vierzig persische pfirsiche

now, everyone repeat after me:

"we see three freakin' peaches.
we see thirteen freakin' peaches,
we see thirty-three freakin' peaches.
we see fifty-three dirty persian peaches."

everyone who makes a mistake MUST eat one of the peaches.

moi non plus

Je t'aime / oh, oui je t'aime! / moi non plus / oh, mon amour... / comme la vague irrésolue / je vais je vais et je viens / entre tes reins / et je / me retiens - je / t'aime je t'aime / oh, oui je t'aime ! / moi non plus / oh mon amour... / tu es la vague, moi l'île nue / tu vas et tu viens / entre mes reins / tu vas et tu viens / entre mes reins / et je / te rejoins- je t'aime je t'aime / moi non plus / oh, mon amour... / comme la vague irrésolue / je vais je vais et je viens / entre tes reins / et je / me retiens / tu vas et tu viens / entre mes reins / tu vas et tu viens / entre mes reins / et je / te rejoins - je t'aime je t'aime / oh, oui je t'aime ! / moi non plus / oh mon amour... / l'amour physique est sans issue / je vais et je viens / entre tes reins / je vais et je viens / et je me retiens / non ! maintenant / Viens !

(This lyric, as sung by Gainsbourg/Birkin, was put here for me to keep up an association.)

it's worse than i thought

i read her favourite books.

i accidentally go for walks in her part of vienna, visiting places where she might have played as a child, or hung out when she went to school.

i go shopping in perfectly strange streets, trying to divine what she would buy there.

i get hungry and dream up a dinner to suit her, though i will eat it without her.

i come home, and it feels like entering a strange country.

girl, you've kinda moved in under my skin.

you're sweeter than any carrots, darling

Water

Next time it's cold and rainy outside, go and watch this movie. It manages to melt a banyan tree, a bamboo flute, a black baby dog, quotations from Sanskrit poetry and lots of white cotton saris into one big beautiful picture - while all the time it is really shockingly realistic. Being a widow in a traditional Hindu society is just as ugly as "Water" makes it appear. And M. K. Gandhi's political activity did chiefly consist of appearances of just the kind you see towards the end of the movie...
Some nutcases think this movie attacks Hinduism. It does not; it doesn't even make fun of Gandhi, though that is quite the vogue in India now. All it condemns is stupidity and inhuman behaviour. - And the little girl you can see in the picture is certainly a most stunning actress - she alone is worth the way to the cinema!
Water plays a great many roles in "Water". You can use it to wash fleas off a puppy. You wet someone's hair with water in order to shave their head. You can use fetching water from the river as an excuse to meet your beloved. Rain is water, and so are rainclouds - even when they occur in classical poems. You cross the water of the river for a number of purposes. Even when the male protagonist's brother, the "brown Englishman" who has embraced Western culture and whisky, mangles a German song at his piano, it is Ich hört' ein Bächlein rauschen wohl aus dem Felsengrund ("I heard a brook a-gushing amid the rocky grounds"). Dead bodies go into the water of the Ganges. So do living bodies, and sometimes they do not return.
And then there is the tear in the spectator's eye.

the caterpillar's back again

(click to enlarge)


und für die, die deutsch verstehen: die zweite ausgabe vom bagger ist da!