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De Engelse schrijver Bruce Chatwin werd op 13 mei 1940 in Sheffield geboren. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2008.xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Uit: Was mache ich hier (Vertaald door Anaa Kamp)
Vor langer Zeit, als ich bei Sotheby's arbeitete, dem Kunst-Auktionshaus, brachten zwei undurchsichtig wirkende Schweizer einen prähistorischen Goldschatz: Halsketten, Armreifen, Haarspangen, Broschen. Sie behaupteten, daß er aus Mitteleuropa komme, aber ich wußte, daß er iberischen Ursprungs war. Wir gaben ihnen eine Empfangsbestätigung, und sie gingen davon.
In der Bibliothek hatten wir ein Buch über iberische Vorgeschichte. Ich fand mehrere der Objekte darin abgebildet, als Besitzer wurde eine Fundacion Don Juan de Valencia in Madrid angegeben. Mit Hilfe der internationalen Telefonvermittlung kam ich zu der Stiftung durch und fragte, ob ich den Kurator sprechen könne.
"Sie haben das Gold?" rief er mit erregter Stimme. "Das ist wunderbar! Es ist uns gestohlen worden. Bewahren Sie es auf. Wir werden Interpol benachrichtigen...Entschuldigen Sie, wie, sagten Sie, war ihr Name, Cha...? Cha...? Chatwin! Wir werden uns mit Ihnen in Verbindung setzen. Vielen Dank!"
Am nächsten Morgen gegen elf rief mich die Empfangsdame an und sagte, der Herzog von M**** warte auf mich.
Er war ein weißhaariger Grande der alten Schule. er trug den schwarzen Hut, den nur ein Grande tragen kann. Ich führte ihn in einen Warteraum und holte das Gold aus dem Safe.
Zitternd vor Aufregung nahm der Herzog von M**** die Objekte eines nach dem anderen in die Hand. Nichts fehlte.
"ich kann Ihnen nicht sagen, wie dankbar ich Ihnen bin", sagte er. "Sie können sich nicht vorstellen, was ich durchgemacht habe. Diese Schweizer gaben sich als Archäologen aus, und wir gestatteten ihnen, sich die Sammlung anzusehen. Sie haben sie gestohlen. Ich bin verantwortlich für die Stiftung. Ich wäre in eine schreckliche Lage geraten, wenn das Gold nicht gefunden worden wäre."
Wir kamen überein, den Schatz wieder in den Safe zu legen und die Anweisungen von Interpol abzuwarten.
Bruce Chatwin (13 mei 1940 18 januari 1989)
De Britse schrijfster Daphne du Maurier werd geboren in Londen op 13 mei 1907. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2008.
Uit: The Parasites
Someone from a newspaper had telephoned him the other day. Mr Delaney, we are running a series shortly in our paper, What Success has done for Me. Can we have your contribution? No, they could not have his contribution. All success had done for him was to make it impossible to pay his super-tax. But what is your recipe, Mr Delaney, for the short road to success? Mr Delaney had no recipe.
Success. Well, what did it mean, to him? Supposing he had answered the newspaper and spoken the truth? A song burning in his head for two days until he had written it down, when he was purged; when he was free again. Until the next pain came. And the performance was repeated. The disillusion came when the songs were plugged upon the air, moaned by crooners, whispered by wailing women, clanged by orchestras, hummed by housemaids; so that what had been once his little private pain became, to put it bluntly, everyones diarrhoea. Which was cheapening and intolerable. Negroes offered thousands for the rights to sing his songs. God! The cheques that had rolled in from coloured crooners. Too many cheques, all in one year. Niall had to attend conferences in the City with hard-faced men round desks, all because of some little song that had come into his head one afternoon, when lying on his back in the sun. How to escape? Travel. He could always travel.
Daphne du Maurier (13 mei 1907 19 april 1989)
De Schotse dichteres Kathleen Jamie werd geboren op 13 mei 1962 in Currie, Edinburgh. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2008.
Julian of Norwich
Everything I do I do for you.
Brute. You inform the dark
inside the stones, the winds draughting in
from this world and that to come,
but never touch me.
You took me on
but dart like a rabbit into holes
from the edges of my sense
when I turn, walk, turn.
*
I am the hermit whom you keep
at the gardens end, but I wander.
I am wandering in your acres
where every step, were I
attuned to sense them,
would crush a thousand flowers.
(Hush, thats not the attitude)
I keep prepared a room and no one comes.
(Love is the attitude.)
*
Canary that I am, caged and hung
from the eaves of the world
to trill your praise.
He will not come.
Poor bloodless hands, unclasp.
Stiffened, stone-cold knees, bear me up.
(And yet, and yet, I am suspended
in his joy, huge and helpless
as the harvest moon in a summer sky.)
Kathleen Jamie (Currie, 13 mei 1962)
De Japanse schrijver Koji Suzuki werd geboren op 13 mei 1957 in Hamamatsu. Hij studeerde af aan de Keio universiteit. Kôji Suzuki werd wereldberoemd door zijn bestseller Ring, tot tweemaal toe is verfilmd en waarvan wereldwijd meer dan 3 miljoen exemplaren zijn verkocht.
Uit: Ring
A row of condominium buildings, each fourteen stories high, ran along the northern edge of the housing development next to the Sankeien garden. Although built only recently, nearly all the units were occupied. Nearly a hundred dwellings were crammed into each building, but most of the inhabitants had never even seen the faces of their neighbors. The only proof that people lived here came at night, when windows lit up.
Off to the south the oily surface of the ocean reflected the glittering lights of a factory. A maze of pipes and conduits crawled along the factory walls like blood vessels on muscle tissue. Countless lights played over the front wall of the factory like insects that glow in the dark; even this grotesque scene had a certain type of beauty. The factory cast a wordless shadow on the black sea beyond.
A few hundred meters closer, in the housing development, a single new two-story home stood among empty lots spaced at precise intervals. Its front door opened directly onto the street, which ran north and south, and beside it was a one-car garage. The home was ordinary, like those found in any new housing development anywhere, but there were no other houses behind or beside it. Perhaps owing to their inconvenience to mass transit, few of the lots had been sold, and For Sale signs could be seen here and there all along the street. Compared to the condos, which were completed at about the same time and which were immediately snapped up by buyers, the housing development looked quite lonely.
Kōji Suzuki (Hamamatsu, 13 mei 1957)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Armistead Jones Maupin Jr. werd geboren op 13 mei 1944 in Washington. Zie ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2007 en ook mijn blog van 13 mei 2008.
Uit: Tales of the City
Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time.
She came to the city alone for an eight-day vacation. On the fifth night, she drank three Irish coffees at the Buena Vista, realized that her Mood Ring was blue, and decided to phone her mother in Cleveland.
"Hi, Mom. It's me."
"Oh, darling. Your daddy and I were just talking about you. There was this crazy man on McMillan and Wife who was strangling all these secretaries, and I just couldn't help thinking . . ."
"Mom .
"I know. just crazy ol' Mom, worrying herself sick over nothing. But you never can tell about those things. Look at that poor Patty Hearst, locked up in that closet with all those awful
"Mom ... long distance."
"Oh ... yes. You must be having a grand time."
"God ... you wouldn't believe it! The people here are so friendly I feel like I've ...
"Have you been to the Top of the Mark like I told you?" "Not yet."
"Well, don't you dare miss that! You know, your daddy took me there when he got back from the South Pacific. I remember he slipped the bandleader five dollars, so we could dance to 'Moonlight Serenade,' and I spilled Tom Collins all over his beautiful white Navy . . ."
"Mom, I want you to do me a favor."
"Of course, darling. Just listen to me. Oh ... before I forget it, I ran into Mr. Lassiter yesterday at the Ridgemont Mail, and he said the office isjust falling apart with you gone. They don't get many good secretaries at Lassiter Fertilizers."
"Mom, that's sort of why I called."
"Yes, darling?"
"I want you to call Mr. Lassiter and tell him I won't be in on Monday morning."
"Oh ... Mary Ann, I'm not sure you should ask for an extension on your vacation."
"It's not an extension, Mom."
Armistead Maupin ( Washington, 13 mei 1944)
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