and at last entered the quiet rue des Volontaires, where the only action was of a young couple kissing in a recessed doorway.

The black van rolled to a stop outside L'Institut Pasteur, cut its engine, and turned off its headlights. It remained there, silent, until the young couple, oblivious in their bliss, disappeared inside a building across the street.

The van's doors clicked open, and four figures emerged clothed completely in black, their faces hidden behind balaclavas. Carrying compact Uzi submachine guns and wearing backpacks, they slipped through the night, almost invisible. A figure materialized from the shadows of the Pasteur Institute and guided them onto the grounds, while the street behind them remained quiet, deserted.

Out on the rue de Vaugirard, a saxophonist had begun to play, his music throaty and mellow. The night breeze carried the music, the laughter, and the scent of spring flowers in through the open windows of the multitude of buildings at the Pasteur. The famed research center was home to more than twenty-five hundred scientists, technicians, students, and administrators, and many still labored into the night.

The intruders had not expected so much activity. On high alert, they avoided the paths, listening, watching the windows and grounds, staying close to trees and structures as the sounds of the springtime gaiety frown the rue de Vaugirard increased.

But in his laboratory, all outside activity was lost on Dr. Emile Chambord, who sat working alone at his computer keyboard on the otherwise unoccupied second floor of his building. His lab was large, as befitted one of the institute's most distinguished researchers. It boasted several prize pieces of equipment, including a robotic gene-chip reader and a scanning-tunneling microscope, which measured and moved individual atoms. But more personal and far more critical to him tonight were the files near his left elbow and, on his other side, a spiral-bound notebook, which was open to the page on which he was meticulously recording data”

De Amerikaanse dichter Theodore Huebner Roethke werd geboren in Saginaw, Michigan op 25 mei 1908. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2006.

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine--
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!--
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me--
And that was scary--
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

Journey into the Interior

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

De Franse schrijfster Claire Castillon werd geboren op 25 mei 1975 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Zie ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

Uit: Le grenier

„J'ai décidé de ne plus rien passer par mon trou du cul, ni dans un sens, ni dans l'autre. Ni queue, ni crotte. J'ai trop peur que maman Perle ne me quitte par en bas, et je n'oublie pas que j'ai failli la perdre. Alors il faut que je mange très peu. Je vais mastiquer longuement, et avaler juste une bouchée par repas, que je rendrai plus tard, par en haut. Je n'irai plus jamais aux toilettes.
- Tu sais, Simon, j'ai décidé de ne plus jamis aller aux toilettes. Désormais, je fais que pipi.
- C'est intéressant. Tu en as d'autres comme ça? a demandé Simon.
- Non. Je gerbe souvent. C'est tout. Mais je crois que je l'ai déjà dit.
- Et sinon, a ajouté Simon, à part avaler des billes et arrêter de chier, tu as des projets?
- Non.
- Ecoute, si tu vis bien comme ça, tant mieux. Tu arrives à travailler?
- Très bien, ai-je répondu. Je travaille très bien.
- Je ne te propose pas d'aller diner? a-t-il ajouté. Tu préfères faire un footing?
- Non. Je vais aller vomir. J'ai pas assez craché mon déjeuner.

Je sens que j'ai frolé sa baffe dans ma gueule, mais rien. Il s'est levé, il a soupiré, je crois même qu'il a haussé les épaules, et il a claqué la porte. M'en fous. Il rappellera.
Ah, Simon...Quand comprendras-tu que j'ai envie que tu me cognes. Une fois. J'ai envie que tu me frappes et que tu me secoues par les bras, devant toi, comme on fait avec les bébés qui s'étouffent, ou avec les brancardiers qui bloquent un passage. Que tu gueules, que tu vocifères, que tu me pousses sur le carrelage contre lequel je m'éclaterai la tempe, et que tu me baises alors que je reprends à peine connaissance, en me murmurant que je suis la pute que tu aimes. »

Zie voor onderstaande schrijvers ook mijn blog van 25 mei 2007.

De Amerikaanse schrijver, filosoof en essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson werd geboren in Boston, Massachusetts op 25 mei 1803.